1
As the autumn wind pawed at the boarded windows like a wolf trying to break in, I arranged my medical supplies next to the teacup containing the severed finger. Needles and water, handspun thread, and clean rags.
“This is the second time this week, Galechka!” I exclaimed, picking up the finger. The first knuckle twitched when I touched it, then curled inward, prodding tentatively against my palm.
“I fell down again,” Galina mumbled, extending her arm across the table. She was in better condition than the other upyri in my family and still had most of her hair and flesh.
“Be more careful. Keep losing fingers, and someday you won’t have any left.” I took her left hand, examining the damage. Her skin was discolored and withered, buffed with a sheen of lavender oil to keep from tearing. Mine was a reminder of what hers had once been—smooth and still warm, a sandy beige against her waxen complexion.
“Can you make a pretty one this time?” she asked. “Like one of your rushnyky?”
“Okay, but promise me you’ll try not to lose anything else.” I gently tapped a finger against her forehead. “You don’t want me to reattach your head, do you?”
Galina giggled. “No.”
She didn’t wince when the needle pricked her. I used a geometrical stitch, embroidering her skin in a delicate red lattice of interlocking lines and diamonds. No blood welled up. The liquid had long since evaporated from her veins.
It made me proud being able to do this small deed for her. So much had fallen apart in my life, it was satisfying to know that I had the ability to sew things back together again. At least in this way, I could make a difference.
“This will protect you,” I said, tying off the final knot. My birth mother had taught me that the embroidery was a talisman against ill luck and the Unclean Force, a corrupting energy that sickened the body and soul. Over the years, I had decorated the walls of our house with rushnyky I had made using found linen. Some good must have come from the tapestries and their lucky embroidery, because the wilderness had yet to claim me.
After snipping the tail of thread, I cleaned her hand then bandaged it. Later, I’d probably find the strips of velvet scattered across the floor, forgotten as she admired my embroidery.
When Galina flexed her reattached finger and laughed, I smiled. Just that raspy sound made all my effort worth it.
“Thank you, Toma.” She curled her fingers to test them. “Will you come exploring?”
“I can’t. It’s too wet for me out there.”
“We can search for treasures.”
“Don’t you have enough of those?” I teased, gesturing at the array of objects lining the shelves along the wall. Jars filled with ceramic pipe stems and tarnished coins sat alongside bottles dredged from the mud, the glass so old that it had acquired an iridescent gleam. She had found brass artillery shells, which I engraved and turned into vases, until each windowsill overflowed with cotton stems and wildflowers.
“Please.” Galina scrounged through her dress pockets and came out with a handful of faceted barrel-shaped beads. “Look what I found in one of the houses.”
“Is that how you lost your finger? You shouldn’t be digging around in those kinds of places.” I took the beads from her, rolling them around in my palm so they caught the firelight. “These are beautiful, Galechka. They’re so blue, they look just like sapphires.”
She smiled in excitement, revealing teeth like river pearls. “You think they’re sapphires?”
“They could be,” I said, although I doubted sapphires would be so heavily chipped.
“I didn’t know they were blue.”
I felt a twinge of sadness. Did Galina even remember what the color blue looked like? She admired things for their shape and feel, but she’d never know the ring of embroidery around her finger was as crimson as the berries of a guelder rose.
“I want to see if I can find the rest of the necklace, but I don’t want to go alone.” Galina pocketed the beads when I handed them back to her. “It’s scary in there.”
I sighed. I wasn’t looking forward to caving my skull in with a fallen beam, but how could I refuse her? “It’s going to get dark soon. If it stops raining, we can go tomorrow, all right?”
“Oh, fine.” Galina rose to her feet. A draft intruded through the door as she opened it, rustling the bundles of herbs and wild garlic nailed to the rafters. She looked so fragile standing there, framed by the bruised sky and dark tree line, as though the world might swallow her whole. There wasn’t much of her left to give—year by year, more hair fell out in chunks, and just in the last summer, she had started carrying her lost milk-teeth in a sachet I’d sewn myself. It frightened me. Someone as small and delicate as her seemed prone to disappearing.
