Chapter thirteen of Wallachia is out. Get it from the App Store and read it for free.

Marley meets Dracula.

Notes:

• This immediately follows chapter 12. Still Monday, 19 June (old style).

• There are several photos of Romanian clothing on this page. Pestelcă is a regional term for what’s more generally called fotă, the wool skirt. Marley being unmarried doesn’t wear a head covering.

• The bit about Wallachian horses being small comes from William Wilkinson’s An Account of the Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia:

  The Wallachian breed of horses is of a peculiar kind. Their stature is very small, and they have no spirit; but they are strong, active, and capable of enduring great fatigue. Those of Moldavia differ only in being a little larger in size. Some of the richest people have their horses sent them from Russia and Hungary; but they are merely meant for their coaches, as, from an aversion to every exercise that occasions the least fatigue, hardly any of them ride on horseback.

• At the time of our story, Wallachia and Moldavia (The Two Principalities) and Transylvania had a small number of European bison left, called the Carpathian wisent (Bison bonasus hungarorum). They were hunted to extinction by 1852 (per Wikipedia). Whether they were actually delicious, I’ll confess I don’t have a source.

  The region also used to have aurochs, a species of giant cattle, which went extinct in the 1620s. Voivode Dragoş of Moldavia is said to have gone on great hunts for aurochs and bison.

• Dacia’s “c” makes an “sh” sound.

Chapter 14 might be delayed as I work on version 2.0 of the app. I’d like for chapters to come out more frequently—I have the next few plotted pretty well out—but we’ll see how it goes. I appreciate the support and patience.