The ground snares were easy to make in comparison, and the meat would be easier to preserve, but there was little game in winter. She went through her possessions and picked out a cord, thinking she’d have to be sparing with it, as one of the two coils was lost when the bear rummaged through her bag. She would set three traps that evening. She put the sticks for the funnel trap and the cord in her bag and strapped the snowshoes onto her, now only slightly damp, shoes before stepping out.
Looking towards the bridge, it struck her how little of the mountains she had seen before her banishment. She grew up in a village surrounded by tall pines, and the wide-open view of the mountains still had an aspect of novelty to it. She looked up the steep slope of the Grim Sister and wondered briefly what lay to the other side of the peak. A gust of wind blew some of the snow off the bridge and sent it swirling towards the cliff in the north. Salka walked up as close to the bridge as she dared and took a deep breath. She could see a path running far below. Even with the freshly fallen snow, you could make it out: a thread winding its way westward. Salka thought of the villages the path must lead to, and she wished she could see them for herself one day.
It struck her then that perhaps that had been Alma’s intention: to tempt her to willingly leave the strigas, to chance it with the folk below. If she could only get far away from the mountains, to where people had never heard of strigas, she could finally explore what life could be. The thought gave her a small thrill, and a shiver went up her spine. If she chanced to look at the ground, she would see her shadow writhing and stretching as if it too wished to move beyond the forest to where the mountain range ended and the plains began.
A sudden thought chilled her. Salka had never before thought of a life outside of the community, and her shadow shrank instantly, leaving only the slightest impression on the fresh snow. She thought of her mother, awaiting her return. No, she would not be tempted.
She turned around and headed for the stream, setting up two snares on the way. Munu screeched above her head, searching for prey of his own and she smiled. It was a comfort to know he was there, but she could not rely on the food he might bring her.
Salka came upon the stream and looked for a part shallow enough to set her trap. She took her shoes and socks off and rolled up her trousers above her knees. She picked up a flat rock and carefully lowered herself into the stream. She gasped as the icy water made contact with her skin. She started digging the sticks into the river bed to create a vase-like trap for the fish to swim into. The sticks she brought, however, were neither long enough, nor sturdy enough for the depth and the hard gravelly belly of the stream. Swearing loudly, she climbed out, pulling her socks and shoes back on. She couldn’t look for better materials before warming up, unless she wanted to risk frostbite. She walked back to the hut in a rotten mood, on the way adjusting one of the snares, already upset by a pile of snow freshly fallen off a tree.
Once inside, she made up a small fire and sat warming her feet. The day was more than half gone and she needed far more firewood than the few boughs she’d dragged in if she were to keep herself warm through the night. She had no axe, just a small hatchet. Salka weighed it in her hand for a moment, sighed, and walked outside again.
She picked a small tree growing near the hut. It was not much more than a sapling, but her unpracticed hands took a long time felling it. She dragged it towards the hut and tried splitting it against an old stump. Her fingers were sticky with sap by the time she hauled the wood inside, and stacked it against the wall. She moved closer to the fire and threw some of the smaller branches in. They were too green to burn efficiently, and the smoke made her eyes water. She peered towards the wood she’d chopped down and wondered briefly if freezing to death was preferable to choking on the smoke. She had seen some deadfall on her way from the stream, but it would take a great deal of work to drag it back. Not that she had anything better to do.
She moved her supplies closer and counted every bit of salted fish and every square of cheese. Even with strict rationing, she didn’t have enough to last the month. She’d have to try again with the stream trap. Maybe she could set some traps for birds, though she’d always hated doing that. Even though Munu had no qualms about devouring his smaller brethren, she always felt guilty. He was sitting beside her now, his eyes watching her with mild interest.
The sap on her fingers with its pleasant, familiar scent, made her painfully homesick. She took a deep breath in and the shadow behind her moved almost imperceptibly, with ripples like the surface of a lake. A sensation of warmth tracing the line of her spine jolted her. She held her breath and tried to force the shadow down into the listless pool on the floor, as she’d always done before.
A breath in, hold, a breath out, like she’d been taught. She gasped. For the first time, the shadow pushed back.
It felt like the protest her lungs would make when she tried to hold her breath for too long. The discomfort was sudden and overpowered any desire to continue. She looked at her shadow, and she could see a small whirlpool of darkness within it, so faint she would have missed it if she wasn’t looking for it. A ripple that showed her the shadow would not allow her to starve it again.
Salka stifled a sob. She’d been warned. Everyone knew what happened if you let your second heart take over. She had healed the lamb and poisoned herself in the process. She was tainted now, she knew that. How long before her other heart would silence that within her which was human? Till all that was left was the stigoi?
She reached out and touched one finger to the floor. There was no response. She quietened her breath and waited. She could feel it inside her, a taut string. If she plucked at it, she knew it would respond. She pulled herself away from the feeling inside, gently, a thief tiptoeing out of a looted house.
Food. She would think about food. One worry at a time, one form of doom a day.
