More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
There was a time when the woods near Duva ate girls.
“Be back before dark,” they whisper. “The trees are hungry tonight.”
Stupid girls, you think. I would never be so foolish. But you've never known real hunger.
The khitkii were spiteful forest spirits, bloodthirsty and vengeful.
The khitka might take any form, but the shape it favored most was that of a beautiful woman.
“Karina is a good woman,” he repeated. His fingers gripped the arms of his chair. “Now leave me be.” She has him already, thought Nadya. He is under her spell.
Her limbs were white birch branches; her eyes were ice over black water. Maxim looked unsteady on his feet.
“I will warn you just this once,” hissed Karina Stoyanova. “Go.
Nadya saw Karina watching, her eyes black, her lips turned down like peeling bark, her long, slender fingers like raw spokes of branches, stripped bare by a hard wind.
She knew from stories that you must not eat at a witch’s table. But in the end, she could not resist.
There was always something strange brewing on that stove. Soon she learned why.
They cried out for love potions and untraceable poisons. They begged to be made beautiful, healthy, rich.
“Stay there and keep quiet,” Magda said. “I don't need rumors starting that I’ve been taking girls.”
Nadya was never sure how much was real and how much was show until the night the wax-skinned woman came.
And then she heard it again, a gurgle followed by a plaintive coo. From inside the oven.
Magda swaddled the gingerbaby in a red kerchief and handed it, squirming and mewling, into the woman’s trembling, outstretched arms.
She learned which herbs were valuable and which were dangerous, and which herbs were valuable because they were dangerous.
Nadya knew there was much that Magda didn’t teach her. She told herself she was glad of it, that she wanted nothing to do with Magda’s abominations. But sometimes she felt her curiosity clawing at her like a different kind of hunger.
“You cannot come and go from this place like you’re fetching water from a well. I will not have you bring a monster to my door.”
“You know that you are welcome to remain here with me,” said the witch.
But Maxim did not seem to notice her silence. He babbled on, laughing, crying, shaking his head in wonder. Karina hovered behind him, watching as she always had. There was fear in her eyes, but something else, too, something troubling that looked almost like gratitude.
But when Karina spoke, her voice was gentle. “Fly away now, little bird,” she said. “Some things are better left unseen.” Then she disappeared into the dusk.
It isn't me, Nadya told herself. Not really. It isn't me.
It was not her father she thought of, but Karina. Karina who had found ways to visit when Nadya’s mother took ill, who had filled the rooms when Havel left, keeping Nadya close. Karina who had driven Nadya into the woods, so that there would be nothing left for her father to use but a ghost. Karina who had given herself to a monster, in the hope of saving just one girl.
There are some who say that when the moon is waxing, she dares things not even Magda would try. Now you know what monsters once lurked in the woods near Duva, and if you ever meet a bear with a golden collar, you will be able to greet him by name. So shut the window tight and make sure the latch is fastened. Dark things have a way of slipping in through narrow
