As a wretched sob escaped my lips, I could almost feel the lingering warmth he’d left across my skin—those fingers tracing the scars scouring my forearm, as though each mark were something precious. Proof that I had survived.

A final figure emerged from the Vesna River as the other rusalki disappeared beneath its restless waters. When she had helped Vanya ashore in the night, her face had been lost to the shadows, reduced to the wet gleam of eyes and teeth, and the scalpel-sharp curve of her cheekbones. In daylight, her chiseled features were strikingly familiar—they mirrored those of the head she cradled in her arms.

Instead of laying his head down with the rest of his remains, the rusalka stopped at the edge of the bank and held it out to me. I took it from her, his hair as slippery as oil against my palms.

She didn’t speak, but when she looked at me, I felt her grief inside of me. The moment her hands were empty, they gravitated to her stomach. Her gills swelled in long, heaving pulses as she stroked the space above her belly button, where I imagined she once must have felt an infant kick.

“I’m sorry,” I wept, holding his head against my chest. “I’m so sorry. I couldn’t stop them.”

She reached out and laid a hand upon my hip. No. Upon the rushnyk fastened around my waist, tugging at the loose knot with her long, webbed fingers. The brooch popped off and landed on my knee. With my hands full, I couldn’t keep her from untying the cloth. I didn’t try to stop her. Maybe she would take the rushnyk back up the Vesna River, into the rain and silence of the wilderness, to Mama.

The rusalka slid her fingers over the embroidered patterns, snagging her hooked nails on the threads. Her lips parted, revealing a fringe of teeth as sharp and delicate as an ivory comb.

“Bring him back,” she hissed in a voice like wind and the sluice of water. Her pupilless silver eyes pierced into me. Looking into them, I felt as though she could peer into everything I ever was and would be, my conscience split open like a mavka’s back and exposed in all its vulnerability.

“I can’t—” I began, but she had already let go of the rushnyk and retreated beneath the waves, leaving Vanya and me alone on the shore.

37

Resting Vanya’s head in my lap, I forced myself to gaze at his face. His eyes were closed, a small mercy. If I looked at him from the neck upward, I could almost pretend that he was asleep. But dirt plugged his nostrils. There were dead leaves in his hair, and his mouth had been stuffed with moss and monkshood.

Sobbing even harder, I cleared out the moss and dried purple flowers and held his jaw shut until his lips remained closed. There would be no kisses or caresses for him anymore, only the cruel beaks and talons of ravens.