Dedication

For all the girls with teeth and claws

Epigraph

Do you remember the way out of the woods?

I went in forgetting how dark it becomes.

—Unknown

Content Warning

Author’s Note: This novel includes challenging subjects like suicide, physical abuse, mutilation, claustrophobia, animal deaths (rodents, folkloric creatures), and murder.

1

I am wrapped from head to foot in tassels and gray rabbit’s fur on the day I depart to meet my husband. Somehow, despite the care taken to protect me, my hands are still terribly cold.

Arylik—my village, my home—sits naked and wind-whipped between Lake Temtol and Lake Tarlii. The people of Arylik believe that long ago, at the sheared edge of memories and song, the giant siblings of myth, Temtol and Tarlii, chose this place to lie down and rest after a long journey across the steppe. But they never left, their sleep becoming death, their bodies shaping the lakes and the landscape.

I’ve often thought those giants might have chosen a gentler place to die; there is almost nothing in Arylik to recommend it to anyone. The ground is hard, the ice never melts, and even the trees look withered and dire as they cling to the crumbling soil. To grow old here is to harden like a lump of clay left out in the winter sun, to be whittled down and down by the sharp wind that cuts through home and cloth and flesh. To work the land is to burrow fingers into the leathery skin of the earth while each yielded crop feels like the land taking pity.

You can love Arylik, and I do, but it will never love you back. But that is all right, for since the day my beauty became obvious, I was set aside. No little girl expects to become an outcast that way, but each of us had the chance; every girl in the village had her portrait painted and sent to the Count. The day we learned that I had been chosen was the day the other girls stopped speaking to me. I wouldn’t be allowed to fall in love or marry within the community, and so I was looked upon with curiosity and pity, like a tree that bears fruit nobody can touch.

I tried not to be sad about it—I have been earmarked for something special. Something grand.

Had those giants, Temtol and Tarlii, taken a few more long strides, they might have found a forested grave and laid their heads down on pine boughs and springy black dirt. But this barren steppe is my home, for better or worse. I know it. When you know a thing, truly know it, you can’t help but hold it in your heart, even if it hates you.

I leave today, having outgrown Arylik, to present myself to destiny, and I am a small pink face swaddled in gray, everything I own in a bulging pack that I, my brother, and his wife will carry.

Outside my family’s kotte, I kneel, awkward and round in all that fur, and cling to the soil. I pick up the earth, hold it in my hands, and feel how it becomes warm, releasing a smell like split grain.

“You’re going to have dirty hands when you meet your husband,” says my brother. “Of course, you would.”

Gavril has come at last, his small and stupid wife behind him.

“No man wants a woman with stained hands,” he adds, and slaps me on the back of my head. We were kind to each other as children, but he makes that easy to forget. Gavril is not small, and his hand stings. He is six years older than me, but his wife, Maksi, is my own age. She and I once played pruchki outside my family’s home, giggling and trading painted sticks until we were hoarse and rosy cheeked and then called in to help with chores. I think maybe she was my only friend. But marriage to my brother changed her. Now her face is blank, her eyes staring and dull. Probably she is irate that I will be “free” of Arylik, which she detests. When I told her that marriage made her sour, she huffed, promising that the same fate awaited me.

“You are marrying gold and jewels,” she said. “But you will tire of even that, in the end.”

For three ghastly winters I have endured them as a couple in the village, but soon that will be over.

“The Count won’t care about my dirty hands,” I tell them, standing, the earth sliding out of my fingers. It feels like letting go of a cool, dry hand. “He will have flower-scented water for me to bathe in. And fine oils. I will never be soiled or smelly again. I will never go hungry. The same cannot be said for the two of you.”

Maksi laughs and holds her belly. They do not have children yet, but that will likely change when they return from this journey. We will take the mule south to the even less forgiving forest sprawl of Gottyar, walking for days. The Count has written—he will meet us with horses at a trading post, and then I will never have to see Gavril or Maksi ever again.

Two summers ago, Arylik elders sent the Count’s family a tiny painting of me on a wooden circle. The Count liked it well enough, and so my real face will win seeds and goats for the village and enough treated furs to last six winters. All the girls I know sent their portraits, but he liked mine best of all.

I am a small price to pay for food and warmth.

My father and mother emerge from the kotte just as Gavril tries to strike me again. This time, at least, I probably deserve it.

“Idiot,” my father spits, and grabs Gavril’s hand. “The Count will turn her away if you mark her face. She bruises easily.”

Gavril shrinks into the shadows, and Maksi follows him, cooing and coddling as she always does. My brother is nothing but a big child, with clumsy hands and a round, plain face like a frozen lake. A brute, hunched and gnarled, sculpted by this harsh place. Neither he nor Maksi have ever left the confines of Arylik. When I realized that nobody would want to be my friend, I found my comfort in other things, in small adventures. Tiny rebellions. But they have never abandoned the safe, lingering warmth of their cots at dawn to roam beyond the lakes, to watch a herd of reindeer while hiding downwind where the creatures might better be studied and observed. Gavril and Maksi know the touch of Arylik soil, but not the soul of it; they put their hands in it, scratch in it, force it to give up withered potatoes and allium, but they’ve never seen the rill that splits off the southeastern edge of Lake Tarlii and, if followed, carries one to a choice thicket of honeyberries.

They think the wind smells like nothing.

Soon, it might smell like nothing to me, too, for I am leaving this place and will never have to think about rivers or growing potatoes again.

Done with my idiot brother, Papa comes to loom over me and take me by the chin. He inspects me carefully, pinching my cheeks and opening my eyes wider, as if evaluating a goat for purchase. The fist-size hammered medallion on his chest shines, marking him as an elder of import. His fingers and tunic smell of smoke, and there is a greasy smear of charcoal on his left temple. Squinting, his eyes water, but Papa has never cried. He does not cry now. My mother wails, then quiets herself by stuffing her face into Papa’s shoulder.

“One less flower in Arylik,” my mother says. I had no idea she cared so much.

I kiss the elder medallion solemnly, as children are meant to do.

Papa must stay to oversee the cottage and farm, to struggle and toil alongside everyone else. I would not call Maksi and Gavril useless, but I would also not call them useful, so they accompany me instead of staying here to work. They will pass me over to the Count like the best crop of the season. I know these last years of loneliness won’t be for nothing—my beauty is something to cherish. No longer will I be an outcast.

If I’m honest, I’m hungry for it. Hungry to be seen and loved.

“My one precious daughter, you go now to make us all very proud,” Papa says. It’s hard to hear him over my mother’s stifled sobs. He usually doesn’t speak so softly. Even his hands, still touching my face, are gentler. Then they slide off my chin, and he gestures to my pocket.

“Did you bring the amber like I told you to, daughter?”

I did. When I draw it from the warmth of my coat, it seems to hum with its own ancient fire. A hunk of amber, bright and gold, with shards of black and white chasing through it.

Precious. It seems like the very heart of Arylik is thrumming in my grasp.

“Like a jewel,” Papa says. “Do you remember the day you brought it home?” His voice is even quieter now, as if he’s afraid to wake the small piece of magic cupped in my palms.

Nodding, I bite my lip and try not to worry. Is he going to make me leave the amber? It feels like the only thing here that’s truly mine.

“Yes. I found it in the south field while digging seeds,” I tell him. The lie is rehearsed; it was given to me on the edge of the Gottyar Wood by a man called Blind Yurg. Nobody else will speak to Blind Yurg, nobody even mentions him, so I kept the amber’s origin a secret. Stupid Gavril found it in one of my socks and forced me to show Mother and Father.

“Where you are going? The Count’s castle? It is just like this treasure. You will live inside a golden hall, and your eyes will never again alight on so mean a place as this. You are our gift to him, and that life is our gift to you.”

I nod, expecting him to take the amber from me. Instead, he folds my fingers carefully around it and sighs. He has told me all this before. When I cried and refused to eat and swore to him that I would never be sold to a stranger, that I would never allow it, he promised I would live in a jewel world.

But here I am, so I suppose all that arguing was for nothing. Papa’s stubbornness, and the reality of the world, outlasted my tantrum. My mother has told me that the other girls are jealous of me, and only a selfish fool would complain about such a thing.

I should hold my head high, so I do. One less flower in Arylik.

“Take it,” Papa says. Now my eyes are red, too, and watery. “Present it to the Count.”

Oh. I let the amber disappear into the countless pockets of my rabbit and tassel dress and decide that I will not give the Count anything of Arylik. Especially not its heart. When my father steps back toward the house, I look west, toward Temtol, the brother of the two lakes. When I can no longer see that lake, I will have shed all of Arylik. None of it will reside inside of me anymore, and so none of it can be taken away. I will be the Count’s wife, modern and glamorous. The Arylik girls wouldn’t even recognize me, drowning in silks and pearls.

The leave-taking is almost over.

“Four days is hard travel!” my mother cries, pulling Gavril and Maksi to her breast and swaying them from side to side. “Be ever so careful. Be ever so careful! Never lose the road. Never let the fire go out.” When she turns to me and wraps me in her arms, she crushes the hunk of amber into my hip until it throbs. “Do not be trouble for your brother. Do what he says. When you reach the castle, whatever the Count requests, you must do, yes? You must listen like you have never listened before, yagnush.”

“Of course,” I tell her. I have always been her yagnushka, her little lamb, but perhaps not her favorite. We kill lambs for eating here. But her little lamb has every intention of doing whatever the Count says. Even if he is mean, even if he stinks like garlic, I will be obedient to earn my ease. Nobody knew of my tiny rebellions. I am my papa’s good, sweet daughter.

The amber digs deeper into my hip.

I wonder if the Count’s family will look at me the way Arylik folk do, like an eleventh finger, and I fervently hope they will fold me in like fyuda nuts into dough.

The sun is a bleary orange sliver on the horizon, splitting the sky above the lakes and dyeing them white gold as we finally depart. Maksi carries a simket on her back, heavy and sturdy, filled with whatever traveling supplies the mule’s bag cannot carry. I am to sit atop Gray Azta, the mule, as I am too valuable for diminishing labor. The lads of Arylik love a woman short and thick, with strong hands and an unforgiving, stony heart.

But a Count loves a lady, soft and pliable, with summer in her eyes and spring on her breath.

And even if it seems hard, I will be that lady, I decide, wobbling back and forth on the mule, but not until the lakes have vanished from my sight and the last trace of heart-home soil has disappeared from my fingers. I almost jump down and rub more dirt on my slippers, just to stall for time, just to take more of this place with me. Maybe the land was cruel and hard to work, but it did, eventually, yield. And I had my little adventures, my trips to see Blind Yurg at the forest’s edge, and it was, after all, familiar.

Before we go, my father hands us a thick torch crowned with reaching fire, and I hold tight to it, knowing it will be vital for the journey. I ought to feel important, on the cusp of something, riding toward Gottyar Wood with my head held high and my chin tilted up, a title and wealth in my future, but I feel only a quaking inside. The village is depending on me for a prosperous year.

Gavril and Maksi walk; I sit on the mule. Soon we have reached the limits of the only home we have known, and then we are across the border.

“When the village is farther behind us, I will help you carry the simket,” I tell Maksi. It’s the fair thing to do, and she is already surrendering to the weight of the pack.

“Yes, you will,” she grunts, sweating and cursing under the contraption. She has the plump cheeks of a squirrel preparing for a harsh winter. “You will carry it all the way to Ulganyo. You might soon have servants to command at the castle, but we are not your servants.”

“No, you are right. Servants do not complain nearly so much.”

Maksi growls. Before she can spit out a smart retort, my brother reaches up to help me down from Gray Azta’s back. I almost kick him away, but it will be better to keep the peace. It feels wrong to have my last memories of home poisoned by arguments and complaining. Maybe Gavril and I have not been close for many years, but a small piece of my heart insists that I will miss him when he’s gone. Or I will miss what we might have cultivated had we been less stubborn and more aware of time moving forward, forward to the near moment when we will be separated forever. He will never know my children, and I will never know his. He doesn’t see it, but I glance up at him, sad, visited by a premonition of regret that is surely to come. We walk three astride, the animal clomping along behind us. I keep the torch aloft to see the hard line of my brother’s mouth go even thinner and paler as he surveys the trickle of a mule path winding away from the village.

I almost say, I will miss you terribly, brother, miss the idea of us.

But I say nothing because he already looks irritated.

“You will both be quiet when we reach the Gottyar,” he tells us, stern. He has never looked older or wiser in the harsh flicker of the torchlight. For a moment, I almost forget how foolish and dull he is. “You will not bring down mischief on our heads. You will only whisper, and bow your heads, and pray the wild beasts and yiliksii ignore our presence.”

He’s right, though I would never admit it. Gavril glances at each of us in turn, and our silence is the resounding answer.

2

The Gottyar Wood spreads across the Uldest territory east to west, a wide belt of sprawling pines, low hills, and never-ending tangles of brush and brambles—thorny, dense, and dark, untouched by light or industry. A single bold road slices through it, running north-south, and all the starlike constellation points of civilization within the wood lie along that single path—shelters, trading posts, and watchtowers. To stray too far off the road into the wood is to invite misadventure or death. Though the lumber trade exists and a handful of families manage to survive there, and though the Count and others lay claim to it and plant flags and raise pennants, it is understood that the forest belongs to itself.

More specifically, it belongs to the yiliksii.

They are the cursed children of the forest, and they do not care for trespassers or travelers. Their golden eyes glitter in the trees at night, sometimes mistaken for the friendly glow of a lantern, and any who chase that glint of gold are never seen again. These are not children’s stories; this is the rule of the Gottyar. A man fears the yiliksii as a babe, and he fears them equally on his deathbed.

Maksi and Gavril are surprised to find me out in front, leading the procession. No one in the village knows how far I have ventured on my quick adventures, and my parents would have scolded me terribly for going all the way to the edge of the wood. There will be a road when we reach the Gottyar itself, but until then, there is only a tangle of confusing footpaths that cut through the fields, many of them leading nowhere, others going to game trails in the tall grass.

“How do you know the way?” Maksi asks, a suspicious, rising note in her voice.

“The forest is over there,” I tell her, waving my hand.

“You walk as if you’ve been this way before,” she adds.

“We are making good time,” says Gavril. “That is all that matters.” But he hurries to my side, lowering his tone to add, “How do you know the way?”

I lie to him as I lie to everyone about what I get up to when nobody is looking. “Maybe I am special. Maybe I was born to leave this place behind.”

“Stop whispering!” Maksi shrieks, and Gavril falls back to placate her.

Here is the truth: I have ventured here before, promising that I am off gathering roots or rushes, always going up to the point of danger but never crossing the threshold. On one such trip, I risked walking four hours south, finding a man standing on the hill that has the best view of the Gottyar. I remember thinking it was so wide, so vast, that I couldn’t see the edges of it, even from that vantage. The stranger there was Blind Yurg, and I did not recognize him.

“Your folk do not want me,” he said. He smelled strange, unpleasantly sweet, like old apples, but his unseeing eyes somehow twinkled. “I left the fold a long time ago.”

I asked him where he lived, then, and he told me of a hut near a rill that wound into the Gottyar. “But you will never walk that far,” he said, and sounded almost despairing.

“I might,” I replied, puffing out my chest and feeling very brave.

Blind Yurg reached into his leather satchel and handed me the beautiful hunk of amber. “If you do, take this, child. The forest is vicious, but the forest knows its own.”

“You found this there?” I asked, astounded.

“I did, I did.”

Ever after, when I wandered from home, I’d find Blind Yurg at that spot, sometimes so still and watchful on the hill that it felt as if he did nothing but stand and wait for me to visit. Patiently, he answered my thousand questions about the cursed and haunted Gottyar. He described rivers that flowed uphill, trees with thin red sap, and a tremor along the ground at night that rattled his bones until he ached. That rumble, he told me, breathless, did not seem to come from the earth itself, but projected from somewhere in the sky, like a god calling down a warning. There is more, of course—creatures with pelts like jagged stone and burning eyes, toneless songs that carry on the forest wind, false deer paths that become spirals . . .

I don’t need to dwell on it, for we will not lose the road, and that is that.

We walk and walk and walk. We pass the outlook on the hill where Blind Yurg should be, but for once, he isn’t there. My heart sinks. I wanted, I suppose, to say goodbye.

The travel is dreary, and Maksi sings little songs to keep herself going. She swore we would share the load of the simket, but I carry it when she refuses. We walk and walk, and at last, the forest nears. As the solid trees rear before us—a seemingly impenetrable barricade of steely gray trunks—I think to myself that the Count must be very powerful and very impressive to make a life in the Gottyar. Blind Yurg is a keen navigator, tough as old boot leather, and even he would never think to return; his voice, when speaking of the Gottyar, would become tiny, like a little boy’s. It is not a place for soft or lazy men. I close my eyes and imagine the Count like a bear, bending the trees to his will beneath weighty, clawed paws. No blood sap or strange rivers frighten him. He is unshakable.

Nobody has sent me his portrait on a tiny shaving of wood, so I can only pretend to know his handsome face.

“Night is coming on again,” Gavril says, sighing. Even camping in the tall grass miles from the Gottyar had made him nervous. Now he’s almost panicked. He shivers, his eyes fixed on the shadow cast by the wood ahead, a black ribbon that will soon swallow us up.

“We must keep to the road when we reach the Gottyar,” I reply. I don’t dare tell them of Blind Yurg’s warnings—he is a pariah, and none of his wisdom is heeded. They would just scoff at me for taking the advice of a stranger. He is not fit company for a future countess. “There should be traveler huts for shelter so long as we do not stray.”

As soon as we pass into the shadow cast by the trees and lose track of the sun, the cold arrives like a slap. The flame on my torch dips, and I cup my hand around part of it protectively. Maksi moans with frustration. There are little bells tied to her furry boots, and they clang with each of her oafish steps.

“Let us go no further and sleep out under the stars tonight,” Maksi says, huddling closer to her husband. “We can rest beside Azta for warmth and start into the forest in the morning.”

“Yes, and then I can go to my husband the Count stinking of donkey.”

“Then the smell will match your face,” she hisses. I almost laugh. This is the best joke Maksi has ever made.

“Darling wife, the wind will tear us to shreds. No, we will need the cover of the trees. Do you want to be right out in the open for any cutpurse or yiliksii to see? Do you want to freeze? There will be a traveler’s yurt, and we must find it. They are hung with charms and wards and built to withstand the wind and the dangers of the woods,” Gavril tells her. He uses a voice like our father’s, rasping and low. It doesn’t frighten me, but Maksi’s gaze drops to her feet. It is well enough that he’s using our father’s voice, since Gavril is repeating everything Father told us about traveling the forest. “You might not care for Valla, but our task is to deliver her safely to the Count.”

Valla. That is my name. Countess Valla has a certain music to it, I think.

Maksi musters up the courage to rub her nose and reply. “My father says the forest children do not leave the safety of the woods.”

“And we should stake our supplies and lives on the word of your papa? The mad, drunk goatherd?” I ask. “You don’t know anything about the yiliksii, or the world. You’ve never left the village; you hardly even leave the kotte. Gavril is right—we sleep tonight in the forest. And take those stupid bells off your boots—every yiliksii for miles will hear us coming.”

“My mother gave me these bells,” she blurts out, furious. “ ‘If the yiliksii take you, the others can track you,’ she said.” Maksi whips her mitten away from her oozing nose and slams her elbow into my ribs. The precarious simket stays upright on my shoulders, but only just. It feels like the trees are standing in silent judgment of our childish bickering.

“I could have been sold to a count, too,” Maksi suddenly cries, and I can tell she is walking with a strange gait to make the bells ring even louder.

“To work his fields?” I suggest.

“Oh, Valla, you might be lovely on the outside,” she says. “But your insides are as black and twisted as a burned root.”

“But I am lovely.”

Gavril grunts. “I doubt the Count will appreciate your glib tongue, Valla.”

“When I am a countess, I will be as glib as I please.”

“If he were truly a wise man, he would not take either of you. Who wants a woman who talks so much?” Gavril perhaps deserves the slap this time, but Maksi would never raise her hand against him.

Instead, she blathers on. “Chasing a few rabbits out in the fields does not make you better than me, Valla. I hope your husband the Count is a runty pig. Then you will very much deserve each other!”

She hits me again, and this time the nudge sends me hard to the left. I have always been beautiful, so I have never had a need to be very strong. The backpack teeters, and a shower of dried herbs rains down on me, leaving my fur wraps and face dusted with rosemary. With the weight of the simket wobbling, I fall carefully to my knees, grimacing as a potato slips out of the top sack, hitting my head before rolling away. Gavril is quick to yank the torch out of my grasp before I can light the whole simket on fire. With both of us distracted and grousing, Maksi storms off, kicking up a trail of dry, ashy dust as she marches toward the head of the Gottyar-Vyriz Road.

“I hope a wolverine eats her face,” I murmur, staying very still while Gavril places the rogue potato back in the pack and tightens the drawstring. “What if I fell and scratched my face? Papa would never take you back. Mother’s mercy, you married a spoiled child.”

“You are both acting like awful little children.” Gavril hauls me back to my feet and together we chase after Maksi. His eyes become smaller and smaller as he watches his dumb wife careen toward the edge of the Gottyar. “You are wiser than Maksi, so why not behave like it? I’m begging you—make this journey easy on all of us. Be my sister, yes? Not my burden.” For just an instant, he pauses, sticking a gloved finger in my face. The torch spits. “You will not repeat that to Maksi. Come.”

I can acknowledge that it would be bad for us all if Maksi was eaten by a wolverine, so I match his stride, running toward the cut in the forest with big, clumsy steps, trying desperately to keep the simket from toppling again. Azta trots along behind us, chewing grass, unaware of the danger. The ground crunches beneath my feet, sweat pooling under my heavy rabbit furs. Gavril takes the torch so I might run easier, and soon we are utterly enveloped by the trees that spear toward the sky with soldierly discipline. They seem unnaturally straight and, despite the harsh wind, do not bend.

When we reach the forest road, Maksi is not there. A circular arch marks the beginning of the Gottyar-Vyriz, hammered together from foraged black wood. The name GOTTYAR-VYRIZ is scored into the uneven slats, but travelers have scratched their own warnings into the gate. Gavril stumbles out onto the uneven dirt of the road, spinning in a circle, calling his wife’s name. The mule will not pass under the gate, so I stand there with Gray Azta and run the soft, worn skin of my mitten over a carving in a slat at eye height. I only know simple words, but it seems that only simple words are carved in the wood.

ALYONA WENT TO HER HOME AND LOVE, 16 PROLETNA, STAG’S YEAR

I take a step back. The gate seems like a rough-hewn crown, as sharp-edged as a ring of knives. Gavril calls out again, his voice quaking. I join him beyond the gate and pull and pull on Gray Azta, who will not budge. The mule waits when I let go of the lead; he bows his head and chews grass frantically to calm himself.

“Here,” I mutter, unhooking the simket from my shoulders and letting it slide to the ground. Several torches have been stabbed into the earth near the gate. I grab one and touch it to Gavril’s, taking fire. “Hold the torch high so she can see it.”

“Why would she go off the road? Why?” Gavril shows his teeth, perspiration glinting on his forehead and chin. “She knows better. Everyone knows . . .”

I can almost hear the drumming of his heart in this halting voice.

A cluster of spleenwort and coated oak shakes near the eastern edge of the road up ahead. Both of us rush toward the sound, a few lights dancing in the impenetrable thicket, too close together, too steady to be the glow of fireflies.

And fireflies do not glow red.

“No,” Gavril whispers.

“They wouldn’t come so close to the road,” I say, but now my heart is thunder, too. I have never been this far from home. I have never been in the forest. “They wouldn’t. Yiliksii have golden eyes, brother. Maybe it is . . .” I trail off, able to think of nothing kind or welcoming with red eyes.

The bushes rustle again, and then the lights are gone. I can just make out a shadow before it plunges toward us from out of the darkness. We both shriek as Maksi tumbles onto the road, heaving for breath, her mouth wide open and drooling. Before we can reach her, she turns onto her back, gasping up at the ceiling of leaves and mingled branches above us—so close, so tight that they look as if they have been woven by massive hands. We crouch on either side of her.

“Wife! Are you well? Are you hurt? Wife, dear wife, why did you leave the road?” Gavril asks, removing his glove and running his bare palm over her forehead. Her skin is like ice. He coos and whispers, but she cannot reply.

“Wife? Wife! What did you see? What took you from the road?”

“I saw my death. Oh. Oh, oh, oh.” She moans like a deer with an arrow in its gut. “I saw my death, Gavril, a hole for a heart. Heartless, I am heartless. . . .”

Gavril shakes his head. “How can that be?”

“We must find shelter,” I tell them both. When I look up from Maksi’s face and glance around the forest, it presses in around us. “Get her on her feet. I will fetch the mule.”

A fire and hot tea will put her to rights. I tell myself this even as I know that something is wrong.

“We should go back,” I hear her telling Gavril over and over again.

We can’t go back. If we retreat, I will never be a countess.

When I return to the crown of a gate marking the start of the road, Gray Azta is gone. There is only a patch of shorn grass where he stood; the rest is a solid drape of black sky—not a torch or a traveler’s fire to be seen. Gray Azta, a bloody mule, was apparently the wisest of us all. I look ahead and then behind, neither way particularly appealing. There is no hope out in the impenetrable void, but the lit path of the forest is no better. Thick, jutting branches frame my brother and his wife, trees with arms raised in desperate supplication. It appears like less of a road and more of a tunnel bored through solid, unyielding trunks.

At least the Gottyar-Vyriz promises shelters along the way, so I hoist the simket onto my back again and toddle toward the others, sheepishly chewing my lip.

“Where is Azta?” Gavril demands. They are standing now, Maksi leaning heavily against him for support.

“He’s gone.”

“He cannot be gone,” my brother grunts. “That mule is stupider and lazier than you. Go back and fetch him.”

“He fled, and I will not stand out in the open as night falls and argue with you. Your wife needs a fire and a meal. Walk with me or leave me rations and go back to Arylik with Azta—I hardly care. I’m pressing on. The village depends on it.”

“Please,” Maksi says in a very small voice. “Please.”

Gavril interprets this to mean that she agrees with my mention of food and warmth. His jaw jutted forward, he slowly turns and half carries his wife down the dirt path. I follow a few steps behind, my back aching from the pack, watching as the road stretches forever in front of us.

It is the strangest thing, the way the Gottyar-Vyriz slices through the wood, arrow straight, though eventually the way narrows to no wider than a finger.

“There,” Gavril calls, pointing with his left hand. “A hut. Nothing grand, but it will keep out the wind and weather.”

Unsaid, it will perhaps keep out whatever beasts watched us with glowing ember eyes.

It takes longer to reach the shelter than I expected. Those flame-bright lights dance on the edge of my vision as we find what is no more than a bundle of warped planks, rope, and an old sack tipped against an obliging tree. There are no wards or charms; there’s hardly a roof. When I whip my head around to see where the lights are coming from, they vanish. While Gavril takes his torch and tries to start a meager fire for Maksi, I wander to the edge of the road and peer between the two closest trunks. There, in the distance, a pair of gleaming red eyes. These are not inquisitive eyes, but honed, somehow demanding. We have been in the Gottyar less than an hour, and already we have been marked, identified, and chosen for hunting.

The crimson eyes sway ever so gently, and there’s the faintest rumble of life in the animal’s chest as it considers us.

“Beasts,” I murmur, breathless. “I will have to tie up the food or it will all be stolen come morning.”

Animals somehow seem less threatening than yiliksii, for it is said the children have a kind of intelligence.

“We must be cautious without Azta,” Gavril tells me. “I cannot believe you lost him.”

“I—” But it is not worth arguing. Every word, every utterance, booms like a horn sounded for the creatures of the forest. I should rather suffer my brother’s insult quietly and call less attention to our presence. I have not felt fear like this since Blind Yurg spilled his stories of this place, and now I am sure he did not exaggerate the strange evils of it.

If anything, he was too kind.

Maksi flattens herself against the back of the shelter, practically invisible. A tiny, hopeful cooking fire flares to life under my brother’s hands, torch blaze transferring to tinder, and while his wife shivers silently under the burlap sacks, we work in unexpected harmony to arrange a small pot, fill it with water from a flask, and toss in dried fish shavings, slices of radish, allium, and a few strips of withered, cured venison.

Gray Azta has taken many of our supplies, but more important, he has taken away his warmth and bulk, and his keener animal senses.

It won’t be much longer, I promise myself. Soon we will meet the Count, and he is sure to greet us with a lavish feast and all the comforts fit to banish the dread of this unfriendly place. I cannot help but hold him in even higher esteem. Now that I have had a taste of the Gottyar, I cannot imagine the strength and resilience of anyone who would choose to stay in it. He will know how to protect me from these dangers.

Most of the watery stew goes to Maksi, though she can do little but hold her mouth open while Gavril spoons it in and waits for her to swallow. Her eyes remain wide, unblinking, her arms wrapped tightly around her middle. No matter how many blankets Gavril heaps on her, she trembles.

“My love, my love, you are fortunate to be alive. No more straying into the forest,” he tells us both in a whisper. Night, full night, is close upon us, felt like a mantle as soon as one leaves the smoky confines of the shelter.

But I have no choice; I must make certain our supplies are safe. After a few mouthfuls of food, I sigh and crawl out onto the road, cinching the simket shut before dragging it toward the tree behind the shelter. This is the way it was taught to me by Blind Yurg when he would hobble along beside me on a hunt in the valley. We never stayed until dark, but he showed me how to choose a tall tree out in the open, cover the meat, toss a rope over the highest branch, and hoist the kill to make it harder for predators to reach.

Before the supplies go up, I duck deeper into the shelter to rip off the bells on Maksi’s boots. Attaching one of the little charms to the simket is the perfect way to warn of mischief. But there are empty laces on her boots. The bells are gone.

Gavril notices my frozen posture.

“What is it?” he whispers.

“N-nothing.” It is not nothing. “Nothing.”

“Stop dawdling. We must all huddle for warmth.”

There are a few scattered branches at the edge of the path, so I take those instead and tie them to the pack, hoping they will clatter enough to tell us if predators have come for the food. Then I hoist the simket over the branch above the shelter, though it is far heavier than any bundle of skinned hares, and by the time it is lurching and swinging above us, I am out of breath and slick with sweat. I shuck the formal rabbit fur tunic and toss it over Maksi’s knees, watching as our supplies hang like a dead man, wobbling, faintly, in the still air.

“You two sleep first,” I tell them. Gavril has wrapped himself around Maksi like a fifth blanket, his hand smoothing her hair until her eyes, at last, begin to droop. “Gavril, I will wake you in a few hours. Without Azta, we must always have someone watching.”

“I do not know how I will sleep,” he murmurs.

“Try.”

And he does, closing his eyes. But I can see his eyeballs moving frantically back and forth behind the pale white lids, like a child squirming in a ripely pregnant belly. He is afraid, as am I, that when we sleep, those little lights will march ever closer, ever closer.

Closer.

Where did Maksi’s bells go?

3

Before the beast arrived, I was dreaming of a fat black insect devouring the moon.

It was something Blind Yurg had described as we huddled on the wind-brushed, patchy grass of the watchful hill. He liked to ramble about what he had seen on his one and only push into the Gottyar, and while he dressed a dead hare, he chewed his cheek, saying, “We struggle and suffer because we live outside the wood. We should be within it, not mastering its hardships but submitting to them.”

“But you said it was constant terror,” I reminded him, laying the pelts flat.

“All life is terror and pain. Better to accept it.”

“The pauzhuk!” He coughed the word. The pauzhuk, a spidery thing with a beetle-hard shell that bore through earth, trees, and even rock, slowly but diligently. “That’s what we should be like—the pauzhuk. Steady, steady, never giving up, carving forward, carving forward, even if ground gained is only measured in widths of your fingernail. We could come to know the forest that way, and in time, its darkness would be our darkness.”

“How long has the Gottyar been like that? Was it ever welcoming?”

“The stories go back at least two hundred years,” he told me, sighing. “If it was ever welcoming, the memory of it is gone.” I said nothing while a slack, dreamy expression came over his winter-hardened face. His cheeks were bluish, as if touched with frostbite, but it never bothered him. “I think we came from it. Yes, I know we came from that forest.”

“How?” I asked, skeptical.

“I am an old, old man, but I have no memories of my childhood, of the mother that birthed and raised me, of the father that must have been there, too. There’s the wood and what came after, but nothing else. Somehow my hands still draw the bow, my feet carry me in the right direction, but there’s no memory of how that knowledge is mine. Just . . . the wood, as if there was nothing in my life before it.”

“But you did grow up in Arylik? You did have a family. . . .”

“I must have,” the old man murmured. “I must have, pretty girl, but the Gottyar replaced it, like the right plant growing from the wrong seed.”

Did I speak with him like that, or was it only this dream? In the darkness, in the night, I was disoriented. The memory was the dream, and the dream a memory. The dream. The dream. I was alone on the fields outside Arylik, and I stood, walking at dawn, watching a consuming black shape grow on the horizon. A caravan of travelers? No. A herd of oxen? No. As I moved toward it, I saw that it was a spider beetle, so immense that it looked like a moving city—a moving nation—smooth and shining, with eight bulbous purple eyes, specks of green suspended within the orbs.

At once I knew there was nothing I could do to stop it, no chance to intervene against this godlike pauzhuk. When it was fully before me, day plunged immediately into night. The moon sprang into view like a squeezed tumor, white and throbbing, and the spider beetle lost interest in me, turning to climb the stars nimbly, using them like shining stepping stones, until it reached the moon and crawled around it from back to front, overtaking it until it seemed to blend seamlessly into the night.

Suddenly there is a soft, animallike presence beside me. My mind is half-present, still lingering in the dream but slowly being drawn out. Cold breath sputters against my ear, and then a single word is spoken.

Home.

A hesitant commotion becomes a louder one, and then I am awake. The word in my ear is forgotten as I find myself sprawled on my back outside the shelter. The simket swings violently above, just visible from the dwindling glow of a torch and the wash of starlight that penetrates the wood. There is no moon tonight.

No time to curse, only time to act. An animal has come for our precious supplies. Even as I leap to my feet, roaring out of sleep, I see the jagged hole torn open in the pack, a shaggy black body, and clawed feet digging, digging, a steady trickle of crumbs raining down onto the shelter and path.

“No!” I shriek. “No! Be gone! Go!” Blind Yurg has taught me that animals hate noise and fear humans far more than we fear them. It looks to be about the size of a wolverine, but longer, sharper, with flared points of shaggy black fur rising in a ridge over its back. The beast hears me, of course, and spins, still clinging to the pilfered pack, red, hideous eyes pulsing above a snout as pointed as a beak.

I dive for the torch beside Gavril and Maksi. My brother jerks awake, stunned and bleary-eyed as I wave the fire at the beast, the sudden rush of air over it making the flames burst to greater life. Heat flies terrifyingly close to my face, little sparks catching along my eyebrows, but I heft the wooden shaft and jab it toward the creature. Its eyes, so horror-bright, do not blink, nor does the animal shrink away or flee. Instead, I watch in open-mouthed shock as it shears the rope near the tree branch and rides the plummeting simket to the ground. Pack and creature roll, leaving a trail of dried berries and fish skin.

It seems to leer at me, tongue lolling heavily out of its mouth, black drool dripping like blood from its jaws. On hind legs, it lets loose a high, keening wail, almost human in its desperation. I have only heard such sounds from women in childbirth, and I stagger back a few steps, trembling. The beast eyes the torch between us, then makes its choice, pulling the torn simket off the traveler’s road and into the wood.

Gavril and I watch as it leaves with every crumb of our food.

The bushes rattle and toss in the animal’s wake.

“No! We have to get it back,” I manage to mutter. I can’t feel my heart. It is beating so fast it has become a blur in my chest. “The simket. Our food . . .”

“Sister,” he says, and again I marvel at how wise and serious he has become. Days away from our family, mere hours on this cursed road, and we are older and strange. “Valla? Are you listening to me?”

No, I am not. In one breath I make all of my next decisions: he must keep the torch, for the fire is vital and Maksi is weak; I will go and retrieve the bag. It was my watch to keep, and my negligence has cost us our supplies.

I hear him call my name as I thrust myself like a fist into the snarl of bushes at the roadside. He says it again, choked, and then he is quiet. Good. He should not bring any more evil down on us. They must stay small and silent and hope that the Gottyar takes mercy.

I do not expect mercy as I chase down the animal, but I do know that we have to eat.

There is nothing particularly brave in me, but tonight that must change.

4

There are tiny bells in the distance.

Maksi’s bells.

My mother has always called me her yagnushka, her little lamb, and I have never felt more like a small, soft, heedless child, more like a sacrifice. I sense a gate closing silently behind me, as if one step off the road has made retreat impossible. The way forward, however, is clear—the animal has dragged the simket roughly through the underbrush, leaving a trampled path down a hill toward a muddy embankment ringed by smooth, tall, oblong stones.

I follow. The little lamb follows. I might have thought better and turned back, but the bells spur me on. This is not just a creature of instinct; there is some intelligence behind it, some soul wise enough to understand a cruel joke. I see the beast waiting at the water’s edge, prowling in a tight circle around the pack, guarding its prize. The tree canopy is thinner there, and more starlight penetrates to show the creature for what it is—not a wolverine at all, but a nightmarish distortion of one. I have seen a child try to paint with their whole hand, smearing dark paste across a plank, making an artistic mess and then crowning it with two little pokes of the forefinger for the eyes.

That is the beast—a wild approximation, a jagged scribble of fur with round red eyes that stare and stare and dare one to approach.

I approach.

There is no wind, but I hunch low, taking long, careful steps through the brush as I follow downhill. The creature goes completely still, its back arched as it blocks my view of the simket. It is frozen, yet the bells persist.

This beast did not take the bells. I cannot allow myself to conjecture—who has the bells, and why, and what they mean to do with them, how long they will torment me . . . No, our food is all that matters now, and when I return to the road, I will tell Gavril that we must walk until our feet tear and our bones break, for any time spent on this road is too much time.

The Count will know what to do, I promise myself. The Count will know how to make this all right. All three of us will take our leisure at his camp and find the peace this cursed wood has already stolen from us. We are just children! Just children.

Even so, children must eat. Noise and fire startled the beast once, so I will try something similar again. I will take Blind Yurg’s advice and try to scare the thing off into the woods just long enough to steal back the simket. The path has been carved through a thicket of dried, dead honeyberries. I break off two of the branches, and as I grow closer to the water’s edge and the worm-scented, cool squelch of the mud, I stand and rattle the bushes. The dried berries clack and shimmer like a swift, rising wind.

The beast watches me, cranes its neck back, blinks, and considers.

Step by step, I near the pack. The hole in the simket’s side is grievous, and it lies toppled like an elk with its innards exposed. I hear the bells again. They are all around me. How? She only had four, perhaps six small bells tied to her boots, yet it sounds like a chorus of naughty imps, the music jangling along to the rhythm of my shaking branches.

“Shoo!” I say, moving faster, charging now. “Shoo!”

The mud is sucking, gripping, dragging me down, but somehow I keep my feet and rattle the dried branches right in the animal’s face. It won’t budge. I hear Blind Yurg’s voice like a singer’s chant threading through the maddening noise of the bells.

Steady, steady, never giving up, carving forward, carving forward, even if ground gained is only measured in widths of your fingernail. We could come to know the forest that way, and in time, its darkness would be our darkness.

As if in supplication or offering, I feel myself kneel and lower the branches, placing them right near the beast’s clawed feet. As I sit there, the piece of amber from my father pressing into my leg like a knot of muscle, I reach inside my furs and extract it, then trembling, offer that, too, to the beast. The bells grow silent. The wrong, cold air streaming from the animal’s snout curls against my forehead. Its tongue unfurls but does not touch me. Yet it’s tasting something of me. My spirit? My fear . . .

“Please,” I whisper. “Please, let me have it back.”

A sharp-ended paw raises only a little, then takes the chunk of amber. A word comes out of my mouth, a word whispered to me half in dreams. As soon as I say it, I forget it again.

The beast goes, appeased. The forest is silent. My breath rises in thick white puffs around me as I scramble to take the simket and return to the road. The shreds around the torn opening are loose, long enough for me to hastily tie and knot them, keeping most of the contents from spilling out. I follow the path back through the mangled bushes, but already I can see that the damage is being undone. The forest is healing, the way back disappearing even as I hurry to heed it. A tiny flicker rises at the edge of the road. Gavril. The torch.

“Valla! You’re back! Thank the Mother, you are here! How . . . How? But it does not matter. You are here!”

Gavril is wet with crying. He gathers me into his arms and sobs harder at the sight of the simket, broken though it may be.

“Maksi will not speak,” he whispers into my neck. “She will not speak, and I thought I had lost you, too! I could not bear to be alone in this place!”

“We should go,” I tell him softly, gently. “The less we stop, the better.”

“Yes, yes, I agree,” he replies, holding me at arm’s length then. His eyes find something over my shoulder and fix. “Valla. That thing. It has come again. I will not let it harm you.”

“Gavril, wait—”

Before I can stop him, he has taken up the torch and sped toward the trees, waving the fire toward the beast. The red eyes flare in the darkness, a wounded sound echoing down toward the water and the standing stones. The creature is betrayed. I lunge for Gavril, trying to bat the torch out of his hands and to the ground, but he has already made his intent clear, and so the animal does what an animal will, and its right forepaw lashes out, impossibly sharp claws raking across my face.

The strike sends me backward, and I hear the thump of my body hitting the dirt road. Gavril’s face hovers above mine, but the pain has brought instant tears and a sting that tastes like smoke and rot. Blood runs thick and hot into my mouth, but I can only gag and wince, and feel the sear of my torn flesh, warm pink muscle meeting the uncaring air.

At last I can see Gavril clearly again, though the salt tears burn terrible trails that intersect the wounds. My brother cradles me on his lap, pulling me up, his hands flashing in front of my face as if he could patch me back together with his dirty, sooty fingers.

“How bad?” I ask. I can feel the collar of my tunic growing heavy and wet, soaking up the blood. “Will the Count still want me? Am I still lovely? Answer me, Gavril. Answer me!”

“Oh, Valla,” he murmurs. “Oh, Valla.” Over and over again he says it.

I should fear poison. I should fear the things lurking in the curves of that creature’s fetid claws. I should fear disease spreading through my blood.

The Count will never want me now, I think. Who could want me now? Spoiled, spoiled, spoiled. I’ve lost my greatest virtue.

5

Pain distorts time as we move deeper into the Gottyar Wood. Gavril must have found Azta somewhere, for I am jostled back and forth, lying on my back and squinting up at the black canopy of the forest. There is nothing for me to do but moan as the hours roll slowly by, my senses corrupted by the stinging slashes across my face. A day is broken up into many nights when it all becomes too much, and I fall into unconsciousness for . . . how long? I cannot say.

I’m miserably sad. Why even continue on to Ulganyo? The Count will reject me, and that will hurt more than the beast’s nasty swipe. I was Arylik’s hope, an outcast, and for what reason? What a waste. What a terrible waste . . .

Gavril mutters idly as we go, and I hear him debate with himself, wondering if we should turn back and return to what we know. There are healers there who might help me; even Blind Yurg might know better what to do, if they can find him. But Gavril talks himself around to continuing the journey. Maksi is no help. She never adds her voice to the discussion, but I can hear her dragging footsteps along the path, so she must be alert enough to walk. That’s good, I think. It’s good that she is still there for my brother.

“Can you hear me, Valla?” Gavril asks at the end of what I think is the second day of poison.

“I can.”

“How . . . Do you . . .”

“I’m alive,” I tell him. There is bitterness to swallow, and my mouth still tastes like blood. “For now, and for all it matters. My face is ruined. We’ve endangered ourselves for nothing. Why did you have to threaten the beast? It would have left us alone!”

“It returned, didn’t it?” Gavril barks back. “I was trying to protect my little sister; you should have let me take the blow.”

“Yes,” I say. “I should have.”

“Bah,” he mutters. “It matters that you are alive.”

“If you say so. How long?”

“I am going as fast as I dare. And Maksi . . . she is doing what she can.”

“So am I. But we must hurry; my blood feels like it’s boiling.”

“Azta does not look well,” Gavril says.

“None of us do. Hurry, then. If my life matters, try to save it.”

His voice shakes when next he speaks. “You have always been stubborn and demanding. Even now.”

Azta grinds back and forth. My blood is hissing, and there is a strange weight that I can feel sinking into my bones. I’ve seen others in Arylik die of fever like this when something foul gets in the blood. Death is close; my body is fighting, but I do not know how much longer I can last on the road.

“Idiot. Especially now.” I try to lift my head and spit at him, but moving anything is too challenging. Slowly, I am freezing completely into place, every hour stealing more of my vigor. The spit lands on my own cheek, and it feels like a stray cinder.

I hiss and cry out.

It takes him a moment, a long one, but then Gavril cranes, and through my blurry eyes I see and feel his sleeve wipe away the stinging spit. He says nothing after that, and my eyes fill with tears. I won’t let the tears fall, knowing how much they will hurt the open, leaking wounds.

Another, even longer moment passes before I can muster “Thank you.”

“Kindness for the dying,” he murmurs, but there is no venom in it. Maksi’s uneven steps slow, and I hear Gavril sigh. “Do you think the Count can help you?”

“Yes,” I say without hesitation. “He will know what to do.”

The road goes on. I sway and flinch. The canopy above knits together more tightly, a bulwark of leaves and branches unnaturally dense and darkening. There is fear, of course, terrible fear, but I keep it at bay like this: The Count is somewhere on this road waiting for me. He is a rich man and learned, and will no doubt have ways to aid us. There will be food and soft beds and abundance, and a healer who will make me as good as new. Maybe they can even see to it that my wounds disappear. This horrible place has tried to take me, but the Count will not let that happen—he is the hero who perseveres inside this dreadful place. He will not let it kill me, for he has conquered it.

“I think they call them physicians,” I mutter. Because we must go carefully, everything takes longer than it should. Morning to afternoon to evening is almost impossible to track, but we have stopped for a while, and I can hear a fire crackling. I shy away from the flames, already burning with my own intensifying fever.

“Call who what?” Gavril is chewing desperately on what sounds like shoe leather but is probably some dried elk.

“Healers. The Count will have a physician, and they will know what to do. Have you heard me say kyuk?”

“Ha!” His laugh is almost like a balm. Once, we did not despise each other the way we do now. Before it was clear that my beauty would take me away from him and the family, we were as close as two little energetic siblings could be. He would chase me through the fields, tackle me, and rub grass and hay into my hair. When we wanted it to stop—and whenever our childhood games got out of hand—one of us would shriek Kyuk, kyuk!

“Kyuk!” I would scream, like a panicked little chicken, rolling and laughing in the dirt, hay shoved so far up my nose it felt like it could tickle my brain. “Kyuk!”

“No, no, I have not heard you say it,” Gavril admits. “Valla . . .” He sounds choked. I try to turn to see him, but even that much effort is excruciating. My eyes settle instead on the thin curls of smoke rising above his head. “They will need magic itself to fix this, I think.”

I set my jaw. There is no need to fight him or hurl insults. Gavril is not trying to frighten me; he is only choosing to tell the truth. Part of me wishes he wouldn’t. One less flower in Arylik.

“For all your dire warnings, I am still here.” My teeth grind together from the sheer force of belief. “If we need magic, they will have magic, and that is that. How much further to Ulganyo?”

“We should reach the camp tomorrow.” After he says this, Maksi cries out as if suddenly wounded. I can hear her fists beating against Gavril’s chest as he tries to soothe her. This is the first sound she’s made in two days. “Hush, hush,” he tells her. “We will soon be safe. Yes, we will be all right and back home, home in our little village, where everything is familiar and there are no glowing eyes in the dark and no fetid creatures hunting our every step.”

His words ought to be comforting, but hearing my own hopeful thoughts spoken aloud makes them seem ridiculous. Maksi goes on whimpering. There is no more talk between me and my brother, and we both pretend to rest.

I remember nothing from that evening to the next morning, when at last we reached Ulganyo. It isn’t the Count’s castle, but they will at least have more supplies than we do and perhaps someone wise in the healing arts. Up until then, the Gottyar Wood maintained its own strange music—birds hiding among the trees, wailing thwoo-whooooop to each other at unpredictable intervals, commotion and rattling that traveled between clusters of brush, the bark of the clawed creatures that had attacked me, whispers indistinguishable from the wind, and a low whine that seemed to disappear as soon as one noticed it and gave it attention.

As Azta comes to a stop, me flat across him like a stiff pack, all the clamor of the forest ceases. A horn blasts nearby. Men call to each other. Hooves beat the packed earth. A strong burning smell tingles my nostrils. Sunlight flickers through a gap in the leaves for the first time in days. These sudden changes bring me around, but by the time we are ushered through the spiked wooden gates, I’ve lapsed into darkness once more.

Not long after—though who could really say—I wake again to someone pressing their knuckles against my cheeks. Clean, cool water trickles between my lips. A wet rag pools against my skin. Relief. Itching, searing, burning, too, but also relief. Tears I have been holding back for days spill out, undammed by the taste of something sweet and soothing running down my throat.

When I open my eyes, I can almost see clearly. A face hovers above me, as white as cream, a thick tangle of copper hair falling over his forehead. Blue, blue eyes spear into mine, desperately imploring in a way that makes me want to fight through the disease lying heavy on my bones.

“Count Leonid?” I whisper, hopeful.

Handsome. He’s so handsome. . . .

The young man shakes his head and smiles, once more pressing a strong hand to my forehead. That I could speak seemed to please him immensely. “Not I, dear patient. I am his brother, Ermo. But you must not waste your spirit on talk, for you are in a grave state.”

“She can speak?” Another face hovers above Ermo’s, very like his, but softer, the skin a texture like curdled milk and the hair receding as swiftly as it can from his high forehead.

More of the sweet liquid dribbles between my lips. I realize that it is gradually numbing everything on the way down, my fingers and toes tingling lightly before eluding my control altogether. I ought to be afraid, but to feel nothing is such bliss that I cry harder, ecstatic to be rid of the burning and pain.

“The state of her,” mutters the other one—the one standing over us.

Ermo, kneeling, returns his attention to me, and his dark red brow furrows as he blots my face with the cool cloth. “No tears,” he says firmly. “I have packed your wounds with powders from the Capital. They are costly, and you mustn’t ruin them.”

“My brother . . .” I manage to sputter. “Maksi. Azta. Where are they?”

“No tears, no talk, and no worries,” Ermo instructs, smiling again. To see someone smile, even a stranger, and to feel the sun on my face . . . comfort is too small a word. “I will look to your companions soon, but you must be seen to first.”

“My lord! Rozhmaka! Rozhmaka at the gates!” A frantic, unknown voice shouts from outside. Horns blare in a circle around the camp like the staggered cries of a startled herd. I struggle to sit up, but Ermo immediately pushes me back down. They had heaped soft fur blankets on top of me, and now I can sense the fever drawing lower, coaxed to my ankles and feet.

“How many?” the man standing over us bellows back, then storms away.

“A dozen, perhaps. No, twenty!” comes the stranger’s voice again.

Through the walls, I hear them debate the number for a moment more, but soon after, cracks of thunder explode in every direction. Gunfire. I have been warned of such implements, though my father and the other men only ever use bows and traps to hunt. The noise is incredible. I try to duck beneath the furs, my bones trembling with every blast of the weapons. Smoke and reek blacken the camp. I listen, trembling, to the creatures barking and screaming, then yipping to one another in a way that reminds me of ripples fluttering across a pond. It is not a sound animals should make, and the shrill, unnatural timbre of it makes my teeth ache.

