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Some wondered if the girls might have just walked into the wood, lured there by their hunger. There were smells that wafted off the trees when the wind blew a certain way, impossible scents of lamb dumplings or sour cherry babka. Nadya had smelled them herself, sitting on the porch beside her mother, trying to get her to take another spoonful of broth. She would smell roasting pumpkin, walnuts, brown sugar, and find her feet carrying her down the stairs toward the waiting shadows, where the trees shuffled and sighed as if ready to part for her.
Very interesting to lore children like this
The khitkii were spiteful forest spirits, bloodthirsty and vengeful. But in stories, they were known to hunger after newborns, not full-grown girls near old enough to marry.
The khitka might take any form, but the shape it favored most was that of a beautiful woman.
Her limbs were white birch branches; her eyes were ice over black water. Maxim looked unsteady on his feet. Khitka. The word drifted down to Nadya from the barn’s shadowed eaves as she watched Karina weave her arm through Maxim's like the pale stalk of a climbing vine.
“What is it you want?” asked Magda again. Nadya thought of Genetchka dancing, of nervous Lara, of Betya and Ludmilla, of the others she had never known. “I want my father to be free of Karina. I want Duva to be free. I want to go home.” Gently, Magda reached out and touched Nadya's left hand—first the ring finger, then the pinkie. “Think on it,” she said.
Magda shooed her to the window and Nadya, elated from the feeling of her wings and the wind spreading beneath them, did not see the sadness in the old woman’s gaze.
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.
Karina who had given herself to a monster, in the hope of saving just one girl.
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 spaces. Shall we have something good to eat? Well then, come help me stir the pot.
