1. Sacrifice
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I’m running through the dusky forest. Tall ferns whip my face, but I have no air to scream or even moan with pain. Every breath hurts, my lungs and stomach burning with effort. I don’t know how long I’ve been running.
All I know is that I’ll never make it.
I grab the trunk of an oak to turn faster, veering left. The rough bark scratches my palm, the salty sweat stinging. Please, I beg in my mind, but I know no one will answer. The chasm of helplessness in my chest grows bigger with every whoop of laughter behind me.
“Run, little devil! It will be over soon!”
I don’t dare look back. I know I stand no chance. They are older than me, their long legs navigating the undergrowth with ease and confidence. They cackle and howl like wolves. I’m terrified. My heart can’t beat any faster, my body can’t grow any tenser.
A wild raspberry bush leaves gashes on my bare arm as I hurl past it. I have no air left to hiss with pain.
“Run, run! Lead us to your beastly father!” Daga’s scream is raw with rage and much closer than the others.
Panic slams into me. I try to speed up, but my legs are already blurs of white in the dappled green. I’m twelve years old, fast and strong for my age. But I can’t compete with a fourteen-year-old girl who eats to satiety every day.
My breath wheezes out of me, as loud as the bellows in the smithy. Daga’s father is the village smith. When my mother went to him because her sickle broke, he gave her a price twice higher than normal. She paid in silence, keeping her head low.
But that was a few moons ago. It’s autumn now. Late autumn that leaves frost on the grass at night. It’s chilly today, but I don’t feel the cold, my body heating up from exertion.
“I’ll get you, devil’s spawn!”
That’s Jaromir, Daga’s beau. He’s sixteen and the biggest of my three chasers. He’s an apprentice at the smithy, and his parents own the largest field by the village.
He could have caught me hours ago, but Jaromir likes to draw out the pain. Last fall, he tied me up and lowered me into an old well hardly anyone uses these days. I hung there from a rope, half-submerged and shaking from the cold, until my mother found me in the evening.
He could have just thrown me in the river where the current is the strongest, but then, I’d be dead in minutes.
And I don’t think he wanted to kill me back then. Just make me suffer.
“The devil can’t save you, witch!”
My chest burns so badly, I want to cough. Every breath is a struggle. I know I’m doomed. Before, they only tormented me for fun. They called me a witch back then, too, but it wasn’t for real. Not like it’s now.
I’m not the devil’s child. Everyone knows my father, Ratko, was a good-for-nothing bard. He left shortly after I was born and came back two years later so sick, he only spent a week in my mother’s cottage before he died. Wiosna told me. I wasn’t old enough to remember him.
Point is, everyone knows who my father was. And yet, they keep calling me devil’s spawn and a witch. My hair is red like the sunset, so they whisper I’m the daughter of Weles, Master of the Underworld. I wish I could explain how stupid that is.
Weles is the lord of the night, with hair as dark as a raven’s wing and eyes like black pits of despair. His skin is pale from dwelling deep in the roots of the Great Oak, and his mantle is spun from shadows. I don’t look like him at all.
I get my hair from my real father. Even though Ratko’s mane was brown, my mother says there were shades of rust in his beard. My features I get from her, my skin golden from the sun and freckled, my cheeks full and red like apples.
Right now, it’s not about my hair, anyway.
Everything lurches, and I lose control of my body with a sinking jolt of terror. I trip over a protruding root. For a moment, the world tilts around me, slow and dark, my arms flying to the sides. If I just get ahold of something, anything to stay upright…
I’d even take the devil’s hand right now.
Because even though I know it’s pointless, I’m still fighting. As long as I run, there is a chance.
But if I fall…
I grab a low-hanging branch and catch my balance. Just as I hear Daga’s triumphant shout right behind me, I set off again, diving into a cluster of ferns taller than me. She grunts in disappointment, but really, all she has to do is keep running.
I’m so exhausted, my head spins. Soon, my eyes will grow blurry. I’ll fall and it will be over. This time, for good.
Because it’s no longer just stupid pranks and name-calling. Miroslaw, Jaromir’s friend, brought a sacrificial knife to the chase. I know what it means.
They will kill me.
As if to confirm, Miroslaw screams, “Your blood will wash away the curse, witch!”
I dash out of the ferns and turn again, my feet flying over moss-covered stones. Someone’s right behind me, their heavy breath snarling down my nape. Any moment now, their strong fingers will close around my braid and yank.
I run.
If I could just stop and explain, maybe they’d listen. But I won’t have time to speak. As soon as they have me, the knife will plunge deep.
I don’t want to die. I don’t deserve it. And even though they think differently, my death will not wipe away any curses. It will be pointless.
It’s not my fault six pigs died last week, and then, Daga’s sister gave birth to a stillborn son. I didn’t even assist at the birth. It was a difficult one and Wiosna did it alone.
