Popa Vasile’s voice still lingers in my thoughts, calm and steady. A test. Nothing more. I press my lips together and breathe in the warm air. It does not taste of smoke or blood.
We pass the cluster of children near the well. They chase one another in loose circles, shrieking in bursts of laughter that rise and fall like startled birds. Dust rises around their ankles.
Near the edge of the group stands Neaga’s little girl. She is watching more than running, her hair loose about her shoulders. One of the boys tosses a small stone at her feet, teasing. She bends, picks it up, and throws it back with surprising aim. The boy yelps as laughter erupts.
A small smile touches my mouth, her dark eyes meeting mine for a heartbeat. For a moment her face stills. Then she lifts her hand in a small, almost secret wave.
Elena glances at me. "She grows bolder," she says, not unkindly.
"Good," I answer.
The sun warms the back of my neck. A breeze moves through the thatch roofs, carrying the scent of grass and distant smoke, and for a brief stretch of path, nothing presses. No whispers cling. No eyes measure. Only the sound of children, the soft murmur of women, and the steady beat of our feet against the earth as though the village has remembered how to breathe. Elena says something about the old women arguing over whose hen lays best, and I shove her lightly with my shoulder. She stumblesagainst me, breathless, and for a moment we are girls again. I cover my mouth to quiet myself, glancing once toward the square as if someone might hear us and scold.
We are still laughing when I push the door open.
Something drops. A dull, wet thud against the wood. Then another softer sound as it strikes the ground at my feet.
We both stop, the laughter dying in our throat. For a heartbeat, neither of us moves.
A pale bundle lies at my feet.
It is the colour of flesh left too long in water, its surface slick in places, darkened where something has soaked through. Red thread winds around it in tight knots, crossing over itself like veins pressed close beneath thin skin. It looks flayed.
For a sickening moment, I think it is. My stomach tightens.
A scrap of something clings to one edge—a feather, matted and stiff. The cloth beneath it is dark, crusted. Small flies lift in a black fluttering scatter and settle again.
The smell reaches me then. Metallic. Sour. Old blood.
My heart slams against my ribs.
I crouch before I know I am moving, brows drawn tight, breath shallow. The red thread is knotted in tight loops, seven or eight turns around the bundle, cinched so hard the cloth beneath bulges at the seams. A thorn pierces through the centre, driven deep, its tip emerging on the other side slick and rusted with dried brown.
My fingers tremble, hovering inches above as I reach toward it.
"Don’t."
Elena’s grip slams down on my wrist. Hard. I turn to her.
She has gone white, like ash. The colour has drained from her mouth, from her cheeks. Her eyes are wide and fixed on the pouch as though it might move.
"Do not touch it," she whispers.
Her fingers tighten painfully when the flies buzz again, lifting and settling in slow, greedy circles.
The bundle lies between us, small and obscene on the threshold, red thread glistening faintly where the sun catches it. The laughter from moments before feels like something that belonged to another day.
"We have to burn it," Elena says, her voice barely more than breath. "If anyone notices…" She does not finish. She does not need to.
The square is still loud behind us. The doors of the church have only just emptied. Voices drift on the air. Feet on dust. Elena glances over her shoulder toward the path. No one looks our way. Not yet.
Her fingers fumble at the side of the house until she finds a flat shard of wood left from mending the fence. She presses it into my hands.
"Use this."
The shard is rough and splintered at one end.
"Quickly," she urges. "Before they come this way."
