“Did you find the men?” I asked, going to his side. “The ones who hurt Mikhail?”

“We found the crash, but there was no trace of them,” Mama said, lingering near the stove. She had taken off her mask to dry it. The fire cast its glow across her jutting features, gathering in her cheeks’ hollows and the sunken pouches of her eyelids, frozen shut in perpetuity. Her skin was so thin that when she spoke, I could nearly see the ridges of her teeth beneath. “The rain must have washed away their tracks.”

“We’ll look again tomorrow morning,” Papa added, his worry betrayed by the way he handled his knife, carving the wood in rough, swift strokes. “And we’ll stand watch through the night. If they come through here, we’ll know.”

Thin beams of light intruded through the gaps in the boarded window, turning his body into an eerie shadow play of sunken contours and sharp edges. He looked so fragile sitting there, even with his wooden mask and layered clothes concealing the worst of the decay. Any moment, he might fall apart.

“Have you seen Galina?” I swallowed hard. “She went outside.”

“No, but we only just returned,” Mama said.

I took a deep breath, focusing on the whistling wind and the groan of timber, the rap of hail against the roof. For a reason I couldn’t explain, the talk with Mikhail had unsettled me. Just thinking about the past was dangerous. That simple question—Are you Strannik?—had opened a door to allow darker memories to lurch in, if I allowed them.

I rubbed my arms, cold in spite of the oven’s warmth. “Maybe she’s exploring. I’ll take a look.”

I tugged on my boots and stepped outside, hoping to spot Galina climbing one of the boulders or building a fort from branches. An empty brown expanse confronted me, pebbles of ice melting in the rain puddles. I shielded my eyes with my hands, squinting as I studied the darkening horizon, where the forest cradled jagged mountains.

“Galina,” I called.

No answer.

“Galina, come home now. It’s getting late. Don’t you want to string those pretty beads into a necklace?”

Silence.

Frowning, I went back inside. Undead or not, my sister would still be vulnerable to blustering winds and rocky outcroppings. If she fell into a crevice or was buried by a landslide, we might never find her. Goddesses forbid she lose a leg, a hand, or even her head.

I shuddered at the thought. I had never reattached a head before. The idea of confronting her windpipe, the bristling vertebrae, arteries and sinew and so many dried, delicate things made my skin crawl. Could she even survive decapitation?

“I can’t find Galina anywhere,” I said to my parents, crossing my arms as a sudden draft passed through the house. “She was upset earlier and ran off. I should have stopped her, but—but I didn’t. I’m worried about her.”

“We’ll look outside,” Mama said, her joints popping as she approached me.