Rating:

Mature

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandom:

Heated Rivalry (TV)

Relationship:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov, Original Characters, Alexei Rozanov's Daughter, Svetlana Vetrova, Sasha | Ilya Rozanov's Coach's Son

Additional Tags:

Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Shapeshifting, Magic, Curses, Cursed into the Form of a Dog, Curse Breaking, Missing Persons, Urban Legends, Shane Hollander is Retired from Hockey, Shane Hollander Writes Hockey Biographies, Ilya Rozanov is a Menace, Investigative Journalism, Ilya Rozanov Haunts the Narrative, shane's narrative specifically, suicidal ideation/attempt, Happily Ever After, ilya disappeared off the face of the planet after the draft and shane took that personally, befriending the weird feral dog that keeps hanging around your rental, accidental pet acquisition, that turns into accidental boyfriend acquisition, shane investigates ilya's fifteen year cold missing persons case and falls in love with him all over again, Discussions of Suicide

Language:

English

Stats:

Published: 2026-04-21 Completed: 2026-07-02 Words: 60,993 Chapters: 11/11

Don't Feed Me (I will come back)

Summary

It’s the most famous cold case in hockey history. Up-and-coming Russian phenom Ilya Rozanov mysteriously vanishes the summer before his rookie season. Despite extensive police work, no trace of the young superstar is ever found.

Shane Hollander remembers Ilya Rozanov. Better than most. And now, several years retired and with two highly successful hockey biographies under his belt, he’s taking a crack at the mystery that’s haunted his own career with strings of what-ifs and memories revisited so often they’ve softened like old cotton.

Perhaps now, with the long eye of perspective between him and those memories, he can unravel the short lifetime of the man poised to become his biggest rival and best kept secret. Travelling to Russia he searches for stories and the answers they hold.

If only this damn dog that’s apparently a local cryptid would stop raiding his trash cans.

 
It has wandered this place for years. It knows every stream, every hill, every tree. Every pale, flat face in the place of straight lines. It does not know this face.

But it remembers dark eyes and star-dots across the cheeks.
It cannot remember its own name.

But it remembers him.

Notes

This fic is brought to you by the fact that “It Will Come Back” by Hozier fucking slaps.

Chapter 1: The Lake

Chapter Notes

See end note for minor spoilers since I had to shuffle some events around to make this timeline work.

APRIL 2026

The cottage sat tidy against the slope. A gravel driveway leading to a wide front porch, a stretch of well-maintained lawn running smooth and green up to a dense treeline of birch, pine, and spruce; its lower reaches just beginning to fill in with the wisps of brambles and ferns that would become a near-impassable tangle once summer truly descended. Behind it, the lake glittered in the mid-afternoon light, current lapping against a gentle shoreline.

The cottage itself was smaller than Shane was used to. Of simpler, humbler construction; bricks and siding in place of wood and windows. He supposed he shouldn’t be calling it a cottage. Around these parts, such a building was known as a dacha. Summer home. And his new landlady was expecting him.

Her place was a few hundred meters down the shore, technically within eyeshot but obscured partially by a thin copse of trees. A simple dirt walking track peeled off from the driveway in that direction, linking the two properties.

Shane exited his rental car — a simple black sedan, completely unremarkable but comfortable to drive — and rolled his left shoulder. It clicked ominously a few times, but eventually the tired muscles released a fraction. An intercontinental flight and hour-long drive from Sheremetyevo Airport to the tiny town of Ozerovsk had not been kind on the stripped-down joint. He’d need to heat and stretch it before bed or he’d wake up tomorrow morning completely locked up.

As he retrieved his suitcase and computer bag from the trunk, the sound of footsteps drifted in off the breeze. “Is that you, Shane Hollander?”

“Olga Svechnikova?” he replied, extending his free hand.

She was a short woman in her mid-fifties, solid and sun-tanned in a way that spoke of hard work and long hours. Hair long gone iron-gray but still thick in its tidy braid. Dressed practically in heavy denim and a knitted sweater. She shook his hand firmly.

“Nice to meet you.” Russian was still a little thick in Shane’s mouth, despite how much he’d been speaking it the past seventeen hours.

But apparently still understandable as Olga said, “You as well. What do you think?” She gestured to the property.

“It’s lovely,” he answered honestly. “Reminds me a lot of my own back in Canada.”

Without asking, Olga grabbed his remaining duffle bag and started walking towards the porch. “I will help you get settled. Show you all the little quirks. She is an older building but she has good bones.”

The interior was the same at the outside: solid, if slightly dated. A short entryway that spilled into a living room, dining area and kitchen off to the right and a hallway leading to two bedrooms and a bathroom on the left. There were more windows on the east wall, showing off the back garden and lake beyond. The main bedroom was standard, so Shane dropped his suitcase there. The computer bag he carried into the second, where a twin bed gave ground for a large L-shaped desk on the corner facing the forest. Plenty of room for all of his equipment.

Olga took him through the kitchen, pointing out where he could find utensils and the kettle and the various pots and pans, how to turn on the gas and light the stove. She’d been kind enough to stock the fridge and pantry with a few basics so he wouldn’t have to venture into town until tomorrow if he didn’t want to. Shane's mouth nearly opened to point out that she should take the loaf of dark rye back with her, before he remembered he’d been off that performance diet for years now. Old habits, still dying hard.

As if reading his mind, Olga asked, “So what business does a retired Canadian hockey player have in our little town? If you don’t mind my asking.”

“Oh, you’ve heard of me?” Shane asked. He hadn’t disclosed his former profession during rental negotiations.

“Are you famous?” Olga asked, as if she wasn’t talking to the most well-known NHL centre of the 21st century.

He blinked a few times. Olga took pity on him and clarified, “I know you play hockey from how you walk. And that you are done from how you move your shoulder. This is Russia, Shane Hollander. We may not all care about North American leagues, but we know hockey. So, what brings you here?” she re-stated the question like she already suspected the answer.

No point in lying to her. “Rozanov.”

Ilya Rozanov. The most famous cold case in hockey history. Up-and-coming Russian phenom, International Prospect Cup champion and first overall pick in the 2009 MLH draft, poised to take the hockey world by storm with his powerful skating and exceptional skill. Until he vanished in February of 2010, just weeks after losing a second IPC gold medal to Team Canada. Shane’s Team Canada. An extensive police investigation led nowhere, and the disappearance faded into the annals of hockey lore.

Shane Hollander remembers Ilya Rozanov. The one player who could equal him on the ice. The endless hours of foreign game tape, the handful of in-person interactions Shane’s memory had revisited so many times they’d softened at the edges like an old cotton shirt. IPC 2008, outside of that rink in Regina. You will not be so nice when we beat you. That's not gonna happen. The gut-wrenching disappointment of the draft, and a different type of stomach feeling in the hotel gym afterwards. Boston is nice, too? We will be seeing each other a lot. IPC 2009, those Finals promotional shots that kept them on on the ice while their teams vacated from practice. The empty showers. I might open. I might knock. Hotel room 1410. You make me curious. Do I make you curious?

And then he was gone. The man who was supposed to race Shane to the top, his biggest rival, his most guarded secret. Vanished without a trace.

Shane’s career went on. He led Montreal out of the depths of mediocrity and fashioned them into a dynasty. Three Cups, another dozen playoff appearances. Pushing his body to the brink and beyond until his damn shoulder finally called it quits on his behalf. The first time his labrum tore, he was able to rehab it. Only miss about half the season, recovered in time for playoffs. Then it tore again. And then a third time and that third time made it clear that a fourth would result in consequences not even hockey could balance against. And so, two years ago, Shane retired. They gave him a hero’s sendoff and hung his number from the rafters.

Those first six months were Hell. Without the rhythm of routine, faced with so much time on his hands and nothing to fill it with, Shane started to go a little crazy. Not even his cottage felt like an escape when the trap was inside his own head. Going to games was too much. Too many people asking when he was going to start coaching or join a network. And he’d been offered. More than once. But coaching was too close to playing and he actually hated being on camera. So Shane just… drifted.

He’ll never be able to thank Christian Prior enough. A former teammate, and perhaps the best goaltender to ever wear Metros blue. His presence in the crease had bailed them out of many a close game; the kind of goalie that inspired the skaters in front of him to live up to his heroics. Highly decorated by the team and the league, and, as Shane would find out, highly pressured. His retirement was sudden. Around four years before Shane’s own. Alongside the disclosure that he was entering addiction rehab. They’d reconnected after Shane walked away from the ice. One of the few people on Earth who understood what it felt like for your body to surrender before your mind was ready to let go.

It took so much strength, not only to admit an illness but to recover so publicly. The kind of story authors wrote biographies about. Usually poorly, without an in-depth understanding of the ice as your home but the arena your jailor. So, in a fit of desperate inspiration… Shane learned how to write biographies. Mind in the Crease was an instant bestseller, at first because of the names attached to its publication, but then because Shane Hollander was a genuinely good hockey biographer. So good he was approached by none other than Scott Hunter with a proposal to tell the official story of MLH’s first openly gay player. Facing Off had released seven months ago.

Writing that particular manuscript had been just as revelatory for Shane. Pushed him to come out, too. Simply — just a social media statement and a donation to the Trevor Project — but publicly. It felt disingenuous, to write Scott’s story without being honest about his own authorial context. It didn’t cause the same kind of stir it would have, had he done it as an active player, but it had freed a part of him all the same.

All throughout the press tour, when they weren’t pressing for details about his gayness, people asked when he was going to write his own story. Shane gave them any number of reasons. Made jokes that his own story was way too boring. Dime-a-dozen generational talent. But the real reason was… Shane didn’t feel ready. Every time he thought about it, he felt like there was something missing.

Rozanov. It was supposed to be Hollander and Rozanov at the top; a rivalry for the ages. A potentiality forever unfilled. Strangled in the cradle. His career had always been haunted by the what-if of Rozanov’s ghost. And beyond that, Shane felt like he owed something to Rozanov. For being the one who got to live the dream. And for … well, if it hadn’t been for Rozanov and the memories of that hotel room, Shane might still be trying to convince himself he liked his best friend Rose Landry as anything more than a best friend.

Maybe by being here, by unspooling the life of the man who could have been, Shane could weave those loose threads into his own tapestry. Complete the picture. Find the design through the noise of colors.

“Many have tried,” Olga said, voice growing flinty. “Outsiders bothering us for years, trying to find information that is not there.”

“I’m not trying to solve anything,” Shane clarified. And he wasn’t. This book would certainly be a challenge of his investigative abilities, but Shane’s ego wasn’t big enough to believe he could crack the case. “I met him a few times. At the International Prospects Cup, and the Draft. He was… I just want to tell his story. Best as I can find it.”

“And you learned Russian for this purpose?”

Shane tamped down a blush threatening to spread up his neck. He’d been studying Russian for a long time, and it had started after Rozanov’s disappearance. Information was slow to cross the Atlantic, and Shane operated under the incredibly ridiculous logic that local information would be more thorough and that if he could read it he’d...know? Something. His Russian didn’t improve quickly enough to understand any of the news coverage in a timely manner. However, the impulse had reminded him how fun it was to learn new languages after mastering French through high school. So he stuck with it and picked up Japanese, Spanish, and ASL alongside.

“Languages are a hobby of mine,” he answered. “And I have a remote interpreter as a backup. I’ll be making a few trips into Moscow to interview some of his associates there. But I wanted to base myself in Ozerovsk to learn about his mother and the summers they spent up here.” He spoke quickly, struck by a need to prove himself to this woman. To show he was serious and not another exploitative outsider on the hunt for easy notoriety.

Olga continued to regard him coolly, before her expression softened just a hair. “If you want to know about Irina,” she began, “You should speak to Yakov Sytsevich. He was her best friend before she moved. I will tell him you are interested. Then go to the church and ask for Father Andrei.”

Shane couldn’t help but feel like he’d passed some sort of test. “Thank you.”

“Make sure you lock the doors at night,” she said. “The forest is close by, and sometimes wild animals try to get inside. I have left the house keys on the table by the front door, and my phone number. Please call if you need anything. I am close by most days. If you see my mother outside, make sure to tell her hello or she will become upset with you. Do you have any questions?”

Shane answered in the negative, and Olga departed as quickly as she arrived. Leaving him to unpack his bags and send a few emails. Simple things, letting his mother and his agent know he’d arrived safely. Giving his interpreter a rough timeline of when her services would be required. Rejecting an interview request from ESPN to talk about his books. (Because they’re just going to keep circling back to his queerness and his playing days in a way that has little to do with the actual work and he’s already answered those questions for much more progressive outlets.)

By the time he got all that done and prepared a simple dinner out of the ingredients Olga left for him, the sun was going down and the jetlag was starting to set in. Another one of those things that got harder and harder to deal with as he got older. But Shane forced himself to stretch his shoulder and apply a heat pack before slipping into a fitful sleep.

Shane awoke before the sun in a manner that had nothing to do with routine. Still exhausted from travel and timezones, he wrote off the morning as a wash for anything other than sucking down coffee and watching a few episodes of Rose’s latest K-Drama obsession. Something about true love breaking an age-old curse. Boilerplate Joseon-inspired stuff; ripe for miscommunication tropes and class-based posturing. But the leads were charming enough and the side characters entertaining.

By the second cup of coffee, he was feeling somewhat more human. His phone chimed from its place on the side table.

Olga: I have spoken to Yakov. You can stop by the secondary school in Vysokovsk tomorrow after the students let out at 3pm. He will meet you outside.

Shane: Thank you, I really appreciate it.

With something to look forward to, Shane found the motivation to start taking care of the mundanities of the job. Mapping his route to the school, checking his interview equipment. Then a quick trip to the grocer, where the clerks gave him their usual tourist-town charm but with an edge of surprise over having to use it so early in the spring.

Ozerovsk was one of many hamlets backed up against Zavidovo National Park; 1300 square kilometers of birch forests fragmented by meadows, wetlands, and small lakes. Back in the Soviet era it was a game reserve for Party officials, but these days it was a major recreation destination for city slickers from Moscow and Tver. Shane had scheduled his trip just ahead of the summer boom.

After a late lunch, the sound of the breeze rustling through the trees was too entrancing to pass up. Olga had left him a map of the nearby hiking routes, so he picked a trailhead within walking distance and geared up. Entering the forest felt like stepping into a different world. The sounds of civilization — cars on the road, the faint banging of distant construction — fell away into the crackling of branches and the twitter of bird song. The air felt heavy with an unseen weight. And though the trail he walked was recently maintained, the sheer age of the land beneath his feet trickled up into his calves.

It didn’t take long for Shane to feel… observed. Though, that wasn’t a surprise. A forest this storied had its own sort of presence, an identity born of its collective inhabitants. Memories and feelings given a rough shape; an essence of loam and water, rock and root, fang and feather, the shedding and regrowing of leaves and antlers. Breathing in a slow, endless cycle of freeze and thaw and freeze and thaw.

Shane’s felt this sort of thing before, in every arena he’d ever played in. It didn’t scare him. But it did make him notice the noticing. Just in case, he took a pull from his water bottle, then squirted a little onto a moss-covered stone. In the rink, this was something players did to connect with the ice. A little spit frozen into the fabric of the game, to strengthen a tie to their home arena or propitiate an opponent’s. Here it was sign of gratitude, a promise his presence was gentle. The weight didn’t lift, but it changed texture. Grew a little softer. He pushed on. The trail was supposed to loop him around a hill and then down towards the opposite side lake, and he was determined to catch the vista.

He hiked another half hour through the woods, the trail mostly gentle but with a few boulders and rises to challenge his legs. As he walked, Shane thought about his upcoming interviews. He’d managed to secure four participants in Moscow, now six counting Yakov Sytsevich and Father Andrei. Less than he would’ve preferred, but finding any information on Rozanov outside of his player statistics and media appearances was surprisingly difficult. Hopefully his interviewees would be forthcoming and open new avenues of investigation.

This book would require a different approach to his two previous. With Christian and Scott, he’d had direct access to the subject. Able to glean their direct perspectives, run ideas by them for accuracy. With Rozanov, Shane would have to rely on secondhand accounts and piece the story together from its disparate fragments. A challenge, and a responsibility.

Sometimes he thought he was being arrogant, believing he could do the man justice. But then he would think of that hotel room. The pen in his hands, the laugh in Rozanov’s mouth when he signed his number “Jane.” Maybe someone else in his history had access to that Rozanov. But they weren’t in the hockey world, and the hockey world didn’t know that Rozanov. So the thought of anyone else doing it, and doing it undoubtedly worse, kept Shane going even as bureaucracy and distance both physical and temporal compounded the challenge.

He wandered out of his reverie when the trees began to thin, patchwork of blue sky behind their branches and fresh leaves. But just as he spotted the glimmer of water on the other side, a different sort of watchfulness prickled the back of his neck.

Shane froze. He couldn’t hear the sound of anything moving. Perhaps wouldn’t have registered the feeling at all, if it wasn’t a dead ringer for his long-honed sense of opposing players approaching from his blind spots. He checked both sides on instinct, but saw nothing but woods.

Probably just his imagination.

Just the latent anxiety that accompanied his purpose here. The weight across his shoulders from a place that had no reason to reject him but no reason to accept him either. The unconscious tension of the outsider. Shane took a deep breath, shook off the feeling, and kept walking.

It has wandered this place for years. It knows every stream, every hill, every tree. Every pale, flat face in the place of straight lines. It does not know this face. He walks through the woods, treads heavy and obvious, sending prey to ground and birds to higher branches. An outsider. But he is gentle to the forest. Breaks no branches, stays on his flattened track, gives water to the ground.

It watches from a distance, following him by his sounds and his scent. Spicy like fallen leaves but with something cold riding along. Like the freeze of winter but…sharper. It does not recognize this smell, but… does it remember?

It chances getting closer, stalking silent through the thin underbrush. He freezes. Swings his head left to right. He has not spotted it. It does not wish to be spotted, yet. But it sees. Dark eyes, golden skin, dark patterns like stars across the nose.

Much of its mind is occupied with survival. Where to hunt, where to sleep, where to find water. It does not think much of anything else. Turns away from the dim, confusing swirl that lingers in the depths of itself. Feelings and visions that no longer make sense.

But it remembers him.

Chapter End Notes

You did read that bit right, I did fuck around with canon a little. In this timeline, Ilya disappears before officially signing with Boston so the CCM shoot doesn’t happen. But I felt it was important they had one sexual encounter before then, soooooooo IPC 2009 pulls double duty.

Also, as a Habs fan with an AO3 account, I get to live in a world where Carey Price had the caliber of skaters in front of him he deserved.

Chapter 2: Scraps

Chapter Notes

OOF is trying to communicate character through nothing but Q&A dialogue a fun challenge.

THE NEXT DAY

The school was only a fifteen-minute drive from the rental, but it felt farther. The whispering shade of the forest falling away in favor of traffic lights and telephone poles. Buildings not tucked quietly against the treeline but thrusting straight and square from flattened earth. Shane arrived fifteen minutes early, just in time to watch a stream of navy-clad high schoolers exit, group up, and disappear into buses or down the sidewalks.

When the lot cleared, Shane made himself visible by getting out of his car and unloading his equipment bag from the backseat. As with Olga, Yakov did him the favor of coming to him. He was a tall man, light gray hair still clinging to some strands of blond and laugh lines around his eyes and mouth. Late fifties, presumably fifty-eight. The same age Irina Rozanova would be.

Her obituary was dated August 15th, 2002. No specific cause of death. She was only thirty-four years old. Ilya was twelve.

Shane introduced himself, shook Yakov’s hand with his left because his right was occupied. He’d learned better than to try and put the weight of his interview gear on his bad shoulder, social niceties be damned. If Yakov noticed or cared, he didn’t show it.

“Olga tells me you are writing a book?” he began as they walked through the parking lot.

“Yes, I’m a biographer specializing in hockey players,” Shane answered. “Rozanov is my third subject. Thank you, in advance, for speaking with me. I know you’ve had a lot of people asking questions.”

When they reached the main entrance, Yakov opened the door and held it for Shane. “You wanted to know about Irina,” he said in something that must be a trademark teacher tone. The kind that encouraged its recipient to think very hard about the meaning behind the words, the conclusions they were encouraged to draw.

The conclusion Shane drew was that not many people asked about Irina Rozanova. He wondered why that was.

The inside was that of any given school. Some things, it seemed, were truly universal. Tile floors, white-painted walls covered in cork boards advertising extracurriculars and upcoming standardized testing dates. Fluorescent overheads Shane wished he couldn’t hear the constant buzzing of. A tang in the air; the echoes of teenage experience soaked into the very bones of the place like stink on a gym bag. So deep in you’d have to burn the whole thing to get rid of the smell.

This wasn’t the kind of place you gave water. Shane knew that, even if he didn’t have any idea what the hell to do instead. This place felt… hungry.

“Takes you back?” Yakov asked.

“Oh, I actually didn’t attend high school. Too busy with hockey. Did it all online,” Shane answered. His formative experiences had taken place in locker rooms and Greyhound buses instead of hallways and cafeterias. Rozanov would’ve gone through the same. It was almost comical, thinking about him as the star of some high-school drama. They both had too much destiny riding on their backs for something that simple.

“Yes, Olga told me you were big-shot MLH star. I looked you up. Very impressive. Nearly as good as Ovcharkin.”

Shane chuckled. “I don’t miss blocking his slap shots, I’ll tell you that much.”

“He is still playing?”

“I think they’ll have to wheel him off the ice in a chair.”

Shane thought they’d have to do that to him, too, once upon a time. Turns out, he’d exit on his own skates. He rolled his shoulder. It popped.

They reached Yakov’s classroom, and the hunger dissipated instantly. The old teacher held the door for Shane to enter. The overhead lights were turned off in favor of a combination of natural light and lamps scattered through the corners. Whiteboards covered in calendars and carefully marked due dates. A massive bookshelf along the back wall, a few potted plants in the corners and on shelves. Curious, Shane chanced a glance at the mantle over the door. A thorny branch rested under painted blue letters: “It’s life that matters, nothing but life – the process of discovering, the everlasting and perpetual process, not the discovery itself, at all.”

“Dostoyevsky,” Yakov answered to the question Shane didn’t ask.

Shane took a deep breath. “If you’ll just give me a few minutes to set up.”

He had to push a few desks together to create enough space, but Shane’s interview setup was a rather sophisticated system. While his Russian was good for most conversations, he was far from fluent. To create an accurate record and ensure understanding, he needed some outside help.

That’s where Cheryl came in. On top of being a skilled Russian-English interpreter, she was trained in voice writing and transcript preparation. It took two microphones, a couple expensive downloads, a laptop with more RAM than he’d ever thought to need, and a really good VPN to pull off, but it would be worth it.