“Have you ever seen so many at once?” someone shouts.

“Blighted things are growing bolder. We should give them a taste of the ballistae!”

It sounds like the men are having fun with their rifles. A distant scream for help is not enough to draw me back out from under the covers. The men continue firing on the creatures, though it’s clear that one of them has been wounded. When it’s over, and the animals lose interest and run off, I carefully shimmy back out from under the furs. Ermo is there, staring down at me.

“Is someone hurt?” I whisper.

“Indeed. Ivan lost a leg. Jocko was feeling bold and ran through the gates with his sword drawn. They ripped him into four pieces,” says Ermo. At my stunned expression, he adds, “Welcome to the Gottyar Wood, little stranger.”

6

In fact, I want to leave the wood behind as soon as possible. In my mind the Count’s castle is not part of the forest, but a sanctuary, a bright beacon shining somewhere amidst the dark evil of the weald. I’ve earned it, that sanctuary; I crave it. I allow myself to imagine towers floating in the sky, a palace unmoored from the Gottyar, untouched by shadows and beasts.

No more pain, I plead with silent gods. No more worries.

But we do not immediately leave the camp in Ulganyo. I’m in a small tent, the walls the color of old bone, sitting on a simple cot and, once more, piled with pelts. A brazier smolders near my feet, keeping the fever from surging back up my body, and I find my strength slowly returning. I wonder how many days it has been since I pressed my face into my father’s chest and left the village. Outside, something is burning. Fires snarl and crackle, loud on their own and punctuated occasionally by a scream.

The tent flap flies open, and a short, squat man steps inside. He mutters with agitation, and in the brief time the tent is open, I see a wall of black smoke filling the air behind him. He looks like Ermo, if Ermo were a candle stub left to melt in the sun. It is the young man who was hovering over him in the tent earlier. The moonlike outline of his face is darkened by reddish whiskers, and his thin copper hair drips down the back of his neck. His clothes are dark and heavy, and it seems to take great effort for him stay upright underneath them.

My heart tells me this cannot be Count Leonid, but my stomach sours and insists on the truth.

He does not have to be handsome, only kind. My father has a face as hard as a stone, a beard as coarse as lichen, but he shows my mother tenderness now and then. Sitting up, I try to look strong and healthy, even while the healing wounds slashed across my face itch ferociously.

Smile. Breathe. You are here to be beautiful. Here is your destiny, your savior.

Now that we are alone, what will his first husbandly words to me be?

“I was told you would bring a gift,” he says. He comes to stand in the middle of the tent, his knuckles propped on his thick leather belt.

A gift. The amber.

“I’m afraid I lost it on the road here,” I reply. “I’m sorry. Nothing went as we intended.”

He studies me with a sneer. “Hmm. Your dialect is rough. Did they not teach you viyesha movia before departing?”

My cheeks are burning underneath already hot wounds. I look down at my hands, propped palms up on my lap. “Who would have taught me?”

“I ask the questions.” And this? Cold.

“Of course, my lord.”

“At least they taught you that,” he huffs. I can feel the pressure of his ice-blue eyes roaming up and down my face. Swiftly, he goes to a trunk near the entrance and fetches something round and silver. He brings it to me, keeping an obvious distance as he hands it over. It’s a crystal clear looking glass, engraved and fine. My hands tremble as I take it.

“Look,” he whispers. “Look at what has come damaged and empty-handed to my doorstep.”

I flinch, remembering the brief joy that thrilled through me when his kinder brother was tending to me. The mirror shows what I fear it will: dirty brownish-yellow hair full of leaves and twigs, scared green eyes, and a young woman’s face destroyed by raised red welts. Three wounds run diagonally from the top of my right forehead down across my nose. One of them has caught the edge of my right eyelid and, in its healing, has begun to tug.

It’s worse than I expected.

My eyes instantly fill with tears.

“For pity’s sake, don’t cry again.”

“I—of course, my lord.”

The tears get swallowed, and I hand him the mirror. As I do, another scream pierces the tent. The Count takes the hand mirror and slaps it thoughtfully against his hand, his head turning toward the sound.

“Ermo was trying to sew a man’s leg back on. Sounds like it isn’t going well.” He shrugs. “Damned rozhmaka.”

“I think that’s what attacked me,” I tell him. “It tried to steal our food.”

“Your brother told us as much.”

“And that is why your gift is gone. It was . . . looking at me. I thought it might be almost intelligent, and I handed over the amber gem to see if it would take that instead and leave us be.”

Count Leonid snorts. “Yes, those wounds tell me it was most placated.”

It did work, I think, cross. The creature had slinked away, and it was only when Gavril attacked it and I threw myself in the way that it lunged. But I don’t say this to the Count. I can tell from his callous expression that he is losing patience with me already.

“About my brother,” I say carefully. “Is he well? Has his wife recovered her senses?”

He checks his own reflection and adjusts a piece of hair before tossing the mirror back into the trunk. He pauses on his way out of the tent, and I can tell there is something amiss. Keeping a secret is like holding a handful of worms, my mother would tell us. Something always slithers free. Whatever it is, the darkness that possesses him in that moment passes.

“They departed with your mule after one last meal,” he tells me steadily, meeting my gaze.

“Oh. Without saying goodbye?”

“They were eager to be gone.”

After our ordeal, that is hardly surprising.

“They did not have many kind things to say about you—perhaps it is better that they are not here. Even after their complaining, I sent the wagon carrying the promised price, though I am receiving, well . . .” He does not finish, but I take his meaning. He is receiving almost nothing. Arylik has not upheld its end of the bargain. I am not beautiful; I am hardly fit to be seen.

“Then they are safe,” I murmur, mostly to myself. There is relief, but also envy. My body is sore and feverish, my thoughts spinning, but one idea floats high above the rest: I wish I could have gone with them.

I wish I could go home.

I imagine Gavril and Maksi vanishing as they travel the road north, Azta trudging along beside the wagon. Are they smiling? Are they happy to be rid of me? There is still time, I promise myself. There is still time for all this to turn out like a dream. There is still time for clasped hands and loving glances, a joyous bride greeting her new life with open arms.

There is still time to spin in the sunlight, even if sunlight is so hard to find in this forest.

Count Leonid rudely clears his throat. “Yes, the agreement is the agreement.” He sighs, seeing himself out. “Do you know what that means, Valla?”

I do not respond but stare at my empty red palms.

There is still time. There is still time.

“It means you are no longer your father’s. It means you now belong to me.”

The next morning, a gritty black haze stretches over the camp, blocking out whatever light penetrated the trees. I can taste the smoke, the char having infiltrated my tent in the night. They have taken away my lovely clothes and given me a stiff, thick frock that ties at the waist. There is a coat, too, that also wraps and ties, made of a strange ebony hide I do not recognize. The texture is unsettling beneath my fingers, waxen and greasy, like the skin of hardened fat that forms over a cold cooking pan.

Two little embroidered slippers are waiting by the tent flap. Hardly shoes for the hardscrabble road, but then, I am soon to be a lady. It feels good to walk, even if my legs are still weak, and so I step out into the smoky camp and take my first coherent look at Ulganyo. It’s a speck of a trading camp, though fortified as if under constant threat of invasion. Circular, it sits up above the Gottyar-Vyriz passing beneath, built up from a bridge. Two heavy gates protect the road, and a tall wall of wooden spikes guards access to the bridge. A narrow tower rises to the north of my tent, overlooking the way back to the village. That is where the men must be, I think, for the camp is empty. That, or they are scouting the treacherous wood, taking their chances among the feral rozhmaka. I shudder, once more seeing the creature’s gleaming eyes as it sank its claws into my face.

Silence holds the place in a chilly embrace. The trees at the edge of the clearing lean away, as if recoiling from our presence.

There is a burn pit in the middle of the camp, the source of the foul-tasting haze. No food scraps are there, and only black chunks of powder remain. I spy a burned-up boot among the ash and poke at it with the toe of my slipper.

“Here is something to keep you warm for the ride.”

Startled, I leap back from the burn pit to find Ermo at my side. He’s wearing a long, belted robe, the fabric bunched and almost armored with embroidery, and he hands me a wooden bowl of warmed broth. It smells like something my mother might make, a jolting reminder of Arylik.

I smile, grateful for the nourishment and grateful to see him, too. Ermo was not as cold to me as his brother was.

“How far is your home?” I ask, sipping the broth carefully.

“Were the trees not so dense, you might spy the tallest towers of Valtivisk from here,” he says. There is a note of pride in his voice as he swings his arm upward. “It is less than a day’s ride, and in fact, if we leave soon, you will go to sleep tonight with your head on a soft pillow.”

“How nice.” I sound distracted because I am. My eyes keep wandering to the road leading back to the north, back to Arylik. “To leave without a word . . .”

Ermo shifts and pulls his robe tighter, clasping his hand around his neck, pressing the fabric into his skin. “They were frightened. The Gottyar is a brutal place, frequently deadly. It requires a certain sort of stubbornness to survive it.”

I nod. “And so, I will never see them again.”

“You have had an inauspicious start with us, but do not lose hope.”

At last I turn away from the road, letting my gaze linger on Ermo. There is a boyishness about his face that is pleasing and a bright wisdom in his blue eyes that makes me wonder how he can be so different from Leonid. Nobody in Arylik looks like these brothers—there are no heads of copper hair, no unmarked hands the color of cream. Everyone is wind-chapped and stony, save for me, who was always meant to be a jewel for trade.

I must look as miserable as I feel, for Ermo adds gently, “It will go better at Valtivisk. The walls and moat keep out the worst of the forest’s evils, and you will have Yulnia, my sister. She has long needed a companion, and the two of you can share your ladylike secrets and trifles and lift each other’s spirits.” He takes a few steps toward the burn pit and kicks his own boot through the blackened chunks left behind.

I do not know if I have any ladylike secrets to share. I don’t think a young woman who has known the splendors of the Capital will be interested in my opinion or Blind Yurg’s wisdom.

“We had to burn the dead rozhmaka overnight to keep the scourge of them at bay,” Ermo says. “They hunt in numbers in the dark, and not even a ballista will stop them. You were fortunate to survive the creature’s poison. I’ve seen others pull through, but it’s exceedingly rare.”

I touch the edge of my face just below one healing claw mark. “In my dream, I was running through the forest. None of it was new to me, every stone and trunk welcoming. A whole wood of open doors.”

Ermo flinches. “Do not speak that way in front of my brother; he has no patience for such things. Superstition annoys him. Ah, and here he is.”

I hide my face below the lip of the bowl, trying to drink the rest of the broth before Count Leonid is upon us. He seems to arrive from the drifting black smoke itself, dressed just as somberly, though his lumpy face is partly obscured by a round, furry hat that makes him look like the fuzzy spring catkin of a goat willow branch.

Leonid appraises me with a crooked smirk. He is not much taller than I am, but he glances down into the wooden bowl and gives an approving hmm sound. “Broth. Smart. That will keep her a satisfactory shape. The last one from the north was as round as a melon.”

My eyes widen and fly to Ermo, for he already feels like an ally. The last one from the north? What can he mean? Nobody elaborates. Leonid snatches the empty bowl from my hands and passes it to his brother, asking, “Is she fit enough to ride?”

“You might ask her, my lord.”

“But I didn’t, did I? I asked you.”

“If the weather does not turn, then yes, I believe she can ride.”

“Excellent. Then she will sit behind me.”

My whole body is cold and numb as both brothers walk away, leaving me alone beside the smoldering ruin in the center of the camp. I feel a pit opening up in my stomach, not from hunger, but fear. When my father said that the southerners would be strange to me, that their ways would be confusing at first, I imagined gowns like clouds, trailing flowers, never-ending feast tables heaped with new things to discover, and a bed that held me like the loosely closed hand of the Moon Mother. . . .

A horse screams on the road below, and Count Leonid returns, taking me roughly by the upper arm and yanking me toward the gated bridge that leads down from the raised camp. Less than a dozen men in long brown coats and knit caps ready themselves for the journey to Valtivisk while two more men load and secure a canvas-covered wagon near the front of the party. A few of them toss me curious glances, studying me over their bristly mustaches, their brows furrowing with what, horribly, looks like pity or concern.

My face, it’s only my face. They fret over my health.

I thought there would be more men, that the whole castle might come to Ulganyo for what could be a beautiful procession. They have weapons and more experience than I, but it seems a paltry force against the terrors of the forest. Count Leonid’s horse is immense, a muscled shadow rising before us like a sleek ebony root bursting from the road. Several sheathed knives and two rifles are secured to his saddle, each elaborately, lovingly designed and cared for, and after he has mounted, he leans down and plucks me off my feet with ease.

“I like to ride at the rear of it all,” he says proudly, holding his fuzzy-hatted head high. “If anyone is too slow, or distracted, I can punish them for it later. Hold tight.”

I do, awkwardly wrapping my arms around his middle. It is time to be a lady, time to be obedient. And this is something I have fantasized about many times, tucked up in my small cot in Arylik, the night frogs of Lake Temtol and Lake Tarlii singing urgently to the stars. They sang while I pretended to be far away, nestling into the coat of my kind, brave husband as we galloped away from cold and lonely Arylik.

Leonid puffs out his belly and belches; on the wind, his breath is sour with something pickled. Then we jump forward and begin the ride to his home.

Maybe Valtivisk will be vast enough to allow me space to hide. Maybe I can carve out a place there, make friends with Yulnia, and avoid Leonid in the expected married way. My mother never smiled much, but she had her little yarn dolls she liked to make and quiet moments to brew us warmed, honeyed milk and teach us songs. When it became obvious that I would be sent away for marriage to the Count, she stopped trying to teach me how to keep house, stretch and scrape leathers, concoct fever draughts, and perform all the other motherly arts common in my village; there would be servants for that, she told me, and learned doctors from the city. The priority was that I learn to hold my tongue. We drifted apart then, and she ignored me almost as intently as the other village girls did; maybe it was jealousy that drew her from me, knowing I would escape the cold monotony of Arylik, but so far, there’s not much to envy.

An hour after departing, my rump begins to ache from the ridged knife sheathes shoved beneath it. The saddle does not fit both of us, and Leonid made no effort to rearrange the equipment lashed to the back of it. I shift around uncomfortably, and he clicks his tongue at me like I’m a misbehaving horse.

The forest sprawls on forever on either side of the road. I find myself searching for signs of life, but though the birdsong and hum return, all the creatures of the wood hide from us. I wonder if they know Leonid and his men well now, if they sense the horses and hats and guns and know to bide their time. Not even an insect stirs among the spleenwort and coated oak that stand like a thousand spears, the thatched roof of their canopy obscuring the sun. A dreary, sunless gray pervades the forest. I stare up at the branches for a while, amazed.

Soon after, I hear a scratching sound behind us.

And then, to my surprise, soft, twinkling bells.

Maksi’s bells.

I twist carefully so as not to bother Leonid, craning my head over my left shoulder to something watching.

A child has come. Or rather, it is the size of a small child, though its proportions betray it as nothing human. Gangled, easily mistaken for a burned body, it is revealed by the spare light of the woods to be a dark, mottled green. Its legs are very short, its arms very long, and its body covered in intertwining roots, spikes, and vines. A string of bright acorns sits around its neck, the bells from Maksi’s boots looped through the strand, and it is holding something out toward me.

My breath lodges in my throat. Gold. Round. Glittering. The creature has my chunk of amber cupped in its shaggy palms. Its eyes, like that amber, are yellow and bright, deeply embedded, but shining with recognition.

Intelligence.

The thing sees me. It knows me. A yiliksii, a child of the forest. It must be.

Our eyes meet across the expanding distance. The wounds on my face blaze to life, burning, itching, shrieking. My own blood seethes and speaks. My own blood speaks.

SHARP. THE SHARP. TAKE UP THE SHARP. GRIP IT FIRM.

I’m somehow fuller with blood than I was before, as if all the liquid in my veins is expanding. My hands obey, reaching for one of the sheathed knives wedged under my upper thigh. Soon I am holding the sharp, gripping it firmly, tenderly sliding the sheath from the blade.

ACROSS HIS THROAT. THE SHARP. UGLY WORK. BLOODY WORK. THE SHARP. LET THE BLOOD, SEE IT FLOW, FEED THE FOREST WITH UGLY WORK.

Ermo says I am one of the few who have survived the creature’s poison. I am not so sure of that as I feel the weight of the knife in my hands. I’ve never felt like a dangerous person, but the screaming in my blood says that isn’t so. In that moment, it speaks louder than my own panicked thoughts. A rifle shot cracks through the trees, aimed toward the road north and the creature itself. Leonid’s horse bucks under his control, nearly sending me flying. Instead, the mount checks to the side, and the knife, along with its sheath, lands harmlessly in the dirt. The blade knicks my finger as it falls.

“Are you crazed, man? You nearly blew my head off!” Leonid roars. He doesn’t notice the knife or my attempt to use it. At last, the horse settles.

“I saw a thing, my lord, a thing on the road! ’Twas for your protection!”

“A warning will do next time! I am perfectly capable of defending myself against a thing.”

“Apologies, my lord, my most desperate apologies.”

There is panic in the man’s voice, and I wonder what Leonid will do to him when we arrive at Valtivisk. When the gunshot shattered the silence, the yiliksii blurred before my eyes, vanishing into the underbrush, faster than a startled hare. Faster, in truth, than any animal should be.

“Still with me?” Leonid asks, chuckling, breathless from the commotion.

“Of course, my lord,” I murmur weakly. I suck the blood from my finger and breathe as we begin to trot away from the fallen knife. “I must have scratched my finger on the saddle.”

“Be more careful,” he says.

7

Valtivisk rises like the shadow of a warped, narrow man rolling bones at the center of a dark ring. Some of the older women in Arylik make salt circles to ward off evil, but it is not salt surrounding the castle and creating the deep moat. A fetid smell rises off the sludgy water as we draw near, and with afternoon dipping into evening, it looks like we are crossing a bridge over old black blood.

For at least half a league north of the gates, the trees have been cut to stumps. Clotted sap congeals on the potato-white disks, the absence of the trunks and branches giving the empty air a brightly haunted quality. Saw machines, as sharp as the forest’s own creatures, sit stalled in the gloom. Somewhere beyond the clear-cutting is a row of low buildings, presumably the mill.

A smaller fortress crowds the bridge, and I hear the men calling it a carriage house. Horses stamp and scream from behind closed sliding doors, some of their hooves booming against the slats. Somewhere up ahead, a horn blasts from our group, signaling that the Count has returned home. The castle itself is comprised of four squared-off towers and a larger, central fifth. From that grandest tower a pole rises and, with it, a drooping flag that reminds me of a dog with its tail between its legs.

The trees along the road before the clearing curl inward like jaws full of jagged teeth trying to snap around the castle. As Count Leonid dismounts in the cobblestoned yard and pulls me off the horse, my slippers brush against the walkway and the black weeds poking through the cracks. The rhythmic thunk-thunk-thunk of axes draws my attention as we trundle toward the gate and the entrance doors. Two men are hacking at saplings near the carriage house, their metal on the wood playing in counterpart to the bucking horses in their stalls. One of the men stops and rests, leaning on the handle of his axe, and mops his brow, sweating even in the chill air. There are no friendly faces here. The men give me furtive glances. Perhaps they are disappointed that the finest girl from Arylik is no uplifting beauty after all, but a tired, shriveled thing, road-dirty, marred by oozing gashes.

Count Leonid pauses to discuss something with a serious-looking man posted beside the gate. Other than the axes and the horses, the yard before the castle is silent. A wind whistles and snakes through the trees, and as I look back at the road north, it seems to lead to nothing. But that wind is bitter, and I hunker down into my stiff, strange clothes. Near the carriage house, large sacks are unloaded from the wagons we brought from Ulganyo. Either my eyes deceive me, or one of the thick, heavy sacks squirms as they carry it.

Ermo has dismounted and found his way over to me. While plucking off his gloves, he stares up at the castle, a wistful, fond smile brightening his face. I cover my ears from the noise of the axes.

“It’s very loud,” I tell him, cowering.

“You’ll get used to it. My sawing machines are no quieter, but at least they make the work go quickly. Without the timber, there would be none of this,” he says, gesturing at the walls of Valtivisk. “So you’ll get used to it. If lumber from the Gottyar dries up, if there are too many delays or we cannot fill the royal order, Count Leonid will be Count no longer, and you . . .” He trails off, then swiftly changes the subject. “Shall I teach you something cheerful? Whenever we return safely, we say udalye zla umanyk.”

I slowly lower my palms from my ears and try to repeat the words, though the dialect is still strange for me.

“Not bad.” He chuckles. “Fortune to the clever, it is important to say. It is important to let the woods know we have conquered it, and it remains conquered, but only through our industriousness and wits. I collect idioms from around Uldest and the northern territories. I will show you my book of them one day soon.”

“Upon safe return, the folk of Arylik would say, ‘Narzha Muzye Makti savapechue.’ Our Moon Mother provides.”

He repeats the phrase clumsily, then smiles. “That is one of your gods?”

I nod, still glancing around and shivering. “It’s terribly quiet. Are there no hounds here? I imagined the house would have dozens.”

“We did have hounds for a time,” says Ermo, his smile fading. “Three dogs, bitches, as black as pitch and as loyal as sorrow. Korumpo Smoltenkhands crossed with Nankar herders from the steppes.” He sighs, looking off to the east. “They are gone now, and it is perhaps best that their suffering is over. Leonid was not good to them. He never did have a mind for beasts; to be sure, he thinks most things are beneath him.”

“What a shame,” I murmur. “In a big, cold castle, it would be nice to have such a creature to warm my feet.”

“Your betrothed would never allow it. He wouldn’t want you to smell like dog.” He laughs and carefully taps my shoulder with one of his empty gloves. “That was one of his primary concerns, you know, that we would never be able to scrub the animal stink off of you. Don’t your people build their homes over animal pens?”

“Some of the larger houses are that way, yes,” I reply, a little stiff. “It helps warm the home, but the smell is minimal. We have noses same as you.”

“With those wounds, you are lucky to still have yours,” says Ermo. “Which reminds me—I think it would be best if you waited to meet the rest of the family. You can take supper in your chambers before Kiril sees you.”

As Leonid approaches, I scrunch my nose. Even that small movement makes my wounds sting. “Who is Kiril?”

“My sister’s confidant, a physician from the Capital,” Leonid joins in.

“I was just suggesting that Valla avoid the formalities of supper to rest and be examined,” Ermo replies.

Leonid shoulders his brother out of the way and takes my arm. “I will make such decisions for her, not you.”

“Of course, brother.” Ermo clears his throat and ducks his head, but I can see the annoyed flush creeping up his neck. It is hard to tell how much love exists between them.

“But very well, find Kiril and send him to the White Room. And tell the men to hurry up with those saplings. Gravno, we leave for a handful of days and this place goes to the weeds. And notify Marwa in the kitchen that she is to have broth, strictly broth, and I suppose whatever foods Kiril decides. I will not attend the table, either. I have too much work to do.”

Ermo keeps his head down while Leonid takes me by the armpit, dragging me to the gates. “He can be such an overreaching little insect,” Leonid muttered. “But when I depart for the Capital, do as he commands.”

The doors yawn up ahead of us at the top of wide, shallow stone steps. There are silhouettes just inside, and as we pass beneath the pointed arch made by the open doors, I am greeted by the overpowering scent of dried herbs and three tired bluish-white faces. The three women are dressed in aprons and caps, and their eyes never go near Leonid, though they do inspect me with great interest. One of them gasps, and then tries to hide it.

“It will heal,” Leonid barks at them. “Stop staring.”

That herbal scent—astringent, grassy—is like nettles jammed up my nose. As we go deeper into the front hall, I smell something else, something almost sweet but corrupted with the unmistakable toe-curling tang of rot. The walls, covered in patterned paper and tapestries, glisten, the damp persistence of the woods creeping in through cracks along the edges of the ceiling. I can feel how thin the carpets are beneath my feet—once elaborate, woven designs obliterated to suggestions of color and form. The servants awaiting us fall silent, no more gasping and no more gawking. Somewhere, a young woman is singing. Just ahead, steep stairs rise to a passage thick with tapestries; to the left, a pair of closed doors; and to the right, an open passage that leads to the northwesterly of the four towers. Down that hall lies a great feasting table, chairs tidily pulled to it. A gray stone hearth stands behind the head chair, and a roaring fire illuminates another silhouette, this one small and hidden by shadow.

It is certainly a person, but they are perfectly still as Leonid takes me to the stairs.

Up and up we go. My legs are shaking and tired, but I try not to let Leonid see it. The long ride on horseback has left me feeling like a summer dwarf apple rolled across a rocky field. The herb and rot smell lessens as we climb, which is a great relief, though an aura of sour latrines becomes inescapable. When I dreamed of this place, the air was delicately fragrant with the perfume of ladies just passing through, on their way to amusements and long days of leisure. There was always gentle music from another room, crackling fires, and birdsong trickling in through open windows.

The halls are poky, the walls pressing in close, and Leonid, without a candle, leads us into the dark. At the end of this corridor is a room, perhaps in a tower of its own. I can just see inside of it, and there is a little light there, as small as a final ember in the fire.

“This was my sister’s room when she was a child,” says Leonid. It is the first time a note of softness has entered his tone. “My father called her Snowdrop.”

“She must be very fair.”

“The fairest. A flower, but fragile, and not one meant to bloom in a forest such as this. It is hard on her here. Perhaps you can teach her an appreciation for the wilds, for they do not agree with her.”

Again, gentleness in his voice. It gives me hope.

Leonid stops outside the door. Precarious warmth, as slight as a single lit candle, emanates from inside the bedroom. The rest of the doors in the hall are shut tight. All the sounds of the castle are muffled here, and the thought of undisturbed rest in a well-made bed is enticing enough to grant me a smile. I look up at him, trying to blur my gaze, trying to see a handsome young man behind the pale mask of indifference.

“Is there nowhere else for her to go? Family that might take her back in the Capital?” I ask.

That callous mask is firmly in place as he grunts and shakes his head. “When you meet her, you will know why that is a fool’s question. Go, now. Get inside.”

Yulnia’s childhood room is decorated in white flowers. They have been painted onto the green wooden slat walls, tufted into yarn decorations that hang from all four corners, and woven into the pattern on the threadbare carpets. In Arylik, we know these flowers as pigweed; in the spring, their lacy white umbels top slender stalks, covering the fields around the lakes in a foam of tiny blossoms. It mimics the appearance of a common edible herb, but pigweed, while lovely to behold, is desperately poisonous, a small portion of the juice enough to kill even a hardy, full-grown man.

A fire struggles in the squat fireplace on the left wall. Three bundles of ivory flowers hang upside down near the single window, the view obscured by thick iron bars. A poignantly tiny writing desk sits before the window, filmed with dust.

Stranger than the choice of flower that covers the room is the bed built into an alcove along the right wall. Like the window, it’s protected by iron bars.

“A cage?” I can’t help but whisper.

“Yulnia would wander in her sleep,” says Leonid. If he sees anything wrong with the bars over the bed, he does not display it. “Father built the cage to protect her. She left the castle entirely once in her sleep. Once. It was too cumbersome to have it all taken down, but I have had the door taken off for you.”

How gracious.

“I . . . see.”

“You don’t like it.”

“Everything is new here,” I say, staring down at my hands. I rub them together for warmth, for comfort. . . . What can I do? Where can I go? I gaze up at Leonid again, wishing that he’ll see the fear in my eyes. “New and different.”

“You don’t like it.”

“Would you prefer that I lie?”

“I would prefer that you not speak at all,” he says, taking me by the chin. He is not careful about it, and the wounds on my face shiver and seethe. I cannot help but think they are living parts of me—of me, but also of their own will, as if the slashes themselves are recoiling from his brutish touch. “You have been plucked out of obscurity and given the luxuries of a modern home, taken in despite your deformities. I could have left you at Ulganyo Station, could have abandoned you to fever and death, but here you are. For eight generations my family has tried to transform this forest into a livable place, and I will not now hear complaints about its comforts, not from you, not from anybody.”

Leonid digs into the pockets hidden under his cloak and coat. He withdraws a small portrait on a pendant and swings it in front of my face. It has my likeness on it, a rudimentary painting done to show him what he would receive in the trade with Arylik. It resembles me quite closely.

Well, a version of me.

“Gravno. Do you see the issue?” he asks, holding my face, making sure I can see the painting.

“As you said, my Count, the marks will heal.”

Leonid squeezes my chin until my eyes water, until it feels like my teeth are cracking within my jaw.

“They will,” he whispers, staring. “They had better. Ah, here is Kiril.”

When he lets go, the echo of pain lingers in my jaw. I turn away and rub the edges of my face, then spin back around to see Leonid slipping out the open door, allowing another man inside. There is a brief exchange, and Leonid grumbles at him, “She has survived the rozhmaka’s poison; now you must do something about the scars.”

Scars! The wounds are still raw and burning.

The physician, Kiril, nods to the Count silently, ducking to fit his body through the doors. His curling, wispy beard resembles a bird in its molt. He wears a gray smock that ought to brush the floor, but his spindly, vulnerable ankles are visible below the too-short hem. His legs are speckled with dark hair. There is a cricketiness to his shape, or perhaps it is more vulpine, his hands folded by his throat like a fox washing its paws. I only have to glance at his piercingly black eyes to know that he cannot be trusted. He calls to mind a mystic who once set up at the edge of my village. We chased her off when she made a young boy sick with one of her “love” potions.

Kiril carries a black leather case under one arm. He grins at me as if he has just stumbled upon a particularly fruitful tree in an otherwise barren orchard. His teeth are brown as fyuda nuts. “Oh! Oh dear, but we so seldom entertain new faces here,” he says with the nasal drift of a bar-headed goose. “And yours, so lush, so fair. A project of most serious restoration, beslavna.”

He unrolls the case with a flourish and prompts me to sit. There is only the one chair near the writing desk, and it is meant for a child. I go to it anyway, the road-weariness in my bones as I slump down, sighing.

“Pain? Fever? Aches? Chills? I must know all.” Kiril places the opened case on the writing desk, dislodging a poof of dust. “You are in excellent health to have survived an encounter with a rozhmaka.”

I recall the claws, the stinging, the snatches of memories I have from the road and my time at Ulganyo Station. I remember, too, the horrible screaming in my blood that told me to draw a knife across Leonid’s throat, and it makes me shiver. Kiril handles my face delicately, with just the icy tips of his fingers, his pointed tongue poking out and wetting along his lips constantly. I stare straight up his nose and into the gray hairs there while he uncorks a vial of powders that smell familiar.

“Ermo is a clever boy, a clever boy. He packed your wounds with utmost skill,” says Kiril. The paste he smears across my face feels like the one Ermo used, tingling and warm, almost pleasant. “We will work together on this restoration, child. Do you know of the selvitel?”

It is a word in their dialect, and I have never heard it before.

“Is it like a physician?” I ask, venturing a guess.

“So much more, child. So much more, beslavna. We tread the gulf between medicine and mysticism, playing with what the hard logistician and the pious priest refuse to handle.” He covers my entire face with one enormous hand and begins to whisper. I jump in the chair, startled. The words sound like nothing but nonsense to me, but there is a darkness in them, a kind of grievous belief that makes my throat tense with fear. Soon after, I realize he is not letting go, covering my nose and mouth so firmly that I cannot breathe.

My fingernails claw at his forearm, then try to yank his hand away. I squirm and shriek into the musty clamp of his palm and come up off the chair. Kiril chants, determined, and the slashes on my face, slathered in medicine, scream back into my mind.

THE SHARP. THE SHARP. FIND THE SHARP.

“Kiril! You’ll kill her!”

Light. Relief. Blessed air rushes in, and I suck it down on a moaning wheeze. Curled up on the floor, I watch Ermo yank Kiril away toward the fireplace. The selvitel’s bird chest billows, his eyes crazed and fixed on me.

“You are right, my boy. You are right, of course,” whispers Kiril, stumbling away toward the desk and wiping his hands with a rag from the case. “I forgot myself. When the mind is open—when the mind receives—the messages can be overwhelming.”

Ermo throws a concerned glance my way, then hurries over to help me stand, cradling me to his side until I can plant my feet.

“Stir a spoon of this into your balm tea for more restful sleep, child,” Kiril adds hurriedly, leaving an earthenware pot on the desk. He pats the lid as if it were a good child and then stalks to the door. “So lush. So fair. So unexpectedly hale. Yes, we will restore you yet.”

While he leaves, I go quickly to the fire and hug myself, a thousand doubts flooding in. Nothing has gone right, and the fright, the hopelessness turns heatedly to rage. Hunched against the kindness I know Ermo will attempt, I reach down to take the fire poker and stir the coals, letting the blast of new embers wash over my swollen face.

“He is . . . unorthodox,” says Ermo. “Kiril, I mean, but there is no arguing with his skill. Many times he has brought my sister back from the brink of death. Yulnia would protest if we sent him from here.”

“Perhaps they should both leave!” I cry, raking the coals savagely. “It sounds as if she was not meant to survive in this place, so why keep her here?”

Ermo sighs, joining me at the hearth.

I shuffle away from the fireplace just far enough to meet his prying, serious gaze.

“Do not let Leonid hear you speak like that. And . . . you know what? Just do not say such things. Not at all. The stones of Valtivisk have eyes and ears, and they judge swiftly, severely. No—ruthlessly, for you are a stranger.”

I do not say all that I want to, that I am not a stranger to this northerly country. They are. They do not belong here, and neither do I, but at least my kin live near to the forest—not in it—and respect its treacherous nature.

“A stranger,” I whisper, slumped. “I was meant to be a bride.”

“And you will be,” Ermo assures me. “Patience, Valla. This is your first day. I know there is a lot to . . . to confront. Give it time.”

Throwing my hands in the air, I point to the desk and then the bed, deep in a tantrum but too exhausted and furious to care. “A child’s room. A cage for a bed. What am I to make of this? How am I to be patient?”

Ermo frowns and goes to a bulge in the wall near the window. I hadn’t noticed it before, but it runs up the wall, floor to ceiling, with a low basin at chair’s height built into the stones that lie behind the decorative wooden slats. “Not every room in the castle has a privy. Leonid likely chose this one because you are not yet married, but he wanted you to have the modern convenience of a privy.”

He correctly reads my blank expression.

“You can do your waste into the seat, and rainwater from the tower gutters will flush it down and away,” Ermo explains, blushing at the awkwardness of the conversation. “And he has taken the door off the cage.”

Still gracious.

“Even if your unhappiness were to become profound, Valla, even if it were to consume you, where would you go?” Ermo asks, coming to stand before me. “The forest nearly killed you once—would you risk it again? And for what? A family that was all too eager to sell you sight unseen to a Count all those leagues away . . .” He rubs his cheeks with both fists. “What I mean to say is: let us care for you. Let us try.”

He isn’t wrong. He isn’t right. There are so many questions. Still so many doubts. I toss my head, exasperated, and lean against the cage surrounding the bed. “Before, on the road, Leonid said something about the last girl. . . .”

Ermo snorts softly. “Ah, yes. I was afraid you might have heard that. You are not the first lady in Leonid’s life, but I assure you that the others are far from his thoughts. Farther from his heart.”

“Other wives? But he is still young. . . .” They are all young. Only Kiril and a handful of servants are adults.

“One came last summer from a village south of yours,” he says. “Her portrait . . . well, there were some liberties taken with the likeness. Leonid was not happy, and she left without becoming his bride. Another, two summers ago, lasted longer, but she and Yulnia argued day and night, and she was sent away.”

My own portrait was sent a little more than two years ago. I had thought myself the Count’s first choice, that we were waiting for each other, but now it is clear that I am one among many, not chosen at all, but merely reached, like one might arrive at the end of a list of chores. There’s a strange, achy sensation spreading across my chest. Ermo crosses to me and the cage and places his hand tenderly on my shoulder. “Leonid prefers that we keep our secrets, but I ought to tell you: our father was a difficult man. Strong and brilliant, but difficult. He kept the Capital well-supplied with lumber, and we struggle to maintain that legacy. I hesitate to speak ill of the dead, but he could be cruel. That was part of his legacy, too. He unleashed the worst of it on Leonid. Him being the eldest boy, much was expected—too much—and any weakness, any mistake, was harshly punished. We have a saying in the Capital. Maybe you do, too? ‘Hard men make harder sons.’ ”

“Every bent tree weathered a storm,” I murmur.

Ermo nods. “I say again, Valla, let us care for you. Let us try. Let me try.”

He offers a hesitant smile, then reaches for my face, cautiously, as if seeking permission. I do not move away. I should, and I feel shame that I let him caress my chin with one knuckle. I’m not here to marry Ermo, I’m here to marry his brother. But I’m learning that kindness will be hard to come by here, and so far, Ermo seems at least somewhat interested in my happiness. My eyes flutter shut. It’s a relief to be touched gently and with care, handled like the precious thing everyone says I am.

That feeling from before worsens; my heart feels oversized in my chest, too full and expansive. When I find the courage to meet his gaze, his eyes are soft and searching. This is how I imagined it when I lay in my bed at night in the kotte, like the whole world and all its possibilities were within reach. Like my heart could sprout wings and fly. He moves his hand away and I sigh; with time, with that patience he so demands, I could fall in love with a young gallant like Ermo.

I could marry a boy like him, but instead I must bind myself to the Count.

“Good night, Valla,” he says sweetly, almost shy.

“Good night,” I tell him. “Thank you.”

Then he leaves me. The fire in the hearth tries valiantly to warm the place but never succeeds. Folded on the bed is a simple ivory robe with a laced hem and sleeves. I shut the door, use the odd privy seat, and find that an older, broad-shouldered woman has come to deliver my supper. She says nothing, and I see little more than a flash of a grimace and her rough-spun cap before she vanishes back down the narrow hall.

Cramped at the tiny desk, I eat my broth, stewed vegetables, and morsel of bread. I stir some of the mystic’s powder into the dregs of my broth, slurp it down, and hope it does more good than his cruel ministrations.

Then, in a far tower of Valtivisk, a terrible distance from Arylik, wounded and tired, I am alone. I wish Ermo had stayed to keep me company. The chamber felt safer with him in it. It’s better to set such things aside; forming an attachment to him will make things harder.

No, I must not lose myself in fantasy.

As the caged bed rears before me, I think I have been lied to about these Capital people and their superior lives, about the ways they might conduct themselves as they occupy this castle in this forest. I thought my parents had blown fairy dust in my eyes, but now that I have come all this way, I see that it was merely sand.

How can there be magic in a place where a bride sleeps caged?

It’s not too late, I tell myself, and this foreboding feeling will not last forever. Ermo has promised care. You have not seen Valtivisk in the sunshine; everything looks different in the daylight.

I fall into a hard sleep, unbroken at first, drowning again in my wounded body’s need for rest. By and by, Kiril’s powders lend me peculiar, swirling dreams of howling creatures and a cloud of black smoke that moves across the land, enveloping the castle in an ashen embrace.

Choking on the imagined burn, I wake late the next day.

8

There is porridge and a laundered frock outside the door as I finally stir. That door has been left ajar, and someone has already come to look in on me while I slept. The skin of my face feels tight as the closing wounds begin, steadily, to tug and itch. Even though the light is shifting and deceitful in the Gottyar, I can tell that morning has come and gone. I dress and eat the porridge, the spoon breaking through a jiggling skin that has formed over the milk and barley. There is a stale taste to it, as if the barley has been stored for several winters.

I leave the chamber on light feet. Around every corner, I expect to find Leonid or Kiril prowling. Secretly, I hope to stumble upon Ermo. But there is no one, and the stillness of the castle feels tenuous, as if one whisper, one stub of a toe will break the silent spell. It is simple enough to retrace my steps back to the front hall. Kiril and Leonid are not lying in wait to ambush me; they’re standing just inside the long, tall dining chamber I noticed on my way in. They do not hear me, and so I crouch behind the carved railing at the bottom of the stairs, listening.

“I don’t want to hear about any of your confounded treatments going awry,” Leonid is saying, his words short with fury.

“Beslavna, dear Count, I will treat the girl as if she were my own child.”

“No, don’t do that, either. I don’t know what that means with you.”

“Oh. Oh, I see, yes, then I will just take very good care.”

“Heal her, Kiril. It’s challenging to even look at her. Just make those bedeviled marks go away. Those are your concerns.”

“Yes, Count, only—”

“Only what?” There comes a tense pause. Leonid growls before Kiril cries out like a startled hen. “Spit it out, mystic.”

Contempt is wrapped around the word mystic. Ermo hadn’t seemed fond of Kiril. Do both brothers share that mistrust?

“Last night,” Kiril says, “when your brother interrupted my work, I was endeavoring to do just that. She should not have survived the creature’s poison, my lord, even with her peasant’s constitution. The same infection has killed men twice her size and strength; there is no earthly explanation for why she yet lives.” He coughs, lightly, weakly, and I peer carefully above the railing to observe them better. Leonid is pacing, hands tucked behind his rump. He’s holding a pair of gloves and tapping them against his backside anxiously.

“No earthly explanation, you say. And is there another sort?”

Kiril coughs again. “Luck, I suppose. The same luck that makes her fortunate enough to be your bride.”

“Should I be worried?” asks Leonid, standing still. He is much shorter than Kiril, but it is the grown man who cowers.

“You will be in ever so much trouble if my brother sees you there.”

Caught. My heart lurches. It’s a little girl’s sweet voice coming from a young lady’s face. There, behind me and near the front doors, is a person who can only be Yulnia. I panic, gulping, but manage to press one finger to my lips, trying to shush her. Maybe, just maybe, she will see a young woman of a similar age and consider her a potential friend.

She is a haunting, ghastly white. She crouches and scuttles forward and crawls up the steps to where I’m hiding. Leonid and Kiril hear the scratching of her feet, but when they turn, we are both concealed behind the railing.

“They are talking about you,” says Yulnia. “How rude! But you are eavesdropping, which is also rude.”

Up close, I take in her huge brown doelike eyes, fringed with tawny eyelashes. Her hair is whitish blond, kept in a single, neat braid over her shoulder. The hem of her embroidered, long-sleeved frock is darkened with mud.

“What’s wrong with your face?” she adds, frowning.

“One of the rozhmaka attacked me on the journey,” I tell her.

“How fascinating. You should be dead.”

“That’s what they said,” I say, nodding toward the other room.

“So why aren’t you?”

“Not w-worried,” Kiril continues. “Not yet.”

“Come! I will show you the grounds!” Yulnia whispers, flattening herself against the stairs and crawling up to the landing. I follow, fearing she will give us away if I hesitate. Once there, completely hidden from view, she climbs to her feet and urges me to join. “The carpet was making my elbows itch. Here! We will be friends, for what else can two ladies be in a place such as this?”

She makes a bobbing movement, lifting her skirts. I try, clumsily, to mimic it.

“Oh! Nobody has taught you anything, have they? That’s droll. I’ll teach you everything, little dolly. I am Yulnia, and you are my little dolly!”

I was yagnushka to my mother, but now I will be little dolly to this unsettling girl. Without warning, her tiny hand wraps around my wrist and she pulls me swiftly down the stairs. We make a thunderous commotion, drawing the attention of Kiril and Leonid. They look cross, but at least they have not caught me spying.

“Yulnia, dear child, you have been cautioned not to run!” Kiril shouts. He is less like a goose when angry.

“Caution this, old man!” Yulnia, still dragging me along, goes to the front door and tips over a stuffed fox statue. Then, with Kiril sputtering, Yulnia takes me outside and onto the gray front steps of the castle. “Don’t look so nervous, little dolly. I am the princess here. They let me do as I please. If you keep me happy, they might even let you do the same.”

She releases my wrist and marches down the steps. Though she’s as narrow as a sapling, she walks with a confident stride, nothing like the meek, sickly creature I was expecting to encounter.

“To answer your question,” I begin, trying to keep up, “that physician Kiril might know how I survived the beast’s poison.”

“He might. I will ask him later,” she declares. “He loves sharing little secrets with me—it’s pathetic.”

“Ermo says the mystic has healed you many times—that you like him.”

“Like vexing him, maybe. He knows things I want to know, and he isn’t afraid to ask questions, or answer mine.” Yulnia pauses at the bottom of the steps. There is grit in the air, black motes drifting, smoke hanging in a lazy swirl above the carriage house. Men call to each other in the depths of the wood, and there is the clang of machines and a whirring buzz, the din of metal shrieking against metal. It’s distracting. “That’s why he’s here. Exiled. If Leonid sent him back to the Capital, they’d cut his skinny neck.”

“For what?” I ask, but Yulnia is striking out to the east, crossing the moat, moving toward the carriage house and then along a cobbled path that circles the castle, just beside the moat. The water is brown even in the daylight. A fetid smell rolls off it in waves, and I remember the “privy” and my waste taking a sheer drop to . . . I gag and cover my mouth. It cannot be. What would Gavril and Maksi make of this? Perhaps it is better they never saw what “modern” Capital folk consider convenient. I can picture my father on the day I departed Arylik, and his words float down to me, as ashen as the grit floating across the castle grounds: It is like a jewel. You will live inside a golden hall, and your eyes will never again alight on so mean a place as this.

But it is a dank, moldering heap of stones surrounded by a man-made river of piss and shit.

“For his opinions, obviously,” Yulnia explains once I’ve caught up to her. Her braid swings as she trots along the path. In the courtyard of the carriage house is a smoldering burn pit. It must be the source of the smoke. We leave it behind. “For his beliefs. All the other gray smocks in the city think that when you’re dead, you’re dead. Your soul might live on, but it leaves your body. No second chances. Kiril wrote a book about the torrai azhin, the reclaimed life. The gray smocks wanted to give him the chop for it, but Father found it ‘terribly compelling.’ His words, ‘terribly compelling’—here! We’re leaving the path; watch your feet.”

I hurry, both to keep pace and to collect her words into something that makes sense. Kiril is in exile; he does not believe death is the end. Yulnia leads me to a wide clearing among the stumps. The family has created a graveyard here, with stone markers for the many generations that have come and gone. Some have been worn by the weather to almost total obscurity.

The ground and grave markers begin to tremble. The ground quakes, and I teeter, gasping. Yulnia wraps her arm around my waist and guides me to the smoother path. It feels like the earth might break in half beneath us, but Yulnia throws her head back and laughs at my shock, pointing south toward a row of squat houses and a larger, longer building that reminds me of a trunk for blankets.

“That’s where the workers live,” she says. “And that’s called a sawmill.” Then she waves me toward a metal beast, the thing making the ground shake. “Look! It is one of Ermo’s beloveds.”

Hssssss, goes his beloved. Then: Ka-shunk, ka-shunk, ka-shunk . . .

“We call them machines,” she adds.

Ermo’s beloved is a fiendish contraption, like nothing I have ever seen. The monster “machine” is made of gray metal and wheels, with four clawed feet, and a man is sitting atop and to the back, almost as if he were riding a pony. Two more workers follow along, shoveling blackened bricks into the round cavern of its hot belly. Smoke churns from pipes on either side of the rider. With each step, wood chips, dirt, and pebbles fly into the air. The man settled in the brown leather seat has a scarf wrapped tightly around his face for protection. Out in front, like a fanged beak, a round saw, larger across than two men, tilts this way and that.

“How does it work?” I breathe, amazed, watching it pass and head east across the field of stumps.

“Gears and gizmos from the Capital,” says Yulnia. “Ermo claims it will be safer than sending loggers into the untouched woods. It will frighten the beasts, he says, and keep the men safer.”

“But you don’t believe him.”

“Our family has been battling this forest for almost two hundred years,” Yulnia replies with a shrug. “A few saws on feet will mean little in the end. Come! Those machines stink, and there is more to show you.”

We continue on at her pace, making the loop around the castle, walking southeast, then south. In the daylight, there is another ring visible around the castle—this one much like the sharp wall of pikes and stakes that surrounded Ulganyo. I am beginning to picture the whole castle in my mind now—one larger keep with four towers at diagonals hemmed in by a moat, and the path we are on circling it all. On the southern side of Valtivisk there is another drawbridge and another break in the wall to allow passage along the Gottyar-Vyriz.

“Does that go all the way to the Capital?” I ask her, again astonished.

“With stops along the way—other stations—but yes, eventually the road leaves the wood and enters the central territories,” she replies. We pause near the drawbridge to observe the road. There are wagons lined up near the mill, and the short wooden buildings, blackened by paint, smoke, and time, are swarming with activity.

For a moment I imagine pulling away from Yulnia, gathering my skirts, and running as quickly as possible down the road. Running until my lungs burn. Running until my feet burst with blisters. Running until Valtivisk and Leonid and the creatures of the forest are long behind me. As if reading my thoughts, my desperation, Yulnia sighs, twirls her braid around her fist, and says, “I have never seen it—the Capital—but it will not be long. One day . . . One day. Just as you must have dreamed of leaving your sad little pigpen to come here, I dream of the tour my husband and I will take of the Capital and the whole of the central territory. There is sunshine in Korumpo, and a church with bells that ring as clear as angels’ trumpets. There are swans on Printzhessa Lake. Krugan has described them to me. I bet they are gliding across it even now, silent white figurines on water like glass.”

“Who is Krugan?” I ask as Yulnia spins away from the drawbridge and the road. She has let go of my hand, and she kicks stones from the path as she shuffles off.

“Who is Krugan? Ha. He is only the man I will marry,” she replies with a huff, as if I am the stupidest person alive. “Krugan from Korumpo. Does it not have a certain music to it?”

“It does sound very grand, I suppose, like a hero’s name from a fireside story.”

Yulnia’s eyes flash. “Oh, I like you. Krugan is just like a hero; he will be the one to save me from this place.”

She takes my hand again. Her skin is warm and soft, unblemished, and her grip surprisingly tight. Under the thunder of the saw machines stomping off to work, there is a sweeter, more inviting sound. A river joins the moat at the southwestern curve of the pebbled path circling the castle. The water, sluggish, flows south, carved into the dark earth and running alongside the road. It smells less foul, the river diluting the stench of the moat.

Here, on the western edge of the clearing, the spiked wall at the far edge of the property runs directly up against the trees. They mingle, and the branches have grown to accommodate the intrusion, hugging and slinking, threading between the sharpened stakes. The shadows are dense, the brush and bracken and wide trunks of the wood repelling the eye, even while the twinkling green glimmers deeper in the forest draw you in.

Luring.

Yulnia seems as drawn to it as I am. She stares into the forest with me, almost mesmerized by the aliveness of it all. The wet, mossy scent is intoxicating and relieving, the Moon Mother’s own breath released on a dreamy sigh. I wonder if the yiliksii are there, just behind the wall, watching and waiting. I imagine the sound of bells, and I shiver.

I do not want to remember the child of the forest back there on the road, how it took me over, or the way it sang to the poison simmering in my blood. A need in me rises, an urge to fill the silence before the pull of the trees and the creatures becomes too much.

“Is he . . . Is he kind?” I ask. “Krugan from Korumpo . . .”

Kind like Ermo. I am learning that Yulnia is not stupid. She pins me with a knifepoint glare; her eyes seek the bone. Her fingernails dig lightly into the top of my hand. “You mean, is he like my little brother Leonid?”

Little brother? It never occurred to me that Yulnia might be the oldest of the siblings. She seems carefully protected—fledgling-bird tender. I try to conceal my surprise and ignorance, and simply nod. We continue along the path until we are on the western side of the castle.

