“If they come after you, this will protect you, Tomochka,” my mother had said, and wound the rushnyk around my shoulders the way she had once draped it from the shelf in our altar corner. I remembered being cold and afraid, but I couldn’t remember who she had been talking about. She’d squeezed my shoulders and stared at me, pale and drawn, with snow caught in her ebony hair. “Please, always keep it with you. No matter what happens.”

Now, I looked to Mama, unrelated to me by blood but more substantial than the woman from my memories. She wore the mask Papa had carved for her—not her own face, but a visage modeled after the brass icon of the goddess Voyna that hung in the corner. Carved of curly birch and buffed to a sheen, the mask gleamed with a silken glow when the candlelight rippled over the wood’s natural whorls. The sadness emanating from her was at odds with Voyna’s proud, chiseled features and furrowed brow.

“He’s going to die, Toma,” Mama murmured.

“Not if I can save him,” I said, and exchanged the black thread I had used to suture the bullet hole for thick floss dyed red with madder root. The moment I strung the needle, a calm settled over me. Once more, I looked at my birth mother’s rushnyk, its embroidery so ornate that I had never been able to replicate the designs exactly. Something about this felt so right, so familiar.

I got to work. Interlaced chevrons, wheels, lines reminiscent of sown fields. With each stitch, I felt an intoxicating confidence swell inside of me. I could do this. I had to.

Between stitches, I blotted up the blood that swelled through the seam. Mikhail groaned, his muscles tensing. The design became just as elaborate as the rushnyk hanging over my bed, radiating out from his sutured wound like the sun’s corona.

Once it was over, I snipped the remaining thread and washed away the blood. Mikhail’s skin was almost as white as the linen he lay on, but his wounds had already clotted over. His chest rose and fell in deep, even breaths.

I sighed, my shoulders sagging as the last residual tension drained from my limbs. Somehow, I had managed to keep him on this side of our world, at least for tonight.

2

In the time it had taken me to stitch his wound, the candle’s guttering flame had drowned in a puddle of wax. Blood stained the floorboards and blanket. I sat in the chair next to Mikhail’s bed and mended the holes and tears in his clothes, keeping vigil.

Every few stitches, I glanced at Mikhail. It had been so long since I had lived among humans, I had almost forgotten what they looked like. He was beautiful in a severe sort of way, with a sharp jawline and cheekbones like honed blades. Even in sleep, he seemed ill at ease, shifting restlessly atop the mattress, his jaw tightening as though to ready himself for a blow.