My gaze drew to the flintlock musket above the fireplace. If the people in the other dirigible survived, and if they came searching for Mikhail, would I be able to protect us? How could an old musket compare to rapid gunfire, let alone the powers of bogatyri?

No. I hardened my heart to the fear that seized me. Mikhail was my responsibility now. The moment I had touched him, I had known in my heart that his life was something to safeguard and cherish.

Everything that was alive out here, I had to kill for my own survival, from the plants I farmed and foraged to the animals I hunted. But this was different. I must be the one to save him.

“How can I help?” I asked, my voice firming with resolution. “There must be something.”

“We need to stop the bleeding,” Mama said. “Galechka, fetch some samogon from the cellar. Toma, bring me your sewing kit, clean bandages, and a lit candle.”

After finding the supplies, I returned to my bedroom and laid everything out on the bedside table. Already, Mama had started cleaning the skin surrounding Mikhail’s wound with a samogon-soaked rag. As I leaned over him, the alcohol’s pungent fumes stung my nostrils.

At Mama’s instruction, I heated a sewing needle in the candle’s flame. By the time the needle cooled enough for me to touch it with my bare hands, the rag that Mama held against Mikhail’s shoulder was already dyed red. The blood had soaked through to her own hand-wrappings, staining the layers of deteriorated dowry lace and buckskin.

In the flickering candlelight, shadows settled under Mikhail’s closed eyes. He was fading fast.

I threaded the needle and slid it beneath his skin. My fingers ached and blisters had risen on my palms from holding onto the rope lead, but I forced myself to steady my hands as I sutured his wound.

Blood welled from between the stitches the moment I knotted the thread and snipped its tail.

“It’s not working...” The words came out choked and breathless, my voice tight with dismay. “I—the bleeding. I can’t stop the bleeding.”

Mama sighed deeply, resting her hand on my shoulder. “Toma, I’m afraid there’s nothing else you can do for him. It’s as I feared. He’s lost too much—”

“Your rushnyk,” Galina said suddenly. “Use your stitching like you did with me.”

Drawing in a deep, shuddery breath, I turned to her. “Galina, that’s not going to work.”

“It works,” she insisted, wiggling her reattached finger as though it was proof. “I promise. It really does. Please, just try it.”

I hesitated, looking back at Mikhail. He had lost so much blood already that it was only a matter of time before he succumbed to his wounds.

My gaze drew to the rushnyk hanging above my bed. Unlike the other tapestries in my room, the embroidery was not of my own hand but my birth mother’s. It was the only thing I had from the before, an inheritance I had carried from my village, past the border of the Kosa interior, and into the wilderness. I remembered now, my mother had wanted me to carry it, to wear it, because...