In the darkest part of the woods, which even the bears know to avoid, snow falls silently on the massive pines. Clinging to branches, forming icicles that gleam like fairy lights. The wind moans and sighs, cutting its teeth on tree limbs. A whisper of silvery clouds shield the moon. Some of the tree trunks are thin as pencils, others so wide Kateryna can barely see around them. Grey and wrinkled as an elephant’s hide. She takes off her mitten, feels the worn ridges and cracks, the grooves forming a secret language. She notices dry, crackly leaves, a straw mop of a bush, mysterious looking twigs scattered on the ground. Snowflakes sting her cheeks. She breathes in the scent of pine needles and rot. There once was a path. But it has vanished under the weight of the snow, which erases everything it comes across, slowly, then all at once with a shiver.
    Kateryna makes her way carefully, parting bramble thickets through which she must pass. She has lost her way. How long has it been now? An hour? Three? It is so cold her bones ache, as if she were an old crone stricken with ague. She stops in her tracks to catch her breath. It would be nice to lay down in the snow and sleep. Sinking to her knees, she is about to rest her head on a soft frozen pillow when she sees a flower blooming in the snow, a grey rose with fragile petals and spiky black thorns. She leans closer . . . closer and lets out a squeal of surprise. Next to the rose is a hand, pale flesh against decaying leaves, the knuckles red and swollen, and beyond that, an arm, torso, legs. The body is lying face down, flung from the trees.
    Kateryna opens her mouth to scream but before she can make a sound all the body parts float into the air, rearranging themselves into the shape of a large bird. A crow or a raven, she can’t tell which. The bird flaps its wings briskly, settles on a log.
    “My dear Kat,” says the bird, as if they are friends who have known one another a longtime. “Are you lost, poor child? Follow me.”

    The Ukranians are staying in a dark, second floor apartment above a pizza parlor in Kings Park, Florida. Maks is 24, his wife, Sofiy, 23. They’re from Kherson, a port city on the Black Sea.
    Sofiy has pictures of how it used to look on her phone. Here are her and Maks in their old flat, with its funny skylight and windows you had to crank open. Here, studying in a courtyard at the art museum. Buying purple cornflowers at the farmer’s market. Walking hand in hand down a handsome boulevard lined with stately old buildings. Eating waffle cakes at their favorite café. All gone now. Dust.
    Maks was studying to be an engineer when war broke out. He’s tall enough to play in the European League, with sandy hair and a face swarming with freckles. Sofiy is at least a foot shorter. Her skin the color of day-old milk, her eyes a luminous grey.
    There’s a knock at the door. Sofiy opens it a crack to find a woman around her mother’s age, carrying a tote bag. The woman is thin, with brown eyes and shoulder length brown hair. Her lips are thin too, making her look serious, even worried. But her eyes are kind.
    “I’m Leah Applebaum,” the woman says. “The English teacher.”
    She has brought two children’s workbooks for them to practice writing English words. The books have a drawing of a deer with big eyes on the cover and the teacher holds it out to them hesitantly as if she can see she’s made a mistake.
    “It may look easy,” she says that first day. “But it will help you both learn phonics, which is important when you’re beginning to read English.”
    Maks seizes the book, opens it to the first page. He has sharpened half a dozen pencils, though he only needs one to do the exercises.
    “Why don’t we talk for a bit first,” says the English teacher, perching on the edge of the sofa.
    They stare at her blankly. Once in the drugstore, Sofiy overheard a woman talking about their broken English and pictured a porcelain plate fractured into shards.
    “You could start with how life is for you now. Your routine. What you like to eat, the places you’ve been to.”
    They explain how they arrived with nothing – no money, no luggage. Everything they owned got left behind. They rely on donations from people at Temple Sinai, a situation guaranteed for six months. After that they’re not sure what’s going to happen.
    “I get job,” Maks says, though he doesn’t sound confident. “Engineering job.”
    “I want to write,” Sofiy adds.
       “How wonderful. Do you write poetry? Short stories?”
    “Fairy tale for children.”
    “What’s your favorite fairy tale?” the teacher asks.
    It’s hard to choose just one. “Voices at the Window.” “The Story of the Wind.” “The False Sister and the Faithful Beasts.” Sofiy has loved hearing them read aloud ever since she was a girl nestled on her mother’s lap.
    “The Snow Queen, I think,” she says bashfully.
    The teacher nods her encouragement and Sofiy begins.
    “Once upon a time in a kingdom far away there dwelled a woman who never had child. Each day, she went to woods and knelt under her favorite oak tree, praying that gods would grant this wish. One afternoon, instead of returning home, the woman walked to foot of great mountain where she found a spring of crystal-clear water.”
    After the Russians bombed the power plant, Sofiy had gone to the Dnipro River to scoop yellowish water into buckets. Boiling it to drink. Using as little as they could to wash with. Her father had enlisted by then, but they didn’t know he was missing. The Russians had retreated to the east side of the river, and Sofiy could see them in the distance, building trenches, smoking cigarettes. That day, her mother had stayed behind. She was coughing, the shelling had kept her up all night. Her mother sitting by the kitchen window drinking tea when the blast hit, punching a hole in the wall, shattering the glass pane into hundreds of tiny shards.
    Sofiy knots her hands together to stop them from shaking. Picking up the workbook, she says, “I can’t remember the rest.”