While Shane and his interviewee conversed in Russian, Cheryl translated into a stenomask, which then ran through computer-aided transcription software to provide Shane a realtime written English translation he could reference for clarifications. The software also allowed Shane to insert parentheticals describing any nonverbal communication. Cheryl was also on standby for any English-to-Russian translations needed. She then prepared fully cleaned-up English translation and verbatim Russian transcripts for later reference and record-keeping, though he had immediate access to a rough cut if needed.

Shane made sure Yakov was comfortable, and appraised him of how the information he was volunteering could be used. Once consent was obtained, the software running, microphones set up, and Cheryl ready to go, Shane began.

INTERVIEW CONDUCTED BY SHANE HOLLANDER.

DATE: 15 April 2026

NAME: Yakov Alexandrovich Sytsevich

AGE: 58

BIRTHPLACE: Ozerovsk, Moscow Oblast, Russia

RELATION TO SUBJECT: Family Friend

With full understanding and consent to speaking on the record, the above interviewee attested to the following:

Q: How did you know the Rozanovs?

A: Irina — she was Irina Volkova back then — was my best friend in childhood. And I knew her children Alexei and Ilya from when they would come visit their grandparents during the summers.

Q: Did you ever meet her husband? Grigori Rozanov?

A: No. He did not come to the village with them.

Q: Would you say you were close with Irina?

A: Very, until she moved to Moscow. Still after, but we did not talk as frequently.

Q: Let’s start at the beginning, then. How did you meet Irina?

A: I honestly don’t remember. Our parents were friends, so we played together from a very young age. The furthest I can go back in my memories, I already know her.

Q: What did her parents do?

A: Her father Davyd was a game warden for the reserve. Her mother Sofia was a seamstress. I don’t think either of us wore store-bought clothes until we started school. They were not from here, they moved for Davyd’s job. But they stayed.

Q: And what was she like, as a child?

A: What wasn’t she? (Laughs.) Always getting into trouble, and dragging me into it. Adults never believed me, when I told them it was all her idea. She could charm a dog off a bone, that girl. She was so smart, and funny, and quick-witted. Loved to draw. Always doodling on her papers in class. Teachers thought she wasn’t paying attention, but when they tried to catch her out she always knew the answer, and had her own analysis formulated on top. Her opinions on Chekhov were brilliant. Gogol less so. No sense for surrealism. The one time I tried to have her watch Waiting for Godot with me she fell asleep. But, that was her nature. She was grounded. And so beautiful. She wanted to become an architect, you know?

            SHANE: No, I didn’t.

Q: Did she?

A: She studied. Said the country deserved better than Soviet Brutalism. She always loved beautiful things. That’s why she moved to Moscow, to study. I tried to get into the same university, but my grades were not good enough. Went to school in St. Petersburg instead. She didn’t finish, though.

Q: Do you know why she didn’t finish?

A: She met and married her husband. And they had Alexei soon after. Very soon. She stopped for them.

Q: Were you still in contact at this time?

A: Letters, mostly. It wasn’t like today, with the cell phones and the email. But she still wrote me, and I wrote her.

Q: Did she tell you how she felt about dropping out?

A: She told me she was happy to be a mother. I knew she wanted kids, eventually. He was police. Party official. He made good money, their house was beautiful. I think she meant to go back, eventually.

(Note: Irina was 21 and Grigori 32 when Alexei was born.)

Q: You said she visited her parents with Alexei and Ilya during the summers. What did they do during that time?

A: They would stay with Irina’s parents, but I don’t think those boys did anything in the house but sleep and sometimes eat. They were boys, you know? Out having adventures in the streets and in the forest. Well, Alexei in the streets and Ilya in the forest.

Q: They didn’t get along?

A: They were brothers, so who’s to really say? Alexei was older, and made friends with some local boys his own age, or bigger. Always desperate to impress them. Always getting roped into stupid things. He did not have much time for Ilya.

Q: And what did Ilya do?

A: He went into the woods. He was like Irina, loving beautiful things. Always bringing back stones and leaves and flowers. Out there for hours doing God knows what, but always back before the sun went down.

Q: He didn’t have any local friends?

A: There were a few. But… how to say it? He was like his mother. Charming to many, mischievous to a fault, but serious. And I think it’s hard to become close with peers you only see for a few months. From what I saw as a teacher, they liked him, but he wasn’t one of them, if that makes sense.

Q: Did you ever interact with Ilya directly?

A: Oh, many times. He was terrible at literature classes, so Irina asked me to help him with summer assignments. He did not inherent her brilliance with playwrights, that is for sure. Always arguing with me about character motivations, calling them stupid for their stagnations. In less precise and polite language, mind you. Also in less formal contexts; dinners and such.

Q: You describe him as charming and mischievous. Is there a particular example that sticks out in your mind?

A: Let me think. (A long pause.) Oh, yes. This is a long story, so bear with me. These towns around the forest have many stray dogs. We try not to feed them so they don’t become nuisances, but we don’t try to get rid of them, either. The forest is their home, too.

One day, I caught a group of the older boys down the alley behind the grocery, throwing rocks and cans at one of these dogs, who cannot escape. Stupid boy things.

So I clear them away before this poor dog begins to believe the only way out is fighting its way through them, tell them how reckless and terrible their behavior is, call their parents to let them know. Some were punished. Many people here respect the forest. But some were not.

I heard about this many weeks later, after the school year started and the younger boys were laughing to themselves about it. Apparently, Ilya convinced them to sneak out after dark and visit the house of one of the group’s ringleader. They picked their night well, as he had a few friends sleeping over. All at once, they threw rocks and cans at his window and howled like a pack of wolves. The ringleader screamed like a little girl and began calling for his parents, begging them to keep the forest from taking him. They ran off before they could get caught.

Q: Did his parents…respect the forest?

A: No. Otherwise he would have known better than to believe it would do something like that. Revenge is a human concept.

Q: Do you know why Ilya did that?

A: Not for certain.

Q: Your best guess?

            YAKOV: You are too good a writer to trust secondhand motivations.

            SHANE: You read my work? When?

            YAKOV: Best I don’t answer that.

            SHANE: Sure, of course.

            (Note: make no mention of this colloquy in anything published.)

Q: How old was Ilya at the time of this event?

A: Just turned eleven.

Q: Was this kind of behavior common for him?

A: Before, sometimes. But not after. (A long pause.) I only saw them once more after that summer. They did not come back after…

Q: After?

A: 2002 was the last year they visited.

(Note: Irina Rozanova date of death: August 15th, 2002)

Q: Why?

            SHANE: Sorry, I know why, you don’t have to say it. I just…

Q: They stopped seeing their grandparents? Their father never brought them?

A: No.

Q: Do you know why?

A: No. I did not keep in contact after the funeral.

Q: We can… what was their favorite thing about visiting?

A: It seemed like all of it. He always hated leaving. He and her. Never sullen, per se. Just…quieter. Sharper. But she always went back. (A long pause.) Are you familiar with Sartre?

            SHANE: Uh, that’s the “Hell is other people,” guy, right?

            YAKOV: Close. A common misinterpretation. Sartre wasn’t trying to claim that being around others is  inherently like being in Hell. He was claiming that you can construct a Hell out of the right combination of other people. Their traits misaligned as to create constant friction. She thought Chekhov was very good at this, though he does it in a very Russian way. The setting for Hell is not literal, like Sartre. It’s constructed from traditions. Why does Yelena stay with Serebryakov, if not for conscience and convention?

Q: Do you believe Irina felt… trapped? By convention?

A: I think Irina wanted more than this town could give her. She was meant for bigger things. But I wonder if it would have worked out better for her, had she just stayed. Here were the people that truly knew her. The people who loved her. She could have been happy. Maybe she wouldn’t have…

Q: Wouldn’t have what?

            YAKOV: Do you have any more questions about Ilya?

            SHANE: I… not at this time. Thank you.

END TRANSCRIPT.

Shane packed up his equipment, shook Yakov’s hand, and left. The old teacher stayed sitting, eyes fixed unseeing on some distant point out the window.

That night, Shane lay in bed, fighting jetlag and turning Yakov’s words over in his head. He’d reviewed the dirty daily over dinner, but it would take a few days for Cheryl to prepare the official transcripts. Thank God she’d been there, or half of the teacher’s pointed ramblings about Sartre and Chekhov would’ve gone well over Shane’s head.

But now the night was stretching longer and quieter, and the day rattled around his brain in snatches of hazed-out memory that wouldn’t let him sleep but couldn’t wake him up either. Irina Rozanova, meant for bigger things but tied down by conscience. Desperate to go but sad to leave. Beauty and brutality. Like the forest, that sheltered its wild animals but felt no obligation to feed them. Stray dogs around town, hungry and restless and cornered.

The boy in the woods who felt the weight of its attention like an old friend. Charming and mischievous and wicked-smart, like a fox or a sly hound. It made Shane think of his own childhood summers in Lanaudiere, his own forest and lake and attention. Where the skates and the sticks didn’t fall away entirely but shuffled down a few ticks on the priority scale in favor of sneakers and paddles. Summers to him was the smell of charcoal, the awkward scratch of swim shoes, his mother’s voice greeting the walls of their cottage in formal, careful Japanese while his father just whispered a quiet “hey” to the pictures of his parents in the front entrance.

Irina’s parents outlived her. Did they keep her picture in their front entrance? If Ilya had ever come back, would he have greeted her? Or did he find her memory somewhere in Moscow? Ilya had an older brother. Did he keep a picture of his little—

A sound cut through the stillness of the dark. Soft, subtle, but it rent the oppressive quiet into before and after. Before, Shane was on the verge of fitful sleep. After, his veins felt like ice and his breathing lost its smoothness even as his head stayed fuzzy. A sound like thumps against old wood. Something was out there. Was someone on his porch?

He stayed still, ears straining in the dark. The sounds faded. Was he dreaming? Images of stray dogs in alleys mingled with the weight of the forest on his back…no, he was in bed. The sounds were gone. He was safe inside bricks and siding and charmingly dated appliances. Perhaps he had just imagined them…

The awful scrape of nails on wood snapped his eyes open.

For a split second, Shane believed he was that awful boy who threw rocks at hungry animals. That the forest was coming for him in the form of sharp green eyes that sparkled in dim hotel lighting and a wicked grin that felt like it wanted to swallow him whole. Then his brain caught up with his body and Olga’s warning to lock the doors at night sliced through the half-dream, its sheer practicality soothing away the sleepy terror lodged in the corners of his eyes.

Just a wild animal, trying to get inside. The doors were strong wood, and securely bolted. He was safe in here. It would lose interest eventually…

As sleep finally sank into his bones, Shane thought he heard another, more distant sound. But the grip of slumber had grown too strong and he fell into a dreamless sleep with no further thoughts of green.

It does not know why it came here. It only knows it cannot do anything else. The straight-line den tucked against the hillside, with the lake behind and the forest in front, strange paths of hard-packed stone rolling like gray tongues between places the tall creatures disappeared into and out of. It does not wander here often. Only when hunger claws its stomach so wretchedly it becomes worth braving the sting under its paws and the assault of strange smells on its nose.

It is hungry tonight. But not starving. The warming season has enticed much prey out into the gentle evening. It could hunt. It has come here instead. It can smell him on this place. Followed his scent back from where he stopped to watch the water. Autumn leaves and sharp-ice. Familiar and unremembered.

The den is dark, devoid of the tiny suns the tall creatures used to banish the stars. He is inside. It wants to find him again. Scent him, see the star-dots across his face. Stealing across the grass, it finds the terraced slope that leads up to the entrance. The walls are red-stone and wrong-smelling wood. Something distant stirs in its mind, beneath the want and the smells and the instinct. Places like these have ways inside. But they are often blocked by… this.

The wood here is different, its grains running up and down instead of side to side. Something that is not stone — squishy, with a long-weathered acrid scent — seals the gap between it and the surface below. It has seen tall creatures use these. They move away from the entrance, permitting passage when pushed by large paws.

Experimentally, it shoves its paw against the wood. The thing does not budge, and the force of its push sends its long claws scraping down the surface. It knows there is a way inside, like it knows the scent of water or the softness of a feather. But it cannot remember.

Stymied, it follows the walls of the den, but finds no other ways inside. Then, it catches a familiar scent. Food. It’s stomach growls. It is hungry, and there is food nearby. Following the smell, it terminates somewhere inside a cold structure, unnaturally smooth but not very big. It has dealt with these things before.

Rearing up on its hind legs, it uses its bulk to topple the smooth thing, spilling its contents onto the grass. There is not much foodstuff inside, but it noses away the other not-food refuse and fills its belly all the same. The straight-line den is still dark behind it. He is still inside.

It retreats back into the forest. There are no answers here tonight.

Chapter End Notes

Yakov totally thinks he’s Dr. Astrov. But seriously parts of Uncle Vanya are SUPER Rozanov family drama-coded. Also! Cheryl’s setup is inspired by real-life voicewriters and court reporters. Super cool profession, more people should know about it.

Chapter 3: Crossings

Chapter Notes

Heads up, these chapters are likely to just…steadily keep getting longer. Such is my curse.

THE NEXT DAY

When Shane stepped out onto the porch the next morning, he was greeted by a plastic bag rolling across his front lawn. Following its path in reverse, a deep sigh escaped his lips and the coffee mug in his hands was quickly set aside. His contents of his trash cans had been raided. Or, for a better word, massacred. Plastic and paper flung all over the yard, the remnants of his shopping expedition and cooking endeavours shredded and strewn in windblown arcs.

He grabbed a fresh garbage bag from inside and got to work, collecting the scattered shopping bags and cardboard packaging with resigned efficiency. Then, as he picked shreds of paper towel out of a bush on the treeline, the initial annoyance gave way to something else. Shane’s hands stilled. He looked past the first layer of underbrush, into the forest. The gaps between the trees yawned, shadows reaching long in the early light. He hadn’t dreamed it. Something had come out of there and tried get inside last night.

After righting the cans, he checked the front door. It was subtle; if he hadn’t been looking he wouldn’t have noticed. But it was there. A faint set of wide scratches across the bottom half. He fit the edge of a nail into the groove, tracing it across the wood. It whispered a phantom of the loud scrape that held him on the edge of fear and slumber, twisted memories recent and ancient into vague, impossible tapestries.

Better let Olga know. Shane didn’t want a repeat performance, if possible. Grabbing his cooled coffee, he walked down the narrow dirt track leading towards his landlady’s home. It was much the same as his; solid and steady, gently forelit by the sun just edging over the hill.

Someone was sitting on the front porch, gently rocking in a padded recliner. Olga had mentioned her mother. And warned him of the dangers of impoliteness. As he drew within earshot, Shane called out a greeting in his best pronunciation. The old woman stilled in her rhythm, eyes squinting against the brightness. Shane nearly reached the front steps before she seemed to really perceive him.

But she did, and a smile slowly crept across her weathered face. She had to be pushing eighty, posture stooped with age and hair curling wispy about her ears. “Ah, good morning. Olya told me we had a new tenant, but she did not tell me he was so strong and handsome!”

A hot blush crept up Shane neck. He’d grown used to unsolicited compliments when he was actively playing, but they’d petered off after his retirement. Seems he’s lost his tolerance. “You’re too kind, grandmother.”

“Bah!” she chuckled. “I may have been, if my daughter were not too proud for these village men or too smart to waste her time on city boys. You may call me Raisa Ivanova, young man.”

She extended her hand. He took it gently, more cradling than shaking it. “Shane Hollander,” he offered, trying to withdraw his hand but finding the old woman’s grip had tightened considerably.

“Let me see you, Shane Hollander.”

Suddenly nervous, but not wishing to cause any offense, Shane swallowed and crouched down a little, leaning forward so Raisa Ivanova (presumably) Svechnikova’s startlingly blue eyes could search his features, intense in a way Shane only associated with the most do-or-die of playoff matches. They flitted around for several moments longer than comfortable before she smiled. Shane felt a strange sense of relief.

“Oh yes, very handsome.”

The front door opened. Raisa Ivanova released his hand.

“Mama?” Olga asked, “Who are you— oh, Shane. Good morning. Did you need something?”

He noted the frilly pink apron tied around her flannel shirt and work jeans combo, and decided it was most prudent not to comment on it. Instead he said, “Yes, uh, you warned me about animals from the forest trying to get inside? Seems like one of them raided the trash cans last night.”

Olga let out a sigh. “I’m sorry about that. It doesn’t happen often but now that winter is done the forest is more active. I will get you some locks for the lids.”

She disappeared back inside, leaving Shane with the old woman once again. The silence of the morning was oppressive.

“Have you… lived here long?” Shane asked.

Raisa Ivanova laughed, bigger than her tiny frame would suggest. “Word of advice, dear Shanya,” she said, diminutizing his name like it was native, “If you want to flatter a woman, don’t point out her age.”

“As if you could be a day over forty,” Shane replied, put at ease by her mirthful manner.

She laughed again, then turned serious. “I have lived here long enough to see many come and go. But not many hockey players.”

Surely Olga must’ve told her. Or maybe she shared her daughter’s perceptive abilities. Shane went to ask, but Raisa Ivanova beat him to it.

“Your hands still smell of rink ice.”

Oh, okay. She had been told, and was just messing with him. But she was accurate. Arena ice had a specific smell that clung to your clothes, one you wouldn’t find in a natural source like the St. Lawrence or Rideau Canal. A faint diesel-and-freon tinge from the artificial cold. But he nor any of his clothes had been on the ice for the past week. Not since his little cousin’s last U15 game.

Shane was spared the niceties of laughing by the reappearance of Olga. “Apologies again for the trouble, just hook these over the lid and that should keep everything inside.” She handed him two sturdy elastic straps with pitchfork-like hooks on either end.

“Thank you,” Shane said, accepting the items. His right shoulder twinged. The price he paid for laboring on it without stretching first. “And no need to apologize. You did warn me.”

“Yes, I’ve had to chase off the foxes more than once.”

Whatever scratched as his door last night seemed a lot bigger than a fox. But Shane decided to keep that fact to himself.

“Oh, by the way,” Olga said. “I spoke to Father Andrei. You’re expected at the church for 4 o’clock. I would not recommend being late.” Then to Raisa Ivanova, “Mama, your breakfast is ready.”

“She is trying to starve me on mannaya kasha,” the old woman said conspiratorily, but made to rise. Shane offered her a hand, careful to use his left.

“If you’d kept more of your teeth, perhaps I could make you something heartier,” Olga replied, tone flat but eyes sparkling.

“Bah!” Raisa Ivanova found her feet and shuffled into the house without further assistance. Shane watched her until she disappeared into the shadows of the interior. What an interesting woman. He wondered what she was looking for. Or perhaps more accurately, what she’d found.

“Four o’clock,” Olga repeated.

“Thank you,” Shane said automatically. In reality, he was a little put out by his lack of say in regards to his interview times. He would have preferred a day or two to update his reference materials with Yakov’s completed transcript. Being able to negotiate his own schedule was one of the perks of retirement, thank you very much. But he knew better than to be impolite about it. Olga had already gone above and beyond, liaising with her fellow locals on his behalf. He should get her flowers, or something.

Well, Shane had about nine hours of his own time to spare. Best use it wisely. First thing he did was contact Cheryl, who was far too nice considering the late (literally, for her timezone) notice. Then he got in a light workout, working his shoulder through its bevy of PT exercises before a series of total-body calisthenics. They never quite hit right, and Shane always felt a little restless afterwards. He missed lifting heavy, feeling his entire body burn with effort, but the strain was too much of a risk.

Shane channeled that restless energy into his work, making do with the dirty daily to compare Yakov’s testimony to what publicly-available information he could glean on Rozanov’s life. What he had was terribly dry. His birthday, and the newspaper announcement that came with it. The church he was baptised in, and when. Which schools he attended but not his grades. The names, rosters, and season records of his youth hockey teams. His draft profile. Old, grainy game tape from a DVD Shane had kept for fifteen years. Clips from IPC interviews, a collection of glossy, action-shot photographs.

They told a seemingly simple story. Boy grows up, plays hockey, gets good, gets drafted. Becomes rich and famous and retires with 2.4 kids and a dog. It should have been simple. But it wasn’t.

Yakov’s words were closer to the truth of Shane’s memories. Charming. Mischievous. Serious. Good at reading people but bad at understanding them. A leader, but a lonely one. Marred by loss but motivated by the world he stood to gain. A demon on the ice and a devil in the—

But they raised questions, also. Shane always assumed both parents were involved in these summer trips, but Grigori never participated. Was it his job? Or something else?

Getting information on Irina was difficult due to lack of documentation. Between her marriage and death certificates, there was very little written down. Getting information on Grigori was the opposite problem. Plenty of public records about his police career and Party activities. Commendations, medals, promotions. Appearances in newspapers next to high-level ministers. But though Shane had reached out to many of the old soldier’s former colleagues, none had deigned to respond to him. At least with Irina, the people of Ozerovsk seemed willing to speak her name.

Yakov didn’t say it outright, but he seemed discomfited talking about Irina’s marrying. 32 and 21. City man and country girl, met quick and married quicker, two kids and a house in the suburbs.

Kids. Duh. Shane couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought to compare the dates sooner. Pulling up his timeline, his suspicions were confirmed. Married August 28th, 1988. Alexei Rozanov born February 18th, 1989. Seven months.

Of course, Alexei could have been premature, but it was far more likely an unplanned pregnancy had led to a shotgun wedding, and Irina’s exit from university studies. Shane made a note on the file. He wouldn’t publish this information while it was just speculation, but it was a possibility. Another tiny puzzle piece in Ilya’s family history.

He spent the remainder of his time tracking down Irina’s enrollment records for due diligence, packed his gear, then drove out to the church. Once again, Shane arrived fifteen minutes early. The towering building was only five minutes down the road from the school, with a bright paint job that was a little faded but obviously newer than the building itself. A classical kind of construction with vertical arches topped by bulbous domes and gilded crosses. The sign out front named it … oh damn those were some deeply liturgical words Shane had no hope of parsing. Best he could get was “church” and “the most holy.” He snapped a picture and sent it to Cheryl.

Nobody was waiting outside for him this time. The interior of the church was a long, open rectangle with no pews in the center but a small collection of high wooden chairs lining the edges. The walls were absolutely covered in artwork; biblical scenes Shane had little context to interpret, but rendered beautifully in saturations of color. The back wall of the room was the most ornate, icons framed by pillars of gold, three doors separating it from whatever lay behind.

It was hard not to feel a compactness of time in a place like this. Churches all held a roughly similar vibe to Shane. One that spoke not just its own story but the inherited weight of thousands of years of tradition and joy and heartbreak; its architecture deliberately evoking that shared history. It was as awe-inspiring as it was claustrophobic.

Did Irina think this place was beautiful? Was this the kind of thing she wanted to build? He tried to picture her here, with a young Alexei and Ilya to either side, voices crying words made powerful maybe not solely by content but by sheer repetition. He could see it in the general sense. The details refused to sketch themselves in. What color veil? Did she make her boys wear dress shoes or were sneakers allowed? Did she hold their hands? Were their faces rapturous or apathetic? The face he placed on Ilya kept aging against his will, not a boy like he was but the young man in the rink, gaze lax until it wasn’t. Shane walked through the spot he imagined them standing. The picture disintegrated, having never properly come into form.