“Don’t lose anything else!” I called after Galina as she closed the door. If she answered, a resounding thunder blast stole her words.
To fight off the chill, I busied myself by cleaning my supplies in the water basin. Once everything was put away, I added another log to the massive masonry stove that occupied nearly a third of the room. Every night, I cleared the ashes and made sure there was enough wood and tinder. I needed to be careful to keep the fire going. It wasn’t as though I could conjure flames with magic.
Magic was a gift reserved for bogatyri and witches, not someone like me. Thinking back to my childhood among the living, I could recall only a handful of magically endowed individuals, all high-ranking soldiers or nobility. While the heroic bogatyri in Galina’s storybooks were occasionally peasants, in reality the Three Sisters never bestowed their gift on
commoners. It was always the duchesses, the earls, the captains, and the commanders who wore the deep-purple epaulets and sashes of the bogatyri. And in the tales, it was them who hunted creatures like my family for their kingdom’s honor.
Witches, or kolduny, were a different story. Their powers came from the Unclean Force, and they infiltrated all levels of society. With a single glance, a koldun—or his female counterpart, the koldunia—could spoil a person, cursing them with disease and misfortune. Just a few words uttered from a koldun’s mouth could be fatal, or so the stories told. I’d never met one myself, and unlike creatures like upyri or rusalki, I wasn’t even sure if kolduny existed in the world. Perhaps they had died out years ago.
After closing the stove door, I sat down to work on my newest rushnyk. The tapestry was my most ambitious one yet—it was so long it billowed down to my feet, the folds of white linen covered in a wealth of geometrical embroidery. I’d dyed the thread myself, hand spinning it from flax and steeping it in madder. I couldn’t wait to see how the rushnyk would look once I finished.
Just as I was done embroidering one corner, Galina burst through the door.
Smiling, I lowered my needle. “Too wet for you?”
“There’s someone out there,” she cried, her voice breaking on the last word.
“Someone?” I asked, baffled.
“Like you, Toma. Someone like you. I think he’s still alive!”
I barely had enough time to grab my hunting satchel from the shelf and tug on my gloves and embroidered buckskin coat before Galina herded me into the downpour.
Windblown trees, craggy outcroppings, a couple of decaying houses, so much rain. So cold. The storm’s chill worked its way into my bones.
Galina raced across the ground with coltish ease, a tiny figure held together by rags and leather belts. I hurried after her, swatting away the rain that stung my exposed cheeks.
Someone alive. Someone like me. How long had it been since I’d last seen a living person? More than a year, certainly. Two or three, at least. The moment the hunter had spotted me, he’d dropped his snared rabbits and rushed off, leaving me with a nice dinner but a sinking heart. I had spent the entire day afterward searching my dark eyes for any sign of blood or fading and pawing at my hair in terror that the black strands might break away in ash-tinged fistfuls, until I was reassured that I hadn’t transformed into an upyr as well.
At the thought of encountering another living person, my breath seized in nervous excitement. One of my favorite pastimes was watching airships pass overhead and fantasizing about the distant lands they were traveling to. But it was a different thing altogether to look into another human’s eyes.
Galina led me down to the river. As we approached the bridge, a pale figure flitted through the wind-torn shallows. I caught a glimpse of long hair and shining eyes before the rusalka retreated into deeper waters.
The
river spirits ignored us as we crossed the bridge. I had never been attacked by rusalki, but I had once seen them swarm a caribou, all thrashing limbs and burgundy hair, until the water ran red with blood. It wasn’t uncommon to find gnawed bones and scraps of hide littering the banks.
My feet touched down on solid ground. I lifted my gaze to the horizon and gasped. A trail of smoke rose in the distance, black against the downpour.
“Come on, come on,” Galina urged, tugging at my sleeve.
The wind changed directions, blowing the smoke toward us. Each breath I took was sullied by its acrid odor. Pressing my coat collar over my nose and mouth, I broke into a run, heading toward the fire’s source.
