Koledari: The Legend of Viktor Krum

"Rise up, Little Khan, come sing with us! We’re going to sing health and good luck to the villages."

A young man stands at the window, goblet in hand; he has the stern visage of a Byzantine saint carved in weathered ivory. So might the Terrible Khan Krum have looked, drinking the blood of his enemy from a silvered skull. But Viktor Krum was drinking only water, from a common crystal goblet. "I can’t sing," he said, and with his mother’s trademark scowl on his father’s stony features, he might have made lesser men quail. Not so, however, Cousin Dima or Cousin Sevdo. They laughed.

"Too true, Viktor, young hero. You fly like a real Sokolov, a son of the hawk. But you sing like a Krum!" said Dima, and Sevdo added, "Regardless, it is time you took your place among the Sokolov men. You will ride with the Koledari this holiday."

Now, Viktor Krum was the youngest male of the blood of Khan Krum the Terrible, Nation Builder, Drinker of Blood, and the child of Valja Sokolova, the Black Hawk, the only woman to have brought death to the Quidditch field in modern times, which is a story for another time. Even more, he would himself become a legendary Seeker -- but that is also a story for another time.

This is the story of the day he first flew with the men of his mother’s clan, and brought good luck and good health to all the villages.

"Everywhere in the world that the years come as summers and winters and where the people plant crops and gather them in, it is the custom to go about at the year’s end and wish your fellows good for the New Year. In our country, young men walk from house to house in the village, singing koledo songs for luck and health, abundant crops and increasing flocks, rich husbands for the girls and beautiful brides for the boys.

In the mountains, the people look for the Koledari in the sky, for they believe the old vojvodes were wizards and could fly. In the old days, when such things were necessary and were done, we Sokolovs were skilled shape-shifters, preferring to take the form of birds of prey. We came shrieking at the enemy out of the open sky, which is why we are called hawks, sokole."

So old Grandfather Sokolov told Viktor, the year he was sixteen. "Your cousins are quite right, moreover. You are Sokolov as much as you are Krum, and the peasants look for us to bring them a good year."

Viktor sighed. At least, he thought, I know all the words. I’ll sing out loud just if someone forgets… It will be something, though, to ride those antique oaken brooms; to wear the heirloom cloaks, deep red and covered with mysterious figures embroidered in real gold!

Stavaj, stavaj nine, mladi gospodine…

Rise up, young master! Here come the carolers,
Bringing good news from the shepherds:
The sheep have all lambed
All black ewe lambs.

"I hear them! I hear them!" the villagers began to shout. And then they could see them, Dajcho the youngest uncle leading at the point of the V-formation, carrying the great cornel wand with the twisted branches decked with symbols of luck and plenty. The first to see them was the littlest girl, weighed down with silver ornaments and flowers; and this is why: all the unmarried girls in this poor village were talking. "Not one of us has enough jewelry to make a good show when the vojvodes come caroling. So let’s take all our jewels and the smallest little girl, and deck her out like a little queen. That will make the Koledari smile and give us good luck."

So there the child was in the village square, so excited she could not stop spinning and dancing. She snatched up the finest, reddest apple from the basket and held it over head as she danced.

Cousin Dima looked over at Viktor with an evil grin. "I dare you, Viktor!" They flew patterns over the village as the other cousins chimed in, between the verses of the song. "Do it, Seeker!"

The villagers gasped as one of the great oak brooms peeled off from the group and dropped out of the night sky like a stone, but the little girl did not stop twirling. Three feet from the ground, Viktor banked sharply and met the little girl’s eyes with a smile as he took the apple from her hand. On the ground and in the air, everybody was cheering. The singing started again, as Viktor ate the apple down to the core.

Then he thought of something. "Uncle Dajcho, let me have the cornel wand." Viktor flew down again to the village square and plunged the base of the wand into the earth. He flew up again, and then back down to plant the apple core in the hole made by the cornel wand and to cover it with a handful of dirt.

From the seeds of that apple came a tree; every day the tree grew, so quickly that by spring it was fully grown and by fall it bore sweet red apples on every bough. And the poor village became prosperous, the maidens that gave up their ornaments made rich marriages, and the little girl with the apple kept dancing and dancing until she ran away from home and became a ballerina.