Shane’s footsteps echoed loudly through the empty building. When he stopped, another set continued.

“Not what you are used to, I presume?” Shane whirled around to find a tall bearded man dressed in a black cassock, stiff cap, and a large golden cross dangling across his chest standing by the entrance. Ilya wore a golden cross. Is this where he got it?

“Father Andrei?” Shane asked. The priest nodded, brown eyes sharp despite the age on his face. “No, it’s not,” he answered. “My family isn’t religious. I hope you won’t hold that against me.”

“One’s journey is their own,” the priest said. “Please, let me show you to my office.”

Shane followed Father Andrei out of the church proper, down a covered walkway to a much simpler annex building. His office was spare, in contrast to the opulence that defined their previous location. He fit better here, somehow. The sooty black of his clothing blending into the plain walls instead of falling sharp against color.

“Can I offer you some tea?” Father Andrei asked, gesturing to an electric kettle on the shelf opposite a large desk.

Shane declined. Caffeine this late would keep him up for hours, and his sleep schedule was already fucked enough.

“Then you will permit me a moment to make my own.” The priest said, filling a diffuser with shriveled black curls, fingers quick and practiced. As the kettle boiled, he produced a small jar of red jam and spooned a heaping dollop into the bottom of a cup. “Do not tell my wife,” he said conspiratorily. “She does not like how much sugar I eat. Says it is bad for my heart. But tea without jam is like… ah, what is good comparison to you? Peanut butter without jelly?”

Shane chuckled as he unloaded his bag. “That’s more of an American thing, actually.”

Father Andrei hummed. “I hope I did not startle you, earlier. The church can be… overwhelming, for those who are not used to being in the presence of heaven.”

“No, I was… I was just thinking. About Irina, and her kids. Being there. Trying to picture it.”

Father Andrei poured the heated water. The room filled with the scent of herbs and fruit. “You use your imagination this way often?”

Frequently, actually. And often about Ilya. Shane had spent more than one night trying to imagine what his career would’ve looked like, with Rozanov competing for that top spot. As with Ilya in church, Shane could see it in the general sense. Maybe Boston would’ve made a legit Cup run in the mid-2010s. Maybe Rozanov would’ve beaten him for Rookie of the Year. Maybe Russia would’ve dethroned Canada and America at the 2014 Olympics. Maybe they would’ve played on the same team at All-Stars Games. Not on the same line, obviously. Or maybe the league would’ve done everything they could to contrive their rivalry further.

But the details were unknowable. What kind of chirps would they exchange in the face-off dot? Would Rozanov be the kind of player that celebrated every win, or more like Shane and constantly preparing for the next matchup?
Would Room 1410 be a distant, awkwardly fond memory they laughed about years later? Or would they have kept…

Shane booted his computer, and answered lamely, “It helps my writing.”

Father Andrei took his usual seat. “It is a gift,” he decided, “To see beyond what is there into what once was. Or could be.”

“I was hoping you could help me with that. Fill in some details.”

“By all means.”

INTERVIEW CONDUCTED BY SHANE HOLLANDER.

DATE: April 16th, 2026

NAME: Reverend Father Andrei Pavlovich Dorofeyev

AGE: 67

BIRTHPLACE: Voronezh, Voronezh Oblast, Russia

RELATION TO SUBJECT: Community Religious Minister

With full understanding and consent to speaking on the record, the above interviewee attested to the following:

Q: How did you know the Rozanovs?

A: They were members of my congregation at the Church of the Dormition of the Most Holy Theotokos, and before that at the Church of St. Arseny Tverskoy.

Q: How often did they attend?

            FATHER ANDREI: Irina and her parents or Irina and her sons?

            SHANE: Both, please.

A: I became an assistant priest at St. Arseny when Irina was fifteen. Before she left for Moscow, she regularly attended Sunday Liturgy with her parents. It was interesting, during that time many of the regulars were much older. The government was always trying to turn young people away from religion. “Opiate of the masses” and all that Marxist nonsense. And they had success, especially in the big cities. But out here much less so. It is harder to ignore God when one is so frequently confronted by His works.

But there were consequences to professing faith. We all had to keep secrets. It was better under Brezhnev than Khrushchev before, but more than once was I questioned by the KGB. Many clergy were imprisoned or killed. The Volkovs decided it was worth the risk, and the ride to Tver.

When she visited during the summers with her sons, the country was much different. No more Party, much more acceptance. That was when this church opened. She brought them on Sundays, but she also attended at least one weekday service by herself. I cannot speak to her observations when in Moscow.

Q: Did you interact closely with Irina, as a teenager?

A: All of the faithful were close, in those days. And I made a point to speak with the youth. I was young back then too, if you can believe it. (Laugh.)

Q: What was she like?

A: She was charming, when she wanted to be. There weren’t many others her age, but she got along with them as far as I could tell. But there were times she did not. When she seemed to me to be very unhappy.

Q: Did she tell you why she was unhappy?

A: In roundabout ways. Young people have such interesting manners when talking to priests. They do not yet believe we will not judge them the way their peers or other adults will. And of course I will not tell you anything she said in confession.

            SHANE: Of course.

A: But it was obvious when she was struggling. She would start asking more about the saints, and the martyrs. Wondering at their strength. Father Dmitri, the priest I served under, he was from Moscow. She would ask him what it was like to live there. I believe she did not like living in such a small town. Maybe that is part of why she liked the church.

Q: And…after she started attending here?

A: She seemed to like being home. She was… more reserved. Did not linger after services. Always polite, but brief.

Q: Do you know what changed? Besides…

            FATHER ANDREI: You do not need to hedge around it. Ask me the question you really mean.

Q: Was her husband religious?

A: No. And I suspect you already suspected. Even if he wanted to be, he could not. The official state stance was atheism. One could not be in the Party and profess belief. And one could not hold an official position without being in the Party. But I do not believe he would have been, regardless. He did not show me much respect.

Q: You met him?

A: Once, about… goodness, maybe thirty-five years ago? Alexei had fallen very sick. There was some uncertainty he would pull through. I received a call from Moscow, Irina asked me to come and administer Holy Unction. Ah, you may know it as anointing of the sick. So I went.

Q: That’s a long drive. Why didn’t she ask someone more local?

            FATHER ANDREI: How long have you been seeing your primary care physician?

            SHANE: Um, aside from the time I lived in Montreal…maybe twenty years?

            FATHER ANDREI: And there is your answer.

            SHANE: Point taken.

Q: What happened during this visit?

A: At first, it was normal. I was welcomed inside, performed the rite as mandated for home visits. Alexei was very feverish, and very young. I doubt he remembers any of it.

            SHANE: I’m sensing a “but,” here.

A: But it was only Irina and the boys present. Grigori came back home just as I was re-packing my materials. He was… not happy.

Q: What did he do?

A: He asked to speak with Irina privately. It quickly became less than private. They argued, loudly. I stayed to watch over Alexei, just in case something happened.

Q: Do you remember what they argued about?

A: Things I have heard in different combinations many times before. He did not think his wife being so “openly superstitious and backward” reflected well on the family, or his position. She pointed out that there was no more Party and no reason to hide. Asked why he wouldn’t do anything possible to help his son. He doubled down on calling faith ridiculous. Eventually Irina came out and thanked me for my time. I left. Alexei recovered, obviously.

Q: And that was the only time you saw him?

A: Yes.

Q: Okay. You said Irina brought Alexei and Ilya to Sunday services. What were they like then?

A: They were fine, the same way all children are fine in church. Which is to say, mostly bored silly. (Laughs.) They stopped coming around… oh, Alexei was about ten, so… 1999?

Q: They stopped attending? Why?

A: I asked after them to Irina, after a few weeks. She told me they’d started refusing. She was very sad about it. Said more than I think she intended. Confessed to me that Grigori did not allow them to attend with her in Moscow. Spoke unfavorably about religion in front of them. They were just listening to their father, the way every good son should. I could not judge them, or Irina for not pushing harder. They all loved him, this I could tell. But perhaps more than they should have.

Q: But (Long pause.) I met Ilya, several times. He was always wearing a gold cross on a chain. Did he come back when he was older?

A: Ah, this I cannot answer. Perhaps he attended in Moscow. But I am familiar with that necklace. It was Irina’s. I am not surprised he kept it, given what happened.

Q: You mean the accident that resulted in her death?

            FATHER ANDREI: Accident? Who told you it was an accident?

            SHANE: That’s… that’s what was listed in her obituary.

Q: Was it… not an accident?

A: (Long pause, agitated.) (Sigh.) I suppose it is not your fault. The truth is hard to come by. (Pause.) Irina’s death was a suicide. I cannot profess to know exactly why, but… I know she struggled with profound sadness. I saw it on her every time she attended by herself. She would come in so hollow, and worship seemed to help fill her up some. But I suppose there is a hollowness not even the examples of the saints can heal. You need community for that. And she… (Tears up.) she must have felt so alone.

            SHANE: I… I didn’t know. I’m sorry.

            FATHER ANDREI: Secrets. Secrets and shame. I have long lost patience for both. Perhaps if she had spoken about her pain instead of hiding, we could have helped her. She could still be here. Perhaps Ilya would not have gone missing.

Q: What…what secrets was Ilya hiding?

A: I will only tell the secrets of the dead. It is for the living to confess their own.

Q: You believe Ilya is still alive?

A: I do.

Q: On what grounds?

A: I am a priest, Shane Hollander. I believe that God, through His works, protects His children when they ask for help.

            SHANE: If I ask you to elaborate on that, you won’t answer.

            FATHER ANDREI: That is correct.

            SHANE: I… I have no further questions at this time.

END TRANSCRIPT.

Shane didn’t remember much of the drive back to his rental. Perhaps there was more he could have asked Father Andrei, but learning about… it shook him. He could hardly imagine losing a parent, much less at twelve. To lose one to suicide was… fuck, it was unfathomable. What must that have done to Ilya? To the family? 2002. He’d met Ilya in 2008. Only five years removed from the kind of tragedy even adults never fully recover from. A golden cross, glinting under arena lights, glowing in a dim hotel room, its meaning lost until now.

He was getting too emotional. Empathy was useful, but it couldn’t get in the way of objectivity. Pulling up to the rental, sky just beginning to go dark, Shane sat in the car and took a few deep, steadying breaths. What he’d learned was important. He needed to update his notes and references. Father Andrei indicated Ilya received a lot of mixed messaging about religion growing up. It would serve Shane’s understanding to investigate the wider cultural contexts of that messaging.

Plan for the evening in hand, Shane downloaded a few books on the history of the Russian Orthodox Church during the Soviet era and post-collapse. These would keep him busy until Cheryl could get him the finalized transcripts. He’d have to put his pleasure read — a Mateo Lemaire biography (and what Shane wouldn’t have given to write that one) — on hold, but that’s the job. Shane’d had to memorize the geography of the greater NYC metropolitan area for Scott’s book. By comparison this was downright narrative.

He started the first one over dinner, then took his trash out, remembering to fit the lockstraps Olga gave him over the lid of the can. A cup of non-caffeinated herbal tea in hand, he got through a few chapters before the words started swimming on the screen. He wanted to push through. The night was young yet, he should try and stay awake. But somewhere between one sentence and another, wakefulness failed him and he slipped into dreams.

A loud crash woke him up. Gasping in the lamp light, his e-reader long-since gone dark, Shane sat frozen like he did that first night. Had he dreamed this, too? He remained still, letting his lungs calm down as he waited. Yes, there it was. The sound of plastic scraping over gravel. Something was trying to get into his cans again.

He stood up and tried to spot it out the windows, but none of them had direct line of sight. Closer to the walls, the sound of the can being pushed around and scratched at was louder. He waited a few minutes, hoping the thing would lose interest. But it just. Kept. Trying. One minute. Two. Five.

Shane couldn’t take it anymore. Turning on his phone flashlight, he unbolted the front door and walked onto the porch. Making his way slowly around the side of the building, the waved the light around, searching the dark for his persistent nocturnal intruder. He found grass, then gravel, then—

Green. Bright, overwhelming green. The animal’s eyes flashed against the brightness, flat and verdant and focused right on him. Shane adjusted the angle of his light just a fraction. The eyes stayed green but this was their true color. Not an unseeing reflection of the forest but a shade that belonged to it and it alone. Summer grass under midday light.

The too-green eyes were ringed in black, set deep behind a long muzzle, in a wide head topped by pricked ears. For a moment, Shane thought it was a wolf, but the body — covered in a thick coat ranging from cream to golden brown — was too small. The eyebrows too expressive.

Yakov said there were many stray dogs in the forest.

Neither of them moved. Shane counted breaths. One, two, three. His feet felt frozen to the ground. The dog just kept staring his way, unblinking. Body tightened but not tense. Ears forward, mouth closed, the tip of its wet black nose working. The lines of its ribs shivering as it sniffed the air.

Shane stared back. Six, seven, eight breaths. The dog didn’t move. Twelve, thirteen, fourteen. Shane didn’t move. Didn’t blink. Maybe couldn’t, but it didn’t occur to him to try. The world narrowed down to air and light and stillness and green. Just as breath number fifteen began to slither into his lungs, another loud sound shattered the quiet of the night. Shane jumped as his phone vibrated twice in his hands. The spell broke. His eyes left the dog.

Another sound, skittering on stone. When Shane looked back up, there was nothing there but an overturned trash can, its lid still anchored shut. No more sound but the wind through the trees behind him.

Its paws carried it here again tonight. To the straight-line den between the hill and the lake. To the place he slept. There is light still shining through the openings, but it can hear no movement inside.

It should not be here. There were easier places to find food. But it returned anyway.

It does not bother with the wooden barrier. Instead it goes straight for the cold-and-smooth thing, where it can smell more food inside. If it must be here, it may as well eat. Rearing up, it pushes against the thing until it falls over, but to its surprise, nothing comes spilling out. It sniffs around, nose finding something textured and harsh-smelling. But clinging to it is the faint scent autumn leaves and sharp-ice. Angered, it shoves at the thing again. It slides across the loose rocks but does not give up its guts.

It considers the problem, trying to figure a solution for many moments. But before it can make any progress, it hears movement to its back. Turning, it sees the light of a tiny sun glowing from around the corner before—

He is there. It can hardly make out his shape from behind the unnatural glow, but his scent floods the air. Autumn leaves. Sharp-ice. Familiar and unremembered.

Why can’t it remember?

Its paws feel stuck against the rocks. It wants so badly to see the face behind the glow. Eyes brown like oak bark or the rich soil left behind from a river flood. Sparse fur the silky black of raven’s wings. Star-dots across golden cheeks. It cannot. But it keeps looking anyway.

He is breathing loudly. Is he scenting for it the same way it scents for him? Pulling lungfuls across the space between them. Clinging to everything it can get though it doesn’t know why. They stay that way for a long time.

Then a high chirping noise spills from the tiny sun. He startles. It can move its paws again, and all at once it realizes how exposed it is out here. Memories of other tall creatures flood its mind, shouting, banging things together, sometimes throwing hard things its direction. He has not done that, but there are others nearby who might. Leaving the reach of the tiny sun, it flees back into the protection of the forest.

It ignores the tug in its chest that pulls it ever backwards.

Chapter End Notes

So the Church of the Dormition of the Most Holy Theotokos IS an actual church in the area I’ve based my setting on and… I MEAN COME ON THE REFERENCE WRITES ITSELF.

Chapter 4: Promise

Chapter Notes

For re-readers, I made a couple edits to the previous chapters ahead of posting this one. Nothing substantial, mostly fixing wonky formatting. I did correct Olga calling Shane, “Mr. Hollander,” as Mr./Mrs. equivalents aren’t really used in Russian except in extremely formal or diplomatic settings. Live and learn!

Also, just a disclaimer, there’s a decent amount of shop talk in this chapter. I am a hockey fan but I’m very, very far from an expert. Apologies in advance for any mistakes or inaccuracies!

THE NEXT DAY

Shane was jotting down notes on how glasnost policies allowed for increased acceptance of religious activity in state-sponsored areas when a knock came to his door. Blinking heavily from behind his glasses, he realized he’d been reading and annotating for two straight hours; the bottom half of his second coffee long gone cold. He straightened his spine and felt a couple pops.

He walked to the door, working away the dead feeling in his left foot. Given his position as a friendly outsider who’d only talked to about ten people total, Shane wasn’t surprised to find Olga on the other side of the door. What was surprising was the heavy-looking cardboard box in her hand that released small clinking sounds as she adjusted her grip.

“You are not busy, I hope?” she said.

“Uh,” Shane said lamely.

“Good!” Olga said, taking a step towards the entrance. Shane got out of her way. She hauled the box into the kitchen and set it on the counter. “Have you ever had Russian pickles?”

Shane followed her, watching as she unloaded several jars of cloudy green liquid onto the linoleum. “Once, at a restaurant in New York. Maybe… Christ, ten years ago?” The ever-increasing numbers he had to place in front of “ago” statements was one of Shane’s least favorite parts about being in his mid-thirties.

“Bah,” Olga responded, sounding just like her mother. “That is not real Russian pickles. You can’t get the good stuff outside of neighbors and farmers markets.” Without actually asking if he wanted to try some, she unsealed a jar and pulled a few dull orange carrot spears onto a plate.

But Shane was curious, so he took the plate and crunched one between his teeth. The first thing that hit his mouth was the sour-salt of brine, but that quickly gave way to bursts of garlic, dill, and horseradish that was intense in the best way. And despite clearly being an older batch, the carrot maintained its crunch. “Oh man, that’s really good,” he said, mouth still half-full. He swallowed and took another bite.

“Good,” Olga said. “Eat what you want, take the rest back with you. I will be planting soon and we will run out of space in the cellar if I don’t make room. Just don’t forget your gratitudes,” she eyed him sternly. “My garden has produced very well for many years. I would not take kindly to someone disrupting that.”

Shane swallowed the childlike yes, ma’am that threatened to spill from his lips and just nodded.

“How fares your research? I trust Yakov and Father Andrei were helpful.”

“Yes, very,” Shane answered. He went to grab another pickle, but found the plate was already empty. “I have a much better sense of…” Shane trailed off. How could he explain the soft-bloom feeling of a rough outline beginning to fill with color? The opening of new avenues to explore? The gentle clutter of fragmented details waiting to be strung in a line? The weight of knowing before the resolve of telling? He settled on, “...how he grew up. It must have been tough, being born into a world nobody had really figured out yet.”

Olga nodded. “Yes, the collapse was a difficult time. Less so, out here. The forest is the forest no matter who claims to own it. The people here are similar, I think. You will go to Moscow, soon?”

Shane nodded. “I have a few people to speak with there over the next week or so.”

Olga hummed. “Moscow is not like here. Always changing. Many battle scars.”

“Should I put on some Kevlar or would a full suit of armor be better?”

His landlady laughed at him, genuine and surprisingly loud. “You joke like a native, Mr. Hollander.”

“Russian humor and I have always gotten along,” he replied. Russia and him seemed to get along pretty well in general, actually. At least, this little corner of Russia. Its people kind despite his lack of belonging, The forest and the lake and the shops in town slowly getting used to his particular movements around them. Really fucking good pickles. Except…

“Something tried to get into the trash again, last night,” Shane said. “A dog.”

She hummed. “There are some strays around here. Just keep any food locked up tight and it will stop coming back eventually.”

“Yeah, of course. It just—” It just grabbed him with a glance and refused to let go. It just made his heart lurch seeing those ribs; evidence of a long and hard winter in a long and hard place. It just stared at him in a way that felt… fuck. “It just had the strangest eyes. I’ve never seen a dog with green eyes before.”

“Ah,” Olga said. “That would be Leshak.”

“You know this dog?”

Olga shrugged. “He does not belong to anybody. That’s just what we call green-eyed dogs. After the old stories of the Man of the Forest. We’ve been seeing them every now and then for the last, eh, fifteen or so years?”

“Dogs, plural?”

“Well, I highly doubt it is the same exact dog every time. He would have to be very old, if so. But the children, they like to make up tales. We think of them as… ah, how to say it? Affectionate nuisance? A fun story to tell when we spot them, but most would prefer them to stay out of our garbage. It must’ve thought you were an easy mark.”

Shane certainly felt some kind of marked.

“Anyway, I need to get back. The Moon is in Sagittarius and the sun is warm, perfect day to turn over the soil. Enjoy the pickles, Shane.”

Just as brusquely as she arrived, she left.

Aside from his books, Shane had little on his to-do list in terms of work. Finishing up the first volume and taking another look at Father Andrei’s dirty daily with fresh context, he decided to take the afternoon off and run some errands. The spoils of his first grocery trip were running thin, and he should fill up before his long drive to Moscow in the morning.

But first, gratitudes. Putting away the many jars Olga left him, Shane kept out the one that had already been opened, sliding another spear into a small dish before putting the rest in the fridge. Carrots were a common garden vegetable, as were the garlic and dill used to season the brine. Something gifted, something returned.

Growing up, his mom always taught him to leave this kind of thing in the guest bedroom. Every time she made a big batch of miso broth or indulged them with dorayaki or planted new flowers in the beds, she’d put a little bit in a dish and leave it on the bedside table overnight, disposing of it in the morning into running water or a cheap cloth bag to keep it separate from the rest of the garbage. The same way her mother did it.

Shane maintained the general habit, though with much less diligence. The places he’d lived had always been in some way temporary. His rookie apartment for obvious reasons, then the much nicer one in Westmount that he ended up living in his entire career despite constantly maintaining that he’d move out to the suburbs when he found the right girl and they started a family.

Yeah, heteronormativity did a number on him back then. Anyway, his current house in Ottawa got better attention, but it was still on some level just a place to sleep and eat and work between research trips and press tours and his cousin’s U15 schedule and the summer hockey camps for charity Shane and Scott started up a few years ago. A new build, yet to understand the full weight of human presence upon its foundations. He lived there, but he didn’t inhabit it. Not the way Olga and Raisa did this property; maintaining its buildings and working its soil and enjoying the literal fruits of the labor they put into it. Or his mom with her flowers and intentional perpetuation of old traditions.

But Olga asked him and he wasn’t going to risk her garden’s prosperity for the sake of two minutes and a carrot. Shane took three steps down the hall, but then stopped. Using the guest bedroom felt… off. In a very literal sense, he already was the guest. Why would he leave out a gratitude for himself? Instead, he considered the space around him, keenly aware of his status as a visitor. If he were dead-tired and weary, looking for a place to rest amidst the cold and the dark, where would he gravitate? What would bring him the most comfort?

Shane placed the dish on the brick hearth in front of the fireplace. Yeah, that works.