Galina and I took a natural trail formed by decades of deer migration. When the underbrush thickened and obscured our path, we wove our way between red currant brambles and clumps of spurge laurel overladen with berries as black as ink drops. I curtained her with the flap of my buckskin coat when we strayed too close to a thornbush, wary of what its barbed branches might do to her skin and hair.
Before long, the forest thinned. Hornbeams and young oaks replaced the towering spruce and beech trees, admitting in sallow radiance. A pall of smoke caught the sunlight and trapped it in hazy columns.
Ahead, I spotted the deflated remains of an airship ensnared in the trees. Not one of those minnow-shaped vessels that occasionally passed overhead, but a smaller machine whose rowboat-like wicker compartment was open to the elements. Loose ropes and mounds of soot-blackened canvas hung from the branches. A man lay facedown beside the ruined basket, his blond hair streaked with mud.
Stepping carefully over the rubble, I made my way to his side. Here and there, broken machinery bristled from the soil. The barrel of a gun or cannon, and a scatter of brass shells each no longer than my finger. This vessel had been built for war.
I would know—to the south, the wilderness was scarred with overgrown craters and trenches on the verge of collapse, and whenever I hunted in that area, I had to proceed warily. Unexploded ordnance studded the land there, and though the black powder had gone impotent with age or decay, barbed wire and broken glass lined the ground like teeth.
Galina hid behind me, her twig-like fingers grasping at my coat. Her eyes had long since wasted away, but I knew that in her own way, she could see. And while she was incapable of producing tears, I could tell when she cried because her sorrow twisted like a dagger deep inside me.
“Is he dead?” Galina whispered.
“I don’t know.” I sank to my knees beside the wheat-haired man. If he was dead or dying, I didn’t want her to see it. Didn’t want her to be reminded of her own last moments. “Go find Mama and Papa. Hurry.”
Galina rushed into the forest. I waited until she was out of sight before turning back to the man.
“
Hey, are you okay?” I lightly shook his shoulder. “Can you hear me?”
Groaning, he struggled into a sitting position and lifted his arms to ward me off. Weak veins of fire pulsed across his skin, sizzling in the rain.
I froze.
A bogatyr.
“You need...you need to help him.” His voice was scarcely louder than a whisper as the flames throbbed, fizzled, and then receded. He sank against the basket, his eyes clouding over like silty puddles. “He needs a doctor.”
“Who does?” I whispered.
Before he could answer, a pole clattered across the ground. I turned, suspecting it had only been the wind, but then a scrap of canvas bulged as something stirred beneath it. Crawling over, I pulled back the flap.
There was another young man beneath the wreckage. He wore a gray wool coat and broadcloth trousers. His face was almost as pale as the ashes caught in his dark brown hair, his full lips chapped and blued from the cold. Even in unconsciousness, there was a cruel edge to his features, something hard about the cast of his mouth and his sunken cheeks.
“Is he alive?” the bogatyr mumbled, knitting his hands over his stomach as though to hold part of himself in. Blood darkened the crisp white linen of his uniform shirt. Though he was a bogatyr, there was no trace of indigo on him, not even a ribbon pinned to his collar or piping down his sleeves.
I took off my glove and pressed a palm against the dark-haired boy’s cheek. The heat of his skin shocked me. When he drew in a shallow breath, I found myself holding my own breath in turn, feeling as though I was witnessing something precious.
My shoulders slumped in relief. “He’s still breathing.”
“Praise the Three,” the bogatyr said with a sigh.
The dark-haired boy stirred and cracked open his eyes. They were the palest gray, as though they were simply reflections of the sky above. He flinched when he saw me, but he was too weak to shy away.
“My name’s Toma.” I returned my hand to my side, worried my touch might be hurting him. “Don’t be afraid, I’m a friend.”
“Mikhail.” His voice was scarcely louder than a whisper.
“You’re safe, Mikhail. Just hold on. My parents are on the way.”
“They’re coming.”
A flash of alarm rippled through me. “Who’s coming?”
“They’ll kill me.” His eyes fluttered shut, his breath slowing. “Run, or they’ll kill you, too...”
