Chapter Five #3
Mama’s eyes find mine across the room.
"Go," she says. "Bring the stack from the chest."
I nod.
Elena’s hand still grips mine. I squeeze it once, careful, grounding.
"I will be back," I whisper.
She nods, but her gaze stays fixed on the table, on the shape beneath the linen. Her fingers curl around my palm, then slip away. Water moves against the basin as I turn. The cloth passes over skin. The murmured prayers continue, low and unbroken, the scent of blood following me like a shadow.
I slip into the smaller room and pull the curtain halfway closed behind me.
The air is cooler here. Light seeps in through a narrow slit in the wall and settles in a pale strip across the floor.
The chest sits beneath it, lid scarred from years of use.
I kneel and lift it open, its hinges groaning in protest. The smell of linen rises, untouched by the iron tang from the other room.
My fingers are already sorting through folded cloth when something brushes my arm.
Ilinca stands behind me.
She has come without sound. Her hair falls loose around her shoulders. Her eyes search my face, as if asking a question she cannot shape.
"Are you well?" I whisper.
She does not answer. Instead, her hands gather the edge of her skirt and lifts it just enough for me to see.
The fabric beneath is darkened through. Dark red has spread across the linen, blooming outward in uneven shapes, damp at the centre.
I reach forward and press her skirt back down, my heart tightening. "Not here," I murmur, glancing toward the doorway where the voices drifts in and out like breath.
Her fingers clutch the wool at her hips. She watches me closely.
"I am sorry," I say softly. "Just a little longer. I will bring clean ones to you later."
Her shoulders loosen, her head nods. A small smile touches her mouth before she raises her index finger and presses it gently to her lips. Silence.
The gesture is solemn, almost proud. I cannot help the smile that answers it. I cup her cheek in my palm, brushing my thumb lightly against her skin.
"You did well."
She leans into my hand for a moment, then steps back, her gaze steady on mine as the dim light pools quietly around us. I watch her small back disappear through the curtain, the murmur of prayer swallow her whole.
My brows tighten. Is she too young for this?
The thought lingers only a breath before another rises in its place. I was not much older.
Our house. The main table cleared. My father laid where bread once cooled.
His body had seemed both vast and distant.
I remember standing on my toes to see him better, watching the stillness of his chest as though it might change if I waited long enough.
His skin had gone pale beneath the winter light, the fever having burned everything bright from him.
The room smelled of boiled herbs and smoke.
Mama’s voice had filled the walls the days before he passed, gripping his arm, her voice breaking as she begged him to pray louder, to pray properly, to repent of whatever pride had kept God from sparing him.
He had smiled faintly at that.
A few hours before the end, he had called me closer. I remember the weight of his hand at the back of my head, pulling me down so his breath brushed my ear. It came thin and warm, carrying the scent of thyme and sweat.
"Do not be afraid," he had whispered. "Do not be angry."
His fingers had tightened slightly around mine.
"The woods gave me more days than I was owed."
His fingers brushed my cheek.
"Remember that."
After he was gone, I stood beside him until they took him away.
His hands rested crossed over his chest, fingers I knew better than my own.
I remember staring at them for hours. Waiting for them to move.
I traced the lines of his knuckles. I studied the hollows beneath his eyes.
I searched for him in that stillness and could not find him.
The body on the table was my father’s shape, his hands, his beard. But the thing that laughed, that walked into the forest with me, that pressed green leaves into my palms and poultices to fevered brows—
He had been there. And then not.
The house had felt different after. Smaller. Quieter. Mama’s prayers grew louder in the weeks that followed, pressing into every corner. The bundles of herbs disappeared one by one from their hooks.
I did not forget how they smelled when crushed between the fingers.
The murmur of prayer from the other room reaches me again, weaving with the memory until they are hard to separate. Eventually, it pulls me back.
I blink hard and shake my head once, as if the movement might scatter what lingers there. Linen shifts beneath my hands as I gather what I can carry—plain cloth, folded twice, faintly scented with dried lavender. My fingers move quickly at first, grateful for something to do.
Then they stop.
A corner of fabric lies caught beneath the others.
It is torn along one edge. The threads have been pulled apart by hand, left uneven, curling inward.
Between the weave, faint but unmistakable, a strand runs through the fabric.
The light from the narrow window catches on it, just enough that it glints against the dull cream of the cloth.
Blue.
I have seen it twist in flame. I have watched it blacken, curl inward, stubborn even as the rest of the bundle shrank and collapsed into ash. It had resisted the fire longer than the hair. Longer than the bone.
My breath falters, the cloth trembling slightly in my hand. Perhaps it was never meant for me. Perhaps the hand that placed it mistook one threshold for another.
Irina’s house stands not far from mine. The doors look alike. Wood the same. Steps worn the same. A mistake. A misstep. The curse meant for her.
Or—
The question forms and refuses to complete itself.
What if it was meant for me, and found her instead?
I grip the cloth tighter, my pulse drumming in my ears.
Marked.
The word rises unbidden.
If the bundle carried death, and I burned it—
Then why is she the one lying on the table?
I stand there, my hand still resting on the lid. For a moment I consider going back into the other room. Kneeling beside Elena. Leaning close. Whispering what I saw.
But what would I say? That I found a thread? That cloth resembles cloth? That fire burns slower in some places than others?
My tongue feels thick at the thought, and Elena’s voice returns to me.
Do not speak of that.
My breath comes slowly, deliberately.
Linen is traded, borrowed, passed from house to house. A thread can come from anywhere. From a shawl. From a scrap used to mend a sleeve. Things are patched and repatched until no one remembers where the first tear was.
