Chapter Two
The house has fully given itself to sleep when I move.
The ladder does not complain as I descend it. I know which rung sighs if I put my weight wrong, which one must be stepped over entirely. My feet find the floor without a sound, and I pause briefly, listening, counting Mama’s breaths through the thin wall.
Her curtain hangs still, a dark fold against darker shadow. I lift it just enough to peer through, careful not to let it brush the floor. She sleeps on her side, one hand tucked beneath her cheek, her breathing, a steady rise and fall that eases something in my chest. No cough, no restlessness.
Good.
I let the curtain fall back into place.
The front door waits in shadow. I cross the room lightly, lifting the latch with two fingers so it doesn’t snap back. The wood groans faintly anyway, testing me, but I still it with my palm until it obeys.
Cold air slips in, brushing my ankles as I turn sideways and ease through the gap, pulling the door closed behind me until it settles back into its frame. My hand rests there for a moment, feeling the faint vibration fade before I step away.
The village sleeps.
No voices. No firelight behind shutters. Only the known shapes of houses crouched in the dark, roofs black against a sky washed pale. A dog shifts somewhere far off, then settles again. Smoke no longer rises from the chimneys; the night has swallowed it whole.
I glance around as I always do, though not expecting to see anyone.
The path is empty, the shadows between houses deep and undisturbed. I pull my shawl tighter around my shoulders and start walking, my steps quiet on packed earth.
It is not winter yet; the night is cool, but it does not bite.
The air carries the scent of damp grass and wood, of earth turned loose by recent days.
I breathe it in, letting it settle into me before I move again, slipping past fences and sleeping walls, toward the far end of the village where the dark waits.
The path narrows as I leave the last house behind, the village fading quickly at my back—smoke, stone, sleeping breath—until there is only the open stretch before the trees and the seam where fields give way to forest.
I walk without hurry.
The woods open to me as they always do, branches parting into familiar shapes. The night's glow filters through them in broken shards, painting the ground in shifting shapes that move when the wind breathes through the canopy.
There, I slow.
The traps lie hidden near the treeline, where the men have set them year after year.
I know where they are—each and every one of them.
I know where they sleep beneath the leaves, where the iron teeth wait, rusted but eager for warmth and weight.
I step around them without looking down too long, as if they might take offense.
One careless move, one misjudged foot, and there would be no walking home.
Wood complains beneath me—no more than a whisper—but I pause, listening. Somewhere to my left, something small scurries away. Farther off, an owl calls once, then again, the sound hollow as it passes overhead. Leaves stir above me, though there is no wind I can feel.
I breathe in, the scent of moss and damp earth filling my lungs. Sap hangs heavy in the air. Somewhere nearby, water whispers over stone.
My shoulders ease without my noticing, my spine straightening, my steps growing lighter as the houses falls away behind me.
The forest close in not as threat, but as held breath finally released.
Here, I am not watched in the same way. It does not ask me to be smaller.
It does not watch my hands or count my breaths.
Still, my fingers tighten around the rosary hidden beneath my shawl.
The beads are smooth now, worn pale where my thumb rubbed them again and again from the moment Mama pressed it into my hand, mouth tight with worry. Popa Vasile showed me how to move my fingers along it, how to count, how to speak the words that keep darkness at bay.
I whisper them now, barely sound at all.
Lord, guard my steps. Guide me. Let no evil touch me in body or soul.
My breath fogs in the air, the words disappearing with it as soon as they leave my lips, swallowed by bark and leaf and night.
I walk on, and soon, the trunks part ahead of me, opening onto a small clearing.
I crouch low in the herbs and wait, listening. The night answers with its quiet pulse—the far-off cry of an animal, the slow sigh of leaves stirring high above. Nothing moves close enough to matter.
Satisfied, I lower myself fully to the ground and reach to my belt, drawing the small dagger from its sheath. The narrow blade catches the moon, its edge kept honed with care. I test it once against my thumb, then turn to the earth.
I work carefully, cutting only what I need.
Mugwort first, careful to take only the top growth, to leave the roots untouched.
Juniper berries next, pried loose from their prickly shelter, staining my skin in dusky shades of violet as they fall.
A few sprigs of yarrow. A touch of thyme where it grows stubbornly between stones.