Later that day, pantry and gas tank refilled, Shane found some fishing poles in the storage closet and walked down to the small pier between the Svechnikovas’ home and his rental. In truth, he didn’t care much for fishing as a dedicated hobby. It was much more his dad’s thing. But he knew how to bait a hook and throw a line and sometimes the rhythm of it helped him direct his thoughts more effectively than staring at the cursor in Word.

So he stood on the pier and watched the sun sink steadily towards the treetops and listened to the hiss of his reel and let himself think. As could be expected, Shane’s thoughts turned towards Rozanov. Or more accurately, the Rozanovs: plural. How much he’d learned about Grigori and Irina from just two conversations and a handful of public records.

When considered together, it painted a rather unflattering picture. An established Party official, courting and impregnating a beautiful college student over ten years his junior. So quickly something as potentially divisive as religion hadn’t been considered in the marrying. Or maybe it did, for Irina. Convention and conscience, after all.

Shane tried to put himself in both their shoes. For Irina, maybe the idea of having a child out of wedlock was unacceptable. What’s more, the Soviet Union in the mid-80s was a difficult place to thrive. Someone like Grigori, with his stability and connections and wealth, would’ve been an attractive prospect even without a baby. And Grigori, even without religion, may have felt a sense of obligation to the image of family and the care of his son.

All that, plus there was a good chance they just genuinely liked each other. Enough to have two kids about it. But maybe that liking wasn’t enough, as time went on. Based on what Yakov and Father Andrei said about their relationship, they seemed like the kind of couple that fell into a long-term arrangement assuming things would all work out. Only to get snagged on all the places where their values clashed. Religion. Work-life balance. Division of labor. Parenting. Mental health management, if they were even aware there was such a thing to manage in the first place.

Shane knew something about what that was like. After his retirement, when he was considering biographies as a new career, he audited a nonfiction writing class at Ottawa University. And then promptly started going out with the cute TA. Who was pursuing his doctorate and pivoting to creative short fiction after a respectable career writing website copy, thank you very much.

Richie didn’t know a damn thing about hockey. At the time, that made him attractive to Shane. Somebody unburdened by any expectation of how Shane should behave. Who was very gentle and understanding of Shane’s exploration of “glass closet” existence. Shit, Richie and his passion for classics was the only reason Shane caught Yakov’s Sartre reference at all.

It was nice, for a time. But then slowly, it wasn’t. Richie never quite understood what hockey meant to Shane. Shane never quite understood Richie’s need for validation over his creative works. Richie thought Shane was trying to cling to his glory days while Shane thought that if Richie just put in the work and did it well, success would naturally follow as it had for him.

Writing his own book had greatly improved his perspective on that particular issue. Hockey had always been a “you get out what you put in” thing for Shane. Put in the practice, get the win. Stay late, work hard, push yourself to the limit and you’ll be rewarded. He’d yet to understand that effort and success didn’t necessarily correlate. That he’d been lucky, and more than a little privileged. How vulnerable it was to bear your soul on a page and hand it willingly into someone else’s judgement.

They’d ended on a sour note. But they’d ended it to mutual benefit. Shane tried to imagine what it would have been like, if convention and conscience had kept them trying to fit broken pieces together without being cut. Maybe it would’ve looked something like the Rozanovs.

He didn’t want to think about the other possibility, but that would be dishonest reporting. It wouldn’t be shocking, for the time. But he’d heard no evidence of it. That didn’t mean it didn’t happen. Hopefully his Moscow contacts would shed some light on that particular shadow.

Shane packed up his rod once dusk turned to dark. A couple nibbles to the edges, but no bites.

The bag was a stupid purchase. Why did he even buy it? Olga warned him specifically against this. But there it sat, on the counter where he’d first unpacked it because he’d not the first clue what to actually do with it. A ten pound bag of dog kibble.

In his defense, it was the smallest bag in the grocery store. In his further defense… Shane didn’t have one. He’d just passed through that aisle on the way to get eggs, remembered the ribs laying shadows against the pelt of that strange dog – Leshak – and it somehow landed in his buggy and through the checkout before he could think to put it back.

This was a terrible idea. Shane grabbed a large plastic bowl. The damn thing was determined to raid his cans. Maybe if he left out food, it would eat that quietly and Shane could get a full night’s sleep. He checked the recommended serving size, trying to guess the dog’s weight before pointedly reminding himself he was not going to make this a regular thing so it didn’t matter. He filled the bowl. After a long winter, the poor thing would need all the calories it could get. Shane put the food on the ground by the corner of the porch nearest the garbage cans and went to make his own dinner.

Chicken breast, simple and easy, with rice and the rest of the pickled carrots. He saved the leftover brine. The electrolytes would come in handy after workouts. Plus it tasted good. He watched the chicken breast sputter in the pan, the rich smell saturating the room.

Would Leshak recognize the kibble as food? It didn’t smell like much of anything to Shane, but he wasn’t a dog. Shane imagined it: the big creature passing over the offering in favor of fucking up his cans once again. Best make sure. Filling a pot, he put a second chicken breast to boil with a little salt while he ate his own plate. Once cooked through, he shredded it and arranged it on top of the kibble. Yeah, that works.

The next morning, Shane awoke to four completed transcripts in his inbox, his cans overturned, the kibble untouched; but the chicken devoured. Shane let out a sound halfway between a laugh and a scoff. Picky little shit.

Stepping into the rink in Moscow felt extremely familiar. Until it didn’t. Like churches, something about artificial ice felt the same everywhere. Diesel-and-freon conjuring focus behind his eyes, a spring-coil tension in his calves like the moment before he sprang from the rubber into the first glide. The stink of sweat and epsom salts and sugar-sticky Gatorade. The tap of sticks, the hissing glide of pucks. Elation and determination and disappointment and resolve.

Once upon a time, that feeling turned his thoughts forward. Onto the matchup, the ice quality, the opposing goalie statistics, the push-pull chess of an evenly matched series. These days, his thoughts always went backwards. That last time on Bell Centre ice, watching number 24 unfurl from the rafters, left arm in a sling and tears threatening to spill from a half-healed black eye. He let one fall. Just one, right onto the center face-off dot. A gratitude. An apology. A wide, jagged tear he’d spent the last two years slowly stitching shut.

Five steps in, his shoulder gave a sharp throb. Fuck, it felt like when his PT stuck their fingers into the injured space, sussing out stiffness and inflammation and whether or not he was sticking to his rehab plan. These fingers felt much less careful, poking around with a callous air, like they were assessing if he really had to retire. Couldn’t he have pushed through? He had a few more years of greatness in him, surely. Would be a shame to squander all that potential.

Shane gritted his teeth, rolling the shoulder, looking for that pop which relieved the tension. It took a few tries, those fingers getting rougher and rougher until the joint and the grip released all at once. He exhaled sharply, and to his ears it sounded all the world like the specific noise the home crowd would make at the end of a penalty kill. Danger successfully defended against. Time to go back on the attack.

He found his third subject out on the ice, speaking in loud, rapid Russian to a gaggle late teens and early twentysomethings. Members of Zarya Moscow, VHL farm team for the city’s premier KHL franchise. These kids stood in a familiar posture, trying to absorb the coach’s words while secretly wishing he would wrap it up already but also actively putting in the work to appear attentive, lest they be called out for that too and the speech extended. Goodness, had he ever looked that young? Feet dead in the skates, exhaustedly leaning on the stick but not too much, half-listening to Coach ream his teammates for things Shane had already noticed and compensated for?

Shane put his bag on the bottom riser, just loud enough to be heard from over the boards. Coach Viktor Sergechev, Ilya Rozanov’s last hockey coach before his disappearance, finally noticed his presence. With a few curt words, he dismissed his players and skated over to Shane.

“Hollander, I presume?” he said. “Come around the back, I will walk you to my office.”

Most people in Russia addressed Shane by his full name. Polite as possible, for want of a proper patronymic. Raisa Ivanova gave him a diminutive, as her age permitted. Viktor Sergechev just called him “Hollander.” A player’s address.

Shane tried not to think too hard about that as he rounded the practice rink towards the benches. Viktor Sergechev was a tall man in his late forties, light blue eyes and hair still more black than gray, muscular arms straining against the black and orange fabric of his branded quarter-zip. The special teams coach for IPC Russia at the time of Rozanov’s tenure. Since then, he’d steadily promoted up through the junior leagues into the minors; now head coach for Zarya Moscow. Still looking for that break into the majors, just like his players.

Shane waited patiently as the man traded his skates for sneakers, then guided him out of the rink into a rabbit warren of cinderblock offices that made up the back half of the building. Viktor’s office was tidy, which was necessary to avoid claustrophobia in the face of all the memorabilia that coated the walls and horizontal surfaces. Awards, team photos, and shadow boxes from a half-dozen different organizations painted a dizzying riot of black-and-rainbow across the small space. The one point of minimalism was the desk; bare but for a pair of large monitors and a thick binder.

The coach took his chair and typed on his computer while Shane set up his own. He’d made no attempt at conversation since their initial greeting. It made Shane’s legs jitter, just sitting there waiting for Cheryl to log in.

He started, “I don’t know if you remember me from the IPC tournaments —”

“I remember you, Hollander. Your coach liked to brag. Claimed you were the next Leslie Crady,” Viktor said, eyes still on his screen.

“Oh,” Shane said.

“You were better than Leslie Crady.”

“Thank you,” Shane said sincerely. That was a serious compliment.

Viktor hummed. “He couldn’t defend the low slot either. Is this a common Canadian problem? You like to score so bad you watch the puck instead of your man?”

Shane laughed awkwardly. He hadn’t been called a puckwatcher since U9.

“At least you have a good one-timer. Not great, but good.”

Shane was starting to have a very hard time figuring out of Viktor Sergechev was being complimentary or critical. He was spared the danger of trying to respond to that by Cheryl sending him the all-clear.

“Would you like to get started?” Shane asked.

“Go ahead.”

INTERVIEW CONDUCTED BY SHANE HOLLANDER.

DATE: April 18th, 2026

NAME: Viktor Damirovich Sergechev

AGE: 47

BIRTHPLACE: Tyarlevo, St. Petersburg, Russia

RELATION TO SUBJECT: Junior Hockey Coach

With full understanding and consent to speaking on the record, the above interviewee attested to the following:

Q: How did you know the Rozanovs?

A: I was Ilya’s special teams coach for the 2008 and 2009 International Prospects Cup.

Q: Did you ever interact with other members of his immediate family?

A: I never met his mother, but I spoke with his father a handful of times.

Q: What did you talk about?

A: You know how these international tournaments go for juniors. Too many egos, too little practice time. Great expectations. We had to keep the families involved at some capacity or they would try to have their run of the place. They liked to hear our opinions on player progress, so we made it a point to meet and answer questions.

Q: What did Grigori ask about?

A: (Hums.) He was an interesting fellow. Older than a lot of the other parents. Less hands-on. He was interested in my opinion about Ilya’s playing, but he did not seem to…what is the English phrase? (Ital. in English.) Know puck? all that well. Knew the game, but it was clear to me he’d never played. He was more concerned about his son’s effort and manners than anything technical.

Q: What did you tell him in this regard?

A: (Laughs.) That he was right to be concerned. That boy got away with far too much on his talent. Always had this smartass look on his face. He would take corrections for all of five minutes before trying something else. He’s lucky he could read the game well enough this would not bite him in the ass. More than once I had to ask if we were boring him. Oh, and this always made Demidov (Note: IPC Russia’s head coach at the time) go red in the face. He was exactly on time, every time. Never early, not even by five minutes like the rest of his teammates. You told him to be dressed for eight? He would finish tying his last skate right as the hour struck. Smartass look on his face, too. He knew what he was doing.

Q: Did… were there any consequences at home for this behavior?

A: How should I know?

           SHANE: Right, sorry.

Q: What was your assessment of Rozanov’s play style?

            VIKTOR: You played against him, no? Studied his tapes. And you are writing his book.

            SHANE: Um, yes.

            VIKTOR: Well then you should be more the expert than me. Tell you what, you give me your thoughts, and I will correct what you get wrong.

            SHANE: Okay, if you insist. (Pause.) My Russian isn’t good enough for all this. Cheryl, would you mind translating? (Pause. Turns laptop.) You can read off this window.

(Ital. in English.) Rozanov’s style was defined by speed and possession. He was most dangerous along the boards, where he used them and his stickhandling skills to protect the puck and look for breakout opportunities. If his defense could spring him, there was little chance anyone could catch him on the breakaway. That also served him on the forecheck, though he played a more support-based game on those plays; winning possession and passing up to the blue line for a cycle or trying to feed a winger in the slot.

His most effective shot was a snap from the lower right face off circle, but he could be devastating from the slot as well. On defense, he was not afraid to use his physicality to push his opponents off the puck and use his frame to block in front. But that style, while effective, made him prone to penalty calls if he wasn’t careful. But he made up for that somewhat with his ability to draw penalties with the verbal game. Not so much at the tournaments, but I know what ragebaiting looks like regardless of language.

I can admit, had he…kept playing, he likely would’ve had the better two-way game between us, especially if he got smarter on defense. But I think I could’ve outscored him more seasons than not. He was so fast and absolutely lethal if given enough ice, but he didn’t master game rhythm the same way I did. Making him play to my pace was the best way to get him off-balance, and—

            VIKTOR: That is how you beat us in 2009.

            SHANE: What? Oh, yes.

            VIKTOR: Keep going.

            SHANE: (Ital. in English) And I have the better hands. Combine those two things and he has to think twice as hard. A guy like that, with that much talent? It takes a lot of work to beat. I hadn’t been challenged like that in a long time. Made me look forward to.. well. Anyway. How did I do?

            VIKTOR: You are right, but very Canadian.

Q: How do you mean?

A: What you have described is close to my own ideas. But you are missing a key fact. Rozanov is not Canadian. You are all showboats, me me me with the puck, fast skates and hard checks. Hockey that looks good for television. Russian hockey is not like this. We live and die by passing and possession. Russian hockey makes the opponent come to them, frustrates and frays defense to shreds, then strikes.

Rozanov had no patience. He was fast, and he was strong on the puck. But he was cocky. Thinking too far ahead. All that speed and strength is useless when it leaves him brute-forcing a 3 on 1 rush when he could have established a cycle and bided his time. He lacked discipline. (Sigh.) But he could work a room.

Q: Are you referring to his captaincy?

A: Yes. The other boys loved him, somehow. He was surprisingly effective in the locker room, even if he was a little shit.

Q: How would you describe his style?

A: He knew he was great. They all knew he was great. And usually, we have to watch closely. In national teams, most are used to being the best of their local leagues. This can create much ego and posturing when you throw all of these “bests” on the ice together. I’m sure you’ve dealt with that.

But despite his showboating in the rink, in the locker room he was never a braggart. In fact, he spent more time complimenting his teammates than saying anything about his own game. But he would not baby them over mistakes. He expected excellence out of them, and had a way of communicating that expectation in a way that made the others want to live up to it.

He also threatened to seduce their sisters, but I think that was an inside joke. (Laughs.)

Q: In your opinion, could he have been successful in Boston?

A: He played like a Canadian, so probably. If he tightened up that attitude. Boston needed speed and strength, and he could provide. But he could have been good anywhere. I would have liked to see CSKA (Note: CSKA Moscow, a KHL team) straighten him out.

Q: Can you describe his general attitude towards…wait, why CSKA specifically?

A: They approached him after IPC 2009. He would have been a fool to pass that up. (Note: INVESTIGATE.)

Q: Do you know if he seriously considered the offer?

A: Not really. He vanished, what? Seven weeks later?

            VIKTOR: You were asking a different question.

Q: Right. Can you describe his general attitude towards the 2009 International Prospects Cup? In light of his drafting.

A: If you want my honest opinion, I am not sure why he bothered. NHL already wanted him, KHL was right on his heels. (Pause.)

            VIKTOR: Is an odd question, from you. Why did you?

            SHANE: I wanted to compete. Help Canada bring home a gold.

            VIKTOR: You had score to settle.

            SHANE: That’s not—

            VIKTOR: Don’t lie. You wanted to beat him.

            SHANE: (Sigh.) Yes, I wanted to beat him.

            VIKTOR: Well, maybe there’s your answer.

Q: Did you… did you interact with him afterwards? On the way home?

A: Yes.

Q: Can you describe his attitude?

A: (Long pause.) It is strange. I would have expected him to be more upset. But he was calm. Quiet. I suppose it’s easy to take loss well when there’s so much ahead of you.

            SHANE: Easy. Yeah. Um, I have no further questions. Thank you for your time.

END OF TRANSCRIPT.

As Shane packed up his equipment, Viktor said, “I am surprised you are here.”

Shane’s hand stilled for a moment, before he decided on honesty. “Most coaches I emailed didn’t get back to me.”

“No, not in this rink. Out of yours.”

It was a fair query, though he’d been asked it so many times in so many ways it made his teeth grit. Are you sure it can’t be fully rehabbed? Did you get a second opinion? Could you get another surgery in the off-season? As if he hadn’t done that and asked that and put in so much PT time it worried his mother. As if anything but an absolute refusal would have ever ungripped his fingers from that rope.

“Successive SLAP tears in my left labrum. After the last one they detached my bicep tendon because I couldn’t keep getting cortisone shots to make the chronic pain manageable. But I have to do a lot of physical therapy and can’t lift more than ten pounds on it or the literal knot they tied with my tendon could slip out and make my bicep bunch up like a fucking Popeye cartoon. So no, it’s not surprising. It fucking sucks.”

Shane finished packing his equipment, shoulder screaming. He gave a mildly stunned Viktor Sergechev one last firm handshake with his right, picked up his bag, and cleared out of the building as fast as his feet would allow.

The screaming in his shoulder quieted the further away from Moscow he drove. The sky was dark despite it only being late afternoon, the sun obscured by thick clouds. Being in a professional rink again — especially one teeming with so much desire and desperation — got under Shane’s skin more than he was expecting. It was a dumb move, snapping at Sergechev. He shouldn’t burn any bridges, not when they were so hard to build in the first place. But he just…

Shane needed to focus on Rozanov. He merged onto the highway that flowed out of the city, the long expanse in front of him freeing up space in his brain. He was halfway through his list of interviews, and already he’d learned things both expected and surprising.

Yakov. Irina. A serious, mischievous child who got away with too much, lighting up a cigarette next to a No Smoking sign. The smile in his eyes, bemused at Shane’s rambling but daring him to keep talking. The little chuckle around the barrel when Shane went for another handshake. The way his expression sparked when Shane rose to his chirp, like he wasn’t used to others matching his spirit.

A boy who only followed rules he felt mattered. Mind gaming the opponent. Respecting the forest. Disregarding the ones that didn’t. Smoking where he liked, exacting vengeance on older boys when convention would have him fall into line behind them.

See you in final. At first, Shane had read that statement as posturing. That of course Russia would dominate their bracket. It wasn’t until years later that Shane realized it was just as much a compliment as a challenge. Rozanov believed, no, expected he would meet Shane at center ice for the gold medal. Designing something beautiful, his skates carving gentle curves over right angles. The architecture of victory.

Father Andrei. Grigori. The dutiful son at his father’s side, staring down from the balcony with a blank expression Shane couldn’t decipher, only identify as wrong. So at odds with the shit-eating grin in front of the photographer or even the satisfied smirk when he successfully convinced Shane to swap spit on the head of a water bottle. Hands held close, not reaching for more. Listening to his father, like good boys should. A golden cross dangling at his throat.

And now Sergechev. The rink. IPC 2009. Where Shane entered the arena bound and determined to show his excellence. To prove something, though to who he’d never really been able to figure out. Watching Rozanov’s practices, analyzing his game, looking for anything new that escaped prior filming. How he smashed through lesser teams and dared his linemates to keep up. The extreme bend from his tophand that would turn his already-powerful slap shot lethal once he repped it to consistency. Rozanov watching him from the nosebleeds in turn.

That last practice before the last game, when everything changed. They had a day break between the semis and the finals, ice time scheduled back to back. A camera crew was there, collecting stills and footage for the pre-game show. Shane had thought nothing of Rozanov lingering after his teammates disappeared into the locker room, speaking with the crew in a low voice. Until one of them skated over and asked Shane if he would be willing to stick around after practice. Until he’d agreed, and learned just a moment too late that they’d be photographing him with Rozanov. Until that serious, blank face broke into uncontrollable giggles, the two of them unable to maintain composure, faces so close over the dot they could feel the heat of each other’s breaths. When Shane saw the same little spark he’d first spotted behind the rink in Saskatchewan.

The last practice before the last game. The two of them alone in the showers. Shane’s body knowing what it wanted before his brain could catch up. The confusing teenage swirl that kept him lingering in the locker room, entertaining Rozanov’s flirtations, blurting out his hotel room number, opening that door, writing down his number on hotel stationery. Watching with equal parts thrill and terror as Rozanov slipped that paper into his wallet.

The last game. Canada vs. Russia, rematch of the century. Shane won. Rozanov went back to Russia with a promise in his pocket. And then never cashed in.

Shane reached his rental after the sun dipped below the horizon, but before darkness stole the day entirely. As he stepped out of the car and opened the trunk for his equipment bag, that watchful prickling crept up the back of his neck again. Turning slowly, he looked out into the yard. The porchlight cast a haze, darkening the world beyond the reach of its glow. But they were still there. Pinpricks in the darkness. Flat and forest green.

Shane put the bag down. Slowly, with all his limbs visible, he walked out onto the grass. Without the porchlight between them, the shadow that surrounded the eyes resolved into a familiar canine shape. Leshak. Like the other night, the dog didn’t approach. Nor did it retreat. But there was something more…relaxed about it, this time. Tail gently swaying, ears forward but not pricked. Shane risked a step forward. Leshak didn’t move. He took another step. And then another. Until he was only a few meters away. The dog’s ears swiveled, but its nose was working in the gloom. It was… curious, Shane thought.

Still with that same slowness, Shane lowered himself into a crouch. After the fact, Shane would come up with multiple reasons why he was doing this. He was curious about this strange creature, smart enough to be picky about its food. He wanted to get a better look at it, maybe check its gait and its skin for injuries. He didn’t want to disrespect the forest by being rude to one of its inhabitants.

All those reasons meant doing what he was doing. Crouching in the gloom, one hand extended, whispering gentle hey, buddys and it’s okays above the chirp of crickets, trying to get this dog to approach him. In reality, Shane just wanted to know whether or not it would.

Leshak regarded him with those too-green eyes for a long moment. Then it took a slow step forward. And then another one. Ears forward, nose never stilling. Closer and closer, close enough that Shane risked a glance and determined, yep, boy dog. Skinny boy dog, coat overly fluffy like it was still trying to shed out the last of its winter fur. Only inches away now, head reaching forward as it sniffed at Shane’s palm. Maybe if he stayed still, kept whispering encouragements, Leshak would let him—

“Shane?”

Olga’s voice ripped through the stillness, startling Shane to his feet. He heard the faint whisper of disturbed grass behind him. He knew if he looked back, Leshak would be gone. Back into the forest he emerged from.