Until today, no one would have faulted me for any of it. The village people would have gone to the zerca and told him he should make better sacrifices to the gods. It’s his job to keep us in their favor. If pigs and newborns die, people normally complain to him.
But this morning, I woke up with my right eye purple. Not bruised. Purple. Until today, both my eyes were green like fern leaves. I don’t know why one changed color. I hadn’t even noticed until Daga’s mother saw me and cried out.
She called me the devil’s spawn. She said I had finally revealed my colors. And that I’d pay for cursing her family.
It took from morning until late afternoon for her words to spread and turn into action.
Now, the older kids want to sacrifice me to regain the gods’ favor. My spilled blood is supposed to be their key to glory.
Though Daga just wants to wash away her grief and fear. She lost a nephew and almost lost a sister.
“Enough of this!” Jaromir’s shout is so close, I smell his heavy breath on the icy wind.
I try to speed up, but my body won’t obey. My eyes play tricks, making the ground seem so much further away. As if I’m tall, as tall as the treetops. My legs land lightly, as if the stones are clouds.
Even though I’m not dead yet, I feel like a spirit already.
I turn sharply to avoid a thorny bush and look up too late. My body collides with an old oak, its trunk thrice as wide as me. I fall back with a pitiful sound, fear pulsing deep in my gut.
I’ll die here in this forest, under the wise oak. My blood will seep into the moss and down, down into the roots. Maybe it will not be pointless, after all.
Maybe my life will at least nourish the tree. I hope with all my might to have that, at least.
“Not here,” Daga rasps, standing above me. Her face is red with exertion, blue eyes triumphant. “Her blood will poison the roots.”
I cry out when someone grabs my ankles and yanks, sliding my body over something sharp. It digs into my back and tears my blouse.
So here it is. My death wish, denied.
“It’s not me,” I wheeze out through the pain. My eyes water, and I blink away the tears. “The baby… the pigs… Not me.”
“We won’t fall for your tricks, witch,” Miroslaw says, raising the knife. The blade is dull in the gloom of the forest at dusk. “Do you think we’re stupid?”
I do.But that thought fleets past, sucked into the torrent of fear in my chest. Jaromir drops me in a small clearing, and I look up at the purple sky marked by thin, dark gray clouds.
My back is wet. Whatever tore my blouse broke my skin, too.
“It’s just eye color,” I plead.
By Perun, I should get up and run, but my body feels numb. I can move my fingers but I can’t lift my arm. How long was I running? The sun was still well up over the horizon when they started the chase.
And now, night’s falling. It’s been a long race. No wonder I can’t move.
Nausea swirls in my belly, my throat constricting to keep down bile. I try to roll to my side to stand, but it’s useless. Daga yanks my arms up and holds them down over my head. I cry out in pain.
Jaromir sits on my knees, his flushed, sweaty face obscuring the darkening sky. He grins down at me, cruel and ugly.
As he leans closer, I smell his breath. Meat and soured beer.
“We should have driven you out long ago. Your pathetic mother and you are like rats. Good for nothing, bringing curses on our land. But the elders never listened. Cowards. They are too afraid of Wiosna.”
Wiosna. My teacher, who is a whisperer and a midwife. Of course, everyone’s afraid of her. Everyone who offends Wiosna might find themselves out in the cold when they need healing or their baby delivered.
“You should be afraid,” I say viciously, because I know what Wiosna’s capable of.
But my anger is shallow and powerless. It doesn’t overcome the well of fear underneath. My legs tremble under Jaromir’s weight, and his grin widens despite my words.
He knows it’s over for me.
“Wiosna can’t protect you here, you little devil.”
I spit in his face with my last bit of strength. Jaromir roars and backhands me with force. My head snaps to the side.
“Miro, the knife. Make it fucking hurt,” he snarls.
So that’s it. Somehow, the inevitability of death settles my fear. It sinks deep down to the bottom, leaving behind a strange, giddy feeling. My mouth stretches in a grin, a laugh bubbling in my chest. I look up at Jaromir’s furious face, my spittle still on his cheek. Then at Miroslaw, who kneels by my side, the knife raised high in his hand.
He looks pale and uncertain, his hand shaking. Of course. He’s never killed anyone, and it’s not as easy as it looks. Especially the kind of sacrifice that will please the gods.
He should eviscerate me in one, fluid cut, and I already know he can’t do it. I did it once with Wiosna, and it was hard. We cut open a fox that stole chickens from her coop. I still remember the steam rising from its innards when I pushed the knife through fur and muscle.
Miroslaw doesn’t have the guts to do it as it should be done. It’s really funny that I’m the only person who actually knows how to cut open a sacrifice.
“What are you waiting for?” Jaromir hisses, glaring at his friend. “Just fucking do it. Kill the witch.”
I burst out laughing.