“No,” she says, lifting her chin. “Krugan is nothing like him. Gentle, that’s Krugan. And romantic. He has already promised me a fluffy white dog and as many silk gowns from the east as I want. Nobody beat the goodness from him. He did not contend with the whims of our father.”

“Ermo spoke of your father, too,” I tell her, choosing my words thoughtfully. “But what of your mother?”

Yulnia’s smile for Krugan evaporates. Her pale brows cinch low. She takes her hand back and wipes both palms down the front of her ivory dress, then abruptly halts. We’ve come to a stop in front of a strip of land jutting out from the castle. It crosses the moat, and at its end is a large stone slab. There are visible edges of hardened earth around the slab, as if it is the lid to a jar hidden underground. I watch Yulnia closely, and her eyes travel from that big, strange rock, up the castle walls, landing briefly, furtively, with the air of a naughty child, on a window high above.

“Mother went mad,” she tells me. “After the twins, she tried for many more children. Father wanted his own little kingdom, and she tried to give it to him.” Her tone shifts to something tiny, something sad. “All of them died young. Mother couldn’t handle it, and so . . .” Yulnia clamps her eyes shut and sighs. “I was seven when she died. There is a portrait of her in the dining hall if you’re curious—if you’d like to see her when she was beautiful and Father’s favorite. He had the picture taken down when she died, but Ermo put it back up last year after Father left us. Ermo is sentimental like that. He and I aren’t angry at her the way Father was.”

A sudden wind makes us both shiver. Yulnia shakes it off before I do and gestures at the stone slab. “Look at it.”

“I am.” And I do.

HOME. THE PIVOTAL PLACE. PRIMORDIAL. THERE.

The voice slices through me, as cutting as the knife it wanted me to wield against Leonid. My vision narrows to the slab and a shadow blurring above it. I hear and see a child of the forest, see it sway on its tiny legs and then dissolve into the smoky grit drifting through the castle grounds. It wasn’t there, I tell myself, even if it felt as real as my own flesh, as real as the hot, poisoned blood burning through my limbs.

THE UMBILICAL BEGINNING. HOME. THE BEGINNING AND THE END.

Yulnia is still observing the slab. “Leonid says it’s a refuse pit, that Father sealed it up ages ago when it got full. I don’t believe him.”

“Why not?” I ask. The voice, mercifully, departs, but my hands and cheeks are flushed with blazing, infected blood. I press my fingertips against my face, gingerly, in between the wounds, trying to calm down.

The gashes are scabbing over, ragged in the wind, and that surface forming over them is pushing the corruption deeper.

“If it was just stuffed with old garbage, it wouldn’t make your stomach twist when you look at it.” Yulnia shakes her head. “Ermo and Leonid like to lie. Even to me. This is their little kingdom, not filled with children, of course, but with secrets.” As she turns away from the slab with a grimace, she must notice the fear in my face. “Oh, little dolly, you’re not well.”

She rushes to me and takes me by the shoulders. Behind us, back by the southern drawbridge, there is the clattering of hooves in the yard, wheels bumping over stones, and men’s voices raised as they call to each other. Yulnia brightens and tugs me along.

“This will cheer you up,” she says. “The wagons don’t come often. They bring food and clothes, and news from the south, and if we are very lucky, little dolly, a letter from my Krugan.”

I glance over my shoulder at the strange, capped pit as she trundles me away. She’s right; the sight of it twists your guts around, tells on itself, exposes an instinct to run. The child is there again, just the suggestion of it, watching me, but the wind carries it away, just an illusion, blowing it into dust while I taste the smoke from my dreams.

9

Ermo is already greeting the wagon driver when we arrive, and Leonid oversees the unloading on horseback. His mount steps nervously back and forth, worrying the line where the drawbridge digs into the road beneath the gate. The three women in caps who had lined up to see me enter the house have come, sinking under the weight of the baskets they carry back to the castle doors.

The driver is dressed in a waxed blue coat, the high collar turned up against the random and disarming gusts of wind. His face is spattered with mud, lumpy and weather-beaten, like an old hunk of clay. With great ceremony he lifts a bundle of parchment from the sack tucked under the front wagon bench. He hands it to Ermo, and a folded missive, flowery with perfume, sits right on top. The wax seal on it is grassy green, as thick as a slice of autumn melon.

“Mine!” Yulnia greedily shouts, darting forward.

Ermo playfully keeps the stack of papers away from her until she grows tired of the game and lashes out with her foot, hammering him in the shin.

“For pity’s sake, sister!” he shouts, blanching. “Are Krugan’s love notes worth my suffering?”

“Absolutely they are,” Yulnia replies. And smiling, she takes the letter with the perfume and the green wax and hugs it to her chest. She does not break the seal, but forgets us entirely, scuttling down the path, heading east to loop around the house and back inside.

“I hope you don’t learn to take after her too much.” Ermo laughs and rubs his leg, then digs into his pockets to hand the lumpy-faced driver a few clinking coins. The servants in their caps return, red-faced and sweaty, dutifully hoisting more baskets onto their shoulders under the keen, cool gaze of Count Leonid. He would look almost handsome on the horse—one hand tucked against his waist, the other loose on the reins—but I see the way his beady eyes dart toward the forest.

He is small, and he is afraid. Fortunately, he is not close enough to hear my conversation with Ermo, nor is he paying attention to me.

“I won’t kick you,” I reply, pleased to chat with him again. “Not without good reason.”

“I promise to never give you cause,” says Ermo. We share a few nervous glances, and it stretches on too long. He blinks heavily and nods toward the driver. “Bilenko is as reliable as rain.”

Another of his idioms. He takes a lighter suede sack from the wagon, flings it over his shoulder, and starts trudging away from the drawbridge. His pace suggests that I follow, and hungry now, I realize it might be wise to return to the castle and rest. Besides, selfishly, I’d like more time with him.

We fall into step. Ermo clears his throat. “That is the sole trader who will come to us.”

I say nothing, keeping my eyes on the path as we walk. If I look up, if I sweep the horizon, I’m terrified there will be more yiliksii hiding in the branches. I don’t want to appear scared and foolish in front of Ermo.

“Nobody will brave the Gottyar-Vyriz this far north,” he continues. His words are as heavy as the loads on the servingwomen’s backs. “Nobody but Bilenko. Without him, we would probably starve.”

At that, I lift my head, curious. Blind Yurg once told me that the food of the Gottyar was poisonous, but I didn’t imagine all of it would be so foul.

“Every spoon of barley, sip of milk, and bunch of carrots must be delivered from beyond the wood. We can eat nothing from the forest, not even the meat of the animals. It is all tainted with a creeping illness. That is why we keep a modest staff; too many mouths in the castle, and we’d all go hungry. But thanks to Bilenko, we will feast this evening to celebrate your coming.” Ermo inhales deeply, seemingly unbothered by the stink of the trenches or the smoke riding the wind. His machines can be seen in the distance doing their unsettling, swaying dances—sawing and chugging and hissing and eating into the eastern line of trees. “Yulnia already seems fond of you. That’s good. She relies too much on Kiril for company, which . . .” He never finishes his thought, chewing the inside of his cheek.

“And Krugan,” I add for him. “She has Krugan. When will she leave to join him?”

Ermo will not look at me as he plows up the path toward the carriage house. “Who can say? These betrothals are more politics and money than love and warm embraces. Any minor hiccup could make it fall through, and Leonid is . . . passionate. One offense from Krugan’s people and the whole stack of coins falls down.”

“Is it good to let her get so attached?” I ask.

“Yulnia will do as she likes,” Ermo says. He pauses near the carriage house, the sack still over one shoulder. “I’m glad she has you now. I know Leonid is sensitive about your looks just now, but it’s a relief to see you out. I’ll encourage him to let you roam as you like, so long as you are still feeling strong enough for it.”

“Thank you,” I tell him, meaning it. “There’s pain, but I would rather not sit in that little room all day.”

Ermo nods. “I’m . . . glad you’re here. There’s already a new spark in Yulnia. Promises and sweet nothings are nice, but there is no substitute for another’s presence. Real company.” His eyes are almost silvery as he peers at me from beneath the red, curling shag of his hair.

My mouth goes dry. It isn’t a glance the Count’s brother should give me, but I enjoy it anyway. Incredible, to feel momentarily beautiful again, and for it to seem so wrong.

“If I’m to keep up with your sister, I should retire and rest awhile,” I murmur, regarding my feet with sudden interest. I’d rather spend the afternoon with him, but I know it would be a mistake. The older girls in the village never wanted me to hang around with them, but I would find a good hiding spot and eavesdrop; they described falling in love as a swift and furious current sweeping them up, carrying them off. Unguarded hearts could be carried downriver without warning, and my heart is vulnerable, eager for love even as the possibility for it slips away.

Ermo continues studying me in a way that makes my ears burn. “Y-yes, of course. You should go and see to your recovery, Valla. I will have broth and tea sent up. Ready yourself, for a night of feasting with my family is not for the faint of heart.”

10

I’m dizzy with hunger by the time the bells chime for dinner.

There is nothing but thin broth in my stomach as I slump down the stairs, my belly sloshing with each step. I miss my family’s bread, the mash of berries and herbs my mother spread over goat cheese and chunks of fire-roasted wild garlic. “Yagnushka,” she would say when I was very little, touching my cheek. “I chided your brother for gorging himself on cheese. I know how much you enjoy it.” Half-delirious, I can taste the stewed dwarf apples with honey and cream she would make to break our fast after Stag Father’s solstice.

The desire to go home is a throbbing ache in my stomach, inextricable from the hunger. I know it isn’t my mother I long for back in Arylik. Once it became clear that I would go to the Count, she didn’t care what I ate, so long as I did not have too much of it. It’s a yearning, then, a sadness, for a home that’s already gone, as if by letting it vanish from the horizon, it ceased to exist altogether. But my mother is alive somewhere, waiting anxiously for Gavril to return. Would she wait anxiously for me, too, if she knew what it was like here?

I have to set that aside. Encouraging roasty smells rise from the kitchens on the ground floor. Just a little further, just a little longer, and I will have food. It won’t be my mother’s stewed apples, but it will be something to lift my spirits and keep the fever at bay.

There are polished golden knobs capping the railings on the interior castle steps, though many are broken or missing. On the way down to the hall I stop and try to catch my reflection, cleaning the dust off one of the globes with my sleeve. The image is distorted, but even so, I can see the new gauntness in my cheeks and the pinkish-brown crust forming over my wounds.

I don’t see anything lovely there, just a starving, frightened girl a quarter turn from childhood and an impossible distance from home.

A servant woman stands in the center of the front hall. When she strikes the chime in her left hand, the sound clangs through the entire castle. Her eyes, shaded by her heavy folded cap, follow me as I cross the carpets toward the open archway leading into the dining chamber. There is a fire roaring in the hearth, the heat radiating outward, scalding my cheeks. I can already tell it’s unbearably hot inside, but the lure of food is too strong.

Leonid, Ermo, Yulnia, and Kiril are seated at the long, formal table. An impressive collection of paintings clutters the right-hand wall, crowding the windows and their ponderous drapes, but it’s too dark for me to see the art properly. The Count sits with his back to the door, which strikes me as odd, but there is a fifth figure occupying the thronelike chair at the far opposite end of the table.

The family and Kiril are deep in conversation, and I shuffle in quietly, nervous that I am both late and interrupting. I can’t help feeling that I keep making the wrong impression, but it also seems that every inch of this place is laden with invisible snares meant to trip me up and make me look a fool.

“We are becoming fast friends,” Yulnia is saying. It shouldn’t be a shock that I’m the topic of conversation, but it makes my late arrival all the more uncomfortable. My eye twitches as if brushed by a wisp of cobweb.

“How can that be?” Leonid asks, brusque. His skepticism is clear. “You are nothing alike.”

“Why question it? We should be happy for our sister,” says Ermo. He sounds genuinely merry.

“I only wonder if she is the right sort of influence for dear Yulnia,” Kiril adds. He sits to Leonid’s right. Ermo is to the Count’s left, then Yulnia. The space meant for me is across from the young woman. That’s heartening. I won’t have to sit too near to Leonid and his brooding posture. When they detect my furtive presence, the conversation stops.

Leonid gestures to the open chair across from Yulnia and grunts, “It is customary to come down after the first chime. They would tear you to pieces in the Capital for these manners.”

Late. Of course I am. I wince. Nobody has told me the rules of the house, yet it seems as if I’m supposed to guess them. A mean voice inside me, the poisoned blood maybe, suggests it’s meant to be this way, that Leonid craves more reasons to think less of me.

“My apologies,” I murmur, and go to the indicated place, where a bowl is already waiting. More soup. A few shriveled vegetables bob in the murky broth. “I’m still learning my way around the castle.”

As I sit, the chair creaks horribly. Everyone takes it in.

“The route is very simple,” says Leonid. His gaze burns into the side of my face as pointedly as the blast from the hearth hits the other side. “How could you not manage it?”

“More apologies, my lord, but as you know, I’ve had the most feral luck with journeys of late,” I say, trying to lighten the room with a jest.

Ermo and Yulnia both humor me with a chuckle.

Yulnia looks up from her bowl, eyes intent. I give her a flickering smile. I should be grateful that she is taking my side and saying nice things when I’m absent. But I realize, as she continues to stare, the intensity of it turning urgent, that she is waiting for me to notice, waiting for me to react. To the fifth guest.

But I can’t. I can’t do it. I refuse to look at it—the thing—the man, the hollow-cheeked, preserved corpse sitting to my right at the place of honor. The heat is unbearable. The fire behind the throne, behind the corpse, banks ever higher, and sweat pours down my temples. I pull, desperately, at the neck of my gown, but there is no relief. Vapor from the soup steams my face. Without tasting it, I can tell it’s sour, fragrant with the gassy smell of boiled cabbage.

“Sweltering, I know,” says Yulnia. She reaches across the table and pats my hand. “We have to keep it this way. Father must always be dry and hot, or he will not be suitable for company.”

Beside her, Ermo shifts in his chair. He has the grace to look apologetic about the whole thing.

“She’s here,” Leonid mutters. “Let’s begin.”

He spoons down his soup. My appetite, ravenous mere seconds ago, has vanished. How am I to eat when a dead man is inches away? It isn’t right or tolerable. A hysterical sound is building in my throat. Ermo takes his wooden cup and raises it.

“To Valla,” he says. “Welcome home.”

Yulnia and Kiril lift their cups, and I do, too, though my hand is shaking so badly the wine inside slips over the sides. Leonid ignores the gesture, practically devouring his spoon along with the soup. I’ve seen more polite badgers.

“Eat,” Leonid barks. “Everyone eat.”

I do as he says. As the spoon arrives at my lips, I tell myself that it doesn’t have to taste like anything. Filling my belly is what matters, for it occurs to me that I’m so hungry the corpse might be a figment of my starving imagination. But no, it’s there, always in the corner of my vision, draped in lavish black fur, golden amulets, and a red embroidered tunic. I look at anything but the body.

On the table between me and Yulnia is a striped gourd. Beside it is a jar sitting in a low dish of water, a big black beetle motionless inside the vessel. For an instant I think it’s as dead as their father, but one tiny leg moves, scraping curiously at the wall of the jar.

The sour soup burns down my throat, and I try not to shiver with every mouthful, holding back a gag. My eyes remain fixed on the beetle lest they stray to the corpse. There are paintings cluttering the walls, portraits, I think, and I want to study them, but I’m too afraid to move my eyes away from the bug.

“That is Igol,” Yulnia tells me. She doesn’t eat much, but clasps her hands above the bowl, breathing in the steam. Igol is similar enough in both dialects for me to know it means Needle. “Have you ever seen a pauzhuk?”

I know them only from stories, only from Blind Yurg’s wild tales of the woods.

And I’ve dreamed of them.

It has a spider’s low, fast body, but it carries a thick, ball-like shell on its back. Its many eyes are bright green and yellow, and they move independently, lending it a frantic intelligence. A mouth of swirling pincers protrudes below its cluster of eyes.

“I know they can chew through almost anything,” I reply.

“Anything,” Yulnia corrects. There is a delighted gleam in her eyes. “I have yet to find an object it cannot drill through.”

“Why does it not break through the jar?” I ask, admittedly curious.

Leonid snorts. Yulnia ignores him. “It fears the water—well, anything wet,” she says. “Here, little dolly. Watch.”

She lifts the jar out of the dish of water and sets it down on the table beside the gourd. The pauzhuk taps the glass again with its leg, hesitates, then trundles forward, pincers spinning, and begins to bore through the jar.

“Kiril thinks we could study them to improve my saw machines,” Ermo says. He frowns at Kiril, who reaches for one of the wine bottles on a circular stand beside the table. The healer pours himself a full cup.

“Beslavna,” Kiril replies, smiling pleasantly over his wine. His teeth are stained crimson. “There is much we can glean from the Gottyar, and we will not tame it until we master its secrets. The wood and all its creatures guard this knowledge fiercely, but from determination comes brilliance.” He swigs the wine, getting drunker, and with the cup, he indicates the dead man to my right. “My determination. My brilliance. Why do you think I took such pains to preserve the Count?”

Leonid’s head snaps to the side.

“Such p-pains to p-preserve their father?” Kiril corrects himself.

In the agonizing silence, the pauzhuk clicks against the jar, making progress.

“I couldn’t venture a guess,” I say into my soup.

Kiril lifts his cup. “Torrai azhin, the reclaimed life. I have seen too much of this strange forest to ignore the truth it tries to conceal. Immortality, rebirth, reclamation, that is the yadro of this place. Its heart. Its secret.”

“You . . . think you can bring their father back to life?” I ask him, stunned. It is obvious from the tensed shoulders and pursed lips of Ermo and Leonid that they do not believe the selvitel’s bizarre ideas. Yulnia, however, nods along, enthralled.

The beetle breaks through the side of the jar, teetering with sudden momentum, then rights itself and begins to drill through the gourd lengthwise, base to stem. The little noises it makes are revolting.

“And will you do the same for their mother, Kiril?” I ask, just to hear a sound that isn’t the beetle’s chewing.

Yulnia shrieks with laughter, hurrying to answer while clouds gather over Leonid’s head. “Oh, no! Oh, no, no, no! That wouldn’t be possible. Mother betrayed the family, so Father had her bones crushed and scattered to the wind.” Yulnia softens and taps her lower lip with her forefinger. “Although in that way, she is always with us, for on a blustery day she’s as likely as dirt or sand to be the grit in your eye.”

Ermo, gently, clears his throat. “She hurled herself from one of the towers.”

Yulnia giggles.

A tense silence descends until Leonid shifts in his chair, scooting his wine cup around and adding, “That was not in accordance with Father’s wishes, and she was understandably punished. A disgrace in death as she was in life.”

“It killed him,” Yulnia states. Then she seems to remember the corpse’s presence, and she glances at the body of her dead father, staring out at them with hollow-eyed indifference. “Not from sadness, or anything like that. He was angry. He was always angry, but this was different. It burned him up, what she did, what she denied him. I think he wanted to hurry up and die and get to hell to find her so he could have the last word.” She sighs and leans toward the corpse, gently stroking the top of his tautly decayed hand, then the gaunt right cheek. “But we wish you were still here, Father. We wish you hadn’t been in such haste. Don’t we?” She glances at her brothers. “Don’t we wish he was still here?”

There isn’t any consensus. Both brothers squish around uncomfortably in their chairs.

“He had his good days,” Ermo finally volunteers.

“The work went smoothly under his command,” says Leonid.

Yulnia rolls her eyes. “Selfish, ungrateful boys.”

“Ah!” Ermo claps loudly, startling us. “Marwa! The soup was a triumph!” A short, thick woman with looped, braided hair has entered through a curtain I hadn’t noticed along the wall behind Ermo. Her pointed face and bristly brows call to mind a bear. She pulls a cart in with her and goes from chair to chair, removing the empty soup bowls. Until then I hadn’t noticed that there was a portion set before their dead father, but Marwa, without a word, takes his away, too. To her back, as she leaves, Ermo adds, “I cannot wait to see what you bring next!”

Not a moment later, Marwa returns with another wooden cart on wheels. This time she carries the heartier parts of the meal. The smell should be intoxicating, but it butts up against the dusty scent emanating from the preserved body.

“Stewed beets with fermented onion, barley bread stuffed with smoked traotz, and wild pig in brown sauce,” Ermo announces with a gleaming smile. “Only the luckiest foods to ensure health, wealth, and longevity to your union.”

Ermo is hoisting his cup again and Marwa is about to present me with a shiny lump of golden bread when Leonid, from the other end of the table, chuffs like a boar. “None for her,” he says. Marwa, wearing a wounded expression, slowly takes the food back, her hand hovering over the cart. The cook glances around the table, but nobody protests. She shrinks away from me, mortified. Here I am, an outsider, peering behind the rich curtain to discover the broken home within. The damp walls, the missing railing caps, the moat teeming with waste, the corpse that stays to dine.

“The soup was excellent,” I whisper to her, a consolation, or an apology for these people she must serve. Marwa nods, ducking her head. I’m sure she notices my sunken cheeks, and how I am withering away. Yulnia has been watching Needle bore through the gourd. Marwa pushes the cart toward Kiril; the wheels squeak, a high-pitched shriek that sets my teeth on edge. It draws Yulnia’s attention, and she pops out of her chair, as if watching the beetle chew through the gourd has put her into a trance.

“Give her the bread, Marwa,” says Yulnia. She glares at Leonid across the table. “You are a tyrant and a brat, Leonid—how dare you be so embarrassing? Every day you prove why I should have been the head of this family.”

Marwa picks up the bread again as if to hand it to me, but Leonid raises his palm, stalling her. He hunches over his plate, knuckles on the table, returning Yulnia’s frosty stare. “What do you know about lumber? Or the work? What do you know about running a household or protecting these walls? You cannot have our father’s title, however much you desire it. You are a woman, and you are not even very skilled at being that.”

“Cannot, cannot, cannot, bah! It is tedious. All those words you drool out are boring.” Yulnia flips her braid, leaps out of her chair, and comes around the table to wrestle the stuffed bread loaf out of Marwa’s grasp. Deliberately, slowly, Yulnia lowers it onto my plate. The flames behind the corpse of their father crackle and spit. The heat roars on. While Yulnia trots back to her place, Leonid storms over to me and removes the bread. The soft fish bellies of his cheeks ignite pink under the firelight.

“You are as stubborn as that beetle,” Yulnia tells him in a singsong voice. “And uglier.”

“Yulnia—” Leonid breathes over my shoulder, and it is a real warning.

“Tell him, Kiril,” she says, heedless of his growing rage. “Tell him that he must feed my silly dolly or else she will be as sad and desiccated as Father!”

“Well—” Kiril tries to begin.

Leonid laughs hoarsely. “I don’t answer to your wizard.”

That hysterical panic is rising in my throat again. It never left, I realize, but was just soothed for a while by the hot soup keeping it at bay. To make things worse, my starved stomach grumbles noisily. Marwa has gone stiff with fear. Yulnia hurls herself out of her chair and comes back around to where I am sitting. Over my lap, she reaches for the bread in Leonid’s hands.

“Why do you want her to be so hungry?” she asks, seething. “Is it to make her compliant and stupid? It is, isn’t it? Because that is the only sort of bride you can handle!”

“Gravno, Yulnia, you go too far,” Leonid growls. The pauzhuk has chewed almost through to the other end of the gourd. The bread, pulled between them, begins to tear.

“And you are making a scene in front of Father!” she shrieks.

“Me? You are the one causing trouble!”

“I am the only one speaking sense!”

“Peace!” Ermo suddenly shouts, standing and knocking over his own wine. “Peace, both of you! Enough of this!” The pauzhuk is free, looking for something else to consume. Ermo scoops up an empty roll basket and slams it back over the creature, trapping it inches from the spreading wine spill.

The bread splits violently as Leonid and Yulnia fight over it, the gooey middle exploding up and out, showering us in bits of smoked fish. Yulnia gasps and retreats, hurrying to wipe away whatever landed on their father. Kiril stands, too, his hands awkwardly bent, and says, “I do agree that the girl should eat something more substantial than broth. Nourishment would go a long way to seeing her healed.”

Leonid breathes hard, then tosses the torn half of bread onto my plate, the crust deeply pocked by his fingers. There is an entire impression of his hand squeezed into it. Leaning down, he whispers in my ear, “Nourishment, then. Nourishment, not overindulgence.”

Everyone goes back to their seats. Marwa moves here and there, adding food onto plates. Yulnia picks up her utensils and begins to eat her portion of wild pig. Kiril sits and sips his wine. Ermo and Leonid begin to discuss the day’s lumber tally. Their father does nothing, for he is dead, yet present for some hideous reason.

It’s a joke. It’s all a terrible, mean joke, and there is smoked fish streaked through my hair. I remember Gavril once chased me around the kotte trying to smear chicken droppings into my braids. He was incensed because I had told all the village girls that he snored and farted in his sleep. Eventually, he caught me, calling me foul names while rubbing the crap into my hair. But we had our way of saying it was too much, that the game had gotten out of hand. “Kyuk!” we would say. Kyuk to beg for mercy.

“Kyuk!” I slam my fists on the table. I hardly recognize my own voice, shrill and cutting. “Kyuk! Stop! Just stop it! Stop it! I want to go home, please. I just want to go home!”

A log shifts and falls in the hearth. The pauzhuk jostles the bread basket while the spilled wine pools around it. It is safe, for now, inside its dry little dome. Yulnia’s mouth falls open as she looks around, waiting for the others to react. I can tell she wants to laugh.

“Why is she clucking like an angry chicken?” Leonid finally mutters.

Ermo smooths his palms across the table. “This is for you, Valla,” he says. “This food, this feast, it is all for you. Can you not see that?”

For a long, shivering time I stare at Ermo, my mouth opening and closing around a scream that won’t come out. I don’t want to hate him, but in that moment, I do. I hate them all. I hate it here. Tears start to drop down my cheeks, splattering on my half-empty plate.

“Now look what you’ve done,” Yulnia murmurs quietly to her brothers.

That breaks something. Leonid flies to his feet, overturning his entire plate of food. His face turns purple as he marches around his chair, pausing under the arched doorway as he points at me. “Yulnia? You will be silent. Get the girl out of here. Get her out of my sight.” He’s almost out of breath as he punches the wood of the doorway, splintering it. “I leave for the Capital tomorrow. When I return, there will be no more outbursts. Things will be as I want them. Things will be as they should.”

He moves aside, and Yulnia comes around the table to gather me up. She takes the ruined half of bread and loops her arm through mine and coaxes me away from the others. As we pass by Leonid, I am certain he will strike me. The blow never comes, but I move my face as if it had landed squarely across my cheek.

You are not my husband. I say it to him silently as I go by. You are not my husband, and this is not my home.

When we are out in the front hall and away from the men, Yulnia brushes some fish out of my hair and squeezes me close. “You must be strong now,” she says.

“I don’t want to be strong,” I tell her, shaking my head, clasping my hands together. “I want to be happy.”

I say another silent thing as she urges me away, and this silent thing I mean the most. Even at his worst, I rarely wished harm upon Gavril. Maybe it’s the poison in my blood that’s making me change, that makes me want this castle to burn. Whatever it is, where it comes from, I make a vow to Count Leonid—I vow that I will survive all this cruelty and pain to one day see him suffer.

11

I wake up shivering, feet numb, bare, and damp. When I squish my heels around, veins of ice keep them in place, sewing my toes down with biting threads. Worse, I wake up far, far from my bed, standing outside on the stone slab on the narrow land bridge running across the western side of the moat. It’s a sensation like a slap, to go to sleep in a bed and to rouse yourself while speaking, awareness arriving on a word that’s forgotten before it leaves your lips.

What was I saying? How did I get here?

Something is running away from me, small and low to the ground; it flees toward the fence on the other side of the moat, awkward and scurrying. Impossible to tell whether it goes on two feet or four.

Frantic, shivering, I go to hug myself but find that my hands are already outstretched, a hard object nestled in my cupped palms. It isn’t cold the way I am, more like a stone warmed in an oven. Unfurling my fingers, I find the amber nugget my father gave me when I left for the Count’s castle. The gift recovered; the offering returned.

But that means someone, or something, had to place it in my hands. Perhaps the thing darting away. I can hear the last faint traces of its little breaths, gasping and elated, as if it has pulled off an amazing prank. The night is dense and close around me. The hem of my sleeping robe is wet with dew. I can feel grass and grit clinging to the spaces between my toes. The mist is thick as white mud, but golden eyes float like candle flames in the haze. They are just beyond the wall of spikes and spears; it’s the yiliksii. And I know it is them, for ever so softly, I hear Maksi’s bells jangling in the fog.

What do they want from me?

My own breath puffs out in front of me, as obvious as the answer to my question. The sharp. The Sharp. The knife. They want me to kill Count Leonid. On the road, it seemed impossible, but now I’m not so sure. As I stare back at them, whimpering in my thin robe, the lights go out one by one, and gradually, I am alone.

I know the night sounds of Arylik—the men on watch calling to each other at dawn, wind battering the kotte, the hitched rumble of my father snoring, the subdued hiss of coals losing their fight to time and the cold. But Valtivisk has its own eerie music come dark—the whisper of a struggling river, acorns blown into the moat, plopping like skipped stones. The strangled yips of rozhmaka mustering and prowling at the spiked outer walls. Sometimes it sounds like an infant is wailing—sometimes an entire chorus of them, the cries picked up by the gales and warped into a howl.

There is nothing now but the sound of my teeth chattering in my own skull, and then muted, shuffling footsteps behind me.

I spin around, hunched, holding the amber protectively to my chest. I must look like a wild animal—wounded and backed into a trap. Yulnia has come, a furred black cloak swallowing her up, but I catch sight of her wide, startled eyes even in the lightless gloom.

“I . . . I don’t know how I got here,” I murmur. “I didn’t mean to leave the castle.”

“You were sleepwalking,” she says, and her brows tent with worry. “I used to do it, too, until they had the cage built over my bed. They once found me half a mile down the southern road.”

“I wasn’t trying to escape,” I add, nervous.

“Of course you weren’t, silly dolly,” she says. “You would never survive on your own.”

That doesn’t give me any comfort, just more concerns. I glance back toward the forest, but nobody is watching anymore. Palming the amber, I hide it from Yulnia’s sight, sliding it into my pocket.

“You were talking to yourself,” she adds, bringing me under the cloak and into its merciful warmth. My feet feel frozen to the slab; I can’t move. It’s a ridiculous thought, but it’s like the ground won’t let me go.

“What was I saying?”

“It was some nonsense language,” Yulnia replies, trying to coax me onto the path.

I roll the amber in my palm. “Did you . . . Did you see anything strange?”

“You mean stranger than a skinny little imp sleepwalking out of the castle? No, dolly. Why? Did something happen while I was trying to catch up?”

“No.”

Her narrowing eyes betray that she doesn’t believe me.

“It’s just hard to believe that I got here all on my own without waking up.”

Yulnia slips her arm through mine. “You’re freezing. Come, let’s get you inside where it is warm. I won’t say a word, but if Leonid saw you, there’s no telling what he might do.”

As soon as her hand slithers over mine, the stone releases me. I pick up one foot, wriggle my toes, and then let Yulnia guide me off the slab. No less frightened, but slightly more in my body, I gaze up at the castle to our left. High above us, almost imperceptible in the darkness, is a window just beneath the roof of a tall turret. My eyes drop down from that window, drawing a line from it to the slab.

“My mother lived in that tower,” says Yulnia, noting my interest. “It’s my tower now.”

She keeps her voice to a breathy whisper as we scuttle along the path. There are torches flaring on the southern road, beyond the drawbridge and the gate, but those men are lazily patrolling the mill, nowhere near us. “I said such awful things about her at dinner, but that was only for Leonid’s benefit. I was just a girl of seven when she died, but I remember she was sweet with me. She liked to comb my hair for hours and teach me lullabies from her village. Whenever I sing them now, Leonid flies into a rage.”

My outburst in the dining chamber feels like an event from years gone by, not of mere hours earlier. Even so, I remember well the cruel way they spoke of their mother. Yulnia is quiet after that, leading me back around to the eastern side of the grounds. The windows of the carriage house blaze with light, flashing like sudden lightning. The two chimneys thrusting up from the roof belch smoke, creating a hazy veil over the few visible stars above the castle clearing.

“Who would be working so late?” I ask as she drags me toward the castle doors.

“Ermo tinkers long into the night sometimes,” she replies. “He says inspiration can come at any moment, and he must always heed the call. He is probably building another machine, perhaps a saw on legs to be his friend.” Yulnia giggles at her own jab, then draws me close and shushes me. We crouch near the sloped path and stairs leading to the castle’s tall front doors. “Quiet as a mouse, now. Ivan normally keeps the doors, but he can’t stand around all night after the rozhmaka tore off his leg. Poor fool. Lev will have the watch now, which is how we both slipped by without him noticing. Kiril says he has the cataplexy; the man can fall dead asleep even on his feet.”

Lev is indeed deep in slumber as we creep up the stairs. The doors are still open a crack, the size of which is just right for a smallish girl to pass through. His furred hat is covering his eyes as he leans against the sculpted stone decorating the left side of the doorway. Yulnia swaddles us under the cloak, and we go by, no more than a suspiciously nimble lump of cloth. She takes me across the front hall and up the stairs, her fingers pinching around my wrist as she continues higher, beyond my floor.

This is not the way to my chambers.

I glance out from under the cloak, realizing we are going the wrong way.

“You have already been naughty this night,” whispers Yulnia. “Surely, you can tolerate a bit more mischief. Come—Ermo wants us to be friends, so friends we shall be.”

After the calamitous supper, I begin to worry what mischief she has in mind. I need not fear for long, as she soon leads me down a narrow corridor, to the end of it, where two intricately enameled doors squeak open at her touch. Yulnia throws off the cloak as we stand in a grand suite of rooms. She takes a long candle from the table to our right and goes cheerfully to the hearth ahead of us, where a low fire ranges along gray, dusty logs. When the candle is lit, she takes it around the room, igniting pools of light that gradually bring the finer details of the chamber to life.

Part of me wishes she hadn’t.

The walls are cluttered with shelves, floor to ceiling, and each shelf overflows with dolls. I walk slowly to the nearest shelf, leaning in and studying one of the carved wooden figurines. They are all painted to look like Yulnia, with matching whitish-blond hair, their clothes depicting her in different aspects and occupations—here she is a bride, there she is a child in an apron and sun hat, elsewhere she is a regent with a three-point crown.

Yulnia as a queen, when she could not even be a countess.

“Father had them made for me. It became a bit of an obsession,” she says, lighting the last of the candles in their sticks and holders before hovering before a small table by the hearth. While she talks, I wander and wonder. There must be at least two hundred dolls, so many Yulnias watching us with the same placid expression. Like her childhood room, this chamber is decorated in varying shades of yellowing white. The obsession with pigweed is here, too, the delicate bells like lady’s skirts decorating the curtains and what bare slivers of wall exist between the doll-laden shelves. There is one magnificent window, the glass in the panes prettily scalloped, and as I go to look out of it, I realize where we are. This is the tall tower overlooking the land bridge and the stone slab. When I peel the curtain aside, I am staring down at the place where I was standing moments before, barefoot and shivering in the dark.

I feel the hunk of amber in my nightdress pocket, heavy and insistent against my thigh. A plan is beginning to form, slowly but surely. I have made a vow to myself, a vow to punish Leonid for his cruelty, and a plea has been whispered to me by the yiliksii and by my own beast-poisoned blood.

Leonid must suffer.

“Are there many watchmen posted throughout the castle?” I ask. The fear from before, from my sleepwalking episode, lingers, but I must push through it. I must be careful and bold in equal measure. I’ve never been like this, never imagined another person’s demise, and I can’t tell if the impulse is coming from me, or the yiliksii, or something else.

I just know that the urge is powerful and persuasive.

The scheme, as I see it unfolding, depends on my closeness to Yulnia.

“Oh, no,” she replies lightly. I hear her scratching around at something on the table as I peer out the window. I don’t know why, but it unsettles me that this window so perfectly overlooks the slab. Yulnia said it herself—something about that perfectly capped place makes my stomach tighten. “Ermo often sleeps in his workshop atop the carriage house, and Kiril goes where he will. He likes to fiddle in the halls beneath the castle, in the laboratory for his experiments down there. Only Leonid has a man keep watch outside his door, but he has always been suspicious.”

That will be a problem.

“Your mother occupied this tower before you?” I ask, turning and sitting against the deep depression the window makes in the wall.

“She did. You must think me very maudlin, to choose this tower when she met such a . . . sad end.” Yulnia sighs. I do think her weird, but not for that reason. But I pity her, too. The firelight makes her silhouette visible beneath her nightgown. Sapling thin, she looks like a winter weed draped in snow. “I had everything changed. My mother preferred homely things, fur and wood and woven mats. She tried to make this tower her own village, re-create her past.” She beckons me over. “It is warmer here,” she says. “And you have had a fright.”

I have, haven’t I? The inevitability of the task before me has banished the shock of waking up outside. I never walked in my sleep as a child, but this place is not my home. My body decided it was time to escape and walked me out the doors, the body acting on what the mind cannot. But I didn’t get far. Why not take the road instead? Why go to that place, whisper words in a feral tongue, only to receive the piece of amber?

Bowing my head meekly, I join her. She moves aside and indicates the delicate white wooden chair that matches the table. Sitting, I puzzle over the collection of jars and pots, each heaped with powder or pale cream. They smell extraordinary, some like a sulfurous bog, others like dried flowers. Above me, on three shelves, a dozen miniature Yulnias watch over us. Their bovine eyes are dull and fixed. Their empty white palms are upturned, empty and almost expectant.

Her pauzhuk beetle, Igol, stares at me, too, with all its many green and yellow eyes. It’s been placed in a new, unbroken jar with some moss. The jar floats in a dish of water, and Igol—Needle—has only the husks of dead flies for company.

Well, and us. I suppress the urge to tap the jar. I have seen what Igol can do to soft matter, and I’ve no intention of making more enemies. Yulnia takes up a brush and begins to comb out my hair. I hear pieces of twig tumble out and drop to the floor. She handles the brush aggressively, with long, firm strokes starting from the root. The scratch against my scalp is bracing but pleasant. There is an articulated mirror on arms built into the table, and in the reflection, Yulnia’s eyes are just visible over my shoulder.

Her face is perfect, unblemished, and I can’t help the jealousy that spears through my heart. I want to cry, weep for my lost beauty and for all the things I thought I would be and have. One less flower in Arylik.

As she brushes my hair, she sings.

Clasp your hands among your folk,

Crack the egg and catch the yolk,

With apple garlands in your hair,

The Mother seals you as a pair.

Her voice is faltering but sweet, the tune found nervously and then with more confidence. I know the little rhyme well; I have sung it many times.

“How do you know the Bridesong?” I ask, my head rearing back on each forceful stroke of the brush.

“My mother would sing it to me when she wanted me to sleep.”

“She must have been from the north,” I reply. It makes me sad to think of her, transferred like I was, stolen away to this damp, isolated castle. Just talking about the north eases my jealous heart. “Do you know which village?”

“Pezhal, I think.”

“I know Pezhal! It was far west of the lakes where I grew up, but their traders would visit in the spring.” Yes, it’s good to remember home; I can’t help but smile to think of life far from here. “What was her name?”

Yulnia’s expression shifts until it’s as blank as the dolls above us. “Alyona. Her father was Zahksamil.”

Alyona. I know that name. Somehow, I know it. I cudgel my brains for the reason, and by and by a flash of memory comes to me, a hazy image of a round wooden gate. Now I can see the carving, the instinct of a girl to declare herself before venturing into danger.

ALYONA WENT TO HER HOME AND LOVE, 16 PROLETNA, STAG’S YEAR

I hesitate, deciding whether or not I want to share the memory with Yulnia. There is unsettling coldness in her face now, but I must cling to the plan. I need Yulnia to like me, and I need her to trust me. It is obvious that she is at odds with her brothers, specifically with Leonid, so I must win her true friendship.

Yulnia believes herself to be the rightful countess, and there is but one way that happens. I cast my gaze lower and into the mirror, considering my own reflection. It’s hard to see myself in the ravaged, scarred face looking back, but I cannot pretend that I’m not changing.

Or that I have already changed.

“I think your mother carved her name into the gate at the edge of the Gottyar-Vyriz,” I tell her. “I saw it there when I passed by on my way to Ulganyo. It said ‘Alyona went to her home and love, 16 Proletna, Stag’s Year.’ ”

Now Yulnia frowns, her brushstrokes becoming meaner, spiteful. “That was a lie. She didn’t go to her love. She went to her doom.” She shakes off the sudden anger, and the smile she gives me in the mirror makes my nose twitch. “You must forget all of that, dolly. You must forget your village and your family. You must forget your customs and your pigshit language. If you are to marry my brother and become a countess, someone must teach you the ways.” She slams the brush down on the table.

There is an empty cup for tea, a canister beside it. While Yulnia rummages in one of the drawers to my left, I gingerly pick up the square can and remove the lid, sniffing inside. The dried herbs are pungent, and I recognize the slender leaves and shriveled buds of elartsis. It is a flower that grows in the fields outside Arylik, with bright yellow blooms that mimic an old man yawning.

“You aren’t drinking tea made from this, are you?” I ask, putting the canister back where I found it.

“Of course,” she says with a sniff. “It keeps a lady thin.”

“But you mustn’t consume elartsis. It kills baby animals that happen upon its blooms. It is only keeping you thin because it is making you sick!”

I might speak a pigshit language, but even Arylik girls know not to drink tea made from elartsis blossoms.

“You must be mistaken; it’s been a secret passed down for generations.” But she is wise enough to stop and hear her own words. A shadow flickers across her face as she dislodges a bundle of tied letters from within the table drawer and sets them down next to the powders and creams.

“It’s poisonous, Yulnia. Promise me you won’t take any more of it.”

“I . . . hmm.” She isn’t convinced, but I can tell that a seed has been planted. Yulnia picks up the brush and starts in on my hair again. My scalp is beginning to burn. The letters have broken green seals and reek of perfume; this is her trove of correspondence from Krugan. It is not necessary or even common for most folk from Arylik to know their letters, but an elder taught me to read simple things when it became clear that I would be sent away. It never occurred to me that such an ability might be more than just knowledge, that it might be the one way in which my people had armed me. It could be like a weapon and a shield.

Yulnia prods my neck with the blunt end of the brush. “Take one and read aloud. I will correct your viyesha movia as you go. We will turn you into a refined woman fit for the Capital ballrooms, and when Leonid returns, he will be so surprised and delighted, he will forget all about your ruined face.”

12

Yulnia’s lessons go long into the night. So long that eventually we collapse and sleep, she on her four-post bed strung with white felted leaves and flowers, and me on the heap of carpets just beside the bed. I use her black cloak as a pillow, and I dream the average dream of an average girl. I’m running through a field, sunshine kissing my bare arms, a silhouette on the horizon beckoning me. It’s Ermo, the kind brother, waiting with a smile in a place far from here, and once I reach his side, we will disappear together.

It’s a pleasant thought—to run, to believe that freedom is close at hand.

There is no sunlight to warn of dawn, but a harsh crick in my neck wakes me before Yulnia stirs. Krugan’s letters are spilled across the desk, and his words ring in my head. There is no doubt that the man from Korumpo is besotted, but even after familiarizing myself with dozens of his letters, the sketch of him remains loose. He writes frequently and at agonizing length, but he never reveals much about himself.

Pressing my knuckles against a yawn, I rise to my feet and go over to the desk. Before crawling into bed, Yulnia had walked me through her beauty process. Two hundred strokes of the hairbrush, with rose talc sprinkled through the bristles to keep the hair clean, perfumed, and fair; an insipid cream of cattle fat thickened with boiled ripi root applied liberally over the entire face and neck; and finally, a fortified belt strapped around her waist and laced tightly to encourage her midsection to warp into a comelier shape.

All this to stay beautiful for Krugan, a man she has never met. He had sent a painting of himself inside of a silver locket that she kept with the precious pile of letters, but the depiction was so small that he appeared as nothing more than a blur of dark hair and a full, bushy mustache. All the same, it is hard to blame her for loving him. I, too, would cling to any person who might provide a safe harbor from Valtivisk.

My head throbs, crammed with new words and phrases. While reading aloud to Yulnia, I had stumbled over most of the words. Nobody in Arylik has use for terms like courtly or auditorium. Viyesha movia is the dialect spoken in the modern cities of the province, and so I must know it. Girls in Arylik are taught only the basics of reading and writing, more if they are the daughter of an elder or if they show an aptitude for the trading routes or keeping the stores, less if they are destined for foraging and motherhood. I never stopped Yulnia to ask why it matters, when there is no indication that Leonid will ever let me leave this place. But to be good enough for him, modern enough, I must replace my language with one favored by people I will never meet or impress. I gently pluck the topmost letter from the pile, my eyes swimming as I read it silently to myself.

A man with a title should be in all ways a gentleman—unemployed, refined, elegant, pleasurable to know, well-read, with healthy appetites, and primarily concerned with the preservation of the family. He is not a person who discusses money or roughens his hands with the work of lowborn men. That stated, I think Count Leonid is not a gentleman of any note, but his brutish behavior is not your fault, nor should you be blamed for it. You and I together, Yulnia, are the last, best chance to restore the reputation of your far-fallen family.

It would have been useful information for the people of Arylik, for the elders, to know that Count Leonid is not respected or liked by any of his peers. Or maybe the goats and seeds Leonid traded for me make that meaningless. Maybe everyone knows exactly what they want to know, and the transaction occurred as intended.

It’s difficult to consider. Even harder to accept.

Yulnia said there is a portrait of Alyona hanging in the dining hall. If I can find the courage to stand in the presence of their dead father again, I would enjoy seeing her. I wonder if I can catch any hint of the north and the villages in her painted face. And I ask myself, When someone comes to paint Leonid and me together, will they choose to show my scars?

I put the letter down, and a queer smile tugs at my lips. No, we will never stand to have our portrait done. Leonid will not live long enough for all of that.

Needle tumbles around in his jar, rolling among the clumps of moss and fly corpses. There is a sharp rap at the door, and Marwa bustles in, then screams when she sees me standing at the table.

“Child! Yulnia! The bride-girl is just there!” Marwa cries.

Yulnia sits straight up in bed, her crown of braids sliding down to rest around her neck. Blinking, she glances between me and Marwa. “I know. There is no need for alarm, stupid woman. Valla is a nothing from nowhere, and I am teaching her to be a lady worthy of the southern cities. Her hair is brushed now, but you must bathe her today. The stink of the north and the road is all over her. Did you bring my breakfast?”

“I did,” Marwa says, rolling in her cart. “But there is not enough for two.”

“Go down to your chamber, dolly. We can continue lessons later.” Yulnia pulls her feet out of the blankets and tilts her head back and forth, stretching. Then she reaches for an empty cosmetics pot on the table beside the bed and throws it on the floor. It breaks, and Marwa curses quietly from the doorway. “Take those,” Yulnia says to me. “Scatter the pieces in front of your bed.”

I do as she says and gather the jagged pieces, cradling them carefully in my left palm. Before Marwa can come any closer, Yulnia leans toward me, smiles, and whispers, “The pieces will cut your feet if you sleepwalk again.”

The castle is still and silent as I make my way back down to my room. After a while I hear Yulnia singing, her quaking voice wrapped around the familiar Bridesong. There is some merit to her suggestion, and I hide the pot shards under my bed, deciding that later I will lay a trap for myself to make sure I don’t wander away. I take the amber from my pocket and hide it in the pillowcase, unsure of its purpose but convinced of its significance. And when I stop to ponder it, I realize that they have taken my travel clothes and bride furs away. The hunk of amber is the only thing I have left of Arylik.

The window to my left rattles as if pelted by rocks. The racket becomes a pattern, an insistent tapping. I couldn’t go to open it even if I wanted to, for there are bars in front of the panes. The noise doesn’t stop.

Tap-tap tap-tap tip-tap

A dark shape moves behind the grime that coats the pane. I hurry to the desk before the window, holding on to the narrow edge, watching as cracks form in the pane, then spider and spread, a sharply pointed beak breaking through before two of the four glass squares shatter, sending glass flying across the desk. Leaping away does nothing to protect me as the broken glass twinkles down the front of my nightdress. The dark shape wedges its way inside, hopping. There is a narrow ledge between the windowpanes and the iron barring them. I hadn’t seen any of the forest birds on our journey along the Gottyar-Vyriz, but here is one, a beastly raven, oversized, covered in the same bristly strands as the rozhmaka and the yiliksii. Its feathers are shiny black, pine-needle thin, clumped haphazardly, and draped in bits of cobweb, leaves, and dried berries.

Its eyes, however, are nothing like a raven’s. They are spring-shoot green, with inky pupils as intelligent and human as my own. Perched just inside the window, it perceives the bars between us, then hops back through the hole it made, returning a heartbeat later, dragging something along the ledge. It pushes the object toward the bars with its beak, and its deliberateness and its patience say that this gift is meant just for me.

My blood simmers. The poison that won’t leave seems to thrill at this creature’s presence. There is a song being sung between us, but I cannot hear it, and I do not know the words.

The raven’s gift drops through the bars, clattering noisily onto the desk.

It doesn’t seem to be in a hurry, and it waits, preening its feathers until I drum up the courage to take the thing. It’s a shard of black stone, the size, weight, and shape of it fitting perfectly into my hand—as perfectly as a knife.

THE SHARP.

It isn’t the same knife as before, but it will cut just as keenly. The poison, my blood, roars.

There are green marks carved into the flat of the black stone knife, but they appear to be simple runes that I can’t understand. With the offering accepted, the raven hops back through one of the broken window quadrants and flies away. I turn the knife this way and that. What do the runes mean? They seem important. I can hear someone coming down the hall toward my chamber, wheels squeaking along the uneven floor. Marwa. She will have my porridge and maybe fresh clothes.

I flee to the bed behind the cage and retrieve the amber from under my pillow. I hide the knife and gem under the bed, on the lip of the frame just below the mattress. Then I hurl myself onto the tick and gaze up at the ceiling. Marwa knocks and then shoulders open the door, and I hear her groan with dismay.

“Broken window? Tsk, tsk. Trying to escape already, bride-girl?”

Rolling over, I don’t have to pretend to be sleepy, and the way I rub my eyes and yawn is not theatrics, either. I am exhausted, though my heart is hammering from the appearance of the raven and its odd gift. Marwa can’t find out about that, however, so I shake my head and put on my best innocent pout.

“It was like that when I returned from Yulnia’s chambers,” I tell her. Slowly, I approach, holding out my hands. They are not spotless, but they are not marred by the sort of cuts and bruises one would acquire from punching out glass. “How would I have broken it? Look at my hands, Marwa. You must believe me.”

“I don’t ‘must’ have to do anything,” she mutters. But she does inspect my hands, and their relative cleanliness satisfies her for the moment. “Suppose I’ll be the one to tell Master Ermo the window needs fixing.”

I remember her embarrassment from the night before, how she shrank away from Yulnia and Leonid’s antics. “At least you will not have to tell Count Leonid. Ermo seems reasonable enough.”

She eyes me up and down, squinting. “Yes, well. The Count does battle a temper. There, then, have your breakfast. I’m told you can have more than broth and porridge now, but don’t expect much. Food is more precious than coin here, and the men need it for their work.”

Marwa thrusts the warm bowl of porridge toward me, and I take it with a gracious nod.

“Thank you so much,” I tell her, and there, just faintly, is a hint of a smile. Maybe she can imagine that I will be a kind, gentle countess. She probably does not imagine that I will take the black stone knife and carve out Leonid’s heart with it.