“What are you doing out here in the dark?” she asked, taking a few steps into the yard from where she’d stopped next to his car, the trunk still up and his equipment inside. The porchlight limned her gray hair in white.

Shane’s heart squeezed. Something in him didn’t want to speak about what just happened. Couldn’t put words to the ruptured moment. “I, um, thought I saw something moving in the trees,” he lied.

She gave him a puzzled look. “Be careful poking around in there. You never know what hungry things are lurking.”

“I’ll be careful,” Shane said, walking back towards the house. He grabbed his bag from the trunk, and closed it with a loud thud. “Thanks for checking on me. Good night.”

He mounted the steps and went inside, barely hearing Olga’s answering, “Goodnight.”

An hour or so later, he did not check the treeline while he laid out two boiled chicken breasts by the front steps.

It lingers here all the time now. Not just under cover of darkness. While the sun is high, it stays in the trees that line the grass, marking new territory, chasing other hungry beasts deeper into the woods. There is no good reason for this. It can only go to the straight-line den for food at night. It stays here anyway. Watching.

It watches him rise early in the morning, running down the graystone path before eventually returning to the den. The sharp scent of his sweat carries on the breeze even across the distance of the grass. He has not brought back any prey. For a moment, it worries. Could he hunt for himself? But he must, and successfully, if he could afford to leave meat uneaten and exposed outside his den.

Later, he climbs into the black-pawed not-beast and disappears once again. He is gone a long time. Longer than he ever has before. It makes loops of its new territory, finding a rabbit den and the easy young prey inside. But one ear is always listening for it. The not-beast roar that will herald his return.

It comes as the sun — the real sun, not yet another tiny one that shines from the front of the den — drifts below the horizon. It abandons the remnants of its kill, moving quickly towards the treeline, and before it really knows why, beyond. Onto the grass, where there is nothing to conceal its presence from him. It watches him for a long moment before he notices it.

It senses the moment he lays eyes on it. The tensing of his frame, the little hitch in his breath. For a moment, it thinks he might run. Retreat into the safety of the den. But he doesn’t. He walks forward, away from the tiny sun that lights his edges like sparkles on water, into the dimness of the grass. He does not belong in the dark.

It watches him approach, keeping its tail at a gentle sway, unable to hold it still but unwilling to let it sweep around behind like an excited puppy. Breathes in autumn leaves and sharp-ice that makes its mouth salivate though it holds its jaws shut. Teeth will scare him.

Stopping a respectful distance away, he sinks to the ground and extends a long, pale paw, mouth working, soft but undecipherable sounds spilling out. So unlike the shouts and bird-like chatter it usually hears from tall creatures. Gentle, quiet, barely breaking through the noise of the nighttime.

An invitation. It mirrors him, walking slowly forward with its head extended, closer to that warmth and scent than it has ever been. It huffs it in, closer and closer. It wants, oh it wants to touch its skin to his skin. To feel that paw against its face. To lick along his teeth in greeting. He keeps making sounds, gentle and encouraging. It can have what it wants. It can—

A loud sound. Another tall creature. He stands. It cannot stay here.

It cannot really leave, either.

Chapter End Notes

I’m REALLY trying not to overexplain the magical worldbuilding in the text so imma do it here. Leaving food out is a very common IRL folk practice to maintain the beneficial presence of domestic spirits in the household. While there aren’t mythical creatures in this world in the literal sense, I think people in this setting would still semi-personify the rough consciousnesses of places into different creatures over time.

The two mythical creatures I drew upon to illustrate the cultural difference between Slavic and Japanese interactions with house-entities are the domovoy and the zashiki-warashi. Both are considered beneficent spirits who help the household and are acknowledged for their blessings with food offerings. Zashiki-warashi are associated with guest bedrooms and domovoy with the hearth, hence Shane’s thoughts surrounding his actions with the pickles!

Also, completely minor detail, but Zarya Moscow is based on Zvezda Moscow, CSKA Moscow’s farm team. Why “Zarya?” Well, I am an inveterate Space Nerd™ and Zvezda Moscow happens to share a name with the Russian ISS module Zvezda; the word meaning “star.” So I named my fake team after another Russian ISS module: Zarya, meaning “dawn.” Does this matter? No. Did I spend ten minutes of research figuring it out? Absolutely. Writing Viktor as a low-key asshole is just me pissing off Shane for character development. But for real, if you’re ever in a room with a voicewriter don’t make their jobs hard like he did.

Also Russian pickles slap Shane should be so grateful to have so many home-grown jars to bring home.

Chapter 5: The Forest

Chapter Notes

BE FOREWARNED: This is the chapter in which that “Suicidal Ideation/Attempt” tag comes into play. When I first wrote the outline, I planned on keeping it vaguer, but I’ve decided a slightly more explicit depiction serves better. As such I’ve removed the “non graphic” tag. I’ve kept the graphicness to the absolute minimum required to tell the story, but if you need to be spoiled for safety, or would just prefer to know what you’re getting into ahead of time, please see the end notes. For those who still want to read but would prefer to skip that particular section, I’ve bracketed it in the text.

THREE DAYS LATER

With the first decent-size gap in between interviews, Shanes spent the next three days taking advantage of Russian Internet access to pull further sources, finishing up his books, and fleshing out Rozanov’s timeline with added notes based on the now-completed transcripts of his first three interviews. 

A particular point of interest to him was the offer to play for CSKA Moscow that Viktor mentioned. Shane was a little shocked this was the first he’d ever heard of it. Professional contract negotiations weren’t public knowledge by any stretch. But the rumor mill dropping the ball over something like this? The juicy gossip of a KHL team trying to poach Boston’s number one draft pick? On top of trying to sign him as a free agent before the inaugural KHL draft would’ve sent him to a less-successful franchise? Had Rozanov not gone missing, it would have been hockey’s worst-kept secret by March.

Shane had a sneaking suspicion Rozanov’s disappearance was why it remained a secret. Some of the most uncharitable theories at the time had suggested mental instability in the young phenom. After all, why else would he just up and vanish into the woods near his dead mother’s childhood home? CSKA wouldn’t have wanted that smoke, ephemeral as it was.

There were a lot of theories circling around the disappearance. Shane had read them all, in English, Russian, and French: Kidnapping, unlikely considering a lack of ransom for such a high-profile target; drunken accident, but there was no body; mental breakdown leading to a hermit existence in some far-flung corner of the Ural Mountains. (also unlikely, but Shane would be lying if he said he hadn’t ever thought about fucking off into the Canadian wilderness with perhaps a bit more seriousness than he would admit out loud) Murder, but no body. Never a body.

Shane did his best to remain impartial. It wasn’t his job to throw his hat into the ring of speculation. His job was to tell the story in its entirety; the bevy of chatter around its ending included. No cherrypicking, no judgement. Just…the story. In its entirety.

Which brought him back to this massive unspoken piece of it. Shane spent hours digging up the club’s organizational structure that year, chasing down contact information for the contemporary GM, the current GM, and their team of scouts hoping any of them would get back to him to at least confirm Viktor’s claim. He even sent another email to Rozanov’s former agent, though the man hadn’t responded to his previous and Shane had no reason to believe he’d reply now. He’d yet to hear anything back, but it was still early. Hopefully by the time he got back from his next interview in Moscow tomorrow, he’d have an answer. 

Despite all the working, Shane wasn’t a complete shut-in. He tried a local restaurant once and found it decent. At the nearby cafe, he stopped in to refill his water during a run and nearly had to Heimlich the poor barista when she choked on a muffin. Turns out, Milena was a huge MLH fan who never in her life expected to spot the Shane Hollander in her hometown. He was nice; signed a few random items and took a selfie to prove her unlikely tale to her friends, even if she did admit to him her favorite player was Callum McDaniel. Ah, well.

If the tiny community of diehard North American hockey fans in Russia decided to doxx his location from that…well he trusted his scary landlady to deter them. With a garden hoe if necessary.

He chatted a few times with Raisa Ivanova over coffee, and attempted to help Olga with sowing radishes and potatoes until she got tired of his city-slicker bumbling and sent him to help her mother with the newspaper crossword. The grocery clerks were getting used to his presence, making small talk while they bagged his items. 

They must think he was some kind of chicken addict, though. Every night, he set out two boiled breasts by the corner of his porch. He hadn’t spotted Leshak since that night in the yard, but the bowl was always empty by morning and the garbage cans untouched. 

This morning, he went out as usual to bring the dish inside, only for his foot to brush up against something laying on the welcome mat. A manila envelope, edges nearly puckering from the thickness of the papers inside. Shane picked it up. Atop the neatly printed Cyrillic was a stark line of Latin: Shane Hollander. It was addressed to him, at this location. Top left corner blank. No return sender. 

That was fucking strange. Not many people knew to associate him with this address. Despite the obvious futility of the gesture, he couldn’t help but scan the road and treeline. Like he would find some surreptitious figure lurking the shadows, watching for confirmation of a successful drop. 

It didn’t feel like there was anything other than stapled papers inside. Judging it likely safe, he glanced around one last time, took the envelope inside, and opened it at the dining room table. The top stack was all in Russian, printed four pages on one. Shane thought his brain was mistranslating the first few times he read the header. Klinsky District Police Department. The second stack was in English. Translated copies. The pages slipped from his fingers as he gasped into empty space.

The police records from Rozanov’s disappearance. Shane had wanted to get a hold of these since the beginning, but had long since given up. Too much securocracy, too little goodwill. He couldn’t even begin to speculate on who’d procured these, or how they did it. Whoever they were, Shane Hollander was now in possession of the most complete set of information on the case of any reporter past or current. 

That thought spurred him into motion. Carefully separating the pages, he slowly transformed the dining room table into a visual reconstruction of the investigation, highlighting sections and grouping translations with their originals, checking back and forth across languages to make sure his understanding was exact. Writing down notes and an hour-by-hour, day-by-day timeline of the entire search. 

The paperwork dated through the middle of February was thick with information. Security camera pulls, witness statements, search grids, procedural records. But as the days crept on and nothing new was discovered, the stacks through March, April, and May petered off until there was just a single sheet from the beginning of June declaring the investigation suspended. Three days before what would have been Ilya Rozanov’s nineteenth birthday. 

The morning crept on, his coffee completely forgotten in the pot, until he’d read, annotated, and categorized the full contents of the envelope. In his notebook was play-by-play of Rozanov’s last movements, as best as the investigation had pieced together. 

Shane was under no delusions that he would find something in here that would solve anything. But the prospect of just checking, if for no other satisfaction than his own curiosity, had him slipping shoes on his feet and a handful of pertinent documents in a waterproof folder. It was a thought experiment, he reasoned. A way to get inside Rozanov’s head. Walking a mile or two in his shoes. The last known movements of his mystery.

Notebook in hand, he forewent his car in favor of walking the short distance into the village square. According to the investigation documents, the first place Rozanov was seen after apparently leaving Moscow was a convenience store on the main road connecting Ozerovsk to its neighbors along the forest edge. He plugged the exact address into his navigation app, which led him to… Milena’s cafe. It must have changed ownership in the intervening decade and a half. 

Rozanov was first spotted here on a security camera.

KLINSKY DISTRICT POLICE DEPARTMENT

LOG TRANSCRIPTION

CCTV CAMERA #02395834905 (Ozerovsk, Moscow Oblast, 190487) 

21:04:00 13/02/2010 — 21:10:34 13/02/2010

AUDIO UNAVAILABLE

21:04:00 - Empty storefront.

21:04:30 - POI matching description enters from right of frame wearing dark pants, black boots, a heavy gray winter coat, and a black knit cap.

21:04:52 - POI takes out a carton of cigarettes, lights one, and smokes while leaning against the wall of the storefront.

21:06:19 - POI stubs out cigarette and throws butt into nearby trashcan.

21:06:15 - POI makes to enter convenience store, pauses while reaching for the door handle, then continues into the building.

21:10:23 - POI exits convenience store holding a paper bag in left hand.

21:10:34 - POI exits to the left of frame.

Shane shuffled the log to the back of the stack, then snapped the folder shut. Why a cigarette first? Why the hesitation? He was going to look so stupid doing this. But, in for a penny in for a pound, he supposed.

 Leaning up against the cinderblock facade of the cafe, Shane stayed there with his folder tucked under one arm. His mind went to the times he’d witnessed Rozanov smoke. The rink in Saskatchewan, when the fourth sentence out of Shane’s mouth was to politely tell him to knock it off. Now that Shane really thought about it, that was actually the only time Rozanov had smoked in front of him. Huh.

Shane thought about what it must feel like, to stand outside in the February freeze, the only warmth afforded to you from the lit end of a killer; the kind that took as much as it gave. He knew what Rozanov was going to purchase in that convenience store. Where he was headed after. Was the cigarette to steady his nerves? Kill time? Was it part of the same hesitation that stilled his hand as it reached for that door handle?

Shane poked his finger into the cinderbrick. Playing pretend. Flicked an imaginary butt into an imaginary trash can. Walked up to the cafe door. Hesitated. Then, like Rozanov before him, he made the decision to go inside.

KLINSKY DISTRICT POLICE DEPARTMENT

WITNESS STATEMENT

NAME: KATERINA SEMYONOVA KADIROVA

DATE: 16/02/2010

AGE: 22

OCCUPATION: CONVENIENCE STORE CLERK

At approximately 21:05 p.m. on February 13th, 2010 I was working my regular shift at the K&B on Central Street. It was a quiet night, I hadn’t seen many customers. The last one had come in maybe thirty minutes earlier. The person in question walked in. He was wearing a lot of clothes due to the cold, but I could see that he was tall, with curly blond hair. I would describe his face as handsome. He smelled like cigarette smoke. 

I don’t recall him saying a word to me. He just went straight for the liquor section, picked up a bottle of vodka, and checked out. That was the only thing he bought. He paid in cash. He was neither rude nor friendly. In fact, I was struck by how tired he seemed. He looked like he was troubled about something, but I did not ask. He left maybe five minutes after he came in. I believe I had one more customer, about fifteen minutes later. But that was it until my shift ended at midnight. 

The other customer was a regular I knew, Pyotr Kaprizov. He always comes in after his late shift for a snack and a soda. He bought his usual items and chatted with me for a minute before leaving. He seemed the same as he always does, nothing struck me as unusual.

He finished rereading the statement right as Milena brought him a to-go cup of peppermint tea. What, like he was going to sit in her cafe and not patronize it? 

The first time he read Katerina Kadirova’s statement, he’d been intrigued by the mention Pyotr Kaprizov. Apparently, so had the detectives. But a follow-up questioning had provided him an alibi. He was home with his wife and children for the remainder of the night. Just another dead end.

Tired, she’d described him. Troubled. It made Shane’s heart squeeze. He remembered an article from about a month after the incident. Some tabloid willing to publish gossip from distant associates wanting their five minutes of fame. A third line forward on Rozanov’s junior team, telling a story about an altercation that occurred after practice three weeks after IPC 2009. The teammate framed it as just friendly chirping about Rozanov still roughing it with them while his big-shot NHL signing bonus was waiting for him on the dotted line. But it didn’t take a professional writer to clock the jealousy behind the jab. Apparently Rozanov went very still for a moment, then cold-clocked him to the jaw. 

Shane had reason to doubt the full accuracy of the story, but taken together with the witness statement and… things he’d be exploring later today, it began to form a pattern. Something was weighing on Rozanov those months. Something that made him snappish. Tired. Troubled. Something that brought him back here of all places, where nobody would recognize that twelve-year-old boy who played wolf pranks on his seniors from the young man buying a single bottle of vodka on a weeknight. 

Shane made a note in the margins of the statement, then shuffled it to the back. Thanked Milena, and continued on. The walk from the village square to Sofia and Davyd Volkov’s old house was longer than the one to Shane’s rental. Up a hill, into a spot where the edges of the trees folded away into a long U shape. A handful of houses occupied the break, their backs to the woods. 

The next time Rozanov was spotted was about 20 minutes after he left the K&B. Shane timed the walk. Accounting for the slushy February conditions, that was a reasonable gap. Certainly not long enough for him to have gone somewhere else in between. 

The old houses were gone now. Bought out, torn down, and rebuilt as luxury vacation condos. Shane could see why. From this spot up on the hill, one could see the town and the lakes beyond spilling across the landscape, picturesque and distant, the forest a dark line framing the edges. But the street addresses were the same. 

KLINSKY DISTRICT POLICE DEPARTMENT

WITNESS STATEMENT

NAME: MIKHAIL VASILIYEVICH KUZNETSOV

DATE: 17/02/2010

AGE: 37

OCCUPATION: RESERVE GAME WARDEN

Around 2200, I would say, on February 13th, 2010, I was locking my doors and about to go to bed when I heard speaking outside my living room window. I checked through the blinds, but I did not see anything. I suppose there could have been someone sitting on that porch, but it was dark and I did not have a clear view. 

The house? Oh, it has been empty for quite some time. Ever since old Davyd died. From what I understood, his son-in-law was having a difficult time selling it. It has sat empty for almost a year now. I used to cut the grass for him after his wife Sofia died. And I’ve kept cutting it as a favor. It is no big thing, I just do it when I cut my own yard. Otherwise I do not go onto the property.

Ilya Rozanov? He hasn’t visited out here since he was a boy. Isn’t he some hockey prodigy?

I cannot tell you if there was someone there matching his description. I wasn’t even sure there was someone there. 

KLINSKY DISTRICT POLICE DEPARTMENT

FORENSIC LOG #0349758

The following items of interest were found and catalogued at Ozerovsk, ul. Bereza d. 13 and deemed relevant to this investigation:

EXHIBIT 1: 1 bottle Green Mark Vodka containing approx. 45 ml liquid, near northeastern corner of porch.

NOTES:

            - Item was swabbed for saliva sample and dusted for fingerprints. 

            -Fingerprints match National Passport Database Entry #000038238435: “ILYA GRIGORIYEVICH ROZANOV.” 

            -Saliva sample returned same identification as FORENSIC LOG #0349759 EXHIBIT 1. DNA is presumed to belong to the same individual as fingerprints.

EXHIBIT 2: Soil Sample, northeastern corner of porch.

NOTES:

            -In line with on-scene olfactory analysis, sample was found to contain high concentrations of ethanol and other trace molecules consistent with the contents of EXHIBIT 1.

EXHIBIT 3: Gold Orthodox Cross on Chain, hanging from front door knob.

NOTES: 

            -Witness statements from GRIGORI PETROVICH ROZANOV, ALEXEI GRIGORIYEVICH ROZANOV, and SVETLANA SERGEEVNA VETROVA indicate Exhibit belonged to POI.

            -DNA sample returned same identification as FORENSIC LOG ##0349758 EXHIBIT 1 and LOG #0349759 EXHIBIT 1.

Ilya’s cross. Irina’s cross. Left on the door handle of an abandoned childhood home. Why had Rozanov left it there, before moving to his next location? A voice talking softly to nobody, a bottle half-drunk and half-spilled. Or maybe half-libated. Exactly one shot left at the bottom. A remembrance for the recently dead. Did he feel the cold, that night? Or did the liquor numb his skin? It must have. Numbed him. Why else would he…

Shane had one more place to visit. If he could find it. So he walked. With the intentional, hard-focused steadiness of the inebriated. His outsider feet finding the path in daylight where a local would know it in the dark. The imagining of a golden cross hanging from his neck was a decent approximation to removing one worn so long its absence felt bigger than its presence ever did.

 At the top of the hill, where the trees retook the landscape, the paved road turned into a dirt track. A service road for national park employees and a trailhead for hikers. He had no confidence he was actually going to stand in the exact location. There were no more indicators of its direction or importance anymore. No police tape, no orange trail markers leading crime scene analysts and detectives through the thick muck of the snowy hillside to a spot that on all other days would be unremarkable and ignored. But Rozanov had walked these woods that night. So Shane would, too. 

The forest loomed ahead. A solid line of darkness cutting across the horizon, the road disappearing between tree trunks like a tongue between teeth set into a broken jaw. Rozanov would have walked straight in. These trees knew him from those childhood summers. The road took him within and let him back out each time. It would be easy, even after all those years, to slip down that gullet.

Shane’s feet stilled at the edge of the forest, right where the shortened midday shadows split sunshine from shade. They wavered in the slight breeze, lapping at the edge of his shoes. His heart jackrabbited against the inside of his ribs. He drew in a long, slow breath. Willed the racing of his blood to slow. Tucked the folder into the front of his jacket. He considered the dregs of his tea cup, poured the remaining liquid out onto the dirt, crumpled the cup and stuck it in his pocket to throw away later. A little spit. Connection. Propitiation. 

Nerves successfully steeled, Shane walked under shadow and let it swallow him.

He stuck to the road, the weight of the forest across his shoulders familiar and unsettling. It hung heavy, like a thick blanket pulling Shane down, his awareness bent towards the sense data around him. The hard press of earth underneath his heels. The sound of the wind chattering through trees in harmony with the birds and the squirrels. The smell of growing things and rotting things and the cycle that linked the two. The weight stayed on him, tracking his every moment, until suddenly it tugged.

Shane stopped. Blinked away the touch and the sound and the smell. Looked with his eyes at this place he was halted. And off to the side, he saw what the forest does not recognize. Beer cans and cigarette butts. Not old and tarnished, but recent. Maybe a day or two discarded.

Looking past them… it was old and likely largely disused, but was there. An old trail, branching away from the main road. The kind of secret passed around by local kids looking for a place to escape their parents. 

Rozanov would’ve known about it. If not through his own buddies, then through Alexei. Following his hunch, Shane stepped into the underbrush. The final document now sat at the forefront of the folder. He didn’t need to read it again to know its contents.

KLINSKY DISTRICT POLICE DEPARTMENT

FORENSIC LOG #0349759

The following items of interest were found and catalogued in Zavidovo National Forest, loc. 56°25'27.0"N 36°18'28.1"E and deemed relevant to this investigation:

EXHIBIT 1: Army Folding Knife, Model GS26, found on ground.

NOTES:

            -Small bloodstain on tip of blade.

            -Blood DNA sample returned same identification as FORENSIC LOG #0349758 EXHIBIT 1; “ILYA GRIGORIYEVICH ROZANOV.”

Blood on a military pocketknife. The last piece anyone would ever find of Ilya Rozanov. Shane kept walking. The weight got heavier, no longer just hanging but pressing, all around his head like a cottony vice grip. The tugging got stronger. It became increasingly difficult to focus his eyesight, but he kept walking. The world seemed to fracture in and out of existence. Brightly painted greens interposing illogically with stark white and brown shaded gray by darkness. Was he dreaming? Had he fallen asleep? Had he been dreaming this whole time? 

Why else was his skin freezing in the middle of spring, breath sawing out as chill air cut into his lungs? Why did he feel the seeping cold of snow through the tops of his boots? When had the daylight grown so dim? Why did he sense the presence of the forest like eyes in the trees, so much of its will and attention bearing down on him, this walk, this place?

