Sevas grasped our trunks, one in each hand, and started to walk toward the train station. Two gulls on the boardwalk pecked at some one’s spilled kumys. A cargo ship released itself from the dock, horn sounding out deafeningly across the blue-white ocean. The sailors onboard clambered to their posts, and I imagined that they were all as thrilled and terrified as I was, to be going somewhere new.
I paused suddenly, the goblin holding in its small fist a loose clump of my hair.
Sevas stopped, too, and turned around. “Are you all right?”
“Yes,” I said, righting myself and pulling my hair free of the goblin’s grasp. “I’m thinking of what Askoldir will look like, all covered in snow.”
“Very beautiful,” he said. “Like you. Come on now, Marlinchen.”
I followed him into the train station, which arced over us like the rib cage and vertebrae of some extraordinarily large creature soldered from iron. I imagined that with every train that left, the creature was amputating one of its finger bones, a little piece it wouldn’t miss until the train came back again. I quite liked the thought of that, and resolved to tell Sevas about it as soon as we were in our seats, my head resting on his shoulder and the goblin scurrying at our feet, both of us watching the steppe unfold on either side of the train, the yellow summer grasses resembling parchment that hasn’t yet been spoiled with ink.
Acknowledgments
Thank you first and foremost to my agent, Sarah Landis, who believed in this book even when I didn’t, and who coaxed me back from the ledge all the many, many times I felt like giving up. This book would not exist if not for you.
Thank you to my editors, David Pomerico and Sam Bradbury, for all their support and insight. Thank you to Mireya Chiriboga, Kelly Shi, Lisa McAuliffe, Rachel Kennedy, Róisín O’Shea, and everyone at Harper Voyager and Del Rey for helping to bring this book into the world.
Thank you to Allison Saft and Rachel Morris, for giving me a soft place to lie while I dredged this story out of me.
Thank you, always, to Manning Sparrow, for ten years of companionship and unflagging love.
Thank you to Sophie Cohen and Courtney Gould, for giving me another reason to write this story.
Thank you to James Macksoud, for whom words are never enough. Everything good in my life is because of you.
And thank you, of course, to Dorit Margalit. You gave me the language to write this book, and the courage to survive it.