I blink, startled. For an instant, I pictured it so clearly: his doom, his end, his body broken and lying at my feet, a thrill overcoming me from head to toe. It takes a few breaths to shake off the intensity of the vision. This isn’t me—this deranged person who yearns for violence—and yet . . .

“Yulnia wants you to have a bath later,” Marwa adds as she goes, distracting me from my tangled thoughts. “You can have clean linens and garb after that. Come down to the kitchens ’round midday, and I’ll have the water ready for you.”

“I’ll do that. I appreciate it—they’ve only cleaned my wounds since I arrived.”

“I know, bride-girl, you stink.”

13

If Marwa didn’t simply resemble a bear but was one, it would be a gentler bathing. She scrubs me as if there are potatoes growing behind my ears, mushrooms throbbing on my neck, and frogs spawning in my armpits. As soon as I sit in the scalding hot water, it turns gray. Soon after, I turn beet red.

She prepares the big metal tub in the pantry off a narrow, arched hall beside the kitchens. There are deep alcoves receding into the walls, where crates of provisions are stacked. Loops of aged sausage hang above the boxes along with bundles of dried herbs and robes of papery garlic. There is a hatch near the alcoves that must lead down to a cellar where the other foods are kept, the chill underground preserving them longer. Already the crates look picked over.

“How often does Bilenko the wagon driver visit?” I ask, rocking back and forth as Marwa uses a coarse mitten to scour my back.

She grunts, kneeling on the stones behind me. “Why ask? Your window escape has failed, so you will try to hitch a ride with him instead?”

“Why would I try to leave through the window? It is much too high off the ground. And how would I crawl through the bars to even get there?”

“Eh. Maybe you are desperate enough to try anything.”

I remember the black stone knife and amber hiding under my bed, and I can’t help but shudder, suddenly afraid that someone will search the room while I’m gone and find the weapon. Such a discovery would bring far worse accusations. In my village, I accomplished only tiny rebellions. I am still learning how to do bigger ones. It is decided: I will never leave the knife and amber in my room again. The castle is so empty and the staff so few, maybe I will get lucky this time.

Luck is rare and precious in a place such as this.

The castle shakes, gently at first, but then hard enough that one of the sausages slips off its hanger and tumbles into the crates. A cloud of mortar dislodges from the ceiling above us, grit cascading down around the tub. We both freeze and wait for it to pass.

“What was that?” I breathe, clasping my knees to my chest.

The tremor comes again. The sounds, the echoing aches of the earth, come in pairs. Boom-toom. Boom-toom. Outside, voices call to each other in heightened alarm. I wonder if we are safer inside or out, for this is an old castle and it is falling into disrepair.

“Syatu mei viz tristlavo logi,” Marwa whispers. Save me from Bony Leg. It comes out swiftly, with the instinctual fervor of a prayer. She slips into the old dialect, the language I grew up with. Did she come from the north, too?

“Bony Leg?”

The tremors cease. Marwa gradually begins to rub the mitten over my shoulders again. “They say it moves through the wood, a house made of skin and bones. The loggers spy it from time to time, but never in the same place twice. When they try to approach, the mist comes and swallows it up.”

I frown and sink deeper into the gray water. Blind Yurg mentioned tremors, but never a house of bones. “I’ve never heard this tale.”

“The quaking started years ago, but it happens more now. She’s agitated. Angry.”

“She?”

Marwa ignores me, sighing, her breath warm on my back. “Those damned fool machines. The forest is already awake, and Ermo is only making it worse.” Another heaving sigh. “Never mind,” she growls. “Never mind, never mind.”

“But—”

“Hush, bride-girl.”

Bony Leg. She. My mind snags on the word. Is there someone intelligent out there directing all this? Returning the amber? Dispatching the bird with the knife? Sending the children . . .

Somewhere above us in the ringing, damp halls of the castle, Yulnia begins to sing.

Under my breath, I join in. Marwa grunts, but it feels like a question. “I know her songs,” I tell the servant, my voice unexpectedly sad. I long for home, I suppose. I long for something familiar. “My village keeps the same traditions as Pezhal, where her mother was raised.”

“I know Pezhal,” says Marwa.

“And Arylik?”

“Mmm.”

“And your folk?”

“Drolyas.”

“By the Lank Marshes?”

“Mmm.”

Her circular strokes over my back lighten, and it is almost comforting. Marwa softly hums along to the song that leaks like flooding rain through the cracks in the castle. “Countess Alyona was a good woman. You remind me of her, in a way. Soft, maybe too soft for Valtivisk.”

“Do you know why she went mad?” Though it seems a silly question. I haven’t lived here a week, and already I feel moved to sneak and kill. It’s the poison in my blood, I insist. Like Marwa said, I’m a soft heart, not a murderess.

“It was the children,” Marwa replies, surprising me. I expected her to chide me for prying. Marwa, I suspect, knows many of the dark secrets of this place. Servants go unnoticed yet observe everything. “The Count was loving to her at first, even kind. Yulnia arrived, and he was proud, but eager for an heir. Then the twins came, and he was delighted, for a time. He wanted more children and more. At last she gave him triplets, all girls, but they slid out withered and . . . wrong. They survived, but just for a few short years. There. You’re done.” She pinches me on the arm. “Stand.”

The cold castle air is a stark pain after the warmth of the bath, but I stand and shiver, and Marwa hands me a thin sheet to dry myself with. Wrapped in the scratchy fabric, I carefully step out of the tub, slapping wet feet onto icy stones. “And after the triplets?”

Marwa takes another sheet and begins rubbing it vigorously over my head, the damp hair trailing down my back. “More attempts, more failures. It was a hard time in this house. A dark time.”

Withered and wrong. After three healthy children, what could cause such a change? Maybe nothing. Maybe just misfortune. But Yulnia has been sipping poison to keep herself thin—a family tradition, she said—and elartsis tea could do horrible things to an unborn child. When I am more or less dry, Marwa braids my hair into a thick plait and pins it in a crown on my head, then gives me a clean shift and woolen frock. The dress is the color of my dirty bathwater, but it smells like dried herbs from the kitchen and protects against the pervasive chill.

“Tonight,” she says, her small eyes softening as she gestures to the doorway, “come down after the first chime.”

14

Before I leave the kitchen, Marwa gifts me a round, yeasted roll. It’s just out of the oven and faintly warm in my hands, like a freshly laid egg. I carry it out into the dining chamber that connects to the kitchen and pantry. There is a slithering knot in my stomach; the dead Count will be seated at the head of the table, eyes and mouth fixed open as if in constant horror at his own state.

Now there is daylight filtering in through the filthy panes of the windows on the far side of the chamber. It makes the dead Count look like old meat left to dry on a rack. I see him in the slivers of light between the ponderously heavy curtains and tell myself not to look away. It’s hard to imagine why anyone would want this dusty, decaying relic to return to life. Yulnia must want to torment Leonid, for if their father walks again, then Leonid is not really the Count. It seems impossible that Kiril’s magic should work, but I know so little of these people, of the Capital, that I cannot say for certain. There are more interesting things to look at in the chamber, and they are certainly more pleasant.

Some, at least. The dead Count’s portrait hangs behind him and over the imposing carved fireplace. The mantel is exquisitely polished wood, the color and luster of the glazed brown roll in my hands. He is a stone-faced man, with a bushy gray beard and eyes like chips of silver. Beneath his portrait are three more paintings, all in a row, but these depict his hounds. They are beautiful, sleek animals with alert and pointed ears. Thick collars are nestled in the fur around their necks, which read, from left to right: Skernos, Dyella, and Pasha.

Fidelity, Courage, and Patience.

I make a slow circle around the room and find the frame engraved with Alyona’s name and holding her likeness. She looks young, strong, and beautiful, with the bewildered expression of a doe spotted in a glade. White-blond hair just like Yulnia’s is heaped in luxurious loops around her face. I do recognize something of myself in her, and the sturdy jaw and healthy flush of the north. A sprig of ivory pigweed is tucked beneath her elbow. There are scuffs in the dust around the frame, evidence that she was taken down and then rehung later. The dark green wall holding her is cluttered with other paintings. Clusters of serious, solemn faces stare back at me, haphazardly arranged, their eyes as lifeless as the corpse behind me.

I can feel him there, and more, I can feel his displeasure. Does the dead man know I yearn for his son’s demise? Dread comes on like a sickness, and like illness, it covers me in chills. He can’t be ignored, the dead man, and so I face him. A fly perches above the sunken pit of his nose. It buzzes away, and it’s only the fly’s departure that convinces me I haven’t imagined the bulging movement just below the Count’s right eye, beneath the taut leather of his cheek. Queasy curiosity urges me forward. The dusty, fruity smell of the corpse grows hard to bear, but I lean in, studying the undulation. There it is again! Movement! Movement beneath the skin . . .

“I’ve seen to your window.”

The roll slips out of my hands while I squeak with surprise. I hurry and bend to collect it, leaping away from the corpse and turning to face Ermo, who lingers in the doorway like a reluctant goodbye. The table stretches between us, and he is only half illuminated by the milky light forcing its way through the grime-encrusted windows. My eyes slip briefly back to the Count, but his face is normal, or however normal it can be. Ermo is holding his hands behind his back, and my heart clenches. He has been in my chambers—what if he found the knife and the amber? Is that what he conceals behind his back, the evidence of a plan half-realized? What would he think of me if he could see inside my mind and discover my growing willingness to lash out?

Ermo takes a few languid, easy steps toward me, a mischievous gleam in his pale blue eyes. “Marwa thinks you were trying to escape. Is she right?”

“No,” I tell him firmly. The roll is ruined. After tumbling across the carpet, it looks like a baby bunny, fuzzy and gray. “I didn’t break it.”

“Don’t worry, Valla, I believe you.”

“You do?”

“The proof is in the porridge, as they say.” Ermo laughs to himself. “The glass broke inward, so unless you have learned to climb our walls like a spider, you couldn’t have been the one to break the window. If you had, you would be the prettiest spider I’ve seen.”

I can’t help but smile, delighted once more to have his praise. When he’s like this, near to me and kind, it’s almost enough to convince me I could stay. I could endure. Why couldn’t he be the elder son? I don’t want to be this girl I am becoming. I’m desperate for a reason not to be her.

“There is sometimes strange weather in the forest,” he continues. “And a gale could have easily sent a rock at the window. Did you notice any stones on the floor this morning?”

He seems very proud of this conclusion. My palms have begun to sweat, but even afraid, I must not forget my scheme. It should be easy to sway Ermo to my side, for he already seems to like me. And he must do that, and trust me also, or they will never allow me to get close to Leonid. I pretend to ponder his question, letting my face go slack. “Oh! I did see a stone, but I thought it must have been dragged in on my skirt. I kicked it down the hall. Silly, I know, but I did not want to seem slovenly. My, how clever you are, Ermo!”

“Hmm, but not clever enough to solve this mystery.” Ermo tilts his head to the side, finally revealing what was hiding behind his back. It’s one of the shards of the shattered pot Yulnia told me to take. “What’s this?”

Heat floods up my neck. I don’t have time to concoct a convincing lie.

“I caught myself sleepwalking,” I tell him, drooping with embarrassment. “Yulnia suggested I put something sharp on the ground at night. It’s foolish, but I didn’t want to wander far, and since she’s decided to become my tutor, I thought it best to do as she instructed.”

He lowers the shard and frowns. “Sleepwalking? That’s concerning, Valla. I could have the door put back on the cage. . . .”

“N-no!” I sound too terrified. “Please, Ermo, do not put the door back on. I don’t want to feel caged.” My eyes are big and pleading as I take a few halting steps toward him. I make sure he can see my sad, ruined bun. I am the picture of anguish. “We . . . we have a saying in the north, kelepka sa vrebi—to cage is to kill. I’m not caged here, am I?”

Ermo closes his hand lightly around the shard and shakes his head. With his other hand, his left, he closes the distance between us and gently cups my chin. I lean ever so subtly into his touch. Kindness. Tingling warmth blossoms across my chest. “Though you are a rare bird and worth keeping, you are free, Valla. You are free in these halls.” He pulls his hand away as if scalded and closes his eyes, mastering himself. “Ask Yulnia for one of her hair ribbons. You could stretch it across the cage door. Let that wake you. Do not slice up those dainty feet, yes?”

“Oh, yes. There you go, being clever again.” I squeeze out a smile and slip past him, but behind my girlish smile is panic. I wish I could enjoy this brief encounter with him more, but I can’t. The knife and the amber—I must know that they are secure. My gait is slow and wandering until I make it to the first-floor landing. Then I break into a run. Yulnia’s song oozes through the castle, a lullaby for my fear. When I reach my chamber, it is just as Ermo said—the broken pane has been replaced, and one shard of pottery is missing from the collection beneath my bed. I scratch along the bed frame like an animal, crazed, and collapse in relief when I feel the weight of the amber.

The knife and the amber! Thank the Mother that they are exactly where I left them.

That night, my dreams are terrible. Violent. I wake in the freezing cold, startled out of sleep by the raw chattering of my teeth. I’ve walked and wandered in my sleep again. With slowly dawning horror I realize I’ve taken myself to the family graveyard. Small, crooked stone markers are lined up in front of me, the names difficult to read even with moonlight. The stone knife is with me, and I’ve been digging, hands filthy, deep gashes in the mud, where I was stabbing and stabbing. . . .

Feverish, afraid, I glance around, but nobody has followed me this time. The castle is dark and quiet, a looming sentinel, not even a puff of wind to ruffle the flag on the central tower. There are headless trees in the clearing behind the graveyard, dark sap coagulated along the trunks. Above them, eyes like lanterns. And laughter. Giggling.

I clutch the stone knife to my chest, then think better of it and stuff it in my boot. Somehow, even asleep, I managed to pull on my woolen boots. As I stand, the lights in the forest go out and the laughter fades. Odd, it almost seemed friendly, that sound, welcoming. Blind Yurg was my only companion, though now I suppose I have Yulnia. But would she choose me if there were other options? If I hadn’t been forced upon her?

Yulnia would befriend a bullfrog, I tell myself, if it learned to flatter her vanity.

I must get inside. Below me, a stone tablet marking a grave sits in judgment. I lean down, brushing away the errant leaves and dirt, revealing the name.

ALYONA

I say a quiet apology, as if my unconscious scrabbling in the dirt might have disturbed her. Then I flee back toward the front doors of the castle. I’m spinning through excuses for all this in my head when a torch flares to life on my right. I shriek and jump back, hugging myself. The path curves ahead to the left, leading to the steps up to the entrance, but the light has come from Ermo’s workshop.

His worried face, brow creased, appears behind the flame a moment later.

“Valla? What are you doing out here?”

“I . . . I . . .” Tired, petrified, I cover my face with my hands. “I don’t know! One moment I was safe in bed, and then I woke up in the darkness.”

I leave out the part about the knife and the grave.

“Again?” Ermo sighs, looking me up and down. “Did you use one of Yulnia’s ribbons as I bade you?”

“N-no,” I say, shivering. Ermo removes his heavy, oiled coat and throws it over my shoulders. It smells like smoke and leather, and it’s imbued with his own body heat. “I should have. I just didn’t think it would happen again so soon.”

“You’re freezing,” he murmurs. His eyes are filled with pity, and it’s enough to quell the squeezing panic in my heart. “Come, I was working late, but we must get you safely inside.”

“Yes. Yes, thank you. I don’t mean to be a bother.”

“There’s something about this place . . .” Ermo trails off, taking my arm gently, leading me back toward the front doors. “My mother had the same affliction, and Yulnia, too. I’ve never known the men of my family to suffer so. It must be a weakness peculiar to the female mind.”

“Probably,” I say, keeping my head down. “It is horrible. I wish it would stop.”

“The ribbon. That will help. But Valla, if it doesn’t, if this persists, I will have to tell my brother about it.”

We stop on the second step. Lev, asleep, is half crumpled against the alcove beside the doors, his hat askew, a rifle across his knees. Ermo gives him a long-suffering look and, with his free hand, pinches the bridge of his nose. “Damnit, Lev.”

“Please don’t tell Leonid,” I beg him, my hands clasped beneath his weighty coat. “I’m not doing it on purpose. I will get the ribbon from Yulnia, Ermo, I promise, and it will never be a problem again, I swear it!”

“Hush,” he says, touching my chin gently. “There is no need to beg, though your eyes are so beautiful when they’re full of fear and moonlight. I should prefer them, I think, shining with happiness.” He pulls the coat off my shoulders, shrugs it back on, and opens the door. It creaks, quietly, but doesn’t rouse Lev. “Your secret is safe with me, Valla. You are always safe with me.”

When I’m back inside, I hear him aim a savage kick at Lev and curse him out for falling asleep on the watch. I hurry back to my room, my shift, my hair, full of Ermo’s scent. When I tuck the knife back under the mattress, I feel colder. Back in bed, my dreams are blank, and it feels like a small but welcome mercy.

The next morning, I make certain to get a ribbon to tie across my door. Yulnia offers it up with the strangest knowing expression.

A week passes, then another.

Every afternoon and into the evening I sit with Yulnia while she brushes my hair, covers my cheeks with perfumed cream, and commands me to read Krugan’s letters aloud. My reading and language skills are improving, but I am growing to resent the man from Korumpo and his overwrought letters. Somehow I learn to ignore the corpse that sits beside me at supper. His cheek does not move, and for that I am thankful. I am dedicated to being on time for dinner, doing as I’m told, and not raising any suspicion. The marks on my face are no longer crusty and sore, and in my vanity, it fills me with relief.

Over too much wine, Kiril and Ermo argue philosophy and religion. They discuss a god I don’t know, who is worshipped in cities that sound like fantasies, cities with golden cupolas and masked parties, cities filled with ideas and books that sound fascinating to explore. Ermo shows me the library on the second floor of the castle. He tells me I can read whatever I like, and that I should be rewarded for working so hard with Yulnia. When he shows me the book of idioms he has collected and I read them back with no trouble, he compliments my viyesha movia. But there is a melancholy in his eyes as he praises me, a sadness I don’t quite understand.

He doesn’t try to touch me anymore, and it stings more than I like to admit.

Yulnia instructs me in three dances (the waltz, the galopade, and the promenade) and chides me for spending too much time in the library. The books are moving, it’s true, but I am not just filling my head with daydreams. No, I am on the hunt. No matter how many moldering, damp, dying books I search through, I can find no mention of Bony Leg or a woman with a moving house. It occurs to me that perhaps these people from the Capital are incredibly stupid, and that the ground tremors are a natural phenomenon; but then, the pauzhuk, rozhmaka, and yiliksii and all the rest do not seem normal and are not found in the library’s books, which complicates things.

I do find a small naturalist’s manual written by a man named Daniil Chernyo, who catalogued and sketched many of the plants found throughout the north. Accurately, he describes elartsis as dangerously poisonous, and I take the manual to Yulnia.

The following day, when I go to read letters with her, the canister of dried tea is gone.

More than a fortnight after Leonid’s departure, a rider is spotted on the road south of the castle. He warns of Count Leonid’s return and declares that he has been seen with his retinue less than two days’ ride away. Dinner is strained that evening, and nobody wants to speak. Kiril gets too anxiously drunk and falls asleep at the table. Yulnia glowers at Ermo, as if the news is somehow his fault. Leonid’s return is a storm cloud hanging over all of us, but me most of all.

Two days.

In Leonid’s absence, my fury has somewhat ebbed. Life here is almost tolerable when he is away. Maybe the knife will not be needed. Maybe the trip will have lifted his spirits. Maybe everything will be different now.

But now that I know Leonid is coming, my shoulders creep higher, and my limbs ache, unbearably stiff, as if I am hardening all over, growing a shell to ward him off. That night, the night we learn of Leonid’s impending return, I sleepwalk again. This time, the ribbon tied between the bars of my cage catches me, gently pushing me back, and I cry out, shocking myself out of a dream. It was a simple dream of the harvest moon rising over Lakes Temtol and Tarlii, climbing to sit fat and golden in the sky above the foreboding sprawl of the Gottyar Wood.

I wake up, but I’m not empty-handed. Above the ribbon tightened across the cage’s opening, my arms are outstretched, holding the chunk of amber aloft. As a small girl, I sometimes held my straw dolls the same way, lifting them to spin around, taken by a moment of spontaneous joy. Beyond the amber there is a single spear of moonlight penetrating the window. It wouldn’t have been shining so brightly into the room but for the new panes of glass, which are not as gray and crusty as the others. My eye traces from the amber to the light, and if I were to walk forward, they would perfectly align.

I duck under the ribbon, keep my arms raised, and tiptoe forward.

The amber meets the moonlight, and motes of spangled green explode across the walls.

My mind shatters into a hundred wailing cries, all of them screaming: THE SHARP.

15

The runes on the black stone knife. Mother’s mercy, the runes on the knife.

No, the runes carved into THE SHARP.

I hurry back to the bed, duck the ribbon, and dig out the black sliver of stone, carrying it to the middle of my bedchamber. For many days now the poison in my blood was quiet, and I mistakenly thought it was gone. Now my veins are bursting with fire. The burn is an imperative, like drums, like a warband on the move, like the threat of thunder rumbling on the horizon. I let it take me, and I thrust the knife, runes facing the window, upward and then hold the amber up to the light. The same green dazzle comes, illuminating the blade, and the marks, illegible before, spring to life before my eyes.

Three bright marks. Three bright words.

SEAL

BEFORE

BLOOD

What does it mean? I know more, but not enough. For the rest of the wretched night I puzzle over the meaning of the phrase. I beg the poison still in my blood to give me the answers, and I pound my fists against the pillow, lost in a furious tantrum, willing this thing conspiring with me to state its desires plainly. It makes me feel small and stupid. If this “Bony Leg” is behind the messages, why won’t she communicate plainly?

The hours drip by, torturous. There is howling before dawn, mournful and just outside the gates. I sit in the caged alcove of my bed, staring at the knife nestled in my palms. I know more, but not enough. The howling thrills through me, vibrating, and it’s like the baleful wolves are baying with my own mouth. Their frustration is mine. I leave the bed and crawl up on the little desk, cramming myself against the window. The white mist gathers along the palisades, yellow flickering eyes dancing within the fog. Something is drawing near, and it makes the poison spark in my body.

Morning is a groggy blur. Yulnia has decreed that I have another bath ahead of Leonid’s return. Marwa scrubs me until I’m as pink as a piglet and gives me a bowl of barley porridge. I eat it standing in the kitchen to avoid the dead Count’s presence. When I ask Marwa if she heard the howling in the night, she dismisses the question. I spend the rest of the day in the library, listening to Yulnia’s songs and seeking clarification to the clues I discovered in the night. Seal before blood. Repeatedly, I find references to covenants, most prominently, marriage.

Mother guide me. It seems impossible that my benefactor would wish that I marry Count Leonid before using the Sharp, but maybe that is precisely what she desires.

During dinner, there are more tremors that shake the castle. It feels like a giant worm has slid beneath Valtivisk, lifting it. Alyona’s portrait slides off the wall and Kiril’s wine carafe tips over, staining the table red. Even Kiril looks frightened by the ground quakes. Bony Leg. She’s on the move. The hissing in my blood tells me she’s agitated.

Marwa bustles in with her cart to clean up the wine. Ermo calmly stands, smooths his hands down his embroidered tunic, and hangs the picture back on the wall.

Leonid arrives after we have all gone to bed. There is shouting in the courtyard and the banging of horse hooves on the drawbridge. After that, I can’t fall back asleep, and I hug the black stone knife to my chest, clasping it to my wild and drumming heart. The next day stubbornly dawns, despite my fervent pleas for the hours to stop up like a dam. At the usual time, I hear Marwa’s cart squeaking along outside my door, but she doesn’t bring me porridge with her expected, clipped greeting. Instead, two figures hover in the hall, speaking in hushed voices.

One of them is Leonid. I recognize his hunched, brutish shape. Quickly, before they can come inside, I fetch the knife out from under my pillow and shove it down into the boots lined up by the closet. With Leonid back, it will feel safer to keep the weapon with me.

Marwa finally enters my chamber, eyes downcast, her posture concerning me immediately. I am sitting up on the edge of the bed, watching her, pretending that there isn’t a knife wedged against my foot.

“Marwa, is something wrong?”

“You need to hurry and come with me,” she says, no warmth in her tone. No kindness. I knew it would be different when Leonid came home, but I didn’t think it would happen so quickly. “Swiftly now, get dressed. You wouldn’t make the Count wait.”

I would. I absolutely would. But I have been preparing for this moment. As I get off the bed and move across the chamber, my hands flex and open, and I realize that I’m yearning to reach for the knife. Marwa gives me a clean, stiff gown to wear over my shift, but my fingers are so nervous and clumsy with the toggles and ties that she slaps my hands away and does it all for me.

When we reach the corridor, Leonid is gone, but his presence lingers.

“It’s time,” Marwa tells me as we start down the stairs.

“For what?”

“To prepare for your wedding.”

Rumbling male voices rise to us from the front hall. I slow my steps, dreading what lies ahead. “What will it be like?”

Marwa sniffs and shakes her head. “Not like ours, bride-girl. They will dress you in robes and jewels, place a crown on your head, but first, you must abide by their customs and kneel in the chapel.”

“What is a chapel?”

“It’s where they go to worship their god.”

“Why can’t they do that anywhere? The Moon Mother and the Stag Father are everywhere.”

“It’s just . . . different. Don’t ask them too many questions. Kneel when they tell you to kneel, and say what they want you to say. When you are done in the chapel, they will put you in the robes and crown, the Count will take your hands, and the selvitel will do the rest.” Marwa turns, reaches back, and pulls me until I’m at her side. “Don’t drag your feet. It won’t spare you.”

“It feels too soon,” I murmur. The dream of something that was never in reach vanishes. That dream was Ermo, maybe, or freedom. I feel hollow, deep in my own head, and then jarred, as if a steel door is slamming shut in my face.

“You have been here more than a fortnight,” she says. “What did you expect?”

“Not this.”

She grunts. “Someone let you down, child. Someone filled your head with rot. When you are countess, remember who treated you kind.”

I’m sure none of this surprises Marwa; I’m sure she’s seen it all before.

Kiril, Ermo, and Leonid are waiting for us at the bottom of the stairs. Their conversation ends as we appear, and all three of them stare at me, though they wear unique expressions. Kiril grins, showing the ends of his brown teeth. Ermo looks disappointed, or perhaps concerned. As Leonid observes me, his lip curls with disgust. He eats up the distance between us with three furious strides and uses all of his fingers to pinch the side of my stomach. It stings long after the initial jolt.

“You overfed her,” he barks, glaring at Marwa. “Back to broth, and you’ll join her, foolish woman. I was very clear: do not overindulge her.”

Ermo scoffs. “Brother, Bilenko will come again soon; Marwa will need the strength to unload the heavy—”

“She will make do,” Leonid shouts over him. “I leave for a fortnight and all of you forget who I am. What an ungrateful welcome!” He takes me roughly by the wrist. “And I have brought gifts for you. I should burn them.”

I fix my eyes on the floor between us. “I only ate what I was given.”

And it’s true. My ribs are less noticeable, that is all, though I’m convinced Leonid simply wants something to be upset about. Inside my mouth, my teeth are tightly clenched. How dare he punish Marwa for feeding me? Now she will hate me, and I had worked so hard to win her respect.

Leonid leans down, directing his venomous words into my ear. “Everyone says you have been working hard to improve yourself. They claim you are listening. You are learning. Very well, I will not destroy your gifts.” He pauses, sniffing. “The scars are still noticeable, but Kiril assures me that will change. All these things you’ve done . . . should I believe it? Girls are often false. They lie. They show you what you want to see until you are ensnared, and then they curdle and harden their hearts.”

I wonder if he means the girls that came before me or if he means his mother.

“I have worked hard in your absence,” I whisper, tears gathering in my eyes. I blink, rapidly, hoping he will not see them. “All of it was to please you.”

That satisfies him.

“Then, to the chapel. Ermo, move the dravstenya khen from the carriage house and take it to her chamber.” Leonid does not relax his bruising grip but yanks me through the archway to the left of the grand stairs. He pauses there, remembering something, and snaps his fingers impatiently at Marwa. “When was she last bathed?”

“Yesterday, my lord,” says the cook, cowering.

“Good enough.”

Leonid drags me into the northeastern tower. The first chamber is as vaulted as the castle’s entrance hall, half-heartedly decorated with unraveling tapestries and a smattering of furniture, as if the room is both an afterthought and an attempt to keep up appearances for guests who will never appear. Kiril follows us, muttering to himself, while we press deeper into the castle through a crumbling corridor that leads to the southeastern tower. I have never been to this part of Valtivisk. I would be curious to take it all in, but it feels like Leonid might snap my arm at any moment, and my mind keeps circling around the phrase dravstenya khen. I am still sharpening my command of the dialect, but it means something like maiden’s cloth.

By the time we reach the chapel, I’m trembling and out of breath. I can’t stop myself from gasping for air, panting like a badger in a trap.

If Leonid or Kiril notice my panic, they don’t comment on it. Maybe this is expected. Maybe the girls brought to the chapel are always fighting to keep sobs at bay. The chapel itself is nestled into the very corner of the southeastern tower, guarded by a ponderously heavy door, which Kiril struggles to open. The hinges shriek, as if nobody has come to this place in an age. The dusty motes saturating the air inside hint at that, too.

“Gravno, did you do nothing to prepare?” Leonid aims a kick at the back of Kiril’s leg as the selvitel goes to wipe down a wooden altar at the front of the chamber. He uses the gray sleeve of his too-short smock, sneezing as clouds of fuzzy powder engulf him. There are a dozen short benches before us, an aisle between them, and an ancient gold rug marking the path up to Kiril and the altar. Slim windows swathed in tassels and curtains allow in the scantest glow of early-morning light. It feels like how the inside of the little wooden box where my mother keeps her beaded necklaces and silver rings would feel if she had buried it in ash and forgotten it for a century.

Kiril disappears behind the altar, then hops up with a richly embroidered red sash draped over his shoulders. He sneezes again as Leonid shoves me away from him and up the aisle. The Count does not move from his place by the door.

“Go,” he rasps at me. “I am not even meant to be here.”

So why are you?

Kiril raises his arms above his head and begins chanting. It reminds me of the way he muttered and sang when I first arrived, and he nearly smothered me to death in my chamber. No, not my chamber. None of this is mine. A hollow, sick sensation envelops me as I turn and proceed slowly up the golden rug. My palm itches. Could I fight them both? I have no experience, no training, and Kiril is a grown man. If I wait, if I’m patient, I can get Leonid alone.

The closer I drift toward the altar, the louder Kiril’s voice becomes. He throws his head back, shuts his eyes, and shrieks, lost in unbridled exultation. Spit dribbles down into the curling wisp of his beard. The words boom and echo, and I flinch, glancing back at Leonid for instruction. He stands with his arms over his chest, a black shadow darkening the doorway. It’s then I realize that he’s chosen that spot for a reason—he can catch me if I try to run.

There are depressions in the wall behind Kiril, each scooped section of stone holding a clay statue. They are painted but faded, women and men, all of them draped in yellow-gold cloth, red tears on their cheeks, arms stretched wide. Kiril’s screams rattle them in their alcoves, and I stiffen, bracing, waiting for them to fall and crack.

Somehow, I will be blamed for that, too.

Kiril falls abruptly silent. The pointed chamber rings with his final cry. He takes a small broom from within the altar and comes around to stand behind me. The broom tumbles out of his grasp as he clumsily reaches for the wide sash holding my robe closed.

“Why are you doing that? Leave me alone!” I try to slap his hands away, and he swears.

He’s annoyingly strong, managing to tear the woolen garment and swirl it aside, draping it over one of the empty benches. His breath is sour, and the chapel stinks of mold. I’m becoming dizzy, but dagger-point fingertips dig into my shoulders, pressing me down. I kneel, huddling, embarrassed and freezing in the thin white shift.

What if he asks for that, too? What if he asks for my boots and finds the knife?

The rough bristles of the broom rake over my head and over my spine. He beats me about the neck and shoulders as if I’m an unsightly scattering of dirt.

“Pecratus normines,” he hisses at me, mussing my hair with the stubby broom. “Pecratus normines, pecratus normines, pecratus normines . . .” Faster and faster. More urgent, more crazed.

“What do you want from me?” I whisper, covering my face, willing the ready tears not to fall.

“Name the sin,” Kiril murmurs back. He hovers over me, the end of his beard brushing the back of my neck. I spasm away from him, my forehead almost touching the floor. “Name the sin, girl, name the sin!”

“I don’t know what you want! Please! Please.”

I’ve never heard this language. I’ve never knelt in a chapel and been beaten with a broom. I don’t know who the little figurines are that watch me with impassive, bloody faces. Their eyes are all looking up, which feels like a sort of mercy. At least they aren’t staring while this man hisses and drools over me in his addled fury.

“For pity’s sake, just say things you’ve done, Valla,” Leonid finally shouts. He sounds impatient, and bored. “Bad things. List them out. Anything you are ashamed of, tell it to him.”

The broom sweeps down my upper back, following the curve of my bent spine.

“I-I told all the girls in the village that my brother snores!”

The chant in the strange language comes again, and then the bristles.

“Blind Yurg took me hunting once, and I returned after d-dark. I didn’t want Father to know I was with the pariah, so I lied and told him I got lost foraging for mushrooms. . . .”

The chant. The broom.

The words start to tumble out faster.

“I called Maksi names and was unkind to her on the road.”

“More!” Leonid’s voice booms across the chapel floor.

“I don’t know! I can’t . . . I c-can’t think. . . .”

The Count stamps his boot on the ground. “More, Valla! I know there’s more.”

There is more. There is so much more. There is the hate boiling in my poisoned heart. And what of the black stone knife hidden in my shoe? What of the vow I made to myself? What of all the nasty thoughts about Leonid that have cluttered up my head?

What do you want me to say, you bastard—that I will gut you where you stand?

It feels like I’m shrinking, like I’m becoming part of the floor. The bristles tear at my shift, ripping it, and the hard sticks of the broom scratch at my flesh. My right arm unfurls from its coiled position against my breast, and my hand crawls along the floor, following the shape of my knee and my shin, reaching for the knife. My thoughts are beginning to untangle. Clarity is beginning to dawn.

I know it’s not time yet, but maybe I want it to be. These urges, this violence doesn’t feel like it’s coming from outside anymore. It’s bubbling up from my own font, deep inside.

Before my fingers can slip between skin and wool to touch stone, the floor trembles, then violently quakes. Boom-toom, boom-toom. The statues in the alcoves teeter precariously. Kiril leaps back, scuttling like a night roach fleeing flames. One by one, the little figurines drop off their ledges, but they are soft clay and do not shatter; instead, they roll wildly across the floor.

Boom-toom, boom-toom. Bony Leg is on the move.

“Enough!” Leonid shouts. He strides down the aisle even as the castle judders visibly from the force of the quakes. Kiril scrambles to gather up the fallen statuettes, and Leonid whips my frock off the bench, tossing it on top of me. “Get dressed,” he growls. “I’ve no patience for these tired, old-fashioned rites.”

The tremors cease. Kiril wipes his sweaty face nervously and places the statues back in their alcoves. When the gown is wrapped and tied around me once more, Leonid drags me away from the altar, away from the chapel, retracing our path to the front hall. He’s as shambling and damp as the paper peeling down the walls of the entry chamber. I can see the fear in his pale blue eyes and read it in the taut line of his lips. He swipes his hand over his face and pushes me away with all the strength he can muster, sending me toppling against the stairs. I didn’t make the tremors come, but I am blamed for it anyway. Maybe he sees it as a bad omen, the forest rejecting our union. There is a worse possibility—that the power of the forest delights in it. Seal before blood. Perhaps our marriage is necessary for whatever magic the raven messenger desires. . . .

As low as a prowling wolf, I cling to the thin carpet and railing.

At the commotion, Marwa hurries toward us from the dining room, drying her hands off on her apron. She sees me cowering against the stairs and stops short. “My lord?”

“The bride clothes should be in her chamber. Take her there and make her as pretty as you can. I don’t want to see her before dusk. Dusk,” he says, his eyes seeking along the ground until they just reach my feet. He won’t look me in the eyes. “Dusk, when she becomes my wife.”

16

Yulnia is waiting in the little white chamber, right at home in her old childhood room. She sits on the edge of a half-opened wooden crate, straw stuffing spilling out onto the floor, a corner of silvery fabric pulled through the gap.

“New dravstenya khen,” she murmurs, testing the fabric between her fingers. “Expensive, too. I wonder why he didn’t just use Mother’s. It’s tradition.”

“He claims to have no patience for tired, old-fashioned rites.”

“Only the Count knows,” says Marwa.

Yulnia snorts with laughter. “No patience for it? Leonid has never had one original thought in his head. But then . . .” She sighs and stands, wandering toward the desk and the window. “But then he does despise Mother, and perhaps he thinks her wedding garments are somehow cursed. The fool. If anything is cursed, it’s us. We came out of her.”

“Sh-hh.” Marwa pinches her own nose. “To speak this way, Yulnia! A lady—”

“A lady what? Doesn’t know of such things? Doesn’t dare speak of them? A lady is meant to squirt out the children but never acknowledge the fact?” She drinks in our matching expressions of horror. Giggling, she hoists herself onto the desk and sits, kicking her feet. “Oh, but it’s just us girls here. Marwa. You make sausage, don’t you? You know how it gets made, how all the bits of belly and hoof and snout get chopped up itty-bitty fine and stuffed into intestines. That’s far worse than anything to do with childbirth, so don’t pretend to be delicate.”

“She means to shock you,” I tell Marwa, going to sit on the bed. I wait until their attention is elsewhere, letting the knife remain behind in my grubby woolen boot.

“And she does,” Marwa breathes, wrenching the crate open. “Mother, but she does.”

“What did you think of the chapel, northern girl?” Yulnia asks, addressing me but keeping her eyes trained on the silver garments being unloaded from the crate.

The skin on my nape stings, reminding me of the broom. I choose my words carefully. “I don’t know what to think of it. I didn’t understand any of it.”

“That’s the church for you,” says Yulnia.

Marwa glares. The girl puts up her hands in surrender.

“I for one can’t wait to be poked with a silly broom and forced to list out my sins,” Yulnia continues. She sighs dreamily. “When I do, it means I’m far from here and hours away from being dear Krugan’s at last. And I will make the old priest soil himself with my confessions—I won’t be holding anything back. I’ll give them a show they won’t forget. Ha! What about you, Valla? Did you clasp your best secrets close to your heart or mention them all?”

The knife. The vow. I smile, trying not to think too hard about the tremors that interrupted the ceremony. It was as if Bony Leg, if she even exists, realized that I meant to defend myself with the knife and intervened. Leonid certainly noticed the timing. Seal before blood. My gaze settles on the crates and the clothes; if marriage is a seal, that step will soon be complete.

“I was honest,” I tell them demurely, faking a shy smile. “I listed every bad thing that brought me shame.”

Marwa stands tall, resting her knuckles on her hips, and regards me with genuine astonishment. Perhaps even pride. Yulnia rolls her eyes and flips her braid. “What an obedient girl you are, my dolly. I’ve taught you so well.”

Under Yulnia’s watchful eye, Marwa makes me pretty. Pretty. A small word for a small idea. I’m starting to hate pretty, yet pieces of me ache to belong to it. Pretty doesn’t feel mine anymore. But what is mine? The knife and the amber, sometimes my body, though increasingly that is beyond my control, too.

Marwa brushes my hair, braids it, and loops it into an intricate design on top of my head. They dress me in a clean shift and help me into the ceremonial silver gown. It’s loose and swallowing, the size of a shirt meant for a giant. The fabric is heavy, pulling me down toward the ground. It feels like a garment made for someone else. There are delicate matching slippers and a tiara that nestles down into my braids. There is nowhere to hide the knife in this nuptial costume, and Yulnia and Marwa are so near, they would surely see me fumbling with it. With a pang, I know the Sharp must stay behind in my boot. They don’t notice it hiding there, a weak consolation. Yulnia pins the crown in place while Marwa adjusts the neck of my shift, hiding the welts rising along my nape.

“Dravstenya khen,” Marwa proclaims as she smooths out the wrinkles on my silver gown. “The maiden’s cloth.”

They fuss over me until dusk. The hours slide by, and as Marwa and Yulnia prepare me for my wedding, I can’t stop studying my hands. The gaps between my fingers spread while things slip through my grasp—girlhood, innocence, the idea of what my life should have been. Everyone in Arylik knew I would leave someday, that I wasn’t meant to be a wife to their sons, and so my face would become a memory and I would become a subject they discussed like the weather or the water level of the lakes.

That Valla, what ever happened to her? She went away to be a countess—what a lucky girl!

Apparently, I had no future there, among the villagers of Arylik, and I learned to love the future and events that had not come to pass but surely would. I dreamed of this moment, of its import, dreamed of the glittering, rosy world I had earned with my beauty. What would my mother and father say if they saw me now? What would Gavril and Maksi think? I close my eyes and try to imagine them, even as their faces pass like fine sand through my fingers.

Daylight fades, the castle drenched in the far more familiar darkness, and Yulnia sings the Bridesong while we march down to the front hall. We are going to the chapel again, and I dread to revisit it.

Clasp your hands among your folk,

Crack the egg and catch the yolk,

With apple garlands in your hair,

The Mother seals you as a pair.

“In Arylik, a union must happen on a full moon,” I say, babbling nervously. “That is when the Mother is most potent, and when she most resembles a woman heavy with child. Your family surrounds you, making a circle, honoring the moon. You take the hands of your partner, and your parents take turns cracking eggs over the bond. The egg mess is rinsed way with moon water, and then you eat a cold winter apple together. . . .”

Yulnia sings softly. Marwa hangs her head.

“I remember,” says the cook. She urges me down the stairs, her fingers pressed to my lower back. “It’s beautiful to witness.”

“What will this be like?” I ask them.

“Kiril will say a few words, you and the Count will exchange promises, and then it will be done,” Marwa replies.

“That is not so bad.” No, it is not so bad. The bad will come after. I know I will be expected to spend time with Leonid alone in his bedchamber. That I will have to lie with him in order to make children. The thought fills my mouth with bile, a pit opening in my stomach. I’m starting to worry that I won’t have the courage to kill him, that he will be too strong, too big, and even an ambush won’t be enough to grant me success.

One step at a time, I think, commanding myself to breathe. Seal before blood.

There are candles lit throughout the castle, marking a flickering path to the chapel. When we finally arrive, ending our dragging death march, Kiril, Leonid, and Ermo are waiting at the altar for me, as if I am to marry all three. The statues are back in their alcoves, gazing at the ceiling, sparing me their sculpted, bloody gazes. Yulnia’s eyes sparkle with tears as she gives me a kiss on each cheek and then waits with Marwa at the back of the chapel. Once more, it feels like they are posted there not as witnesses, but as sentries.

The distance from the end of the gold carpet to the altar could be the distance from Arylik to Valtivisk, and the result of the journey is the same: I, Valla, daughter of Pushtil, become Count Leonid’s bride. But I am not the same as the girl who left her northern village to venture south into uncertainty and terror. My eyes are wide-open, and I see the Count for what he is. Warmth floods through me, tingling the ends of my fingers and toes. There is a tangle of nerves in my belly—of course there is—but I keep my head high, and a calm sense of purpose carries me forward.

The men turn to watch me. Ermo tries to smile, but there’s nothing behind it. And Kiril grins with all his teeth, more menacing than welcoming, while Leonid glowers. He wears a silver tunic like mine, knotted with beads and embroidery, and a furred hat fixed to his lumpy head by a strap beneath his chin. In the weak glow of the candles, his cheese-white face glows like the full moon. It’s ridiculous. We both look ridiculous. And if we were friendly, if we could laugh together, I would say as much, and we would snort and hold hands and find a way to enjoy it anyway.

But we are not friendly, and we do not laugh.

We are two children playing dress-up, swimming in hideous clothes, presided over by a brown-toothed charlatan who thinks he can raise the dead. The dead. There is a shape bundled up in the frontmost bench, and it catches in the corner of my eye. They have moved the Count’s corpse into the chapel for the occasion, and he is wrapped in a shining black stole.

Ermo steps away and sits beside his dead father, leaving a noticeable gap between them. I can tell he’s anxious, eager for all this to be done. Kiril lifts his arms in skyward supplication and says some words and chants, and then I’m told things to repeat. Leonid, the brute, flexes his jaw and nostrils and clamps his clammy hands down over mine with enough pressure to fracture the bones. At one point Leonid has a coughing fit, and we have to wait until he’s composed himself. A ring of sweat bleeds from the neck of his robe, beads of perspiration popping out along the ridge of his brows.

The castle is quiet—no howling, no tremors, no ravens tapping at the windows. Silence. That stillness does not feel reverent, but watchful, a deep breath held by the whole of the surrounding forest.

Leonid tries to shatter my fingers again after his coughing fit, for the ceremony is not quite done.

“We conclude with your promise, Valla. Fidelity, courage, patience. These are the pillars of an unbreakable union. Do you vow to give your husband your fidelity, your courage, and your patience?” Kiril asks. His eyes burrow into the side of my face so insistently, I wonder if he can see my tongue. “If so, say: I do.”

Leonid smiles hungrily. He already knows what I will say. There is only one answer when the lights are off and your back is shoved against a wall.

“I do.”

We take the same vows and speak the same lies, both of us understanding that Leonid could not act with fidelity, courage, or patience if his very life depended on it. Well. His life does depend on it. There is a tense moment, as if everyone is waiting for something, but I don’t know what. Kiril coughs into his fist. Leonid grunts and bobbles forward, smearing a kiss across my cheek, choosing a spot without scars. From the back of the chapel, Yulnia claps her hands. There should be more—a gong, a drum, a bolt of lightning striking the chapel tower. But there’s just the muted pap-pap-pap of Yulnia’s clapping and Leonid’s heavy breathing.

Kiril inhales with whistling force through his nose, spreading his hands to encompass us both. “Before God and these assembled kin, the covenant is sealed.”

I was my papa’s good, sweet daughter. Now I belong to the Count.

17

Where are the tremors and quakes? Where are the black beasts of night wailing outside the castle walls? Whatever confidence I found in the chapel evaporates like so much morning mist as Leonid leads me to his bedchamber. A lump of sadness wells in my throat; I feel, at the threshold of the yawning bedroom door, abandoned.

I close my eyes, take a steadying breath, and imagine the children of the forest swarming over the spiked palisades, the deep roots of the wood snaking beneath the earth to erupt through the dungeon and pull Valtivisk down around my ears. I see time and nature’s splendid patience taking it all, scattering the stones, growing new things in reclaimed soil, the river washing away the moat, the wind whittling the Gottyar-Vyriz Road down and down until it is no wider than a healing cut.

Yulnia, Ermo, and Kiril followed us to Leonid’s chamber, a maudlin parade of maudlin faces, except for Kiril, who is disturbingly excited. All the way from the chapel to the second floor I can hear his excited little gulps, like a child anticipating a sweet. Yulnia tries to say something, but Leonid pushes me inside the room and slams the door behind us.

His room is dressed in darkness—an ancient bear pelt lies prostrate before the high-burning hearth, a bed crowned with antlers to the left of the fire, a collection of stuffed animal heads staring down at us with expressions of frozen surprise. Greasy tallow candles spit their smell and flame in dishes placed around the room. It takes me a moment to spy him among the leaping light and devouring shadows, but a man sits in a tall-backed chair in the alcove opposite Leonid’s bed. Another corpse? No. He is alive and moving. I gasp at the sight of him, startled.

“That’s just Armen. Ignore him,” Leonid mutters. Armen appears to be a giant coat with a high collar, two burning coals for eyes, and a floppy hat that covers most of his long, stringy hair. There’s a man in there somewhere, but he’s hard to discern. The Count goes to a wardrobe decorated with antlers that’s next to Armen’s chair and begins changing into his nightclothes. Standing on the bear pelt, I turn away, staring at the window over the bed. I beg another raven to appear and hurtle through the glass, then soar across the room to peck Leonid’s eyes. Nothing arrives to save me, and I hear the soft hush of his robes falling into a puddle around his feet.

My mouth goes dry, my teeth aching in their sockets.

Even if I had the black stone knife, we are not alone. Will we ever be?

Leonid shuffles back into view, going to the bed and sitting down on the edge of it. He is wearing a knurled sleeping robe, open down the middle, a sliver of white flesh exposed from his neck to his waist.

“Remove your robe,” he says gruffly. His eyes flit along the floor, as if he is nervous about what I might do.

Every bone in my body stiffens and revolts as I obey. The crown is digging into my scalp, the pins escaping the braids as the whole contraption begins to sag. I lift off the tiara and wince as it pulls and drags along my head. When it is on the ground at my feet, I carefully peel the oversize silver tunic up over my head, taking great pains to keep the shift from going with it. He offers no further instruction, and so I toss the garment in a heap by the crown.

Frowning, he pats the place beside him. “Sit.”

I can feel Armen’s eyes follow me across the room. He takes out a pipe and begins to smoke. My skin is not my skin. It is a loose drape of worms writhing over the locked muscles of my arms and legs. But I go and I sit, every step the disjointed spasm of one of Yulnia’s wooden dolls. I put my hands on the tops of my legs and stare unblinkingly across the gulf of floor and shaggy bear pelt to where Armen sits observing us.

Leonid’s head turns slowly toward me. His quick, hot breaths land against my left upper arm. He seems to be deciding something.

His voice is low and almost tentative as he murmurs, “You won’t be like her, will you? You won’t be like my mother was to my father. To my father, the Count. You’ll be obedient. You’ll give me all the children that I want. You won’t argue and make yourself a nuisance, will you?”

“I’m not her,” I tell him in a similarly anxious whisper. It feels at least partially true. “I have done all that you ask.”

“That’s true,” he says. “You have.”

“Why is Armen here?”

“Don’t ask questions. Don’t make yourself a nuisance.” He sighs and shakes his head. “He’s here to protect me. You’re a strange girl from the northern villages, practically a beast. Maybe, with time . . .” Across the room, Armen inhales a phantom of curling smoke. “Maybe one day there will be trust, but only if you keep at your studies and your manners. If you keep doing as I ask.”

He reaches his left hand toward my face and doesn’t quite trace the scars rising in diagonal ranges across my cheek. His fingers never make contact, though they re-create the shape. “Kiril says the scars will fade.”

I nod, swallowing nothing, for my mouth is still sticky and dry. I wish I had the knife. Even if there are two of them, even if I would never stand a chance against them both . . .

“They will fade.” It sounds like a command. “I will have a beautiful wife like I was promised, and when you are lovely again, you will have everything a countess should. And if not, well . . . my father warned me that all men tire of their wives eventually and keep a mistress,” says my husband, the boy. “Don’t worry. That is some years away.”

A scream lodges in my throat as he begins to drag the fabric of my left sleeve up my arm. The delicate hairs there rise like protective quills, crowning the gooseflesh that bubbles up at exposure. I don’t know what he is going to do, and every wild spiral of speculation returns me to the hideous truth: I am outnumbered and utterly defenseless.

When my sleeve is rolled up to my shoulder, Leonid looks at the naked skin of my arm for a torturous age. His breath makes me want to flinch, but I freeze myself into place. I am not here. I am not even Valla. I am little dolly. I am sitting on Yulnia’s shelf. I am fading away from consciousness, unwilling to see or hear what comes next.

If I’m not really here, then it didn’t really happen. I can pretend it’s Ermo beside me, for they look enough alike at a squint.

