Page 105 of Katya and the Young God

Pieter kneels down in front of Selene, smooth and practiced. “What do you mean?” He asks, and his voice is kind, friendly, like this child didn’t say something absolutely horrifying.

Selene’s eyes flicker between Pieter’s face and at the old man, and all of a sudden, she looks insecure. “He’s gonna end?” She says, voice lilting up.

Katya’s veins go cold, but Pieter doesn’t let on that it’s disturbing at all. “Do you know how?”

Selene’s face screws up, like he’s asking the hardest of math problems. “His blood will stop working?” She makes a face, like it’s an incomplete answer and she knows it. “It’ll...it won’t go to his lungs? Or it will, but it won’t be working after?”

The old man across the street ducks into a store, seemingly moving okay.

“When?” Pieter asks, still kind, still unafraid, with a grace towards Selene that Katya finds enviable. “Is that something you can tell?”

Selene tilts her head, staring off where the old man disappeared into the store. “Today? But later?”

Pieter looks to Katya, then pushes himself up to standing again. “Figuring these things out is good, but you need to be quiet when you do,” he says, and in another life she can imagine him as a teacher. “Whispering is better, people can get afraid when you talk about dying.” Holding Selene’s other hand, he tugs them to start walking again.

Underneath her snow jacket, Katya’s skin crawls, but she keeps a firm grip on Selene. “Can you tell that with other people?”

Selene shrugs. “Sometimes,” she says, and her voice is small. “I knew the cage guard’s blood was going to be out of his body, but I didn’t like him so I didn’t say.”

“That’s fair,” Pieter says, with an unreadable look to Katya.

They make it to the coffee shop, a small little mom and pop store with cozy benches and paintings of cottages on the walls, and Selene shies away from the crowds of people, backing into Katya’s leg like she needs to be afraid.

Katya tousles her hair with her hand, and Selene leans into that feeling, like she’s a normal child who is afraid, needs comfort, and needs reassurance.

A normal child who can tell when people die.

* * *

By the timethey collect a basic amount of kids clothing and a small bed, Selene’s dragging, and when Pieter picks her up she falls asleep against his shoulder.

“Your stitches probably don’t like that,” Katya points out, loading the pieces of the bed into the truck as he carefully lays Selene in the backseat of the truck, buckling her in.

“Need me to drive?” He asks, instead of refuting her point.

“My shoulder can handle it,” Katya responds, because if he’s going to ignore his pain then she’s going to ignore hers.

The drive back is quiet, as small snowflakes began to fall, but they melt as soon as they hit the blacktop, leaving the roads slick and wet.

“So she can tell when people are going to die,” Katya says, as they wind their way into the mountains. “That’s good to know.”

“We can’t know all of her powers,” Pieter says, like it’s normal. “I’d rather find that out in conversation than have it be a surprise.” He gives her a glance, appraising. “I don’t want her thinking she should be ashamed of them.”

Katya gets the immediate feeling that small Pieter and Vanya were definitely made to be ashamed of whatever abilities they may have had as a kid, and vows to never ask about it. “I have no clue what I’m doing.”

He looks out the window, at the softly fallen snow on the pine needles, the bare dusting of white on the dirt off the road. “You’re being kind,” he says, finally. “That’s enough.”

* * *

That night,long after she tucked Selene into the new child-sized bed, Katya wakes to a suspicious lack of Stepan covering her feet.

Next to her, Pieter snores softly, not enough to wake anyone, but just enough that it soothes the skittish person inside her.

It’s dark out still, the total dark one finds in the middle of the night in winter, and Katya shrugs her robe over her pajamas as she swings her feet off the bed.

A glow seeps through the crack in the door jam.

Softly, she pads over, slipping into the other room.

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