Olga gathered her daughter into her arms. Marya had begun weeping again, slow exhausted sobs. “Hush, sweet,” she said to her daughter. Sasha felt his face settling into bleakness. “The priest with golden hair,” he said. “Konstantin Nikonovich.”

“Our father sheltered him. You brought him to Moscow. I succored him here,” said Olga. Her habitual composure could not hide the look in her eyes.

“I am going to pray now,” said Sasha. “If a devil has come to this city, all I can do against it is pray. But tomorrow I will go to Dmitrii Ivanovich. I will see this priest tried and justice done.”

“You must kill him with your sword, Uncle Sasha,” said Marya. “For I think he is very wicked.”

Sasha kissed them both and departed in silence.

“Thank you for saving our sister’s life,” Olga said to Varvara, when Sasha had gone.

Varvara said nothing, but the two women clasped hands. They had known each other a long time.

“Now tell me more of this demon that has come to Moscow,” Olga added. “If it concerns the safety of my family, it cannot wait until morning.”

7.

Monster

IN ANOTHER PART OF MOSCOW, in the black and frigid hour before dawn, a peasant man and his wife lay awake atop his brother’s oven. They had lost their izba, their possessions, and their firstborn in the fires of the night before, and neither of them had slept since.

A light, insistent tapping came from the window.

Tap. Tap.

Below them, on the floor, the brother’s family stirred. The knocking went on, steady, monotonous, first at the window, then at the door. “Who could that be?” muttered the husband.

“Someone in need perhaps,” said his wife, voice hoarse from the tears she had shed that day. “Answer it.”

Her husband reluctantly slid down from the oven. He stumbled to the door, over the complaining bodies of his brother’s family. He opened the inner door, unbarred the outer door.

His wife heard him give a single, sobbing gasp, and then nothing. She hurried up behind him.

A small figure stood in the doorway. Its skin was blackened and flaking away; you could see hints of white bone through rents in his clothing. “Mother?” it whispered.

The dead child’s mother screamed, a scream to wake the dead—but the dead were already awake—a scream to awaken their neighbors, sleeping uneasily with the memory of fire. People opened their shutters, opened their doors.

This child did not go into the house. Instead he turned away and began walking up the street. He walked drunkenly, lurching from side to side. His eyes, in the moonlight, were bewildered and afraid and intent all at once. “Mother?” he said again.

Above, on either side, the awakened neighbors stared and pointed. “Mother of God.”

“Who is that?”

“What is that?”

“A child?”

“Which child?”

“Nay—God defend us—that is little Andryusha—but he is dead…”

The voice of the child’s mother rose up. “No!” she cried. “No, I am sorry; I am here. Little one, don’t leave me.”