But Leonid merely takes his left hand and drags his fingertips in a circle over the chilled flesh of my upper arm. He turns his head away, still touching me, and shudders. As if bitten, he yanks his hand back.

“You may go,” he whispers. He clears his throat. “Armen, see her back to her chambers.”

“My lord?” I look between the two of them, confused.

Armen clamps his pipe between his lips and stomps over to the pile of wedding garments on the bear pelt. He begins to collect the dress and crown, but Leonid shoos him away. “No,” he says. “Forget all that; just take her away. I’m done with her for now.”

I remind myself not to retreat with too much enthusiasm. Ducking my head, I follow Armen out the door. When I glance back at Leonid, he is staring into the fire, a strange, dreamy smile fixed on his face. He looks pleased with himself. Pleased with me. He looks, unbelievably, content.

When we reach my chambers, Armen waits until I go inside. It doesn’t make sense to me until I see the door slotted back onto the cage over the bed. Ermo lied; I am not free to roam the halls. Armen and I are both quiet while I shuffle into my prison. The smell of pipe smoke clings to the room long after he goes, long after he has wordlessly locked me away on the night I’ve become the Count’s wife.

I stuff my hand into my old woolen boot, feeling for the black stone knife. It’s there, my now familiar friend, waiting and warm.

18

The next day, Leonid presents me with a gift.

There is an out-of-order gong ringing through the castle at midmorning. I wait in my cage until Marwa comes to bring me a frock for the day. She fixes my messy braids and tells me there will be porridge soon, but I must go down and receive the Count’s gift. The gown she has brought is dark crimson, black embroidered leaves chasing around the neckline. It is the prettiest thing I’ve seen in the castle.

“What is this gift?” I ask her. I can’t help but be suspicious. It feels like another cruel joke, like another corpse at the dinner table. “Do you know?”

“I heard Ermo and the Count discussing it,” Marwa replies, guiding me toward the door. “They say it is a pet! How marvelous. I hope it is a kitten—the kitchens could use a mouser.”

“A kitten,” I repeat under my breath. I cannot imagine Leonid handling something so innocent and sweet. The knife is back in my boot, and I feel it press against my anklebone. Have I married a man who would gift me a kitten?

No, I haven’t. For when Marwa and I descend to the front hall, where a servant girl has struck the chime and stands there huddling, afraid of the sound she herself has made, there are no curious, fuzzy animals waiting to become my companion. In fact, I see nothing at all that looks like a probable gift. Leonid waits at the foot of the stairs, squishing around in his boots like an excited child. When he catches sight of me, he jams his fingers in his mouth and plucks out a whistle. A circular door I had never noticed opens from the side of the stairs, unleashing a potent cloud of rot-scented air. Out of that fog walks Kiril, his beard flung over one shoulder, a young man in a stained linen tunic limping behind him.

Marwa quietly invokes the Moon Mother from the step behind me.

“Bring him here, Kiril, quickly,” says Leonid, gesturing.

Kiril has maintained his giddiness from the night before. With a flourish, he urges the fellow forward. Hunched, wearing a copper bucket like a helmet, the young man trundles over to where Leonid stands. What little of his flesh is visible is mottled with burn scars, his forearms and neck the texture of a melted candle. An uneven gap has been cut into the bucket, two frightened eyes peering out from the hole. He holds his hands tucked against his chest, like a raccoon surveying on hind legs.

There is some unspoken signal between Marwa and the other servant, and they disappear into the archway leading to the dining chamber.

“I’m told one of the logger’s sons was messing about and fell into a kiln at the sawmill. Something like eighteen years old. Such a pity. When he survived, it seemed a waste to kill him. Do not be afraid of him, wife. He is very docile and stupid—no threat to you at all. The accident addled his wits, and he will do as you command and follow at your heel.” Leonid flicks the bucket on the burned man’s head, and it makes a sharp tink sound.

I don’t like it. Leonid and Kiril are too keen, too pleased with themselves. I should have known that any “gift” from the Count would be tainted. Not that it’s the young man’s fault. On the contrary, I feel nothing but pity for him.

“Why does he have that on his head?” I ask, frowning.

“Beslavna, his countenance is too gruesome for a lady like yourself to behold,” says Kiril.

Leonid snorts. “He was, at one time, a young man with pride; now he’s but a misshapen thing unworthy to be seen without his bucket—nobody who looks like him wants to be seen.”

My eyes roam to Leonid, and boldly, I look him in the face and say, “I would have accepted a hound.”

His hand stiffens at his side. “Hounds can be trained to attack; this broken creature would never raise a hand to me, nor even to an insect. My sister likes dolls—and see? I have made you one, the most lifelike one of all. A young lady should have her dolls.”

“I thought provisions were scarce,” I continue, trying a different strategy. I must not lose sight of my plan, and having a young man follow me around at all times will not make enacting it any easier. Between this and Armen, I will never get Leonid on his own. “Is this not another mouth to feed?”

Leonid snarls silently. “Kiril? Take Bucket away, dispose of it outside. Make it merciful.”

Without hesitation, the selvitel wraps his long fingers around the young man’s arm and begins to pull him toward the door.

“Wait! Don’t harm him!”

Leonid grins. “But you are right, he will be burdensome.”

“Please. I . . . I spoke in haste.”

Bucket doesn’t fight Kiril as he’s being dragged away, as if he isn’t bothered by the threat of extermination. Leonid whistles again, and Kiril pauses at the door. The Count looks me up and down. “His portions can come from yours. How does that sound, wife?”

Unjust, but I can only hang my head and close my eyes. “Fine, my lord.”

He steps closer to me, huffing short, menacing breaths that pulse against my ear. “I thought you would appreciate this gesture, this most lifelike of dolls. It is meant to show my gratitude—gratitude that you did not laugh at me last night. Do you understand?”

I nod, shaking.

“Is there something you would like to say to your Count?”

“Thank you,” I whisper. “Thank you for my gift.”

Yulnia does not summon me that day. A steady rain falls outside the castle, and, abandoned to the hours before supper with the young man, I decide the library is the safest place for us. Just as Leonid claimed, he shuffles along behind me, obedient and silent. I can’t help but wonder if the Count has anticipated my treachery, hampering me with this stranger and making him my responsibility.

I don’t know why Leonid thinks a dog can be trained to attack, but a person cannot. Yet even a quick glance tells me there is no fight in this young man. He jumps at every sound and refuses to meet my eye.

Anger builds in my chest. Nothing is going right. How much longer must I tolerate life in this horrible place? It still doesn’t feel real. I keep expecting something to happen, someone to decide it’s time for my rescue, for Ermo to appear in the night and tell me that we’re leaving and this was all some hideous test. But nobody is coming; I must accept that. I must accept that the only way out is to rescue myself.

When we are alone together in the library, I turn to the young man and sigh. “It would be better if they had killed you.”

He shies away.

“No—I won’t hurt you. I’m not like them. I’m simply stating the truth. It would be better if I were dead, too, if I had never come here, or if I had been born plain and therefore beneath the Count’s notice.”

The library has its own dense atmosphere, warmly damp, like the underside of a blanket after a prolonged sleep or the inside of a dog’s mouth. If one is very still, it’s possible to hear the shelves shifting and settling and the rustle of paper as books nestle against one another like roosting wrens. The floor is tiled with dark brown hexagons, ceiling-high shelves rising on either side of a wide aisle that gradually leads to shallow stairs. Above the stairs, high up on the far wall, is a decorative window inlaid with symbols that must mean something to the family—an axe crossed with a thorny branch. There is nowhere particularly welcome to sit, but the light is best beneath that window, and since almost nobody comes to the library, my pile of books is still where I left them; there are two tall stacks with a gap in the middle, and from a distance, they seem to almost make a throne.

“Do you know your letters?” I ask, leading him toward the window.

He makes a heartbreaking gagging sound. When I turn, I see that he is shaking his head, skull clanging lightly against the copper bucket.

“Can you speak?”

Another shake, no.

“Do they really just call you Bucket?”

A different shake, up and down, yes.

“Is that what I should call you?”

He shrugs. Shrugs and stares. The desperation in his eyes, the terror, makes my heart soften. We are both prisoners here, and I have been too quick to judge. When I approach him, he flinches, crossing his hands protectively over his chest. The flesh on them is so burned and scarred that they appear almost like a frog’s, fused and webbed. He trembles almost constantly.

“I won’t hurt you,” I tell him. “I’m sorry they’ve done this to you, and I’m sorry you fell into that kiln. When I said before that it would be better if you were dead, it’s because everyone here is so cold and strange. There’s hardly an ounce of kindness. Ermo has his moments, I suppose, and Yulnia is . . . Yulnia. It’s made me into a suspicious sort. You’re not a spy, are you?”

Clang-clang. He shakes his head.

“You won’t tell them what we do or where we go or what we discuss?”

He tries to make a sound, but snorts with frustration, then shakes his head, no.

“Since you can’t speak, I will teach you how to spell—at least then we can speak to each other. If you promise to be my friend, promise not to spy, I will do what I can to protect you.” At that, Bucket lets his arms drop back to his sides. A good sign, I decide. “Do you like stories?”

Bucket shrugs.

“I like them. Come, I will tell you my favorites, and with them, you will learn to write.”

We sit together beneath the grimy window, and I read to him a collection of village tales. They are probably too simple for a person of his age, but he doesn’t complain or stop me. Some of the stories are familiar to me, so perhaps the book belonged to Alyona. I can only imagine that Leonid would hate these tales, simple as they are, and disparage them for being from the north. I recite the story of Old Hound, who fell out of favor with his master when he grew toothless and tired. The master no longer let him sleep in the house and fed him gristle and scraps. There was no more warmth and no more bread. Old Hound met Wolf, and Wolf promised to help him.

“ ‘Your master has a son, newly born. He is napping in the sunshine. I will drag the boy away, and though you be ancient, give chase, and I will drop the babe.’ ”

Old Hound watched Wolf drag the baby boy off, and he bayed and made a fuss, catching Wolf, and the master watched as Old Hound saved the child. “ ‘Brave Old Hound!’ cried the master, rejoicing. ‘You will sleep in my bed and eat of my bread, for loyalty knows no age.’ ”

When I finish, Bucket’s eyes sparkle with tears.

In the dust on the floor, I spell out K H A N D.

“Hound,” I tell him. “Can you write it?”

Bucket leans forward and, just under my word, tries it for himself.

“You are not stupid at all,” I murmur. “But the arrogant Count thinks everyone is beneath him, when it’s him scraping his belly on the ground like a snake.”

He makes a sound like a wheezing gasp, but it’s a laugh.

A shadow passes across the library door, once, twice. I scratch out the letters in the dust and grimace. When the shadow comes again, it’s Armen, peering around the doorway. We will have to be careful and clever. And I . . . I will have to find a way to separate Leonid from his shadow. The poison in my blood is growing restless again—a message. I can feel the welts on my face rising, engorged, pulsing with their own frantic heartbeats, as if the tainted blood there wants to burst free.

At supper that night, Marwa wheels in a glossy haunch of roasted meat—horse perhaps, or mule. They say it is for our wedding feast. Bucket is told to sit next to me on the floor. Like me, he keeps his eyes away from the dead Count. While Marwa places a generous portion of meat on my plate, Leonid watches me, eyes honed, as if he is waiting for something, waiting for me to step out of line, say the wrong thing, or eat too much. Under his supervision, I take tiny bites, wondering why they are now so generous with meat.

Kiril shocks us all by announcing that he is close to a breakthrough with his work, that soon the Count will return. This news should create anxiety for Leonid, but he does not react.

He doesn’t believe Kiril, and neither do I.

That night, I find yet another cage in my bedroom. This one is smaller, cramped, with a straw pallet inside. It’s for Bucket. I worry about him on the cold floor and stoke the fire in the hearth higher, but the flames frighten him. I tell him to sleep with his back to the fireplace, for without its warmth, we will both freeze. There is also a small box waiting on the desk beneath the window. Inside, I find a jar of unguent hidden in a nest of shredded linen. Kiril arrives a short time later, stroking his beard and flashing his brown teeth at us. Bucket huddles in the corner, rattling away with his persistent tremors.

“A new potion for your marks,” Kiril tells me. “Sit, dear child, sit. I will apply the concoction, and it must be repeated nightly.”

“I am perfectly capable of smearing some cream on my face before bed,” I mutter.

“A selvitel’s potion, a selvitel’s touch, my dear.”

He cannot be dissuaded. I sit in the muted moonlight and close my eyes against the unpleasant catch of his calloused fingers across my already bumpy scars. The unguent smells like cat piss and has the texture of sandy mud. The reek is so strong that my eyes water. Kiril takes his time. When he’s finished, he bows and flourishes his way out the door.

“Tomorrow night, dear child. And every night after.”

I shudder at the threat. It seems there will be a never-ending parade of men into my bedchamber. Armen comes next to lock me into my bed cage and Bucket into his. He gives Bucket’s prison a mean little kick on the way out.

“The Count has no need of me?” I ask, sitting up in bed and watching him leave.

Armen lights his pipe and speaks for the first time, croaking out, “You’ll know when he wants you.”

After the door shuts, I lie back in bed. It should be strange to have Bucket there, but he doesn’t make a sound on his pile of straw. The cream on my face burns faintly but has lost its smell.

“You can take off that bucket to sleep, hmm? I won’t look at you. Well, at least the unguent doesn’t reek anymore.” I sigh, staring at the ceiling. “Maybe the cat piss smell was just Kiril’s natural musk.”

On his pallet, within his cage, Bucket laughs.

19

Life hasn’t changed much now that I am married.

Marwa and the serving girls call me Countess now, though Marwa avoids it. Leonid spends his days overseeing the woodsmen at the mill; Ermo tinkers in his workshop above the carriage house; Kiril disappears until darkness falls, then emerges from his cave like a bat. If Yulnia is not too tired or apoplectic, Bucket and I spend the day with her, refining my viyesha movia.

I see Armen in other places now, always smoking, a vaporous specter haunting my steps. He never stays for long, but I know he is spying.

Days pass. I become accustomed to Bucket’s presence and give him a few bundles of soft hose to put under his hat to keep the copper from rubbing his skin raw and making so much noise. It is hard to be hungry all the time, but I won’t let him go without food. Sometimes he cries out wordlessly in his sleep, and the force of his nightmares reminds me of my own. If Bucket is capable of anything other than grunts, he does not demonstrate it for me.

I don’t dream of Ermo anymore. That has become a dream decidedly lost, and anyway I’m grateful for it; my heart couldn’t handle the teasing images of love and mutual affection.

On a stormy Friday, Yulnia invites us to her chamber. We find her composing a letter to Krugan at her desk, writing with one hand and brushing her hair with the other. As soon as I arrive, she beckons me over and thrusts the brush toward me, expecting me to take over.

Bent over her letter, Yulnia says, “He doesn’t rattle so much now.”

“His tremors have eased,” I reply. Bucket has gone to sit by the window, calmly and quietly kneeling there. “And I padded his helmet to dampen the sound.”

And for comfort, of course, but Yulnia would chide me for weakness.

“My brother is toying with you,” she says. “Everyone must listen to the Count, so he plays with us, bashes us together like toy soldiers. He wants you to step out of line, rebel, so he will have more cause to hurt you.”

“I have already learned that he doesn’t need a reason to hurt me.”

“Of course he doesn’t,” Yulnia replies with a shrug. “But he wants one. In his stupid little head, it makes him just, styles him the hero. My brother loves his tests; he is seeking the edges of your loyalty with his stumpy little fingers.”

“I know, but what am I supposed to do?”

“Nothing. A countess obeys her husband’s wishes demurely, and watching you disappoint Leonid is ever so much fun.”

“Will you be demure with Krugan?”

“Of course.” Yulnia giggles, making me doubt her. “But he will be doting and generous, and so submission will be nothing at all.”

There is a scratching by the window, and we both turn to see that Bucket has noticed something outside. He props himself against the sill like a curious puppy.

“Is it Kiril?” Yulnia sighs, turning back to her composition.

Bucket nods, yes.

“Even in the storm! The lunatic!” Yulnia slams down her pen and huffs at me to keep brushing her hair. I do, roughly, for that seems to match her mood. “God, but he’s a little freak, isn’t he? Always gathering the button mushrooms that grow around the slab, rooting around in the mud like a worm. I think it has to do with his so-called breakthrough. It irritates me, his skulking around beneath my window every day, but if it brings Father back, I must tolerate it.”

“And if he succeeds?” I ask, my stomach twisting at the idea. “What then?”

“Then everything will be as it should be around here. Papa doted on me, and he was liked at court. He would make Krugan come to me, despite what anyone else wants. It might even be better for you—he will not like Bucket, or the way Leonid still behaves like a child.”

“You shouldn’t need your father alive to be happy. If Krugan loves you so desperately—”

She growls.

I hurry to correct myself. “Knowing that Krugan loves you with his whole being, why does he not send for you?”

Yulnia sighs, slumping. “Sometimes I forget that you know almost nothing, dolly. It is usually pitiful in a diverting way, but just now? No. Now it is fraying my nerves. You see, at court, Krugan is Commander Giyor Bogdrov’s favored card partner, and Giyor is the Emperor’s nephew. He is also fatally riddled with creeping gout and will certainly drop dead at any moment. Giyor could call upon Krugan day or night for one final round of whist, and I would only be a distraction. Until that idiot is dead, our love must wait, and—”

“But if Giyor likes him so much, couldn’t he make an exception for a friend? Surely you would understand if Krugan had to fly to the man’s bedside.”

“Ha! And again, it only shows how little you comprehend the Capital. No, silly. Men like Giyor have never thought about another person’s feelings a day in their life. Papa could convince him. Papa was invited to court six times.” Yulnia smiles to herself as I start brushing her hair more rhythmically again. “Where was I? Oh, yes—soon, things will be as they ought to. Leonid will be humbled, Kiril will be back on his leash, I will be sent to Krugan, and the mill will be more profitable again. And, well, really, you must realize this—Father will make you get rid of that . . . fascinating new companion of yours.” She glances up at me, smirking. “He doesn’t disturb you? Truly? He disturbs me greatly.”

“No. He’s just a person, Yulnia. I feel sorry for him.”

“But why can’t he speak?” she presses. “It’s unnerving.”

“I don’t know, and how could I know? He has no ability to tell me. Perhaps you should ask your brothers. They defer to you.” Or I will know the unvarnished truth when he has learned his letters and we can communicate freely. I’ll uncover his story, his people, what he saw down in Kiril’s horrid little dungeon.

“Maybe I will! Yes, yes, good. I will annoy them on your behalf. Together, we will solve the mystery of this fellow. But first you must read this over and tell me if it is too simpering. Bilenko will come any day now, and I must have a letter ready for Krugan. You will be honest, won’t you? You will tell me if I sound desperate and cloying? I don’t want to be horrible and frighten him off. I need him, dolly. I need him to take me away from here.”

Igol clunks around in his jar while I read, and Yulnia retrieves the brush to continue burnishing her already silky-smooth hair. Rain splats against the window, where Bucket has slid down against the wall and, apparently, dozed off.

Yulnia writes to Krugan about my wedding, as nothing else of note has occurred at the castle in weeks. All of it is standard stuff, though one paragraph catches my attention.

I am beginning to regret Kiril’s residency here. Father liked him for his ideas, and I liked him because Father did. I still believe that he can do marvelous things, I still believe in the wonder of his magic, but I fear he has become too attached to my favor. He unnerves my little dolly, too, which I do not prefer. My brothers would send him away, and perhaps it is time we dismissed him. He is always rummaging beneath my window, leering at me over supper. . . . He doesn’t call me “child” anymore, which makes me worry, it makes me worry that he now views me as a woman.

“Well?” Yulnia mutters, impatient.

“This portion here,” I say, pointing to an earlier passage. “It does seem a bit much. The part where you talk about needing him like a boat needs the sea?”

“Gravno, the humiliation, being corrected by a peasant. Krugan adores the sea, lives for it. His bedchamber overlooks it! But you are right, Valla, he would be repelled by such notions.” She takes the letter back and scratches out the offending line.

Fortunately, Yulnia revises her letter in time for Bilenko’s arrival the next day. All three of us go out to meet the wagon as it is escorted to the drawbridge by Ermo on horseback. He and Bilenko are chatting amiably, the clank, whir, and thump of the saw machines at work drowning out their conversation. I haven’t been outside in ages, and the cold air is a welcome change from the dark, dank halls of the castle. Clouds sit low over the forest, but for now, the storm waits.

Weathered Bilenko bounces up the bridge with his two-horse wagon, crates piled high in the back, a bundle of correspondence on the bench beside him. Marwa recruits Bucket to help with the unloading, and Yulnia slips her arm through mine, carrying me to the side of the wagon. The wheels are laden with muddy clumps, the canvas over the goods soaked from earlier rain. Ermo, swathed in gray wool, a scarf slung over his shoulder, brings his horse around and gazes down at us while Yulnia exchanges her outgoing letter for Krugan’s. The green wax seal is the brightest thing in the clearing.

It’s Yulnia’s beacon, and mine, too. At last, she trusts me enough to let me read her missives to Krugan, and we are growing ever closer. Maybe in this letter, maybe in the next, he will finally indicate that it is time for her to join him in Korumpo.

Ermo succeeds in catching my eye, and we exchange smiles. It’s been so long since he’s done that with me, it almost knocks me off my feet. My neck is hot with guilt as I quickly turn away, but I can sense his eyes still roaming over me, lingering. I wish he would stop; hope is too beautiful and too frail.

“Come, Valla, I must know what Krugan has to say!” Yulnia whisks me away, back to her bedchamber, leaving instructions for Ermo to send Bucket to us when he is done with his labor. A persistent drizzle keeps us inside. Just like that, I am back in the cold clutches of Valtivisk, away from Ermo and his coaxing glances. And I feel further and further from the forest, from nature, as if the castle is not just a monstrosity of black stones but a prison floating in the sky. I miss the cold splash of Lake Temtol and Lake Tarlii, and the sharp, clean wind that ripped across the brushlands, carrying the perfume of tall grass and the coming spring. I even miss the hard dirt and the way it would pack under my fingernails when I helped scratch around for potatoes.

All of Yulnia’s pretty powders and creams cannot banish the lingering stench of mold and wet.

She chews through the letter with wide eyes, throwing herself on her four-post bed after reaching the conclusion. I carefully extricate the paper from her grasp, listening to her chain together sighs of longing while toying with the fringed end of her braid.

It is full of the usual romantic nonsense and promises. He describes at length the boats bringing in their winter catches from the sea, holds bursting with haladnye crabs, trollers breaking the ice creeping along the coastline. There is no invitation to come to Korumpo, minimal mention of their potential marriage, and something else that frightens me, too—a phrase that is completely out of place.

It shatters my heart to think of you so lonely in that woodland tower. Yulnia! My Yulnia! One day you will be free, free of that cage. To cage is to kill, or so they say.

To cage is to kill. Kelepka sa vrebi. They do say that, but in the north, in Arylik, not leagues and leagues to the south in Korumpo. What are the odds that the civilized dandy Krugan would know that saying? My hands go numb around the paper. I lose my grip on it, and it drifts to the floor. Who is always escorting Bilenko up the road when we come to meet the wagon? Who meets Bilenko before anyone has a chance to peruse what he has brought?

Ermo.

Before the letter can hit the carpet, I’m already hurrying toward the door.

Yulnia gasps, scandalized, and leaps to collect the precious fallen relic. “Where are you rushing off to? I want you to read that letter aloud! I must hear it at least six times! Valla!”

“I, well— I forgot to give Bucket breakfast. He will be starving after all that work in the horrid rain.” If she does not believe the lie, I will never know. Yulnia lets me go. I find Bucket trundling up the stairs, sweaty and stooped with exhaustion. “To the library,” I tell him. “I know you are tired; you can rest there.”

I don’t have Ermo’s book of idioms, but that is all right; there are other things I can check. All this time, I simply assumed that every word of Krugan’s letters was the truth, that every description of Korumpo was accurate. It had to be, by the Stag Father’s grace—the man lives there! Bucket is waiting for me by the window, watching as I fly this way and that, hunting down maps, histories, anything that might give me a clearer image of Korumpo. When the books have all been scattered across the floor, Bucket makes a guttural hooting sound, tapping me on the shoulder.

He shrugs and squeezes his hands, giving his signal for “What are you doing?”

“I had a plan, my friend, a plan that might help us leave this place,” I whisper, verging on tears. If Leonid dies, especially if he dies from what appears to be an accident, Yulnia could take me to the Capital as her companion. She detests her brothers and the forest, and I am her dolly! Even being her maidservant would be preferable to staying in Valtivisk. “But like everything here, it’s cursed. It’s dust. Practice your words; I have work to do.”

Hope is too beautiful and too frail.

Bucket frowns beneath his copper helm and opens the book of northern legends, making shapes with his fingers in the dust, and I slam open Southern Territories: A Traveler’s Remarks. After that, I consult the immensely heavy book of maps. The ruse collapses at almost hilarious speed, crushed like a house of straw. No swans, no heaps of haladnye crabs, and absolutely no bedroom view of the sea—the far-off city of Korumpo is beautiful, modern, mountainous, and landlocked. Printzhessa Lake doesn’t even exist anywhere, as far as I can tell.

For all his cleverness, for all his inventions and innovations, Ermo has given the game away. There must be some purpose behind it. I can’t catch my breath. I can’t believe he would hurt his sister this way.

“Does he exist?” I whisper aloud, kneeling and then sitting back on my feet. Dazed. Stunned. “Is Krugan even real?”

And why dedicate himself to the lie? Why make Yulnia believe she is betrothed and desired? But I start to gather suspicions. Maybe he wants to keep her quiet. To keep her docile, always hoping, always dreaming, never leaving Valtivisk to actually live. To make her as miserable and trapped as Ermo and Leonid.

To keep her caged and kill her spirit.

Tears come pouring down my cheeks. Bucket touches my arm, then my back, but nothing helps. Poor, befuddled Yulnia! Now there is no way out. No way out for either of us, and I must be the one to tell her. But how? How can I unravel the fabric of her only happiness?

In the open archway, someone coughs. Armen.

“Has he upset you?” he grunts. He means Bucket.

“No, no.” I hurry to clean off my cheeks with my sleeves. “It was . . . I read something very moving, that is all. We young girls are so silly; we are often moved to tears by a romance, or a romance lost.”

He blows out a cloud of smoke and narrows his eyes. “Hmph. Try something cheerier.”

I keep us hidden in the library until the dinner chime fetches us out, and I take great care to put all the Korumpo books back where I found them. I don’t know how I can face Yulnia while carrying this terrible secret. Worse, Ermo will be there, sipping his wine, bickering with Kiril, and all the while the architect of his sister’s misery.

Part of me insists that Ermo has an understandable reason for playing this game. Part of me has to believe . . .

No. I must kill that part. It would be folly to give him the benefit of the doubt.

And still. Still.

During mealtime, it is torture to listen to Yulnia. She talks of nothing but Krugan. In fact, she recites his letter almost word for word, already committing it to memory, and I notice that Kiril does not say a thing about the odd depiction of Korumpo. The selvitel might be crazy, but he is also learned and has spent time in the Capital. Surely this man, a man of religion and magic, would know that Korumpo is surrounded by mountains. But he only idly smiles, his eyes dancing as he watches Yulnia with a fanatic’s devotion. The Count does nothing but comment that a wedding in Korumpo sounds costly. Igol is allowed free to burrow through another gourd.

And I must look too nervous or too dismayed, or perhaps I am staring too intently into my soup, because Ermo notices. Did I put all the books back correctly? Did Armen see us earlier than I thought and eavesdrop? No, no, I’m just nervous, nervous as only a reluctant secret keeper can be.

I tell myself that Ermo is gazing at me with love-addled eyes.

Whatever it is, whatever he sees, he doesn’t look away. His eyes drill into me as steadily as Igol spears the gourd.

20

That night, Leonid has me escorted to his chamber. As before, I strip down to my shift, sit on the bed, and watch Armen smoke his pipe. Leonid rolls up my sleeve, revealing the unblemished mound of my left shoulder. This time, he presses his forehead against it and licks. When he moves back, shuddering, he leaves behind a perfect, sweaty impression of his forehead. He makes a muddled appraising sound, like he’s testing for something, ripeness or resistance.

Here I am, the fruit, tempting on the outside but rotten with poison to the core.

“Your scars are going down,” he whispers, brushing my cheek. “That’s good. Then it is almost time.”

I don’t ask for clarification. I don’t want it.

He leans in to lick my arm again, but the stones of the castle shake and shed, dust trickling down from the ceiling, dirtying the bed. The agitation. The impatience. I sense it from my singing blood down to the roots running beneath the foundation, like a dark rider traveling a far-flung road, coming closer, whispered of but not seen.

Leonid jerks his face away from me, muttering.

The tremors continue shaking the castle walls long after Armen returns me to my bedchamber. Bucket sits up in his cage but relaxes when he realizes it is only me. I tell him not to worry about the quakes; it is a good omen, a sign that things are changing. My dreams are troubled, and I wake clutching the black stone knife beneath the pillow.

The shape of it against my palm satisfies a dozen silent questions. How will I destroy Leonid? How will I escape this place? Should I tell Yulnia about Ermo’s betrayal? On and on . . . But the knife is the answer and remains the answer. I make sure to tuck it into my boot that morning, concealing it before Marwa arrives with breakfast and an odd request.

Ermo wants me to join him at his workshop as soon as I am able.

Well. It is time for answers, and not just from the knife.

I should be more afraid. I should see this summons for what it is: a threat. But I ask for my red wool frock with the black embroidery, the one garment they’ve given me that doesn’t itch. I feel powerful in it, and strong, and my head is high and straight as I lead Bucket out the front doors, down the steps, and across the path circling the castle. The clouds from the day before have rumbled in again, encroaching, heavy-bottomed and gray, slung so low across the castle clearing that they feel near enough to reach up and poke. The carriage house, with its wide, tall doors and chimneys, casts a distorted shadow. As soon as we approach the door, Bucket grunts and wails.

It’s the most noise I’ve heard him make.

“Are you hurt?” I ask, but he seems unharmed. Instead, he folds his arms close to his body again, refusing to even look at the building, cowering against me, bent double. “It’s the carriage house?”

He nods.

“You don’t want to go in?”

Headshake, no.

I place my hand on his back, rubbing vigorously, as if the gesture will somehow draw out his courage. There is an awning near the left door and a sheltered corner there that will provide him with a measure of privacy. I take him there and watch him collapse against the wall, shivering. “Can you wait here for me? I don’t think I’ll be long.”

He answers by wedging himself against the wall, clawlike fingers digging into the slatted wood. The black paint covering the exterior of the carriage house is flecked with ash, and a smoky veil sits over it like a sickness. Hollow banging noises emanate from the gaps among the tall doors. I find my way inside, slowly, for Bucket’s reaction has somewhat lessened my bravery. I hold the red halves of my woolen gown—already tied shut—closer together. Immense heat blasts against my face. Two forges spew and steam, the lower half of the carriage house cluttered with half-finished machines, broken saws, and splintered parts, a graveyard for the modern sensibility. Along the greasy walls hang multitudes of tools, their correct place known by the void left in their absence. Beyond the forges, to my left, at the end of the workshop, are stairs leading up to a loft with a low wall. It reminds me of the larger huts of home, with humans occupying an upper living area and animals warm and snug below. And like those places, the swelter of the forges rises, heating the loft.

I had pictured his workshop much more like a library, studious and quiet, but this is an overwhelming chaos of hissing steam and unforgiving metal.

Ermo appears over the wall, yanking a pair of dirty goggles off his face. Like the silhouettes left by the tools, there is an outline of black soot where the goggles sat. It would be cute on him if I looked with last week’s eyes.

“Up here if you please. Where is Bucket?” he calls down to me.

“He won’t come inside,” I reply, gathering my skirts and climbing the stairs. “I think the forges frighten him. He must fear the flames after his accident, and I can’t blame him for that.”

“No, indeed.” Ermo has already turned away, retreating to a long table scattered with bits of machine. “One of the automatons has broken down, but I think I’ve finally discovered the issue.”

“Automaton?” I repeat, observing as he flattens a circular piece of metal, skillfully hammering out the dents.

“The saw machines,” he says. “Yulnia calls them my beloveds. There.” Ermo grins, holding up the streaked metal disk. “Must have gotten bent out of shape by a stray branch or a stone. But this should mend the wheel.” There is a hole in the circle, and he peers at me through it. “These machines are comprised of hundreds of individual parts. They must all work together, must all be in perfect condition, or the automaton grinds to a halt. Much like this castle, Valla. When one piece breaks down, life no longer takes its course smoothly.”

His one blue eye burns with fury beyond the hole in the metal.

“You mean me,” I say, neutral. “Have I done something wrong?”

Ermo chuckles dryly and drops the mechanism on the table, then leans against it. “There is no need to be coy. You were miserable at supper last night, and you flinched every time Yulnia mentioned Krugan. We can pretend you are a northern mud hut dullard, or we can be honest with each other.”

I came here to be brave. I came for answers.

He draws in a shaky breath. “I can explain if you would let me, and I hope you would, as I always thought . . . I always hoped there was a kind of understanding between us.”

“An understanding?”

“Coy again, mm? Please, Valla. I haven’t imagined all those glances, all those roses blooming in your cheeks when I touch your face,” he says, and right away, my face betrays me, those same blossoms reddening, high points of color burning across my cheekbones. Suddenly it’s like he occupies more space.

“Perhaps,” I murmur. “And perhaps it was mutual.”

“Was?” Ermo sighs. “Is.”

“Why did you lie to her?” I ask him, setting my jaw.

Ermo pushes off from the table, approaching. It’s dangerous to be alone with him, alone with my husband’s much more handsome brother. He looms over me, radiating warmth, the heat of the forges having soaked into his shirt and coat. So near, it’s hard to remember that he has lied horribly to his sister.

“Yulnia was growing very unmanageable,” he says. “It was terrifying. It reminded me of our mother, the way she got before . . . before the end. I had to think of something to keep Yulnia from going mad. Love, I thought, would do it, and I was right. A woman must anchor herself to a dream of love or else fall into despair. It was just meant to be a temporary thing, but then she got so attached. . . .” His eyes droop, sad. “How did you come to realize the truth?”

“There are plenty of maps and books in the library,” I reply, holding myself still despite his encroachment. He wants me to move, wants me to bend or fall for his pitiful glances. I won’t. “Korumpo is nothing like you describe in the letters; honestly, it’s shocking that Yulnia didn’t catch this herself.”

“She wanted to believe,” he tells me. “And you should let her.”

It’s an outrageous idea. Unthinkable.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he says, touching my chin, trying to rekindle the old warmth between us. I half expect it to come, but instead I shiver, cold with dread. Something has shifted in me; something won’t let me forgive. He goes to sweep his thumb across my lower lip, but I jerk away.

“You think you’ve outwitted me?” Ermo whispers furiously, even closer to me. He smells like singed metal, like brimstone. So, here is the turn. I wanted to believe Ermo was the good one. Hope. I have to stamp it out.

“I know I have.”

“And if you tell Yulnia the truth, what then?” he snarls, so like his brother. “Do you think she will be grateful? How do you imagine she will take it when you scatter her dreams to the wind?” At last, he withdraws, stalking around to the other side of the table. He leans over it, pressing the knuckles of both hands into the wood. “Ah. I see it now. You consider her your ally. You thought she would take you far, far away from Valtivisk and my brother. A heroic notion, Valla, but an irrational one. He would never let you leave, and you will never have your freedom. Unless . . .” His eyes drag across the table toward me, no longer simmering with fury, but with desire. All pretense of sweetness is gone, laying bare the lust behind it. He straightens, still smiling. “Unless. I . . . may have a proposition for you.” He rounds the table, returning to me, but this time he keeps a respectful distance. “We have a saying: pick your poison.”

I’ve already chosen, and it’s the sizzling corruption in my blood, but I want to hear him out, if only to gain more information. He’s caught, and now he’s bargaining.

“I’m listening.”

Ermo nods, once, a curling lock of red hair falling over his forehead. “Let me pen another letter to Yulnia from Krugan, yes? He will end the betrothal and break her heart. Kiril will be there to pick up the pieces, to keep her from madness. Kiril and Yulnia, you and I, it could be a simple, happy family.”

I tuck my hands behind my back so he can’t see them trembling with rage. Disgusting! To offer up his sister to a total charlatan, a leering old loon . . .

Here he is. Here he really is.

“And the Count?” I ask, wrangling my revulsion.

“Trivial. Leonid is a dead weight locked around the legs of this family. He fears innovation, he fears risk, and for it, we lose ground to the forest and its creatures. We lose profits and prestige. You need only leave Leonid to me,” he says. “That had to be part of your plan to leave here, right? You and Yulnia run off together when Leonid is dead—is that what you imagined?”

I stay perfectly still.

“You’re not far from the mark, Valla. I’m not immune to dark thoughts myself.”

“Speak plainly.”

Ermo shrugs. “Regrettable accidents happen at the mill all the time. The saws are sharp—they break, they fall . . .” Ermo takes two steps toward me and sweeps up the end of the sash around my gown. He fiddles with it, his gaze softly flirtatious. “There is a dangerous beauty in your eyes, Valla. That’s why Leonid married you. The only fire worth quenching is the one that burns high and hot.”

Every part of me screams to reach for the black stone knife.

“I need to consider this carefully,” I tell him.

“Is that a rejection?” he asks, a shadow flickering over his face.

“No! Of course not. I just need time to think. What you are proposing is . . . serious. Dangerous for all of us.”

He takes the end of the sash and brushes my nose with it. “I will give you until the dinner chime to choose me. And don’t even think about taking this conversation to my brother, for he would never believe you. Don’t think that you can get the better of me. You can’t get the better of me because you can’t understand me. You never will.” Ermo lets go of the sash and crosses his arms, growling in my face. “Your parents probably soothed you when you were sick or sad, bathed you, cared for you, showed you genuine love and affection. We were raised and made by this crucible of degradation and pain. Leonid may travel south sometimes, but he never truly leaves this place. None of us do. None of us can.” Ermo squeezes his eyes shut, winces, then slices his hand through the air. “You would be impressed with who I have become, if you knew what it was like growing up here.”

“I am impressed with you, Ermo, but not for the reason you might expect.”

He suddenly laughs, all dimples and boyish surprise. It’s so easy for him to slip the mask off and on. “Oh?”

“Yes. I thought you were the kind brother, the gentle one. But now I see you two are exactly the same.”

It hurts him, the comparison, and I have already turned to go when he calls after me.

“Has he bedded you yet?” He laughs. “Or is it just the licking?”

It shouldn’t amaze me that he’s aware of these things, but it’s humiliating all the same.

I escort Bucket from the carriage house—to his visible relief—and we hurry away to the library. He practices his letters while I pace and fuss and hem and haw. Who to approach first? Leonid is stupid, but surely not so bumbling that he has missed Ermo’s interest in me. But Yulnia feels like the likelier alliance, even if she has relatively little power. There is no proof of Ermo’s proposition, but plenty of evidence that he created the character of Krugan.

The day slips away from me, the hours crumbling, hurtling me toward a decision.

When the bell for dinner comes, I am only half decided.

It isn’t until I see Ermo lingering outside the dining chamber door that I know my heart. The servant stands at the bottom of the stairs, striking the bell. Bucket follows along behind me, Leonid and Yulnia already inside. A chill determination carries me forward, and I stop beside Ermo, genuinely enjoying his pained expression. This wasn’t just a bargain, I realize. It wasn’t just a desperate pivot—Ermo wanted me all along. I simply forced his plans prematurely.

“Well?” he mutters, glancing over his shoulder. “I trust you have come to see reason?”

Let it be chaos, then.

“In fact, I have come to see that Yulnia is the sibling who has shown me true kindness, and so I have chosen her. Whatever that means, whatever that brings me, I choose her.” My eyes flicker into the dining chamber, briefly alighting on Yulnia. “Not you. Her.”

Ermo puffs himself up, snarling. “Ungrateful, shortsighted—”

“Hello there! Are you two coming in?” Yulnia calls, giggling. “Where is Kiril? He is annoyingly punctual. His wine cup looks so forlorn without him. . . .”

Ermo tries to grab my sleeve, but I duck out of the way and rush to the table, taking my spot. Leonid picks his teeth, bored. Yulnia frowns at Ermo as he drags himself inside.

“Ermo, what is the matter with you? You’re as red as a boil,” Yulnia teases. “And you, Valla, you look well. Radiant, even. That dress suits you so.”

“Thank you.” I’m not sure if I’ll ever be radiant, not with these scars slashed across my face. It doesn’t feel like beauty belongs to me anymore, and it shocks me that Ermo could overlook the marks, the flaws. It would be to his credit if he wasn’t as selfish and odd as his brother. “If I could delay dinner for a moment, there’s something I would like to say. . . .”

Ermo’s head jerks up, his eyes widening with dawning comprehension. I return his attention, unflinching. He’s right. My plan was absurd. I’ll never leave this place with any dignity, or with anyone’s permission. The knife tucked in my boot presses against my anklebone, as if in support.

“Not now, my funny dolly, not now, for Kiril is never this late. Shall we send out a search party?”

Her concern seemingly summons the selvitel, who floats into the chamber with devious flamboyance, gray smock flapping, making a great commotion over an earthen jar held aloft in his right hand. His fingers twinkle over the top of it, as if it might be filled with magic or secrets.

“Are you performing for us?” Yulnia asks brightly, clapping.

Ermo broods beside his brother, staunchly avoiding Leonid’s eye. Of course he would, for now the Count’s bride is wise to his murderous heart. Bucket sits beside my chair, watching as Kiril circles the table twice, then saunters in two big strides to the hearth, hovering between the flames and the deceased Count.

“At long last,” Kiril announces, “my concoction is finished. The potion of potions! Renewed life itself, distilled, aged, and purified for the sole purpose of bringing the dear Count back to his soul and senses!”

The brothers share a skeptical look, though Ermo is quick to shift back around and glare at Kiril. For now, my request to speak has been shoved aside. I shift in my chair, annoyed and anxious.

“Now?” Leonid asks, almost stammering. “Tonight?”

“Are you afraid, brother?” Yulnia taunts. “Worried that Father won’t approve of your choices?”

Leonid slams his fist on the table, making the plates jump. Igol, in its jar, falls to the side, jostled. “The mill runs apace with Ermo’s new machines! I am married! All is in order!”

“What a laugh. What a lark!” Yulnia shrieks, unphased by his shouting and posturing. “If the profits are so remarkable, then why are we practically starved? Why have I no dowry? Why can’t I go to my betrothed in Korumpo?”

This is my chance. “Because Krugan is—”

“Beslavna, my children, these arguments are moot! The potion of potions is ready. Are you not curious?” Kiril asks, wagging his finger in a chiding way. “Are you not eager to be the first to witness the very heights of necromantic invention?”

“Do it!” Yulnia commands him, tugging fretfully on her braid. She makes a scrunchy face at her brothers, then turns her full attention to Kiril. “Do it. It’s what you’re here for, after all. Prove them wrong and shame the doubters.”

Once more, I try to cut in, but the brothers start talking over me, grumbling and muttering, conferring, their heads bent together.

I can hear Ermo whisper: “His medicines might be potent, but he’s a cretinous charlatan—he’s got nothing. Perhaps we have tolerated him for too long.”

“Yulnia is devoted to him,” says Leonid.

“Then he must be brought under control. . . .”

And while they fidget and debate, Kiril sets the earthenware vase on the table in front of the corpse. He reaches into it with his right hand, palming out a generous amount of jellied black goop. There’s an earthy, decayed scent to it, like powdered mushrooms mixed with swamp water.

Kiril chitters to himself in the language he used in the chapel. “Verno, verno, atramenti, atramenti, morso abijerus, morso abijerus . . .” He repeats the phrase, his voice rising and falling as he takes the dark jelly and paints it in a thick layer over the corpse’s face. When he’s finished, it’s as obliterating as a death mask. The Count’s children fall silent. Bucket presses himself to my chair, his helmet clattering against the wooden legs.

The selvitel completes his ritual, throwing himself back and forth behind the Count’s body, his arms loose and waving, his spellcasting dwindling to hoarse moans. Then he goes boneless, still, drooping at the waist, gulping for air, as if the whole process has left him completely spent.

For a torturous moment, nobody moves or comments. All eyes are on the corpse.

“You see?” Ermo sniffs, crossing his arms and leaning back in his chair. “A charlatan.”

Beneath the thick layer of black jelly, the skin begins to move. I sit up straighter, choking on a gasp, watching in speechless horror as the Count’s tautly drawn cheek bulges, something small and round moving beneath the surface. I didn’t imagine it, then, when I stood in almost this exact place and saw the Count’s face undulating. Yulnia covers her mouth with both hands, letting out a squeak.

Faster and faster the skin wiggles and squirms, as if the thing within is excited, as if it can’t wait to get out.

21

“What is happening?” Leonid whispers. He’s crawled partially onto the table, watery blue eyes trained on the writhing flesh of his dead father’s face. “Is he . . . Is he . . .”

“You can do it, Father,” Yulnia says between her fingers. “Come back to us. Your Snowdrop is here; your Snowdrop is waiting to embrace you.”

I reach down and clamp my hand around Bucket’s shoulder, keeping my other hand free just in case I need to fetch out the knife. Not that a simple weapon such as that could defend against a deathless creature. What terrible magic has Kiril unleashed? How are we to witness and bear it?

“Come back to us, Father, come back to us!” Yulnia has lost her fear, sliding her hands off her face to clap, as if cheering on a baby that is learning to walk. “Look! His mouth is opening! He’s trying to speak!”

The Count’s lips warp and distend, then his mouth gapes wide, a shape pushing through, and he remains thoroughly dead as a rat emerges, gnawing and screaming and tumbling onto the dinner table. The room erupts. Yulnia flies out of her chair, as startled and squealing as the rat. Leonid swears, falling down, then leaping to his feet and banging on the door to the kitchen.

“Marwa! A broom! Gravno, Marwa, a broom! Rats! Rats! RATS!”

Ermo takes his pewter plate and flings it at the rat, hitting it hard enough to stun the creature, but also knocking Igol out of its jar. The pauzhuk seizes on the opportunity for newfound food, charging forward with ramming speed and drilling its sharp jaws into the rat’s side. Kiril stumbles away, chewing the fingers of his unsoiled hand, cowering against the far wall. Bucket crawls toward the wall, gaining distance from the body, and I try to follow, pushing off from the table in the midst of the commotion.

I haven’t made it far when another rat comes, this one chewing its way through the corpse’s thin throat, exploding out from its neck. The body reels, rocked by the sudden ejection, and rolls to its left, then flies forward against the table. This collision dislodges the heavy skull, and it cracks free from the neck, hitting the carpet and rolling toward me. And from the hole left by the torn-away throat, I see a tail, wriggling and pink, like a long worm slithering around inside the decapitated head. The rat tries to liberate itself, jerking its disgusting little prison across the carpet.

My feet dance up and down with panic, and I don’t think, I lash out, kicking hard and sending the Count’s head soaring into the roaring flames of the fireplace. The burning logs crumble; shooting sparks and ash shower the table in a spectacular blast.

Marwa shoulders open the door from the kitchen, her broom wielded like a spear, her bravery and bluster all abandoned at the sight of the headless Count propped against the table, a beetle eating through a half-dead rat, and one of the skittering creatures squealing and bumping against the walls as it searches for a way out. Leonid tears the broom out of her hands and chases down the fleeing rat, knocking it senseless with the bristly end. Ermo darts around the table, scooping victim and beetle into the same jar to at least capture the pauzhuk.

And then there is no more panic, just Leonid’s labored breathing, Marwa’s whispered prayers, Yulnia’s sobbing, and the blood thundering painfully in my ears.

Yulnia begins pacing up and down beside the table, hands fisted in her hair. “Father was full of rats! How! How could he be full of rats?”

“There were droppings sometimes, but there are droppings everywhere in the castle,” says Marwa, sliding defensively into the kitchen doorway. “We have long needed a mouser.”

“Be quiet, Marwa.” Ermo has collected himself. He wrenches the broom out of his brother’s hands and uses it to point at me. “The girl. I’ve come upon her unsupervised in this chamber. She seeks to undermine us, Leonid—undermine you. I had my suspicions, and I didn’t want it to be true, but who else could it be?”

Kiril unfolds himself from the floor, gradually standing and peering around with the stupefied awe of a man who has fallen from a great height and landed on his feet.

“Where would I get a bunch of rats?” I reply, backing up slowly.

Ermo and Leonid advance upon me, forgetting Kiril, forgetting the corpse.

“I’m sure you have northern ways to entice pests to wherever you please,” Ermo replies, his voice a dangerous whisper. Here he is. Here he really is. “That is your domain, isn’t it? Enticement. Just this afternoon you tried to ensorcell me, tempt me—me!—your husband’s own brother. You tricked Leonid into marrying you despite your spoiled face. You have tried to put the entire family under your spell! I admit, I’m embarrassed that it took me this long to see it.”

Yulnia freezes, spinning toward her brother. “Ermo, have you lost your senses? We have all suffered a tremendous shock, but this is true madness!”

Ermo ignores her. “Whatever she says, sister, whatever lies she tells you, don’t believe them.” He swivels toward his brother, toward my husband, who is chewing hard on his lip, deciding his loyalties. There is no point in hoping he decides on me, and what a hypocrite I would be to expect it—there is a knife in my boot just for him.

Bucket kneels on the carpet at my feet, throwing himself in their path to protect me. It’s an act of such selfless courage that I’m moved to defend us both. I go for the knife.

“Stop her!” Leonid shouts, shoving Ermo forward.

They are upon me before I can reach the weapon, Ermo yanking my arms behind my back and pulling until my shoulder blades touch. Bucket groans and thumps his fists on his helmet, protesting—so far, my only defender. My eyes fly to Yulnia’s, imploring. Leonid whips the sash out of the loops of my gown and uses it to tie my hands together tightly.

“Is it true, dolly?” Yulnia asks, tugging nervously on her long braid. “Have you been lying and scheming all this time?”

“No! Yulnia, please! You must believe me. Remember all that we shared; remember our nights passed in learning and friendship! Kiril’s potions lured the rats. I never touched your father’s corpse! And it’s Ermo who lies—lying to you, lying to me! Krugan isn’t real! The letters are fakes!”

“Get her out of here,” Ermo mutters to no one in particular. But Kiril and Marwa are eager for a task, and they race to abide. They urge Yulnia out of the dining chamber in the direction of the front hall, first with words and then with force. Kiril, at last, must grab her by the wrist and remove her while she squirms against him. She screams all the way back up to her chamber.

“It is Ermo who seeks your family’s demise,” I whisper fiercely, but Leonid won’t even look at me. “He tried to tempt me into an agreement, a proposal that would see you dead and him the head of the family. Please, my lord, you must listen. I never touched your father. I never sought to tempt your brother. I only did as you asked!” My words just irritate him more. Leonid withdraws, aiming a sharp kick at Bucket, sending the boy sprawling.

“She’s just like Mother.” Ermo sighs, shaking his head. He’s enjoying this, greedy for the upper hand and revenge for my rejection. “They are all the same.”

Leonid stalks to the table and leans against it, massaging his temples. “Gravno, why can it never be easy?”

Ermo swipes the napkin from my plate and, smiling calmly, returns to where I stand, shoving the balled-up fabric into my mouth. It tastes like the sour sweat of his fingers. “Watch her carefully,” he tells Leonid. “Don’t let her speak, and don’t let her escape.”

