The patches of sky visible up through the branches had turned indigo. The dusk had come on, and full darkness was only a heartbeat away. It had happened almost without Donika realizing, and now she heard rustling in the underbrush and in the branches above. A light breeze caressed her bare arms and legs and only then did she realize how warm she’d been.
She halted on the path and stared at her mother, eyes narrowed. “What are you talking about, Ma? What the hell are you…you had me.”
Qendressa slid her hands into the pockets of her skirt as though fighting the urge to reach out and take her daughter’s hand. Her features were lost in the gathering darkness.
“No, ’Nika. You came later.”
“How could I—“
“Hush now,” her mother said. “Just hush. You want to know. You need to know. So hush.”
Something shifted in the branches right above them and an owl hooted softly, sadly. Her mother glanced up sharply and scanned the trees as though the mournful cry of that night bird presented some threat.
Donika shook her head, more confused than ever. “Ma?”
Qendressa narrowed her eyes and took a step away from her daughter, casting herself in shadows again. “You know the word shtriga?”
“No.”
“No.” Her mother sighed, and the sound was enough to break Donika’s heart. “I was so much like you, ’Nika. Still very young, though already I was a widow. So many questions in my head. I walked in the forest always, cold and grieving and alone. I knew I had to have a baby, to be a mother. I would never love another, but a child I could love. I could have what my husband and I dreamed of…even if part of it is only a dream.
“One night I am in the forest, walking and dreaming, and I hear voices. Some men and some women. I hear a laugh, and I do not like the way it sounds, that laugh. So I walk quietly, slowly, and go through the trees, following the voices. I walked in the forest so much that I learned to make almost no noise at all. From the trees, I see them, two women and three men, all with no clothes. I felt ashamed to spy on them like that. I would have gone, but could not look away.
“They looked up at the sky and reached up to their mouths and they slipped off their skins, like they were only jackets. Inside were shtriga. They looked like owls, but they were not. I could not breathe and just watched, praying not to be seen. They flew away. I stood there until I could not hear the wings anymore and then I could breathe again.”
Qendressa paused. Donika realized that she had been holding her breath, just the way her mother had described. As the story unfolded, she had pictured it all in her mind, so simple to imagine because of all of the hours she had spent walking these woods by herself and because, just last night, she and Josh had been naked beneath the trees and the night sky. But this…her imagination could only go so far.
“Ma, you must have been dreaming. You said you were dreaming, right? You fell asleep. That couldn’t have been real.”
Her mother approached her, stepping into the moonlight, and Donika saw the tears streaking her face. Sorrow weighed on her and made her look like an old woman.
“No?” Qendressa said.
Somewhere in the trees, an owl hooted. Donika flinched and looked up, searching the branches, just as her mother had done. A second owl replied, sharing the sad song.
“Even when they were gone, I could not go away. I should have run. I did not know when they would be back for their skins, the shtriga, but I knew that they would be back. The shtriga went ’round the town and through the forest and they hunted the lustful and licentious. They had the scent of those whose lust was strongest, and the shtriga drank their blood to sate their own hungers.”
“Sounds like a vampire,” Donika said.
Qendressa frowned, shaking her head. “No, ’Nika. Vampires are make-believe. The shtriga are real. But the power they have, it has rules. The shtriga must come back to its skin by morning.
“My mother had told me many stories of them. How they grow. How to stop them. And I dreamed of a baby, ’Nika. It hurt my heart, I wanted it so much.
“I knew I only had till morning, and maybe not even that long. I ran into the clearing and I took the skin of one of the women, with her beautiful black hair. I carried it home, hurrying and falling, and I locked the door behind me. I took my scissors and sat at my worktable and I cut the skin of the shtriga. I cut away large pieces and later I burned them.
“And then I started to sew. With the shtriga’s black hair for my thread, I patched the skin back together, only now it was not the skin of a grown woman, but the skin of a baby girl.”
Donika shivered and hugged herself, staring at her mother’s eyes shining in the moonlight, tears glistening on her face.
“No,” the girl said.
When her mother spoke again, her voice had fallen to the whisper of confession.
“I sat and waited in the corner of the room, in a chair that my husband had loved so much. A little before dawn, the shtriga came looking for her skin. I left the window open and the owl flew in and landed on my worktable. It spread its wings and ducked its head down to pick at the skin it had left behind. The owl pushed itself into the skin.
“When the sun rose, a baby girl lay on my worktable and she cried, so sad, so lonely. I took her in my arms and rocked her and I sang to her an old song that my mother loved, and my baby loved it, too. She didn’t cry anymore.”
Qendressa bit her lip and gazed forlornly at her daughter. Through her tears, she began to sing that same old song, a lullaby that Donika knew so well. Her mother had been singing it to her all her life.
“I don’t believe you.”
But then the owls began to cry their mournful song again, hooting softly, not only one or two but four or five of them now. Donika saw the fear in her mother’s eyes as the woman searched the trees. Qendressa put out a hand to her.
“Come, ’Nika. We go home.”
Donika stared at her.
“I don’t believe you,” she said again.
But she could taste the salt of her own tears and feel them warm upon her cheeks. She backed away from her mother’s outstretched hand, shaking her head. Denials rose up in her heart and mind but somehow would not reach her lips.
She knew. The hunger churned in her gut, gnawing at her, and she knew.
“Why did you tell me?”
Qendressa sobbed. “Because you are not my baby anymore, ’Nika. You’re sixteen. Sixteen years since that night. I know the stories. You are shtriga now.”
Donika felt something break inside her. She spun on one heel and ran. Low branches whipped at her face and she raised her arms to protect herself. She stumbled over roots and rocks that she’d always avoided before. The owls hooted above her, and now she could hear their wings flapping as they moved through the trees, keeping pace.
In her life, she had never felt so cold. No matter how fast she ran, no matter how her pulse quickened, she could not get warm. Her sobs were words, denials that felt as hollow as her own stomach. The hunger clutched at her belly and a yearning burned in her. Desire.
Josh. She summoned an image of him in her mind and focused on it. They could run together. He would hold her. He could touch her, and maybe, for a little while, the madness and hunger would fade.
A numbness came over her, but Donika began to get control of herself. She still wept, but silently now. Her feet were surer on the path. She saw the stone wall to one side and the fire pit ahead and the memory of last night gave her something to hold on to.
Soon, she found herself at the end of the path, stepping out into the backyard of the bitter old couple. An owl hooted, back in the woods, and she hurried away from the trees, wanting to leave the forest behind for the first time in her life.