Why could he hear another set of footsteps? Why did he hear Rozanov’s voice, not mischievous or serious but…sad? Angry? Why was his voice saying these things?

Take me away from here.

Take me away from here.

Take me away from here.

God, why did he sound so broken?

The stumble of roots and branches fell away into a small clearing, traversed by a long-fallen and slowly rotting tree. No, the tree wasn’t rotting. It had just recently fallen. Shane could see soil and snow still clinging to its upended roots. 

Rozanov was standing there, next to the tree. Lightning cracked the blue sky. No, a cloudy night where the sky roiled but did not rain. Distant thunder washed over the hillside. Dark pants, black boots, black cap, heavy gray coat discarded on the ground and he was going to freeze to death doing—

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Something flashed in his hands, pale metal somehow colder than the air around it. His arm came up, blade pressed into the side of his neck—

Shane found his voice. “Ilya, no!” But the sound fell dead in the air, contained to the haze-drenched confines of his skull as he stumbled further into the clearing, but he couldn’t seem to make any progress, legs heavy like he was wading through molasses. 

Ilya stayed there, blade poised against the sensitive skin over his pulse. All Shane could do was silently scream, please no don’t do this this isn’t how it goes this isn’t how its supposed to go over and over in a loop, begging and begging into the void for unknown seconds, minutes. 

A sobbing breath. A hand falling away. A thin line of blood along the blade. A drop winding its way down into the well of Ilya’s collarbone.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A hoarse, jagged, desperate scream as the knife hit the snow. A tiny smear of red across cold white. Stark and silent.

The forest erupted. A great, shuddering moan that was felt more than heard. Lightning cracked again, thunder clapping against the trees. Shane’s vision went blurry, the weight of the woods now heavy enough to send him to the dirt. He kept looking for Ilya, blinking past the flickering of the world, eyes darting, breath as jagged as that terrible scream, watching the figure in front of him go in and out of focus, one moment upright and man-shaped and another moment… something else. 

Shane’s vision faded into a flat, reflective green until darkness claimed him entirely. 

The first thing Shane registered was wet. Something warm and wet against his face, uneven but persistent on his cheeks. The next was the orange glow of sunlight shining directly through closed eyelids. Then an ache in his back that had everything to do with the hard-packed ground he was laying on.

Why was he laying on the ground? Fuck, had he passed out? He shifted around, grateful beyond belief he’d landed on his right shoulder instead of his left, mental functions slowly returning even as his eyes were reluctant to open. That wet feeling persisted, and now it came alongside a smell. Something dank and animal and just skirting the edge of unpleasant. He raised a hand to wipe away the feeling. Except Shane’s hand never made it to his face. It was halted by a wall of fluff and warm solidity, moving minutely under his fingers.

Shane forced his eyes open. They were met with green. But not the flat green of a tapetum lucidum reflection; animal eyes or something like them. The green of summer grass, too bright for the season.

Leshak towered over Shane’s prone form, nose just inches away from his cheeks. The dog stopped licking his face, instead moving to press his cold nose into the side of Shane’s neck, under the curve of his good shoulder. Fuck, his limbs still felt so heavy. Shane shifted a little, just to relieve the tension in his back. He didn’t think he was getting up any time soon. The air was warm and the sun was dipping behind the canopy and it would be so easy to just fall back to sleep…

The stinky wetness returned. Shane blinked open his eyes. Leshak once again began nosing underneath him, with more insistence this time like he was trying to crawl beneath Shane and put him on his back. 

“Alright, fuck, fine,” Shane whined, slowly finding the will to move his legs and draw up into a sitting position. He hadn’t felt this exhausted since going into triple overtime against Houston in Game 4 of the 2022 Cup Final. He’d scored the game-winning goal, then used the ensuing dogpile that built itself on top of him to let every muscle in his worn-out body collapse against the ice, bones so useless he required the hand of his right winger to get himself back on his skates. 

That game had been the first inkling that he was closer to the end of his career than the beginning. So needless to say, Shane wasn’t a fan of the feeling.

Leshak shoved at Shane’s left shoulder, the dog’s innocent attention nevertheless sending a pang through the injured joint that left Shane hissing. Before the noise was fully out of his mouth, the creature was on his other side, wriggling his way under Shane’s armpit. Still fighting the ache in his everything, he used the dog’s back to support him as he found his feet, swaying a few times before his balance kicked in. 

Leshak began walking off into the trees. Shane watched him. Where the fuck was he? He’d entered the forest around midday, but now the angle of the sunlight suggested a much later afternoon hour. Vision still swimming a little, checked his cell phone. Dead. A useless hunk of glass and metal. Fuck. How the hell was he supposed to find his way out of here? The shift in the light made everything look different. He couldn’t catch a glimpse of the disused track he’d walked to get here, much less any other indication of the path back to civilization.

Something tugged on the hem of his dirt-stained jacket. Shane looked down to find Leshak at his side again, teeth sunk gingerly into the canvas. He hadn’t even noticed the dog coming back. Why had he come back?

Leshak tugged again. Exhausted, mildly delirious, and lost beyond all sense; Shane took a step in his direction. The dog released his hem and walked ahead through the trees. Shane Hollander followed. 

When asked about it later, Shane could only remember snatches. The exhaustion dragging at his limbs, the gentle up and down of the terrain. Moments when the trees broke in favor of small meadows dotted with wildflowers and the warm sun on his face — flashbulbs against his eyelids —seemed to draw him out of the fog for brief moments before the trees swallowed him again. The slow crunch of his feet through the underbrush. Birds in the trees chattering like a swarm of reporters. The near-silent lope of the creature in front of him.

Mostly he remembered Leshak. Always a few steps ahead of him, but never far. Tail waving like a pennant for Shane to follow. His easy navigation through dense trees and around boulders, moving through the forest with the grace and ease of a being long-familiar with his contours.

And the dog never stopped moving. So Shane didn’t stop moving. He must have been half-asleep, brain conjuring memories in random associations. How else could the nose-burning sting of smelling salts and the deep inhale that smell forced him to take find him here? The sensation pushed him forward. Even when he thought his feet wouldn’t carry him another step, he took one more. Through the gathering dark, following dark gold and cream and green eyes that glanced back to meet his every time he felt like lying down and just letting the leaf mould take him. Something in their depths told Shane stopping was a bad idea. 

The world narrowed down to walking, watching, following, resisting. Marching on for who knows how many minutes or hours. Until the flicker of something in the distance flashed through the weariness. Sunlight on water. Leshak had led him back to the lake. The prospect of his walk finally ending sent a jolt of urgency — a push like the bite of his skate blade through a fast crossover — through Shane’s legs. He stumbled forward, chasing the sunshine until he emerged from the trees on the lawn between his rental and the forest. Blow the goal horn. He’d won. Free of it at last, his screaming muscles finally failed him and he went down to his knees. He hadn’t known relief could feel so profound.

His long, heavy breaths began to lose their rhythm, air bouncing past his vocal chords as senseless laughter bubbled from his chest. He’d walked into a place with bones older than the existence of mankind as a species, let it dig its thorns within his flesh and found a way back out all the same. That’s what Olga found him doing. On his knees, eyes to the sun, laughing.

“Shane!” she called, hand gripping his bad shoulder and the pain of that brought him fully back into reality. He met her gaze if for no other reason than to reassure her, though he knew his expression was slack and his eyes glassy. He didn’t make straight eye contact very often. It took a lot of effort. But it made her hand relax. 

Olga swallowed, wrinkled brow furrowed deeper with worry. “What happened to you?”

For the first time since he woke up, a thought occupied Shane’s brain that wasn’t about the fight to escape. Olga’s question reminded him of why he’d walked into those woods in the first place. The old trail. The fallen tree. The pale knife on pale flesh. A single drop of blood. Ilya, angry and sad and screaming. The story painted across the landscape by the contents of the folder still tucked into the front of his jacket.

Shane had walked out of the forest. Why hadn’t Ilya? Why hadn’t… 

He glanced around wildly, almost stretching back under the shade of the trees if not for Olga firmly gripping his arm. She called his name, but he barely heard it. No sign of golden brown or cream or summer-grass green. Leshak was gone.

“Where did he go?” Shane breathed, struggling weakly against Olga’s hold. “Where did he go!?” 

Olga got another arm on Shane, bracketing his chest and tugging him backwards. “I don’t know, Shanya,” she whispered. 

A different sort of wetness coated his cheeks. A heavy sob hiccuped out of his chest, loud and echoing against the suffocating quiet. Olga held onto him while he cried, asking over and over again a question no human could know, and the silence of the trees refused to answer. 

It has ranged further afield today. The hunger-like need in its gut slacking as he spent more and more daylight away from the den. Not so far it cannot be back by nightfall, but to the places where it knows fat brown-and-white birds lay their eggs this time of year. It stalks the edge of the meadow, looking for a nesting hen who has positioned its clutch too close to the trees. If it can chase the bird off, the eggs she covers will be easy pickings. 

Birds cannot smell, so it disregards the wind. It moves slowly through the cover of underbrush, then selects its mark. Gathering its limbs beneath it, it prepares to strike.

Then a shiver runs through the forest. Not like wind rustling the leaves of the canopy, but something in the ground that trembles through every intertwined root of this place, up through its paws into its coiled limbs. The brown-and-whites erupt into their short, useless flights. Smaller songbirds chatter and chirp and flap, squirrels and mice retreat into their hiding holes. Somewhere behind it, a deer crashes through the ravine. 

None of these noises are enough to conceal the sound from its ears. A tall-creature sound, uneven and desperate and hurting. His voice.

It does not hesitate. The forest has him, somewhere. Has marked him, taken him within the influence of branch and bramble. And the forest can be reluctant to return that which it has claimed. 

It will not let that happen. Careening through the trees, it tracks the source of the tremor, nose constantly on the hunt for autumn leaves and sharp-ice. It slows down as it catches a whiff. The scent is faint, but suggests it will be stronger in that dir—

It does not go there. Not that direction, where the not-beasts of the woods rumble down their track and young tall-creatures make ruckus that scares away prey. The place where it first woke up, the shape of its bones unfamiliar under its skin. It does not think about those days. Thinking makes its guts churn like a snow-swollen stream, and it cannot afford the hurting. 

So it does not go there. Does not think. But he is there. And the forest has him. 

It follows the scent, crossing the track, past bright-hard tall-creature things and little orange pellets that stink of dead fire, through the tangle of the forest reclaiming a place the tall-creatures no longer walk, ignoring the ice in its chest that has kept it away for so long. 

It finds him there. The place of the fallen tree. That old oak is half-rotted now, coated in terraces of fungus, its roots and branches collapsed like prey going limp of the jaws of a hunter. The scent is strong here. For a moment, it thinks it smells a hint of blood. Feels something thorny against the thin skin of its throat. A hurt not in its flesh but somewhere deeper, a yawning, grasping hole through the center of itself. It shakes its head. Nonsense.

When it finds him, he is uninjured. Just asleep in the dirt, so deep the flickers of sunshine against his eyes does not stir him from it. He needs to get up. Already the forest grasps at his edges, like the trunk of a tree eating the straight-line things tall-creatures sometimes affix to them. Slow, but inevitable if he does not move.

It licks at his face, running its tongue over the star-dots across his cheeks. It has never seen them this close in the daylight. They are… Something stirs in its chest, something beyond hunger and thirst and instinct. Something it has no name for but finds kindred in a view of the moon in the reflection of water. Something content and wanting at the same time. 

He begins to stir, and it must get him to rise. It takes two attempts, a harsh grumble, and considerable insistence, but he peels his back from the forest floor. The grip lessens. They must move while they can. It goes to prompt him to his feet, nosing under a long limb. But the sound of pain causes it to retreat. No blood, but not no injury. It would be careful of that, now. 

It switches to the other side, helping him stand. Good. Now he can follow it back to the den, where he will be safe. Except he doesn’t move. He fiddles with a tall-creature thing, sounds of frustration spilling from his mouth. They don’t have time for this! 

It returns to his side, digging its teeth into the loose pelt that hangs from him like half-shed velvet off an elk’s antlers. Tugging once, then twice, until he finally understands and begins following it through the woods. 

It moves much slower than it would on its own. Taking gentle routes that will not strain his exhausted limbs. Through gaps in the canopy where the sun breaks through the shade and helps him breathe just a little easier. Looking back over and over again, every time that sharp-ice scent spikes, making sure he is still following. Always following. It will not leave him here. The forest cannot have him. He does not belong in the dark.

As they approach the grass that separates the den from the forest, other scents began to prick its nose. Tall-creature smells, and strongest is hers: the one whose land protects her and hers. He will be safe with her. It will not. 

He begins to move faster, as if sensing they have reached their destination. It simply… moves out of the way. He does not belong in the dark. That is not the case for it.

He leaves the forest, the last tendrils snapping away. This is good, it thinks. He is free. He is safe.

Then why does his voice still cry out? Why can it still hear him hurting?

Who was he looking for?

Chapter End Notes

Spoiler: Ilya goes into the forest with suicidal intent, though his plan is not well-thought out. He ends up using a pocketknife to make a small cut on his neck, but does not go any further.

Stick tap to anyone who can name the real-life inspirations behind all five MLH players named in this fic. There will be more. Poor Shane, can’t find a single Russian for whom he’s their favorite player.

DOUBLE stick tap to anyone who can name all the Russian hockey players whose last names I pulled for my bevy of OCs. (And the one last name that’s not a hockey player but a very roundabout reference to the origins of Game Changer as Marvel fanfic.)

Worldbuilding Rambles! In some magickal practice, peppermint leaves are said to induce prophetic dreams. So Shane, quite by accident, low-key asked to see this by drinking the tea, giving some to the forest, and walking in with Ilya so heavy on his brain.

As for why it wants to keep him, I don’t consider the forest to be malevolent nor benevolent. (Though it does have favorites.) Natural places are inherently amoral because they’re not much influenced by human ideas. They are places of survival, and an energy as tuned-in as Shane’s is simply, in a manner of speaking, extra nutritious and therefore advantageous to retain.

You have reached a milestone! Please, if you would like, enjoy the official playlist for the first half of this fic: Don't Feed Me Official Playlist: Forest ver.

Chapter 6: Walls

Chapter Notes

So, uh, the chapter count went up. I was looking through my outline and realized Chapter 9 really needed to be split into two. BUT Chapter 9 is gonna be a fun little inversion of some established conventions so who’s really gonna be upset by that?

Also, you may have also noticed I added a pseud. This is for fandom consolidation purposes. Any previously created links to my works should still work the same.

Last chapter was angsty as fuck so have a little more angst and then a long stretch of ungodly fluff.

THE NEXT DAY

Shane rose early the next morning, eager to pack his car and get on the road. He’d barely slept the night before. How could he, with the dark line of the forest looming on the hillside, grasping and relentless and empty? He’d lain awake for long hours, listening for the tell-tale scrape of plastic on gravel. Or maybe soft, offset thumps against his porch. All he heard was silence. 

Under the light of the sun, it was all he could do not to rush through his morning routine: pour a slug of coffee in a travel mug, double check his equipment bag, and fire up that boring black sedan for a perfectly boring drive through some perfectly boring countryside that hadn’t tried to eat him.

The further he got from the forest, the more ridiculous his panic seemed. The woods didn’t work like that. At least, that’s what Doctor Lyubushkin had told him, once Olga pried him off the lawn and took him to the local clinic; terrified on his behalf while he hadn’t the energy to feel it for himself. Physically, there was nothing wrong with him. Clean bill of health, aside from the acute exhaustion and emotional outburst. Not even a reason to explore a psychological issue.

Shane wasn’t the first person to see things in the forest. It wasn’t common, but locals and visitors alike occasionally reported experiences similar to his own. The forest’s weight upon them, whispering knowledge they had no right to understand. 

Doctor Lyubushkin asked him why he’d gone there. What he’d seen. Shane couldn’t answer. The doctor expected that sort of response. 

He’d been around the last time this happened, though it was very long ago. Imagine Shane’s surprise to be told the last person to go through this was none other than Raisa Ivanova Svechnikova, nearly twenty years ago. Missing for almost twenty-four hours, until her husband tracked her down in a meadow she liked to pick wildflowers from, dazed and disoriented and not realizing she was crying as she broke her fingernails scratching in dark earth. She refused to talk about it, too.

Shane asked the doctor if what people saw in there was real. Lyubushkin just said that wasn’t his question to try and answer. The kind of response people gave when they thought you should man up and do the thing yourself. 

So Shane considered talking to the old woman in the next house over. But then the night was long and quiet and the forest sat dark against the rising sun and Shane was a goddamn coward. He didn’t want to talk to Raisa Ivanova about the forest. Talking to her would make it… real. But not the useful kind of real. Not the kind of real that one can cite in a bibliography, a clear source one could point to and say yes, this is the preceding link in the chain of knowledge, and if you go there you will find another and another and another unbroken, the way reality is supposed to work. 

Gnosis was for hedge-crossers and prophets. Not biographers. 

So Shane chose to focus on chains of causality he could track. An unlikely source that had hunted down Shane just as much as he had it. An email in response to one of many he sent out to Ilya’s former coaches and teammates, not from its intended recipient but from his son. An Aleksander Mikheyev claiming to be a friend from his teenage years. 

That email actually turned up two unexpected sources. He’d be meeting with the second early next week. But for now, Shane recalled their correspondence as he drove. Though a Moscow native, Aleksander had actually spent most of his adult life in Paris. But work had taken him back to his hometown for an extended stretch, so Shane jumped on the opportunity to meet in person while they were in the same country. 

Shane made the last few turns to the address Aleksander had sent him. An upscale cafe whose bar served just as much liquor as it did caffeine. Modern and sepia-washed and almost parodically European with its reproduction wrought-iron railings and actually-electric gaslamps, moody and warm under cold gray skies. A kind of place that wanted to be historical and sophisticated and only somewhat successfully aped the energy of actual age. 

As per usual, Shane arrived early. He grabbed a table in the back big enough for his equipment and a pair of drinks, ran through his setup, and ordered a decaf latte that arrived overfull in an unwieldy mug a perfect three minutes before the agreed meeting time. Fifteen minutes after that, Shane was bouncing his leg idly wondering if this was all an elaborate prank.  

He didn’t really believe that. Of course he’d done his due diligence vetting the source. Aleksander Mikheyev was a real person, son of Evgeni Mikheyev who was Ilya’s head coach from the ages of fourteen to seventeen. He had a long and robust social media presence (which, in Shane’s opinion, indicated Parisian life suited him much better than Muscovite) and in fact lived in France. His profile on his company website corroborated his role took him back and forth from Moscow regularly. 

Just when Shane started contemplating sending an email asking for an explanation, the front door opened with the soft tinkling of a bell. Aleksander dressed like he did on all his socials, which is to say low-cut shirts and fashionably wide-legged pants. Or at least, Rose had called him fashionable. Shane never really paid attention to things like that. Today’s ensemble was a drapey tan trouser and a blue silk button-up that made his eyes pop. 

Pair that with light brown hair, smooth pale skin, and the kind of pout that looked perpetually kiss-bitten; Aleksander Mikheyev was hot. Shane felt a strange sense of relief that Cheryl’s services weren’t needed for this particular interview. With fluency in a shared language between them, they’d be speaking French and Shane would type up the English translation himself.

 Shane gave himself a little shake, flinging away thready possibilities like cobwebs from an attic. It had just…been a while, and the man in front of him was objectively pretty. But now was not the time and here certainly was not the place to be considering that.

Aleksander quickly clocked Shane’s attention and made his way over. Shane rose, extended his hand, and said in French, “Aleksander Mikheyev? Thank you for agreeing to speak with me.”

A sharp grin split Aleksander’s face. “Sasha, please,” he said in kind, taking Shane’s hand. “Nobody calls me Aleksander. It is a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Hollander.”

“Shane is fine, then,” he answered, releasing the handshake. “Would you like something to drink?”

Aleksander – Sasha – eyed the bar briefly, then shook his head. “Coffee after 10 AM keeps me up all night. Even the decaf. The joys of aging, am I right?”

“Yes,” Shane answered, not really sure how to continue. 

Sasha’s lips pursed as he lost the fight against an amused smirk. “Definitely Canadian,” he muttered. Shane did his best not to blush. Canadian French had a…rather distinct accent to it, especially to an ear trained in Paris. 

“Sorry,” Shane replied, doing absolutely nothing to beat the allegation. “You’ll have to put up with my obnoxious North American rhotics.”

Sitting down, Sasha waved his hand. “Oh, please. From one bilingual to…whatever hyperpolyglot thing you’ve got going on, accent snobbery is bullshit.”

Shane also took his seat, then sipped his latte while raising an eyebrow at Sasha’s extremely polished response.

He giggled, pretty and tenor. “Okay, you were not bullied by snobby Parisians while you were learning.”

“I don’t know, it seems to have worked pretty well for you,” Shane laughed. 

“Paris is many wonderful things. Nice is not one of them. One of the few ways it is like Moscow.”

That sobered up the room. The other thing they shared sat heavy in the air, not to be spoken aloud in any language. Not in the open. Not here. 

“And what was Moscow like for you, growing up?”

“Oh, are we starting now?”

Shane blinked twice. “Right, yes, if you’re ready.”

INTERVIEW CONDUCTED BY SHANE HOLLANDER.

DATE: April 22nd, 2026

NAME: Aleksander Evgeniyevich Mikheyev (Hereafter referenced as “Sasha.”)

AGE: 35

BIRTHPLACE: Moscow, Moscow Oblast, Russia

RELATION TO SUBJECT: Childhood Friend

With full understanding and consent to speaking on the record, the above interviewee attested to the following:

Q: How did you know the Rozanovs?

A: I met Ilya first, when we were fourteen. He played on the team my father coached. I interacted with his father and brother a few times but I did not know them well. 

Q: And how exactly did you two meet?

            SASHA: Getting rather personal rather quickly, aren’t you?

            SHANE: Sorry, you don’t have to answer that if you—

            SASHA: Relax. I’m just teasing.

A: My father was a single parent, so I spent a lot of time at the rink for want of alternate supervision. Most of the players just ignored me, but Ilya made a point to say hello. He stuck around after practice a lot, so we started chatting. After a few times, we considered each other friends.

Q: You didn’t play?

A: (Laughs.) Absolutely not. And I still have no idea how hockey works, except that one Houston player knew what he was doing foregoing a rash guard during warmups. 

           SHANE: (Laughs.) Tyson Segall. Yeah, he, uh, he was committed to the bit, that’s for sure.

Q: What did you normally do together?

A: Well, that changed as we got older. 

Q: Take me through it, then.

