Romanians welcome spring on March 1 with the centuries-old tradition of mărțișor, a red-and-white trinket symbolizing luck and continuity. To mark the occasion, Patricia Furstenberg, a Romanian-born author in South Africa and a Romania-insider.com reader, shares a story that “blends atmospheric storytelling with the deep-rooted symbolism of mărțișor, exploring how a simple string can carry the weight of history, hope, and destiny lightening the burden of all those  who hold it.”

An old tradition, the mărțișor was initially made of two intertwined threads, one red and one white, as a symbol of balance between opposing forces. The red represents warmth, passion, and vitality, while the white signifies cold, purity, and honesty. Over time, the simple twisted wool evolved into a decorative item, often featuring figurines, charms, or handcrafted symbols of luck and prosperity.

Through the 2,800-word story Threads of Mărțișor, Patricia Furstenberg weaves together “elements of myth and reality, exploring how this ancient tradition remains alive in people's hearts, even in the modern world,” as she told Romania-insider.com.

The story follows Ana's journey as she finds herself caught between past and present, faced with the choice of continuing down the familiar path or allowing herself to be guided by destiny’s subtle signs. In a frozen train station, a red and white thread will lead her to an unexpected encounter - where the wisdom of an old woman and the charm of traditions will change the course of her journey.

The complete Threads of Mărțișor story by Patricia Furstenberg below:

When she reached the station, Ana’s heart was like a windowpane rattling in a frigid gust. A bitter cocktail of disappointment and urgency filled her backpack. So late in February and winter had clawed its way back, unexpected and unrelenting. Fading daylight cast long, ragged shadows across an iced pavement. The air tasted sharply of iron and frost. She was late. Always late. Even time conspired against her.

Then, the whistle of an engine shattered the silence, a mournful note echoing through the void. Promising salvation. In that suspended moment relief, like a snowdrop, bloomed.

Thank the cosmos, thought Ana. The train had just pulled in.

Clad in every layer she possessed yet still under-packed for the biting cold she spotted it. Oh, no – a promise of spring bloomed, not arriving but poised, to depart at the station’s edge. Her final, elusive chance.

Before the echo of that whistle faded, she had bolted along the tall, unforgiving fence. Across the path’s slick surface. Her boots slid, yet as she raced ahead, her eyes hooked onto the engine in a futile attempt to hold it in place. Into, and through the cramped station house, she flew.

“Almost there,” she braved herself, a fragile incantation against fate’s caprice. But destiny, ever playful and elusive, intervened.

In the narrow doorway, an old woman. Moving with deliberate caution she negotiated each step as if engaged in a slow, secret dance with time. She blocked the path; the only way out onto the platform. Ana’s impatience flared like a spark in the dim light. The train’s roar grew louder, its bell tolling the impending departure as if counting the seconds of a fleeting life. The old woman stepped aside. Ana surged past. Her arm brushed against an old shawl. Like a dark omen, the fabric flared in the twilight, tangled in the buckle of her backpack. Tugging along unwillingly.

The train seemed to wait, still hooked to Ana’s vision. But on the open platform the wind whipped the fallen shawl ahead as if possessed by a determined will, a silent envoy from realms beyond. Ana’s eyes followed its flight, a brief flash dissolving into the gathering dusk. Like memories that vanish with the passing of time. The train lurched forward, its momentum unstoppable, echoing the inexorable march of destiny. In that suspended heartbeat, Ana hesitated.

Should she reach out and grasp the door’s bar?

The conductor’s hand appeared, extended in gentle urgency.

“Come, miss. Jump,” he urged, his voice a quiet command against the backdrop of a world in flux.

In that moment, when the boundaries of time and space blurred and the cold embrace of fate met the promise of escape, Ana sensed the weight of every unspoken choice — the precarious balance between destiny and the fleeting pulse of now.

She halted. Her breath bursting forth in ragged gasps, her throat bristled with the sting of unseen needles. Tears blurred her vision as frustration mingled with fear while she clutched the stray fabric; silent testimony against the mocking wink of the train’s back lights.