    “My name is Yuroslav Petkovic,” the bird announces. “You may call me Yuri.”
    “A moment ago,” Kateryna reminds him, “you were dead in the snow.”
    “Yes, my dear. But things change quickly around here. Haven’t you noticed?”
    Kateryna is thinking that a magic bird might be useful company.
    “Can you help me find my way home?” she asks.
    She gets up and starts walking, with Yuri flying above her, pumping his wings slowly like a busted fan. Ahead there’s a hint of a path, faint paw prints inscribed in the snow.
    “First there is something we must do.”
    “All right.” She recalls what she wanted to ask. “How did you die?”
    Artillery strike. The air shook with a terrible thud. Then nothing.”
    “Did it hurt?”
    “Not really.”
    The moon appears from behind the clouds, leaking milky light, a teasing sort of light that could fade in an instant. It’s good to have a companion in the woods. She already feels less lonely.
    “Where are we going?”
    Kateryna has realized that going straight home is not what Yuri has in mind. He is a crow, she’s decided. A larger than normal crow, bigger than the size of her head.
    “Where?” she repeats.
    “To the castle of the dark lord.”
    His words circle the air before landing in her ears.
    This I don’t want to do,” she tells him.
    He is flying a bit faster now. Her child legs struggle to keep up.
    “We have no choice, I’m afraid. The castle is where the moonstone is kept. Without it, we cannot ever leave these woods.”
    The moonstone. It sounds poetic. Sweet. Not dangerous at all.

