Page 10 of When Among Crows
In its place is a forest. The trees that surround them are dense, with narrow white trunks and branches that tangle together just above their heads, untrimmed and untamed. The layer of leaves beneath their feet is wet and soft, as if from a recent melting. Ala can almost smell the rot.
The sun has set, but it’s still light enough to see by. A tall, hulking man with a shaved head stands between her and Dymitr, his scalp shining with sweat. He stands over a long-haired woman with a greenish cast to her skin. She kneels on the ground in a white nightgown. She’s a rusalka—a water maiden.
Dirt streaks the fabric right over her knees, and blood. Blood on her sleeves, on her back. Stripes of it, soaking through the white.
Ala tries to meet Dymitr’s eyes, but he’s staring, rapt, at the man with the shaved head. The man reaches behind him and digs his fingers into the skin at the back of his neck. Then he yanks both hands up in one strong motion, and a bone-white blade pulls free of his flesh, his bloodstill running down the hilt. He may have split his soul to make the weapon, but he still has to pay for it in pain every time he wants to fight with it.
A purple-red color, like a port-wine birthmark, spills into his fingers and palms, all the way over his wrists, like he’s plunged his hands in a vat of red dye. His eyes, too, glint red, bloodshot all the way through.
He’s a Knight of the Holy Order, and he’s here to perform an execution.
The rusalka wraps her too-long, too-thin arms around herself, and hunches over her bloodied knees, sobbing.
“Please,” she says softly. “Please—”
The man’s sword drips blood onto the wet leaves. He swings it. Dymitr and Ala both jerk back at the same time. As the rusalka’s head rolls toward Ala, the man, the leaves, and the birch trees all disappear. The Thorndale platform takes their place just as a train pulls into the station.
Ala watches the late-night commuters step out of the cars—just two of them, a woman in blue scrubs and a man still wearing his warmest coat, unzipped over a worn sweater. The old woman with the suitcase waddles onto the train. The doors close; the commuters descend to the street; the train pulls away from the platform.
They’re alone.
Dymitr’s Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows, hard.
“You see memories,” he says roughly.
He doesn’t ask who the man was, and how he managed to draw a sword from his spine as if it were a sheath. That means he must already know who the Holy Order are.She tastes something sour. He seems friendly enough—certainly none ofthem,or anyone aligned with them, would ever speak to someone like her as if she’s an equal, as he does—but maybe he’s called on them before, just to rid his neighborhood of somethingpesky. It wouldn’t surprise her. Humans are always talking out of both sides of their mouths.
“Maybe they’re memories,” she says, shrugging. “Maybe they’re hallucinations. I don’t know, and I don’t particularly care. What matters is, they’re bloody, and they fill my every waking moment. So take a moment to consider whether you’re toying with me or not, because if you are, I’ll kill you.”
“I’m not.” She’s not sure a mortal has ever spoken to her that gently before.
“Well, I don’t know how to find Baba Jaga, let alone how to get her to meet with some random human,” she says. “So now what? You have a fern flower and no leads.”
“You don’t know anyone who might be able to help us?” He raises his eyebrows. “Can’t get me into a place I could never otherwise go?”
Ala sighs.
As it happens, she can.
“How long will that thing live?” she says, nodding toward his right pocket.
“Thirty-six hours before it’s no longer useful to us,” he says. “Why?”
“I have an idea,” she says. “And it’s five hours untilsunrise, so we might still be able to pull it off if we get moving.”
She sends a series of texts as Dymitr summons a ride with his several-generations-old iPhone. She doesn’t know how he can even read anything on a screen that cracked. But there’s an air of carelessness about him in general: the stretched, misshapen collar of his T-shirt, the fraying ends of his shoelaces, his rumpled hair, his bitten fingernails. As if he hasn’t looked in a mirror in quite some time—or perhaps he has, and he doesn’t care about what he sees.
“Why is it called the ‘Crow Theater’?” Dymitr asks her. “Some Poe reference?”
Ala shakes her head. “It’s from that saying. ‘When among crows, you must caw as they do.’ Because we’re supposed to fit in among mortals. Mimic them.”
“Cheeky,” Dymitr says. “Considering they’re the ones who compareyouto crows. And ravens. And—”
“Stoats, yeah,” Ala says. “Klara thinks it’s funny.”
Her phone buzzes, and she glances at the new message.You’re in. But hurry up.
Luckily, at that moment a puttering Honda pulls up to the curb in front of Dymitr, and he ducks his head in to check that it’s theirs. Ala slides in after him, and sneezes. It smells like old cigarettes, stale french fries, and a pine-scented air freshener, so potently that when she meets the driver’s eyes in the rearview mirror, she can hardly smellthe sugary nervousness he emits. She gives him a broad smile, the kind that tends to make mortals uneasy, and the sweet smell of his fear surges into her nose. Her mouth waters.