She rubbed some soot on her hands, preferring them grubby to sticky. As she did so, a sudden thought occurred to her. She pulled the tin cup out from the corner and spread some sap around the sides and the bottom of it with a twig. She then pulled out some of the biscuit crumbs still sitting at the bottom of her sack and sprinkled them in generously. She took the cup outside, and set it close to the trees, where the snow fell thinly.
A few hours later Salka ran outside, and was rewarded with the sight of a small bird struggling inside the now overturned cup. Its feathers stuck to the sap as it desperately tried to free itself. It was a cruel way to kill, but starvation was a cruel way to die. Salka picked up the cup carefully and made her way back to the house.
Munu was sitting by the fire, and squawked loudly, clearly irritated at having been left indoors. The bird in Salka’s hand grabbed his attention though and he hopped towards her cheerfully.
Salka reached towards the bird, meaning to break its neck quickly. The idea of cracking its bones made her shiver with revulsion and she hesitated for less than a heartbeat. As she did so, a dark shape shot past her hand and the bird was dead before her finger even touched it.
Its feathers were scorched, and a smell of cooked meat filled Salka’s nostrils. She dropped the cup with a yelp, and stood there staring at her hands. Her shadow seemed to mirror her every movement as she turned towards it. She crumpled to the floor and hid her face inside her hands, rocking slightly.
She had felt no pull this time. There had been no warning. Nothing at all that would have alerted her to her striga heart releasing its shadow.
CHAPTER 12
Alma looked at Dran, and she felt a small knot in the pit of her stomach.
She had noticed him slowing down over the past weeks, his movements becoming more deliberate and calculated, as if all energy was to be rationed. He did a good job of hiding his weakness at first, but the shaking hands gave him away soon enough.
Still, she said nothing. Experience had taught her that he was not to be questioned, no, not even by her. Unless he was ready to speak of it, any mention of whatever seemed set on consuming
his strength and body would elicit a furious denial.
She had thought that he would approve of the temporary banishment of Salka, seeing as the girl had put him and Emila in such danger. And though at first, Alma had to admit to herself, she did harbor some small doubts about Emila’s version of the story, she soon put them aside. The wisdom of the Dolas was not to be questioned and, after all, it was they who ordered Salka’s banishment. If they did so, then her guilt must have been beyond any doubt. So why should she blame her son, when even the Dolas didn’t?
But the rage of Dran’s reaction to the news was unusual, even for him. And now, more than a month later, he still eyed her with anger. As if it was her who had dragged him to the town. As if it was her fault Salka was a silly little girl who had let herself be seen.
Any doubt Alma had felt at first about the banishment was soon put aside. She was a just leader after all, a famously reasonable one. Everyone knew that. She had always been known for her sound judgement. Hard but fair, that was her. And so, she had to trust herself. And if it protected the village, if it protected her son, then it was the right course. The mere thought of Dran being put in the path of danger was enough to make Alma’s second heart beat faster, and her shadow billow like a black sail on some of those boats she had heard tales of but would never see.
Alma could of course sense that many in the village disapproved of her decision to send Salka away. But though the girl was young, to be sure, she was capable, and Alma couldn’t put the whole tribe at risk for her sake alone. She felt a pang of regret at not being able to share her reasons with the other strigas. But the Dolas had given her the gift of their silence and she would not waste it by letting the others know how close her own son had come to risking their truce with the townspeople.
She sighed and rolled her shoulders. She supposed, once the three months were over, she might send two strigas to retrieve the girl so that the long trek through the snow might be made safer on the way back. Alma doubted that it would do much to improve Miriat’s opinion of her, but it would be the right thing to do nonetheless and would make Alma feel better if nothing else.
Alma reached into one of her many jars and took out a pinch of dry herbs, before adding it to the pot over the fire. A little cassandra berry to increase strength and stamina couldn’t hurt.
For a moment she thought back to Markus and Maladia. The thought came unbidden, as she watched her son’s sleeping frame. If only Markus had not been discovered, maybe now he would be able to help Dran. She indulged the fantasy for a moment, imagining how the man would notice her son’s strange illness and volunteer to treat him in secret.
But even if he had, would she have allowed it?
She looked down at her hands and shook her head. The stigoi touch would corrupt even as it healed, and she would not sentence her only son to become a monster. He would live his life as she did, in discipline and with dignity, and their second hearts would lie unfed, slumbering in their chests. Not even the chance of a healthy body was worth opening that door.
So she used what knowledge she had of medicinal mountain plants and hoped that, once the snow cleared and the sun warmed their bones again, Dran’s strength would return. Some cassandra berries, and some Toran’s Wort for the pain.
There was so much pain, and she could do so little to relieve it. She wiped her wet eyes with the back of her hand. She thought back to when Dran was small, and a smile briefly brightened up her face. He had so much determination from the first. He’d never let his foot stop him from doing anything he had set his mind to, be it racing or climbing a tree. She was so proud of him then, and she was proud of him now, even though she had learnt to be wary of his changeable moods and quick temper.
