My feet touched down on solid ground. I lifted my gaze to the horizon and gasped. A trail of smoke rose in the distance, black against the downpour.

“Come on, come on,” Galina urged, tugging at my sleeve.

The wind changed directions, blowing the smoke toward us. Each breath I took was sullied by its acrid odor. Pressing my coat collar over my nose and mouth, I broke into a run, heading toward the fire’s source.

Galina and I took a natural trail formed by decades of deer migration. When the underbrush thickened and obscured our path, we wove our way between red currant brambles and clumps of spurge laurel overladen with berries as black as ink drops. I curtained her with the flap of my buckskin coat when we strayed too close to a thornbush, wary of what its barbed branches might do to her skin and hair.

Before long, the forest thinned. Hornbeams and young oaks replaced the towering spruce and beech trees, admitting in sallow radiance. A pall of smoke caught the sunlight and trapped it in hazy columns.

Ahead, I spotted the deflated remains of an airship ensnared in the trees. Not one of those minnow-shaped vessels that occasionally passed overhead, but a smaller machine whose rowboat-like wicker compartment was open to the elements. Loose ropes and mounds of soot-blackened canvas hung from the branches. A man lay facedown beside the ruined basket, his blond hair streaked with mud.

Stepping carefully over the rubble, I made my way to his side. Here and there, broken machinery bristled from the soil. The barrel of a gun or cannon, and a scatter of brass shells each no longer than my finger. This vessel had been built for war.

I would know—to the south, the wilderness was scarred with overgrown craters and trenches on the verge of collapse, and whenever I hunted in that area, I had to proceed warily. Unexploded ordnance studded the land there, and though the black powder had gone impotent with age or decay, barbed wire and broken glass lined the ground like teeth.

Galina hid behind me, her twig-like fingers grasping at my coat. Her eyes had long since wasted away, but I knew that in her own way, she could see. And while she was incapable of producing tears, I could tell when she cried because her sorrow twisted like a dagger deep inside me.

“Is he dead?” Galina whispered.

“I don’t know.” I sank to my knees beside the wheat-haired man. If he was dead or dying, I didn’t want her to see it. Didn’t want her to be reminded of her own last moments. “Go find Mama and Papa. Hurry.”

Galina rushed into the forest. I waited until she was out of sight before turning back to the man.

“Hey, are you okay?” I lightly shook his shoulder. “Can you hear me?”

Groaning, he struggled into a sitting position and lifted his arms to ward me off. Weak veins of fire pulsed across his skin, sizzling in the rain.