This is a dream. This is a dream. This is a dream.

The snow was pure. It glimmered in the moonlight and danced in the frozen wind; it was soft under their running feet and clung on their eyelashes. It was familiar. It was silent. Chiudka loved the snow. This was her thought while she ran, stumbling, through the glistening road: she loved the snow.

The hot, roiling, gnashing darkness tumbled over dear Oksana and Oskar's house, over little Antonina's home, over the old hall where Chiudka had learned to sing, over the water well she'd fallen into as a child, over Bronislava's grave, over the untouched snow. The shadow swelled and snarled and screeched and swallowed all of it whole.

This is a dream.

Tjasa's arm was suddenly gone from her grip, and panic caught in Chiudka's throat. The dark thundered and howled and flashed its thousands of teeth and eyes just above them. She threw herself over her niece and covered them both with snow and there she hid, still as stone, silently calling her sister's spirit for protection and strength while bones cracked and flesh slurped and voices she'd never hear again screamed.

She didn't realize that silence had fallen until the first sob of despair rang out. Snow fell in clumps from Chiudka's back while she stood stiffly -- and Tjasa was already out and running for the tavern. "Thank you, Broni," she whispered, grateful, to Bronislava's spirit, and tears stung her frozen face. Tjasa was safe. But the village...

The snow was destroyed and speckled with red. All those years that the village had escaped famine, disease, disaster and war -- all that luck and good health while the world around them suffered -- had been paid for in a night.

Tjasa's voice rose up among the mourners.

Chiudka approached the tavern in a hollow daze. She pushed a shoulder into the barricaded door, and paused there to look down, sorrowful, at her bereft niece. She laid a hand on the girl's head, but there was nothing she could say. Tjasa would know that her father's spirit surrounded her now. Chiudka caught a glimpse of her own father and mother in the shadow of the vacant hearth, huddled around one another against the far wall and unmoving. She took a slow breath. "Okay," she whispered to herself. She had helped draw her friends, her loved ones, her family all of them, inside the tavern for safety. Their blood stuck on the soles of her shoes. The tears burned. "Okay. Okay." She swallowed. "Okay. Help me, Papa. Help me, Mama. Stay with me, dear sister, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Mama, Papa, Bronislava," she breathed a mantra, calling upon her parents while their bodies were still hot, and the snow outside muffled the wails of bereavement.

"Tjasa..." Chiudka's voice failed her. She cleared her throat, took a breath, and tried again. "Tjasa, please, I need you now. We all ... Tjasa, do you remember where Grandpa Kisel keeps his bag?" She meant the big satchel that Chiudka's father, the healer, always brought to the sick and the injured. "Tjasa, I need that bag. Can you fetch it and bring it to me?" Her voice was steady -- but for the first time since Blind Nadeen's warning, Chiudka was shaking.

She stepped forward into the tavern, and she addressed Adrian and Bogdan, of the few who remained alive therein, with a voice that was as frightened as it was certain: "Please help me find and gather the survivors. Check for a pulse, hold a mirror to their mouths," as she spoke, her speech tumbled quicker out of her mouth, and she began to kneel among the fallen, her skirts quickly wicking up the blood. "If we can save them, we will save them. Help me save them."

She lifted the eyelid of a beloved young girl, hoping with all her heart for a sign of life, while knowing there would be none. "I can save them," she whispered, and she touched another, pressed her fingers into his artery, lowered her ear to his mouth to listen for breath. And the more she touched them, the more she realized that this was not a dream. Tears streamed down her face, she scraped them away with an arm, she tried another, and another ... and another.