Chapter Three #3
The space between us feels wider than the whole of the square.
Voices rise all at once, no longer murmurs but clear and certain, each one reaching for me, pulling, naming, shaping something I do not recognize.
"She has been strange—"
"I saw her near the forest—more than once—"
"Look—moonflowers. They can only be gathered at night."
"She keeps to herself—always watching—"
My mouth opens, closes. There is no space to place a sentence that will hold. The words come from every side, pressing in, leaving no air between them. I turn, searching for something steady, for someone who will see what is before them instead of what they fear.
"Elena—" I say, my voice breaking as I find her face in the crowd.
She stands just beyond Mama, her hands clasped tight, her eyes wide and bright with something I cannot hold onto. Her lips part.
"There was… something," she murmurs, her voice trembling. "On our door. The night before Mama—before she…" Her words falter. "A sign. A spell."
The world tilts.
"No." The word tears out of me, louder than I intend, cutting through the noise. I push myself to my feet, stumbling forward. "No, Elena, you know that is not—" My breath comes fast, uneven. "You know who did that. You know the truth. Tell them."
Her gaze flickers, uncertain, slipping away from mine.
"Tell them," I insist, the plea breaking into something insistent, more desperate. "Tell them it was not me."
Her hands twist together. Her mouth parts, then closes again. A few heads turn toward her, waiting, but she remains silent.
A movement to my right draws the crowd’s attention, as Radu steps forward.
His presence stills something in the air, just for a moment. He looks at me, and for a heartbeat I think—hope—that he will speak for me, that he will set this right.
"She tried to entice me," he says.
The words fall clean, measured, carrying easily across the square.
"She came to me before the betrothal was sealed. More than once." His gaze does not leave my face. "I had to turn her away. To remind her of what is proper."
For a moment, I do not understand the meaning of it. Then, it settles.
Something breaks loose in me.
"You lie," I say in anger, the words, burning through everything else. "You are the one who would not wait. You came to me—"
A gasp ripples through the crowd.
It silences everything else.
"She admits it," someone whispers.
"She tempted him—"
"Before marriage—"
"Shameless—"
"Witch."
The word strikes again, harder this time, finding purchase.
I shake my head, my breath coming too fast, my chest tight with something that will not release. "No," I say again, softer, desperate now. "You do not understand—"
"She spoke over the priest, and he was found dead the next morning—"
"She spreads sickness—"
"Neaga—look what became of her—"
"She poisons with those things—"
"She flees her duties—"
Each accusation folds into the next, building a shape around me, a story I cannot unmake.
Petru’s voice rises among them, hoarse and insistent. "She spoke over me," he says, pushing himself forward despite his wife’s grip. "When I lay there. I heard her. Pagan words."
My hands tremble where they rest against the ground.
"She called something," he goes on. "I felt it. It came through her."
A murmur of fear answers him, deeper now, darker.
"The strigoi—"
"She summoned it—"
"It fed because of her—"
The words close in.
I look from face to face, searching for something that will hold, something that will not shift beneath me. Mama stands rigid, eyes still turned away. Elena does not look up. Radu remains where he is, unmoving.
My breath falters, shallow, uneven.
I try to speak.
Nothing comes.
"Catch her."
I understand in an instant. There is no space left for reason. No place where my voice might reach them. The air itself has turned against me.
I push to my feet, slipping between bodies before hands can close, before anyone understands I am no longer where they expect me to be. I slip between shoulders, past outstretched hands that grasp too late. Someone catches at my sleeve—I wrench free. Fabric tears. I do not look back.
I run.
The ground rushes beneath my bare feet, hard-packed earth giving way to dust, to scattered stones that bite into my soles. My breath tears in and out of me, wild and alive. The village loses its shape, voices breaking behind me into shouts, into pursuit.
But I am faster.
I always have been, and they are already falling behind.
The air rushes against my skin, filling my lungs with something exhilarating. My heart hammers, wild and strong, each beat driving me forward. My dress tangles at my legs, heavy now with dirt, but I gather it without slowing.
The earth knows me.
My feet find their way without thought, avoiding stones, adjusting to dips and rises, remembering paths I have walked in darkness and silence. The wind lifts my hair, pulls it loose from its bindings, and for a fleeting moment something breaks free in me with it.
I have not run like this in so long. A sound escapes me—half breath, half something else—and it rises into a laugh before I can stop it, bright with something close to joy.
The forest draws nearer. The trees stand ahead, dark and waiting, the line between village and wild clear and absolute.
I can see them now, their trunks rising dark against the light, branches shifting in the wind.
The air changes as I near them, carrying the scent of moss and earth and something deeper.
I feel it on my skin before I reach it, the forest opening to me, calling me home.
I am almost there.
The shouts behind me fade, swallowed by distance, by my speed, by the pull of the trees that open before me like a mouth.
One more step.
I cross the threshold—
And something strikes.