    The thing Sofiy doesn’t understand about Americans is how they are able to ignore so much. They go about their day like nothing’s wrong. Grocery shopping. Driving their big SUVs. Getting their nails done. Basking in the sun until their skin turns red and peels off in strips, like wallpaper. Playing golf. Playing pickleball. Pickleball! A ridiculous game with a funny name. The sky is so blue here, the clouds virgin white. In Ukraine, it’s always grey. A grey ceiling of ash. On the way to buy milk, Sofiy spots a heron and thinks most of the birds in Kherson must have died by now. Trees have been ripped from the ground. There’s nothing to eat.
    In America, the war is still visible in newspapers and on TV. Every day, something bad happens. A new offensive. Mortar fire. Buildings sliced open by exploding rockets. More dead kids. Dead pregnant women. Dead soldiers. Maks can’t bring himself to watch; Sofiy is the opposite. She won’t look away. Meanwhile, the Americans act like none of it is happening. The public is war weary, the TV announcer says, before switching to a story about how fewer people are using ATM machines.
    “They have a low attention span,” Maks explains. “If it was happening here, they’d care.”
    Sofiy’s not sure. She hadn’t paid attention in the beginning. Hadn’t believed Russia would invade, which is how they got trapped in Kherson, going to the train station every day, not able to board because thousands of other people had the same idea. Maks’s parents and younger brother got out and are living above a Polish woman’s garage. The kindness of strangers.
    “We should be grateful,” Maks tells Sofiy. “We are the lucky ones.”
    But Sofiy doesn’t feel lucky. She can’t pretend the way Americans do. Besides, luck is a word people use after good or bad events have already happened. By the time one mentions luck, it’s already too late.
    Maks says, “There’s always a war somewhere. Afghanistan. Myanmar. Sudan. The Congo. You and I don’t think about what goes on in those places. Even if we care, we do nothing. How are Americans any different?”
    Maks says, “The people at the temple are our friends. Thank God for them.”
    Maks says over and over, “We are the fortunate ones.”
    At night he cries in his sleep. Sofiy wraps her arms around him, massages his neck. Sometimes he stops weeping. Sometimes not.
    “I should be fighting for Ukraine,” he tells her, as moonlight spills onto their comforter. “Only cowards desert.”
    “Then you’d probably be dead.”
    It was an impossible choice, she says. You did your best. You did what you thought was right for both of us.
    Eventually, he falls back to sleep. But Sofiy stays up. She is always surprised when daylight breaks the night apart each morning. It seems wrong, perverse. She has forgotten how to cry; when sadness overwhelms her, she stuffs a rag between her teeth, bites down, wills herself to breathe. Tells herself: eat the bread, clean the bathroom, go to the store, over and over until each task is done. Now she makes the coffee, remembering what used to preoccupy her in the early morning hours. Where they would have the wedding. Her dress. Flowers. The band. It seems not only foolhardy but cruel since the ceremony ended up taking place in a subway station that doubled as a bomb shelter. Afterwards, a woman she didn’t know handed her a bottled water. She thinks about all the people she’ll never see again: her father, their friend, Arkady, who was shot in the head by a young Russian soldier; Roman, killed in the Donbas; Danya, found half naked in a storm cellar, after the Russians occupied the city. Her college roommate, Kateryna, still missing; Denis, whose apartment building collapsed, Alina. Larissa. Ivan. Symon, Her neighbors, the Petkovices. Her six-year-old nephew, Ilya, deported to Russia. Her mother, sipping black tea while looking out the window, waiting for Sofiy to return.

    The castle of the Dark Lord is morosely attractive, with stained glass windows, stone gargoyles, turrets, and a drawbridge extending over a moat teeming with alligators. Gothic Chic, Yuri calls it.
    “If it were a hotel,” he claims, “they could probably get 30,000 hryvnya a night.”
    The snow has not let up. It settles on the massive walls, dusts the statues of knights. Overhead, a flag with the letter Z.
    “Where is the moonstone?” Kateryna asks.
    It’s so cold she can no longer feel her fingers or her feet.
    “Who knows? I’ll go in through the portico. You sneak in that window. It’s half-open.”
    “We’re splitting up?” The thought makes her ill.
    “For now. If you find the moonstone, holler.”
    With that, he flaps his wings and takes off.
    Kateryna tumbles through the window, landing on her back. She is in a room lit by dozens of candles. Crimson drapes, crimson carpet, crimson furniture.
    What does a moonstone look like?
    Before she can even start looking, a door in the wall slides opens and a large black creature with long sticky legs creeps towards her.
    Panic twists her insides.
    The thing lets out a whine, inches closer.

    Or she and Yuri discover the moonstone behind a loose brick in the fireplace. She thought it would be white but it’s pale grey, the color of squirrel fur, of the sky before a storm.
    “Swallow it,” Yuri commands.
    Why not? She’s hungry enough to eat snow. Tilting her head back, she sucks down the gem and waits for the world to change.
    “I have a friend who’s an artist,” the English teacher tells her. “If you write the words, she can draw pictures to accompany them.”
    “Thank you so kind,” Sofiy says politely. “It’s not that kind of book.”