I said his name once more and repeated my question. He muttered something unintelligible before slipping back into unconsciousness.
I turned to the bogatyr. “Who’s he talking about? Who’s coming?”
“The Fraktsiya,” the bogatyr said grimly, his gaze planted on the horizon. “They’re here.”
I followed his line of sight. In the distance, a dark blotch surfaced behind the clouds like a bloodstain. Rising to my feet, I squinted against the rainfall. Slowly, the form took shape, materializing into a small dirigible much like the one scattered across the ground at my feet.
An explosive rattle shook the air, as loud as hail on an izba’s roof. In an instant, holes appeared in the ground at my feet. A bush shuddered to my right, its boughs splintering as the projectiles struck it.
Heart hammering against my rib cage, I threw myself to the ground and scrambled toward the cover of the deflated balloon. The canvas would provide no protection from gunfire, but at least it would hide me.
As another volley of bullets pierced the glade around us, the bogatyr raised his bloodied hands toward the sky as though to beg the goddesses for intervention.
“Long live the Tsar.” Blood bubbled from the bogatyr’s mouth and slid down his chin, diluted pink from the rainwater. Curls of smoke wafted off his palms and forearms. “Glory unto him. May the Three Sisters lead him to victory!”
Crackling flames raced up his arms and leapt from his spread palms in a blazing gout, setting his gaze afire with reflected light. Raindrops evaporated in an instant, forming a scalding cloud of steam as the blaze arched toward the balloon. The two pilots jumped out of the basket seconds before the craft exploded into flames. Bags of fabric spread out above their heads, slowing their fall to a smooth, slow descent.
Carried away by the wind, the pilots disappeared from sight. Smoke billowed from their balloon as it crashed in the depths of the forest.
“You got them!” I turned to the bogatyr.
My smile dropped from my lips as I saw that he had crumpled onto his side. His eyes confronted me, their pupils fixed on a distant point.
I couldn’t stand his sightless gaze. Crawling over, I gently pressed my hand over his eyes and closed his lids. I waited for a moment after lowering my hand, hoping half-heartedly that the bogatyr would open them again. His eyes remained closed.
Only a small percentage of people came back, and even the magic-endowed bogatyri burned or dismembered their fallen to prevent resurrection. Still, after spending so much time among the dead, I had come to expect it.
Rising to my feet, I returned to Mikhail’s side. He hadn’t regained consciousness, but at least he was still breathing. I tried to wrestle him onto my back and nearly collapsed under his weight. Not good. I’d never make it back to the house this way.
I racked my brain for a solution. If I couldn’t carry him, maybe I could drag him.
Drawing my hunting knife, I cut a square of canvas from the deflated balloon. I laid the sheet over Mikhail to shield him from the rain and retrieved rope and more rubberized cotton from among the wreckage.
Once I had gathered my supplies, I rolled the tarp over him, and bound it tightly. The layers of oilcloth enclosed his body, protecting him from the elements.
I
looped the remaining rope through two of the holes riveted in the tarp, fashioning a rudimentary lead. Afraid that my sloppy invention would fall apart, I tugged carefully on the rope. The waterproofed canvas slid effortlessly across the mud.
Dragging Mikhail forward, I cast a worried glance behind me. The smoke from the boys’ dirigible was as good as any beacon, and the downpour did little to conceal it. It would only be a matter of time before those two men—the Fraktsiya—made their way to the glade, and I intended for us to be long gone by then.
We headed deeper into the forest. As the minutes passed, the ache in my hands turned into a steady throbbing, and my legs wobbled from exhaustion. At last, I spotted a dark gash through the trees and sighed in relief. The river. Just a little farther.
Rusalki swam through the shallows, exposing a hand here, a webbed foot there. Their skin was even paler than Mikhail’s ashen complexion, their limbs disproportionately long compared to their gill-split torsos. One lifted her head above the water as we neared, her burgundy hair curtaining her face. I couldn’t see much more than her flared nostrils and the curve of her full lips—slick and crimson, like a gaping wound—but even that brief glimpse was enough to send a shiver down my spine.