The pain is sudden. Absolute. It tears through my leg with a force so violent it steals the ground from beneath me. My body folds before I understand what has happened, my foot failing me, my weight collapsing forward.
A cry rips from my throat, raw and broken, the sound tearing itself free without my consent. It echoes into the trees, into the open space beyond them, as though the forest itself must hear it.
The earth rises to meet me, and I fall.
The ground swims beneath me. For a moment I do not understand what has happened. My body lies twisted where it fell, breath caught somewhere between my ribs, the world reduced to a ringing silence that presses in on my ears. I try to move, but I cannot.
Something holds me.
I lift my head.
My foot is no longer mine.
Iron teeth have closed around it, the trap buried beneath leaves now sprung wide and clamped tight.
The metal sunk so far into flesh it has become part of me, crushing through it, splitting it open.
I see white where there should not be—bone forced into the open air, slick and shining beneath torn skin.
Blood spills freely, running over the iron, dripping into the soil, soaking the earth until it turns black and wet beneath me.
My mouth opens. No sound comes.
The pain seeps in slowly, as though my body must first understand what it is being asked to endure. It travels upward my leg, sudden enough to fracture thought. My fingers claw at the dirt. My breath stutters, shallow and broken.
No.
No.
I try to pull free, but something inside my leg tears further. The world flashes white.
The trap does not yield. The movement sends another surge of agony through me, tearing something deeper, something final. The edges of my sight flicker, when I hear footsteps approaching.
Radu is running toward me, his face pale, his breath coming hard. Relief crashes through me so suddenly it almost feels like another wound.
"Radu—" The name barely forms. I reach for him, my hand shaking, slick with dirt and blood. "Please—"
He slows as he reaches me, and for a heartbeat, our eyes meet. His hand lifts. I reach for it—
His fingers close in my hair.
My head snaps back, pain ripping across my scalp as though the skin itself is being peeled away. A scream tears from me then, raw and broken, echoing through the trees. My hands fly upward, grasping at his wrist, at anything I can reach.
"I have her!" he shouts in fierceness. "I caught her!"
"No—" I choke, clawing at him, my fingers slipping against his skin.
The forest looms just ahead.
Close.
So close.
I reach toward it, one hand outstretched, fingers grasping at empty air.
He pulls me back from it.
My body drags across the ground, my trapped leg following, the iron jaws grinding deeper into torn flesh.
Something shifts inside it, something that should not move, and the pain explodes upward, blinding.
Blood streaks the earth behind me in a dark trail.
I feel bone scrape where it should not. My vision fractures.
"Stop—please—" The words dissolve into cries as another violent pull yanks me forward.
My hands scramble against the dirt, fingers digging in, trying to find something to hold, something to stop the movement.
Nails break. Skin tears. I clutch at roots, at stones, at anything that might anchor me, but each grip slips, each hold fails, and I am pulled onward, my body trailing after him like something broken.
My scalp burns where his hand grips tighter, strands of hair tearing free beneath his fingers. I feel them give way, feel the searing sting where they rip from my head. My neck strains, my vision blurring with tears I cannot control.
"Please—" I choke again, my voice fading to nothing.
He does not stop.
By the time he drags me back into the village, I no longer feel the ground beneath me as something separate from my body.
It scrapes, it catches, it burns, but it is all one thing now—pain threaded through every limb, every breath.
My dress clings to me, heavy and wet, the white long gone beneath blood and dirt.
The trap drags behind my leg with a dull, grinding weight, each movement sending another tearing through what remains of my foot.
Hands replace his at some point—I do not see whose. They pry me from Radu’s grip only to seize me themselves, arms under my shoulders, fingers digging into my wrists, my legs left to drag when they falter. My head lolls, hair tangled and damp, my throat raw from screaming.
The barn doors open, and I am thrown inside.
The impact knocks what little breath I have left from me. Straw rises around me in a dry rush, sticking to blood, to skin, to the open ruin of my leg where the iron still holds fast.
Voices move above me, urgent, fearful.
"She will call it—"
"Do not let her speak—"
Rough hands seize my arms, wrenching them behind my back.
Rope bites into my wrists, pulled tight, tighter, until I feel the pulse there strain against it.
Another strip of cloth is forced between my teeth, shoved deep, tied hard at the back of my head.
I choke against it, breath catching, the taste of it thick and suffocating.
My legs are left as they are.
The trap remains.
No one touches it.
No one dares.
The doors slam shut, and darkness swallows everything at once.
The sound echoes through the space, then dies, leaving only the low, uneven rhythm of my breath and the distant murmur of voices beyond the wood.
I lie where they have left me. The pain no longer comes in waves. It is constant now, a deep, pulsing burn that fills my body, that erases everything else. My thoughts slip, catch, dissolve. My vision dims at the corners, darkness creeping inward even as my eyes remain open.
I tremble without control.
Tears slip sideways into the straw, unnoticed, unheeded.
The darkness shifts, or perhaps I do.
And then, slowly, mercifully—
it begins to fade.