Exiles in the Night

The world we live in is called Álomvölgy. The village has no more than about 150 people, and perhaps only a third of buildings. To the east, one can follow the rising sun towards the sea.To the west of it, towards the setting sun, mighty mountains that seemed to have scraped the very firmament of heaven itself hang in the distance. Beyond those mountains lie Transylvania and the rest of the Home States of Austria. Yet to me and my older brother, these places were nothing more than abstractions; the Emperor’s court in Vienna was as distant as the Moon and stars. For all intents and purposes, the entirety of creation was nothing more than this village and the fields and forests around it that one can fly to in a day.

There are two buildings at the each end of Álomvölgy, two buildings that the village revolves around. One one end is the church: a tall, elegant building made from the same wattle and daub that most of the village is made out of. The elegant stained glass windows tell stories from the Scriptures and the lives of the Saints. On the other end of the village is the Town Hall, a brick building no bigger than a large house with an array of tables for meetings. On Sundays, me and Mihály go to Mass, and sing praises to God and His saints. Unlike Mihály, I’m not old enough to take Communion at Mass, which means that he has to eat the special bread and wine the priest gives him and the rest of the congregation. I wonder why I can’t eat the special bread, but father says I’m too young to understand. The Town Hall is where father goes every Sunday after Mass to talk about how to run the town correctly, and what sort of weather the farmers need for their crops.

Our home is a cottage towards the east end of town. There are three rooms inside it: the kitchen, the living room, and the pantry. The living room, which has a stove, a couch, and three beds in the corner: one for me, one for Mihály, and the last one is shared by our parents. Then there’s the kitchen, which always has the scent of paprika, potatoes, and fruit jams hanging around it. In the fall, father moves the beds in here, since the stove in the kitchen is far warmer than the living room stove. Finally, there’s the store-room. Here are a large array of cured foods: jars of jam, or vegetables and even food that come in metal cans line the shelves, waiting to be eaten when winter comes. On top of the ceiling, in between the beams of the roof, the sparrows nest and the bats roost. Mihály loves to fly up to them and frighten the tiny birds, sending them fluttering while I imitate him. Papa does not like this, and he smacks us with a wooden spoon in the kitchen if he catches us. It leaves red marks on our faces that even show through our hair.

Papa is a weather-Pony: he’s the one responsible for bringing the wind and rain to the crops we all need to eat. He works with other villagers who can fly, ordering the others as to what to make that day; what clouds are to be made, when the rains will come, and so forth. Mihály wishes one day he could one day be up there, gracefully soaring in the heavens and forging the very threads of Álomvölgy’s existence, but papa disagrees. He believes we should study hard, go to university in Buda-Pest or even Vienna itself, and become great scholars that can earn money for our family.

The days pass like the minnows in the stream outside the village, and the seasons pass like a gigantic wheel, slowly turning a long year after year. When autumn comes, the leaves change colour, and the adults start displaying their goods out in the fair, and the farmers reap the fields with the help of the Gypsies, the dark skinned men who arrive in their carts and depart when their times come. This is the time when the fair is held, and the villagers give out candies and sweet pastries to celebrate. During autumn, we also celebrate All Saints’ Day. We go to church and celebrate all the saints, who are like God’s helpers, and remember our dead relatives. On the night before, All Hallows Eve, some of the villagers who look like us also celebrate a holiday called Nightmare Night. The foals dress up in different costumes and ask for candy, which is supposed to be given to Nightmare Moon, even though she went back to being Princess Luna over thirty years ago, before even the “Weltkonvergenz” that brought the worlds together happened. Sometimes, Mihály wants to dress up like the other foals and take part in Nightmare Night, but papa says it’s a pagan festival, which is not Christian. That God could punish us by sending us to Hell if we do so, so he says. This is a strong enough threat to stop us from playing with the other foals, but we always look out the windows, wishing we could be out with them.

Fall is also the time of the Feast of Saint Michael, Mihály’s Name Day, which is like his second birthday. When this day comes, mother and father gives him little gifts, even if he isn’t doing his homework right. He also takes out a small picture book about Saint Michael the Archangel, and tell us about how he fights for God and helps us keep away temptations and demons. Saint Michael is one of my favourite saints, almost as much as Saint Gabriel. Not only is does he help protect us, he’s Mihály’s patron saint, and I feel that sometimes, a little bit of Saint Michael shines out in him, too.

But fall is also the season when school starts, when Mihály has to go away all day to the other village, far, far away from Álomvölgy and learn. Every morning at dawn, papa sends him out of the house, flying away to school. On those days, he’s gone for the entire day, and since papa is out making the weather, that only leaves mama to play with. When Mihály comes home, he also has to do homework, which is like the paper sheets papa fills out, but from the school instead of the office in the city. I often see him struggle to fill the homework sheets, or memorising the rosary and the gospels like papa wishes him to be.

Winter is a better season, even if it’s when it gets colder. This is when father tells the other flying villagers to make snow, which is a white, powdery thing that falls from the sky. With snow, we make snowballs and make snow forts and play at war. We imagine that we are fighting in the Siege of Jassy, not too long after Archduke Maximilian became our Emperor. We take turns being the Russians and the Austrians, digging small holes in the ground, pouncing up and attacking each other in surprise. We never win the Siege of Jassy, but it always ends with us in a pile of snow making snow balls. Other times, we pretend that it’s ancient times, and that we’re Hun warriors off to conquer the Roman Empire. We sneak up on the foals (both the ones that look like us and the ones who don’t) when they are distracted, building snowmen and snow angels, like the corrupt and decadent Romans. Sometimes, we wait in the snow, while Mihály is old enough to take position in the clouds. Then, screaming, “FOR ATTILA!” we pounce on the unsuspecting victim, attacking them with snowballs (but not icicles; father says we could poke someone’s eye out) and trampling whatever they were building apart beneath their hooves. Oftentimes, they get mad, and they start attacking us in turn with snowballs, and we all get covered in snow as well. Other times, they run off, and they avoid talking to us or the other villagers who look like us.

