1

Grey sky stewing branches, straggly end of winter,  

birds a dirty spattering, I took the bus to Sandomierz 

on a Saturday. Cobblestones, bell towers, Kamienice 

houses. Angular church aloof, all medieval brick 

and stern windows. Inside, the clumpy smell of paper 

and decay. It fell against me in dull wet thuds, like fists 

of earth. Outside, men at tiny tables, cigarettes clinging 

to their fingers gentle as moths. Alleys dappled by 

women with high cheekbones, elegant as extras in 

a movie. I was very proud of myself. I’d made it 20 

minutes up the road from my apartment.

2

Sandomierz is quaint. Like it’s in a snow globe, unsold 

on a shelf in a small town tourist shop, slanted light 

shadowing its scaled-down streets. People have called it 

home since the Neolithic. The Vistula flows past, on its 

way north from the Carpathian mountains. It’s built for

beliefs. Franciscan reformers, Benedictine nuns,

Dominican monks. They planted its wine grapes, were

happily martyred on its green hills. During the Swedish 

Deluge of the 17th century, four thousand grenades

exploded in its castle. Soldiers wearing different

coloured uniforms died in droves on its bridgeheads

in the heat of 1944. Youtube says it’s the murder 

capital of Poland, exclamation point. I tell you this so

you can know, it’s a place where things happen.

3

Mongolian horses have big heads, bigger than regular. 

They can canter and canter. I grew up on the prairies, 

so I understand. Mongolians invaded Poland in the 13th

century. I don’t think they’d have been impressed with

my bus ride, even if I’d explained that I wasn’t sure how

to pay the fare and couldn’t speak Polish. Mongolia is

six thousand kilometres away, depending on how you

measure. That’s how far ruby-throated hummingbirds

migrate, all by themselves. They have to cross the Gulf

of Mexico, which can take 24 hours. I wonder if they

start to panic at hour eighteen, looking down and only 

seeing water. I guess hummingbirds wouldn’t be 

impressed with my bus ride, either.

4

Spiritual sickness used to be the cause of every kind 

of ailment. Claustrophobia hadn’t been invented yet. 

If you couldn’t breathe in small spaces, you weren’t 

trusting God enough. Pray more. I played organ in a 

Christian Scientist church for awhile. It was cozy and 

fastidious. It smelled over-enthusiastically of cotton. 

They read Mary Baker Eddy and the Bible, service after 

service. The loudest singer was tone deaf. Underground, 

I feel like a wound is trying to close over me. I have to 

focus on my breath, hold onto my terror. It careens in 

front of me, like the bunnies my dog chases. The same

inconsequential fact of disaster closing in.

5

In the year 1261, when Mongolian invaders camped

outside Sandomierz, it was Piotr Krepy who had the bad 

luck of being in charge. Heavy wears the hat. He took a 

deep breath and made himself walk over to strike a deal. 

The Mongolians decided just striking was best. They killed 

Piotr, either fast or slow, the internet wouldn’t say. Halina 

Krempianka sat in Sandomierz, waiting for her dad, Piotr,

to come home, but, well. I’m sure that really hurt, even if it 

was a long time ago and she didn’t have the internet or pod 

coffee. Imagine people camped outside your home, having 

a meal and a quick nap before standing up, stretching, 

swinging steel straight into your lovely covering of skin 

and muscle. Nowadays, people can get stuck at airports, 

eat too much sugar. Ask the government to empty a 

syringe into any available vein. Die stuffed with machines 

at a hospital. 

6

In movies, invading barbarians dress all in black. Women 

scream in the background. Getting paid to scream is not

my dream job. Studies show that football teams in black

uniforms play more aggressively. Of course, Mongolians

didn’t consider themselves barbarians. They could wear

whatever colour they wanted. They’d been made by Tengri,

Giver of Life, God Over Everything, the Eternal Blue Sky.

He placed his Mongolians on those immense, open steppes

so they could ride forth and conquer the world. When they 

die, the wind spirit comes to show their souls the way home. 

It might help to remember that Tengri crafted the Universe 

out of energy, indestructible as the tiny tardigrade. It might

help to remember that all of this is very far away.

