Our lips met: my eyes closed; I inhaled him, pine and smoke and wool; his skin warm and his nascent beard prickly; his mouth hot, his breath into mine. Our lips met: only a moment before we both pulled back. His eyes betrayed shock—horror, even—and my heart stopped beating.

I started jabbering immediately. “Cooking. I was trying—we have to make more dinner; it was really silly of you—I mean, it’s my fault; I’ll do it; we just need to cook more, so I’ll do it.” I struggled to extricate myself from our tangle, but suddenly I felt like an octopus, all limbs and no bones.

Sanya, it appeared, still had the functioning body of a bipedal, land-walking creature, because he was on those bi-peds faster than I could blink.

“Okay, okay.” I finally got to my knees, suddenly cognizant of the fact that I was sweating profusely. “You can cook for yourself, but only because you’re better at standing up. I wouldn’t brag about that too much if I were you; I used to be good at standing up, but look at me now.”

He did not look at me. He turned his back to me to fiddle with things on the stove, and all I could see was the beet-red tips of his ears.

“Sanya, I don’t want to tell you how to live your life, but you really ought to work on seasoning your food, you know, in Gorakino. Haven’t you heard of flavor up here? The plants that grow up here are weird, but surely some of them must taste good. You know, I think I should go look for some. I want to find some mariweed and lobelia, anyway.” I hoisted myself up on the side of the stove. Once I was up, I managed to move towards the door by first throwing myself at the table, but from there the journey got more difficult, and as I stared at it, trying to puzzle it out, hummingbird heart buzzing as fast as it had on too much zhiva, my vision started to tunnel and spin.

“Okay, maybe not today, for the spices,” I said.

Sanya was steadfastly ignoring me.

“Actually, I think I’d prefer a nap, anyway. Just a little shut-eye does the body good.” I judged the stove too difficult to climb back on top of. I was, if anything, too hot, anyway, so I launched myself at my unmade bed.

I happily landed face-down on the mattress, shins hanging off the edge, and thought maybe I’d stay like that forever. I was just babbling something (thankfully) incoherent about this plan into the mattress when my stomach rumbled.

I had forgotten my flavorless sustenance.

I could not—could not—ask Sanya to bring me the kasha. Sure, five minutes ago, I could shamelessly ask him to spoon-feed me, but I knew shame now, and I would die before I ever asked him to do anything for me again.

But I needed that damn bland kasha, at least as much as I needed to smother myself in this musty mattress. When was the last time this had been cleaned? Who was meant to clean this, anyway? Was it us? If it was us, surely Sanya would have known that.

No, don’t think about Sanya. Don’t think about Sanya or his lips or his smell or what his cock looks like.

Well, now you’ve gone and done it.

I stayed on my stomach, concentrating on kasha until I didn’t have to hide the front side of me—how that still worked when my legs wouldn’t was beyond me—then I flopped onto my back like a dying fish and suppressed the attention-seeking groan that naturally wanted to erupt from my throat. Stop attention-seeking, Iyu. That’s what got you into this imbroglio in the first place.

I flopped my way out of bed and more or less crawled back to the stove.

Sanya stood stock still at the fire, staring into a pot that I could tell even from my position (on the ground, like a weasel) had long since come to a boil.

I stretched my arm up and slapped around on the stove’s shelf until I found my bowl, then sunk down and sat there, slumped against the stove, shoveling now-cold kasha in my mouth, while Sanya stood looking at a boiling pot, presumably until all the water evaporated.

***

I didn’t make it back to bed. The kasha might have given me enough strength to, but I was too embarrassed to move again, in case he noticed me.

I fell asleep on the floor, which seemed, in the end, right.

I woke up on my bed, tucked under a blanket.

Sanya was at the stove again, and I might have believed he’d been there all night, petrified (with what? Fury? Horror?), if I didn’t know someone had to have carried me to the bed. Well, he wouldn't have just left me there. That would have been out of order.

I stayed in bed pretending to sleep until I heard dishes being set on the table, and then a shadow fell over me.

I squeezed my eyes shut harder, which may have given me away.

“Iyu, open your eyes,” he said.

I cracked one.

He stared down at me with a familiar blank face.

“Oh, good morning.” I yawned theatrically and stretched. “Wow, how did we get back here? My mind is just… can't remember anything, you know?” I rapped my knuckles on the side of my head.

He did not look convinced. “How do you feel?”

