As I stopped before them, I offered the man a weak smile. He growled something in Strannitsky, and I nodded, then nodded again. Vanya took me a step aside and hugged me, turning me away from the man so that he could whisper in my ear.

“He’s going to escort you to the car. Once you get there, you’re going to tell him that you want a moment alone with our brother and you can find your way back. Listen carefully. These exact words.” As he whispered them to me, his warm breath brushed against the nape of my neck, lifting the fine hairs there.

It felt so good to be touched by another human, to be held by one. I didn’t want to let Vanya go, and when he finally did pull away, I had to fist my hands at my sides to keep from reaching out for him again.

With the same nonchalant professionalism with which he had chained the feet of the dead, the man offered me his hand as he climbed into the train car. I took it, knowing that as the grieving sister, this was my part to play.

Though electrical lights were strung along the walls, it was dim within the cars. Weak sunlight intruded through the narrow portholes of windows, faint and grayish beams as thin as bayonet blades.

At one point, this train must have been meant for nobility. The car bore signs of its former splendor in the polished floorboards and floral wallpaper. The ceiling was adorned with raised plasterwork, gilded and resembling a briar of roses.

The original booths had at some point been ripped out to make room for rows of cots, except for those at the far end and those in front, which still had their original carved burl details and tufted leather seats. Of the rest, only brackets and scarred wood remained.

And the smell. The smell was horrific—a nauseating brew of gangrene, piss, and vomit. I breathed through my mouth as we headed deeper in, now more than ever longing for the familiar, dusty aroma of my mother’s rushnyk, or the scent of the forest after a storm.

Fingering my bead bracelet, I followed the Strannik down the aisle. On most of the cots, a red ribbon had been tied to the footrail. He paused beside every cot marked by a black ribbon, turning to me expectantly.

I peered into the soldiers’ faces as they slept or slowly drifted away to death. Some were so young that in another life, a life where my parents had lived, they could have been a brother of mine. Each time the Strannik man looked my way, I shook my head.

As we entered the second car, my skin prickled, and without reason, goose bumps rose on the back of my neck. Yet more soldiers lay wounded on the cots, only these men and women were more bandages than people, some with their faces oddly sunken beneath their shrouds, others with bloodied pads of gauze where limbs had been.