Suspicion crept through the town. That lecherous Anton Kozar had returned from the northern front much changed, had he not? Peli Yerokin had always been a violent boy. And Bela Pankin was a most peculiar woman, living out on that farm with her strange son, Uri. A khitka could take any form. Perhaps she had not “found” that missing girl’s doll at all.
Standing at the lip of her mother’s grave, Nadya noted Anton’s seeping stump and lewd grin, wiry Peli Yerokin with his tangled hair and balled fists, Bela Pankin’s worried frown, and the sympathetic smile of the widow Karina Stoyanova, the way her lovely black eyes stayed on Nadya’s father as the coffin he’d carved with such care was lowered into the hard ground.
The khitka might take any form, but the shape it favored most was that of a beautiful woman.
Soon Karina seemed to be everywhere, bringing Nadya’s father food and gifts of kvas, whispering in his ear that someone was needed to take care of him and his children. Havel would be gone for the draft soon, off to train in Poliznaya and begin his military service, but Nadya would still need minding.
“After all,” said Karina in her warm honey voice, “you do not want her to disgrace you.”
Later that same night, Nadya went to her father as he sat drinking kvas by the fire. Maxim was whittling. When he had nothing to do, he sometimes made dolls for Nadya, though she’d long since outgrown them. His sharp knife moved in restless sweeps, leaving curls of soft wood on the floor. He’d been too long at home. The summer and fall that he might have spent seeking out work had been lost to his wife’s illness, and the winter snows would soon close the roads. As his family went hungry, his wooden dolls gathered on the mantel, like a silent, useless choir. He cursed when he cut into his thumb, and only then did he notice Nadya standing nervously by his chair.
“Papa,” Nadya said, “please do not marry Karina.”
She hoped that he would deny that he had been contemplating such a thing. Instead, he sucked his wounded thumb and said, “Why not? Don’t you like Karina?”
“No,” said Nadya honestly. “And she doesn’t like me.”
Maxim laughed and ran his rough knuckles over her cheek. “Sweet Nadya, who could not love you?”
“Papa—”
“Karina is a good woman,” Maxim said. His knuckles brushed her cheek again. “It would be better if …” Abruptly, he dropped his hand and turned his face back to the fire. His eyes were distant, and when he spoke, his voice was cold and strange, as if rising from the bottom of a well. “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.
The night before Havel left for the south, a dance was held in the barn by the Pankin farm. In better years, it might have been a raucous night, the tables piled high with plates of nuts and apples, pots of honey, and jars of peppery kvas. The men still drank and the fiddle played, but even pine boughs and the high shine of Baba Olya’s treasured samovar could not hide the fact that now the tables were empty. And though people stomped and clapped their hands, they could not chase away the gloom that seemed to hang over the room.
Genetchka Lukin was chosen Dros Koroleva, Queen of the Thaw, and made to dance with all who asked her, in the hope that it would bring about a short winter, but only Havel looked truly happy. He was off to the army, to carry a gun and eat hot meals from the king’s pocket. He might die or come back wounded as so many had before him, but on this night, his face glowed with the relief of leaving Duva behind.
Nadya danced once with her brother, once with Victor Yeronoff, then took a seat with the widows and wives and children. Her eyes fell on Karina, standing close to her father. 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. Nadya pushed her foolish thoughts away and turned to watch Genetchka Lukin dance, her long golden hair braided with bright red ribbons. Nadya was ashamed to feel a pang of envy. Silly, she told herself, watching Genetchka struggle through a dance with Anton Kozar. He simply stood and swayed, one arm keeping balance on his crutch, the other clutching tightly to poor Genetchka’s waist. Silly, but she felt it just the same.
“Go with Havel,” said a voice at her shoulder.
Nadya nearly jumped. She hadn’t noticed Karina standing beside her. She looked up at the slender woman, her dark hair lying in coils around her white neck.
Nadya turned her gaze back to the dance. “I can’t and you know it. I’m not old enough.” It would be two more years before she was called to the draft.
“So lie.”
“This is my home,” Nadya whispered furiously, embarrassed by the tears that rose behind her eyes. “You can’t just send me away.” My father won’t let you, she added silently. But somehow, she did not have the courage to speak the words aloud.
Karina leaned in close to Nadya. When she smiled, her lips split wet and red around what seemed like far too many teeth.
“Havel could at least work and hunt,” she whispered. “You’re just another mouth.” She reached out and tugged one of Nadya’s curls, hard. Nadya knew that if her father happened to look over he would just see a beautiful woman, grinning and talking to his daughter, perhaps encouraging her to dance.
“I will warn you just this once,” hissed Karina Stoyanova. “Go.”
The next day Genetchka Lukin’s mother discovered that her daughter’s bed had not been slept in. The Queen of the Thaw had never made it home from the dance. At the edge of the wood, a red ribbon fluttered from the branches of a narrow birch, a few golden hairs trailing from the knot, as if it had been torn from her head.
Nadya stood silent as Genetchka’s mother fell to her knees and began to wail, calling out to her Saints and pressing the red ribbon to her lips as she wept. Across the road, 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.
When Havel said his good-byes, he drew Nadya close. “Be safe,” he whispered in her ear.
“How?” Nadya replied, but Havel had no answer.
A week later, Maxim Grushov and Karina Stoyanova were wed in the little whitewashed chapel at the center of town. There was no food for a wedding feast, and there were no flowers for the bride’s hair, but she wore her grandmother’s pearl kokoshnik, and all agreed that, though the pearls were most likely fake, she was lovely just the same.
That night, Nadya slept in Baba Olya’s front room so the bride and groom could be alone. In the morning, when she returned home, she found the house silent, the couple still abed. On the kitchen table lay an overturned bottle of wine and the remnants of what must have been a cake, the crumbs still scented with orange blossom. It seemed Karina had still had some sugar to spare after all.