She would watch him sometimes, when he talked to the girls in the village. His handsome face would light up with that easy charming smile of his, and her heart would swell as she saw how others cared for and admired him. He would take over as the head of the village after she was gone, she had no doubt about it. The strength of his character and his determination would more than make up for the deficiencies of his body. She looked down at her own hand for a moment, and held it out in front of her. If she could only make his as steady. She reached into the jar and added another pinch of cassandra berry to the stew.
CHAPTER 13
The first twenty days in the Windry Pass were hard for Salka, but the following ten were worse still. The food she had brought from home was rarely dipped into, but the pitifully small pile of it kept growing smaller. Salka told herself it was to be expected, as it took time to set up the traps and to find the parts of the freezing stream where the fish might be found, and in the meantime, she had to eat.
But as the night once more fell all too soon, catching her hungry and cold at a distance from the safety of her hut, Salka felt tears come unbidden to her eyes. She tried to force them back, a sign of shameful self-pity, but they glistened still on her long eyelashes, turning into tiny balls of ice as the cold gripped her. A sudden warmth spread over her shoulders and she knew it was her shadow’s unbidden comfort.
She would shake it off, any moment she would. But she luxuriated in the warmth of it for half a breath too long. Finally, she pushed it away, though she felt the struggle of it more than before. In the first days of her arrival, she had waited for the taint of her striga heart to spread. She thought it would feel different and was vigilant for any signs she might be turning into a stigoi. But she noticed no change in herself, beyond the ease with which her shadow would leap to assist her if she relaxed in her resistance. But there were no changes in her desires or thoughts, not that she could tell at least. She had no desire to hurt or kill beyond satisfying the needs of her body.
She still resisted the shadow, of course, though she felt it push back now, in a way she never had before the lamb’s healing. The bird was hatched, as it were, and it voiced its demands for a share of Salka’s life, much like a fledgling would. She wondered if she resisted for long enough, if she could starve her striga heart and bring it back in line. She somehow doubted it and shivered with the shame of that knowledge.
She walked towards the hut, the moonlight reflected in the snow, though the path immediately in front of her always seemed a bit too dark. She tripped over a root and fell face-first into the snow, scattering all the branches she’d gathered that evening. She gasped as some of the snow fell behind her collar and melted into an icy trickle on her neck. She punched the root in frustration and yelped in pain. She leaned against a tall pine to stand up and pulled herself up, digging into its rough bark with her fingers.
She was cold, and there was no wood in the house. Remembering what Pike said, how Markus had drawn on the trees’ life to heal Maladia, curiosity overtook her. She walked up to a smaller tree, barely taller than her, and placed her hand on it. It couldn’t hurt, not any more than what she’d already done. And she was too cold to look for the scattered branches, which were barely enough to last her through the night.
She was alone, nobody would ever know.
She searched for the place inside her where she heard the humming of her second heart, and pulled on it.
Salka opened her eyes. Nothing happened. She held her breath and grabbed the sapling as hard as her icy fingers would let her. Nothing. She let go.
Frustrated, she sat in the snow and groaned. She was not a stigoi after all then. Much comfort it would be to her frozen corpse. A silent sob shook her back. She shouldn’t cry. Tears would just freeze on her cheeks and hurt her as everything hurt in these mountains. Struggling to control her breath, Salka exhaled slowly to calm herself.
As she did so, she felt something quicken inside her chest. A small tendril wrapped itself around the sapling, digging into the soft bark. A sudden sensation of warmth wrapped itself around her shoulders like a warm cloak. She let herself sink into it and luxuriated in it as feeling returned to her freezing toes and fingers. There was a sound, no louder than a baby’s breath, as needles began to fall from th
e sapling.
She reached with her gloved hand and picked up a needle. It was dry and brittle. She pulled on the trunk, which snapped with a sad little sound, as if it had been dead and dry for months. She looked at it with a mix of joy and regret. It had been a lush green thing only moments earlier. The cost of her warmth had been great. She grunted as she picked up the fallen tree. Though her hand closed with ease around the trunk, it was not as simple to drag it back. But she would be warm that night at least. She whispered a thanks, which felt proper and right to her, though she couldn’t say to what or to whom she was grateful.
She looked towards the moon. She still felt no different than before, though she could breathe a bit more easy perhaps. No scales sprouted from her skin, no fangs grew in her mouth. There were no outward signs that there was anything different in her. But a resolve began to form inside Salka. A small but hard thing it was.
She would not be cold anymore if she could keep herself warm.
CHAPTER 14
Miriat trudged through the ankle-deep snow, her day’s meagre catch in her bag. All the animals seemed to have travelled down the mountains and away from the striga traps. Miriat had managed to catch a rabbit, so thin and so white she barely saw him in the snow. She was lucky to have that much, she knew. Most of her snares showed up empty these days, as they did for the others in the village.
She tried not to think about Salka and the deep snow covering the path between the village and the Windry Pass, separating them more effectively than even Alma’s edict could.
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