I had never seen a rusalka lift her head above the water before. Maybe she could smell Mikhail. Smell his blood.
I swallowed the lump in my throat and stepped onto the rope-festooned bridge. The rusalki swam back and forth beneath us but didn’t attempt to climb up. I avoided looking at them directly, instead focusing on the path ahead.
One step after another. The slick wood creaked, and the bridge swayed in the grasp of the storm. One step after another. Why couldn’t I have been born a bogatyr? I would have killed to be able to levitate Mikhail right now.
No sooner had I reached the other side than two figures appeared ahead. Recognizing my parents’ lurching gait, I sighed in relief. Galina followed behind them.
“We need to help him,” I said as Mama pressed her hands against my face, my hair, my ears—all the parts of her that had withered.
“You’re not hurt, are you?” Her voice crackled like frost underfoot; it grew softer each year, until I was afraid that one day it would fade away for good.
“I’m fine, but Mikhail isn’t. I think he’s dying, Mama.” I swallowed hard. “And the other boy, the bogatyr, he’s dead. They killed him.”
“Toma, Galina, return home,” Papa said, his words muffled by the wooden mask covering his face. His entire body was restrained in leather belts and scraps of hide and oilcloth, leaving no amount of withered flesh exposed. His garments were the only things keeping him together, with the rusty splints providing additional support for where his joints failed him.
“But, Papa, Mikhail—”
His mask turned to me, a careful construct of the face he had lost, carved by his own hands. No eye holes, just the bulbous shapes of eyes, uplifted like those on a saintly icon. “Return. We will take him back.”
I wanted to argue, but I knew better. While my legs could fail me halfway up the next slope, Mama and Papa could go on until time tore them apart.
“All right.” I took a step back. “Come, Galina. Let’s go.”
I hurried in the direction of home, only glancing back when Galina and I climbed a low hill. My adoptive parents held the makeshift sled’s rope, soldiering on with grim determination. I hoped that the strain wouldn’t lead to torn muscles or severed limbs, the unfortunate consequences of pushing their bodies past the breaking point.
Once Galina and I reached the homestead, I immediately filled a pot with well water and placed it on the stove in preparation to make herbal tea.
“Toma, what can I do?” Galina asked, tugging at my sleeve to catch my attention. She had followed me to the well and back like a ghost, always a step behind me. “Please, I want to help him.”
Normally, the sleeping nook atop the masonry stove would’ve been the best place for an injured person to rest and recuperate. I knew from experience that the warmth radiating from the masonry could soothe even the worst fever chills. But considering how much trouble I’d had with just dragging him here, I doubted we’d be able to lift Mikhail onto the shelf.
“Can you get extra blankets from the chest?” I asked. “He’s been out in the cold for so long, we need to make sure he’s warm.”
“Warm,” Galina repeated softly, as though it were a spell or a blessing, and then she hurried upstairs. As I listened to the steps creaking beneath her feet, my heart swelled with nervous excitement.
I could count the number of living people I’d seen over the years on the fingers of one hand. Usually, after taking one glance at my family, they ran off screaming. If Mikhail survived, maybe we could become friends. And if he died, perhaps the same strange force that had resurrected my new family would also allow his sentience to remain after his body failed him.
Just as the pot of water started to boil, the door opened, and Mama and Papa dragged Mikhail inside.
I hurried over. “I’ve prepared my bedroom.”
As I followed them into the room, Galina’s fingers plucked anxiously at my skirt. I hadn’t heard her approach, but she could be so silent sometimes, easing across the floorboards like a shadow.
Stopping next to my bed, I untied the ropes from around Mikhail’s body and peeled back the oilcloth. My heart dropped. Against the fabric, he was white and deathly still. As I reached out to see if he was still breathing, he stirred briefly. His sharp face contorted in pain, shadows carving out the hollows in his cheeks as a low groan escaped his lips.
Mama and Papa hauled him onto the mattress. I leaned over the bed and drew back the flaps of Mikhail’s coat. Bloody gemstones spilled from the saturated fabric and scattered on the straw-stuffed mattress.