7

Number 4 on the list of “How to Know If Your Sickness

Is Spiritual” is feeling abandoned by God. The internet 

lists Number 3 as difficulty sleeping. This illustrates,

I believe, the challenge of trying to understand anything

with numbers. In a parallel universe, a hypochondriac 

David Letterman is spending decades doing Top Ten 

Medical Lists, and one night, he’ll do the symptoms 

of spiritual sickness, and there will be a drum roll and 

loud cheers at the end. 

9

Halina Krempianka must have looked out from the hill 

that Sandomierz is perched on many times. She could 

kneel at the church, put her feet where I’d put mine. I’m 

sure she prayed a lot. I wonder if she meant it. In 1287, 

Mongolians rode up again, with their long, thin teeth 

and their big-headed horses. Halina Krempianka 

watched them come. She had time to time to about it. 

She made her way to their camp outside of town. She 

sat at their fires. She did this with her history bobbing 

up all around her. My own people have cast me out, 

she said. They are planning to hide and I can lead you 

to them, she said. She wanted, and this is true, revenge.

10

I learned these things standing beside a bulkhead.  

I’d been wandering the narrow streets, taking pictures 

of pigeons. The ornate sign, in Polish and English, 

explained that the doors I stood beside, now locked shut, 

were openings to cellars that spidered under the town. 

The cellars under Sandomierz are long, very long, longer 

than you’d think. They could hold an army.

11

Taphephobia is the fear of being buried alive. It would 

take until the late eighteenth century for Safety Coffins 

to be invented, complete with windows and handy bells 

that anyone stuck six feet under could ring. Frédéric 

Chopin, famous Polish composer and pianist, was 

tapophobic. He made thunderous, elemental piano 

pieces, which sound like the hoofs of Heaven bearing 

down on you. Chopin had his heart removed after he 

died, to make sure he was good and dead when he got 

buried. If I were to be buried, I wouldn’t want my heart 

removed. I would want it to liquify into a great lake, so 

that I could finally love all the things I’m supposed to. 

12

Genghis Khan is a title. It’s not a name. Maybe you 

knew that. King of Kings. When the Universal Ruler 

was a squishy baby, he was called Temüjin. He made 

the biggest contiguous land empire ever, and fun 

fact, believed in religious freedom. He fathered scads 

and scads of children. I watched a documentary once 

about more than fifty fertility doctors who made hordes 

of children by using their own sperm to impregnate 

clients. Those doctors didn’t created empires of any 

kind. They were too busy being gross.

13

Halina Krempianka lead the sabre-carrying warriors, 

with their long, thin teeth, down the steps like ducklings. 

Along the cellars that monks had made, along the dark

passageways, Earth covering over them, the sky lost. 

The Mongolians were maybe delighting in the surprised 

terror they would soon see, when they would emerge 

into the light to kill anyone they wanted. Weapons ready, 

all suited up. 

14

While Halina and the invaders burrowed under the city, 

the good people of Sandomierz crept up to the very

bulkhead I stood beside. They worked together to place

boulders and heavy rocks in the entrance. They moved

fast, encouraging each other with whispers, eager hands. 

They swung the doors up and shut, barricading them. 

The invaders didn’t know it, but they were already dead. 

They’d walked themselves into their own dark grave. 

The dangerous men and Halina Krempianka, in there with 

them. Knowing even as she’d lead them down each step, 

there was, there would be, no way out. 

15

Imagine a woman, slight as a hummingbird, turning.

Imagine her from a great distance. Facing her, a dense

hunk of army about to fracture. Imagine the swing of a 

brown skirt, her back from behind, like in a movie. How

angry the men would’ve been. How scared. The long 

moment it would take for them to realize they’d been

severed from the blue sky, the slow sun. What those men

would’ve done to that woman. The painful death that had

arrived for them. Like rats poisoned in a garage.

The excruciating hours.

16

On the day I visited, Sandomierz seemed peaceful and 

sleepy. It was the beginning of spring, like I mentioned 

earlier. Even the sky seemed happy. It’s taken me years 

to imagine triumph, not terror, in Halina Krempianka’s 

eyes. To put a knife in her hand. To let her use it.