    Or there is no castle. No bird. Only snow falling steadily on Kateryna as she trudges through the woods. What is it like to be lost in the snow? Knowing they won’t find your body until spring, as it decomposes silently, bone on bone. Knowing is the worst part. Thoughts careening through your brain like a bullet, leaving an ugly, permanent scar.

    The advertisement is brief:
    Cleaning girl wanted. Full time.
    Must be neat, clean, reliable, customer oriented.
    We look forward to having you join our team!
    They pay $11 an hour and Sofiy really wants this job. Maks has his head buried in an engineering book borrowed from the library, trying to sound out words on the page. When she kisses the top of his head, he barely looks up.
    She has mapped out the route. Two buses, then a 10-minute walk.
    On the first bus, she mulls over endings. Hopeful or terrible. Fantastic or realistic. Endings are always the hardest part. Although she should be good at them by now. Her old life folded in a shroud, buried in a place she will never see again. I am on the bus, she tells herself. On the bus. On the bus. It lurches towards the curb, grinds to a stop.
    “Flat tire,” the driver announces. “Everybody out.”
    She files off the bus with the poor and the elderly. These are not the ones getting suntans or driving SUVs. The next bus isn’t coming for half an hour. She’ll be late for the interview, for a job she was never going to get.
    The neighborhood she finds herself in is seedy. There’s a betting parlor. A pawn shop. A shuttered electronics store. All the buildings are marred by graffiti.
    Sofiy takes out her phone and starts walking east. She’s heard there’s an ocean nearby but hasn’t seen it yet. That’s what she wants right now, a glimpse of the sea.

    “What if we are both dead and we’re too dumb to know it?” Kateryna says.
    “Stop being so gloomy,” counters Yuri. “We’re here. Together.”
    “It would be nice if we had some bread.”
    The wind has picked up, blowing snowflakes into her eyes. Icicles cling to her lashes.
    “Let’s stop and rest,” Kateryna says wearily.
    “Ach, divchynka. We must keep going. What choice do we have?”
    “Will it ever stop snowing?”
    “Climb on my back,” says Yuri. “Flying is faster.”
    She settles herself between his wings, feels his silky black feathers tickle her nose. The feathers are warm, like nestling in a down comforter and she reminds herself to stay awake as they soar higher and higher toward the clouds.

    When she got home from the river that day, her apartment building had been sheared in half. She could see people’s furniture, like looking into a doll house. Here pieces of a refrigerator, there a child size bed. Everything covered in fine grey powder. The window where she used to wave to her parents as she headed for the bus stop was gone. All the windows in the apartment – gone. She dug through the rubble until her hands bled, until her tears finally dried up. The dust made it hard to breathe. Other people joined her, digging with shovels, straining to lift chunks of concrete. A futile task. Beneath the rubble there was only more dust.

    The beach turns out to be a spit of sand, lined with sad looking palm trees. Sofiy takes off her shoes. She has never seen the Atlantic Ocean before. It’s bigger than she expected, reaching to the edge of the sky. She remembers a fairy tale her mother told her about the land beyond that point. Beyond time or memory. Beyond wishes. Sunlight bounces off the water. She wades in and stares at where the ocean disappears, knowing something lies beyond it, not knowing what, until sea and sky fuse into a distant wall of blue.

Beth Sherman has an MFA in creative writing from Queens College, where she teaches in the English department. Her stories have been published in Portland Review, Black Fox Literary Magazine, Blue Lyra Review, Sandy River Review, 100 Word Story, Fictive Dreams, Flash Boulevard, Sou’wester and elsewhere. She is also a Pushcart Prize, Best Small Fictions and multiple Best of the Net nominee, including a 2023 BOTN nomination for flash fiction.