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Her father had pulled the gingergirl into his lap and was stroking her white hair

"Nadya," he said again and again "Nadya" He nuzzled the brown flesh of her shoulder, pressed his lips to her skin

Outside, Nadya’s sivethe soft curve of icing at her neck

Nadya shivered Her wings stuttered a futile, desperate tattoo on the glass But her father’s hand slipped beneath the heirl did not move

It isn’t me, Nadya told herself Not really It isn’t ht of her father’s restlessness, of his lost horses, his treasured sledge Before that … before that, girls had gonefrom other towns, one here, one there Stories, ru winter, and Maxim had been trapped

"I’ve tried to stop," he said as he pulled his daughter close "Believe irl stayed silent

Maxiain and the sound he h as his teeth sank into the sweetness of her shoulder

The sigh turned to a sob as he bit down

Nadya watched her father consuirl, bite by bite, limb by limb He wept as he ate, but he did not stop, and by the tirate When he was done, he lay stretched out on the floor, his belly distended, his fingers sticky, his beard crusted with crumbs Only then did the crow turn away

They found Nadya’s father there the nextof rot He had spent the night on his knees, voar Karina had not been home to help him When they took up the bloodstained floorboards, they found a stash of objects, alass beads, the rest of the vivid red ribbons Genetchka had worn in her hair the night of the dance, and Lara Deniken’s white apron, es stained with blood From the mantel, the little wooden dolls looked on

Nadya flew back to the witch’s hut, returned to her body by Magda’s soft words and Vladchek licking her lida, only picking at her food

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 roo 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 irl

Nadya scrubbed and cooked and cleared the garden, and thought of Karina alone with Maxi for it, searching the house for so over floors and cabinets, feeling for the secret seams hidden by the carpenter’s clever hands

In Duva, there was talk of burning Maxim Grushov’s body, but in the end they buried him without Saints’ prayers, in rocky soil where to this day nothing grows The lost girls’ bodies were never found, though occasionally a hunter will come across a stash of bones in the wood, a shell comb, or a shoe

Karina moved away to another little town Who knohat becas happen to a woman alone Nadya’s brother Havel served in the northern can and cada and learned all the old woht like this There are sos not even Magda would try

Now you knohat monsters once lurked in the woods near Duva, and if you ever reet hiht and s have a way of slipping in through narrow spaces Shall we have soood to eat?

Well then, come help me stir the pot