A: When we first started hanging out, it was a lot of public spaces or my house or Svetlana’s house. (Note: Svetlana Vetrova, another childhood friend of Rozanov.) Sneaking into movies we were not old enough for, doing homework in each others’ bedrooms while listening to CDs ripped off Limewire. (Laugh.) You know, Ilya had terrible taste in music. Always putting on the most obnoxious club music or, like, shitty American electropunk. We never could fix that about him. And when it was all three of us, there was lot of me reminding those two that normal people talk about things other than hockey every once in a while.

Q: You didn’t spend much time at Ilya’s house?

A: No. I didn’t know the particulars back then, but he didn’t like being home. That’s why he stayed late after practice all the time. Delaying the inevitable. 

Q: Do you… know why?

A: He didn’t have a great relationship with his father, and his brother was older and didn’t have time for him. Ilya didn’t really talk about it, and I didn’t press. If Svetlana knew, she never told me.

Q: But your best guess? What made you think that about them?

A: (Pause.) If you insist. It was quite obvious they weren’t close. His name in Ilya’s phone was (Ital. in Russian) “Colonel,” and he would call him father when speaking to him. You know these words?

            SHANE: Yes.

            SASHA: Then you know that’s not normal.

            SHANE: No, that’s… very formal. 

A: That is one word for it. As for Alexei, Ilya complained about him a lot. How he was always taking their father’s side on things. I think Ilya would have spent the night out more often than not had his father not insisted he sleep at home during the season. Not hard to read between the lines, there.

Q: No, I guess not. Um, and as you got older? What changed?

A: Movie theaters became clubs. Svetlana’s father was high in government, so she knew where to get good fake IDs. We all became closer. Learning things about who we were as people. 

Q: And how did Ilya act in these spaces? 

A: He liked to have fun. We were all pressure-cooker kids. Fathers with big expectations. Those clubs were places we could escape for a few hours. Dance, drink, enjoy the company of other people. He was such a flirt, Ilya. Treated it like a game. (Pause.)

Not in a gross way! He was always respectful. In fact, he was the most… I can’t call it “responsible,” but he kept himself in check. Had a hard stop time so he could sleep before practice, refused anything stronger than alcohol or cigarettes. And…I tried. And not with the kindest of methods. 

I guess I didn’t like thinking of him as a jock. Yes, he loved hockey, but he was different from many others my father coached. He was…kind. Not nice. The fucker had a judgemental stare worse than a grandmother’s and couldn’t resist a clever retort. But never about anything that would actually hurt. He was observant, like that. Generous, in many respects. Safe. Back then I did not like associating him with those boys who would bully me for being small. 

I’ve gotten past that, obviously. But there were many times I was not a good friend. Many times we fought. Getting clean helped with that. (Chuckle.) Ten years sober in June. Well, California sober. 

            SHANE:  Congratulations.

            SASHA: Thank you. Sorry, I completely rambled off, there.

            SHANE: No, no. It’s good to…hear your perspective. Very helpful.

Q: Sasha, can I ask something… maybe uncomfortable?

           SASHA: About?

           SHANE: Something potentially personal.

           SASHA: (Long pause.) Turn off your recording.

INTERVIEW PAUSED.

Shane paused the recording and disconnected his microphones. “Whatever your answer, if I use it, will be attributed on background only. Your name won’t be linked to it anywhere.”

Sasha regarded him from across the table. His posture was lax on the surface, but there was tension coiled just beneath. The mundane sounds of the cafe; of casual stop-ins and friendly laughter, the clink of spoons on ceramic and the tinkling of a bell, all fell away as interest bore down on the moment. Walls loved secrets, perhaps more than trees. They knew what it meant to keep one. 

“Ask your question, Shane. Then I will decide if I want to answer.”

“Did you ever notice… signs of physical abuse? Beyond what he’d get playing hockey?” 

Sasha’s heavy-lidded eyes widened.

“I just,” Shane stammered, “I’ve heard things about his father from other sources and I just… I need to know.” Was there anything underneath those heavy winter clothes? Any other wounds besides a single tiny cut?

Sasha’s posture relaxed, the corners of his mouth wavering as he processed the question. Right when Shane felt like he was going to explode from anticipation, he answered, “I never noticed any unusual bruises. Anywhere, you understand?”

Shane nodded. It had hit him somewhere after the rash guard comment. Is your first time with a man? Ah, no. Really. My coach’s son back in Russia.

I like trouble.

Shane tried not to feel relief. It was just information. Another piece of the puzzle. It sagged through his tense muscles anyway. Noise returned to the world. “Thank you.”

“Any more deep, dark secrets you wish to pry into?” Sasha asked.

Shane ducked his head. “No. Just the regular kind.”

INTERVIEW RESUMED.

Q: Where were you when you heard Ilya was missing?

A: Sleeping off a bender. Svetlana blew up my phone until I answered. It was… it was a big shock, obviously.

Q: What did you do, after?

A: The police questioned me. Once officially, and then Alexei got a hold of me on the way out. Had some very choice words hurled my direction. Thankfully I did not have much to tell. 

Q: Why is that?

A: I was a cokehead party boy and he was on his way to fame. I understood. There were many eyes on him at that time, domestic and international. He would be stupid to risk his future getting caught at a club with a fake ID. And we had been drifting apart, for some time before that. Without Svetlana holding us together I think it would have ended sooner. I moved to Paris about a year later. 

Q: And he was set? On the MLH?

A: He was the number one draft pick, right? That’s a big deal? I would say yes. 

Q: I’ve heard from other sources he was approached by CSKA for a contract.

A: I’m not really the person to ask about that. Svetlana would know, probably. He told her everything about the hockey stuff. 

SHANE: Okay, thank you.

Q: Did he ever talk about his mom?

A: Ah — um, not to me. I knew she had died, obviously. But I didn’t know about… you know?

           SHANE: I know.

A: I didn’t, until after he went missing. Svetlana…fuck, she might kill me for saying this. She was very scared that he’d… done the same kind of thing. Told me about Irina so that I would understand why she was so upset. She wasn’t okay for a long time, after he disappeared. Neither of us were, really. In some ways, we still aren’t.

Q: Svetlana was worried he’d… attempt? I’m sorry, I need it in words.

A: Yes, she was worried about that.

Q: Do you have any idea what—

A: No, I don’t. And I don’t want to speculate. It doesn’t matter anymore. Whatever he did, he’s gone. 

Q: I’m sorry. I wouldn’t ask you to. I was just trying to ask if you knew what might have prompted him to visit Ozerovsk again, after all those years.

A: I didn’t even know that place existed, before. He was under a lot of pressure, maybe he missed her. But he never told me anything particular. (Long pause.) Do you have everything you need? I think I’m done.

           SHANE: Yeah, we can be done. Thank you, Sasha.

END TRANSCRIPT.

Shane politely ignored the wetness in Sasha’s eyes as he finished the dregs of his latte. As he packed up his gear, his email pinged a notification. Checking quickly, he saw the Cyrillic in the subject line, glanced at Sasha again, and closed his laptop. Now wasn’t the time.

 Something about the way Sasha slumped in his seat told Shane any attempts to comfort would fall on unwilling ears. And Shane had no place trying to. He’d never lost a close friend. He tried to picture it, for a moment. If Hayden or Rose just vanished off the face of the map, never to be seen again. Even just the imagining threatened to buckle his knees. 

So he just went through his standard, I’ll contact you if I have any further questions spiel, accepted the monosyllabic answers, and left the man to collect himself. As he started for the door, he risked one glance back. Watched Sasha’s eyes linger on the spigoted bottles artfully arranged behind the bar. Ten years sober. 

As quietly as he could, Shane ordered a chamomile tea to be sent to the man in the blue shirt. And if he pressed a hand to the doorframe on his way out asked the walls to maybe dim the moody light glinting off those bottles, that was his own business. They owed him one, for the secrets he’d revealed within them. He couldn’t think of a more worthy repayment.  

In his car, Shane pulled up his inbox on his phone. One of CSKA’s former scouts had replied. 

On background, this source confirmed Viktor Sergechev’s words. CSKA Moscow had approached Ilya to play for them. But Viktor had the timelines wrong. Overtures had started as early as June 2009. Well before the International Prospects Cup. Right after Ilya became eligible for free agency, in the absence of an established draft procedure. 

Shane quietly recalibrated his entire timeline. At first, the operation was smooth. But then something snagged. Ilya had known about CSKA’s offer during the tournament, but had taken down Shane’s phone number. Presumably to enter into an American cell phone once he had one. Because they’d meet up again. Because he’d be in Boston.

Ilya had already, demonstrably chosen the MLH by then. So… why hadn’t he signed a contract? Shane had a copy of that document, courtesy of the Raiders. Its terms were generous, for an entry-level. Why not lock that down? Did it have something to do with the pressure Sasha mentioned he was under? The one that had driven him into the withered embrace of his childhood summers? Something that would lead him to…

Shane put the car in gear. The first question was what. The second question was who. If Shane could figure that out, then maybe, just maybe, he could answer why.

About twenty minutes from his rental, the heavy gray clouds finally made good on their threat and released the rain. A drizzle at first, but quickly gathering into a heavy downpour, darkening the day before its time. By the time Shane pulled down the gravel drive, his wipers and headlights were working at maximum just to keep his tires straight. 

The tiny part of him that wasn’t white-knuckling the steering wheel spared a worry for Leshak. With this weather, Shane wouldn’t be able to leave any food out. He shook the feeling off. That dog had survived these woods for plenty of years without Shane supplementing his diet with an unending stream of chicken breasts, and he’d keep doing it long after Shane left. One missed day wouldn’t upset him. 

 He pulled in front of the house with a sigh of relief, tension finally uncoiling from his spine. Bracing himself, he left his equipment to stay dry in the car, then braved the few feet of open sky between himself and the porch. Water quickly soaked through his canvas jacket. Lightning cracked in the distance, thunder rumbling closer. As he searched his key ring, another bolt struck, so close the sound was instant and deafening. He fumbled the keys, and they clattered against the porch. 

Shane cursed, but bent down to blindly fish for them in the damp darkness. His hand did not find metal. It didn’t even find wood, or the scratchy pile of the welcome mat. It found fur, coarse and clingy and absolutely soaked through. 

With a panicked cry, Shane jerked away and fell flat on his ass. Scrambling backward, he struggled to extricate his phone from his jacket pocket so he could use the flashlight. His spine clacked against the porch rails as panicked visions of howling wolves and dark, grasping earth swirled in the space behind his eyes. The night was dark and the forest close by. He was a fool to think it would let him go that easi—

Shane’s clammy fingers finally found the right combination of buttons. Light blazed against the close-pressing darkness, picking out the edges of the creature that interposed itself between Shane and the doorway. His golden brown and cream fur was dulled and darkened by the rainwater, but those green eyes were as bright as ever. 

Leshak stared at Shane. Shane stared back, the panicked vise around his chest loosening into something that wasn’t relief but a gentler sort of feeling regardless. With his first full breath, Shane said, “Fuck, buddy, you scared the shit out of me.”

He should still be panicking. Here was a wild creature – a denizen of the forest – in his space and physically keeping him outside with its presence. But Shane couldn’t muster that emotion. Not when the strange little dog he’d been feeding for days — the same creature that walked him out of darkness — looked like a drowned rat shivering on his stoop.

Fuck, Leshak was shivering. Noticing that made Shane feel the bite of cold on his own skin. Spring had arrived, but this was Russia. And the wet turned the lingering chill into a penetrating force not even the sturdiest insulation kept fully at bay. And soaked through as that pelt of his was, it seemed like Leshak had been caught out and retreated to a place he knew would keep off the worst of the rain. 

A safe place. Shane’s place. Leshak stayed curled up on the mat, more concerned with preserving his own body heat than wasting energy on Shane’s erratics. But those green eyes stayed trained on him; always watching for his next move. 

What Shane did next was objectively stupid. What he should do is get back in his car and go one driveway over. Tell Olga he’d dropped the house keys under the stairs and couldn’t hope to dig them out of the mud until morning. Beg for the use of her couch and leave this wild thing to its spare comforts and hope it returned to the woods. 

But every time Shane looked at the dog, he remembered the kiss of damp on his cheeks. The warm, solid presence under his arm. The gentle tug of teeth, the uncompromising gleam of green. Steady gait on a steady track away from fractured memories and out of the forest. Something gifted. The magnitude of which Shane could feel in his bones but never find words to articulate. 

So, something returned. Slowly — always so slowly — Shane crawled back towards the doorway, whispering gentle encouragements. One hand closed over the fallen keys. The other tentatively reached for Leshak’s face. He held it there, a few inches away, watching that black nose wiggle. Shane was close enough to hear the ragged inhales and exhales as the dog made its determination. He couldn’t take the waiting. His eyes slid down to the boards. 

Something soft and solid pressed under Shane’s fingers. A snout, and then the top of a head as Leshak uncurled and pushed into the space between Shane’s legs. He risked a few scritches between the dog’s ears, rewarded with their pricked tips slipping from alert to relaxed in their posture. 

“That’s it,” Shane whispered. “You wanna get out of this rain?” The dog didn’t make a sound, but it did shove its head into the pit of Shane’s stomach, which he took as an affirmative answer. 

Gaining his feet, Shane got around Leshak’s other side and successfully unlocked the front door. The first blast of centrally heated air hit him like the splash of a shower after a grueling game. Welcome and relieving. Shane crossed the threshold, shucking his soaked jacket and dropping it on the entryway tile alongside his shoes and socks. He left the door open for the dog to come inside, but the creature remained firmly on the other side of the entrance, head hung low and cautiously sniffing.

“It’s okay,” Shane said. “You can come in. Better than waiting it out on the mat, right?” He accompanied his words with a beckoning wave of his hand. 

Leshak held his position for a long moment. Just when Shane was beginning to think he’d miscalculated, the dog put one paw over the threshold. Then another, and then Shane suddenly had sixty pounds of soaking wet animal shaking off in his front entryway and thank goodness his clothes were already damp because the amount of water that came off that coat could’ve drowned a fish. Shane would…wipe down the walls in a minute. Once he covered every fabric surface in the living room with towels. 

Ducking into the bathroom, Shane grabbed spare linens from the hall closet and laid some towels on the floor. Leshak watched him from the corner of his eye as he sniffed around the small space. 

“Hey, bud! Come see.” 

The dog abandoned its investigation to answer Shane’s summons. Towel in two hands, he raised it to the dog’s side, always keeping himself in clear visual range. The last thing he wanted to do was spook this animal, but he couldn’t leave it dripping all over his floors either. Leshak let him place the towel against his side, and didn’t react when Shane began to rub it over his damp fur. But after a few seconds, Leshak seemed to understand what was happening and began leaning into the touch, pressing the soft terry cloth further into itself. 

Shane couldn’t help but chuckle when the dog started rolling in the pile of other towels, scraping its neck and back along them and letting out little huffs and chuffs that weren’t quite sounds but certainly seemed happy. 

Leaving the dog to his devices, Shane grabbed a starter log and a few small pieces of firewood from the crate by the hearth. Towels alone weren’t gonna cut it for all that fur. In a few minutes, he had the beginnings of a cheery fire crackling against the pounding rain sounds echoing down the chimney. 

His satisfaction was quickly interrupted when a solid form bodied him from the side. Leshak shoved against Shane with his head, teeth snapping near his hands but Shane could tell there was no intent to bite. It was like he was trying to…herd Shane away.

With a chuckle, Shane said, “It’s okay, bud. It’s safe. Fire can’t get past the bricks.” But dogs don’t speak English, and certainly not Russian dogs. It took Shane backing away from the fire, grabbing the hearth screen, and sliding it with a rather unpleasant screech across the bricks from a dog-determined safe distance before the creature seemed to relax. 

With an obvious barrier between the room and the fire, protective instinct transitioned to curiosity. Shane watched with a strange warmth in his heart as Leshak sniffed the screen. He seemingly decided it was up to its task, then succumbed to the comfort of dry heat on wet skin. He still kept his back to the bricks, though. One eye, as always, on Shane. 

Dog dealt with for the moment, Shane disappeared into the bathroom to shower and change into a comfy t-shirt and set of flannel pajama pants printed with the emblem of Rose’s X-Squad character. She’d given them to him as a coming-out gift: the only pants of mine you’d actually want to get inside. At the time he’d been mortified, but with age and experience he’d come to appreciate the joke. 

Leshak stayed by the fire as Shane crossed into the kitchen for an awkward I didn’t eat lunch and don’t want to wait for an “appropriate” dinner hour meal, but once the air began to fill with scents of chicken and beef, the dog became an overly-curious burr sticking to his leg. Shane tried to just work around him, but once the creature started rocking back on two legs to try and get its face to the counter, Shane had to enforce some rules.

“No!” he barked, startling Leshak back to all-fours. Mirroring the dog’s actions from earlier, Shane herded Leshak out of the kitchen and put out a firm hand. “Stay.” 

He went back to his tasks, only to find Leshak at his side less than a minute later. Once again, he moved the dog out and bid him stay. It took two more tries, but eventually he got the message. Even if his response was to lay down right where wood met tile, muzzle and the tips of his paws just over the t-molding, looking all the world like a pouting child as Shane put the finishing touches on dinner. 

He grabbed Leshak’s usual bowl and put his usual double serving of chicken breast inside. Idly, Shane wondered if he should start supplementing with other food groups like vegetables. The kibble he’d bought advertised a complete nutritional profile, but of course the damn creature wouldn’t touch the stuff. Plus, without knowing what Leshak was eating out in the forest, Shane couldn’t work out a proper meal plan, any—

What the fuck was he thinking? He shook his head to clear out the old performance-diet headspace. Leshak was just a feral dog sheltering from the storm. It wasn’t Shane’s job to take care of him long-term. 

He set the bowl down next to Leshak and took his usual seat at the dining table. Beef stir-fry with brown rice and lots of broccoli, snow peas, and bell peppers. The sound of gnawing and slobbering going on to his left was as satisfying as it was mildly disgusting. Thankfully, the wild animal ate like a wild animal and finished before Shane was even a quarter of the way through his own bowl. He scrolled through his phone, reading an article on what veggies dogs could and could not eat when he felt a nudge at his leg. 

“You’re not allowed on the tile, big guy,” Shane said, doing his best to ignore the subsequent pushes against his thigh. 

Eventually, his resolve broke and he looked down. Leshak sat politely on his heels, tail swishing back and forth, mouth slightly open and giving Shane the most pathetic little puppy dog eyes like he hadn’t just devoured 500 calories worth of poultry. 

Turns out, Shane was a weak man. He checked on the webpage that broccoli was dog-safe, and held out a floret between pinched fingers. Leshak sniffed it for a moment, then lunged forward so quickly it was all Shane could do to let go of the target before powerful jaws snapped shut around it. Fuck, this dog was going to take his fingers off!

“Alright, that’s enough!” Shane scolded. He resolutely ignored the dog’s persistent breath on his knee as he shoveled down the rest of his bowl. If he found a certain level of satisfaction in rinsing the dregs of the bowl in front of the naughty, snappy animal that clearly wanted to lick it clean, then that was between him and the house. 

With little left to do and the fire crackling merrily away in its hearth, Shane settled down on the couch and booted his personal laptop. Sasha’s interview was going to be a lot of brainpower on his end, so he’d rather leave it ‘til morning when he was fresh. That left the rest of the lengthy evening open for more episodes of Rose’s K-Drama. He’d been seriously slacking, but now he had a backlog to get through with a warm cup of orange tea. 

He got maybe twenty minutes into the episode (the female main character was about to reach a breakthrough in her investigation of the curse, once the male main character helped her finally get past the snooty and highly sexist imperial records keeper) before he felt the couch cushion under his feet dip. Shane raised his gaze from the screen to find Leshak staring right back. “Down,” Shane commanded. The dog didn’t move. 

“Down,” he said again, leaning forward to shove the creature off the furniture. Leshak just took that as an opportunity to shove himself into Shane’s space, worming his way so that he was sprawled half against the couch back and half over Shane’s left side. Leshak leaned his head forward like he was going to rest it on Shane’s shoulder. He braced for the pressure and the pain that would come along with it. But right before he put weight down, Leshak redirected and laid his cheek on Shane’s pec instead. 

“You’re not getting up, are you?” Shane asked. 

Leshak responded with a long, contented huff. Rolling his eyes, Shane used his good arm to maneuver the laptop into his lap and hit play. 

“For a feral dog, you’re pretty domesticated,” Shane idly remarked. Though his left arm was partly pinned, he had enough mobility in his elbow and wrist to curl a hand over his cuddle partner’s back. Resting turned to scritching, and the weight and warmth of another body pressed up against his was so comforting against the pounding of rain and intermittent thunder. Wrapped up and cozy as they were, protected by the steady walls and warmed by the flickering fire; ever so slowly and surely, Shane slipped off into a dreamless sleep.

He awoke some time later to Netflix’s Are You Still Watching? screen and an eerily silent house. The rain had stopped. The clock on his laptop indicated late afternoon. Fuck. There went his sleep schedule, again. Halfway through rubbing the grit from his eyes, Shane remembered that he wasn’t supposed to be alone in this house. 

Sitting up, he looked around for Leshak. The dog was nowhere to be found. Shane felt the same specific dread that previously he only felt when babysitting Hayden’s kids and hadn’t been bothered by any of them for more than twenty minutes. The kind of silence that hid mischief within. Moving quietly, Shane padded down the hallway, ears questing for any hint of happenings. He found them outside the half-open door to the hallway bathroom, accompanied by a shadow moving over the floor. 

He peeked slowly around into the bathroom. Leshak was in there, all right. Sitting in front of the toilet paper holder, one paw poised up, tongue wagging slightly as he watched the roll slowly spin to a stop. Then he raised his paw, gave the roll a swipe, and watched it unspool another length of paper onto the floor. Based on the pile that had accumulated next to the toilet, he’d been at this for a couple minutes. 

It was all Shane could do to keep his laugh behind his teeth. Grabbing his phone, he quickly snapped a picture the next time Leshak’s paw spun the roll. Evidence preserved, it was time to spring the trap.

“What’cha doing there, bud?”

He didn’t know animals could move like that outside of cartoons. Leshak jolted three inches off the tile, skittering over the smooth surface and utterly wiping out against the side of the bathtub. Shane let himself laugh, now. Deep and from the belly, a smile wrinkling his cheeks. Shit, he hadn’t laughed that hard in a really long time. Leshak, for his part, found his feet with a put-upon huff. He gave himself a shake and pointedly exited the bathroom, leaving the mess of his doggy experiments scattered about for Shane to clean up.

Refreshed by his nap, Shane decided to spend the rest of the awkward hours before he would be tired enough to sleep running through his shoulder exercises (Leshak had been gentle, but holding his arm in a static position like that was bound to stiffen him up) and writing up a weekly progress report for his editor. It was strange to think he’d only been in Russia for seven days. It felt like so much longer. 

Putting it all in writing was a strange experience. He thought he knew what he was getting into, coming here. In general, if not the specifics. Speak to a few of Ilya’s intimates, figure out the contour of his childhood and teenage years. He hadn’t expected to dig so deep into his parents’ turbulent relationship. Or the apparent intrigue surrounding his professional future. Or the detailed reconstruction of his last known hours.

