Page 58 of Katya and the Young God

* * *

They’re walking,when Pieter stiffens, sudden. “They just tried to put Stepan in a car,” he says, a little wild.

“Tried?” Katya asks, keeping her hand in the child’s gloved hand.

He blinks, looking far away, like trying to see through the mountain and through the cave and the stone and the bones, before he shakes his head, the white dust falling from his black curls. “They couldn’t,” he says, half satisfied, half darkly. “Guess they haven’t tried to look at his collar.”

“Who’s Stepan,” the girl asks.

“He’s my pet dog, you can’t touch him,” Pieter says immediately. “I’ll be very angry if you do.”

Katya doesn’t really disagree with that assessment. “What, they were just convinced to not drive away?”

“Yep,” he says, proud. “If you’d ask them, they’d say they had an epiphany that it would be better to stay where they were.”

There’s a darkness to the smile he gives her, a sort of sick satisfaction he takes from his paranoia being correct, and it’s not nearly as terrifying as it should be.

“Does his name mean anything?” The little girl asks, voice almost sing song.

“No,” Pieter says, almost startled. “It’s just a name I liked for a dog.”

She briefly pouts, before perking up. “What about a name that means cave?”

“I’d have to Google it,” Katya says, before deeply regretting it, not wanting to explain computer technology to a child who’s been buried underground for a few centuries.

“What about Selene?” Pieter suggest, almost slyly, and the girl looks up at him, eyes bright. “It’s the name of an old goddess from far away.”

“Is she still alive?” She asks, scuffing her feet along the smooth white stone.

“She died more than a millennium ago,” Pieter says. “They say she was powerful, scary, and full of darkness. She ruled the moon and the tides.”

The little girl’s eyes light up, and Katya’s not going to pretend to know why that’s what she wants, but she’s also not going to complain too much. “I like that,” she says, confident in the way only children can be. “Can I be called that?”

Katya and Pieter exchange a glance over the top of her head. “Is there any danger in naming her after a myth?” Katya asks, getting a bewildered shrug in return. She turns to the child. “If you like it, it could work.”

“I like it,” she says, kicking a pebble down the cave. It clatters, the sound harsh, before it comes to an abrupt stop, when the silence of the cavern eats it up, stops the noise. “I like that.”

* * *

They getto the other end of the seal, past the sloping winding cave path, past the giant translucent stone pillars, to find the other group right outside the seal.

The caver who stayed with Nathan’s body is slumped against the wall, dust on him, face pallid and obviously dead as well. Obviously dead for a few days.

The Magician gives Katya a vile look as they come into the small bowl area, before deliberately turning his back on them.

The ghoul sits, watching the little girl the moment she steps across the seal.

The little girl falls silent the moment she does, eyes wide, before she cranes her neck to look up at the black stone door. “It took all his blood?” She asks, tentative, to Pieter.

“All of it,” Pieter confirms, and Katya is so weary of the talk of blood and death. “I thought it would only take a bit.”

“Have some respect,” one of the remaining cavers spits out, and Selene looks up at him, suddenly and brightly. “You’re the reason he’s dead.”

The little girl stares at him, her eyes unblinking. The air stills, the sound of the drips of water falls away, filled only with the buzzing of the cave, louder than ever before.

“I didn’t mean to,” she whispers, finally, her voice wobbling.

The caver pauses, like he finally understands that he spoke those words to a child. “Well, you did.” He finishes, lame. “Whether or not you meant to, he’s dead, the creepy Vampire’s dead, and Charlotte’s dead.”

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