He leaves us then, marching out into the front hall. I hear the circular door beneath the stairs open and shut. My eyes begin to water from the deep throb in my shoulders and the napkin crammed in my mouth. Bucket remains flat on the floor, whimpering softly. The fire spits and crackles around the burning skull, Kiril’s mushroom potion turning the smoke a putrid, fluorescent green—the green of the runes carved into the black stone knife, unreachable and inert in my shoe.

Leonid coughs, batting the smoke away and joining me near the wall hung haphazardly with myriad portraits. Our shoulders almost touch as he regards them. Through the napkin, I try to say his name, but it all comes out as nonsense and mush.

“I hate that he’s right.” Leonid sighs. “But it’s more than that—all of this, all of it from the start was riddled with bad omens. I should have left you to die on the road outside Ulganyo.” His gaze rakes over the painted faces of his family, his mouth a grim line. “Do you know how many rozhmaka we had to kill the night you arrived at Valtivisk? At least two dozen. They were hurling themselves at the walls. I remember now what you told me—that you gave away the gift of amber to bargain with the creatures.” He takes hold of my face and squeezes, his overgrown nails biting into my cheeks. “What unholy pact did you make with those things? What curse did you bring down upon me?”

Again I try to speak, and nothing but frantic noise comes out around the fabric.

Leonid makes a disgusted sound and resumes his study of the paintings. I need to get to the knife. My head is hot and stupid with fear. Without drawing Leonid’s attention, I nudge Bucket with my toe, trying to rouse him. He still has use of his hands, and he could bash Leonid over the head with his bucket if he had a mind to, but the boy is motionless, and for a brief, paralyzing instant I wonder if he’s dead.

I go inward, trying to reach the poison and my connection to the creatures of the forest, trying to summon Bony Leg, the children, even the beasts that apparently revolted in droves at my arrival. What I wouldn’t give to feel tremors rock the castle! But what could I give? I have nothing, not my beauty, not friends, not magic, nothing but a tiny stone knife I can’t even reach.

“They all turn on you—that’s the lesson I should have taken to heart,” says Leonid. He’s gone to stand in front of his mother, Alyona, and the tryptic of dogs near her. “Even my father’s dogs, noble beasts that should be loyal to a fault—even they hated me. Dyella bit my hand two winters past, so I had the lot of them shot.” He shrugs and meanders back to plant himself in front of me. “That’s how it is. I thought a tight leash would be enough, but it didn’t change things with Dyella, and it won’t change things with you.”

In Arylik, when someone commits an offense, the elders are convened and the accused is allowed to tell their version of events. If there is proof of wrongdoing, it’s produced and discussed. There is some debate. The elders then sequester themselves in a kotte overnight and argue the issue until there is a satisfying consensus. All of that has already happened, I realize; Leonid has considered Ermo’s accusations and believed them, and there will be no chance for me to explain myself.

Now all that remains is for Leonid to take me outside and shoot me like one of his unruly hounds.

Ermo reappears in the doorway, dragging along a small, shriveled person. At first I think it might be an elderly woman left to rot in a prison, for her skin is worn and sunken, hard lines grooved into her forehead and neck. Like a beanstalk left in the sun too long, she’s permanently bent. Her flesh is mottled, black-and-blue, patchy brownish-blond hair matted to oozing sores. But there is something familiar about her eyes and the furry boots hanging limply off her feet.

“At first I didn’t agree with Kiril’s insistence that we keep her, but now I see his reasoning,” Ermo mutters with a mirthless laugh. He carries the shrunken young woman closer to the fire so I can really get a good look at her, and he tosses her like a straw doll onto the soot-stained carpet. “It’s always stirring,” he adds, “to have a reminder of home.”

The girl sees me and groans weakly. She tries to lift her head, then her hand.

Oh no, oh no, oh no. Tears blaze down my cheeks. I scream for the state of her, for the suffering she must have endured, for the food she was denied and the loneliness of that fetid dungeon beneath the castle. I am crying out her name as Ermo rips the wet napkin from my mouth.

“Maksi! What have you done to her? You told me she went home! You told me they were safe. . . .” My strength fails, and I sag to my knees, defeated.

Leonid looks us both over with visible distaste. “No. I said they departed after eating, and that they were eager to be gone. We did feed them, and then we threw them into sacks and brought them along. They did not remain at Ulganyo. We brought them here.”

I remember it now—the strange, moving bag I saw the men unloading when we first arrived at Valtivisk.

“Why do this? Why? Just to torture us?” I can hardly look at her, but I know I must. It would be cowardice to turn away from what they have done.

“Kiril is always asking for bodies for his experiments,” says Ermo. He marches swiftly over to Bucket and kicks the copper helm from his head. The little pads I had created for him fall and drape around his neck. Just as I expected, just as Leonid led me to believe, the face beneath the helmet is deeply scarred, the flesh too smooth, melted and re-formed. The pain he suffered must have been unimaginable—but there is more there, something familiar, the shape of the young man’s nose somehow untouched despite the intensity of the burns. Ermo leans down and smears a handful of soot across the carpet, just between Maksi and Bucket. There is pain and comprehension crawling up my gullet, gagging me, the urge to be sick forcing me to wheeze for air. “This is a better use, I think,” Ermo says. “With the two of you, we will help Valla arrive at the truth.” He takes Bucket’s hand roughly and hovers it over the patch of soot. “I know she has been teaching you how to write, little idiot, so why don’t you show us your new skill. Write your name, boy. Show her who you are.”

Bucket hesitates at first, but then Ermo begins forcefully guiding his trembling finger up, down, around. . . . I know what it will say, for the sickness in my heart and my soul wouldn’t lie. I don’t know how I missed it, and every apology, every plea, feels inadequate as I slowly gain my feet, taking me to stand over Bucket’s back and shoulders. He’s never allowed me to see his head without the helmet, and now I see that his hair has been completely burned away.

“Let her see it. Let her see your name.”

Ermo lets go of his hand, and Bucket draws it toward his chest, revealing the shaky letters in the smear of soot.

G A V R I L

He reaches for my ankles, wrapping his arms around me and holding me tight. There is strength there, his old strength, before they tortured and burned him. He used to taunt me in Arylik for caring about learning and reading. “Why would you waste your time with that?” he would ask, laughing. “All the best tales are sung.” He never bothered to sit and listen when Mother gave her lessons. I hated him for the taunting then, but now I know I could never hate him again. My brother, my poor brother, has been here all along, abused and broken, no longer the hardy young man with the sturdy arms and legs, but a mere shadow. My shadow.

When I try to huddle with him and nuzzle into his shoulder and whisper the hundred thousand apologies he is owed, Leonid tears me away.

“Enough. The two of you are pathetic,” he says, flattening my back to his front.

“Now that the reunion is over, Valla can give you the answers you deserve, brother,” Ermo announces, practically winsome as he bounces over to the table, picks up the jar with the pauzhuk and the dead rat, and carries it over to where Maksi lies prone. It doesn’t seem that she ever regained her wits after getting lost in the Gottyar Wood. She gapes around at us, half-present, but when she notices Gavril, she almost manages to smile.

22

Sweat glistens across Ermo’s red face as he takes Yulnia’s chair from the table and spins it around, hoisting Maksi up by her armpits and piling her onto the seat. She almost slides right back down, unable to hold herself straight, dazed and fragile. Ermo takes the jar with the pauzhuk, rips off the lid, and presses it firmly to Maksi’s chest, right over her heart, keeping it there—a dark promise.

I have to stop him. I have to free myself.

Gavril crawls toward his wife, but Ermo kicks him in the shoulder, barely missing his head. Leonid’s fingers dig into my wrists, pulling against me as I surge forward, fighting him, bucking against his bruising grip.

“Let her speak,” Ermo instructs, cold.

I can’t believe what I’m seeing. I can’t believe that I ever allowed myself to be fooled by Ermo’s charms. Through the walls of the castle, I hear the muted sound of Yulnia in hysterics. It gives me strength to know she is fighting back, too. I should have gone right to her when I learned Ermo’s grim secret, should have rallied her to my side. Together, we might have found a way to gird our spirits, escape from this place, and take our chances on the road. We could have brought Bucket before I knew he was Gavril, and found out by and by, when his letters were perfected, his true identity. We might have all grown close and made it clear of the forest north or south, leaving all this torment behind.

But those chances are gone, burned up like the blackened skull in the fireplace.

Leonid grabs the napkin out of my mouth, and I heave for air, throwing myself back against the Count, trying to slam my head into his jaw and knock him witless. He dodges out of the way, laughing. “Should have bound you from the start, northern girl. This makes for good sport and exercise.”

“Have you not done enough?” I shriek. Igol notices the new flesh before him, turning away from the cored rat beside him in the jar. His jaws are sharp and slick, soaked in blood as he ambles toward his human target. Maksi and I did not part as friends, but she doesn’t deserve this. No one deserves this.

Except perhaps Leonid, who seems intent on breaking my wrists. This is the most he has ever touched me, now, when he is at his most cruel. Gavril moans, sprawled on the soot-covered carpet at Maksi’s limp feet.

“Take up the broom, brother. It is time for her nuptial confession. This time we may have the real truth out of her. She was not honest the first time,” says Ermo. He doesn’t seem interested in anything but my reaction. This is how he thinks I should be punished for refusing his odious scheme. Leonid shuffles us forward, taking the fallen broom from the floor. He lets go, but only briefly, grabbing me around the neck with one hand and forcing me down to my knees.

The bristles rake over my head and back, sharp and snagging.

“Pecratus normines,” says Ermo, staring. He wipes the sweat from his temples and brow. Another burst of green smoke pours from the fireplace.

Leonid laughs and swats me with the broom again.

“Tell him, northern girl. Tell him everything—how you loved me, how your vows of marriage were false, how you batted your eyes and tried to put me under your spell. Say how you planned to kill him and take me to your bed instead.” Ermo’s tone never waivers, and neither does his paralyzing gaze. He speaks with such conviction, it’s like he believes every lie that comes out of his mouth.

My chest rises and falls quickly, the broom a mere irritation beside the horror of watching the pauzhuk dig its drill-like beak into Maksi’s tunic. Red blossoms outward from the point of contact, darkening her shirt as the beetle eats quickly through the fabric, reaching flesh.

Maksi’s eyes snap open, as if she is suddenly, terribly awake. A low, confused sound scrapes out of her throat. She is too weak to move much, but as she flops in the chair, Ermo anchors her down with his free, sweaty fist.

I look from Maksi to Gavril and back again, trembling with the weight of what is to come. My parents will have no more children; they will have no grandchildren. All three of us will be lost to the cursed, blighted halls of Valtivisk.

“Pecratus normines!” Ermo shakes Maksi so hard she almost tumbles out of the chair.

Leonid beats me with the broom.

“Stop this!” I say. “Let her live, and I will say whatever you want me to say!”

“Pecratus normines.”

I watch the beetle continue on, eating into Maksi, burrowing toward her heart. I can’t look away. I won’t. From a memory that feels a thousand years old, I hear Blind Yurg’s tremulous scratch of a voice. That’s what we should be like—the pauzhuk. Steady, steady, never giving up, carving forward, carving forward, even if ground gained is only measured in widths of your fingernail. We could come to know the forest that way, and in time, its darkness would be our darkness.

That darkness is my darkness.

“I would have loved you!” I snarl, lurching forward. Leonid drags me back, hits me with the bristles. “I could have, Ermo. You were kind. You were good. You came to me and told me to be patient and touched my face with your liar’s hands. I didn’t love you, but I could have! Now there is only hate—hate for you, hate for your brother, hate for this fucking castle—”

I’m not done. I’m spitting, half-mad, but I’m not done.

“Pecratus normines,” Ermo interrupts. He’s enjoying this, enjoying my pain. Unblinking, nostrils flared, he watches for every twitch and ripple on my face. Gavril pounds both fists on the ground, then gets on all fours, attempting to reach his wife again.

Ermo kicks him in the head this time, and Gavril collapses.

Leonid pulls the bristles down over my braids, tearing out clumps of hair.

Maksi convulses. The pauzhuk is deeper, almost enveloped by the soft black tunnel it’s made. Her eyes roll back, a string of incomprehensible words dribbling from between her slack lips.

“More? You want more?” Leonid says.

Thrashing. Shrieking. Leonid is too strong; I can’t squirm free. They are killing her. Killing her. Killing her right before our eyes. Gavril rolls onto his back, weeping, tears flowing across his pink, knurled skin while he chokes out strange sounds.

“I planned to kill the Count, not with you, Ermo, but on my own. If you let me go right now, I would tear out his throat with my teeth. At first the forest poison in my veins told me to kill, but now I yearn for it with no help at all. And I didn’t put rats in your father’s corpse, but I wish I had! I curse your foul bloodline, Ermo and Leonid. I curse you both, and I will live!”

Ermo shakes his head, too focused, too intense to laugh or say that damned confession command again. Leonid has no trouble laughing, doing so right in my ear.

“I will live! Oh, yes, I will. I will live to see your lives extinguished, and I will snuff them out myself!”

Maksi’s legs jerk. Blood flows into the jar, half-full now, covering the rat.

Gavril slams his head against the floor, bam-bam-bam, choking, desperately trying to speak. No, not speak. He is invoking our word for mercy, our sign that the game has gone too far.

Bam-bam-bam. Kyuk, kyuk, kyuk.

Leonid tosses the broom aside and hauls me to my feet. He drags me closer to Gavril so he can glower down at him. “Hard to cluck like a chicken, without a tongue.”

Maksi has stopped moving altogether. Her head falls to the side, her eyes still fixed on the wall to my left. Igol reappears, slick with blood. I tear my gaze away while Ermo scoops up the insect and drops it back into the vessel. I don’t need to see the hole drilled through her heart to know what they have done.

“Gravno, I think the beetle is drowning,” Ermo mutters. He pinches down into the blood-filled jar, trying to fish out the insect, but it continues flailing, upended on its back and sinking. “Yulnia will be cross, but I can get her another one.”

“What matters is we’ve had the truth,” says Leonid.

Ermo pushes the jar across the table with a sneer of disgust. He steps over Gavril’s arm, joining his brother and their headless patriarch near the head of the table. “Now we just need to decide what to do with her.”

“She should share Mother’s fate,” says Leonid. Pressed against his chest again, I feel the sharp intake of breath as he catches sight of Maksi. His tone is less giddy when he next speaks, as if the real horror of what he has done is beginning to settle on his spirit.

“The tower?” Ermo suggests.

“Yes, but we should wait until it’s light. I want to see it.”

My fire has gone out. I sag forward against the bonds and Leonid’s grasp. He whistles sharply, startling me briefly out of the exhausted, despairing stupor that has set in. I don’t have the energy to cry anymore; my mind spins forward, desperately seeking an answer, a strategy, anything. I’m outnumbered, and soon I will be thrown from a window to fall to my death.

Armen appears, takes in the scene of gore and chaos before him, and quickly recovers.

“Take her back to her chambers, make sure the locks are secure, and set a watch,” says Leonid. He transfers me to Armen like a sack of vegetables. His grip is no less punishing than the Count’s.

Armen has nearly dragged me out the door and into the front hall when Ermo hurries over, stopping us. It makes me sick now to look at him, to consider that I ever thought fondly of his curling red hair and sweet blue eyes. It was all a mask for the demon lurking inside.

He touches my chin gently, sweeps his thumb across my lips.

“Is it true, what you said, Valla? You never loved me?”

I regard him for a long while, deciding. At last I snap my teeth forward, biting his finger, sinking my teeth in, and making it count.

As soon as his blood touches my tongue, I hear it. The voice.

THE SHARP. THE BLOOD. CLOSE NOW. CLOSE. UGLY WORK LIES AHEAD.

Ermo cries out, rears back, and slaps me. “Lock her in the cage. We’re done with her.”

I barely feel him strike me. In fact, I laugh. I laugh in his face, his blood smeared down my chin. Armen wrestles me out into the hall, and while he carries me up the stairs, I hear the brothers deciding Gavril’s fate.

“Don’t waste time; his mind is already gone,” says Ermo.

“A hunt, then. I’ll let him loose on the south road and let the men try their aim.”

“Not worth the spent shot. Just a single crack of the rifle will do.”

Armen locks me in the bed cage, leaving my hands tightly bound. All night long I listen for the bullet that will claim Gavril’s life. On and on the hours march, and the shot never comes.

23

Whatever happens next, whatever I become, it’s all their fault. I sit on the bed, very still and vigilant, and consider what I will be, how this will change me, but I don’t have long to wonder.

The moon comes out, fingers of milky light trying to reach me through the new grime on the window. I feel a distant quaking. Bony Leg is on the move. I keep the amber and the stone knife on me, aware that I must take any opportunity to flee. Soon after, there is gentle scratching at my door, then more frantic. I sit up straighter, wondering who has come. I half expect a pack of rozhmaka to barrel through, but instead, a ghostlike apparition opens the door and floats inside. It’s Yulnia, creeping across the stones in her flowing white sleeping robe, her hair loose and free.

She presses a finger to her lips before advancing. Her mouth screwed up to the side in concentration, she takes a pair of hairpins and tinkers with the lock on the cage until I hear the mechanism catch. I leap to my feet, turning and presenting the sash that’s tying my hands. She undoes the knot, and together we tiptoe to the open door. Slumped against the wall just outside is Lev, who has fallen victim to his cataplexy and lies there fast asleep.

“Not a word until we reach my chamber,” says Yulnia. “The guard in your corridor is asleep; the others have gone to hunt your brother.”

Her voice is rough from crying, and there are heavy red marks beneath her eyes. We slip silently through the hall, to the stairs, and then up, pausing now and then to listen for footsteps. On the landing, Yulnia pulls me behind a thick curtain, and we wait while two men listen outside her door, hear nothing, and leave, going the way we just came. Once they are gone and we are safely inside, she turns and locks the door, then shoves a chair up under the knob.

There are dolls and doll parts everywhere. She has scattered the tiny versions of herself across the floor and bed, hacking off their heads, arms, and legs. The little wooden pieces skitter as I wade through them and toward her bed, where I huddle, grateful, shaking with fear and relief.

Yulnia crosses to the window, which she has left open. It’s freezing inside the chamber.

“Krugan,” she murmurs, haunted. “Krugan . . . I brought you here because I have to know once and for all if he’s real. Please, dolly, please say you were lying.”

“I’m sorry, Yulnia.” I pull myself up. Have to keep going. Have to find a way. The voice is back to keep me company, and Bony Leg is awake. Escape has never been so close at hand. “But Krugan isn’t real. He’s just a cruel fiction concocted by your brother. Korumpo is landlocked, surrounded by mountains; nothing he describes in those letters is real. There are maps in the library and histories of the region.”

“But why?” She sounds so young, and so small. So betrayed. “What was the point of it all?”

“To keep you here,” I tell her firmly. “To keep you quiet.” We both must leave behind fantasy for good, and we must do it tonight.

Yulnia scratches her hands down her face. She drops to her knees in front of the window, picks up a severed doll head, and throws it out into the dark. “Then I’m alone, truly alone. I have never left Valtivisk. Nobody even knows I’m here. Nobody knows I exist.”

I notice a tall glass potion tube on her writing desk. It sits among the riffled explosion of Krugan’s love letters. My legs are weak and tired, but I force myself up and go to inspect the potion. It sits beside the bloody jar, two dead creatures inside.

“Igol killed someone tonight, didn’t he? They brought him back like that, dead, drowned in gore.” She joins me at the table, her eyes filling with fresh tears as she beholds the jar and her lost pet. “It’s a warning, giving him back to me like that. A warning.”

“Yes,” I say. “They killed my brother’s wife. They made us watch.”

“I heard the screaming.”

“Maybe my brother managed to escape them.”

“No,” she says. “They will make certain he dies. But without you there, perhaps they will be merciful.”

I shake my head. “Maybe. But I will not be.”

Yulnia grabs a few of Krugan’s letters and shoves them into the bloodied jar. “I heard you, Valla. I heard everything. I hate them, too, and I won’t just sit here and let them threaten me. I’m the eldest child, and they dare treat me like a prisoner?” She takes the potion and throws it, smashing it against the wall over the bed. “And Kiril, the snake! The liar! As if I would drink another one of his putrid concoctions ever again! He probably brewed this to make me witless so he could carry me off to his creepy little dungeon and have his way. He never really had the power to bring Father back, just his disgusting, rotten potions and lies, but I was too silly to see it. No wonder they wanted to execute him in the Capital! I just wanted things to . . . to . . .” She trails off, covering her face again. “I just wanted things.”

Carefully, I peel her hands away from her scratched face and hold them lightly in mine. We stand face-to-face amidst the ruin of her never marriage and the loyal pet they forced to kill.

“I wanted things, too.”

“What do you want now?” Yulnia asks, squeezing my hands. “Whatever Leonid claims, you are still the Countess of Valtivisk.”

My blood seethes and sizzles and provides.

“Revenge,” I tell her. “And then, freedom.”

Yulnia nods, filled with new vigor. “We will run away, Valla, run away together. Maybe the forest will have us. There is deep, old magic in the wood. It lurks in her heart, in her yadro.” She takes back her hands and presses her fingertips against her cheeks, soaking up tears. “I used to know that. When I was little, when I would sleepwalk, I could hear the forest calling to me. It knew I wasn’t like my brothers, and it was right.”

Something scrapes around outside her door. We both freeze.

“Under the bed,” she whispers, fruitlessly smoothing down her tousled, tangled hair. “Hide! Quickly! I will make them go away.”

I duck down and pull the black stone knife out of my boot, passing it to her. “Here,” I say. “You should not be defenseless.”

Yulnia regards it with wide, amazed eyes. Someone knocks. She jumps and stows the knife down the front of her dress, tucking it into her underpinnings. Like a spider, I stow myself in the shadows and wait, eyes fixed on the door.

She pushes the chair to the side and unlocks the door, tugging it open just a fraction to peer out into the hall. Whoever is on the other side takes advantage, shoving their weight against it and stumbling inside. Kiril. He cries out at how easily the door gives way, and then he catches his balance, running his fingers through his beard as he spins around to inspect Yulnia.

“Dear, dear child, you have made such a mess,” he chides, gesturing at the scattered, broken dolls. “Why have you not taken your medicine? The hour is too late for these fitful antics.”

Yulnia turns coldly toward the stain spreading across the wall and her bedding. That, and some shards of glass, are the only remnants of his “medicine.” She points. “I seem to have spilled it.”

Kiril’s caring mask quickly slips, and he glares at the stain. “That is not an accident, child. You wasted powerful medicine! Expensive powders!”

He storms toward her, towering, and Yulnia’s fingers flinch. For a moment I think she might go for the knife, but instead she drops her head to the side and giggles and simpers, and Kiril stops short. She ensnares him effortlessly, with a mere toss of her hair.

“You know my changeable moods.” She sighs. “It is my brothers; they have both behaved abominably this evening. Look,” she says, nodding toward the desk. “They killed darling Igol.”

“A serious blow, my child. I know, I know, and beslavna, you are deeply sensitive.”

“I am.” Before my eyes, she slides back through time, younger and younger, until she appears as no more than a naughty child caught eating midnight sweets. She tucks her hands behind her back, swinging from side to side. I’m itching to fly out from under the bed and ambush the creature. Together we might overpower him. Her voice changes, lilting up, sweet and sad as she asks, “Did you know?”

Kiril’s shoulders slump, his mouth hanging open. “Know? About . . .”

“About Krugan from Korumpo,” she replies. “Did you know that he was a fiction?”

The selvitel is no fool, and he hesitates, picking his words carefully. “I . . . had my suspicions, but dear child, it is not my place to question your brothers. They employ me, and I am simply here to serve.”

Yulnia nods once, and a chill thrills down my spine. “So. You knew. That makes me cross, Kiril.”

“Yulnia, child—”

“And something else has made me very cross.”

“Oh?” Kiril’s overgrown brows tent, his hands pressing together, pleading. “What is it, my child? You must tell Kiril. You must trust Kiril.”

I roll my eyes, sickened. Yulnia has the right of it; there’s no telling what was in that potion he left for her. He’s obsessed, desperate to keep her on his side.

“I want to trust you, my cherished magician. You are the only person I have left. The only person until Father is returned to me,” Yulnia says. She leads him to the open window, leaning out to peer into the darkness. The wind tugs at her hair. “Tonight, I spied little children of the forest gathering ’round the slab. They were picking mushrooms, and now there will be none for your magic. Surely you will keep trying to resurrect Father? And so, we must guard those precious ingredients. . . .”

Kiril sputters. “M-my child. Your father’s head—”

“Surely you will try again.” There is no room for argument, and the horrible old pervert is hypnotized by what he thinks he will have. Yulnia slips back from the window. “Look,” she says. “They are there digging and scratching, even now.”

“What? Could it be so?” Kiril leaps forward, no doubt curious to catch a glimpse of the fabled children.

“They are there,” she tells him, skimming backward, putting distance between them. Doll parts spread in her wake, making quiet, twinkling music as they collide. “Keep looking.”

I see what she means to do the instant before she does it. I pull myself out from under the bed, not to stop her, but to help if it comes to that.

“Beslavna, my child, I believe you, but the gloom is impenetrable, and I cannot see—”

Yulnia sprints, hard, head down, shoulders squared, and rams Kiril in the lower back. He’s still speaking when she hits, and he squawks, flailing, his beard swirling in the air above Yulnia’s head as he twists and flies, hanging on to his last word.

“Seeeeeeeee—”

I make it to the window and to her side in time to see him soar. He’s just a smudge across the night, rapidly smaller, his voice dwindling until he lands partially on the slab with a sickening crunch. He moans softly, still alive, trying to crawl but only succeeding in dragging his broken body off the slab, revealing that the rock below him has cracked in half from the impact. The selvitel doesn’t get far, realizing too late that he’s pulled himself too close to the edge of the land bridge. The ground there is sloped, and he rolls limply into the moat. The thick water sucks at him, pulling, and we watch the brown sludge claim him. With a bubbling slorp, he disappears below the muck.

In the night, a lone beast howls, and the trees of the forest shimmer and clatter their close black branches; there is a rush of wind and then silence, as if the whole Gottyar Wood has shuddered with greedy delight.

24

For a long moment, there’s just the bubbling of the moat and Yulnia’s harsh breathing.

“He’s gone,” she whispers. “Dead. Dead, and I killed him.” She gives a high giggle, then blinks hard, as if clearing something from her mind or reeling from some internal blow. “He loved that damned moat and his privies. The conveniences of modern city life in the wilds, he would say. Day by day, we conquer this place, he would say. But what have they conquered? Drowning in your own crap, old man—what have you accomplished here?”

She stops and turns to face me, frowning. I’ve forgotten the dried blood on my face, around my lips, and Yulnia wets her thumb with her tongue and gently rubs the remnants off my skin with frustration and amusement, as a mother might do.

“You must be afraid, after everything they’ve done to you,” she murmurs, and—knife in hand—pulls me into her arms. I am afraid. I am. Everything I know is gone or out of reach. Maksi has been murdered. Gavril could be dead, too. It’s incredible that he did not go mad after the torture they put him through. A fragile part of me takes hold, and I sink into her embrace. I close my eyes and remember being a girl, happy, richly unburdened, scooting around the kotte in a loose shirt to my knees, squealing with laughter because my father is pretending to be a bear. I have never been held by a person who isn’t family, and this feels different, intimate. For a long moment we are warmly together, flung into a tender feeling by terrible circumstances, two stars hanging together in the sky, cosmically distant but part of the same constellation of pain.

Yulnia strokes my hair. I don’t want it to end, this embrace, but there’s more to do.

“We must see to Ermo,” she says, holding me at arm’s length, a dark ringing in her voice. “They will notice that Kiril is gone, and they will find a way to blame you for it. I need answers—I deserve answers—and then he will show us to your brother.”

She speaks firmly, with a confidence I yearn to share.

“Wait,” I tell her. “We need to be careful, Yulnia; we need to think. Your brothers are stronger than we are—they have weapons and watchmen. . . .”

“No.” She shakes her head, definitive. “I don’t care. I don’t care! I’ve waited long enough—all I’ve ever done is sit and wait—prisoner in one tower and then another. I’m all done waiting, dolly—” Yulnia cuts herself off with a mad laugh. “But you’re not a dolly, are you? We were just ornaments, you and I, but no longer.” She takes the black stone knife and lifts it to her hair, then begins to saw. The long, beautiful, ice-white hair comes away in heavy chunks, drifting to the floor where the doll parts are still scattered, painted severed heads mute and staring.

The shorn hair, cut in jagged lines at her jaw, fluffs up around her head.

“Sharp,” says Yulnia, holding out the knife to inspect it. “That’s good. Come, Valla.”

“Wait—”

“No! NO. No more waiting. I’m awfully tired of waiting.”

Before I can grab her, Yulnia runs to fling open the door, nightdress trailing behind her, then plunges out into the corridor. The knife had been entrusted to me; I have to get it back. I don’t call after her, afraid of causing too much noise and drawing attention. The halls are dark, and Yulnia has traversed this place all her life. She is much faster than I, but I have an idea of where she’s going: Ermo’s workshop, where he is known to tinker away late into the night.

I follow the ghostly tail of her gown, hurrying along, mindful of the sound of the heaviness of my step; it feels like the house should still be in chaos. That it is not, that everything has subsided as if normal, fills me with renewed anger. We race down the stairs to a cold and empty front hall. There is no one manning the front doors, neither inside nor out, which gives me pause. Where have the guards gone? To kill your brother, to satisfy the brothers’ bloodlust.

I want the knife back, and the urgency coursing through my veins wars against my better judgment. We shouldn’t rush this. We mustn’t be sloppy. Yet Yulnia is already crossing the path, stark white in the gloomy depths of the night, a haunting that has left the castle to spread across the property. The ground sparkles with frost. My feet are unsteady on the slippery front steps that lead to the path crossing to the carriage house. A few humble lights glow in the windows, marking Ermo’s presence. Torches flare along the distant palisades, hollow calls echoing from the south, near the mill. Some of the voices sound agitated, and I wonder if the Count is among them.

The uncertainty of his whereabouts follows me, a constant dread. Have they found the empty cage in the bedchamber? Do they know I’ve escaped?

Hooves drum along the road to the south. I see Yulnia duck down, flattening herself against the wall of the carriage house near the door. I’ve yet to cross the road, and I fall where I stand, trying to meld into the shadows cast by the raised steps up to the castle entrance. Pools of light move along the road, revealing a patrol of three riders. They pause briefly near where I lie, distracted among themselves with an argument. I recognize one of their voices. It belongs to Armen.

“You can tell the Count your rifle bloody jammed—I won’t be hided for your mistake,” he says.

The rider beside him jerks his hat lower over his eyes and spits off into the grass near me. I don’t flinch. I don’t move at all. Through the damp, overgrown weeds, I can still see Yulnia huddling against the carriage house.

“Doesn’t rightly matter, does it?” says the spitting man. “Forest’ll get ’im. With all the poisonous crawlies out there, he’s as good as dead. Won’t last the night, poor sod. Shot to the head would have been merciful.”

“It would have been, had you done as you were told,” Armen mutters. He kicks his horse forward, and the men ease down the road curving to the south. “You should tell the Count; he will want to see it finished himself.”

“Maybe I will, maybe I won’t,” the spitter replies. “Maybe I’ll run like the others, desert. Five more quit last week, did you know that? This place is cursed. It’s all going down in flames, and I don’t want to go down with it.”

“Then run,” says Armen. “I’ll tell the Count, and we’ll hunt you, too. This is no place for cowards.”

What the other two riders say in response is lost to the shadows.

My heart flutters in my throat, leaping with hope: Gavril is alive.

I need to get to him, but I can’t abandon Yulnia to her brothers, nor can I leave the black stone knife in another’s possession. It was given to me. A gift, a destiny.

Yulnia springs away from the wall, hooking around to the carriage house doors and peeling one open. She slips inside while I dash across the road, low and skulking, like the black rozhmaka lurking in the woods. The smell of char and grease wafts from the space left by the half-cocked door, the interior bright yellow with the bloom of a hotly burning fire. As soon as I draw into the oppressive heat, I pull the door closed behind me, gently, without engaging the latch.

It doesn’t matter. My caution is all for nothing, as Ermo, hands up in surrender, notices me at once. He glares at me over his sister’s shoulder. Yulnia has drawn the knife on him, pressing him down the aisle between two drafting tables littered with schematics, drawings, and plans on brown paper. Two half-finished projects are suspended above the tables by heavy ropes, as droopy as unmanned puppets, the metal contraptions posed as if they could quiver to life at any second.

There is a quill pen tucked behind Ermo’s left ear, and the smock over his nice tunic shirt is marred with ink stains. A fire roars behind him, high and raging through the wide bars of the protective grate. His face is a sweaty and pale mask, his parted lips suggesting hurt, perhaps surprise. My gaze keeps snagging on the pen behind his ear; he just went back to work. He drilled a hole through Maksi with a forest insect, promised to fling me to my death, then calmly retreated to this sanctuary and got on with his little sketches, his little life.

He didn’t expect this. He didn’t expect us.

“A patrol just passed,” whispers Yulnia, dripping with venom. “Rendering us quite alone, brother.”

“Why would that matter?” he asks, wetting his lips with a nervous sweep of the tongue. “Please tell me you have no intention of using that knife.”

My mind lurches forward. What next? She and I cannot hope to take on the Count and his armed men. The best we might hope for is escape. If we can reach the forest, I might be able to find Gavril, though such a thought feels mired in impossibility. The wood is vast and dangerous, and there’s no guarantee the yiliksii will aid us.

But the knife. The knife! I’ve done as they asked. Where is my reprieve? Maybe drawing blood with my teeth wasn’t enough, wasn’t right. The Sharp must be blooded.

“Why not? Do you not deserve punishment?” Yulnia asks, keeping the knife pointed at his throat.

Ermo tilts his head to the side and laughs. “What have you done to your hair?”

“It isn’t your concern,” she growls. I move along the wall, inching, trying to bring myself closer without startling a response from either of them. “What I do from now on is not your concern.”

His laughter eases into a sneer. Bubbles of sweat gather at his temples, and the fire screams higher behind his back. “You look ridiculous. You look mad. Mad, just like Mother. Is that what this is, sister? Your inevitable plunge into hysteria? I urge you to be calm, to cast aside whatever deceptions the northern girl has used against you. You’re not stupid, but it would be deeply foolish to trust her word over that of your brother. Snowdrop, little Snowdrop, listen to your brother. Lower that knife and come to me.”

Yulnia takes the tiniest step backward. Then her shoulders stiffen and she shakes her head, slicing the knife through the scant space between them. “That won’t work on me anymore. The sea, Ermo? Korumpo by the sea! Krugan—my savior, my hero! All of it false. All of it your nasty little game.”

Her shoulders shake. She sobs, hard, fighting to get out the words.

“Let me explain,” he says, raising his hands. His gaze flicks to me again as I move forward to the edge of the table on the right. “Though I am outnumbered, let us be civil. For pity’s sake, Yulnia, you are beside yourself. We will summon Kiril, and he will have soothing powders for you—”

“Oh, no, no, no. I’m afraid he will have nothing.” Yulnia wipes her face clean and draws in a shuddering breath. “Deranged Kiril is dead. What fate would befall Valla has befallen him instead.” At this, Ermo’s eyes widen. He knows, in that moment, that there is real danger. His eyes lower to the knife. Kiril is dead; this weapon is not an idle threat. “I won’t have any more of your poisoned honey, brother,” Yulnia goes on. “No more words. No more lies. I know why you did it; you’ve already betrayed yourself. Just like Mother. Mad and unmanageable—that’s what you think of me. When a cage wouldn’t work, you used my own heart against me. Vile! Vile is what you are. I see you clearly now. I see us all clearly. I see what we have become.”

Ermo’s face tightens, his arms slowly shifting down to his sides. “Enlighten me.”

“A blight,” she cries. “We are a blight on this place! We shall be torn out by the root, starting with Kiril, starting with you!”

With a piercing shriek, Yulnia throws herself forward with the knife, attempting to stab it down into his heart. But Ermo is ready for her, and he’s quicker, stronger, catching her by the wrists and keeping the blade from striking true. Brown paper schematics flutter to the floor as I vault over the table between me and Yulnia. Ermo wrenches her right hand to the side, squeezing, his teeth bared, rasping out a grunt of exertion as the knife falls free. I’m there, I should be there, but he disarmed her too quickly. The knife is his, and shining and red, he surges back against the grate, burning himself, but out of her reach.

I’m a step behind Yulnia when Ermo flourishes the black stone knife like an artist with his brush, painting a thin red ribbon across Yulnia’s neck. Her eyes widen. She gulps, and blood pours down her lacy white dress. She reels back against me, leaning into my arms, then collapses, spasming on the floor, the wound spraying and spurting, her hands stiffly curled like two upturned dead spiders.

“Yulnia, no!” I whisper, then scream. I’ve fallen to my knees with her, my hands clumsily splayed across her cut neck, trying to fix what cannot be undone, trying to scoop the hot blood back into her dying body. “Yulnia! Yulnia!” I cry, but she is fading, then gone. Her eyes always reminded me of a doe’s, of a scared beauty in a glade, and now they are frozen in that state of terrified alarm.

Her blood is hot and covering me, quickly sticky. My shock turns to fury. My terror turns to rage. My eyes climb up Ermo’s legs to his chest to his face, where he wears an arrogant smirk just like his brother’s.

“Look what she did,” he whispers, pointing with the Sharp, with my blade. “Look what she made me do, Valla. Or maybe it was you. Yes, all that blood on your hands. Obviously, it was you. Nobody will ever believe that gentle Ermo killed his own sister. What’s one more lie between family, hmm? Watchmen!” he calls, puffing out his chest. “The girl has escaped her chamber! She is here! To me!”

To me. To him, for that is what he wants. I let Yulnia slide limp and lifeless out of my lap, and I take up her anger like a hissing torch. The heat from the fire behind Ermo scorches my face. The smell of his burnt flesh hangs heavy on the air. But I’m leaping. I’m soaring. I’ve no more strength than Yulnia, but I have fight and ferocity, and Ermo can walk back no further or he’ll risk searing the backs of his arms again.

We wrestle over the knife, Ermo pushing back against me, both of us tripping over Yulnia’s sprawled body, our feet slipping in her pooling blood. He loses his balance first, sliding, with a shout of anguished defeat, landing hard on his knees, his weight pulling me with him. My nails bite into his fingers, and it’s enough to loosen his grip, and the black stone knife is mine again at last. I have thought too much, hesitated too often, and now there is only me and the boy and the Sharp.

ACROSS HIS THROAT. THE SHARP. UGLY WORK. BLOODY WORK. THE SHARP. LET THE BLOOD. SEE IT FLOW.

“This isn’t anything,” he whispers, trembling as he lashes out to try to steal back the weapon. “You haven’t won—you can’t. We belong here, we—” He seems to change his mind midthought. “It could’ve been us. Count and Countess . . .”

I stab the knife into his right shoulder, and it sinks into the hollow and scrapes bone. He throws his head back with a savage growl, contorting from the pain, before remembering to fight back. Ermo’s hands wrap around my neck, squeezing, and now it is a matter of who can persevere, who can outlast the agony. The moment the Sharp goes in, the ground quakes, the forest wakes, and all around us, Valtivisk throbs. There is a great stirring, a rumbling from far off, the black stone knife blooded at last.

My vision begins to blur. With his hands locked around my neck, I can’t quite aim for his heart; his elbow blocks the way. His grip on my neck is crushing, bruising, and lights spangle in front of my eyes as it feels like his thumbs will pierce straight into my throat. I start to stab at his arms, as fast as I am able—slash-slash-slash—and his fingers ease, shreds of skin visible beneath the bleeding mess of Ermo’s right shoulder. My own blood ignites. The poison is singing.

THE SEAL AND THE BLOOD.

There’s a thud over my shoulder. Ermo’s pale blue eyes swim upward to something looming above me. I want to believe it’s Gavril or some creature of the forest coming to my aid, but I know from the smile of relief spreading across Ermo’s face that nobody has come to my rescue.

Something hard and punishing cracks against the back of my head. I tip forward into Ermo’s bloodied arms, the world narrowing to a single speck of black.

25

If I’m not dead, I will be at any moment. After the darkness came the pressure, the crushing from all sides, the worst of it bearing down against my chest. For an instant, I wonder if they gouged out my eyes. I can’t see, can’t hear; I’m a presence without a body. And it’s hot, so hot, bringing first awareness that I still have skin and a body, and then a quivering wave of panic. When I open my mouth to breathe deep, the soil floods in.

It’s everywhere, all around me, damp and fragrant, filling my nose, my ears, and now my mouth. Even after clamping my lips shut, there’s no way to spit the earth back out. They must have thought me dead. They buried me in the ground somewhere and left me to rot. Every small movement takes a lifetime, biting away at what little vigor I have left. I still feel stunned and dizzy from the blow to my head, but that’s nothing. This is worse than Ermo’s cruel hands choking me—every place I ought to draw in air covered instead with dirt. I can’t breathe. The ground shakes.

I’m here, I want to scream, but I don’t dare open my mouth again. I’m here! Alive!

Maksi is gone. Yulnia is gone. Gavril is wandering the forest somewhere, tongueless, burned, and all alone. And now I am already in the grave, listening to the earth shift around me, acutely aware of the moist pressure punching against my chest. A stabbing pain in my side makes me believe that at least one of my ribs is already cracked. If I don’t find a way out, if I don’t dig up, my life and the revenge that felt so close at hand is forfeit.

The nauseating waves of panic begin to ebb, for I must use what air I have left. I need to think. Where are my hands? They are crossed over my belly, and the black stone knife is trapped under them. The knife! I can dig with a knife. It takes an age just to shimmy my hands enough to take hold of the implement and gouge in tiny spurts upward. It isn’t enough. The dirt around me is packed tight, and there’s no telling how far it is to the surface.

My ears begin to ring, soft at first and then loud enough to turn my skull into a clanging bell. Even if there was anything other than black soil around me, I wouldn’t be able to see it. I can’t expand upward, can’t squeak in even one breath, and my teeth are clamped down around soil turning to mud.

It’s a trick of the mind, the sounds I hear through the solid wall of ground between me and freedom. I’m alone as ever, and the end has finally come. I sink back into it, into the death hurtling toward me, and a memory visits me, faded around the edges, warped by my failing body and my suffocated mind. It’s a memory of an old man, hunched and worn, a strange glint in his eye as he recalls the peculiar nature of the Gottyar Wood.

“That’s what we should be like—the pauzhuk,” says Blind Yurg. “Steady, steady, never giving up, carving forward, carving forward, even if ground gained is only measured in widths of your fingernail. We could come to know the forest that way, and in time, its darkness would be our darkness.”

I repeat it like a mantra: This darkness is my darkness.

This darkness is my darkness.

I’m slipping away into another warm place, kinder than this one, when I hear the faint, silvery sound of little bells.

Maksi’s bells.

I suddenly detect a muted voice from above. “Faster!” It’s harsh and creaking, like wind whistling through winter trees. It’s like no voice I’ve heard before. “Good girl, good girl! Faster now! Dig! Dig!”

Scratching. Panting. Someone has come to collect me. There’s just a trace of strength left in my arms, but I find it, use it, stab upward with the knife. They buried me with it, the fools, and I will make them pay for that.

The sounds above me sharpen. Two hands and four paws rake through the dirt, shifting, and cracks appear in the vast wall of brownish black crowded around me. Even the moonlight burns my eyes as my grave breaks open, and the crisp, clean air rushes in, filling me like a loving promise. Coughing, spitting, turning, I wriggle and sputter while two sure hands pull me out, clean and quick, like an earthworm plucked from its burrowing hole.

It’s almost too much—the moonlight and the air and the dazzling onslaught of thoughts now—that I can clear my mouth and breathe again.

Those same hands wipe the dirt out of my eyes, cradling me, showing me an odd assortment. Gavril is there, holding me up, and a yiliksii watches me from two paces away, eyes like glittering glowworms in the darkness. And there is a canine, tall and well-formed—a hound, with fuzzy charred moss, an oily, shadowy substance coating it, sliding constantly, giving the beast an almost vaporlike presence. One sharp ear stands straight up; the other is bent in half, flopped. It, too, has golden eyes, keen and watchful, a lichen-covered tongue lolling out from powerful jaws. A worn, battered leather collar, the width of four of my fingers stacked, sits around the hound’s neck, the letters burned into it reading: DYELLA.

Her paws are muddied from digging me up.

Gavril holds me, and I, shaking with sorrow and relief, hold him, too.

“No time! No time . . .” The child of the forest trundles forward. I don’t know how I can understand their language now, but perhaps some part of the ritual has completed itself. Seal before blood—the marriage that made me Countess, made me bride, and now the blood of the family drawn by the Sharp. The child tries to shake me. They are no more comfortable to behold up close, their gangled proportions unsettling, but I won’t refuse their help. Whatever their appearance, their intent is mine. Even if I wanted to fight or run, I couldn’t. “Hurry, hurry, hurry.”

The yiliksii gestures toward Gavril and Dyella, making it clear that he’s to put me on her back. The hound is large enough, and I’m too weak and bruised to walk on my own. Gavril lifts me with some effort and gently lays me across the hound. I can feel her sinew moving beneath me while I lie there, squinting up at the veiled stars, holding the black stone knife to my belly.

My heart swells with gratitude, and even that is unbearably painful.

“Quiet now, we go, quiet,” says the yiliksii. I wonder if Gavril can understand what the child is saying, but he stares down at the creature in silent confusion. By the moonlight, I can see a twine necklace around the yiliksii’s neck, acorns and a leafy twig hang from it, along with Maksi’s bells. “Quietly, quietly, we bring her to Baba.”

With my eyesight returning, I flop my head to the side and try to locate us in relation to the castle. Reddish blurs float among tall spikes—the palisade walls. We must be just outside of them. The trees here are densely packed, which makes me think we are either east or west, not along the road or near the mill. So they dumped me into a swallowing grave to die; perhaps I should feel fortunate that they did not decide to throw my senseless body out of a tower.

The four of us move deeper into the wood. There is no path, and soon the cloaking white mist envelops us. There are whispers within the fog, as if the trees are carrying on a hushed conversation around us or watching, bringing word of our coming to our destination, to this Baba.

Dyella’s paws crunch through leaves and clumps of springy loam crusted with frost. There will be time to consider how the hound has survived, though her appearance suggests the dark magic of the forest at work. The forest. It is so alive around us, and not as foreboding as I once thought.

This darkness is my darkness, and now I see it with new eyes, all the legends and rumors stripped away, revealing the sinister beauty that was always ready to be embraced. The leaves shimmer; the whispers rise in the mist, a sense of excitement, of anticipation, following us as we slowly wend through the trees. There is a route, but I don’t yet know it, and Dyella navigates it with a steady stride. Courage, that is her name, and I will need all the courage I can muster to keep surviving. My body is numb with pain it does not want me to understand, and even holding the weight of the knife to my stomach is daunting.

We walk for a long while, and the mist becomes so encompassing, I can’t see anything beyond it. When it is almost completely obscuring, it feels like we’ve walked through a door, stepping from one part of the forest to another. The fog lifts, and the trees are less closely clustered, a narrow path of trodden, packed leaves snaking down into a shallow bowl of a glade.

There is rumbling and grumbling from the forest itself, and with eyes wide, I see trees with roots like many slender feet shuffling along the edge of the glade. They move slowly, ponderously, but they are walking. We travel downhill and toward the clearing, where two dozen or so yiliksii have gathered, yellow eyes peering at us with unbridled interest. At the center of the glade lies a sparkling pool of greenish-blue water ringed with flat, runed stones, night insects skimming the lush, clean surface. A clattering music begins, and as we draw closer, the yiliksii raise rattles of empty seeds, shaking them until it sounds like a hundred dry branches shivering in a gale.

“Human brother found her in the dirt, and we found brother! Almost lost her!” says the child that has been traveling with us, the one with the twig on a string and Maksi’s bells. “She must rest. Food and drink, yes, that is what humans require!”

“Come, Twig,” says another yiliksii from the front of the assembled group. They lower their rattle and toddle forward. Their string ornament bears a clump of feathers. “Come, we will make ready. . . .”

Twig goes with the other child, and together they begin gathering fistfuls of leaves from the edge of the glade, bringing them back to a clear spot beside the pond. A perfume of wet moss and wildflowers pervades the clearing, and I breathe it in greedily while each pull of my lungs makes my battered ribs twinge. The other yiliksii scatter with their rattles, though one stays behind. This one, a claw dangling from around its neck, observes carefully while Dyella ferries me to the soft bed of leaves being heaped at the water’s edge.

“The Sharp!” they cry, stuffing both fists in their mouth. “She has brought the Sharp! Blooded and sealed! The Sharp! She can hear the forest now! Joyous! Joyous!”

“Run and tell Baba,” Twig says, punching the leaves into shape. “Off with you, Claw! Feather, help me clean her.”

Claw does as they are told, leaving us. Gavril sidles up to Dyella, helping guide me onto the ground while the hound lies down and leans to one side. Even gentle touching stings, and I curl up on my left side, then decide my back is better. There are welts there from the Count beating me with the broom, but my chest and ribs are pulsing in excruciating time with my heart.

The knife stays in my hands, crusted with blood but safely resting on my stomach. Twig and Feather kneel by the water and, with hollowed-out gourds, gather cold, clean water. They trickle the water over my face, and it almost burns. I adjust to the shock of it by and by, and soon it feels soothing, the glade’s untouched water cleaning away the dirt, sweat, and blood. Some of it seeps into my mouth; for a moment, I wait, breathless, wondering if it will hurt like the poison, curdle my stomach, but it tastes perfect, like spring rain pouring from clouds over Arylik. It floods into me, bringing me back to life.

Gavril holds my hand, cradling it carefully, and tears slip down my cheeks from the joy of having him alive. We haven’t been that close in recent times, and now I regret it deeply. His red, scarred cheeks are wet, too, so maybe he is thinking the same thing.

I don’t know how much time slides away while they clean off the remnants of the castle and let me drink from the spring. Hours don’t seem to pass in this place. Kiril called it the yadro, the heart, and I have to believe that is where they have taken me. Clusters of spiky seedpods glow among the trees, emitting a milky, starry light. It’s enough to see by, and I turn my head, taking in the ring of walking trees patrolling the edge of the clearing. There is a sharply rising hill to the south, and it seems to breathe, pulsing faintly, like a giant baby hidden beneath a blanket of moss and soil. Floppy, leafy plants grow in abundant bundles all around, fuzzed with delicate silvery fur, like the lamb’s ears that sprout against the village well and explode with purple flowers in early summer; and there, farther back, to the east of the spring, I see the outline of a shack, tall and precarious. The house sits on stilts of aged and faded white wood. No, not wood, bone. And the pillars are not stilts, but legs, angled back and then forward with an awkward bend, like a chicken’s, meticulously built into this shape but created of many smaller bones lashed and clay-patched together.

Bony Leg.

There are three visible windows built into the house, each triangular, one on either side of the door and one above it. A crooked chimney smokes, a green haze rising to the tops of the tree canopy.

The yiliksii that vanished gradually appear again. They come and sit here and there, on stones or the ground or piles of leaves, and they take up their seed rattles and make music together. One brings out a small reed flute and plays a song that makes my belly twist with longing—for innocence, for childhood, for a mind unshackled from all that I have seen and endured. Dyella curls up at my feet, a comforting presence, and raises her head, releasing a long, winding howl. Two more voices join hers from the edge of the wood—Skernos and Pasha, I think, similarly returned to life and prowling somewhere in the shadows.

