Kramola wasn't kidding when she promised to patrol the approaches. Her sentinels came running into the dig site with a report that Damir was returning four days later. Returning, after that speech! Returning, when Volya's four preceding days were filled with trial and error, hard manual labor and grudging bonding. Returning! That was rich...
Damir didn't wear a sheepish grin Volya had hoped to see. The guy surveyed the piles of dirt. Then his gaze traveled to the wide trench with shallow slopes that now went all the way to the rock wall. His face preserved his customary expression. Meaning, no expression. Despite the lack of accolades, Volya's chest swelled with pride. Nobody got trapped. Nobody died. They had a couple of close calls, but Damir didn't need to know that.
He was about to transform back to his human form and ask if he should send a search party for Damir's integrity, but Damir pre-emptied the quip with an unexpected move. He dropped his pack and rummaged through it like some vintage Disney cartoon character looking for a toy gavel or whatever.
What, not even, Sorry, I got you all worked up over nothing?
Apparently not, the mist-wolf said in such a way that Volya imagined his shaggy head tilt to one side. His moonlight-filled eyes would be set on Damir. Instinctively, Volya imitated his wolf's pose, and he was not alone.
Damir's activity was so frantic, that everyone dropped their buckets, shovels and picks to circle the prodigal archeologist. Scowls scrunched the faces. A snarl erupted from the back, then another one. He was more concerned than angry when Damir, still staunchly silent, armed himself with a toothbrush. The thing had definitely seen better days.
Okay, weird that dental hygiene was at the forefront of his mind in this specific situation, but okay...
However, that wasn't all.
Damir's other hand groped inside his pack for another thirty seconds or so, to emerge with a baby-enema in the size and shape of a large pear.
Instead of, You seem awfully sure we want you back, Volya squawked, "What on Earth—"
Crap, he was human now. Definitely human, because the sound that emerged from his throat wasn't a snarl. It was more than a little bit disturbing that he hadn't consciously initiated the transformation. He wanted to speak, so he had just... transformed. But right now, Damir was far more worrisome.
The guy regaled Volya, then the assembled Walkwe, with a wan smile. Shadows around his eyes were darkened by insomnia. That uncharacteristic smile, plus how Damir held the toothbrush and enema—as if he were a tzar and sovereign of all the Russia holding his scepter and orb—knitted Volya's brows tighter together.
"There is a glyph by the cave's entrance," Damir said.
"Aha," Volya replied. Aha wasn't a fitting tribute to the beauty of Russian language, but he was giving his 110% to pretending that he had an inkling of what was going on.
Damir wormed his way through the trench to the wall and put his weird toolset to use. Just a few brushstrokes and gentle pumps on the enema later, Volya spotted the emerging spiral on the stone.
"You gotta be kidding... the super-senses... the instinct..." Volya babbled.
Damir leaned a bit back to observe the results of his labors. "It doesn't take gods to fire pots," he said with some satisfaction. "Maybe I can't find a single cave in the hectares of ragged landscape, but some things... some things I have an eye for."
Volya's hackles raised as if Damir had just questioned his manhood. "No wonder we've missed it! We worried about a million things. Without our subject matter expert, I must add."
He pointed at the mortarless stonework plugging the cave's entrance. Centuries of fine dust, wind-blown and from run-off, seeped into every crack. The movements of the mountain during the eruption further compressed and cemented it in place. "All I could think about was how we're going to break through. Studying the walls wasn't exactly a priority."
Damir whistled under his nose. The archeologists obviously didn't forget to keep their eyes peeled no matter how hard it got. "Let's see what else we could discover."
A shadow appeared out of nowhere, walked through Damir and started chiseling the symbol.
Volya's jaw hung open. He didn't even close his eyes! His vision just twined into the present and ancient past.
"There is—" He cleared his throat. "Damir, there's a square beneath the spiral."
Damir ceased his whistling at once.
"I see the centaur who carved the runes into the stone." More shadows flickered in and out of existence like an overlay. They were out of focus, slipping in and out of his field of vision. Some had an annoying penchant for sitting at the very edges of it, making it all too easy to lose them in the vibrancy of the present day.
Volya focused so hard the bones in his skull creaked.
"She was here. The girl who did it." His throat turned to parchment paper. The parchment paper after the cook drew the tray out of the oven, so dry, it crumbled at the faintest touch. He sounded like a ghost communing with the living from the nether.
"Who do you see, brother?" Nadezhda asked, lifting her hand in a gesture demanding silence.
The waterfall willfully disobeyed. Everyone else didn't look like they were going to talk anyway. But, hey, something pleasantly tickled in his chest when Nadezhda called all the attention to him.
"It's fragmented. I see the centaurs placing their dead in the cave. Coming back as if they were... I dunno... visiting the bones? Can you visit the bones?"
Damir nodded. "Yes, that makes sense. It's a ritualistic practice associated with ancestral worship."
"They are bringing more of their dead to place in the tomb."
Damir nodded again.
"The only child turned into a young woman now. It's Ushpi's daughter." Volya stumbled, then went on describing what he saw to the Walkwe and Damir.
Her shadow aged every time she reappeared at the wall. Fewer accompanied her. More remained behind in the tomb. Finally, she was all alone, visiting the bones of everyone in the world who had been like her. Volya saw her carrying the stones. Carving the symbols again. Disappearing for so long, he had thought that the vision had ended.
His audience fidgeted after his silence stretched.
"Wait!"
The heads, human and werewolf, whipped to him. Eyes burned with anticipation.
Ushpi's daughter's shadow came back and sat by the entrance.
His voice quivered and he could do zilch about it. "She came here for the last time, years later after abandoning the place. She was the miracle and the bitter reminder of their failure. She had died right here."
He pointed weakly at the gateway. "Ushpi's daughter. For some reason, I had never dreamt about her."
No conduit. Not of our blood, the mist-wolf whispered.
"Ushpi's daughter," Volya repeated, brushing off his invisible friend's explanation. "I don't even know her name."
You never will. There's no way.
Where there is will, there is a way. Liam had taught him that.
Stubbornly, Volya clung to his belief that the others, the Yamnaya descendants, or even those not related to either Walkwe or Yamnaya, had magic in their blood too. That there was a way to reach them. Bond with them. Make peace.
Damir dropped his toothbrush. "We... we often name the remains that we study, even fragmented bones, if we don't have the individual's name from the written sources."
Volya slowly lifted his head to meet Damir's glance. "I think I would like to do that."
There was only one name that was fitting. The name that belonged to someone else who experienced the profound loneliness of being the only one of her kind. Someone who couldn't even guess why such fate had befallen her.
"Anabelle," Volya said. "I name her Anabelle."