Apologies for the long hiatus - I had exams, and then had to go abroad to stay with a sick relative. As a result, this chapter is rather fragmentary and rough, but hopefully you shall see the part it plays as the story progresses.

Have a lovely day, everyone.

i am one of twenty eight young ballerinas with the bolshoi. training is hard, but the glory of the soviet culture, and the warmth of my parents… my… parents… makes up for….

no… that's not right…

i am one of twenty eight black widows with the red room. training is hard, but the glory of the soviet supremacy, and the warmth of my parents…. all my parents…. makes up for…

you'll have to excuse me. i don't know what's happening.

who are you?

April is the cruellest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain. Winter kept her warm, covering the earth in forgetful snow, feeding a little life with dried golden husks of autumn's finery. Summer surprised us, coming over Elbrus.

Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt deutsch.

And she was frightened. He said, Liha, Liha, into her hair, he said, Liha, Liha, hold on tight. And down they went.

In the mountains, there you feel free.

She had taken a dive on a smoky set of lies, had been so deceived and she'd been the one lying - and there was this one time when she painted a masterpiece, among other foolish things, all canvas and bleeding ink.

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow out of this stony rubbish? Son of man, you cannot say, or guess, for you know only a heap of broken images, where the sun beats, and the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief, and the dry stone no sound of water. Only there is shadow under this red rock (come in under the shadow of this red rock), and she will show you something different from either your shadow at morning striding behind you or your shadow at evening rising to meet you; she will show you fear in a handful of dust.

Frisch weht der Wind

Der Heimat zu

Mein giftig Kind,

Wo weilest du?

Oksana lowered her gun and exhaled out a breath she hadn't realised she was holding. She touched the radio on her belt, eyes not moving from the dead ghost, and spoke softly - "It's down."

"You gave me hyacinths first a year ago; they called me the hyacinth girl."

—Yet when they came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden, his arms full of metal, and his hair wet with blood, she could not speak, and her eyes failed, she was neither living nor dead, and she knew nothing, looking into the heart of light, the silence.

Otkrytyy i ochistit' more.

One of the dying men on the metro station floor stirred wuietly, mournfully, as the widow they called Oksana stepped over them. Ahead of her, the girl in the white dress lay like a corpse, dark skin slick with blood.

Here, said she, is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,

(Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)

Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks, the lady of situations.

Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel, and here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card, which is blank, is something he carries on his back, which I am forbidden to see. I do not find the Hanged Man. Fear death by water. I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring. Thank you: One must be so careful these days.

The unreal frozen city, under the brown fog of a winter dawn, a crowd flowed over Anchikov Bridge, so many, she had not thought death had undone so many. Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled, and each man fixed his eyes before his feet. Flowed up the hill and down Nevsky Prospekt, spilling into Ostrovesky Square, to where old Catherine kept the hours like a dead thing keeps secrets.

She heard herself say it's gone all wrong: since when did the days and the nights get so long? And there were things that she did, just so she could feel anything - but somewhere along, something went off, and she woke up with blood on her lips. And yeah, and there were nights she just did whatever she liked... And those were the nights she was the one who woke up bleeding.

Oksana stood over the girl in the white and bloody dress, and readied her gun for the final shot into the skull.

Such was a ghost.

This was how they made the prizraki. This was how they carved them from stone - by trapping them inside their own skills with the ghosts and the thorns until their eyes bled and obscured the world from their view in rivulets of crimson and scarlet.

The dead girl on the ground, in the white dress, opened her eyes in the same moment that she moved - exploding from the ground in a violent action that took Olsana off her feet and carried her back into a grey stone pillar. What chance did Oksana have to hold into her gun when the ghost's attacks were endless - blows from fists, elbows, wrists, every surface a weapon. The hyacinth girl held her by the collar and slammed her head into the pillar and the world swayed and Oksana struggled to plant her feet on the ground again.

The ghost's forehead met her nose and that pain more than anything else propelled Oksana into action - planting her feet and throwing herself forward, twisting her shoulder until she met the prizrak's ribs and using that torque to free herself from the grip.

They traded blows - as though they were mirrored images, every move Oksana made was blocked with ease, the ghost's eyes absent, as though she were lost somewhere within herself. Her dress swayed about long dark legs. Oksana wondered why the traitor who had freed the hyacinth girl had failed to change her clothing from these, which marked her out clearl as a relic of the Red Room. Had he cred so little?

Oksana had always been one of the best in her class, but this battle was hopeless. Oksana was good, but she was human, despite all she had endured, still human - she had none of this girl's viciousness, her desperation, her casual deadliness. If she had her gun -

In the same moment she thought of this, she heard the rumble of an approaching subway train. She feinted a punch and then swept a kick at the prizrak, hard enough to knock her back - rather than pressing forward her advantage, she ran for her gun. Her pain was separate from her, like a light on the distant horizon - she could, and would, deal with it later. There, and yet absent. It did not slow her. She dropped to her knees, seized her gun, and was promptly knocked t the ground with a dizzying, deafening blow to the head. The ghost stood over her with a claw hammer.

Oksana opened her mouth to say something, to threaten, cajole, to repeat that mantra which made her a widow, but before she could speak the prizrak had seized her by the hair and dragged her, kicking, struggling, screaming sojndlessly, to the edge of the platform.

Then she threw Oksana in front of the oncoming train.