Page 9 of The Bone Doll
“What’s the matter?” Syra asked.
“I’m just trying to read these.” He squinted at the weather-worn waystones. One saidBel–and the otherBelu–. As ifbothpaths went to the city by the lake. No matter how hard he tried to read the other letters, he couldn’t make them out.
“Which way did you come from?”
Neither, if he was being honest. Viktor didn’t remember this fork in the road. He had taken a straight, uninterrupted shot from Beluvod to Bereza and then the tundra. He scratched at hishairline, glancing between the two waystones. Well, he couldn’t stand here forever.
“That way,” he decided, jerking his chin to the southwesterly path.
Syra hesitated, her hand twitching towards the waystones minutely before she closed it into a fist. “Are you sure?”
“Yes, of course,” he said with all the confidence he could muster.
“I feel like–”
“Beluvod and Zoldrovya are southwest of here,” he said. “That path goes southwest. It must be that path.”
“Okay.” She gestured flatly for him to lead the way.
Viktor forced a smile to reaffirm to Syra – and himself – thatof coursehe knew the way. He didn’t want her to think he was incompetent or so forgetful that he didn’t know how to get back home. It was easy: just head southwest. He would recognize the trail soon enough, and Syra would never be the wiser.
However, as he guided her down the trail, he didn’t see any familiar landmarks. His hands began to sweat inside his gloves.
He tried to distract himself. “You said your grandfather made the Bone Doll. He was a shaman, yes? What I wanted to ask is: what do Sarnok shamans like your grandfather do? They have magic, it seems. They can make these … talismans.”
Her lips pressed into a fine line, and for a moment, Viktor worried he might have hit a sore subject. But then her expression eased and she said, “Our shamans deal in one of the three worlds – the sky, the earth, or the underworld. My grandfather was avidutana, meaning he was a sky shaman.”
“Did he teach you any of his magic?” Viktor asked.
Syra shrugged. “I’m avidutanaas well, but I don’t have magic like him. I can’t even read omens in the stars. I can’t makemy soul leave my body and I definitely cannot make a talisman like the Bone Doll. Only the most powerful can do that.”
Viktor recognized the shame in her voice. He had it too, buried deep inside. His father had wanted a strong and violent son. Instead, Igor Sviatopolkovich got Viktor, a coward and a liar. “It can be hard when we don’t live up to expectations.”
“No one expects me to be a sky walker,” she said. “But it would have been nice to at least prophesy.”
He admitted silently that prophesying might have helped him pick the right path. Because hestilldidn’t recognize the thin trees with bluish-green needles that surrounded them, nor the stretch of yellow-brown grass ahead.
“I’m sure you know lots of stories, though,” he said to change the subject. “Holy people are a font of stories.”
She gave a noncommittal grunt.
“Perhaps you can tell me one of your grandfather’s stories,” he said. “Even a true one. I’ve never heard of a man who could walk in the sky.”
She eyed him sidelong and said instead, “Something’s rotting.”
“It’s just the thaw,” he insisted as the trees gave way to waterlogged grass and large spans of yellow mud. “Dead leaves being exposed after a long winter, and all.”
“The spring melt can make low-lying areas dangerous,” she said. “It turns solid ground into a mire.”
“The road is still raised here.” He gestured. “If we stay on it, we’ll avoid the mud and any quagmires there might be.”
Syra wrinkled her nose but said nothing else.
Viktor adjusted the straps of his pack as he led onward. He wasn’t a pampered lordling anymore. He had been traveling for two years. He knew how to handle bad roads. And here, he could show Syra how capable he was.
The path narrowed as the patches of mud and snowy slush widened. Gnats swarmed, and he batted them away from his face. Ahead, trees and more solid ground awaited. This muddy field wasn’tthatlarge. They’d be out of here in no time. And the road was fine, just slick.
He glanced back. Syra slogged after him with one hand over her abdomen – right over where the Bone Doll lay. As though it were a child in her belly and not an old piece of carved bone. The mud oozed over his boots, sucking him downward as he paused.
