Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Author’s Note

Glossary

Acknowledgments

1

As the autumn wind pawed at the boarded windows like a wolf trying to break in, I arranged my medical supplies next to the teacup containing the severed finger. Needles and water, handspun thread, and clean rags.

“This is the second time this week, Galechka!” I exclaimed, picking up the finger. The first knuckle twitched when I touched it, then curled inward, prodding tentatively against my palm.

“I fell down again,” Galina mumbled, extending her arm across the table. She was in better condition than the other upyri in my family and still had most of her hair and flesh.

“Be more careful. Keep losing fingers, and someday you won’t have any left.” I took her left hand, examining the damage. Her skin was discolored and withered, buffed with a sheen of lavender oil to keep from tearing. Mine was a reminder of what hers had once been—smooth and still warm, a sandy beige against her waxen complexion.

“Can you make a pretty one this time?” she asked. “Like one of your rushnyky?”

“Okay, but promise me you’ll try not to lose anything else.” I gently tapped a finger against her forehead. “You don’t want me to reattach your head, do you?”

Galina giggled. “No.”

She didn’t wince when the needle pricked her. I used a geometrical stitch, embroidering her skin in a delicate red lattice of interlocking lines and diamonds. No blood welled up. The liquid had long since evaporated from her veins.

It made me proud being able to do this small deed for her. So much had fallen apart in my life, it was satisfying to know that I had the ability to sew things back together again. At least in this way, I could make a difference.

“This will protect you,” I said, tying off the final knot. My birth mother had taught me that the embroidery was a talisman against ill luck and the Unclean Force, a corrupting energy that sickened the body and soul. Over the years, I had decorated the walls of our house with rushnyky I had made using found linen. Some good must have come from the tapestries and their lucky embroidery, because the wilderness had yet to claim me.

After snipping the tail of thread, I cleaned her hand then bandaged it. Later, I’d probably find the strips of velvet scattered across the floor, forgotten as she admired my embroidery.

When Galina flexed her reattached finger and laughed, I smiled. Just that raspy sound made all my effort worth it.

“Thank you, Toma.” She curled her fingers to test them. “Will you come exploring?”

“I can’t. It’s too wet for me out there.”

“We can search for treasures.”

“Don’t you have enough of those?” I teased, gesturing at the array of objects lining the shelves along the wall. Jars filled with ceramic pipe stems and tarnished coins sat alongside bottles dredged from the mud, the glass so old that it had acquired an iridescent gleam. She had found brass artillery shells, which I engraved and turned into vases, until each windowsill overflowed with cotton stems and wildflowers.