Chapter Five
I am already walking when I realize I am outside.
The air is cooler than it was at dusk. It settles against my skin without asking. My feet sink slightly into damp earth, the soil soft from evening dew. I do not remember unlatching the door. I do not remember crossing the yard.
The path folds beneath me anyway, trees parting around me as though I have already passed through them once tonight. The forest smells deep. Wet bark. Moss split open under heel. A sweetness rising from rotting leaves. I breathe it in, the scent settling low in my lungs.
Roots curl across the ground, but I do not stumble.
Ferns bend and spring back as I pass. My hands hang at my sides, fingers brushing against bark as I pass close to the trunks.
A beetle crawls across the top of my foot, but I do not shake it off.
The moon slips between branches, making my shadow stretch long before me, then disappear when I step beyond it.
After a while—or perhaps no time at all—the trees thin.
Roofs crouch low against the dark. A single ember glows faintly through a window.
No movement. No light but the pale wash from the sky.
I stand at the edge of the field, my feet sinking into softer soil, dew cooling the mud already clinging there.
The air near the houses smells different—ash and animal and straw.
I pass between them like a shadow that has forgotten its body, and soon, our door stands before me. Its wood bears a faint stain where something once lay, tough I cannot tell if it is shadow or memory.
The latch gives with a soft click as I step inside.
The house is dark. The embers in the hearth pulse faintly, red beneath ash. The air smells of smoke and wool. I pause just past the threshold, when something cool brushes the back of my neck. I turn.
The doorway frames only night. The yard is empty. The path still. The trees beyond do not move.
I hold there a moment longer before I turn my back to it.
I walk across the room. My feet leave faint marks on the packed earth floor, the ladder waiting ahead. I climb without sound, my hands finding the rungs without looking.
The blanket is cool when I slide beneath it. My skin is damp. My pulse slow.
Below, the door remains open, night breathing through as I sink.
***
I wake as if pulled upward by the throat.
My skin is slick. The linen clings to my back. For a moment I do not know where I am. Then the beams above me come into focus, and my eyes fly to the door below. Closed. The latch rests where it should. No strip of night across the floor. No open mouth swallowing the dark.
My breath shudders out of me. A dream. Only a dream.
I press my palm hard against my mouth as if to hold that truth there.
My heart still pounds, but the walls stand solid around me.
The house breathes slow and ordinary, gray with early dawn.
My hands search blindly beneath my pillow until my fingers close around the rosary, the beads sliding through them as I climb down the ladder and kneel before the hearth.
"Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me."
The words spill out quickly at first, breathless. I bow forward until my forehead nearly touches the earth, then rise again. My body moves before thought can follow.
One.
"Have mercy on me."
Two.
I bend and rise. Bend and rise. The motion settles into rhythm. The beads slip one by one through my fingers.
Three.
Four.
My knees begin to sting. I welcome it.
Five.
"Do not let him in," I whisper without meaning to. I swallow and correct myself. "Have mercy on me."
Ten.
The image flickers behind my eyes.
Trees washed in silver. Damp earth.
I bow harder.
Fifteen.
A mouth too close to mine. Teeth catching light.
Witch.
I press my forehead to the ground and stay there a moment longer, nails digging into the packed earth.
"Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me."
Twenty.
My thighs burn now when I rise. My breath grows rough. I keep going.
Enchantress.
The word coils through me, low and intimate.
Twenty-five.
I try to summon the face of Christ instead, crowned in thorns, eyes lowered in mercy.
But the image wavers. The thorns become branches.
The bowed head lifts, the lowered gaze darkens—reddens.
His mouth curves in the dark behind my eyes, wicked, and my body remembers the heat before I can stop it.
His mouth at my throat. His thumb at my pulse.
"No," I gasp as I force myself down again, hard enough that my knees flare with pain.
Pain is clean. Pain is safe.
Thirty. The beads snap against my fingers as I move through them faster.
The pouch flickers in my mind—pale cloth drawn tight, red thread biting into it, blood blistering in flame. Smoke curling up into the trees.
My body bends and straightens, bends and straightens, breath falling in time with the words, as if I can pound the visions out of myself with motion alone.
"Have mercy. Have mercy. Have mercy."
Thirty-five.
