Their warmth surrounds me, close and earnest.
Someone brings forward a basin, its surface filled with still water drawn fresh from the well. They hold it carefully between them, angling it toward me.
"See," one of the women urges softly.
I look.
For a moment the image wavers, broken by the faint tremor of the water. Then it steadies.
A girl stands there, pale beneath white linen, her throat hidden, her posture straight and proper. Her hands rest neatly at her sides. Her hair has been braided and coiled, pinned neatly, the ribbon woven through like a small thread of colour beneath the restraint.
She looks like a bride.
I search her face for something familiar. Hold the gaze of my reflection, waiting for recognition to come.
It does not.
A scream tears through the fragile stillness that had gathered around me, and for a moment, I think it comes from my imagination. But the basin trembles in the women’s hands, ripples breaking the image apart, and the room empties in a breath.
The women move before the sound has even settled.
Voices rise, skirts gathered in hurried hands as they rush toward the door. I follow without thinking, pulled along by the surge of bodies, the echo of the scream still ringing through me.
The ground is damp beneath my feet, soft from frost and morning dew. The hem of my dress drags through it as I run, the white linen darkening at once, streaked with earth. I do not feel it.
The square is already crowded.
Old Petru lies on his back in the centre, limbs slack, head turned awkwardly to one side. His wife kneels beside him, hands shaking as shegrips his shoulders, calling his name again and again, her voice breaking with each attempt.
"Help him—someone help him—"
The word spreads before I reach them.
"Strigoi."
"It has come again—"
It moves through the crowd like a breath drawn too quickly, passing from mouth to mouth, gaining shape as it travels.
I push through them.
My heart is already racing, but not with their fear. I know this. I have seen this before. My father’s voice returns to me, steady and certain, guiding my hands, teaching me what to look for. The stillness. The breath caught too long. The heart that falters and forgets its rhythm.
Elbows brush my sides. Someone tries to hold me back, but I slip past, dropping to my knees beside him. The world narrows. The noise falls away.
I lean over him, my hands already moving, pressing where I was taught, searching for the faintest sign beneath skin and bone. But his skin is pale, too much so. The colour has drained from his face, leaving it waxen, still. His chest does not rise. His lips have begun to blue.
No.
Not this. Not today. Not when they believe everything will be set right.
I press again, harder, willing something beneath my palms to answer. My father’s voice echoes somewhere distant, guiding my fingers, showing me where to feel, how to listen. The world tilts slightly, a strange pressure building behind my ribs, in my throat, in the very centre of me where something has been restless since the night before.
Then—
It shifts.
A faint warmth gathers in my hands. It spreads quickly, seeping outward through my fingers, into the place where they rest against his chest. It is not heat like fire. It is softer. Brighter. It moves with purpose.