With courage stitched over uncertainty, she returned it to the old woman who now waited by the platform’s veteran door, eyes shifting as if reading unspoken tales in every shadow.

“She never comes,” she said, her voice a patient lament. “I wait for her each day, she never comes.”

Ana’s gaze caught in what seemed like seven layers of heavy, storied fabric cocooning that twilight soul. She stepped forward to offer the scarf when, again, fate intervened. A treacherous patch of ice greeted her boot. One disorienting moment, a twist, a twirl and the world spun wildly. Her knee struck frozen cement with a hollowed impact.

The cold, the damp earth’s musky scent and the distant echo of the train’s retreat merged in the fading light, as if even the night toyed with her.

Biting winds and the relentless sting of winter still clung to the station when the old woman beckoned Ana to the refuge of her modest cottage.

“Call me Baba,” she instructed, adding that the next train was not due until midnight. Her voice low and reassuring, “That’ll be your last chance, lass.” With a mischievous flick of her tongue, she added, “But you can’t travel by night. Not tonight.”

Ana felt the pull of questions. Was it not safe? Had something peculiar gripped this night? Yet, Baba continued her gentle chiding: “So thin, can you keep any warmth? The sun did shine bright on Bear’s Day, but no one pays heed to such signs anymore. Of course that winter will linger.” And then, as if carried away by the cold, she had vanished. Halfway through the train station’s waiting room, she waved Ana to hurry up.

Just adjacent to the station stood a weathered cattle barn - a relic of forgotten times. There, swaying silently in the icy breeze, hung a red–white string, tied with meticulous care to hold the barn’s memories, quiet echoes of ancient hopes that had lost their footing in a world hurried by time.

“This string, to keep my cattle safe,” Baba declared, as though she could read the secret contours of Ana’s mind. But her cattle had grazed in fields long reclaimed by the relentless march of time. The old woman’s words danced effortlessly between present and past, filling the frigid air with the lingering warmth of yesteryears.

Inside the cottage space possessed a dual nature — both humble and eerie. Scented with the comforting aroma of sweet bread; embalmed by the savory perfume of juicy mince wrapped in cabbage leaves. Ana swallowed hard, her stomach echoing an unspoken demand for nourishment. Slowly, Baba shed layer after layer of heavy coats - nine, by Ana’s careful count - each removal executed with deliberate, almost ceremonial slowness while the room revealed its sparse, solitary occupancy.

“My son, Dragu, comes and goes,” Baba murmured, answering the next silent question that flickered in Ana’s thoughts. Her tone was laced with bittersweet acceptance. But despite its lone inhabitant, the cottage exuded a resilient spirit, cradled with memories and hope in equal measure. Then, with a tender cadence, Baba tended to Ana’s knee, applying a poultice steeped in both herbs and whispered lore.

Ana couldn’t remember when she began eating, and when she stopped, satiated. A satisfied, drowsy slumber draped her shoulders. In that quiet, fading moment, she wondered whether Baba prepared such abundance in anticipation of Dragu’s elusive visit. Perhaps in hope — but where could he possibly fit? There was barely enough space for Baba to move, let alone for Ana to perch, cramped, on a three-legged chair. Yet, as she leaned against the woven fabric that hugged the walls, the room itself grew around her. Yes, there would be enough space for Dragu. What a strange name for a man.

This had not been the holiday Ana dreamed of, but one defined by late arrivals and rushed exits. From the shattered plans of kindling an old flame while researching enchanting Eastern-European forests, to her own untimely journeys. She sighed, her chest heavy with disappointment, drowned by unmet expectations. What was she to do next? Then, in a heartbeat, she knew that it would all work out. She knew it because, in the midst of her wandering, someone had held her hand, a silent promise that all would be well.

Maybe it was a gut feeling shaking her from her reverie, though perhaps it was Baba’s time-tangled hand pressing on her shoulder. Or the distant, wistful whistle of a train that pulled her back to present. She offered thanks in a quiet murmur, the kind that follows a deep slumber, embraced the old woman with fragile warmth, and rushed out to find, and follow, her own path.

