Antomír didn’t know what to make of this strange scene. Gamayun sat like a statue, her gaze peering into some unknown distance, away from Antomír and Parfyon. The field stretching before them was riddled with rocks, but it was also covered in bones. Antomír didn’t understand that. How could there be bones in the Realm of the Dead? Was it not the land of spirits with no bodies?
For the first time since he had awoken in the Realm of the Dead, Antomír looked at his hands. They were familiar enough, he thought, though he noticed the conspicuous lack of a scar on his left thumb that he had received when he had tried to chop a branch for the first time in his life. He was lucky he hadn’t lost his finger completely.
There was no fondness in that remembrance, though. Something about being in Gam
