“Do you know that the dog has not eaten since we brought her here? Over a month, and not one lick. She protects us, and she’ll protect you.”
It was true. Kasha had refused even the small bites of food offered to her. At each meal, such as they were, the boys shared morsels from their own pitiful portions. But the morsels would sit there, on the bare wood of the floor, ignored by the dog completely, until the boys gave up and ate the food themselves. When they tried to feed her from their hands, she would push the offering away with her nose, then hurry off before the food could be offered again.
“That’s impossible,” said Mykola.
“We’ve survived on little more than nothing,” said Grandmother, “and Kasha is a special dog. Now it’s up to you to protect her. Go.”
Mykola hesitated.
“Go!” shouted Grandmother.
Mykola started at the shout and hustled straight to the door, still open from when he entered. On the front step, he patted his thigh, beckoning Kasha to follow. She streaked between Mykola’s legs and out of sight around the cottage.
“Thank you, Mykola,” said the younger Leonid.
Mykola jogged after Kasha.
“Will she be all right?” asked the older Leonid.
“It would take more than a man with an ax to stop her,” said Grandmother. “In that way, Kasha and I have something in common.”
She grabbed the broom from the corner and leaned against the table, facing the door.
HONCHAR ENTERED WITHOUT even knocking. Grandmother stood from the table, sweeping a single spot on the floor. She did not greet him. His eyes twitched around the room, flitting from spot to spot. His hair, now speckled with gray where only months ago it had been nothing but black, wired from his head in every direction. A streak of snot glistened his mustache underneath one nostril. The ax dangled from his knobby fingers.
“We’re here to search your cottage,” he said.
Grandmother stopped sweeping and gripped the broomstick at an angle in front of her chest. “No, you’re not.”
Leonid heard the sound of Dyachenko rooting through the pile of firewood outside. There was not much wood left, certainly not enough to hide anything. In years past, the supply would have been replenished months ago. But who had strength for chopping wood? Who really expected to live long enough to see winter?
“If you have nothing to hide,” said Honchar, “then you have nothing to worry about.”
“You will not search my home.”
Honchar raised the ax. The blade showed chips and spots of rust. It had not met a whetstone in some time.
Grandmother sprung forward. Honchar took a step back, but too slow. As if wielding a sword, Grandmother arced the broomstick forward and connected with Honchar’s knuckles. The ax fell from his hand, the dull blade embedding in the worn wood of the floor. Honchar reached with his other hand to retrieve the ax, but Grandmother swung again, this time landing a blow on the top of his shoulder. He yelped and fell to one knee.
“Suka,” he said.
Raising the broom over her head, Grandmother stepped toward him. Honchar leapt up and backed into the doorway, colliding with Dyachenko, who had come at the sound of Honchar’s cry. The two men fell over each other, heaped at the foot of the front steps.
Grandmother stood in the doorway, looming over them.
“Thank you,” she said, “for the ax.”
Dyachenko tried to struggle toward her, but Honchar held him back.
“If I hear of you searching another home,” said Grandmother, “I won’t hold back the next time.”
She started to come back inside, but paused just past the threshold. Her lip trembled, and tears blurred her eyes. She turned back to the men outside.
“I’m sorry about your daughter,” she said.
She closed the door to Honchar’s weeping.
MYKOLA STARTED to come to the cottage almost every day, and on the days he did not visit, the Leonids usually went to visit him. When Oksana had died, the village’s children had stopped playing together. It was partly due to worried parents, who feared that the fever would spread. It was partly exhaustion. What child had energy to waste on play?
Then a sort of euphoria spread among the villagers. Parents and children alike had long since passed the point of exhaustion, and in its place came a feeling at once calm and giddy. It even affected Honchar, who returned to his old self as if the incident with the ax had never occurred.
Still, though, Grandmother, the Leonids, and Mykola kept Kasha a secret. Grandmother told them that the current mood was partly delirium. The promise of even Kasha’s scant meat might drive the whole village into a craze like Honchar’s. The dog, for her part, refused to eat and seemed as well as ever.
Mykola arrived at the cottage earlier than usual. He knocked once and entered without waiting for someone to answer. Grandmother still wore her bedclothes. The younger Leonid rubbed at his face with a parched cloth by the basin. The older Leonid sat cross-legged on the floor, groggy from sleep. The only one to acknowledge Mykola’s arrival was Kasha, who scampered over and waited for a pet behind the ears.
“Come, girl,” said Mykola, “I have a treat for you.”
He took one of the seats by the table and opened his palm. Some sort of berry rested there, shriveled and sickly. He often brought a speck of leftover food to see if Kasha would eat it. Berries, stewed bark, insects, greens, any ort he could smuggle from his family’s makeshift meals.
Kasha sniffed at his palm, even nudged the berry with her nose, but she did not eat it. As always, she used her snout to push Mykola’s hand back. Then she stared at him until he ate the berry himself. After Mykola swallowed with a big deliberate gulp, Kasha sprinted a lap around the room, stopping again in front of him, panting happily.
“I often think that she’s an angel,” said Mykola, stroking the dog’s back.
“There’s no such thing,” said the older Leonid.
“The teacher told us there’s no such thing as a god, but why does everyone assume that means there can’t still be angels? I like the idea of angels much better than the idea of god.”
“Last I checked, Kasha doesn’t have wings.”
“Maybe the wings were made up by the same people who made up god. Maybe an angel can look like anything it wants.”
“What does an angel do, then, besides run in circles around a room?”
“It watches us from above, from heaven or whatever’s out there. And then sometimes it comes down, like Kasha here, to offer help.”
“I thought we were helping her.”
“We have nothing left in this valley,” interjected Grandmother, “but she’s given us some small purpose. Something more than simply waiting to die.”
“So you think she’s an angel, too?” asked the younger Leonid.
“I don’t know about that,” answered Grandmother. “I think she’s just a dog, though a very special one. One that has learned kindness. No, not an angel. But human? That I might believe.”
Mykola petted Kasha. Grandmother stood by the cold stove. The Leonids stayed where they were. All of them gazed at the little white dog in the center of the room, as if searching for something woven into her fur.
From the far distance came a low whine. At first, Leonid thought the sound came from inside his own head, a memory. But the sound grew, entering full-throated into the valley. It was the train coming through the pass. How many months since that had last happened? Could it possibly bring relief? Or was it soldiers again, come to rob the village of what little it had left?