The train pulled in with a steady, comforting rhythm, its warm lights slicing through the dusk and almost dissolving that lingering chill of an over-stretched winter. When she stepped into the softly lit compartment, Ana’s breath danced visibly, her heart still weighted by that earlier rush. But the humming interior and the rhythmic clatter of wheels on tracks, of slowed time catching up to its usual speed, revived her heartbeat.

At a table near a window, another young woman sat alone, her eyes fixed upon the pages of a worn travel book. The flicker of the overhead light threw shifting shadows across her thoughtful face. A few seats away, a young man scribbled fervently in a fresh notebook, occasionally glancing up, as if in search of an elusive inspiration. But the view outside, cloaked in darkness and guarded secrets, offered none.

She was down the narrow aisle when a jostle sent her near the other woman’s table. Their eyes met briefly - a silent, fleeting acknowledgment amidst the murmur of the carriage. The man, pausing in his writing, watched from across the aisle his gaze, too, was momentarily caught by that shared glance. The steady drone of the train hushed the compartment. When, suddenly, something unexpected occurred. A large, dark shape pressed silently against the window.

Ana’s eyes snapped, a sudden flash of recognition and urgency stirring within her. The old woman’s shawl billowed against the glass, as if held by an unseen force, a spectral echo of memories and hopes lingering on the threshold between what was and what might yet be. Without a thought, she waved, her hand slicing through the frigid air as if to sever the lingering chains of time.

The other woman’s eyes widened in quiet astonishment.

“Is that...?” she said, almost to herself, before adding, “It looked like Baba Dochia. Or could that have been your grandmother?”

A wistful smile curved Ana’s lips.

“No, neither of them. Baba Dochia is a legend, a spirit of spring. Yet, echoes of her live in every old tale, do they not?”

Her voice remained calm as the train’s rumble carried them deeper into the night but her heart sank. Baba? Dragu? How had she not thought of it before? It had to be a coincidence. Besides, if the Baba she had met was as ancient as she looked, then her son would have been as old as time.

The man stared at what was reflected in his window, his pen suspended in mid-air as if the world outside and the lives within the carriage had converged into a shared destiny.

For a heartbeat, all three had felt — without a word — that their journey was far more than a mere transit; it was a quiet convergence of paths where fate interwove their stories with a planned precision. Yet no magic had sparkled, only the idea, reflected in their thoughts like their image in the windowpane, that within the soft glow of the train’s light and the steady cadence of its movement every traveler bore a piece of something, timeless and unexpected. And that those three pieces, somehow, fitted together.

Night deepened. The train clattered. Shadow and light was followed by more shadow and light. A chill crept through the compartment. Only a lone heater, by Ana, a stubborn, flickering flame, remained the sole bastion against the frost. Gradually, the trio found themselves huddled together, drawn by necessity and a nascent sense of kinship.

Fighting off sleep in an instinctual attempt to preserve life, Ana studied the quiet sorrow weighing upon the other woman’s features. A sadness contrasting with the ephemeral wonder of the moment.

The woman’s gaze avoided Ana’s, drifting to her wrist.

“I always believed such charms carried a touch of truth,” she said, her voice a near-whisper. “I could use a little of that magic tonight.”

Ana discovered her own hand, hardly recognizing it at first. There, tied in a delicate knot, lay the red–white thread she had once seen swaying by Baba’s cattle barn. A talisman meant for good luck and protection from unseen harm in a world where such things had once been believed and now were scarcely trusted. But how? When? Without hesitation, she retrieved the thread.

“Take it,” she tucked it in the woman’s book. “Keep it. Wear it until the first blooms appear. Let it be your talisman for hope.”

Eyes shining with a gratitude and newfound resolve smiled at her.

Ana chuckled, a sound mingling relief with an inner epiphany.

“I caught the train tonight. That, in itself, was a stroke of luck.” But beneath her composed exterior a newfound clarity took root. In Baba’s gentle ministrations, tending her injured knee and recounting the lore of her cattle and the protective power of the red–white thread, Ana had understood. She was not a reluctant passenger drifting through her life. She was a guardian of memories. No longer would she allow doubt to wither her dreams like frostbitten leaves. In that moment the path ahead had unfurled before her: to honor traditions, to walk the forested trails of those before her, and to let their whispers guide her toward what was meant to be. To believe, to hear, to remember. Past and future had been and will always be intertwined, like the red and white threads of Martisor.

