I close my eyes and tilt my face toward the sun, to the steadiness of its warmth. There is nothing to fear.
I will pray.
I will listen.
I will do as I am told.
The pouch is gone. The woods are only woods. Red eyes belong to stories.
I will forget, and everything will be well.
I tighten my grip on the bucket and begin walking toward the well, repeating the words silently, pressing them into place with each step.
Everything will be well.
The village wakes slowly around me.
A door creaks open. A woman shakes a rug. A child runs past, hair uncombed, laughing at nothing. Everything will be—
A shape ahead interrupts the line of the path. A murmur drifts across the square, low at first, then thicker. I slow. It is too early for so many voices. My eyes lift, landing on a cluster of bodies stands gathered near the far edge of the village.
Elena’s house.
My brows draw together as the murmur swells and then breaks into something else—a cry cut short, a gasp smothered. My heart stumbles. I step faster. The bucket swings wildly now against my leg as I weave between figures already turning inward, faces pale in the morning light. No one looks at me. No one sees me.
"Elena?" I call, voice dying in my throat.
No answer.
I push forward, the crowd parting just enough—
And stop.
Doamna Irina lies on the packed earth just before the doorway. Her skirt is twisted beneath her, one shoe half slipped from her heel. One arm flings outward, fingers stiff, as if she reached for something that was not there.
Her throat—
I cannot breathe.
It is open.
A wide, ragged slash gapes beneath her chin, deep enough that I can see the inside of the flesh. Blood has poured from it in a slick stain that soaks into the dirt and blackens the hem of her dress. It glistens in the morning light, pools beneath her head in a dark, glossy halo that spreads along the grooves of the ground. Her eyes are half open, dull, fixed on nothing.
Her skin is wrong. Not the pallor of sleep, not the gray of sickness.
White. As if the blood at her throat is the only place it remains.
My breath leaves me in a broken sound. The bucket slips from my fingers and strikes the earth with a hollow knock. Water spills out, running thin and clear toward the dark stain, vanishing into it.
The crowd shifts behind me. Someone mutters a prayer. Someone else turns away. I swallow hard, but the taste of iron has already crept into my mouth. My heart hammers so violently it blurs my vision. She was laughing yesterday. Her hands were warm. I take a step back, my heel catching on something solid.
Ilinca stands behind me, her small body barely reaching my shoulder, hands hanging uselessly at her sides. Her eyes are wide, fixed and unblinking, drinking in the sight before her. She does not move, does not make a sound, and for one terrible heartbeat, she sees everything.
"No," I whisper, though my own voice sounds far away.
Without thinking, I reach out. My hand comes up and covers her eyes, pressing against her face to block the terrible view. Her lashes tickle my skin as they flutter once, startled. She does not resist when I take her wrist and pull her toward me, placing myself between her and the doorway, between her and the blood.
"We must go," I say, the words stumbling. "Come. Come."
