“Stop!” Dronov screamed. “Stop, or once I find you, I’ll make sure you suffer! I’ll make it slow!”

In the brightening daylight, the firs and spruces appeared as sharp as blades, each bough bristling with a thousand needles. After a few minutes of running, I could no longer hear his shouts, but I kept going. My throat felt nearly as raw as my abraded wrists. Parched and breathless, I ran, panting like an animal. I felt like I was trapped in a nightmare—everything was hazy but the path ahead, my thoughts blurring until all I could focus on was the need to go.

Downhill, the ground was loosened by rainfall, deadly treacherous. I had to force myself to slow down, unable to escape from the conviction that if I returned to the Vesna River, I’d find Vanya, alive and whole.

Scrambling through a thorny bramble, my feet touched empty air. I plummeted down the steep ridge of a gully, grasping onto stones and branches in a futile attempt to control my descent. At the bottom, I rolled to a stop. The pain from my bruised ribs pushed the breath from my lungs in one sudden gasp.

Overhead, the dawn sky glowered down as though inflamed. Dazed, I watched as several blue swallowtail butterflies drifted from the foliage and danced around me.

My body ached, even in muscles I hadn’t realized existed. Still too weak to rise, I looked up at the slope I had tumbled down. No sign of Dronov, but I wouldn’t feel safe until I had put more distance between us. I needed to keep going.

As I hoisted myself onto my hands and knees, the underbrush rustled at the other end of the gully. Through the gaps between the shrubbery, I caught a glimpse of sage-green fabric. Fraktsiya green.

35

The leaves parted to reveal a person in fragments. Bare limbs, the sun-bleached swell of an exposed spine, pin-straight blond hair that glowed like fire in the dim light.

The mavka regarded me with her chin cocked, maple-brown eyes blinking unperturbed. A Fraktsiya cap perched rakishly on her head, the leather visor tilted sideways. More spoils overflowed from her cradled arms—an Otzvuk coat adorned with purple piping and blood-drenched epaulets, half a brown gabardine pant leg severed at the knee, a single boot.

It was the same mavka who had teased Vanya after we’d fled from the train. All this time she had been following us, or at least lingering nearby. Maybe she’d sensed the pall of death that hung over Vanya and had been drawn to it like a moth to a flame.

From deeper into the gully came the leaden thud of an axe striking wood.

We stared at each other in perfect stillness.

“I know you’re here,” Lieutenant Dronov called, his voice raspy from thirst or exhilaration. “I hear you moving, girl.”

“Help me,” I whispered to the mavka, but she had already turned away in disinterest. Swallowtail butterflies darted from her rib cage as she slipped the partial pant leg on one arm, tugging it upward before abandoning the effort. She handled the garments the way I might have handled a radio—shaking the boot this way and that until blood and dirt poured from its inner sole and plucking at the coat’s gilded buttons, ignorant to their function.