Each stem yields with a faint tear, a stubborn resistance.
I lay them briefly on the ground, sorting by habit, then tuck them into the small leather pouch at my waist, its drawstring whispering as I loosen and tighten it again.
Something moves beyond the ring of light. Leaves shift. A breath that is not mine passes through the clearing, stirring my hair, lifting the hem of my skirt. I pause, the dagger held still.
Nothing comes.
My body wanders deeper into the woods, following paths only I know, stopping when my feet tell me to stop, kneeling when my hands recognize what my eyes have not yet found. Cut. Gather. Move on.
All the while, my lips keep moving. For the plants, first—old syllables spoken low and even, a cadence meant to soothe rather than command. Thanks given. Leave taken. Balance kept.
Then, beneath it, the words Mama taught me.
Lord Jesus Christ…
…have mercy…
…deliver us from evil…
The prayer rope shifts beneath my shawl as my fingers brush it unconsciously, beads sliding one by one as I move, the two languages threading through the night—one learned at my father’s knee, whispered with dirt under my nails; the other pressed into me by candlelight and rule.
They braid together in my mouth, the ancient and the ordained sharing breath, neither louder than the other.
The dagger flashes and disappears again. Leaves fall, roots part, while the pouch grows heavier at my side. The scent of crushed leaves clings to my hands, my fingers sticky again with oil and resin. I welcome it.
The moon drifts between branches, veiled and then blazing, painting my hands bone-pale as I work.
A night bird flutters into motion above me, wings cutting the air with a dry hiss.
My heart stutters, then steadies. Somewhere farther off, something larger moves—slow, heavy, unhurried.
I freeze until the sound fades back into the unseen.
I whisper. I cut. I gather.
When the pouch is finally full, it rests heavy against my hip. I tie it closed and stand still for a moment longer, listening to the night breathe around me, letting the silence seal what has been taken.
I am almost back on the path when it reaches me.
A wet, dragging sound. Not the clean snap of bone or the tearing rush of a hunt, but something slower—rhythmic, obscene in its patience.
A deep pull, followed by a thick swallow.
Again. Again. It carries through the trees with a terrible clarity, cutting through the stillness of the forest and settling at the base of my spine.
I stop.
The forest seems to lean closer, as if stirred by my attention.
Instinct moves me before thought does. I slip behind the nearest tree, pressing my back to its bark, its cold roughness biting through my shawl. I do not breathe.
Pale light spills through the branches ahead, bathing the clearing in silver.
In its centre lies a deer—or what remains of one. Its body is half-collapsed into the grass, legs folded wrong beneath it, throat torn open so wide I can see the dark hollow of it even from here. Blood slicks the ground beneath, black where it pools, glistening in its freshness.
Bent over it is something else.
Tall, hunched, its shape wrong in ways I cannot immediately name. Too long in the limbs, too still in the spine. Its head is lowered to the deer’s neck, mouth pressed to torn flesh.
Drinking.
Each pull is heavy, greedy, accompanied by that thick, swallowing drag that makes my stomach twist.
This is no wolf. No bear. Its hands—if they are hands—grip the carcass with unnatural strength, fingers digging in, holding it open. Its shoulders rise and fall as it feeds, utterly intent. Wrong.
My heart hammers so loudly I am certain it must hear it. I clamp a hand over my mouth, willing my breath to stay trapped as I draw back, inch by inch.
My heel finds something brittle, and before I can shift, it gives a crack.
The sound splits the clearing. I freeze.
The creature stills.
For a breathless moment, nothing moves at all. No sound. No wind. Even the night insects fall silent, as if the world itself has gone rigid with fear.
Then it lifts its head.
Blood shines wetly along its chin, dripping in slow, luminous drops back onto the deer’s chest. Its face turns, just enough for the glow to find its eyes.
Red.
Not the dull tone of firelight or reflection, but something deeper, glowing from within, catching the moonlight and throwing it back wrong. They lock onto me with terrible precision, pinning me in place as surely as iron jaws.
My breath catches. I try to hold it, to swallow the sound down, to disappear into bark and shadow and prayer—
But the gasp tears out of me anyway.
Strigoi. [9]
My legs lock. My lungs forget their work. I feel the creature’s attention settle fully now, heavy and intent.
It has heard me.
It has seen me.