He stopped by the bones of a doorway and stared inside as though he could see the structure that once had been, then turned and took them instead across a low, rocky field and into the mouth of the wood. Saplings and brush batted at their legs at first, then more and more infrequently as the trees rose up into a cathedral ceiling that blocked out the light.
“That place,” Kim whispered. “It had to have burned down decades ago. How old is he?”
Aniela shook her head. “That is not a polite thing to ask. Age is a measure of power, and to ask says that you cannot tell. But I will tell you that he left this place with his family and with Yekaterina in nineteen-eleven, and that he was human then. I do not know the year of his birth.”
And she had thought him young, maybe close to her own age if
