When I blinked, though, it all returned to me: the magic crackling in the air, the rage on his face, the flush of his cheeks that lingered from when Derkach had said the words Grand Inspector.
As Dr. Bakay rose to his feet again Undine’s body rolled over, landing facedown in the dirt and weeds. Derkach vanished back through the gate and it flapped open after him, swinging and swinging, as if it were a dress on a clothesline.
Instantly I felt Sevas relax, his shoulders slumping, though the wind picked up and I could smell the salt tang of Undine’s blood on the air. Rose was still kneeling beside her, though her sobs had ebbed to little whimpers, another sound I had never heard my middle sister make.
Before Papa could even say another word, before he could even look upon his dead daughter and weep, one of the day laborers poked up his head and said, “I need to go.”
Papa’s gaze landed on him like a hawk seizing its quarry. “What was that, boy?”
“It’s only—well, the monster, the murderer . . . he’s targeted your estate.” It was a freckle-faced man who spoke, one who was not Sobaka. “And now that your daughter is, ah, dead, well—that’s half the reason I was here, isn’t it? To compete for her hand. I mean no offense, sir, of course, but your middle daughter is vicious as a wounded bear and your youngest daughter, well . . .”
He did not have to finish his phrase for everyone to know what he meant, and Papa himself had called me plain-faced so many times before. This time, though, storm clouds gathered on Papa’s brow and he said, “My daughter’s hand comes with more than just a beautiful woman to share your bed. It is my estate you will inherit someday, in all its sprawling glory.”
But the men had been here for nearly three days, and they had seen the cracking plaster, the weeds and thorns running over the garden, the ivy growing on the walls like an old man’s beard, the taps that worked only half the time and the floorboards that were rotting under our feet. Our house was no great prize. It was a racing dog years past its prime, gray-muzzled and limping, moments away from a mercy killing.
The man did not say as much, but it was clear in his eyes, in the way his gaze dropped to the ground and he began to back up slowly, toward the open gate. In another moment, the rest of the men followed.
I stood there in the grass, watching my sister’s body go pale and stiff. Papa marched after the men with more vigor than I had ever witnessed before, shoving through the throng until he was blocking their way through the gate.
“Aw, come on, sir,” the freckle-faced man said. “There are fifteen of us, and only one of you.”
Not fifteen, I thought. Fourteen. One less than had entered.
But the man had made more than just a mistake in his arithmetic. Papa threw his shoulders back, and then his magic loosed like a thousand poisoned darts. It spread like a front of cold blown off the frigid Half-Sea. And then, as the men started to press past him, the bars of the fence turned into hissing, spitting black vipers.
The men all leapt back, scrabbling over one another as the snakes lunged and snapped at them. When they had all fallen down fleeing, or cowered behind the flowering pear tree, Papa closed his magic back up in his fist and the snakes ceased their hissing.
They went still and taut, but his transformations only worked in a singular direction. Our fence would never be a fence again. From now on it would be a latticework of black snakes, standing at fixed attention and suspended in the air, but spitting and lunging at anyone who drew too close.
One of the men started crying. Papa gave a loud and exuberant laugh.
“Fifteen of you, yes,” he said. “But there is just one wizard Zmiy Vashchenko. I am the only wizard left in Oblya, and I have the strength and power of all the dozens that I ate before their downfall. If you break your vow to me, I will eat you too.”
And then he was gone, brushing past Undine’s cold body, but his magic lingered in the air like choking black smoke.
We buried Undine right there at the base of the juniper tree, and all I could think of was how I had swept up Mama’s tiny bird bones and put them out with the trash. Rose cried while she dug, watering the earth where we planted our sister’s body, and Sevas and I mostly watched as the wind bristled through our hair, his jacket, the ripped-up hem of my nightgown.
Indrik watched from behind the huge begonia plant, and I thought he might come and eulogize her, or promise vengeance by his divine magic, but he only cried, too, like a man and not a goat. I did not know if goats could weep. The goblin certainly could, but he was nowhere to be found, and still the eyeless ravens were silent.