Chapter 21: Rising Taiga Sun

Twelve years old, thirteen winters passed – finally fourteen and with her moon’s blood upon her.  Anya now danced sky clad at Witches Sabbaths.  From her bloody feet, finally, fern flowers sprang in fragrant gore red blossoms.  She pressed them and made tinctures and potions out of the mashed fronds and roots.  Summer turned, and she was between childhood and womanhood, of two ages, belonging not quite anywhere.

Anya’s first day of high school had dawned.  She wore a pleated white skirt, a blue blouse and had plaited her long black hair back in a French braid and secured it with a red velvet bow that Elizaveta had sewn.

She stood in front of Liliya’s vanity in the vila’s windy room at the top of the inn’s lookout tower, perfect for planning strategic maneuvers and defending Tsar Dmitri’s kingdom.  The room was all white birch bark,  its walls lined with sabers and long swords, whips, and arrow