“Táltos”

Trial by Water

It was just after midnight when my classmate, Anna, came to me. I woke when I heard the crackling of the flames. She leaned over my bed and water dripped onto my sheets. I looked up. Everyone else in the dorm room was asleep.

Come, Sari, she said.

I held her hand, the right one, the wet one. Her left hand, the one on fire, lit the dark and by its light, she led me from dorm and out into the low field on the outskirts of the village. I looked back for just a moment, at the torches which were still lit from the trial the day before. In the end, none of the girls were freed. They were taken to the river, all thirteen of them. I turned back, away from the village, and saw Anna’s white face, her dark eyes on me.

Somehow, they missed you, she said. 

She led me through dry brush, parched from the drought. I tried to step where she stepped, but her feet made no prints in the brittle grasses. Her hand was cold. She gripped mine tightly. My fingers ached from the chill. Soon we were crossing onto the peninsula in the river where the burning happened yesterday. The fire had gone out, but the rocks still smoldered, unable to forget what they had seen.

The headmaster hadn’t allowed any other students to watch. Yesterday when the officials led them all to the river, the last I saw of Anna was when she turned to wave. Then she was gone, across the dry field.

Now, she showed me the place. The flickering flame of her left hand, revealed the cauldron. Her wet right hand still gripped mine. Yesterday the water in the cauldron was boiling. Tonight, it was cool. Yesterday she had to dip in her right hand, searching for the stone while her skin boiled, hoping to show it was not her who made the fields dry. She couldn’t reach it. Later, when they were tying her to the stake, she thought perhaps there had been no stone.

I stared at the charred circle. The river breeze lifted some of the ashes, and they blew into the night sky. I looked back in the direction of the village.

I looked back at her. Her hollow eyes stared into mine. Then she reached forward and took my hand again, my right hand, the one with six fingers from my birth.

Find her, she said. The one in the mountains. 

I awoke in the morning. I went to her grave, behind the town church. The carving on the wood was still fresh, “Nagy Anna, 1710-1728, Trial by Water”.

Trial by Metal

The flickering light from my torch illuminated Erzsebet asszony’s door. Hers was the last house, a small hut, huddled at the edge of the village. The wind whipped down, blown from somewhere above me in the mountains. I’ve never been this far from Szeged and never before seen mountains. Their height seemed unreal to me.

The woodsman who gave me a ride for the last few miles. He was surprised to find a young woman on the mountain path.

“You’re a student?” he said.

“From Piarista gymnazium,” I said.

He looked at me for a moment. “Far from school here,” he said. I climbed into the wagon and he gave me a piece of bread. We passed through small settlements, the path wound up through the hills toward the village where I heard she lived.

As the wagon bumped along the woodsman told me the story. It was in these mountains a boy child was nursed by a white mare. He grew into a young man named Lófia. One day he lowered himself on a rope into the caverns beneath the earth. In the underworld he found a golden castle where a maiden was held by a twelve-headed dragon. Lófia killed the dragon and brought the princess back to the rope. The princess climbed up to the daylight, but then the rope broke. Lófia searched through the mountain and found a small griffin, weak from hunger. The young man cut his hand and fed the griffin with his blood. In return the griffin carried him to the sunlit lands above. The boy’s star picture was then carried into the night sky. A constellation for the eyes of the nation’s youth…an ideal. A type.

“He was a táltos?” I said.

“He had six fingers on his right hand,” the woodsman said. 

The woodsman dropped me in the town square of the last village below the snow line. He said I should look for shelter soon. The wind from the mountains was bringing a cold night. After asking at a few houses I was finally led to Erzsebet asszony’s house. Another gust of wind blew down the street, this time with a few snowflakes. I squeezed my hands to warm them and knocked twice on the wooden door. There was a pause, then a hiss at the threshold, and she stood before me.

Even though she had a face, I couldn’t really see it. I sensed the vacant spaces where her eyes were and the wide slice of a mouth. I could also hear her breath, thick and deep. After a pause she said, “Well, then, come in.”

She brought me down a dark hallway, and gestured to a wooden bench by the fire. She sat across from me, sipped something for a moment, and then said, “Who told you?”