“Me?” As though there were someone else he might be talking to. “Oh, fine. Totally normal.” I sat up. My head hurt when I did, but I’d had much worse hangovers.

“Come have breakfast, then.”

“What have you made? Caviar and pelmeni? Roast duck with carrots?” I tested a joke.

“Kasha,” he said, turning back to the table.

Well, he hadn't punched me, and he hadn't told me to leave. If he was willing to pretend it never happened, I certainly was.

***

We gave ourselves a few days off from experimenting with zhiva and gnila and did not talk about what had happened. Something about that morning, the kasha, eating at the table, meant forgiveness. It set things, if not right, then closer to it.

We didn’t touch as freely as we had, though, and while I hadn’t particularly noticed it before, I noticed its absence.

On the fourth day, while we cut firewood, I suggested we try again. With the gnila, that is.

To my surprise, Sanya demurred. I had never gotten the impression he was scared of it—he didn’t give the impression he was scared of anything—but if that was the problem: “I’ll be the victim again. I don’t mind.”

He stopped swinging his axe long enough to say, “Taking care of you is worse than being sick.”

“I won’t be so dramatic this time,” I said, propping another round up for him to split. I had a felled tree I was meant to be sawing into rounds for him, but I was giving myself a break. It was going to be rainy season in the mountains soon, and he had finally convinced me to help him stockpile enough dry wood for the next winter. I didn’t see the point; I didn’t plan on being here next winter. He said someone would be here, and whoever it was would need wood. “I was just doing it to irritate you. It’s fun, getting a rise out of you. But I won’t do it again.”

“You didn't lose the ability to walk in order to irritate me.”

“No, but I’ll silently lose the ability to walk this time if you want. Probably, I’ll be fine.”

He swung his axe again, and the log gave a satisfying crack and split in two. “Do you like the feeling of zhiva?”

“Huh? Oh. Yeah, sure. It’s… invigorating.”

“I don’t,” he said.

“Well, you can be the victim, then. I don’t mind taking care of you. You’re an easy patient.”

“No, thank you.”

“If the zhiva makes you edgy, it helps if you drink. It kind of evens you out. I brought more of that potato liquor.”

“I know.”

“So you’ll do it?”

“No. If either of us is sick, we neglect our duty.”

“There haven’t been any ghosts sneaking across the border.”

“Not yet.” Half the log tumbled off the chopping block, and he positioned the other half to split it again.

“Sanya, if we’re going to do this, we’re going to have to leave eventually. There are other hunters to keep the ghosts out.”

He brought the axe down so heavily that the blade stuck in the stump and the handle jerked out of it. Tossing the handle down on the ground, he turned and said, “I’m going to go get water.”

“Sanya,” I called to his retreating back, “the bucket’s still in the house.”

He didn’t stop.

“Okay,” I said more quietly. “I guess I’ll finish up here, then.”

That wasn’t like him, but I decided to give him space. Show him that I could be quiet and reserved. I could do my chores without making a big fuss about it; I could even get us ahead. When he came back and saw how much I’d accomplished, surely he’d be pleased enough to…

I really was a child, wasn’t I? I knew he was upending his entire life for this. Everything he believed in had just been capsized like a skiff in a hurricane. I hadn’t wanted to ask too much about it, didn’t want to poke at the fragile formation of cards he’d stacked that allowed him to help me—join me.

He just needed some time to think. I’d prove that he could trust me. That I’d be there to pick up the slack, I wouldn’t be a millstone around his neck, in fact, I knew what I was doing, and I could show him.

Yes, I’d prove all of this by finishing the firewood and breaking up kindling and sweeping out the hearth and airing out our blankets and sweeping the floor and cooking dinner (we had plenty of water) and not even drinking a little bit.

That last proved to be the most difficult chore of all, once I was done with all the others and Sanya still wasn’t back. To be honest, the rest hadn’t taken very long. Sanya kept things clean, so my efforts weren’t quite as impressive as they could have been, but still, it was getting dark, and Sanya wasn’t back.

I had the sudden, cold fear that he had gone back to the palace to tell Vasilij our plans. I didn’t know where he was, exactly, so I couldn’t send him a message, but at that thought, I started putting on my coat and pulling my boots off the stove.

I threw the door open, and there, against the purpling sky and black-brush silhouettes of trees, was a little shadow moving swiftly towards me.

My shoulders slumped and I sighed, closing the door behind me. I stood there as the shadow grew bigger and closer until, eventually, the narrow light from the windows hit it, and there was Sanya. Neat and composed. Expressionless.