Kemerovo Oblast, USSR, 1966:
Three children are playing a game with hoof bones. One of the boys, Grigori, misses again and accuses the other two players, Arkady and Nastya, of playing him for a fool. Arkady gently chides him not to be a sore loser. Nastya is a natural! Grigori accuses her of being a cheater. No way is this her first time playing babki!
That moment, Grigori’s father comes and angrily berates his son for playing with those two outsiders. He drags him away, warning him of consequences. Nastya calls out that she is to blame for inviting Grischa here. He knows, witch! he hisses. Everybody knows what her mother does in that house!
The present:
Arkady stands in front of the ruins of Nastya’s old home. According to Grigori, they don’t know how the fire started, but Nastya likely died from smoke inhalation. Since he became Omega Red, he’s died by fire more than once. He is grateful she did not have to endure it. He finds a little straw puppet on a windowsill. A moment later, a stone hits him and somebody calls him a ghoul. She is dead! Isn’t that enough for them? a young woman rages. Has he come to gloat?
He warns her to have a care. As he turns around, she sees he is not whom she expected, then is horrified by his looks. What is he? He is many things, confused chief among them, he replies. He asks íf she knew Nastya and why would anyone gloat over her death, but the woman runs away. He begins to realize that something horrible happened here.
Arkady returns to town and talks Grigori’s wife, Elena. She calls him an unclean spirit. Grigori told her he had left! Arkady explains he had a strange encounter at Nastya’s home. A girl hurled a rock at him. She must be an excellent judge of character, Elena replies icily. Undoubtedly, he agrees wryly, then shows her the sewn doll, which lay there surrounded by coins and charms. He knows old magic when he sees it. What was Nastya to the village?
Elena looks up and replies that Anstasya Ilyevna was a healer like her mother and her mother’s mother. When other measures had failed or discretion was required, they would visit her for her counsel and her herbs. But the local boys tormented her. They threw stones at her windows and killed her cat but, no matter what, if help was needed, she offered it. She was a good person who held herself apart but never aloof. Arkady asks about the fire. Elena begins to cry that they hated her.
That moment, Grigori enters. He thought Arkasha was leaving. Arkady explains he wanted to pay his respects at Nastya’s home. Now he has questions. Grigori replies that he only told him what he heard. He didn’t see the fire with his eyes. Bu he can take him to those who have.
He takes him to the steel plant, which was built in the time of Krushchev. He leads him to a balcony above a vat of molten steel, to where his son Viktor works. The younger man growls that his father has misplaced affection for Arkady and calls him a monster. All he wanted was for him to leave quietly. And now? Arkady asks. He tried, Grigori mutters.
Viktor announces that Arkady’s friend, the witch, killed his son. Sergey and his friends played pranks on her, true, but they did nothing to deserve…
Arkady urges him to continue. When the boys sickened, they were taken to her for her damned remedies. She said she could do nothing for them, and one by one they died. But it was the witch’s revenge against a few spirited youths who had killed her cat!
And then they burned her while she slept, Arkady finishes the story calmly.
His tentacles begin to manifest. He doesn’t see how Grigori is pointing a gun at his back, as he insists that it shouldn’t have come to this, but they were children!
So, he promises, there will be a reckoning. Only for him, Viktor replies. A coconspirator hiding in the shadows hits Arkady with a chain and he falls downward into the molten steel.
Grigori damns his son for making him his accomplice. Viktor spits on the ground and hopes the monster will burn!