The train rumbled on, carving its way through winter, through an unyielding night. Overhead, the lights flickered, fading into a deep, unsettling shade of red, like embers of ancient lore, smoldering but never quite extinguished.

"I am in search of forgotten narratives,” said the young man, fighting off sleep. “Of secret undercurrents that bind ancient customs with modern life. I sought to uncover the untold magic of this Martisor tradition. Not its commercial face, but that what whispers through blood and stone. What lies beyond the lucky red-white thread." His eyes drifted to the twisted string peeking from the book. The words hung in the air like a tentative bridge spanning separate solitudes.

"This thread isn’t just cloth. It carried whispers of old promises and hidden sorrows," said the woman.

"I wonder if our traditions fade into mere echoes, like secrets lost in the cold night?” his voice was tinged with melancholy.

"But the pulse of forgotten stories still calls, at least to me. My research took me towards uncovering this truth that beats beneath the weight of modern despair," she said, her eyes alight with quiet intensity.

"Baba spoke of guarding the cattle and the land, as if each knot of a Martisor thread that is tied, holds a hope for renewal," Ana said. “Tonight, in every frigid moment, I felt the pull of a past that refuses to be silenced, even as it trembles at the edge of oblivion."

”Is it not our chance to preserve these fragile tales, to let the Martisor tradition remind us of what we once believed?" he had inquired, challenging the quiet with his conviction.

"They said you don’t choose the Martisor, but it chooses you."

"What do you mean by that?"

"It knows who needs a dram of luck."

“It...?”

"I clung to reason for so long, yet tonight I sensed a call. An invitation to trust in something more than logic. That call can be both a comfort and a fear, a fragile beacon in the dark bidding us to remember our roots." The words were laden with ancient longing.

"Then perhaps our journey was not solely for the sake of discovery, but to rekindle a light that time has almost forgotten."

“Are you willing to accept the challenge?”

“Are you?”

But Ana glanced at the red-white Martisor thread, knowing that the quest to bind tradition with the here and now had already chosen them.

The train’s whistle sliced through the calm of shared dreams, jolting them awake. The compartment transformed into a frenzied dance of hurried motion. The station was near and both girls were destined to disembark. Limbs pulsing like wild rivers scrambled to gather belongings before disembarking.

The train lurched, engine groaning against the canvas of the night, a low, ancient hymn calling through time. The compartment still carried echoes of their words when the man’s eyes fell on an old travel book left behind. A red-white tread peeked from it. In a desperate bid to capture the vanishing moments, he dashed to the window only to find it as stubborn as the winter ice. Frustration set in as he fumbled with the latch; then, in one final effort he thrust the book against the glass. Unable to coax the obstinate window to yield he bolted toward the door it, too, jammed by the relentless inertia of the moving train.

Amidst that chaotic symphony, the young woman’s laughter had burst forth, light and fearless, a crystalline sound against the encroaching darkness.

“Keep it,” she called out, her voice penetrating the dim carriage like a soft incantation, “Wear it until the first day of spring. Then tie it to a blooming tree. For good luck.”

The promise of spring bloomed, as it always does, amid a crescendo of haste and mystery. It carried with it the lost perfume of forgotten lore that spread, like a good-luck charm, over three lives. They braced themselves for the unfolding of what lay ahead, but knew it will be surprising and enchanting if they followed their hearts.

----------

About the author:

Patricia Furstenberg grew up in Bucharest, obtained a medical degree, and moved to South Africa almost a courter of a century ago. There, she went on to pursue her love of writing while also running a blog where she advocates her love for Romania. She writes novels, children's books, and poetry.

Readers can find Patricia Furstenberg on her website and blog or on social media, especially X, but also on Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

She previously shared a special story dedicated to the night of Saint Andrew with Romania-insider.com - here and an interview - here.

Irina Marica, irina.marica@romania-insider.com

(Photo source: Chernetskaya/Dreamstime.com)