Winter is also the holiday season. Advent begins at the start of December or the end of November, but the first real winter holiday is Saint Nicholas’s Day. We leave our boots out by the window still, and when nighttime comes, Saint Nicholas himself, accompanied by the fearsome Krampusz. Saint Nicholas is tall, like the priest, and he wears scarlet vestments and a tall mitre and shepherd's staff, and has a beard as white as the snow on the ground. The Krampusz is smaller, like us, but his wings are like a bat’s wings, and his pupils are narrow and thin, like a lizard’s eyes. Saint Nicholas talks to our parents, and if we were good, he gives us sweets and small gifts like toy cars and marbles. However, if we were bad, the Krampus puts onions, switches, and other things we don’t like as a reminder of our actions and a warning not to repeat our actions, and hisses at us, and makes scary faces.

However, best of all is Christmas, when we celebrate Jesus’s birthday. On the Holy Evening, the night before Christmas, we eat delicious salad with Grandma and Grandpa, and afterwards, father, mother, Mihály and I go off to Church for Midnight Mass. Afterwards, our parents tell us to go off to bed. On Christmas morning, Mihály and I wake up, and they invite us into the living room. Our faces glow with delight as we discover an entire tree has been placed there, surrounded with gifts and lights. Mother smiles and tells us that during the night, the Christ Child and the Angel Gabriel came into the living room and brought us the tree and the gifts. It’s always different, sometimes, it’s books, sometimes, it’s games like Chess or Backgammon, or toys like balls and jigsaw puzzles, but the joy is always there. Mother and father can’t afford to buy many things, but we cherish what few gifts they give us, knowing that we must use them well. This is when grandmother tells us about the Hearth’s Warming’s Eve, when Equestria, the nation we came from, united in the face of the terrible windigoes. Father scowls, but grandfather says she has the right to tell him the stories of our people.

When spring comes, the villagers who look like us start clearing the sky of ice and snow, and putting in the green plants and flowers and crops. They wear three colours, tan for those who wake the sleeping animals, green for those who grow the plants, and blue for the ones that clear the skies and bring back the birds. Papa is the head of the blue team, and he’s often the one who yells out orders, like a general commanding his troops. Mihály also takes participates. He loves to break up the clouds, and he wishes that I can be old enough to help him break the clouds up, too. This holiday is called Winter Wrap-Up, and we like to sing the special song about it, too. Springtime is also the time my birthday, which is also the same day the Angel Gabriel came down from heaven and told the Virgin Mary she would be the mother of Jesus. Since the day before is my name day, my parents always give my name day presents on the same day. I’m always sad that I don’t get presents three times like the others, but mother smiles and tells me I get twice as many presents as Mihály. Mihály’s birthday, and Easter are also this season.

On weekends, when Mihály finished up all his studying, me and Mihály play on the streets. We chase the chickens that wander loose on the streets, flying up into the air when the housewives try and scold us. Other times, we watch the old widow Boglárka make pots inside her shops. When she’s done spinning the pots into existence on her potter’s wheel, she inscribes them with mysterious markings on the side. Sometimes, I wonder whether Boglárka is a witch, and she writes spells in a magic language to prevent them from leaking or from their contents from spoiling.

And so as the butterfly emerges from the cocoon, the world is restored to green and vigor. The months slowly pass, and as time goes by, the days get warmer and longer, and spring blends into summer. Mihály is no longer goes to school during the summer, so he’s free to play with me all day long— or, at least, when his omnipresent studies are finished. He takes me out exploring as far as our little wings can fly. Father doesn’t think we’re old enough to truly become explorers, but we still try and search for new and interesting places. We find little alleyways behind the houses, gorge ourselves on plums  from Mr Szarvas’s orchard when his farmhands aren’t looking,and fly out to the sheep pasture near the little stream which eventually farms out of our village. Mihály likes to explain how the shepherd will always look out for the sheep that he watches, and no matter what, he will always go out and find a missing sheep, even if he has to leave the other sheep behind, and that he learned this in the Gospels. Thanks to papa, Mihály is very well-versed in the Bible as well as his other studies. Sometimes, I image that will become the village priest some day. Papa would never be content with him being just a priest, but I still enjoy the image of him in the place of Father Bartal, a great stallion in black robes, delivering sermons to the villagers about the things he learned in the Bible. Perhaps one day, the angels will come and, being so impressed, they will show God his zeal and faith, and he would become the Pope.

But there are other powers in the world than God. There is only one major holiday in the summer, and that is the Summer Sun Celebration.  When grandmother comes to visit us that, she tells us that the sun is raised by Princess Celestia, who rules that country where we once came from, and her sister Luna raises the moon. I always see father talking with her about not telling them these stories as he does with the other stories, but like every other time, she is unhindered. Sometimes, I wonder if Princess Celestia meets God every day in heaven, or if she’s an angel. But most of the time, after grandma leaves and the house slowly settles back into normal, I simply watch the setting sun from the window, content in its beauty for its own sake.

I put down the wine, and I look out to the window, absent-mindedly pushing away the book that I brought to the table. I make a second glance back at the door to Mihály’s room, where he is almost certainly drifting in the illusory peace of an Equestria that never was. I try my best to return to that memory, back to the days when we played, together, on the hills and valleys of the Carpathian mountains. Yet my mind wanders still, and slowly, the memories of those early days, bathed in the sweetness of honey, turn bitter as the reality of those times sinks into my mind.