Page 41 of Devil's Deal

I suck my bleeding fingertip into my mouth, shaking my head to clear it. I don’t know whether I’ve actually started hearing voices of the dead or if I’m going mad. I haven’t slept through the night ever since it happened, so it’s likely my exhausted mind plays tricks on me.

I remind myself Wiosna’s dead and can’t speak to me.

And yet, her voice sounds so real, if slightly off, like there’s a barely distorted echo to it. As if she’s really there, but maybe in another room.

Only, I know she can’t really be here and it’s not her real voice. If anything, it’s the devil’s trick. Another lie designed to… what, make me trust him again? I snort under my breath, reaching for the knife.

Kupala is over, the gods and devils are gone, and I’ll never see Woland again. Just like I won’t see Bogna.

Most likely, it’s my own mind going mad with the need to justify what happened. Wiosna’s words are something I made up to alleviate my guilt, except, it will never work. I saw Bogna’s mangled skull. I saw the fear and suffering etched onto what remained of her face, just as I see it every night in my nightmares.

“There is nothing good or redeeming about her death,” I hiss softly, feeling unhinged voicing my thoughts, and yet needing to argue with the ghostly voice. “It’s preposterous to even think that.”

“Suit yourself,” Wiosna says with her usual haughty impatience.

I almost smile hearing it. I never expected to miss that tone of voice, because it exasperated me to no end when she was alive. And yet, here we are.

Or maybe hearing voices is natural when you’re all alone, having gotten your only friend killed. Since I have no one to talk to, my mind makes up people just so that I’m not stuck all the time with the one person I loathe the most in the world: myself.

“I’m losing my mind,” I mutter under my breath.

“Oh, pish,” Wiosna says, and I can almost see the dismissive wave of her hand. “Young people. Always so dramatic.”

“Yes, I am,” I whisper, letting the last pea fall in the pot.

My task done, I sit back, looking at the dark line of the forest in the distance. The sky turns pink and purple, but the glorious sunset only makes the ache in my chest worse. Bogna will never see this beauty again.

And yes, maybe she’s happier now, a light, carefree soul flitting around the branches of the eternal tree in Wyraj.

But more likely, she is stuck here, her soul tied to the earth forever by the violence of her death. Her body was burned to prevent it, but who knows if burning the remains actually works? If gods are real, all types of bies could be, too, and who knows where they come from. Bogna might turn up next summer, maybe as a poludnica taking people’s sanity in the fields at noon or a wila seducing young men in the woods to kill them off.

Before, I never questioned the old tales, accepting the natural order of things. Violent death meant a violent afterlife, filled with blood and killing, a curse on the mortals left behind. Souls of those violently murdered were supposed to turn into various sorts of bloodthirsty bies, trapped on the mortal coil, denied entrance into Wyraj. It seemed to make sense when I was younger.

Yet now, I feel angry. Why should Bogna suffer as an undead creature forever just because her husband was a violent monster? Shouldn’t she be allowed to rest, finally?

And Przemyslaw wasn’t even really punished for killing his wife. The elders decided to banish him, and so he went into the woods at dawn after Kupala, not even allowed to witness his wife’s funeral—not that I think he deserved to say goodbye after what he did.

But I do think he should have been thrown onto the burning pyre. He should have burned with her body. Instead, he walked free.

Hopefully, a kobold or a bear will find him in the woods and deliver the justice his own elders were too cowardly to serve. But more likely, he’ll just find another village and build a new life for himself while Bogna’s ashes nourish the earth, her spirit forever trapped because of what he did.

“Still moping, poppy girl. I thought you were made of stronger stuff.”

I jump to my feet and look around wildly, clutching the small knife in my hand. His voice is real, as if he’s just behind me, whispering indecencies in my ear like he did that night. And yet, there is a certain echo to it, a softer edge. As if the voice filters through a thick veil.

As I take in the herb garden in front of my house, the path half-hidden by the hedge, and the fields stretching further down on my right, I see no one.

So Woland’s voice is simply another facet of my madness. I sit down heavily, trying to take in a deep breath and failing. Ever since that night, it’s like there’s an iron band around my ribs, keeping my lungs from expanding. Every breath I take is shallow and barely enough.

When another voice trails over from the path, I am ready to scream just to drown out the dead. I stop myself at the last moment when I recognize the impatient ring of Ida’s voice.

“She said she knew what would help, and after Czeslawa’s ointment didn’t work, I’m not going to see her again. You can go there if you like.”

I frown and sit back, hiding the knife in my apron. When two kerchiefed heads appear over the hedge, I breathe out with force, trying to coax my body into calmness.

“No, I’m done with her. She took a hen, too. And the ointment didn’t even work,” says Ola, Ida’s best friend.

When the two newly married girls open my gate, I am composed enough not to scream like a strzyga, even though I badly want to. Ola, the younger and plainer of the two, falters when she sees me. But Ida gives me a sharp nod and comes over in sure, even steps.

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