The Snow Vampire Read Online Free

way, he had been broken. I resolved then to do what I could to fix him, to render him complete once more.
    “Well,” he finally said, breaking the silence of the moment by speaking. “I have not seen much of the town yet. Perhaps you could show me the sights?”
    “That should take all of five minutes,” I laughed.
    He laughed too, the first time I heard his laugh. He laughed like his father, in short, gasping bursts, only higher in tone and sweetness, like the plinking of the short strings of a harp. “Perhaps you can find some way to make it last a bit longer,” he said, and I laughed one more time, a happy sound that echoed through the hills as we walked back toward town.
    That afternoon, I showed him my world. The widow’s house where I attended school, the mine I would someday own, the back porches where I and the other village boys would steal jugs of hard apfelsaft every fall. And Hendrik absorbed every sight I showed him, took it all in, as rapt as if he were touring the grand vistas of Rome. Looking back, I cannot think of a time in my life I had ever felt more significant, as if to him, for those brief moments, I was the most important thing in all the wide world.
    And as we walked, we talked. He finally spoke to me of his work with his father’s businesses, which he secretly loathed, and his studies, which he loved. He spoke of Budapest, of the wide boulevards and the opera house and ballet and the men and women all dressed up in their finest clothes. He spoke of the poverty, too, and of the government, and patiently answered my endless string of questions, sometimes thoughtfully, sometimes laughingly, but always with great and sincere earnestness. And I—I was his captivated audience, eager for every word that came off his tongue. The world, the mountains, Pilsden itself melted away, and in my mind we were suddenly in Budapest, he and I, two heady youths in black tie and tails, taking a motorcoach to a night of theater over paved roads and streets illuminated by artificial, electric lights.
    Yet as quickly as I left Pilsden I returned, taking Hendrik back through the town square and toward the edge of the village. Our tour ended where it began, somewhere near the base of the mountain, two youths aimlessly milling around the woods of a small Hungarian mountain town.
    “What’s that, up there?” Hendrik suddenly asked. He was shading his eyes from the sun and pointing up, high up, seemingly halfway up the mountain itself. “I can see something, but… I’m not sure what it is.”
    I knew without looking. “Those are the old ruins,” I said. “Hundreds of years ago, there used to be a monastery up there. It was here before the town itself. The monks tended to travelers going through the pass. It was never anything more than a small, cloistered community.”
    “Can we go see?” Hendrik eagerly asked. I loved hearing that tone of fervor in his voice; he sounded almost happy, and the sound made my own heart beat faster.
    “There isn’t much to see, I’m afraid,” I said, the smile never leaving my face. “There was never much there to begin with. Just the frames of one or two old stone outbuildings, the chapel, and the main compound exist anymore. The rest was taken by avalanche, or snowstorm, or fire, many decades ago, perhaps longer.”
    Something in the sound of my voice suggested I was leaving some important details of the story out. “What happened up there?” Hendrik asked, clearly interested.
    I shrugged and gave him half a smile. I was delighted that he was so keen on knowing, that I had been able to give him yet another small gift. But while there was a story to be told about the ruins of the old monastery, I was not the one to tell it.
    “You should ask Grandmamma,” I told him. “Tonight after supper. She knows the history of the ruins better than anyone in town. She can tell you.” I gave Hendrik another playful smile and gently clapped him on the shoulder. As I did so, I became