My knees throb. Sweat runs down my spine again. My pulse roars in my ears.
Forty.
I remain bowed, fingers clenched around the beads so tightly they bite into my skin.
The house is silent.
My breath echoes against the floor.
I will not let him in.
I will not.
I rise slowly, legs trembling, and cross myself again and again until my hand steadies.
Still, the forest lingers behind my eyes.
Still, the voice remains. The room tilts.
I steady myself against the wall and breathe through the dizziness.
The rosary still hangs from my fingers. I wrap it once around my wrist and grab the bucket.
I cannot stay here any longer. Outside, the morning meets me cold and clean.
I draw it in deeply, my skin prickling where the chill touches sweat. Again.
The sky is pale, just beginning to open.
Light threads through the trees at the edge of the forest, touching rooftops and damp earth alike.
For a moment, my lungs loosen. Birds begin their small, busy songs.
Smoke rises thinly from a distant chimney.
Somewhere a rooster calls, late and indignant. Nothing is wrong.
Nothing.
I close my eyes and tilt my face toward the sun, to the steadiness of its warmth. There is nothing to fear.
I will pray.
I will listen.
I will do as I am told.
The pouch is gone. The woods are only woods. Red eyes belong to stories.
I will forget, and everything will be well.
I tighten my grip on the bucket and begin walking toward the well, repeating the words silently, pressing them into place with each step.
Everything will be well.
The village wakes slowly around me.
A door creaks open. A woman shakes a rug. A child runs past, hair uncombed, laughing at nothing. Everything will be—
A shape ahead interrupts the line of the path. A murmur drifts across the square, low at first, then thicker. I slow. It is too early for so many voices. My eyes lift, landing on a cluster of bodies stands gathered near the far edge of the village.
Elena’s house.
My brows draw together as the murmur swells and then breaks into something else—a cry cut short, a gasp smothered.
My heart stumbles. I step faster. The bucket swings wildly now against my leg as I weave between figures already turning inward, faces pale in the morning light. No one looks at me. No one sees me.
"Elena?" I call, voice dying in my throat.
No answer.
I push forward, the crowd parting just enough—
And stop.
Doamn? Irina lies on the packed earth just before the doorway. Her skirt is twisted beneath her, one shoe half slipped from her heel. One arm flings outward, fingers stiff, as if she reached for something that was not there.
Her throat—
I cannot breathe.
It is open.
A wide, ragged slash gapes beneath her chin, deep enough that I can see the inside of the flesh.
Blood has poured from it in a slick stain that soaks into the dirt and blackens the hem of her dress.
It glistens in the morning light, pools beneath her head in a dark, glossy halo that spreads along the grooves of the ground.
Her eyes are half open, dull, fixed on nothing.
Her skin is wrong. Not the pallor of sleep, not the gray of sickness.
White. As if the blood at her throat is the only place it remains.
My breath leaves me in a broken sound. The bucket slips from my fingers and strikes the earth with a hollow knock. Water spills out, running thin and clear toward the dark stain, vanishing into it.
The crowd shifts behind me. Someone mutters a prayer.
Someone else turns away. I swallow hard, but the taste of iron has already crept into my mouth.
My heart hammers so violently it blurs my vision.
She was laughing yesterday. Her hands were warm.
I take a step back, my heel catching on something solid.
Ilinca stands behind me, her small body barely reaching my shoulder, hands hanging uselessly at her sides. Her eyes are wide, fixed and unblinking, drinking in the sight before her. She does not move, does not make a sound, and for one terrible heartbeat, she sees everything.
"No," I whisper, though my own voice sounds far away.
Without thinking, I reach out. My hand comes up and covers her eyes, pressing against her face to block the terrible view.
Her lashes tickle my skin as they flutter once, startled.
She does not resist when I take her wrist and pull her toward me, placing myself between her and the doorway, between her and the blood.
"We must go," I say, the words stumbling. "Come. Come."
Someone steps aside for us. No one stops us.
The murmurs swell again behind me as we move forward, but I do not look back. I pull her gently away from the circle, forcing my body to turn from the sight even as my mind strains back toward it.
Her hand remains in mine, small and silent. I do not let go.
***
I sit beside her on the low bench, my hand wrapped around hers.
Her fingers are cold.