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My breath was already trying to come faster, hands clenching and clammy beneath my sleeves. I made myself calm as I sank to my knees, taking a breath on the count of three over and over.
The Father bowed his head, eyes squeezed shut, as the Augur lifted my veil.
I wondered at times if he was truly blind. The old man dragged rough, calloused fingertips over my cheeks, forcing my eyes open, and it felt like he was looking right back at me.
Into my eyes, as yellow as the buttercups in the Wood.
A witch’s mark, Father Borodin had declared when I was a child, the mark of the next Vessel. Only someone shat out from such filthy loins as my mother’s could possibly be able to swallow the demons of the Wood that possessed our people. It takes evil to understand evil, to cage it.
They would beat it from me once I had consumed it, purifying it in the process, giving my unworthy, gutter-ridden soul a way to atone for the crime of my birth.
The Augur chuckled, his cracked nails dragging over my lips in an almost sensuous manner, and when I obediently opened my mouth he lifted the cup to it.
He was the one who brewed the tea that would allow me to see demons and consume sins. It smelled earthy and pungent, filling my mouth with the taste of dirty mushrooms, and my stomach tried to violently upheave it right back into the cup.
I had done that several times once I’d been declared old enough to drink the tea. The first time they had forgiven me.
After that brief grace period, the Augur would grind my face in my own vomit while the Father whipped my ass with a thin birch rod.
It was better to force the tea to stay down.
I swallowed hard, my mouth watering, tongue drying to cotton almost immediately. With sheer force of will, I kept it in my stomach.
The Augur tucked the cup in a pocket of his brown-streaked robes, put the flat of his palm on my forehead, and muttered the Praises to God over me. His sour breath nearly made the tea come up again, but as the minutes ticked by, it settled.
Everything settled. My limbs felt heavy as lead, but the rest of me was as light as a feather. My mouth was dry, the belfry swimming around me, twisting into odd dimensions, the motes of dust glittering and laughing as they drifted through the air.
I felt nothing inside, not even fear of the werewolves that had invaded our village overnight.
“She is ready,” the Augur muttered, and drew my veil back down. He lifted me bodily to my feet, and both Father and Augur took my elbows and guided me down the stairs.
I floated down them, feeling like my feet hardly touched the earth.
Ionna, the Father’s wife, was sweeping out the church as the holy men led me past. The Father’s hand was clamped hard around my upper arm, but that too was a distant pain.
The roads were empty. Everyone had gone inside, pulled their shutters shut, and fresh daubs of blue paint covered every door and sill, warding off the Beasts of the Wood.
The well in the center of Vostok seemed to loom before me, a circle of rough, flat stones with streaks of brown dripping over the side. This close, the gamy scent of the slaughtered stag was choking.
The Augur brought me before it, pulling my veil back once more and pushing me face to face with the corpse.
I stared at its bloodied muzzle and gaping nasal sockets.
Father Borodin put his hand on top of my head, palm down, and began the Rite of Purification. “We condemn the sins that have been committed here. Lord, help us through these dark times. Help us walk the paths of light, of purity…”
The Augur passed a loaf of bread over the deer’s corpse as the Father spoke and waved the censer. Billowing gray clouds spiraled from the bronze dish, choking me with its harsh scent and coating the bread.
“With the body of this bread, we soak up the evil that has permeated this land. We reject it, and cleanse it—”
The Augur ripped off a chunk of the bread and held it to my face. Once more, I obediently opened my mouth. It was salty and dense, making my tongue shrivel.
Piece by piece, he passed it over the corpse and fed it to me.
“As she consumes the bread, let her also consume the sins of these people. Let us be cleansed, let us be free of the taint of evil.”
I felt like I was going to be sick. The Father’s hand had slipped downwards, and he gripped the back of my neck tightly, digging into my throat. It made swallowing the salty bread that much harder, even as my stomach protested.
I choked, coughing a mouthful of bread back up. The Father stopped dead.
