I thought of asking Mikhail how he expected his would-be allies in Svet to recognize him, if he didn’t trust his former soldiers to. But something in his voice held me back, and as he turned ahead, it dawned on me—he was afraid.

“Isn’t Svet on the other side of the continent?” I asked instead, thinking back to the maps I had found in a moldering almanac. Painted green on the maps to represent its pastoral landscape, Svet was an archipelago resting southwest of the neighboring Groznaya Empire.

“Not quite, but it’s far.”

Everything seemed far from here. Svet. Galina. The two soldiers. They might as well have been a world away.

7

As night fell, Mikhail and I were rewarded with our first glimpse of civilization when we passed several farms, lights burning behind their half-shuttered windows. I paused, mesmerized by the glint of candlelight.

“What’s wrong?” Mikhail asked.

“Nothing, it’s just...it’s beautiful.” I had spent the last seven years searching through abandoned homes and decaying trenches. For all the books I had salvaged from the ruins, I had almost forgotten that the places described in their pages were real—that somewhere far beyond my izba, other people continued to live and prosper. Most days, I’d felt like the only person still alive.

“What do you mean?” Mikhail glanced up. “The stars?”

“No, the lights in the houses.” I pointed at them.

He followed my gaze, and his expression softened. “Ah... They are, aren’t they?”

As we left the lights behind, my wonder turned into deep homesickness. If I didn’t return, the fall vegetables in my garden would rot on the vine, and the wheat I’d just planted would remain unharvested come midsummer. If I didn’t return, my parents’ bodies might fall apart for good.

Mikhail and I continued on, the moon burning overhead as the cloud cover cleared. Nightingales and crickets chirped in peaceful harmony as we passed along a crumbling stone wall overtaken by ivy. Through breaches in the wall, I spotted crooked outcroppings of gravestones. Ahead, shingled domes swelled against the night sky—its triple domes identified it as a Troika chapel or monastery, devoted to the worship of the Three Sisters.

A low rasping sound distracted me. Several paces down the road, an animal slunk out from a breach in the fieldstone wall, emerging into the moonlight.

At first, I thought the creature was a crippled, emaciated hound, dragging itself along on stunted limbs. Its head was humanlike and grotesquely enlarged, dangling on a knobby neck like an apple rotting on the bough.

My heart jolted at the sight of its wrinkled ruddy skin, swollen brow, and crude features. It made me think of a horrible mistake I had made years ago, when I had shot and field-dressed a deer, only to find a fetal doe nestled among its steaming innards. Except this rudimentary creature was far more threatening.

A drekavac, a harbinger of doom.

As the monster neared, Mikhail seized my wrist and pulled me to the other side of the road.