Stunned
, I picked up a couple of the faceted jewels. They were cold and sticky against my palm. Rubies and diamonds, as if his blood itself had hardened into stone. I spotted the source sticking out of his coat’s ripped lining—a pocket of fabric lighter than the rest, torn open and contents scattered.
Placing the gems on the nightstand, I unbuttoned his shirt. My stomach lurched at the devastation beneath—blood coursed from a hole in Mikhail’s shoulder, slickening his entire left side.
Papa examined the wound.
“He’s been shot.” Papa’s voice was low and gravelly through his wooden mask. As he spoke, he twisted the lead ring on his finger around and around, a memento forged from the bullet that had taken him.
My gaze drew to the flintlock musket above the fireplace. If the people in the other dirigible survived, and if they came searching for Mikhail, would I be able to protect us? How could an old musket compare to rapid gunfire, let alone the powers of bogatyri?
No. I hardened my heart to the fear that seized me. Mikhail was my responsibility now. The moment I had touched him, I had known in my heart that his life was something to safeguard and cherish.
Everything that was alive out here, I had to kill for my own survival, from the plants I farmed and foraged to the animals I hunted. But this was different. I must be the one to save him.
“How can I help?” I asked, my voice firming with resolution. “There must be something.”
“We need to stop the bleeding,” Mama said. “Galechka, fetch some samogon from the cellar. Toma, bring me your sewing kit, clean bandages, and a lit candle.”
After finding the supplies, I returned to my bedroom and laid everything out on the bedside table. Already, Mama had started cleaning the skin surrounding Mikhail’s wound with a samogon-soaked rag. As I leaned over him, the alcohol’s pungent fumes stung my nostrils.
At Mama’s instruction, I heated a sewing needle in the candle’s flame. By the time the needle cooled enough for me to touch it with my bare hands, the rag that Mama held against Mikhail’s shoulder was already dyed red. The blood had soaked through to her own hand-wrappings, staining the layers of deteriorated dowry lace and buckskin.
In the flickering candlelight, shadows settled under Mikhail’s closed eyes. He was fading fast.
I threaded the needle and slid it beneath his skin. My fingers ached and blisters had risen on my palms from holding onto the rope lead, but I forced myself to steady my hands as I sutured his wound.
Blood welled from between the stitches the moment I knotted the thread and snipped its tail.
“It’s not working...” The words came out choked and breathless, my voice tight with dismay. “I—the bleeding. I can’t stop the bleeding.”
Mama sighed deeply, resting her hand on my shoulder. “Toma, I’m afraid there’s nothing else you can do for him. It’s as I feared. He’s lost too much—”
“Your rushnyk,” Galina said suddenly. “Use your stitching like you did with me.”
Drawing in a deep, shuddery breath, I turned to her. “Galina, that’s not going to work.”
“It works,” she insisted, wiggling her reattached finger as though it was proof. “I promise. It really does. Please, just try it.”
I hesitated, looking back at Mikhail. He had lost so much blood already that it was only a matter of time before he succumbed to his wounds.
My gaze drew to the rushnyk hanging above my bed. Unlike the other tapestries in my room, the embroidery was not of my own hand but my birth mother’s. It was the only thing I had from the before, an inheritance I had carried from my village, past the border of the Kosa interior, and into the wilderness. I remembered now, my mother had wanted me to carry it, to wear it, because...
“If they come after you, this will protect you, Tomochka,” my mother had said, and wound the rushnyk around my shoulders the way she had once draped it from the shelf in our altar corner. I remembered being cold and afraid, but I couldn’t remember who she had been talking about. She’d squeezed my shoulders and stared at me, pale and drawn, with snow caught in her ebony hair. “Please, always keep it with you. No matter what happens.”
Now, I looked to Mama, unrelated to me by blood but more substantial than the woman from my memories. She wore the mask Papa had carved for her—not her own face, but a visage modeled after the brass icon of the goddess Voyna that hung in the corner. Carved of curly birch and buffed to a sheen, ...
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