The bundle was most likely a child’s cruelty. A foolish prank. A piece of linen stolen and wrapped with bones from the yard, herbs from the ditch. Boys dare each other to leave gifts at doors. Girls whisper stories until they begin to believe them.
And wolves roam.
They slip between houses when hunger drives them close. Irina may have stepped out at the wrong hour. Heard something in the dark. Opened the door without waking anyone.
There are no monsters in the woods. Only trees. Only beasts that bleed when cut. Men who tell stories to make children hurry home before dark.
I press my palm against the chest as if sealing the thought inside it.
The nights have been restless. Dreams press too hard, shadows lengthen where they should not. I have let my mind wander.
We will pray. We will keep the windows open and the candles lit.
Popa Vasile will speak.
God will not abandon a village that kneels. I repeat it quietly inside my head. There is sense in this. There is order.
My hand presses the lid shut and I rise, pushing the curtain aside to get back to the main room.
The candles have burned lower, wax pooling at their bases like pale milk.
The windows remain open, letting in a thin current of wind that lifts the edge of the sheet and carries the scent of water and iron across the room.
I place the folded linen into Mama’s hands, her sleeves damp to the elbows. She passes the cloth to Neaga without looking at her. Together they work in silence now. Cloth moves over skin. Water is poured and wrung out again. The basin darkens, then clears as it is replaced.
The blood is washed from Irina’s throat, still, the wound remains. Her face has been wiped clean, her hair combed back, but something of the pain lingers in the set of her mouth, in the faint pull at the corners of her brows. As if the last thing she saw clings still to her.
When the body is finally clean and dry, Neaga sets the basin aside. Then, from the fold of her apron, she draws a coin. It catches the candlelight briefly, before she leans froward and places it over Irina’s left eye.
Mama’s hand shoots out immediately, stopping her wrist.
"We do not need such things. The Lord will guide her."
Neaga’s fingers do not withdraw. She looks at Mama.
"Her husband would have wanted it that way," she says. "You know it."
The name hangs between them without being spoken. Mama’s mouth opens, then closes again, while the other women watch in silence. One presses her lips tight, another shifts on her feet. No one steps forward. The coin rests against Irina’s cheekbone, waiting.
Slowly, Mama’s fingers loosen. Neaga lifts the coin again and sets it back in place, pressing it lightly against the closed lid. She takes another from her palm and lays it over the second eye. Her voice lowers, almost to herself.
"No one crosses the river empty-handed."
Her words settle into the air as the metal gleam faintly in the candlelight. I remember the coins on my father’s eyes. Cold discs pressed against pale lids. The way Mama pressed them down herself.
Since when are coins wrong? The question forms and folds in on itself. I keep it there, tucked beneath my tongue.
Still, no one reaches to remove them.
Neaga bends once more. Her fingers slide to Irina’s jaw. She presses gently at the hinge, coaxing the mouth open so the last coin may rest there.
The lips part, but she pauses. Her hand stills, a small crease forms between her brows.
"Hold the light."
Someone lifts a candle closer. The flame wavers, casting long, trembling shadows over the table as Neaga tries again. The jaw does not give easily. It resists in a way that feels wrong, not stiff but full. She manages to press her thumb against the lower lip and draw it down at last.
A dark shape fills the mouth. At first it looks like shadow.
Then the candlelight catches it.
Earth, packed tight between the teeth. Wedged along the gums, ground into the tongue, crumbling where Neaga's thumb has disturbed it. A thin line of soil spills out and falls against Irina’s chin.
A sound breaks from somewhere behind me.
A breath caught and drawn in fast. A whisper that does not finish itself.
The scent reaches us then—damp and loamy, as if the forest floor has been brought inside.
My breath stutters in my chest. A woman at the window gasps and staggers back, knocking against the wall.
Another drops her rosary; the beads scatter across the floor with a dry clatter.
"Doamne miluie?te…"
The coin remains poised in Neaga’s fingers, but she does not recoil. She stares at the mouth, at the soil packed where words should be.
"This is no wolf," a woman near the hearth stands in a rush, her voice thin. "No beast fills a mouth with earth."
Her eyes shine wide in the candlelight.
"Strigoi," she breathes. "It took soil from its grave and—"
"Silence," another woman snaps. "Do not speak such filth in this house."
"It’s nonsense," someone else says, louder now, as if volume can steady the room. "She fell. Her face struck the ground. The soil went in. That is all."
"She could have gasped when the wolf tore her," another agrees quickly. "There was blood. It—"
"Blood does not pack soil into a throat," the first woman whispers, her voice shaking.
"Enough!" Mama’s voice cuts through, strained. "Do not invite evil by naming it. The men will find the wolf," she adds. "They will kill it. Do not make foolish tales out of grief."
"Yes," someone echoes. "It is a beast. Nothing more."
The candles gutter in the draft from the open windows. Wax spills over fingers. Rosaries click against bone.
I stand frozen, staring at the dark soil lodged between Irina’s teeth. My mind slips. I see trees instead of walls. Moonlight instead of flame. A face bending close. White teeth on the throat of a deer. Red eyes catching the light.
Witch. Enchan—
A dull thud cuts through the noise. A body hitting the floor.
Elena lies crumpled beside the bench, skirts tangled beneath her, hair spilling across the packed earth. Her face is drained of colour, lips parted, eyes closed.
"Elena," I am at her side before I feel my feet move. "Elena, wake."
Her head lolls against my arm, her lashes rest pale against her cheeks. Around us, the women fall silent again, their fear shifting shape. Someone moves to fetch water. Someone else begins to pray louder.
And the earth still clings to Irina’s mouth.