Popa Vasile will speak.
God will not abandon a village that kneels. I repeat it quietly inside my head. There is sense in this. There is order.
My hand presses the lid shut and I rise, pushing the curtain aside to get back to the main room. The candles have burned lower, wax pooling at their bases like pale milk. The windows remain open, letting in a thin current of wind that lifts the edge of the sheet and carries the scent of water and iron across the room.
I place the folded linen into Mama’s hands, her sleeves damp to the elbows. She passes the cloth to Neaga without looking at her. Together they work in silence now. Cloth moves over skin. Water is poured and wrung out again. The basin darkens, then clears as it is replaced.
The blood is washed from Irina’s throat, still, the wound remains. Her face has been wiped clean, her hair combed back, but something of the pain lingers in the set of her mouth, in the faint pull at the corners of her brows. As if the last thing she saw clings still to her.
When the body is finally clean and dry, Neaga sets the basin aside. Then, from the fold of her apron, she draws a coin. It catches the candlelight briefly, before she leans froward and places it over Irina’s left eye.
Mama’s hand shoots out immediately, stopping her wrist.
"We do not need such things. The Lord will guide her."
Neaga’s fingers do not withdraw. She looks at Mama.
"Her husband would have wanted it that way," she says. "You know it."
The name hangs between them without being spoken. Mama’s mouth opens, then closes again, while the other women watch in silence. One presses her lips tight, another shifts on her feet. No one steps forward. The coin rests against Irina’s cheekbone, waiting.
Slowly, Mama’s fingers loosen. Neaga lifts the coin again and sets it back in place, pressing it lightly against the closed lid. She takes another from her palm and lays it over the second eye. Her voice lowers, almost to herself.
"No one crosses the river empty-handed."
Her words settle into the air as the metal gleam faintly in the candlelight. I remember the coins on my father’s eyes. Cold discs pressed against pale lids. The way Mama pressed them down herself.
Since when are coins wrong? The question forms and folds in on itself. I keep it there, tucked beneath my tongue.
Still, no one reaches to remove them.
Neaga bends once more. Her fingers slide to Irina’s jaw. She presses gently at the hinge, coaxing the mouth open so the last coin may rest there.
The lips part, but she pauses. Her hand stills, a small crease forms between her brows.
"Hold the light."
Someone lifts a candle closer. The flame wavers, casting long, trembling shadows over the table as Neaga tries again. The jaw does not give easily. It resists in a way that feels wrong, not stiff but full. She manages to press her thumb against the lower lip and draw it down at last.
A dark shape fills the mouth. At first it looks like shadow.
Then the candlelight catches it.
Earth, packed tight between the teeth. Wedged along the gums, ground into the tongue, crumbling where Neaga's thumb has disturbed it. A thin line of soil spills out and falls against Irina’s chin.
A sound breaks from somewhere behind me. A breath caught and drawn in fast. A whisper that does not finish itself. The scent reaches us then—damp and loamy, as if the forest floor has been brought inside. My breath stutters in my chest. A woman at the window gasps and staggers back, knocking against the wall. Another drops her rosary; the beads scatter across the floor with a dry clatter.
"Doamne miluie?te…"
The coin remains poised in Neaga’s fingers, but she does not recoil. She stares at the mouth, at the soil packed where words should be.
"This is no wolf," a woman near the hearth stands in a rush, her voice thin. "No beast fills a mouth with earth."
Her eyes shine wide in the candlelight.
"Strigoi," she breathes. "It took soil from its grave and—"
"Silence," another woman snaps. "Do not speak such filth in this house."
