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IT’D BEEN PRETTY EASY to find someone to translate my books. The owner’s mother sat in the corner of the restaurant making little dumplings but it seemed a task they’d given her to keep busy more than anything. She was about 200 years old and, when the owner introduced me, she scrutinised me with her sunken eyes. She knew a lot. I bet she’d stopped talking a long time ago, though, because no one believed or cared about her stories from the old country. They’d laughed at her until she’d just stopped trying. Fools.
The restaurant was all dark wood and checked tablecloths. It looked like it hadn’t changed for decades. There were faded pictures of Hungary on the walls and piano accordion music playing in the background.
She had gestured for me to sit down. I’d hoped to get some of that delicious smelling stew into me first. The spicy smell from the kitchen wafted through the air and my stomach rumbled like a runaway train. I felt faint. But I sat down and showed her the book.
She grinned. “Ah, you want to know about this?”
I sure did. She read through the books, translating the details with her heavily-accented English.
The liderc was a critter shrouded in mystery and folklore.
“He will change shape, often as a dead one.”
Yep, I’d got that from the dude looking like the dead husband.
Then she went on with a whole lot of stuff about chickens – how they were born from black chicken eggs and sometimes the eggs were smaller than normal chicken eggs but sometimes they were the same size.
Then the shitty bit. They attached themselves to one person. That was the killer part for me because I needed to get this critter unattached from one person – the wife – and reattached to another – me. There were ways of doing that but it was more difficult if they were a one woman type monster.
“He will find gold for his owner until they become very rich.”
I sat up then. Finding gold sounded pretty much a win-win to me. You got mind-blowingly amazing sex to boot. Why would you want to get rid of him?
I guess the husband might be feeling a bit left out. I mean, what could he offer her to compare with that? Okay, there was a bit of an ick factor with the demon basically being a chicken but other than that, I saw no downside.
“Sometimes, they will suck the blood of the woman.” She lowered the book to appraise me. “Is this you? Are you the one who is with the liderc? You are too pale and too thin. You must eat. You must get rid of him so you can grow strong.”
She called out to the kitchen to bring me some food. I didn’t want to tell her it wasn’t me he was feeding off until that food arrived. I would do some mighty damage to anything the kitchen had on offer.
The owner came out with a big steaming bowl of meaty soup. I grinned so wide my face hurt. I could almost swim laps in that soup bowl.
I picked up the spoon and tasted it. Spicy but not too spicy with a flavour I couldn’t really name. The warmth of the soup heated my insides and I was torn between wanting to get that soup in me as fast as possible and wanting it to last forever.
An old man came in with a violin case.
“Jimmy will practice before the dinner customers come in,” the owner explained. “You can still talk.”
He took out his violin and began playing a mournful song. If that was meant to encourage customers, I’m not sure it’d work. Perhaps it was to hurry them out in case they took too long over dinner.
I finally scraped the bottom of the bowl and my stomach felt full.
“How do you get rid of it?” I asked the old lady.
“There are many tales. Some say burning incense.” She gave a throaty laugh. “Some say you must trap it inside a hollow tree. But the best way is to give it a task that is impossible to do. The liderc need to do tasks. Every day they want new tasks to do. You must give it harder and harder jobs until you find one that it can’t do. If you like, you can bring him in here to wash the dishes.”
She laughed again and her laughter mingled with the wail of the violin. This job didn’t sound too difficult. I’d have that stupid liderc gone in no time.
I laughed with her.
“Actually, that’s what we need. He can do the dishes during the day and keep an old lady happy at night.”
With that, she gave me a wink. Then she grabbed my wrist with her bony old hand.
“It’s not you, though,” she hissed. “It’s not you that he wants. Be careful. The troubles might come to you.”
Well, the old Hungarian lady hadn’t been that helpful. I mean, it wasn’t her fault. She could only tell me what was in the books, ergo it was the books’ fault.