Chills

Dragomir slowly opened his eyes as his nose twitched.

He sniffed twice.

Then he got on all fours and retched. Something was supposed to come out of his throat, but nothing did.

He wheezed, saliva dripping from his mouth onto the rocky ground.

His skin was covered in goosebumps. Dragomir rubbed his palms over his arms, but he was still freezing.

“Ugh, my head’s about to explode…”

Everything around him was dark, as if the sun never rose.

“Are you okay, Drago?”

Dragomir’s eyes snapped upwards. Then at his wrist. The threads were still there.

“You… can talk?”

He stared at Levoslav’s warm dusha. His eyes were still closed. But his lips moved.

“Thank you for keeping your promise. This is far enough,” Levoslav said.

“Where’s the other-“ Dragomir stopped himself.

The other dusha panicked. His eyes still darted from side to side as he tried to run away through the air.

“I have to go back… I have to go back… I have to go back…” he mumbled, repeating it over and over again.

“What’s going on with him?” Dragomir asked.

“I don’t understand his state of mind. He’s been saying that ever since we arrived here. But I don’t want to go anywhere. I feel like I belong here.”

Dragomir gagged again. “But it… smells so horrible here. And it’s so cold. Where is ‘here’ anyway?”

“It smells… normal to me. This is the final destination I was supposed to reach. I hope there are some pretty women.”

Dragomir smiled. That sounded exactly like the Levoslav he remembered.

“Levo…” Dragomir looked at Levoslav as if trying to meet the eyes he kept shut. “…forgive me for killing you.”

“I can’t forgive you. You did what you did. I did what I did. I don’t harbor any strong feelings. In fact… I don’t think anybody does.”

In that instant, Dragomir realized they weren’t alone.

The voices around him shouted.

“Rotten chicken!”

“Potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, whatever you despise!”

Crows circled above the butcher stalls.

“Raw pork ribs for you, sir?” A merchant behind one of the stalls put on a false smile. When he spoke, three silver coins glistened under his tongue. His eyes were closed. He had a simple cross of soot across his forehead. A short rope tightened around his wrist.

The pork ribs hanging around the stall dripped with blood. The severed pig heads stared at Dragomir from the table, worms squirming out of their eyes.

“No, thanks!” he said as he ran toward a street corner.

Levoslav’s dushe had no choice but to follow wherever Dragomir went.

He sat down on a bench. A scorched potato rolled from a nearby stall. A woman had dropped it… along with her hand.

Dragomir kicked the potato away, pinching his nostrils shut against the stench.

All the people passing by had the same short rope around their wrists and a soot cross on their foreheads. Strangely, most of them seemed to come in pairs, two nearly identical people walking side by side.

A young boy bit into a rotten apple. As he gulped, he coughed, and the silver coins fell out of his mouth. The woman beside him, presumably his mother, picked them up and placed them back inside.

“These are all the people who died during Perun’s attack at the market in your hometown…”

“You remember their faces, don’t you?”

“I do. Along with the smell of burnt flesh. And their screams over the sound of me chewing grilled meat.”

“They found peace.”

“So this is Nav, huh? Why am I here? Did I die?”

“You did not. Otherwise your body wouldn’t keep rejecting this place.”

Levoslav’s cold dusha scratched at the wall, trying to pass through it.

“At least one of you is sane enough…” Dragomir held his head. “But I don’t remember… what I was supposed to do… why am I here…?”

“After you buried the body of your Rusalka mother, you decided to look for a friend who didn’t betray you. His name is Zduhach.”

“Zduhach? Doesn’t ring a bell. But I thought that getting here alive was impossible.”

“There was a cute girl you traveled with. She had Morena’s heart with her.”

“A girl? What girl?”

***

A few hours earlier, Dragomir and Milena walked downstream along the river, looking for paths that led lower. Dragomir carried Zduhach’s sleeping body on his back.

They had to leave the Little Table behind at Svarog’s house, as they were unable to carry both the table and the archer, not to mention the battle-axe that Milena held.

“Dragomir… we’ve been walking around for a whole day… how are we going to find a way to Nav?”

He sighed. “I thought that trying to get to lower levels of the landscape would help us but…”

Dragomir carefully laid the archer on the grass. He then took the battle-axe from Milena’s hands and struck the grass-covered soil beneath his feet. He used the battle-axe as a crude shovel.

“Uhm… isn’t it too early to dig your own grave?” Milena placed her hands on her hips, her elbows sticking out.

“Zduhach’s dusha aimed for the ground below. I bet that’s where Nav is.”

The soil was almost black. Wet and fertile. Soon, the hole was deep enough to reach his waist.

Meanwhile, Milena sat beside the snoring Zduhach and inspected the pocket watch.

“What are you doing?” Dragomir huffed.

“I was reluctant to use this ever since the encounter with the Drekavac. I don’t understand it well… and it’s powerful enough to slow down or rewind time.”

Dragomir leaned against his battle-axe. “I see…”

“I’m just afraid it would do something irreversible before I figure out how to use it.”

Dragomir pondered. He knew the pocket watch belonged to Morena, the Goddess of Death and Winter. And that she could command the spirits. And he knew he shouldn’t speak of her name in Milena’s vicinity.

“Hmm… can you describe exactly how this thing activated each time?”

“Well… the first time Mr. Jozef, a farmer from Arkona, was almost killed. No, that’s incorrect. It was more like… his death was inevitable. Poludnica had pierced Jozef’s stomach with her golden sickle.” She raised the artifact to her eye level. “When I held the pocket watch and screamed, I wished that it had never happened. Then… I’m not sure but…” She pointed a finger at the dial. “…this second hand moved backward. I think I heard five ticks? And then Mr. Jozef was suddenly fine. But it looked like it was still about to happen. And then…”

“I jumped in front of him and clashed with the sickle. Yes, that’s the only thing I remember.”

“When I think about it out loud like this, it really did seem like the time had rewound, but only I remembered it.”

“What about that Drekavac encounter?”

“There was… someone fighting them with me. I can’t remember their face or name. And that someone was hit by their screeches so many times, I was sure the next one would be fatal. So again, I tried to rewind time but… my feelings were a little bit different. I didn’t think about turning the time back. Instead, I pleaded to make it stop. Or at least… to reach the person being attacked in time.”

“Yeah, that person was me, so…”

“Oh, that actually makes sense, haha…” She giggled. Then continued. “So anyways, the second hand didn’t go back that time. Instead, it went forward but the ticking became much slower. Just like everything else around me.”

“And that gave you enough time to save me.” Dragomir jumped out of the hole. “How many times did it tick this time?”

“I think… five?”

“That’s not a coincidence. This device can clearly manipulate time for five seconds.”

“Yes but… how is it connected to Nav?”

I can’t tell her it belongs to the Goddess of Death or she’ll be in danger… presumably. But I’m not taking that kind of a risk. So instead…

“I have a hypothesis. Listen well, you really have to trust me on this.”

“Sure, just like I trusted you with that digging,” she said mockingly.

“Take off your clothes.”

Milena blinked once. “Huh?”

Chapter 35: END