Chapter 7
The Harvest of Truth
The sky over Plovdiv, usually a gentle wash of robin’s egg blue, had turned a bruised, angry purple. Fat, heavy raindrops began to splat against the cobblestones, each one a tiny, insistent drumbeat heralding the coming storm. Baba Yana, her back as straight as a sapling despite the years that had etched themselves onto her face, surveyed the scene from her porch. Babe, her magnificent pig, snuffled contentedly beside her, a mountain of pink flesh and quiet strength. He seemed unbothered by the darkening clouds, his wise eyes fixed on something only he could see.
“A bad omen, Babe,” Baba Yana murmured, her voice a low rumble like distant thunder. “The sky weeps before the harvest.”
The annual pilgrimage, a tradition as old as Plovdiv itself, was due to begin in two days. The grandmothers, perched atop their prize pigs, would journey to the Whispering Woods to gather the rare moonpetal herbs, essential for the village’s winter remedies. But this year, the storm threatened more than just a damp journey. It threatened the very lifeline of Plovdiv: the old wooden bridge that spanned the swift-flowing river, the only way to the market town for supplies and the only path for the pilgrimage.
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