It carries me away, this unfamiliar familiar song, until I fall into a deep, dreamless sleep. When I stir many hours later, the children are still gathered in the glade, though they have abandoned their gentle forest song to work. I watch, stunned and amazed and horrified, as they drag a human corpse into the clearing and begin to dress it, using sharpened stones to expertly remove the limbs at the joints, taking it apart as one might a hare or deer. Claw and Feather slit the legs from thigh to ankle and effortlessly remove the bones, exposing the gleaming white treasures to the moonlight, setting them in neat piles, and moving on to the next portion of the body. As they begin to flay the skin from the skull, I recognize the victim.

Kiril.

They have removed the moat’s filth, undressed him, and broken him down into pieces. Claw slices off the bulk of Kiril’s beard, gives a laugh like nails scratching down dry bark, and puts it on their own head as a wispy little hat.

I turn away, rolling onto my belly with a grunt of agony. Gavril has fallen asleep to my right, and he does not wake as I pull myself over to the water. A splash. A cold slap. It keeps me from getting sick. When the ripples in the pond settle, I can see my own face quite clearly by the milky light of the hollow seed lamps. My hair is a wild, unkempt tangle framing the hard, new angles of my cheeks and jaw. Kiril’s ointment has obviously worked, for my scars are so minimal that my beauty has been restored. Hope flares in my heart; has it all been undone, the cruelty of Valtivisk? I am myself again, whole and lovely, Arylik’s flower once more in full bloom.

No, there is something different about me. My eyes are not the same.

This darkness is my darkness.

Dyella whines in her sleep, shifting against my feet. The Count is still out there, and his odious brother, and they will have to be dealt with sooner or later. Bony Leg can take the knife, sealed and blooded, do her forest magic with it, and wipe them from the Gottyar and from memory. What did Yulnia call them? A blight.

In the water, in the reflection, something moves above me. I gasp and turn, no longer alone. An old woman watches me, her eyes filmed as if blind, her gray hair a snarling bramble just like mine, her face not just weathered but hard and lumpy, as if slashed repeatedly, lichen and bark growing in the cracks where scars should be. She is larger than any woman I have ever met, wide yet somehow fragile. A tattered robe in the style of my own hangs in shreds from her broad shoulders. A single, speckled mushroom grows from the tip of her strong nose.

When she smiles, and smile she does, it isn’t teeth in her bleeding gums, but spent bullets from the rifles of Leonid and his men.

“Made you sick, did it?” she asks, chuckling. Her long, long fingers spread out, gesturing to the yiliksii at their grim work. “Hard to watch, I imagine. Hard to take. We save the bones of the brides and the dead men and build our homes. Nothing goes to waste. We weave warmth from their hair, make trinkets with their teeth. We keep their names alive with our winnowing songs. There is beauty in the body, even in its winter, even in its season of death.”

Her smile broadens, and behind her, Claw begins pulling the teeth out of Kiril’s head.

“Waste not, want not,” she adds. Her voice is edged, rising and falling unpredictably, quavering like the first warning shriek of a long winter night’s wind.

“Bony Leg?” I try to sit up, but wince. It’s too painful.

“Is that how you know me, child? That is one of my names, and now that you are here, I am Baba Yaga to you. Be at ease. There is no rush now, for you have done all that you could, and done it well. I couldn’t ask more of you, but I will.”

Kerlunk-kerlunk-kerlunk. Claw is rough with their rudimentary tool, rough and enthusiastic as Kiril’s teeth are gathered in a brown, spilling pile.

Bony Leg squats and offers me a hungry smile. “Here in the heart of the forest, Baba Yaga takes, and takes, and takes, but rest assured, dear, desired Valla, she gives, too.”

26

Bony Leg—Baba Yaga—lumbers away back to her odd house tucked just inside the tree line. Now that I’m here, now that I’m finally free of the castle, I have so many questions. I try to stand and follow, but she half turns and wags one long finger at me. “Rest,” she says. “You’ve earned it.”

As she leaves, the children glance up at her only briefly. In fact, as they continue their work, they flash intense, expectant eyes at me. There is a palpable sense that they are waiting for something. When I try to meet their gazes, they pretend not to notice, and it makes my skin prickle. The sound of their stone knives slipping over muscle and bone creates a rustling lullaby, and I sleep awhile more. Morning banishes night, but even when the sun rises, the glade remains thick with shadows.

After sleeping for so long, I’ve become painfully hungry, and Gavril is awake, too, lying on his back and staring up at the clouds, which are visible above the twisting canopy of branches that domes the clearing. My unanswered questions needle and poke, but I don’t want to leave Gavril’s side. He must be afraid, and he must miss Maksi terribly. Only his eyes are familiar, for most of his face has been burned and changed, rearranged into raw pink swirls.

“That one is like a sheep,” I say, pointing at one of the clouds.

Gavril grunts and blinks rapidly.

“I’m sorry, Gavril, for all of it, but in the night, I had an idea.” Or the start of one. It filled me with giddy excitement, making it difficult to fall back asleep. “We could go back to Arylik now, couldn’t we? My face is almost completely healed, and I could find someone to marry, someone who could take care of us both. Baba might even give us safe passage through the forest. We could avoid the roads altogether. . . .” His face falls the more I speak. “You . . . You don’t want to go home?”

He motions over his own face and shakes his head.

“I would explain to everyone what happened,” I hurry to add. “But you don’t want them to see you like this?”

Gavril frowns.

The idea, the promise of somewhere familiar to go, drifts out of me on a dreary sigh.

He sits and scrounges up a stick from nearby. Dyella has trotted off somewhere, and the children are busy patching the legs on Baba Yaga’s house. I can hear them hammering the new planks into place with rocks. Sweeping away some of the leaves between us, Gavril takes the stick and uses it to draw a rudimentary castle.

“Valtivisk?”

He nods, then points to me. There is pain in his eyes, and a question.

“I did want to live there,” I tell him with a sigh. “Once. Papa said it would be a golden dream, but he had no idea he was sending me into a nightmare. It all went wrong from the start, didn’t it? We should’ve turned back. If we had, Maksi might still be alive, and they would never have hurt you. It’s ruined, the lives we would have had, but I promise to protect you. I can’t believe I didn’t recognize you under that bucket. . . .”

Gavril shakes his head and shrugs.

“Did they warn you not to take it off?”

He nods, then wipes out his first drawing, starting anew. With the point of the stick he makes two rudimentary people, points to me, then himself, then slashes both figures through the neck. His meaning is plain enough.

“Ermo and Leonid must answer for what they did to us.”

Gavril sets his jaw firmly. That means no Arylik, no home, no way forward, but back to Valtivisk. It’s too hard to stomach.

“How shall we go forward, you and I?” I ask, lost. “I can teach you more words, and we can speak that way, or we could devise a language with our hands, signals and gestures, though I wouldn’t know where to start.”

With the stick, he carefully, shakily writes, BOTH. Then he touches the fingertips of his right hand to his heart.

“I love you, too, brother,” I tell him, and lean across the small gulf between us to embrace him. I’m reminded of Yulnia’s arms wrapped around me, the comfort that came with even a moment’s gentle touch. Gavril and I have never been close, but I swear that will change. I know it will. But there is fear in the knowing. We’re both so different now, and much uncertainty remains. I pull back, masking my alarm with a soft, far-off smile; to protect him, to love him, is to confront those responsible for his torment. For our torment.

Feather has been observing us from where the yiliksii are assembled to mend Baba’s house. They peel away from the others, running over to us and pausing before opening their arms.

“A hug?” I ask, hesitant. “You . . . also want a hug?”

Feather nods, tucking their hands behind their back.

“I suppose . . .”

The yiliksii tosses their little body at me, and I have no choice but to catch them. Their small, spiny arms link around my neck, their chest rising and falling quickly against my throat. Sensations and memories wash over me in rapid succession—the first time I felt sunlight on my face; making grass whistles with Gavril in the dry winter fields; the chirp of insects and frogs rising to meet the starry blanket of night, their chorusing seeping in through the kotte windows, a reminder that nature is close and walls are frail.

Feather giggles like a rill bubbling over round, worn rocks. The child drops out of my grasp and goes to Gavril for an embrace.

I’m still slightly stunned, sure that I have just been hugged by nature itself.

“How did they find you?” I ask, hoping someone will answer for him, watching Gavril’s face fill with the same wonder that just crossed mine.

“He was trying to dig you up and not getting very far. Oh, but it was sad, and we felt very sorry for him,” says Feather, releasing Gavril. They gaze up at him, fiddling with the charm dangling over their chest. “Baba said he was your friend, your kin, that your blood is his blood! He didn’t want to let us help at first. Most of your folk don’t, and usually we just let them die to join in the cycle. But it was that or the fire booms, so he came with us.”

“Fire booms? The rifles?”

“The barking, biting human contraptions,” Feather says, swaying. Their eyes slide to the side for an instant, then return to us. “Fire very dangerous. Fire hurts us most. Oh! Baba says you must be hungry. The children will bring your kin food, but you must go to Baba.”

I watch as the door to Bony Leg’s hutch swings open, welcoming me inside.

My legs are still sore and bruised, but strong enough to stand. I do so reluctantly, afraid to leave Gavril again after our unlikely reunion. But he doesn’t seem too concerned, and he sits quietly, waiting.

“You won’t feed him anything from the Gottyar, will you? It’s poisonous.”

“Silly! We know!” Feather laughs and pats their round, protruding stomach. “Children have gone to gather roots and berries from the edge of the forest. They will not hurt him. Hurry, hurry,” they say. “Baba is anxious to see you, sparkoyem.”

That is a word I know, though it strikes me as more appropriate for the halls of Valtivisk than a glade enfolded in mist and magic. Sparkoyem. Heir.

As I limp closer to the house, it shifts, alive, the clawed toes on the bony chicken feet flexing into the soft earth. The children pause at my approach, stopping their hammering to mark my progress across the clearing, once more leading me to think that they have been waiting for me. And why not? It was their voices I heard in my head, their runed knife delivered to my window, and now my living body that they have saved from death.

The children step back, the house kneels, and I take my first step into Baba’s shack.

Inside, the home is crammed full of drying herbs, hanging sacks of ingredients, and cauldrons of various shapes swinging from hooks on the ceiling. The entire first floor is a kitchen, and narrow, steep stairs along the right wall lead up to a closed door. The walls of the shack are pink and faintly shimmering, as if coated in slime, as if I have stepped into a beast’s innards. Straight ahead, though partially obscured by Baba’s tall, broad body, sits a brick contraption laden with tile stoves. Along the left wall, a shelf displays an impressive collection of stone mortars in various sizes and colors, each with a matching pestle. An eye-watering medicinal smell pervades the lower level, and underneath it, the more comforting and beckoning scent of roasting meat.

Baba hums a tuneless song, her snarl of gray hair tumbling down her back almost to her knees.

The raven with strange green-and-black eyes is there, perched on a wooden staff or walking stick poking out from a wicker basket. It caws softly at me, head swiveling this way and that. It gives one excited hop, then pecks at Baba’s right shoulder, alerting her.

“I know, I know, Nochi,” she mutters, toiling away at the stove. “Her rumbling stomach gave her away twenty paces ago.” Baba wipes her hands on the front of her tattered dress and turns to face me. Her metallic smile reaches her eyes, crinkling them. “It’s bad luck to linger so in a doorway. Come in, child, and join me. We have much to discuss.”

Answers, at last. I’ve wandered in a fog of confusion for too long; if anyone can explain the magic of the Gottyar and all its bizarre happenings and creatures, it’s this woman. If, indeed, she is a woman. I can’t help but peer at the bark and moss growing through the cracks in her skin. She sounds like any elder from Arylik, but I would be a fool indeed to assume that she has no more power or import than the ladies sitting around the fires telling stories and mending tunics.

She waits, staring at me. Her raven, Nochi, bounces up and down again, swoops over to the cool edge of the tiled hearth, and knocks its beak against a wooden bowl.

“Yes! Oh, you pest, back to your perch. The girl is here for her meal, but you cannot blame me for enjoying the sight of her.” Baba chuckles to herself in a rasp and sweeps up the bowl. She takes another and trundles over to me, the house shaking with each of her ponderous steps, and she offers both meals. They are steaming hot, the bowl in her right hand heaped with stewed greens and what looks like chestnuts; the bowl in the other is murky red, filmed with pockets of shiny oil. She smirks and cackles. In the left-hand vessel, a human eyeball bobs to the surface.

Gagging, I take a leaping step back.

“Tut, tut, child, you will need a stronger stomach than that for what comes next.” With another brittle laugh she holds out the bowl of vegetables. I tiptoe forward, take it, cradling it nervously to my chest. My starving belly has already forgotten the shock and disgust of the other bowl, and I lift the food to my mouth, smelling the rich, brothy leaves and nuts, and sip the clear broth surrounding them. There’s the homey flavor first, and the instant pleasure of savoring good food after deprivation, and then an awareness of the warm, tingling, spreading sensation traveling from my mouth and throat to my extremities.

“Even the food here is magic,” I murmur, amazed.

“It must seem like magic, yes,” says the forest woman. Her white eyes sparkle with interest. “In truth, it is but the plants and seeds of the wood married over a stove with water from the glade. Simple solutions to simple problems. You hunger and the wood provides.”

I gaze down into the bowl for a long moment. The water didn’t seem to hurt me, but I can’t help but wonder if the meal is safe to eat. “Then, I can consume food from this place? It won’t poison me?”

“You’ve already survived its poison, child,” says Baba, and with a sigh, she guzzles down the other bowl of soup with the floating eyeballs. It occurs to me with a shiver that they probably belong to Kiril. She smacks her lips and returns to the stove, depositing the empty bowl beside a still-bubbling cauldron. “A callus dulls the sting of repetition, just as the infected wounds that scabbed and healed prepared you for this moment.”

“Was I . . . different, then? Chosen?” I ask.

“Chosen!” Baba cackles with laughter. “Only like the salvaged wood is chosen to be whittled. Once the Count decided on you for his next bride, certain events were set in motion, but no special star shone on the day of your birth, no omen told of your arrival. You are simply next.” The front door behind me is still open, and Baba slowly nods toward it. Turning, I watch as a figure shuffles and slumps into the glade, then stands still, swiveling as if on strings, puppeted by an unseen hand. Blind Yurg. “There have been several Vallas over the years, and I have had decades to plot in the forest’s interests.”

Outside, Blind Yurg wanders away and out of my view.

“He was never real?” My only friend, and he was what? A corpse? A spirit?

“Oh, the man that provided the body was real enough. One of the Count’s workers who deserted in the wrong direction. He wandered, lost and starved, and afterward, we . . . repurposed him. His name was Yurg, he did have a curiosity for the forest, but his words and deeds were mine.” She walks the fingers of one hand across the wrist of the other. “Mine. Like that.”

Just a puppet, then, or bait. A stool near the raven’s perch twitches and marches over to me on its four legs. Baba gestures to it, positioning herself near the shelves stacked with mortars. Her face softens somewhat when she notices the tears in my eyes. “Sit, sit. The more you rest, the better. Do not cry over Blind Yurg. Nothing he said can be taken from you. Your bond, too, was true—it was us speaking to you even before the poison made it easier to hear.”

I do as she asks, silently grateful for the respite, though it does feel a bit impolite to sit on something that’s alive. Hearing about Yurg only fills me with a desire to run from the house. The danger hasn’t passed, I realize, it’s just different now. “I was thinking about what my brother and I might do next. He doesn’t want to return to Arylik, but that seems the best place for us now.”

She explodes with laughter. “You think you would survive the journey without me?”

“And why not? Would you not grant us safe passage?”

“I certainly would not.” Baba sneers, lowering her head like a wolf ready to strike, her eyes cool, searching my face with discomfiting intensity. “We could have left you in that grave to die, but we didn’t. None of this—safety, healing, power—comes without cost. I can be very kind, girl, but I can get cross, and cross I will be if you run from this place.”

I think about what she just swallowed, choosing my next question with care. “Then for the moment we will stay, but I will not be imprisoned again. Why do I get the impression you’re all waiting for me to do something? The children stare and stare, and it’s as if . . . Well, it’s as if the whole forest is holding its breath.”

Baba nods, slowly, no longer so wolflike as she wraps her arms around her middle. Her breathing is ragged, noisy, whistling slightly as she pulls air in through her mushroom-capped nose.

“It’s unsettling,” I finish, slurping more soup.

“Well, pretty girl, you will hopefully forgive all the gawking; we have been hoping and hoping for some years now. Hoping someone would come along, the conditions would ripen her, and she would survive long enough to meet destiny. We hoped and planned, and along you came.” Baba lowers her head, then raises it with some effort and sniffles to fight a runny nose. “May I see the knife?” She holds out her hand, her palm bright with sweat.

The black stone knife has been tucked back in my boot for safekeeping along with the chunk of amber. I begin to reach for the weapon but stop myself. I have come too far to act recklessly and hastily now. The old woman has given me hospitality, it’s true, but I just watched her chew a mouthful of human eyeballs as if they were chunks of goat meat, and I sit upon a stool that has a life of its own, inside a shack that walks on two bony chicken feet. This darkness is my darkness. Who can I trust but myself?

“I will show it to you,” I say. “But you may not have it.”

Baba’s eyes widen. “Ah, yes. There she is, and crossness is all forgot.”

“Who?”

“The young woman who will take my place—our much-desired sparkoyem, the forest’s heir. I told you; plans have been set in motion.” Baba scratches her chin, watching me draw the knife from my boot and place it in my lap. “Mmm, mm, I had my doubts, and that can be my shame, but the children trusted, the children believed, and as their will is the will of the wood, they were bound to be right.”

“I . . . I don’t understand.” But perhaps I do. Heart and mind go to war at once, for just looking upon Baba is difficult, and now she says I am to become like her. My face is finally healed, my beauty restored, and to imagine my face exploding with slivers of bark, my forehead growing mushrooms and moss . . . I turn my gaze downward, glaring at the knife. What have I begun here? How can I go back?

“Your revulsion is only natural, my girl.” Baba chuckles, wrinkling her nose. “Would it surprise you to learn that I was once beautiful, too?”

“N-no.”

“You are a young wit, but a bad liar.” Baba smiles serenely, and I see a glimpse of the comeliness that might have been there before. “But that is forgivable—your destiny does not rely on deception, merely acceptance.”

I finish the soup and set the bowl on the floor beside the stool. At once I hear the little four-legged thing sniff the remnants of the broth. Does it eat? Does the house? My guts flip around, another wave of fear and confusion muddling my thoughts. “Acceptance of what?”

“I will start here, with what it means to be the sparkoyem,” she says. “It means your power and revenge will come at the cost of your beauty and all the dreams it inspired.” At least she has the grace to sound sad about it. Again, there comes the flicker of loveliness in her face, the striking profile of her nose and the elegance of her brow. “That will be a difficult sacrifice, I know.”

Without meaning to, I jump to my feet. The empty bowl skitters across the floor, and the knife in my lap clatters down. “It has been nothing but unfairness since I left Arylik! All my life I have been told that my face will win me a better future, but that was a lie. It was all lies and unfairness!” The words are petulant, my tone even more so, but it’s a truth that hurts to hold inside, so I let it spill out. Tears burn down my face, gathering along the edge of my jaw. “That beast clawed my beauty away, and the Count treated me cruelly for it! You don’t . . . You don’t . . .” I’m sputtering out, flaming high and hot before melting back down, sinking onto the stool and dropping my head into my hands. “You don’t understand what I suffered in that castle.”

Baba’s heavy steps approach, and I feel her standing over me. The knife remains on the floor between us. “Oh, oh dear. Of course I understand, child. I lived it! And I lived it longer than you. For forty long years I lived it, endured it, a prisoner in a dream someone else decided should be mine.”

She lowers one spindle-fingered hand, carefully tugging at my chin until I look up at her, miserable and damp from my tears.

“D-did you want all those horrible things to happen to me?” I ask, small and tired. “You sent Yurg—did you also send that rozhmaka to claw me?”

Baba’s white eyes soften. “Want? No, certainly not. That beast clawed you out of fear. That you survived is chance. But the other things? Yes, I knew they would happen, as they have happened many times before, eight times, to be precise. Once is chance, twice is coincidence, but after that, it’s best to sit up and take notice.”

Eight times?

“There have been eight of you?”

“Eight of us,” she corrects, wiping a few tears away with her bark-hard knuckles. “I was the first wife of the first Count. Two hundred years ago, give or take, I arrived from Strubronya of the Mountaintop, far from your Arylik, but not unlike it. My parents sent me with gifts and garlands, and I married Count Maxev, whose blood is the blood of Leonid, Ermo, and Yulnia.” Her eyes wander down to the knife. Reverently, she takes it up, raising it and holding it for the light coming through the grimy windows to catch it and spark against it.

“Poor Yulnia. I had hoped to make her the forest’s heir, but the darkness in her family was too strong. It dulled her to our wisdom and our whispers,” she says.

“Yulnia told me she would walk in her sleep as a child, and that’s why they built the cage bed.”

“Indeed, she did, for when she was young and innocent-minded, she could hear our calls. You heard it more keenly through the poison.” Baba runs her thumb along the knife, but it draws no blood and leaves no scratch. “I allowed Count Maxev my heart, but he was ever cold and distracted. The building of Valtivisk occupied his every waking thought, and I had our babes for company for a while, until all but one perished. The boy that survived was made harsh by his father’s ways, and the loneliness consumed me. Eventually our son was in need of a wife, so one was fetched from Mezna and the whole terrible business began again. I couldn’t stand to watch it—the Count tried to stop me, but I injured him, slicing him with a rock I had taken from the garden, and I fled, starving and cold in the forest, until I found my way here.” She closes her eyes, a sweetness lightening her windy voice. “The wood returned my children to me, those that had perished. Twig, Feather, and Claw were the first to rise and join me, for the forest wastes nothing and had held them in her black soil bosom, feeding them through the rootless tunnel beside the western tower. All the children of the forest were once children of Castle Valtivisk.”

“The slab,” I murmur. “The hole they covered with the slab where the strange mushrooms grow, is that what you mean?”

Baba nods. “Count Leonid’s father put that slab there; the fools finally got a little wise. That was the site of the first seedling, the very first tree of the forest. The place where it grew old, dried up, and died. That was how the wood returned its lost creatures, how it began, slowly, to defend itself from the hacking and the chopping and the burning, and the men who came to spread ashes and bricks and declare this place theirs to own. To retaliate for a life wasted by spite and desolation, I made a bargain for power with the wood—or maybe we made a pact. In the long shadow cast by annihilation, we found each other.” She cradles the knife in both palms, holding it out like a sacred offering. “We have both grown tired, forest and Baba; it is time for new blood, and an heir requires a new ritual.”

I feel the familiar itch to take the knife; that singing of poison in my blood has changed, quieter, but more resonant, more like an awakening of memory than a raw, startling scream.

“But you have a house that walks, the yiliksii and rozhmaka, and who knows what else. The Gottyar itself is your accomplice. Why would you need me? I couldn’t even destroy Leonid. I only succeeded in getting Yulnia and Maksi killed and almost perishing at the brothers’ hands myself.” The knife, runes glowing, says I’m ready; my unsteady heart says there is more to learn.

Baba closes her fist around the blade and walks by me, ducking to avoid the low ceiling on the doorframe before stepping out into the glade. I follow, feeling the floor beneath me inhale and exhale as the house breathes. Outside, the morning is subdued gloom. The skinny winged insects have returned to skim across the water, and the children have gathered near Gavril, spreading out a magnificent vivid carpet of moss and leaves, a green patchwork that they diligently piece together, weaving and sewing, Feather and Twig on either side of him, guiding his movements.

He appears almost content, and my heart clenches. Here in the forest we are tucked away from the world and all its pain, but that cannot last forever. He does not want to return to Arylik, but where else do we belong?

Baba veers to the left, skirting along the edge of the clearing, taking me to the large, grassy hump I had noticed the day before. She has not answered my question, and I trot along impatiently, watching her flick the knife this way and that.

“Wake up, old friend. We have company,” Baba croaks, tapping her empty hand on the huge swell of rock and moss resting like a turtle in its shell. The ground trembles as the lump stirs and rises up, displacing plants and branches, dirt and leaves, a round mass the size of a kotte, shaking off its slumber and turning gradually to face us. I gasp and recoil, stepping behind Baba shamelessly to use her as a shield.

She laughs. “Such reactions! We are repellent, it seems. Ah well. I have forgotten what we must look like to outsiders.”

The awakened mound is not part of the earth at all, not a hill come to life, but an immense pauzhuk, peering at me, dozens of yellowish-green eyes swiveling to find me, each the size of Baba’s gnarled fist. Leathery spider legs extend and retract, keeping it low to the hollow it has created beneath its bulk. The bulbous boulder shell on its back is carrying clusters of smaller rocks, which, when I study them, move and travel, revealing themselves to be pauzhuk beetles the size I have come to expect, just like Yulnia’s pet, Igol.

I cannot help but shy away from the pincers that could snip me in half with ease.

“Pozhu the First Beetle will not harm you,” says Baba, observing my fear with a mildly bemused smile. “Here, girl, come and place your hand on her shell.”

Her pincers mash and fidget, but she makes no attempt to drill through my chest.

“Why does she not try to burrow? I thought they did so relentlessly.” As I take a step closer, I’m enveloped by a damp wood smell that emanates from her beak.

“When they are in distress, yes,” Baba replies. “Pozhu has mothered every pauzhuk in the forest. One day, she will drill through the walls of Valtivisk and bring its towers toppling down.”

My hand is open and outstretched, but I pause just before my skin touches the beetle’s shell. “The moat,” I whisper. “She can’t pass the moat.”

Baba nods, spinning the knife and appraising me. “There she is.”

As soon as I touch Pozhu, her many eyes close, her form hunkering down as if sleeping again or calmed. At once I feel a hook behind my spine, yanking me forward, my own eyesight drowned out by a sudden vision of endless trees sketched in black-and-white. All the color drains from the world, and all the creatures in it, too, except for thousands of red threads extending from my body. The threads tug lightly, as if sewn to my own skin, and as I trace the wiggling red lines to their endpoints, I see all the beetles she has created as they make their way through the wood. I am part of all of them, and they all lead back to me.

“We remember the hatchling called Needle,” a thunderous voice says in my head. It tries to whisper but can’t. “We remember his fear, his confusion, his final, terrible moments. We weep for the life he took, maddened by his hunger and distress. Fear took the song of the forest from him, and fear took him from us. We saw you through Needle’s many eyes, and we stayed sleeping until your arrival.”

I flinch, taking my hand away, ending the vista of black-and-white trees, cutting the red threads tying me to Pozhu’s offspring. Pozhu’s eyes squint at me, then close, and she settles back down into the muddy depression below her shell.

“Don’t get comfortable,” Baba mutters, shaking her head. “We will need you soon.”

Pozhu is still and silent.

Baba turns and leads me closer to the water. A howl slices through the peace in the clearing, then another, and then a third. The old woman lifts her head, the mushroom on her nose vibrating, and she grimaces.

“Perhaps they found your empty grave,” she murmurs, her head tilted back, as if she’s speaking to the wind. “Perhaps they sense their walls cannot long protect them.” The noise from the hounds dwindles, and Baba sags, her shoulders caving in toward her chest. Her toilsome breathing can be heard above the rustling sewing work of the children, and she stifles a yawn. “You asked why you are needed, why my power and the wood are not enough. . . .”

It’s obvious now what the children and Gavril are creating. The shape of it is coming together, the fluttering blanket cinched tight in places, let loose in others. It has all been sewn with thin roots as red as the sap that bubbles from the Gottyar’s cut stumps, as crimson as the veins stretching from Pozhu to all her creations. It’s a gown grand enough for a Countess, a gown made to fit me.

It’s nearly finished. Claw scampers away from the hem of the mossy skirt, fleeing to find one of their tiny reed flutes. They return to begin a tripping tune, their golden eyes fixing on me, not just expectant, but hopeful.

“The magic takes your beauty and your vigor, girl, and I have given as much as I can,” says Baba, hoisting her right arm with effort and showing it to me. There are slashes there, too, scaly bits of root and bark poking out from beneath ragged scars. “The Count has machines and weapons, ballistae, axes, rifles, and walls. The wood lamented that I could not finish my revenge, that I merely kept the destruction from spreading far, and it provided me knowledge of an heir, one who might seal herself to the Count, blood the knife with his family’s liquor, and take more power than ever I commanded. . . .”

And I have been told the cost. Shivering, furtive, I peer up at her face, my limbs numb with fear.

“Again, you shy away. What do you imagine your life will be now, mm?” Baba sighs, holding out the knife toward the water. The insects there gather and swirl into a spiral. “Even if you go far from this place, who will want you? In your village, they know you went to marry the Count, and disgrace and shame await you there. Or would you venture south and live among men like Leonid and Ermo, who tell lies as smoothly as they draw breath? And you cannot marry now, can you? For your hand is already the Count’s. No, Valla, you are bound to him still, unless, that is, you were to become a widow.” Her white eyes roam over my face, all softness gone from her expression. “You made a vow, did you not? A promise to destroy the Count, to see him suffer, or has a day of safety made you forgetful?”

Baba offers me the knife. My hands are smooth, but bruised, still healing from the horrors of the castle. Maybe I have forgotten. Maybe it’s all I want to do. But the bruises are lurid, and the body, keeper of the heart and mind, will not forget. His coldness, his selfishness, his cruelty, it lives in my blood, veinmates of the forest’s poison.

I take up the knife and remember, grip the blade firmly, hold it like I hold that now-familiar darkness. Something is coming, snarling toward me on the wind, ready to snatch my breath clean away, lead me to the water, bend me toward reflection, and show me a version of myself I crave and dread with equal strength.

Before I can heed that wind and take a single step, a yiliksii breaks through the tree line, racing toward us, riding atop a spiky, red-eyed rozhmaka. When they reach Baba, they somersault off the beast and roll toward us. Their pulsing yellow eyes are panicked.

“They are burning the trees, Baba!” cries the child. “See? See the smoke to the east? The flames are hungry! The flames feast!”

27

“Let me join you.” Even as I say it, the words ring hollow. Baba storms toward her walking hutch while the glade erupts with activity; yiliksii run this way and that, gathering spiky seedpods from caches hidden in the trees and corralling rozhmaka, urging them toward the western edge of the clearing. The badgerlike beasts bristle and growl, hackles raised, red eyes sweeping the perimeter with an air of eager savagery. Gavril sits near the water, legs crossed, mouth slightly agape, observing the commotion with clenched fists.

And Baba shrugs me off, the house on bony stilts rising as she leaps onto the front stoop, the door hanging open. She spares me a brief glance, chest pumping from the exertion of jumping so high and so far. “Go and sit with your brother. You’re not ready.”

“But—”

“Be gone.” Her command leaves no room for argument, and the wolf in her returns. I shrink, seeing what the men of the mills and the castle must imagine when they hear the hut move through the forest—a fearsome witch potent with rage and terrible magic. That rage makes her eyes glow white-hot, her hair lifting about her head as if caught in the charged atmosphere before a lightning storm. That flash of anger at me lasts but an instant, and she ducks into the house. The shack stretches its legs, then stands, creaking, and marches along with the walking trees north and then west. Any rooted trees in the way lean hard to the side, allowing passage before straightening again, the forest swallowing the house, dense mist filling in the gaps between branches and trunks.

I don’t even know what I was protesting, because Baba has the right of it—I’m not ready and can’t yet fathom what ready might mean.

Gavril and I are almost alone in the clearing. The ground shakes beneath my feet as I return to his side and slump down into one of the piles of soft leaves. Twig has stayed behind, continuing to sew and cinch the mossy garment carpeting the shallow dish of the dell. The yiliksii works with no more speed or urgency and seems oblivious to their compatriots marching to war.

I can’t help but watch the black smoke rising above the tree line, drifting toward us on a steady wind.

“I should’ve gone with them,” I murmur. Gavril is kind enough to touch my shoulder.

“Not ready,” says Twig, echoing Baba. “Too weak in body and spirit.”

“But I don’t feel weak. I don’t . . . want to be weak.”

Twig shrugs their narrow, slender shoulders, back hunched as they lean forward, some of the gown gathered in their lap. “You will know when time has come. Spirit will know; body will mend.” They pause what they’re doing and look over their left shoulder, jamming a bone needle between their lips and reaching back to touch one of my bruised hands. “Root sprout takes time.”

Twig pats my hand.

“Root sprout?”

The yiliksii nods, taking up their needle again, talking and sewing. “Some trees you cut to stump, won’t grow back. Others, like willow, have root sprout, gives tree a chance at second life.” I have seen such tender shoots reaching up from the side of a stump, a flourish of green among the dead. They pause and stick out their hand, palm up. “Blood gem, you have it.”

“Blood gem? Oh! The piece of amber?”

Twig nods. “Yes, yes, gem from resin. Blood gem, I smell it on you. Give it here.”

Indeed, the piece of amber from Blind Yurg is still rolling around in my boot. I dig down between fabric and skin and find it, offering it to Twig. They swipe it out of my grasp, producing muted, thoughtful sounds while they place it at various points on the gown, trying to decide where to attach it.

“It’s beautiful,” I tell them. “The gown, the gem . . .”

“Yes, yes,” says Twig impatiently. “We will make much beauty together. Rest now, root sprout—light, water, time.”

I can tell they’ve grown tired of conversation. Gavril has been watching the yiliksii with intense interest, and admittedly, I feel the same curiosity. Could these little creatures really be imbued with nature herself? Baba claims she did not raise them, that they appeared to her in a time of great need, and when I embraced Feather, I felt sunlight on my face and grass brushing my fingertips. The glade feels abruptly empty and lonely; only Twig and slumbering Pozhu have stayed behind. The quiet descends with the bitter anxiety of a cold night without fire, and though I sense we are safe here, I can’t help but reach for Gavril’s hand, squeezing it tight.

Gavril squints at me, asking a silent question.

“I don’t know,” I whisper. “My heart tells me something is wrong.”

It’s a lie; I know precisely why my chest is buzzing with worry. Ermo and Leonid are alive out there, and I should be the one making them answer for their cruel ways. Gavril doesn’t seem to share my disquiet.

“You like it here,” I observe softly. “If you won’t return to Arylik with me, we could remain here, let the peace of the glade banish some of our hurts. I can learn and train under Baba, and you will be safe. But they will have to find more than leeks and dried roots to feed you, or else you will shrivel up like the yiliksii.”

Gavril gives a weak laugh.

Light. Water. Time.

It doesn’t seem possible—to wait and wonder—but if Twig speaks with the voice of nature, I would do well to listen. The yiliksii have left a hollow bark vessel for water on one of the smooth stones surrounding the pond, so I drink some of the cool, soothing liquid and sit beside my brother, who lies down on the bed of leaves, gazes up at the canopy above us, and then presses his hands together, opening and closing them, mimicking a book.

“A story?” I ask, and sigh. There’s a tremor in my voice, a leaping in my stomach, but I oblige him. How else are we to pass the agonizing time? Staying behind like this reminds me of the village raids; the last attack happened when I was barely walking, but Gavril would remember them better. A drought in the lower mountains had forced starving villages to pillage surrounding settlements, starving folk descending in the night to steal from our own paltry stores. Mother would gather us in the kotte, in the very corner behind her and Father’s bed. We would sit together there on the floor, heads lowered, listening to the screaming outside, the crackle and flourish of torches, and the cries of those who did not survive the raid.

She would always tell us the same tale, the story of how Arylik came to be, as if the legend of its founding, told over and over again, layer by layer, lessened the chance that it could be utterly ruined. Her words reinforced a threatened foundation.

“Once, before our home was a home, when the wood was still wise and friendly, there was a young girl, Arylina, who became lost and hungry in the forest. . . .” Gavril closes his eyes, a calm smile easing across his face. That is now a rare sight, and I cherish it. Though Twig does not slow in their sewing, I can tell they are listening, too, their face cheated ever so slightly toward me. “The Stag Father found her, carried her on his back, leading her away from the trees and up into the hills. There, she found two giants, Temtol and Tarlii, exhausted and having their rest. The moon was out, lovely to behold, and Arylina knelt by the giants, gazing up, watching as the moon nested perfectly between Stag Father’s antlers. ‘The moon will shine until I return, and when I do, I will bring a hunter to feed and protect you.’ This was the Stag Father’s promise. Afterward, the full moon remained for a fortnight, much to Arylina’s amazement. And just as the Stag Father vowed, a hunter appeared, strong and able. His name was Likkne, and the two fell in love, grew the village, creating Arylik, and never forgetting Moon Mother and Stag Father’s guidance.”

There were variations on the legend. Some claimed that Stag Father was the hunter all along, using the animal’s guise to win Arylina’s trust. Others say the giants were already gone when she came, that they were long since dead, the depressions left by their bodies filled with water, making the lakes.

“Is any of it true?” I ask Twig. They would have the answers; nature existed long before our nothing village.

“Won’t ruin surprise,” says the child of the forest. “You will find truth soon. Light, water, time, young root sprout.”

As promised, the yiliksii have left a basket of food safe for Gavril to consume. I take some of the leeks in the basket and rinse them, and we gnaw on them for a while together. My stomach burbles at the taste of them; have I changed so much that even the food of the plains outside the forest feels like poison?

The pain in my gut is sharp enough to freeze me in place. Gavril and I rest together on the heaps of leaves, and I try to remember the last time we shared a bed. We must have been children, and for a while, it feels like that again. The days in the heart of the forest are hard to track, for the light never seems to settle as it should, sun and moon almost interchangeable behind the veiny pattern of black branches arcing over the glade. In another part of the woods, Baba’s house still makes the ground shake and the leaves shimmer, but that sound grows more distant; as it does, the ceiling of smoke thickens, and we lose the sun and moon completely.

“How long has it been since Baba left us?” I ask Twig one morning (I think it is morning, but cannot be certain), rinsing more leeks for Gavril to eat. My bruises have become suggestions, and the tiredness in my limbs replaced by antsy urges to run and pace. There is a second basket by the water now, filled with nuts and berries from the Gottyar.

“Eepa.” They make a forlorn, thinking sound. “Four days,” the yiliksii answers. Twig lifts their very round head, sniffs, searching for something, then turns toward the east. There’s a new glow in their yellow eyes, vibrant, and they hurry over to me at the pond’s edge. Their raspy fingers reach down to brush over the fading bruises on my wrist. “Little sprout! Smoke chokes the light; there is no more time. Water, water!” The yiliksii trundles over to the water scoop and ladles some hurriedly over my skin, then dips it in to collect more water and offers it to me to drink.

Water splashes down the front of my dress, the ground alive and leaping. All three of us tumble off our feet, unable to stand as Baba’s hutch approaches at a run, the trees guarding the edge of the clearing bending and contorting to allow the house through. The tunnel widens, and a few rozhmaka appear first, riderless; then the risen hounds, Dyella, Pasha, and Skernos; then a handful of limping, charred walking trees; and finally, Baba’s shack. The windows are darkened with black grease, scorch marks flaring up the sides; it limps into the clearing and stumbles to its knees. The front door swings open, Baba sliding out in a boneless pile. Claw crawls out behind her, along with two other yiliksii.

Twig stands and clutches the talisman around their neck. “Feather is gone, taken by fire. Stone, Beak, Acorn, Leaf, all gone . . . Only Claw, Berry, and Tuft remain.”

The yiliksii and Claw toddle to Baba’s side, where the witch of the wood shudders and extends her right hand as if reaching for something. Gavril and I join the others as they form a loose ring around her. Baba rears up on her stomach, finds me among those gathered, and sighs. Most of her bullet teeth are gone. Her hair is matted with blood and sap. It’s me she’s reaching for, and I go to her, knees sinking into the soft earth just beyond the tips of her spindly fingers.

“To the water,” Claw is saying, trying to push and roll her.

“No point, little one.” Baba coughs, wheezing through a stretched smile. “I’m done for. It’s time. It’s . . . time.” Her milky white eyes travel up her own arm, to her fingers, to where I am kneeling. “Ready or not, child, here it comes.”

“Water!” Claw cries again. “Help me with her! Lazies, lazies, help! Good-for-nothing lazies, lend strength!”

Baba doesn’t struggle against us, all hands descending to drag her along the carpet of leaves and moss to the runed stones and the crisp surface of the pond. As we slide her in, she’s laughing, coughing, reaching for me again.

“What happened?” I ask Claw, who’s on all fours beside the water. “Where are the rest of you?”

“Fire chewing, gnashing, spreading,” Claw replies. It’s then I see that half of their shoulder has been burned away. “Stopped what we could, killed who we could, but brothers bring barking sticks, machines, push us back. Wound house, wound Baba, burn Feather . . .” Their voice falters, and the crestfallen child shakes their head. “No trees, no mist, no mist, no heart!”

“Hush, Claw, you are giving me more of a headache than I already have,” Baba mutters. In the water, she turns onto her back, revealing a raw gash that has sliced into her side. Her blood mingles with the water, dyeing it pink in swirls that darken as her heart pumps more blood out of the wound. “And that is saying something, dear child. Dying! I am dying, yet the noise . . . Ah! I must have silence. I must . . . see the girl. See the heir.” Baba sinks down into the pond until her chin dips under the surface. Her eyes flutter, but then her gaze fixes on me and her expression softens. Well, as much as it can, behind the jagged bark that breaks through her flesh, now rougher and more copious than ever, her face more tree than human skin. There are bald patches on her head where her gray hair has fallen out in clumps. Feet pitter-patter behind us, the remaining children hurrying to patch the house with fresh planks and bones.

“Stop that fussing! You can do it later!” Baba barks, then winces at the sound of her own voice. “Sparkoyem, heir, stay there. Yes, right where I can see you, child. Oh, but there are three of you; stay still. Never mind, never mind. Nobody said the end would be easy.”

“The end?” I must look crazed, horrified, clutching the stony edge of the pond with white knuckles, my eyes wide from watching the water turn gradually crimson.

Baba rolls her eyes and seeks out Twig at my side. “Did you not prepare her?”

“Twig try! Tell her light, water, time. Not my fault she not smart.”

“She is more than clever enough.” Baba sighs. “You were too vague and mystical about it, as always.” She coughs painfully, gritting her remaining metal teeth. Baba closes her eyes and draws in a long, shivering breath. When she looks at me again, it’s with all possible sympathy. “I assumed Ermo’s saw machines would become a problem. I did not think they would turn the tide so sharply.” She grasps her side. “I’m sorry, sparkoyem, winter comes early. Here is the freak frost that dooms us all. I was too spent. You are not ready. Perhaps the Count and his bloodline conquer us in the end. Two hundred years of war—nobody could promise the forest would win.”

Her dripping wet hand rises out of the water and cups my face.

“They can’t,” I whisper. “They can’t win. I won’t let them.”

“You’re a fledgling, child, a broken thing fallen from the nest, and now I must ask you to go back up into the branches, wounds and all, and take a terrible leap.”

I feel the failing strength in her hand, the thinness of her papery skin. Baba is dying. The risen hounds whimper, ghosts of black vapor patrolling in a circle around the pond. Even Pozhu shakes herself awake and joins us, the green fire of her many eyes noticeably dimmed. The insects skimming the water fly away, out of fear or respect, I cannot say. I hold Baba’s hand to my cheek and close my eyes, and against the lids, I see Leonid’s cold smile. And there are the bars of the cage they made me sleep in, and the false warmth of Ermo’s touch as he tried to steal me out from under his brother. There is Yulnia, a red ribbon tight around her neck, her face as white and frozen as the painted expressions of the dolls that kept her company in the lonely west tower. There is my brother, burned and humiliated, his tongue torn out, his wife murdered for the brothers’ amusement.

And to be told I’m not ready, that my body and spirit are too weak . . .

No. No. I see myself from a distance, bruised, afraid, and alive, not yet conquered, with a knife and a calling, and a promise to fulfill. It was a promise I made to myself, and it must be honored and upheld. From far away, I see a powerful young woman poised on the edge of darkness, armed for a fight that has become her own.

My body knows what my mind was slower to find—the knife is out of my boot and gripped in my left hand. Baba and I look at it together.

“Sealed before blood,” she murmurs with, at last, relief. “Your power will be far greater than even mine, child. There was more I wanted to teach you, but you will struggle through. You know what to do, mm? Plunge it into my heart and blossom.”

28

“You have knelt like this before?” It’s getting harder for her to speak, but Baba continues to touch my cheek and hold my gaze. “In their chapel you made a covenant with their god. Now you will make a new covenant—not with their god, but with yourself.”

A reverent silence squeezes around the yadro, the heart of the forest. The hounds, the remaining yiliksii and rozhmaka, Pozhu, Gavril, and even the walking trees pack in close. They are all listening and watching and holding their breath.

The rich brown color of the bark poking through Baba’s skin is leeching away, more and more like the pale peeling sheaves of a birch. She pulls my right hand to my left, urging both to close around the black stone knife. I’m afraid, suddenly, that whatever comes next will make me lose myself, but perhaps the dreaming Valla who struck out from Arylik wrapped in fur is already gone.

“What will happen? What will I see?” I whisper, stricken. This is all too fast. When will I learn? How will I know what to do?

“Roots that run to deep, forgotten places,” says Baba, smiling at me like it is my wedding day. “You will understand why the storms come, why the droughts kill, why the bright, poisonous thing leads us to temptation, and you will hear what the mushrooms murmur to each other when they carry the messages of the trees. There is a secret world beneath this one; it cares not for the pettiness of human ambition or the blows we land on each other, nor will it ever care for the cities that blight and spread. Nature seeks only to preserve itself; she is a selfish goddess, but your interests align. Plunge the knife into my heart, go with her, heir of mine, and blossom. Do it now, before my life ebbs into the pool, or else the forest is lost.”

There is no hope of healing her. The gash in her side is too grievously deep. Everyone is waiting, hoping, expecting. . . . I have just one reservation. Turning to Gavril, I seek him out among those assembled, and there he is, starkly human among the yellow-, green-, and red-eyed creatures serving the forest. His eyes are glossy with tears as he touches my hands. I almost hoped he would try to stop me, but nothing can stop this now.

How could I go back to my old life in my old village now that I’ve discovered this place? There is no position, no husband, no kotte that would satisfy me now. I have my brother, this knife, the yadro, the slicing gale of vengeance forcing me onward. I can’t let Ermo and Leonid win. More than that, I can’t let them live.

Here it is, at last, the power to make things right, and no time to hesitate in the taking of it.

Baba manages one last iron smile, her fingers unfurling in the bloody pool. The knife is warm in my hands, thrumming and ancient. The children crowd us, and each lays a brittle little hand on me. The hounds gnash their teeth and howl. Everyone holds me as I guide the knife between her ribs, seeking the heart and sliding it home.

There is a rush, a burst of gasping sound, and then pure night, inky and consuming. My eyes are open, but it’s like I’m back in that suffocating grave—everything is obliterated. The knife dissolves in my hands, breaking apart into dazzling motes of green light that drift upward from the pool. In the darkness, I feel Baba’s body sag against me, tilted across the stones ringing the pond; then that, too, begins to shimmer and join the other flecks of light. They travel away, across the water, forming a single, snaking stream. They vanish into the forest, but something insists that I wait; it’s the poison in my blood, but it’s whispering now, gentle and coaxing, perfectly entwined with my own natural thoughts.

Rustling. Murmurs. Then comes the drumming of hoofbeats traveling over shifting soil. The green light returns, this time in the form of a stag. It noses through the trees, striding into the clearing, its nostrils flared, red eyes hunting. It is nearly as large as Baba’s shack, impossibly huge, with its wide crown of antlers dripping strands of slithering black ooze. A shaggy moss coat covers the stag, brightened here and there with clusters of blooming green flowers. He tosses his head, then comes to the pool’s edge, across the water from where I kneel. With a keen and a wail, he raises his antlers, and with a startling flash that blazes across the sky, the full moon reveals herself, held perfectly between the two arcs of the stag’s horns.

I want to cry out and weep at this sign from my gods, but an unseen force keeps me in place. My limbs harden and stiffen before I pitch forward, dropping my face down into the pond. Blood and water swirl into me, and when I peel my eyes open, I see Baba’s face by the light of the pearl moon. She’s young again, achingly beautiful, a girl walking into the forest with an open heart and unfulfilled dreams. I paddle through the water, reaching for her, and my fingers pass through the image, scattering it. The calmness in the pool tells me I could stay here forever. I could just let go, allow the water to pour in and drown me, keeping me with this beautiful girl whose face is just like mine. It would mean my death, but it would also mean peace. No more struggle. No more fight. The temptation frightens me, clutters my mind with confusion. But there’s something on the other side of this enticing surrender. A need. A pull. I have to go on—no, I want to. My feet find the bottom of the shallow pond, and I push to ascend, thrashing, exhaling, and splashing up above the surface.

When I can breathe again, everything in the glade is different. The darkness has receded, and the world is luminous and new, as if a spring shower came and went while I was submerged in the pond.

The children are changed, too. They are no longer scratchy, blackened things, but furred with a thin layer of moss. Their eyes are golden and friendly, and I realize that I’m seeing them with the forest’s sight. Filled with love and awe, I rise easily out of the water and stand on the banks. When I draw breath, the woods breathe through me, as if my body does not end at my feet, but my veins continue, branching and merging with the millions of roots and threads held in the soil. I close my eyes and tug on one of those roots, coaxing it up through the ground, where it wriggles around like an exposed worm. I let go and it retracts.

The noise of the trees speaking to each other is overwhelming, as if I stand in the middle of a vast house where overlapping conversations permeate paper-thin walls. A raven startles from a tree two miles away. A spider at the edge of the clearing turns in a circle, completing its web. Beyond the mist, the fires set by the Count and his men dwindle, and the smoke lingers over the wood, a bleak veil.

The rozhmaka and hounds are green, too, created of living vines, leaves, and twisting plant matter. They are so alive it almost hurts to look at them. Dyella, Pasha, and Skernos sit calmly, waiting for my commands, Dyella with her mismatched ears, Pasha with hers at matching attention, and Skernos with one chewed away by rot, a sprig of violets growing in its place.

Twig ambles toward me, holding their hands tight to their chest. They are gloriously vibrant, the play of the light over their mossy skin turning them into a creature that could be formed from green molten metal. A wild crown of branches and twigs sits on their head. “Baba?”

“She’s with me,” I tell Twig. “I carry her.”

Twig hops and nods. “What do we call you?”

“Valla, just Valla.”

Curious, amazed, I lift my hands and study my limbs, smooth and somehow unfamiliar. It’s like I’m learning to live again, fascinated by breathing, standing, blinking, smiling. “I saw the moon and the stag, and the crown they made with antler and light. But how will I know what to do with all of this?”

Claw, who now has budding antlers of their own, steps up next to Twig and hands me a soft, spiky seedpod. Inside, it is teeming with the bloodred sap of the Gottyar’s trees. “The sap will make you strong. The sap will feed the magic.”

Twig nods, beaming up at me. “Think, and it will be.”

I imagine a sprig of wildflowers, and just such a spray of purple and orange flowers springs from the ground at my feet. I lean down and pluck the bloom, then hand it to my brother. Gavril rises from his knees slowly, taking the gift with wide eyes.

