❝ Anitchka, Anitchka, will you not invite me in? ❞
In which a girl is indebted to a wintry demon for saving her life, and the gold from her fingertips is a magic whose price she must repay tenfold. Unless she guesses his name first.
| loosely based...
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THE MORNING NEARING THE longest nights of winter begin with a great roar of snow beating her windows. Anitchka clothes herself in the warmest of her scarves as she walks the stairs down, each step echoing the grimace and yelps of the creatures that lived below them.
She fumbles beside the fireplace, shaking at every twitch of the wind, each tremor against the door. Carefully, she lines the windows with salt; a superstition the farmers carried with them when the cold ate up their fields. Anitchka is remotely aware that it may not be of help at all. If the demon could walk the land of the living and stitch a kingdom from the souls of men and women, salt will not keep him at bay.
But for a girl made of bones, superstitions are all to cling to.
When she heads to the market during the darkening lull of the afternoon, the place is rife with whispers. Frantic calls and prayers to the gods above and the gods below that the demon must not visit their homes, that he pass gently through their porch. But then she hears the fear distinct in the tone of those who dared a deal with the demon. The time to reap, to collect, had come and their pockets were empty so he would settle for their bones in its place.
The jittery Baker wraps her bread, a coarse loaf damp with cold. His fingers shiver lightly, and as she holds out the little coins in her palm, he shakes his head. "No, no, you needn't."
He refuses politely but it isn't because of the goodness of his heart. The fear in his eyes is palpable– he does not want to deal with the demon, and certainly not with her. As she walks away, Anitchka catches the quiet words of his wife, "Must the demon reap from the poor child?"
And then the Baker's voice rings, loud and clear. "It must be her own doing, and who are we to question the Old Ways?"
She remembers them, locks the syllables in her heart, and in a long time, Anitchka feels a chill slither across her spine.
As she reaches the weary walls of her house, Anitchka locks the doors and locks them again. Then she folds her hands in a prayer, one she knows, the kind that whispers in desperation to the Gods the peasants call in moments of fear. She pulls the curtains over the windows, blocks the outside from her vision. If she cannot see them perhaps her heart will not beat as loudly.
And as the night is settling in, the ones leading to the longest of them all, she drifts into an uncomfortable sleep.
There are plenty of starving girls in the North with hollow, sunken eyes and chattering teeth to keep her blended in the crowds, but when there are three crisp knocks against Anitchka's door, she jolts awake in fear. She has heard the old women in the streets speak tales of monsters and gods to keep the villagers from venturing afar, but she knows better.
She has seen them.
The girl breathes softly. "Dmitri?"
When the demon does not appear, its beady eyes and small curled wings having vanished without a trace, she presses an ear to the door, eyes shutting. It is silent, like the wind in the dead of night.
