“Ready yourselves,” a man shouted as he unshouldered his rifle. His gaze roved the platform. “This is the work of bogatyri.”

But even as he spoke, the dust immersed him. In the haze, individual forms were reduced to silhouettes, flickering and insubstantial, like shadows cast by candlelight.

Holding my breath, I pushed the door open wider, grasping onto the handlebar to keep the wind from tearing the door closed again. Through the billowing dust cloud, I caught a glimpse of Vanya and Mikhail running toward me, shielding themselves with my mother’s rushnyk. The wind stilled around them, and they carried with them a bubble of calm, the only breeze that which was created by their own harried movements.

As they neared, the undercarriage shuddered beneath me. The air filled with the hard clack of gears moving and levers being disengaged. Rolling down the tracks, the train released a shrieking whistle so loud it dwarfed even the howling wind that consumed us.

“Hurry,” I shouted, but the train was already beginning to pick up speed. I held out my hand to Mikhail, felt his fingertips scrape against mine, and then the train surged forward, and the pair of them disappeared from sight.

Slowly, I sank onto my knees, my fingers curled around thin air. A crushing weight pressed down on my chest. Gone. They were gone in an instant, as if they’d never existed at all, and I was alone again.

I swallowed down the hard lump in my throat.

This was what it always came down to for me, wasn’t it? Being alone, in a strange place, searching.

It should have been easy to let them go. Maybe it was better this way. All I had to worry about now was finding Galina. This wasn’t my war after all, and this had never been my world, not really.

Beyond the open door of the train car swept the smoke-tinged walls of a winding passage the builders had hewn into the hillside. Numbly, I stared at the bricks until they were reduced to a maroon smear. As we passed through a tunnel, the car was engulfed in darkness. The dimness soothed my aching eyes. I wished it would stay that way.

Much too soon, we emerged into the light, through a stand of birch saplings growing haphazardly along several moss-choked tracks, routes that led nowhere now. As I began to rise from my knees, a shadow fell over me.

“Koldunia,” a voice growled in raw hatred, and I lifted my eyes to confront Dima’s seething gaze.

26

As I began to rise, Dima’s foot shot out. The hard toe of his boot caught me in my stomach, driving me down again. Curling over myself, I pressed my palm over my side and gasped desperately to regain my lost breath. It felt as though my rib cage had been transformed into a bear trap, seizing my lungs in its merciless grip.

Before I could recover, Dima snared his fingers through my hair, throwing me off balance and casting me onto my stomach. I writhed beneath him, snarling and kicking as he seized my arm and twisted it behind my back. His weight anchored me to the floorboards, crushing what little breath I had managed to draw in.