“My classmate,” I said.

“Where is she?”

I looked down. 

“One of the thirteen in Szeged?” she said.

I nodded.

“Fools,” she said. “Young girls are caught late at night after curfew and suddenly there’s blame all around and tales. A waste of young lives.”

She sipped some more.

“Show me your right hand,” she said. I flexed it for a moment and then held it up, embarrassed. 

“You have six like me,” she said. “All do.”

I gave a small smile. “Yes, I know.”

“Do they teach about Táltos in your school?” she said.

“Not much,” I said. “The priests think it is a folk tale. But my mother taught me some.” 

“And her hand?” she asked.

I nodded. “The same. She told me to keep it hidden. Not to show it to the priests.”

I sensed her smile in the darkness of her face and then she said, “Shall we do the test?”

There was a fierce pop from one of the logs on the fire. She sipped quietly while she waited. I held out my hand.

“Put it on the hearth,” she said.

I was shaking. I knelt on the floor and stretched my hand forward. The hearth was warm from the fire. I lay my palm flat against the stone.

She stood and walked to a dark corner of the room. When she returned she was holding an axe. “This will hurt,” she said. And swung the axe.

Pain exploded from my hand. I wanted to snatch it back, but I kept it stretched before me. She struck again. The pain was white and brilliant. It radiated up my arm until I could feel it in the back of my head. She must have struck again, but my eyes were squeezed shut. I saw white flashes and my arm was alive with pain.

Then I saw a vision. It was Anna’s cross, the wood was older now, but her name was clear. I was hovering above her grave. White lightening flashed above me as the axe came down again. But now I felt no pain. Instead I rose into the air above her grave and saw the village of Szeged below me. People walked in the streets. I saw the magistrate and his men, hunched at their desks.

Then white shapes rose up around me. There were thirteen of them. Anna and the other white shapes moved away and slowly encircled the city below.

“Open your eyes,” Erzsebet asszony said.

I did and saw I was back in her room. She stood above me with the axe. I looked at my hand. All six fingers were there. I flexed it. Nothing was broken.

I was still breathing heavily. I sat back in the chair. 

“May I have it?” I said.

“What will you do if you have it?” she said.

I closed my eyes to steady myself. “Révülés,” I said.

There was a pause. Slowly a smell filled the room. It was wet earth, like during planting time…fallow ground. Then she leaned forward and pressed a little jar into my right hand. The glass of the jar felt cool. As she leaned back the air wafted around me. I realized the planting smell was coming from her.

She ushered me back down her hall to the door. I crossed the threshold and a slight shiver that came between my thighs. I turned back to her.

“Travel through the night,” she said. “The storm won’t touch you.” Sure enough, although the wind was high and screaming, I felt warmth coursing through me. 

“When should it happen?” I said.

“In two days,” she said. “On Sunday.”

Then she was gone.

Trial by Fire

It was just after midnight. I was back in my dorm room on Sunday morning. Everybody was asleep. I took Erzsebet asszony’s jar from below my pillow and sniffed it. It smelled like dry earth and mushrooms. I tipped it into my water cup and drank it. Then I worked quickly.

I stole out from the dormitory and took the dorm cat with me. As I walked I broke its neck. By the time I reached the magistrate’s house I had opened it. The drink was beginning to take me. I had only minutes.

I knelt at the magistrate’s front door and assembled the cat. My eyes were doubled and, on the mountain, Erzsebet Asszony moved for me. Through her eyes I saw the pattern form. 

I leaned back and looked at the sky. The eclipse was approaching. At the moment when the darkness was the greatest, just before the sun came over the lip of the river water, I emptied myself. I dissolved and rose into the air. Far below me was my body, lifeless at the magistrate’s door. The magistrate came out onto the street. He saw the assembled cat next to my body. He destroyed the pattern, but by then he was too late. 

Hungarian schoolbooks teach about táltos. It is no longer passed down as myth.

The signs are teeth at birth, a sixth finger, a caul.

If the extra bone is broken, the abilities are lost. The powers are not learned or taught.

The táltos key ability is the trance. The révülés. 

They send their soul into the stars to stir the others.