My own gaze travels to the expansive forest gown the children have prepared. It’s impossible to concentrate on just one thing; unbidden, the movements of the animals, insects, fish, and plants of the wood force their way into my consciousness. A shaggy black squirrel stuffs its cheeks with bitter seeds; a water bug scoots along the river, diverting when it reaches the fouling stench of the castle moat; and the stag of moss and branch eases slowly through the snarls of half-burned brush, somewhere, somewhere, watching, waiting, his keen red eyes landing on the machines of the mill and the men returning to their devastating work.

The trees cry out, afraid to be cut.

“Twig,” I say softly, breathing deep, taking in the clean air and also the smoke. “Could you attach Maksi’s bells to that creation of yours? The dress I’m meant to wear . . .”

“These?” Twig holds up the string of little silver balls and jangles it around. The bells have become warped, no longer merry but like the clanging of a broken wind chime. “But enemy will hear you; they will know you come.”

“Yes.” I smile. “Exactly.”

29

Wide awake, I dream with the trees. They have impossibly long memories, and those remembrances mingle with mine. I see the forest when it was new, just a few scattered saplings shivering in the dark. I grow with them. Their pain is my pain when their lives are cut short by the bite of the axe. The trees observe, allowed only their mute horror as they watch their fellows die to the woodsmen. The branches are hacked; the blood sap swells and spills, their seedmates taken away to be floors, chairs, whittled bowls; Yulnia falls to her knees in front of me, throat slashed; Maksi goes limp, her torment ended; Yurg, starving and afraid, dies in a shallow river, arms open to the chill embrace of the water.

And I see Baba’s life, too. She is with me, within me, is me. Count Maxev’s black eyes follow me across the glade as I approach the house that sits on two chicken feet. Every downed tree, every day Baba suffered, every hour I spent in Valtivisk, it all comes with me, haunting me onward. Whatever doubt I felt before is gone. This is where I belong. This throne of revenge and perseverance was always mine to claim, and now I take it with sure steps.

The children have already returned to work, pulling bones from their storage caches hidden at the edge of the forest to patch the house. Baba’s home—my home—is slumped to the side, east of the pond. I can feel its attention turn to me, the windows as keen as eyes. Standing before the creature’s door, I lean forward, stretch out my fingers, and lay my palm flat against its charred slats. It seems to sigh or breathe against me.

“What do I call you?” I ask, smiling gently, as if to soothe a frightened animal.

Hutch.

“Hutch. How long until you can travel again?”

Claw ambles by, arms piled with bones and clay. “Hutch ready after one sun and one moon. Hutch like Claw—always eager to hunt.”

“May I step inside?” I ask.

Hutch lowers itself farther, their door swinging open. There is a dull smoke tang to the air inside, but also the same lingering perfume of herbs and cooked meals. I see it with new eyes, not as a stranger, but as an occupant. This is my home now.

And do with it what you will, girl. You’d never find me crowing about my taste in decorations. Pretty it up if you please or leave it just the same.

Baba’s scratch of a voice. It’s good to hear from her again. I climb the stairs to the attic bedroom. Inside, there is a large bed, the frame shaped out of antlers and woven twigs. A cushioned seat runs along the one triangular window. The ceiling is sharply angled, and a worn chime made of crow’s feet and salvaged glass hangs from its highest point. There is an open wardrobe belching tattered clothes of all colors and sizes. There are trinkets everywhere—straw dolls, talismans made from sticks tied together with twine and grass, necklaces with broken chains, mismatched shoes, and discarded books. A quick, curious perusal shows me that the books are her own, containing notes and sketches of every girl who has been brought to Valtivisk to marry a count. Every girl like me who started the ritual or didn’t, but perished before she could become the heir.

The records sprawl back two hundred years.

The names conjure memories. These women died in the Gottyar and were buried there; their blood leached into the soil, their bodies fed the wood, their bones were taken to strengthen Hutch and let Baba limp along in her fight until . . . until . . . Kalyinka, Zlara, Lezhet, Alyona, more—the names are lodged in my head, each a sad poem written in tears spent years ago, each penned in invisible but no less staining ink. They arrived with hopeful smiles and left in a shallow grave. Some of their portraits were made, then burned; others were never painted; some didn’t last even a season before illness or violence claimed their lives.

I see the chain of them stretched back behind me, their hands on my back, their hollow eyes pleading for acknowledgment, for justice.

The last few pages of the most recent book are about me. Baba has put down my likeness, with and without the scars, and I am startled by the little charcoal girl staring up at me. There are words written beside her: “Valla from Arylik. Lost. Scared. Determined? I will tell Nochi to bring her the knife. My river runs slow—let this be the final bride, let her be the rush of a terrible current.”

Lost. Scared. I close the book and put it back where I found it. Those words mean nothing to me in this moment; I don’t claim them, and I don’t let them sink into my heart. They are the understandable anxieties of a distant observer. At least she got one word right.

Determined.

Can you blame me? Things were looking uncertain for a moment there. . . .

“One sun and one moon,” I tell her aloud. “Then you will see the terrible current you hoped for.”

Looking in the overstuffed wardrobe, I sort through the clothes of the women and girls who came before. Each garment tells a story. All of them are stained with dirt, others with visible sweat marks, some with blood, or ragged tears, or holes. One simple shift draws my attention. It’s more like the clothing I wore in Arylik, sturdy and homespun, mended artfully to conceal its real age. When I touch it, I plunge into memory, visions of the darkened forest spreading out before me, vast and unknown, as threatening a foe as the men hunting me on horseback. My heart feels like it’s going to burst in my chest. I’ve never run this far or this fast. Somehow, they don’t find me the first night, but that means I must survive alone in the woods in the cold and damp. There are red-eyed beasts watching, encroaching. I hear the digging of their claws among the leaves and fear their hungry snarls. Gunfire echoes through the trees, scattering the rozhmaka. The Count is still searching, long after sunset. I find a berm and hide behind it, lying flat, covering myself in mounds of wet leaves until the sound of horse hooves retreats. I pass the night in frozen shock, arms stiff at my sides, the crawlies of the forest moving through the leaves, over and around me, finding me as tempting as a log for warmth and seclusion. Like the trickle of water over my bedroom window, the worms weave wetly through the soil; it seems as if I can listen to the subtle twitches of the roots burrowing and seeking beneath me.

In the morning, I will shiver awake, slide out of my leaf pile, and find my way to a shallow creek to wash away the bugs and dirt. Leonid will find me soon after, the hunt called up again, and it will take only one braced shot to bring me down. My last thoughts are of the cool water lapping against my cheek and the red line streaming down the creek, as bright as a child’s festival streamer. I almost got away, I think. And then: No, no I didn’t. There is no escaping this evil. Stag Father protect me, there is no escaping it.

My name was Olgeth, and Leonid thought my portrait was a lie.

The birds took her hair to weave into nests. Her bones even now fortify the legs Hutch stands on. A lonely owl watched the woodsmen dig a grave for her, mere feet from where they would toss me, half-conscious, to die.

The vision slowly ebbs, and I’m Valla again. I shove the yellowed chemise back into the wardrobe and stumble backward. Her despair is too overwhelming, too close, as undeniable as my own feelings. My hands smooth over the back of my head, where the wound that nearly bashed it open is now fully closed.

Maybe she was fortunate. At least it was all over with merciful quickness.

“That only means she didn’t have a chance to fight back.”

She was our hope before you came, with your amber and your fur and your dreams of golden castles.

“When I first arrived, I asked Ermo about the other girls,” I murmur, eyes fixed on the stained shift poking out from the wardrobe. “There were two. He never mentioned that they were dead, of course.”

Not just dead—hunted like criminals.

“What beauty he did not see in them, I will return to him as pain.”

Do not underestimate him, Valla. They have been preparing for this war for two hundred years.

I move to the window and watch Gavril sitting near the pond, practicing his words and letters with a sharpened stick. This is our home now. There is no returning to Arylik.

“A few hundred years. What is that? The lifespan of a single tree. There is far more fight and wisdom in the legion ready to stand against them.”

One sun and one moon. The men at the Count’s mill return to work. Their vigilance has ended, and they think they have won. More of them have left and taken the road south after the last confrontation, their numbers dwindling. Ermo and Leonid must be in a panic over the wood that will go unharvested.

They fear the wrong thing.

On the morning of retribution, I stand amidst the silver-furred leaves of the lamb’s-ear plants that shimmer with dew, my arms out and my head high, while the children crawl on top of each other to dress me. They close the amber and bell clasp over my chest, and the gown of moss, leaf, and root spreads around me, lush and light. Claw loops a sash dangling with sap pods diagonally across my upper body. The blood of the forest inside will fuel my magic and replenish me.

Gavril watches, his brow drawn low, his arms crossed over his stomach.

“You’ll be safer here in the heart,” I tell him.

My brother shakes his head; he wants to join us.

“I promised to protect you, Gavril, and this is the best way to do that. The Count will have weapons—they have rifles and ballistae—and we will be very outnumbered.” But he won’t budge, and his expression is unchanging. With the whole host of the forest gathering at the eastern perimeter, I go to Gavril and wrap my arms around him, holding him tight. He embraces me, and for an instant, I’m just a human again, a girl afraid for her big brother.

“Let me do this for you and Maksi.”

Gavril pulls back, takes my hand, and makes the sign for together.

He’s already suffered so much at the hands of Ermo and Leonid, but I can’t deny him this opportunity. In his place, I would desire the same.

“Stay in the back, then, at least at first,” I tell him softly, touching his cheek. “Don’t charge in or take unnecessary risks. Let me clear the way, and if you find yourself in trouble, climb inside Hutch. The house will guard you.”

I take one last look around the yadro. I’ve come to love this place, and whether I return or not, whether I die or live, it will always be part of me. Even if I was brought here for a single purpose, not out of kindness but of desperation, I will still think of the glade fondly.

As we march, no one stays behind, not even Twig, who is almost as fanciful as their fallen kin, Feather. In fact, Twig, Claw, Tuft, and Berry join me and Gavril in the shack, in the curious walking house of Baba Yaga revived to its full strength. Its Bony Legs gleam, and its chimney puffs green smoke, and the trees bend and shuffle to allow us through. There are only four yiliksii left after the last battle to stop the spread of the fire, a dozen or so walking trees, the three hounds, twenty rozhmaka, and the lumbering, awoken Pozhu. It is not much, but it will have to be enough.

Oh child, you’re forgetting one very important thing.

With Baba gone, with her powers and the magic of the forest transferred to me, I must be the difference that changes all our fates. The shard of runed black stone is gone; now I will be the Sharp. It doesn’t bother me that she calls me “child”—I am hardly Valla anymore, beyond human, filled with the will of nature and all her unstoppable ferocity. I carry the wood, I carry the memories of the girls come and gone, I carry the violence of a wounded heart that would have justice.

The white mist obscuring the way to the yadro can be navigated safely only by those touched by the magic of the wood. Hutch knows the way, and leads us, a solemn procession, slow and determined, the inexorable creep of debts coming due. The Gottyar has been afflicted with the plague of the Count’s family for too long. Yulnia described it rightly: they are a blight, and they must be removed.

The mist distorts time. It feels like a long, winding path, and the sun has dipped low by the time we reach evidence of the burned grove. Charred trunks weeping bloodred sap mark our proximity to the mill. We are approaching the castle from the south, meeting the wide Gottyar-Vyriz Road that cuts all the way to the grand cities of the more cosmopolitan provinces. There is a foul grittiness drifting through the air, remnants of the blaze, and they have left a pile of smoldering rozhmaka carcasses not far from the mill. The ring of destruction, of cut stumps and burned trees, yields to the row houses of the workers, then to the spiked walls, and finally to the drawbridge leading to the castle.

To the men at the mill we would appear as nothing more than a smudge of activity along the blurred bend of the road.

“Here,” I tell Hutch. “Stop here, and I’ll go first.”

“Hide in the trees! We hide!” Twig cries excitedly, rallying their fellow yiliksii. The children tumble out the door and rush into the brush along the road.

Gavril pulls on my sleeve, frowning.

“Hide with them,” I say, “but remember what I said—do not appear until I’ve cleared the way.”

Hutch kneels, and my brother climbs down from the stoop and hurries into the concealing brush. He has grown close to the children, and I want to think they will look after him. It feels like the ground rises up to meet my feet, as if even the dirt and soil yearn for this reckoning. That sense visits me again—the one from days earlier, when the whole wood was holding its breath in anticipation. The birds are quiet sentinels on their branches. The insects cease their gathering and storing.

“Follow,” I tell Hutch. “But at a distance. Pozhu? Do not show yourself until we can find a sure way to cross the moat. Skernos, Dyella, Pasha, come along. I will have the trees with me.”

My voice rings out. Clear. Strong. The roots of the walking trees snake along at my side as we make our way north, a blanket of veiled stars draping over us as the world goes to sleep and the night patrols light their torches and take their posts. I let my hands fall loose to my sides, close my eyes as I walk, and whisper for the kiss of the wind. The breeze arrives, tossing the bells around my neck, heralding our coming.

There are fires all along the barricade beside the mill. Silhouettes become shadows become solid shapes. A line of riders has come to wait behind the barricade, half a mile from us. My eyes are the eyes of the bats that have emerged to meet the darkness, and with their beady little orbs I spy the Count on his pacing horse. Faces appear in the windows of the mill and row houses, the workers having their meager evening meal along with what they must imagine will be amusement.

On either side of the Gottyar-Vyriz the white cores of cut stumps shine bright in the starlight. One rider eases ahead of the others, reining up to the fore. The trees flanking me rattle their branches, their music rising and falling amidst the waves of grief as they pass by the carnage. Noble Oak, tall Maple, Elm, and Walnut, they let the woodsmen hear their anger. Between the barricades, atop his horse, Count Leonid emerges, holding his torch high with one hand, the other clamped around a bulky rifle. My eyes are keener now, sharper, for I possess the farseeing eyes of the hawk, who can spot a field mouse from a hundred paces away. Leonid nestles low in his tall black coat, and the wind carries the smell of his fear.

“Wait here,” I tell the trees. “And let your roots run deep into the earth. Hold your fury close. You will need it all.”

I speak with the voice of the wood, and the trees listen. The ground trembles and shakes gently as they snake their feet into the earth beneath me.

“It seems the blow did not end you, nor the crush of the grave,” Leonid shouts. “I have called a hunt on a girl like you before. I warn you, Valla, she did not last long.”

There is a smattering of laughter and coughing among the men beside him. There are six riders, including Leonid. Sleepy Lev is among them, but not Armen. The wind whips up, circling, then slicing back against me. I shiver, remembering the sting of hunger in my belly when I was sent to bed with nothing but thin broth. The trees let their branches twist and shimmer again. I feel the brittle rasp of the broom on my nape and back as Kiril screams at me to confess my secrets. The risen hounds paw at the road, coils of white steam rising from their nostrils as they taste the air and whine. Like me, a tide is rising with them, a current that cannot be deterred or dammed.

“You gave yourself away with those damned bells,” Leonid adds, carefully riding out farther. There is still enough distance between us that he must shout to be heard. He doesn’t realize that he could whisper, that the words would be brought to me by the creatures listening in the brush. “What are you playing at?”

“Children play, Leonid, and even you, a spoiled, stunted brat, are too old for games.”

“You . . . You dare goad me!” He rides on, drawing closer. “I beat back your little freaks once already and set the forest ablaze as a warning. You didn’t listen. But you never wanted to listen to me. That’s well enough. What happens next is on you.”

“I certainly hope so.”

He readies his rifle, fixing a cruel blade to the end of it.

Dyella snaps her jaws, restless.

The Count tosses his torch to Lev and digs his heels into the horse’s flank. The beast leaps forward, foam dripping down its lips, Leonid’s charge rousing the others and inspiring them to follow.

Remember, Valla, nothing will destroy you faster than fire.

I remember.

Leonid, the fool, allows himself to be taunted away from the barricade. There are two ballistae fixed to the scaffolding on either side of the drawbridges, but we are far, far out of their range. The men on horseback fly toward us, the torches roaring above their heads giving the impression that searing demons of pure flame have come to battle. In the bushes, Claw and Twig whisper furiously, wiggling with eagerness.

“Why she just stand there?” Claw is muttering.

“Trust, Claw, trust. Trust the heir.”

Their bickering is briefly distracting, for nothing could tear my attention away from the man-boy speeding toward his demise. The torches illuminate his fleshy white face, the slick red hair blown back by the ride, and his mean, loveless eyes. The other riders, more proficient, easily catch up to him, and a line six across chews up the ground between us, the beating of the hooves pounding in time with my racing heart. I pull one of the four sap pods from my sash and chew off the top with my teeth, letting the rich, thick blood of the forest pool against my tongue before swallowing. My senses scream. My eyes pick out every speck of dirt kicked up by the horses, every tiny glob of spit flowing from the beasts’ lips, and the sour odor of the unwashed coats hanging around the men. On the other side of the Gottyar, a sapling pushes through a new leaf, breaking the soft shell of the bud. A raven glides to a branch, pauses, and turns its head toward us.

The workers in the mill and the row houses trickle out onto the road, following at a trot, left behind and wanting to see what transpires.

And beneath the road that these men sliced through the forest with axe and fire, I sense the strong, wild roots ready to burst free.

Leonid squeezes the saddle with his thighs, needing both hands, and lifts the rifle and its blade to prepare the killing blow. Their shouts rise above the thunder of the horses’ hooves, the heat of the torches flaring against my face. They are upon me now, thirsting for death. I wait until I can lock eyes with Leonid, watch him, and feel the moment when the pride of his victory turns to ash and soot in his mouth.

Now. My eyes snap shut. The roots respond as if they were extensions of my fingers. Like pulling laces taut, I draw the roots of the walking trees up from the ground, stretching a thick barrier across the riders’ path. They have one breath, one heartbeat, one flicker of acknowledgment in their widened eyes before their horses are halted—and they are still moving. Catapulted. Flying.

Leonid soars right over my head and lands behind me. There’s a percussive thump, along with the crack of several important bones, as he hits the hard-packed road.

As soon as the riders land, sprawled and broken, I can sense the wanting from the remaining rozhmaka. Their fellows have been shot, piled, and burned. Their slavering jaws are my slavering jaws. I call to them through our shared poison, through the magic in my blood; I let them have what they want.

“Leave no one alive.”

The red-eyed beasts burst from the brush, descending on the riders. The horses scream and buck and spin, then flee into the woods. They are innocent in all of this, and I wish them no harm. Ripping. Shredding. Snarling. Bits of coat and flesh are flung indiscriminately, both dyed darker with fresh blood. At first the cries of agony from the men paralyze me, but soon it becomes just noise to be endured, and I have grown very good at enduring.

Robed in moss and starlight, I turn and go to where Leonid lies moaning in the dirt. One arm is crumpled underneath him, and the sharp-ended rifle sliced him on the way down, leaving a deep gash across his cheek. It reminds me of the slashes left by the rozhmaka that scarred me and made me so repulsive to the Count. Leonid’s black coat has flapped open around him like flayed skin, and he is trying to pull himself down the road, as if he could groan and shudder all the way to the Capital and to safety. I know he hears the bells as I slowly step up beside him and walk along for a while. His eyes bulge as they turn up toward me.

“If you keep going that way,” I tell him calmly, “you will find my house. It stands on two legs crafted from human bones.”

“Bony Leg,” he mutters. “No, those are legends.”

“Look for yourself.”

Leonid pauses, raising his head with great effort. He winces now, aware of the men being savaged and eaten a few paces behind us. Leonid’s horse weaves back onto the road, galloping away, its mane blown beautifully back as it streams past the shack that’s crouched and waiting in the shadowy gloom of the wood. The horse draws Leonid’s attention to the house like an arrow drawn and pointed, and he lets his head fall back down with a huff.

“Do it, then,” he says. “Gravno. Kill me! Kill me! It must be what you want.”

“I will.” He thinks this challenge is deterrence. Quite the opposite.

I roll the Count onto his back with my foot. He’s heavy, but eventually he flops, wailing from the pain. His left arm hangs at a weird angle, and his right foot is twisted backward. I almost feel pity for him. The rozhmaka have had their fill with the riders, progressing onward, up the road, chasing the foolish workers who left the confines of the row houses and mill. I glance that way, watching one of the guards across the moat fire a ballista. The bolt from the weapon has been coated in oil, the tip bright with flame. The fiery bolt misses the beasts, striking the main mill building, setting it ablaze. Cinders and splinters explode into the air, showering the road.

The flash of light is amazing. It shimmers off Leonid’s sweat-shined cheeks.

The Count, my husband, glares, trying to lift the rifle. I take one step forward, pinning that wrist with my foot, grinding it into the road.

“I made a vow to you, Leonid,” I whisper. There’s a singing in my veins—the poison, the magic, or just my own desire. My face fills with heat. My palms itch. “I promised you fidelity, courage, and patience. That is what I will give you, and it will be my vow fulfilled.”

This blood-soaked road is to be the chapel, and the hounds growling in the dusk, the dogs he betrayed and killed, my new wedding oath.

30

Dyella, Pasha, and Skernos melt out of the shadows. Leonid lurches at the sight of them, recognizing the long-dead Korumpo Smoltenkhands at once. They were his loyal hounds once, and now they are mine.

“N-no,” Leonid whispers, his eyes wide with horror. Dyella lowers her head, darting forward with unnatural speed. “Mercy! Mercy!”

Dyella tears the last Mercy from his mouth with her teeth. Pasha and Skernos eagerly join, soft flesh yielding to determined jaws. I stay. I watch. I stay and watch until well past the point when his senses have fled him. The life and will drain out of his eyes while the dogs root around in his innards like diligent pigs. When the organs are punctured, the smell is terrible. It will be the reek I associate with Leonid for the remainder of my days.

When I step back from his lifeless body, my limbs are shaking. The satisfaction, the pleasure, is almost unbearable. I feel as hungry and stained as the hounds. And warm. I’m warm all over, tingling with a light I couldn’t have hoped to feel. I feared it would all be hollow and unpleasant, but the thrill of it, the joy, sets my teeth buzzing. This is what the forest yearns for—this justice, these bodies to feed the birth, growth, and decay of all that surrounds us. A vibrant green smell fills my nostrils, banishing Leonid’s stink.

Ermo yet lives. Focus, child; there is work still to be done.

“Goodbye, Leonid,” I murmur, wandering a few paces north to watch the mill burn down. My heart is beating so fast, almost painfully with the rush of victory. “I go now to kill your brother.”

The children and Gavril emerge cautiously from the brush. My brother stands for a prolonged spell, drinking in Leonid’s demise. Then he takes the rifle, inspecting it.

“We don’t use their weapons,” I tell him.

“No fire, no barking sticks,” Claw agrees, frowning up at my brother.

Gavril shrugs, points to me, then himself, and shakes his head.

“We’re not the same?” I ask, and he nods. “Well, I suppose that’s true. If you’re going to come along, then you can use whatever you like.”

“But—” Claw tries to disagree.

“He isn’t like us,” I assure Claw. “He doesn’t see with the forest’s eyes like we do.” I finish with a warning for Gavril. “Just be careful with it. Take his bullets and powder, but only use it if you must.”

I’m quiet, lost in thought as we advance toward the drawbridge. The men posted with the ballistae on the other side have pulled up the bridge, leaving us no way across, and there is no chance any of us will risk stepping foot in the tainted waters ringing the castle. Pozhu, in particular, must not get wet.

Arms crossed, I survey the problem, jaw set with frustration.

Don’t sulk, Valla. It is going well, one brother has fallen, and the other . . .

“And he is far cleverer,” I murmur. “He will not go so easily.”

And now I must be clever, too. Beyond the fetid water, Valtivisk is a dark pillar, though torches burn bright across the guard posts on either side of the drawbridge. The ballistae are loaded and ready. We must get across, with enough of us alive to dismantle their most powerful weapons. What is a bridge but a series of wooden planks? I turn to the walking trees that have lent me the strength of their mighty roots, waving them forward.

“Bend your trunks across the water; lie down just long enough for us to cross. Once we are on the other side, we can lower the bridge for Pozhu.” There are glances of hesitation among the yiliksii. Even Hutch leans back as if in protest.

“The fires! The torches!” cries Twig, hopping up and down. “They will burn the trees!”

“You have to trust me in this, and trust in the magic you watched me take on.”

Twig tugs nervously on their talisman. “Twig trust. Twig scared. So many lost . . .”

I kneel before the child of the forest and gently touch their shoulder. “If we lose more, will it be worth it to see the towers fall?”

Twig nods, pursing their mossy lips. “That is why we stay, why we fight.”

“Then let the trees move up and make a bridge for us so we may finish that fight.” I stand and turn to address the others—the rozhmaka who have returned after their giddy feast, the hounds with their bloodied snouts, the few living yiliksii, the walking trees, Pozhu, and the bone-legged house. “We are all tired, but there will be a fitting end and a deserved rest if we just press on a little more.”

Claw, at least, is stirred by the speech. “We follow! We battle!”

Gavril hoists his rifle proudly. I close my eyes and take a steadying breath. The wind gathers at my fingertips, smoke following close behind. When I exhale, the breeze flows around me, touching each of those who have come to stand for the forest. The walking trees lurch forward, shaking the earth, the heavy tread of their roots rumbling like drums in the corners of my heart, a heart like a cup, waiting to be filled with more death, more blood, more promises that the wood will survive.

Men shout beyond the drawbridge and the spiked wooden walls. The walking trees dig their roots in on our side of the moat, then pitch themselves forward, branches and leaves battering the flat side of the raised drawbridge. The ballistae cannot fire on the trees, for they cannot be aimed at targets so close, but they do begin firing on us. The first flaming bolt blasts by my right side as we begin to cross the walking trees.

“Back, Hutch. Back, Pozhu. We will signal when the way is safe!” But the others must go quickly. I lead the charge, fearless, stepping out onto the trunks of an oak and watching as the castle guards muster around the ballistae. I hear Ermo’s frantic calls from somewhere on the other side of the wall created by the raised bridge.

“Fire, men! Fire! Torches and whatever else you have, burn them!”

I don’t know how many we have killed near the mill, but there are at least a dozen men gathered on the castle side of the drawbridge. Each ballista requires two men—one to load the mechanism and another to fire it. But everyone else—everyone besides Ermo—has begun to dip torches and random sticks, tossing them onto our living walkway.

“Aim for the house!” Ermo shouts, still unseen. “Aim for that bloody house! Bring it down!”

The bolts scream across the moat, and one strikes true, slamming against Hutch’s chimney, crumbling it to dust. I feel the house’s pain in my chest and hear its cry of pain and alarm. Pozhu and the house retreat down the road, more bolts clattering to the dirt, missing, or just out of range.

And I feel the walking trees panic as the fire begins to catch on the branches and drier leaves, growing a spreading rash of flames. The heat rises to my face, licking and taunting. Now, with our bridge in peril, the men take up their rifles and crossbows. We are too exposed, too vulnerable, easily dispatched.

One more sap pod is crushed in my fist before I drink down the fortifying liquor of the trees. Beneath us, the trunks creak and shiver, burning alive. My eyelids flutter shut, and the wind comes once more to me, but this time stronger, not just a caressing breeze but a screaming gale. It is the rustle of a hundred thousand branches, the wind that slices when the winter cold is at its worst, and I shape it, pushing back the flames, urging them toward the raised bridge. The bullets and bolts flying our way are lost in the sudden maelstrom, blasted harmlessly into the moat.

Better still, the flames find more suitable food, igniting the base of the drawbridge before swiftly rising, coaxed by the controlled wind. The bridge, spiked walls, and scaffolded low towers holding the ballistae are all made of wood, and as the fire spreads up the bridge and along its structure, the men begin to abandon their posts. The air feeds the flames, fanning them, sending the blaze soaring across the walls until there is nothing but a sheer wall of fire before us.

The walking trees exhale their gratitude, still once more.

One more push, Valla, and the whole lot of it is ash.

I take Baba’s good advice and guzzle a third sap pod. There is only one left on the sash, but that should be enough to deal with Ermo. My senses sharpen again, and I am achingly alive, flush with simmering, bubbling magic, as if an entire raging river has funneled down into my chest. The next conjured wind pulls me off my feet, and I float lightly above the walking trees as a final, potent gust blasts the flames forward, breaking the bridge off its mechanism and crashing it down onto the castle side of the road. The eruption and the falling bridge flatten several of Ermo’s men on the other side who had been fruitlessly trying to splash moat water onto the blaze.

“They’ve made it across!” one guard shouts, falling somewhat as he tries to run away. He stumbles, then gains his feet and continues fleeing. He and seven others swiftly follow the path leading right, curving around the base of the castle and to the carriage house.

Only Armen and Ermo stay to make their stand.

“After them,” I tell the rozhmaka, children, hounds, and Gavril. I do not want my brother to pursue the guards alone. “Armen and Ermo will be no trouble.”

Gavril hesitates, falling behind. In the light cast by the burning walls, I see his trepidation.

I give him a smile; I know what must be done here. “Go, big brother. I will not finish Ermo too quickly. There will be time for you to observe his suffering.”

He glances nervously over his shoulder, shakes his head.

“And I will be all right,” I promise him. “Go.”

The yiliksii, rozhmaka, hounds, and Gavril move up the path like a writhing shadow. Armen and Ermo have wisely chosen to split our forces—for they have retreated down the left side of the path, the curve running along the western edge of Valtivisk between castle and moat. I release the walking trees, worried that without attention the fires will spread back and consume them. Now we are all on this side, and there is no retreat to the south for help. Anyone fleeing that way will meet the house, Pozhu, and the walking trees.

I am a lone huntress now, and every part of me has its own pulse. Smoke drifts across the castle grounds, just like the day of my arrival. That day, they burned my brother and piles of rozhmaka, but now it is their turn to feel the fire. The bridge behind me crackles and spits. Low calls echo across the courtyard, but I shut my ears against them. In total darkness, even a distant blade of grass can be seen by the eyes of a bat. Their eyes are mine, keen even in the gritty veil cast over the grounds. The night is no barrier, though I wouldn’t require perfect sight to find Armen and Ermo—they are obvious enough, positioned not far down the path, Ermo sitting astride one of his mechanical saw monstrosities.

The saw blade on the machine churns and screeches, sizzling with sparks.

Ermo waves a torch above his head, illuminating his pale, mean eyes. Armen stands beside the machine, rifle ready and aimed at me.

I drift down the path, veering from side to side like a wolf deciding its direction of attack. It will be impossible to take them on like this. I need to draw them out. Armen fires, missing wide, inaccurate in the thick darkness and hazy smoke.

“Where are your condolences, Ermo? I became a widower this night.”

Beneath the flare of the torch, Armen is stuffing powder and shot into his gun.

“Do you think that frightens me?” Ermo laughs, his voice just louder than the hulk of metal beneath him. “He was a useless lump dragging this family down. I should be thanking you for ridding the world of his incompetency.” And to Armen: “Get closer, fool; you’re a bad shot in the dark.”

“I’ll not take another step toward that witch,” Armen mutters, shouldering his rifle.

“You might not be afraid,” I say, “but it seems your companion is.”

“I’m sure he witnessed stranger things chaperoning my brother’s marital chamber,” Ermo calls back. “Closer, man, find your courage.”

“Forget this cursed place, this cursed family,” Armen shouts, stalking away. “And forget you!” He spits, abandoning Ermo as he hurries north, disappearing behind the tall sentinel of the castle as it sits silently, watching us with empty windows, like empty eyes.

“Wretch!” Ermo shrieks after him. “Shirker!”

“All alone,” I chide, risking a few steps closer. “No Kiril, no Yulnia, no Leonid . . . Don’t you see? Your time in this forest is at an end. You were never meant to be here, and when we are through, the roots will climb upward, the seedlings will spread, your towers will topple, and the new growth will obliterate your family from time and memory. The forest will heal, and you will be gone. Your absence will only be notable in the relief that follows.”

Ermo snorts, urging the machine forward. It clanks toward me, saw spinning, metal feet digging hard into the path, scattering rocks and dust. A heavier cloud of black muck hangs around the machine, along with the foul scent of burning grease and charred wood. There is a tall berm to my right, the moat to the left, and very little room to maneuver. If he charges down the path toward me, I will be forced to retreat.

“I warned you quite clearly, Valla, there is no winning here. What nature creates we have conquered, and by our longevity and our tenacity we have proved our right to persist. The Capital craves the fine wood of the Gottyar, and our family provides.” The machine stomps toward me, inexorable, deadly.

“You have no family left,” I remind him. “And that fine wood belongs to itself. It’s just you now, just a lonely boy in a lonely castle. How long do you think you can hold out against the forest? Days? Weeks? The walls are closing in around you, and it’s simply a matter of time before you feel the squeeze.”

Ermo shakes his head, sneering and cold beneath the torch’s light. “I’m sure you’re enjoying this after everything we put you through. It’s a shame you won’t live to enjoy the feeling. Once you’re gone, there will be more girls from other villages, and they will come with their dull eyes and simpering smiles, and they will take your place to be my bride.”

The machine roars down the path. One last sap pod—I reach for it, crush it, and send the juice splashing down my throat. There are few things alive this close to the castle, but little plants cling and try, and I call to them in desperation. Their roots are small but many, and they shoot up through the scant cobbles, tangling in the machine’s legs.

Ermo slams his fist down against the controls, but the machine struggles weakly, stuck in place. He jumps down from the leather seat, pulling a knife from the belt hanging loose around his waist. Brandishing torch and weapon, he leaps and slashes, and I jump out of the way, narrowly avoiding his strikes. The blade slices through the empty seed pod sash, which flutters to the ground between us.

I sense the others at the carriage house, but they are rooting out the last of the guards. Claw’s battle lust flickers in my own eyes. Ermo lashes out with knife and torch, spinning in mad, carving, flaming circles through the night.

I told you, girl. I told you he was the dangerous one.

Baba’s voice is as sharp as Ermo’s blade. He rushes me again, forfeiting all caution and tackling me to the unforgiving ground. It’s a rattling fall, my head slapping back against the cobbles, leaving me briefly dazed. The fire of the torch blazes hot, flames singeing my hair. There is no more sap to consume; any magic I call upon now will cost me my own vigor.

It’s as if we’re back in the scalding hot carriage house, locked against one another, the black stone knife digging into his shoulder while his hands squeeze the life out of me. But this time it’s his knife slicing into me, lodged in the hollow just above my collarbone on the left side, perilously near to my heart. There are bandages sloppily knotted across his neck and chest; the boys have lost Kiril, their healer. I can feel the weakness in him from the wounds, feel him losing his grip on the torch as we tumble to the ground, his weight pressing me into the earth. We both scramble for the torch, but neither of us can reach it without giving ground. Pain explodes through my chest, a searing jolt emanating from the blade he twists and digs. He gives up on the torch, concentrating on me.

Blood seeps through his bandages. He brings his face close to mine, sweat dripping from his nose and splashing on my forehead.

“It could’ve been us. It could’ve been . . .” he whispers, licking his lips with quick, nervous jabs of his tongue. He grits his teeth, then smiles, trying to kiss me.

I quickly jerk my head to the side, snarling.

“You’re so beautiful, Valla. So, so beautiful . . .”

With his fist wrapped around the blade’s hilt, he saws, trying to cut downward toward my heart. I see the glade, the yadro, the forest’s mist-enfolded center, where the silver leaves of the lamb’s-ear foliage glitter with dew like starlight. The Stag Father looms over us both. I’m imagining it, but the mossy lord comes, antlers tall and reaching, the moon nestled there like a jewel in a verdant setting.

And I hear Claw’s rasping, scratching voice.

SHARP. THE SHARP. TAKE UP THE SHARP.

I am the forest’s defender, the heir, the witch’s successor, and I have not come this far and suffered this much to die before the towers of Valtivisk fall. If he covets my beauty, then I will take that from him, too. I draw inward, fast and reckless, seeking the power I consumed when I was submerged in the pond and saw Moon Mother and Stag Father, felt their presence and their protection, and understood the bloody path they expected me to follow.

“What—your face—God, your face!”

Ermo shrinks back, his pale lips wrenched to the side with fear. The shards of bark break through my skin like shoots pushing through spongy loam. My flesh gives, and the magic begins, slowly, to claw its way to the surface. The pain is overwhelming—pure, silvered, so hot it turns icy as it pulls a scream from my throat.

The knife is still in me, and Ermo sits on my stomach, but the answer presents itself from memories of the young women who lost their lives to Valtivisk. When Yulnia threw Kiril out of her bedroom tower, the force of his fall broke the slab. It’s cracked open now, the tunnel down to the womb of the earth open once more. My eyes roll back, showing whites, one hand stretching upward as I ask the wood to provide what I need.

The children of the castle returned to life through that tunnel, sucked down into the wet tissue of the earth and transformed.

The wood returned my children to me, those that had perished . . . feeding them through the rootless tunnel beside the western tower. All the children of the forest were once children of Castle Valtivisk.

That was how it was in Baba’s time, but I am something new and wholly my own. Maybe I could call to the newly dead and see them returned to me the way the children were brought back to Baba. I want to know the limits of my magic, so I reach for other bodies that might be molded and remade to tip the battle in our favor. Bodies recklessly abandoned and forgotten. A human goes into the Gottyar soil, and the forest’s wild alchemy changes it, but there is a way back into the world: through that tunnel sealed by the slab. I see it now, the cycle, the rebirth, and the futile effort to stop it.

“What is happening? What are you doing?” Ermo sits back, slaps me, but I hardly feel it. He yanks the knife out of my shoulder and lifts it to drive down one more time, preparing for the stroke that will reach my heart.

The slab pieces behind us shift and scrape, loose enough to be pushed.

It’s enough to draw Ermo’s attention. His head cocks to the side. I am content to wait, for I know what has begun to emerge. The earth itself exhales, a plume of green smoke unfurling like a spring leaf into the air behind him. Then the first hands appear, filmed with moss and tiny buds, and the newborn child of the forest has its first look at the world, golden eyes glittering and familiar. Yulnia, a streamer of grass across her neck where the life-ending slash would be, drags herself free of the hole. She gains her unsteady feet and, trembling, shambles down the land bridge, then to the path and toward us.

Ermo hears the rasping steps, glances back long enough to see what I’ve conjured, and whips his head back around, fumbling to plunge the knife. I’m ready for him. I catch his wrist with both hands, forcing him backward. We tumble to the side and then roll apart, the knife spinning away across the grass before disappearing into the moat.

On his feet, Ermo races for the torch, snatching it up and sweeping it out in an arc.

“Get back,” he whispers, glancing between me and the risen form of his sister. To me, she is lovely, a spirit of nature’s devising, bursting with the white dill flowers and snowdrops she loved so dearly. To Ermo, she appears as a blackened, stiff thing, covered in spikes and the oily residue from the birthing tunnel.

Another pair of hands rise above the slab, finding purchase before the second child brings herself into the world.

“N-no,” he mutters, his eyes widening to pale blue pits as he beholds this new creation. “You’re dead. You’re both d-dead. Leonid had that hole covered up years ago, you . . . How . . .”

“Kiril cracked it open when he fell,” I tell Ermo with a shrug. “The best thing he ever did.”

Maksi, hole through heart, lifts her full, joyful squirrel cheeks toward the moon as if it’s the warm and kissing sun. She stretches out her arms to greet the night air and follows after Yulnia, drawn to the man cowering and swinging his torch.

Ermo retreats behind me, away from the slab, backing up toward the still-burning drawbridge. Yulnia and Maksi find confidence on their newborn feet and dart toward him, as swift as swirls of spiraling wind. The torch will hurt them more than it will hurt me, so I approach Ermo’s right, waiting until his eyes have landed firmly on Yulnia before wrestling the flame out of his grasp. It bites against my cheek, a cinder from the bark breaking through and sparking off into the shadows and smoke.

“Get back, all of you! Stay away from me!” Ermo points at me, shivering. “Hideous! Hideous, hideous creature . . .”

Yulnia and Maksi are closing in.

“We are only what you made us,” I say, casting the torch aside. The flame sputters out, harmless.

31

The moment the hope leaves his eyes, I wish to see it again. Nobody is coming to save him. Ermo sinks to his knees, but not for long. Yulnia and Maksi grab him by his arms and drag him back to his feet. They leer at him with intent and golden eyes, unnatural strength freezing him there, the black spike of Valtivisk rising behind him, the slab, throbbing and open, glittering on the path.

The others have finished clearing out the carriage house, and with a full heart I feel the pitter-patter of yiliksii feet, paws, and Gavril’s heavier tread. The first glimpse of Maksi is a shock, but Gavril has spent time in the glade, and he knows what magic is at work here. Perhaps I should pity him, but far stronger is the urge to hand him his revenge.

My eyes travel from Gavril to the space behind Ermo, to the machine that sits lonely and tangled in roots. Tangled, but not for long. I release the mass of tendrils keeping the saw monster in place. Gavril and the yiliksii scurry on their way while I observe Ermo squirming between Yulnia and Maksi.

“Did Leonid bargain with you at the end?” Ermo asks me, sweating, breathless. “Ha! I never . . . I never thought I would. But now . . . now . . .”

“He did beg for mercy. But you can infer how inclined I was to listen.”

“We treated you abominably, it’s true,” Ermo admits, nodding feverishly. He can’t bring himself to look at Yulnia again, though he struggles to meet my eye, too. “But we were made to. Our father . . . You didn’t know him. You can’t imagine what he was like!”

“Oh, I think I can imagine it well enough,” I tell him, sneering. “He would be proud to know his sons turned out just like him: cruel, petty, greedy, and cowardly to the last.”

Dyella, Pasha, and Skernos gather around me, one on each side and Skernos wedged against the back of my knees. Dyella lifts her mossy snout and howls, mournful.

“V-Valla wait. Maybe I was hasty. I shouldn’t have said those things, called you hideous—”

“Beg, Ermo. I like to hear it. Though in the end, it will get you nowhere. Whatever kindness and hospitality you extended to me, the forest will show you just the same. The mercy you showed me. The mercy you showed my brother. The mercy you showed Maksi.”

The saw machine jerks to life behind Ermo. He hears the chug and roar, finding the strength to fight against his captors once more. Then the tears start. Then the blabbing. I sway in place, wondering if this is what it feels like to drink too much liquor, if this was the sweet, numb dizziness he and Kiril felt each night as they poured wine down their gullets at supper. Ermo shakes, then stills, and before the blade can tear through him, he locks his gaze with mine.

“Every morsel of meat you ate under our roof was from your own animal,” he whispers, unblinking. “We fed that mule of yours to you. Ha! We fed you your own mule!”

Gavril’s head appears above Ermo’s as the machine clanks along, driven by Gavril, the yiliksii running alongside, shrieking. Claw hurries to my side, Armen’s severed head raised high on a sharpened stick. Ermo sees it, swallows, and there’s a shift in his eyes, an acceptance or understanding of the doom that has arrived. The ritual is complete. I no longer need the black stone knife; I am the Sharp, and here, at last, is the completion of my bloody work. Not another’s terms, not another’s arcane scheme, but my own deep desire.

“We have a saying in the forest, Ermo—waste not, want not. You will feed the forest, it will consume you, and from your despicable corpse, better life will spring.”

The saws are meant to bite through tough wood. He loves his machines, his cruel metal beasts that destroy and maim. The blade rips through Ermo as if through clay, cleaving him in half just above the waist. His look of vague surprise is painted there forever as he tumbles in two halves to the ground. The blood of the whirring, spinning saw blasts against me, a red spray splattering across my middle.

Baba is quiet, but I feel the swell of her heart. The forest, the Sharp, is sated. For the moment, so am I.

Gavril abandons the machine and steps down, wading into the yiliksii on the ground before joining us on the other side of Ermo’s remains. My brother hides somewhat behind me, stealing glances at the returned form of his wife. Then, without warning, he ducks down and begins pulling out grass by the handful and shoving it into his mouth.

“Stop, stop that.” I kneel and shovel the grass out from between his lips. “It isn’t Maksi. Poisoning yourself won’t bring you together.”

I guide him upright, holding tight to his left arm and gesturing toward the two new spirits. “They aren’t Yulnia and Maksi. There’s little of them left; they are just vestiges of nature, as Claw is the bloodthirst of the predator and Feather was the giddy running river. It isn’t your wife, anymore, Gavril. It’s not Maksi.”

He steps away, carefully, gingerly approaching the wisp of the wood inhabiting Maksi’s body. She regards him with no more recognition than any random blackbird idling on a branch. Gavril lifts his hand, flattened, and gently covers the hole drilled through her chest. Then he turns and gazes at me, his eyes filled with sorrow.

“The walking trees can span the moat, let Pozhu and the house across, and set these spirits free,” I murmur, going to take my brother’s arm. “They will go into the trees and, when ready, return to the soil. Their souls are already with the forest. Maksi isn’t in that flesh, she’s in the water and the wind.”

Gavril nods, sparing one last furtive glance at Maksi’s form. With his right hand, he undulates his fingers like waves.

“She did like to sit by the lakes,” I reply. “And you were married on the banks of Lake Temtol. Maybe her body can go to the river to lie down and have her rest.”

The ground trembles as the walking trees stretch their trunks across the moat again, bashing their branches and boughs against the half-charred bridge and blasting it into swirls of ash. Whatever power I held over the girls to receive their aid is released; Yulnia and Maksi, splashed with Ermo’s blood, hold hands and go to the walking trees, crossing over and disappearing up the long road that stretches into night.

A few tears have slipped down Gavril’s face, and I wipe them away. Pozhu and Hutch trundle up past the burned mill and begin their passage over the moat. Darkness is giving way to dawn, and the first licks of it across the horizon have never been so bright. Even daylight in Valtivisk was grimy and dim, my memories of the sunshine always faded. But the dense canopy of the wood seems to lessen, or give way, allowing in the creep of golden things.

There is a commotion behind us as a handful of women emerge from the castle to discover what has become of their home in the night.

Marwa and the servant girls. The broad-shouldered cook covers her mouth, the girls gathering behind her, some bursting into tears. Dawn is casting the carnage anew. The smoke cannot conceal the ruined buildings, savaged bodies, abandoned weapons and posts, and the blood staining all of it. I approach the women, arcing up toward the drawbridge, then turning left to travel the stairs I once watched Marwa traipse up and down carrying heavy loads from Bilenko’s wagon. Marwa gestures for the girls to stay behind her, watching my gradual progress up the shallow stone steps with a hard-set jaw. With a sudden little cackle Claw jams the stick with Armen’s head into the ground beside the steps. Marwa shudders.

“Bride-girl, is that—can it be you?” she asks, hoarse. She is trying very hard not to look at what’s left of Armen. “The Count told us you were gone, run off.”

“He lied.”

“Is he dead?”

“He is.”

“Will you kill us, too?” asks Marwa, puffing out her chest, protective as a mama bear.

“I have no interest in that,” I reply, settling my hands in front of my waist. “Unless you intend to stay.” It is damp there, soaked in Ermo’s blood. The long train of my mossy dress drips down the stairs, and the rest of the forest’s warriors come to stand at my back, watching. I point to the castle looming over us all. “Those towers are coming down. By nightfall, there will be nothing left of Valtivisk but memories and graves.”

Pozhu and Hutch have crossed the moat. The blood drains from Marwa’s face as she lifts her hand and points at the walking house. “B-Bony Leg . . .”

“Yes. That house is now mine. I’ve inherited the witch’s power. Baba Yaga—if title or simply name—is mine, too. You’re from Drolyas by the Lank Marshes, yes?”

Marwa nods, though it seems her head is somewhat frozen, slow to move. She watches Pozhu continue up the path, sharp beak already opening and closing as it approaches the southeastern tower of the castle. Without hesitation, without warning, the First Beetle drills into the stone, dust shooting out from the broken wall. A subtle quaver moves through the earth toward us, a premonition of the greater destruction to come. An image flashes before my eyes of the bony-legged house crouched on the rubble, two of the children dutifully repairing the chimney while the others set about gathering the dead bodies to break apart and salvage.

Marwa and the servant girls rush down the steps toward me, spurred by the whole of Valtivisk shaking, threatening to crumble. Those girls . . . I never learned their names, and I wonder if they ever learned mine. Perhaps no one should leave this place. Perhaps the grounds should be their graveyard. It’s a quick, cruel impulse, and it passes as swiftly as it descended. There is little pity left in me, but I dredge up what’s left. My gaze shifts to the young women huddled and sniffling behind Marwa.

“And these other girls, they have villages in the north?”

Marwa’s expression softens. “They do, yes.”

“Then you should all return to your homes. Avoid Ulganyo Station. If there are still guards posted there, they will be loyal to the Count, and they will have questions. The forest will grant you safe passage so long as you travel north and do not deviate. No yiliksii or rozhmaka will bother you, but pack food, and do not eat anything grown by the wood.”

Marwa nods, frantic. “A-and when we reach our homes, what do we tell them happened here?”

“Tell them whatever you like.” I spread my hands, a fragile peace settling over my heart. “Tell them the truth if you wish. Tell them that the castle will claim no more girls and take no more lives. Tell them the Gottyar is not safe for anyone. Tell them not to come, for the wood will protect itself, and I will protect the wood. Tell them you saw Bony Leg, the crooked house that walks. Tell them you saw Baba Yaga herself, and she showed mercy. Tell them the blight is no more, that the men who so boldly inflicted themselves on this land are gone, that they were eaten alive by dogs and ripped apart by saws. And tell them no more village girls will come to meet their husbands here—that the Count, at last, is dead.”

Acknowledgments

I’d like to thank my agent, Kate, for her continued guidance, support, and hard work. And to Alyssa, thank you for going on this journey with me and trusting me with something even stranger than our last endeavor; there’s no greater feeling in the world than knowing your editor just gets what you’re trying to do.

The quote at the beginning of the novel was taken from a ladies’ bathroom stall in the Streamline Tavern. To that most spontaneous poet: thank you for your inspiring words.

This novel was influenced by many things, real and fantastical, and I’d specifically like to acknowledge the art of Kim Simonsson. I had the pleasure of seeing his work in person at the American Swedish Institute in Minneapolis years ago, and it has followed me around ever since. I looked to Antony Britton’s harrowing description of being buried alive for a scene in this book. For the folkloric tales Valla references, I was inspired by the work of Robert Nisbet Bain, more specifically his version of The Old Dog.

Finally, I would like to thank Trevor and my boys, who are always so understanding when I need to vanish into another world for a while.

About the Author

MADELEINE ROUX is the New York Times bestselling author of the Asylum series—Asylum, Sanctum, Catacomb, Escape from Asylum, and The Asylum Novellas—which has sold into twelve countries around the world, as well as the House of Furies trilogy and The Book of Living Secrets. She has also written for Dungeons & Dragons, Marvel, Star Wars, and World of Warcraft. A graduate of the Beloit College writing program, Madeleine now lives in Seattle, Washington, with her partner and their two beloved dogs.

Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.

Also by Madeleine Roux

Asylum

Sanctum

Catacomb

Escape from Asylum

The Asylum Two-Book Collection

The Asylum Three-Book Collection

The Scarlets

The Bone Artists

The Warden

The Asylum Novellas

Dungeons & Dragons: Dungeon Academy: No Humans Allowed!

Dungeons & Dragons: Dungeon Academy: Tourney of Terror

Dungeons & Dragons: Dungeon Academy: Last Best Hope

House of Furies

Court of Shadows

Tomb of Ancients

The Book of Living Secrets

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Copyright

a girl walks into the forest. Text copyright © 2024 by Madeleine Roux. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

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Cover art © 2025 by Alex Eckman-Lawn

Cover design by David Curtis

Library of Congress Control Number: 2024947084

Digital Edition JUNE 2025 ISBN: 978-0-06-328495-1

Print Edition ISBN: 978-0-06-328484-5

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