Shane should’ve known better. Nothing about Ilya Rozanov was ever as simple as it first appeared. Why should this have been any different? Fuck, his publisher was going to love this shit.

He typed out his conclusion: Thus far, my research has turned up multiple unexpected insights and raised many new questions. In the following week, I’ll continue to explore Rozanov’s family dynamics and the specifics of his relationship to the KHL. I believe my last two interviewees will have particular insight into these areas. 

Despite the branching of investigative avenues, the book’s core principle remains the same: Who was the Ilya Rozanov behind the media persona, and what impacts were made by his short but noteworthy presence in professional hockey? 

Something damp and cold pressed against his elbow. 

Shane sent off the email. “What is it, bud?”

Leshak sat back on his haunches, front paws tippy-tapping back and forth as he panted. Shane checked the time. They’d been inside for the past seven hours. Fuck, he was lucky the creature hadn’t pissed on the rug already. 

The storm had fizzled out into a thin drizzle, fluttering droplets flicking in and out of the porchlight as Shane opened the front door. The clouds were dispersing, a few stars peeking out from behind. Leshak bounded out and down the steps, sniffing quickly around the edge of the house before lifting a leg. 

It struck Shane suddenly, seeing the dog outside once more, that there was no further reason for Leshak to stick around. The rain was over and necessity with it. He would disappear back into the forest that was his home and forget all about Shane and the fireplace and the broccoli and the couch and the toilet paper roll. Nothing left of his presence but some wet towels and a silly photo on Shane’s phone.

He waited, watching the creature range further and further into the yard, stopping in random spots to let out another stream. It was nice, having another warm body in the house with him. He’d lived alone for so long, he’d forgotten. But Leshak wasn’t his to keep. Just a…fuck, Shane didn’t really know what the dog was to him at this point. A friendly nuisance? A debtor? A reminder of the forest’s capricious nature?  Either way, he wouldn’t stay. Why would he? 

Knowing didn’t make it any less strange to see that arcing tail wave like a pennant as Leshak trotted closer to the treeline. Shane turned away. He didn’t want to watch the night swallow him. Didn’t want to watch bright green fade flat as it disappeared into shadow once again.

It has severely miscalculated. Focused as it has been on reinforcing the scent lines around its new territory, it allowed itself to be lulled by gentle weather. But the sky cares little for the needs of tiny creatures, and the storm it unleashed rendered its pitiful beginnings of a new den useless against the pouring rain. It is soaked through to the skin, weighed down by the water dripping off its coat and chilled by the whipping winds. 

There is one place it knows will provide shelter. It has not had reason to resort to this solution for many, many seasons; but tall-creature dens often had spaces where one could put a barrier between themselves and the sky. Often it involved sneaking underneath the den floor or risking discovery tucked against a wall, but any shelter was better than nothing.

Almost before it realizes what it has chosen, its paws take it to the edge of the grass. His straight-line den is hazy through the thick screen of rain, but it is dark. No tiny suns burn inside. He is not here. All the better, probably. Tall-creatures were territorial, and the creatures of the forest were among the most fiercely deterred. 

It climbs the terraced slope towards the entrance, shaking off what water it can. A flat tangle of rough plantstuff lay on the wood. The least unappealing place to bed down in this soggy place. It curls up as tight as it can, pressing its own warmth back into itself and tries to ignore the water in its fur. With nothing else to do, it slips into a light slumber.

It blames what happens upon its waking on the rain. It pounds upon the world, masking sounds and drowning out scents. Why else would it fail to notice the approaching roar of a not-beast, or fail to catch the scent of autumn leaves and sharp-ice until he is so close a noseblind hedgehog could sense his presence? A series of things fill its attention as sleep retreats from its head. The thump of large paws, the jangling of hard-bright things above itself, a darker shadow against the gloom cutting off its escape.

It remains very still. The worst thing it can do is startle him. Tall-creatures can be cruel when startled. This wasn’t like the forest, when it came to him at a time of great need. It was in his space, now. And not just the edges where leftover meat was offered. Right in front, its body a barrier between him and the safety of his den. 

It wants to believe he would never hurt it. It has long learned to ignore wants. So still it remains, even when a long, pale paw brushes against its back. Even when he startles and retreats in a panic, dropping his bright-hards with a clanging thud. Even when it lights the tiny sun in its hand, the brightness painful on its eyes after the endless rainy gloom. It remains still. Keeps an eye, so he knows it is watching. So he knows any threats will be seen and met. 

But then he takes that same posture as before; that night in the grass beyond the glow of the den’s tiny sun, before she came and her command of the land prickled warnings against the pads of its toes. Gentle and questing, as afraid to startle it as it is of offending him. He extends a pale paw forward, just like before, inviting it in and all those same wants come roaring back. And shielded as they are, from the rain by the barrier above and the rest of the world by the rain, it lets itself want. It lets itself have.

First the top of its snout, then its head; where gentle digits scratch between its ears. Into the core of him where he is warmest despite the rain. If it can stay here, it will never feel cold again. He stands, fiddling with the entrance until its barrier swings away and he steps inside. He leaves the barrier ajar. 

He cannot be serious. 

But then he looks at it, brown eyes twinkling, making tall-creature chatter and beckoning it forward. Never had it thought to want this. But perhaps it can have it anyway. It takes one tentative step, and then another into the warm, dry air of the den. It feels…correct, somehow. The colors of the walls, the texture of the flooring, the presence of many many things it cannot make sense of within. As if somewhere inside itself, it knows what the inside of tall-creature dens should be like; though it has never seen one with these eyes. 

In its relief, it thinks nothing of shaking more water out of its fur, or exploring the den with its nose and eyes. The large white leaves he holds in both hands confuse it at first, but when it can feel the rain leaching from its fur where the leaf touches it, the prospect of being dry sends it rolling through them with puppyish joy.

Its joy is interrupted by the smell of smoke. It emerges from the leaves, casting around for the source of the scent. When fires burn through the forest, it is up to every creature to flee or die. But he does not flee. He sits on his haunches just watching the flames. He needs to move before he is bitten!

Its attempts to herd him away are rebuffed. It huffs, stymied by his actions. But this is a tall-creature den. He is the leader here. So it watches, keeping him at a safe distance as he places a bright-hard barrier between the fire’s place and the rest of the den. And in all that time, the fire hasn’t leapt from its confines. It cannot cross the red stones that surround it. And while the fire is tamed…there is no reason not to dry its coat in the crackling heat it dispels. But it will still make sure he does not get too close again. Just in case.

It is grateful for the bird flesh. It truly is. But it is bland the way all bird-flesh is bland, and the foodstuffs in his bowl scent strong with unfamiliar, mouthwatering aromas that it cannot resist, even though it has been warned away from this area multiple times. He has been so generous so far. Surely he could spare just a taste?

The plant he feeds it — cry of displeasure at the snap of its teeth notwithstanding —  is unlike anything it has tried. No, that’s not true. The taste-memory is ancient. Fuzzy and largely forgotten. The sound of a high, soft tall-creature voice comes alongside it. It does not understand the rotten feeling in its gut. 

He does not give it any more plantstuff. It thinks that is for the best. 

His bedding is ridiculous. Excessive, even. A large, fluffy structure covered in soft pelts. But it is tempting, and quite large. Surely he would not mind sharing space with so much to spare. 

It leaps up onto an unused stretch, content to curl up and rest on the squishy surface that buckles strangely under the weight of its paws. But then he is chattering and leaning forward and a rush of autumn leaves and sharp-ice flood its nose and it is done resisting. Its time in this den has taught it that he will be firm in his displeasure but never cruel. If he doesn’t like it, he will just push it off. 

He does not push it off. Instead he settles, letting it find a comfortable arrangement against him. It is careful of his wounded shoulder. It can hear his heart thud underneath its ear. It listens to that as his breathing slowly deepens. It will keep watch while he sleeps. 

The rain slows down, and he shows no signs of waking. But his scent is good and his heart strong, so it is confident it can keep one ear on him while it explores the unseen corners of the den. Some paths are closed to it by more of those same barriers, but one stands ajar. The space beyond is cold and hard, different-shaped mounds of snowy white, hard and smooth to the touch. 

Except this white. It is soft. A plant? The closest thing it can compare to is the low-growing weed with honey-scented flowers it sometimes finds in the forest, but it is not a close one. Curious, it noses the thing. And when it pulls away, the white leaves begin to unfurl downward in a long ribbon, like rain off a rock. Intriguing. 

It uses its paw to unfurl more leaves. And then again. And then again. So caught up in the strange phenomenon it does not hear or scent his approach until he is chattering at it from the other side of the door. Panicked instinct floods its limbs as it scrambles for a defensive posture, but the floor is too smooth and it has no traction. It slips sideways into a hard snow-mound, tumbling tail over nails in a sprawling heap.

At least the chatter that comes from his mouth is…it thinks back to moonlight on water. Content and wanting at the same time. Beautiful. That is what it was looking for. Cheeks crinkling his star-dots together and eyes bright as sunshine, he is beautiful. 

It watches from the corners of the room as he moves his body in odd patterns, then sits in front of a glowing box for many moments, nimble paws clattering over another tall-creature structure it doesn’t understand. It tries to be patient. It truly does. But the need in its bladder grows too strong to ignore and it refuses to soil the den. 

Thankfully, he seems to understand its need and opens the entrance to the outside. As the familiar smells of nature replace the strangeness of the straight-line den and its dried fur proves plenty protection from the remnants of rain, it realizes it has no more reason to stay.

It wants to stay. It wants to go back in and curl up on the squishy bedding, eat familiar-and-not plantstuffs from his hands. But he stands blocking the entrance, one paw on the edge of it like he is waiting to close it back up.

It ranges further into the grass, slowly moving closer and closer to the forest’s edge. He has been firm in his wants for it. If he wants it to come back inside, he will call.

He does not call. Worse, he turns away.

It takes its answer and slips back into the trees. 

Chapter End Notes

As a Stars fan I gotta gently throw my favorite little thirst trap under the bus, lol.

In other lore notes, Ilya’s contact info/form of address for Grigori is actually canon. When speaking to him in the first two episodes he uses the very formal “отец,” though he does switch to the more typical “папа,” during the phone call in Episode 4 and when talking about him to Alexei.

Canadian French does indeed have a very distinct accent and vernacular, especially how it rhoticizes certain vowel sounds. And yes my Parisian-trained ear has a very hard time with it.

"Ilya Rozanov is a Menace" but in dog form leads to some very petty behavior inspired by my own little menaces.

Chapter 7: Ties

Chapter Notes

For once, I manage to post a chapter that’s shorter than the one previous! Don’t expect that to ever happen again in this fic, lol.

Also, this chapter has some very non-explicit descriptions of sexual acts. Just fyi for those who care to know beforehand.

ALSO! Very important! I had a minor revelation about some upcoming elements that required a bit of editing to Chapter 5. I added a couple of lines to the section where Leshak is leading Shane out of the forest, highly recommend re-reading that bit before jumping into this chapter.

For the people keeping track of my references. There’s no new Russian hockey names in this chapter but there is one NHL-MLH analogue name drop and a lot of real-life inspiration (NOT analogue, sorry in advance fellow Habs fans) behind my version of the 25-26 MLH playoffs.

THE NEXT DAY

The delicate, often painstaking, work of translation is just about the last thing Shane has the brainpower for after a night of fitful and interrupted sleep, but he’s got a schedule to keep. Thank goodness he’d gotten that solid nap yesterday afternoon, or not even his second cup of coffee would have been sufficient to banish the heaviness from his eyes. But as it stands, he spends his morning slowly going line by line, word by word, slowly tugging not just language but intent and nuance across the gap of understanding. 

Translating the individual words is the easy part. The hard part is correctly conveying everything they didn’t say. So much of that conversation had existed in the silence between sounds. The careful face-off posture of just enough. The defensive pressure on certain words, reading the passes as they threaded the lane between unintelligible and incriminating. A spaceless place where they shared something so specific and so intimate, both of them linked to this ghost of a man; sharing versions of him unknown to either but for the vibrations of his name in their mouths. A body touched only in secret, and spoken of only in silence. 

Therein lay a particular issue that had plagued Shane’s outline since the beginning. What to say about Ilya’s … lovers? Ew, no, that’s gross. Relationships? Too monogamous-sounding. Physical dalliances? What was this, the Victorian era? Hookups? Accurate but too harsh. Fuck. Lovers it was. 

What to say about Ilya’s lovers. Which, of course, included Shane. His first thought is to do what he’s always done: tell the story in its entirety. And Ilya’s apparent bisexuality was part of that entirety. He wouldn’t say anything that could jeopardize Sasha, obviously. But the nature of the work demanded exactness in all things.

That was his first thought. His first instinct was different. Shane thought back to his own closeted days, when the threat of outing squeezed him like an ill-fitting skate. He had so many reasons to stay in the closet. The press attention, the potential fallout with sponsors, League corporate’s reaction. The fact that, unlike Scott Hunter, he would not only be gay but a gay Asian. What would it mean to alienate those other Asian hockey kids behind him by becoming something they could no longer identify with? What would it mean to alienate his teammates?

Shane thought himself a good captain. He was fair and motivating, always ready to step up for his teammates on the ice. He checked in, kept tabs, knew the names of everyone’s wives and girlfriends and children. The first to offer a listening ear, helping hand, or smack upside the head. The mediator between rookies and veterans, players and coaches. If he wasn’t what they needed him to be, what good was he?

Yeah, Shane had spent a decent amount of therapy unlearning that particular brand of self-effacement. He’d retrained his perception as to not view himself as a tool for others to feel better about themselves. That he was allowed to exist as a whole person. That was a big part of why he came out publicly. 

But… he’d come out. Scott Hunter and Ryan Price and Troy Barrett had come out. When he wrote about Scott’s sexuality, it was with the express consent of the subject. Ilya Rozanov had done no such thing. Couldn’t have, for reasons that were far more important and consequential than Shane’s. 

Eventually, Shane confirmed the decision he’d already come to at the start of this deliberation. Maybe as far back as choosing this project to begin with. Rozanov’s sexual history could exist as a vaguely-worded footnote tucked between more important facts. He wouldn’t out Ilya. It is for the living to confess their own secrets.

Shane was pulled out of his reverie by the ping of an email notification. He blinked, eyes burning from staring blankly at the screen for so long. It was a response from his editor.

TO: shane.y.hollander@neutronmail.com 

FROM: michael.abbot@victorybooks.com

Subject: Re: Rozanov Biography Research Week 1 Progress Report

Hello, Shane!

It’s great to hear from you! I’m glad Russia is treating you well. To keep it short, I’m very excited about the research progress you’ve made so far. Rozanov was always going to be a hot story, but you’ve uncovered some details that are unknown to North American audiences. We can definitely leverage that down the line with Marketing. They love a good “untold story” push.

I’m particularly fascinated by the reconstruction of the investigation you’re putting together. What a find, getting a hold of those police records! I know you said you didn’t want to focus on Rozanov’s disappearance at the expense of the rest of his life, but maybe we can expand the scope of those later chapters a little to include this information? Let me know what you think. 

Overall, I think you’re doing a great job operating within the scope of your mission statement. Keep gathering up all that information and we’ll work on teasing out the most useful parts when you get back. 

Happy Researching!

Michael Abbot

Editor, Victory Books

he/him/his and they/them/theirs

It was so…enthusiastically clinical. Of course, Michael was just doing their job. The story needed to become a book, and a book needed to be marketed. And Shane knew sending that email would get him all fired up about the police records. It’s why he reminded him of his original mission statement at the end of the email. Who was the Ilya Rozanov behind the media persona, and what impacts were made by his short but noteworthy presence in professional hockey? 

Ilya’s whole life, not just stats on a spreadsheet or a tiny sliver of the end. It wasn’t supposed to be about the disappearance. But — and Shane wanted to kick himself as he realized — it had become that. Slowly, as shadows of the forest darkened and lightened around him in equal measure. As all the roads of Ilya’s life seemed to inexorably lead him into that snow-covered clearing. Sometime after receiving those documents, almost without noticing, Shane had started trying to solve the case.

Or rather, Shane was trying to solve the case behind the case. The culmination of circumstances that rendered one outcome inevitable. A horrid, unavoidable fascination with the darkest parts of Ilya Rozanov. Trying to understand why that smiling, blissed-out boy could hate home so desperately he’d abandon his future if it meant burning down his past. 

This was ridiculous! Shane couldn’t do this. He was exploring avenues based on information he could not verify. If he quoted what Rozanov said that night, he could not point to a source. If he told them exactly where the knife sat against skin, they’d question where on the police report that was confirmed. None of what he saw was real!

Or rather, Shane had only one way of knowing if it was real. One instance is a curiosity. Two, a coincidence. Three, a pattern. But successive instances, reported over years and years by people with no reason or motivation to lie? That was a phenomenon. 

Shane needed more data.

Raisa Ivanova sat, as she often did, on the back porch of her home overlooking the garden and the lake beyond. Olga’s labors over the last week had turned over the rich black soil, and last night’s rain had soaked it soft in preparation for the more delicate vegetables she would plant in the coming weeks. 

“Ah, Shanya!” she called, waving a frail hand at his approach. “Perhaps you can help me. I can never get the Latin ones. Five letters, ‘blank vincit amor.’”

“О-м-н-и-а,” Shane answered. “Omnia vincit amor. Love conquers all.”

Raisa Ivanova smiled, pencilling the answer into her crossword book. “Well, isn’t that a nice thought? Come sit, though I suspect you’re not here solely for the pleasure of my company.”

Shane took his place in the second rocker. “You heard?”

“Yes, I know,” she said. 

Shane stared at his hands. They twisted together in a tangle of digits, a bouquet of brambles like the ones the forest tried to thread through his bones. He decided not to waste her time. “Was it real?” he asked. 

“Tell me what you mean by ‘real.’” she asked as she laid down her pencil and folded her hands in her lap.

“Like… what you saw in there. Did it…happen? It wasn’t just a dream or a hallucination?” It felt real, to Shane. Watching Ilya stand in that clearing. Fuck, it lined up with what happened in the police report. But that could just as well be his own brain insisting on narrative cohesion as the forest faithfully recreating actual events for him. He couldn’t know on his own.

“Yes. It was real.” 

One sentence. One unambiguous, authoritative sentence, and a hard knot that sat somewhere inside his chest, unnoticed but certainly not unfelt, began to unwind. It didn’t solve Shane’s problem. But the validation meant he wasn’t crazy. 

He didn’t expect an answer, but it was in his nature to ask anyway, “What did you see in there?”

Raisa Ivanova was quiet for a long time, sharp blue eyes fixed on some point across the lake. Eventually, she said, “What we see in there is for us alone. What I saw became very important to me, though I would not understand for many, many years. But it changed me. I have not left Ozerovsk since that day.”

A cold feeling growing in his gut, Shane thought back on his own walk with the woods. The unnatural exhaustion grasping at his limbs. The weight pulling him down into the dirt. Roots seeking purchase like they’d found in Raisa Ivanova. His hand found the center of his chest, like he could somehow reach inside himself and find where those ancient threads had woven themselves into him.
“The same is not true for you.” Raisa Ivanova said. Shane exhaled. Right. He was not anchored in the same way. He could leave. His trip to Moscow proved that. “You found your way out much faster.”
But that wasn’t true. Shane hadn’t found his way out. He’d been led. He looks at the old woman, tied to this place by a bond almost nobody else could understand. The full gravity of what Leshak did for him threatened to crumple his lungs like a tin can in vacuum. 

If Shane kept thinking about that, he might have a panic attack. “Does it…hurt?” 

Raisa Ivanova sighed. “Not in the body. It means very little to me, really. This place was my home long before that day. But…when Nikolai died, Olga quit her job in Tver to come and take over the property. Fixed up that old house and turned it into a vacation home. The land here welcomed her easily. And I think she’s happy. But sometimes I fear I’ve tied her here as well. I would hate for her to feel stuck to my ghost once I’m gone.”

The old woman’s words made Shane look at his landlady in a new light. It’s easy to imagine people as always having been what they are now. Teenagers gloss over the fact their parents were young once, too. You think your new friend has always worked their current profession until you learn over drinks they had a whole different career before moving to your town. People tend to think their present is forever despite the changes in their past. 

Shit, Shane played most of his career believing it wasn’t going to end. He knew it would, intellectually. Planned for it. But over wasn’t real for him until he was living it. He wondered if Olga had felt the same way, before her father died and life necessitated a complete overhaul. She’d had a whole existence before this. Just like him.

“I get it,” Shane said. “Feeling…tied. Not like you, but… fuck, sometimes I miss it so much. I used to think I liked the quiet. My cottage in Canada is a lot like this place. In the woods, on a lake, not much around to disturb the peace. I’d go there every summer for two weeks, just to get away from it all. It was my favorite place in the world. 

“And then after I retired, I thought, obviously I’m just gonna live there most of the time now. I bought a house in Ottawa for when I had to be in town, but the cottage was supposed to be the real home. And it was just so. Goddamn. Quiet. 

“I miss the arenas. I miss the Bell Centre. The crowds and the cheering and the action. Maybe not the pressers or the injuries…ah, who am I kidding? That, too, kinda. And I like a lot of what I’ve done the past two years, don’t get me wrong. But I’d be lying if I said I wouldn’t follow that thread right back to her, if I had half a chance.” His shoulder ached. He stayed still and let it hurt.

Raisa Ivanova hummed through a smile. “Of course you would. It’s still on your hands.”

Shane chuckled. That was one way to put it. Clinging to him like the adhesive on stick tape. Years and years of memories compressed into solid mental touchstones that bedrocked his perception of the world. He’d been hockey, he was hockey, and he’d always be hockey. Even now, sometimes he would conjure those moments so strongly they felt real. Dragged over a lengthy gap but present in a way a mere memory just wasn’t. He’d felt it in Sergechev’s rink. And again in the forest. And a dozen other instances besides. The place that he’d loved so much, and had loved him right back.

Shane was starting to think he’d become an expert on being haunted by the past. 

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to start rambling.” 

Raisa Ivanova just laughed. Not a chuckle, but as full-bellied as her frail form could conjure. “Shanya, at my age, stories are as much sustenance as food or water. And you are a good storyteller.”

“I hope so,” Shane chuckled. Not like it was his job, or anything. “You sound like you have a few of your own.”

“One or two,” Raisa Ivanova said. “Shall I tell you some?”

They spent a few long hours sitting with the garden, trading tales back and forth while the air dripped in a humid haze. By the end of it, the ache in Shane’s shoulder faded and he felt more awake than he had all day. 

Shane returned to his rental and cranked out the rest of Sasha’s interview. By the end of it, his thoughts were blurring back and forth across English and French and he didn’t want to look at a Word document for at least the next twelve hours, but it was done. With a relieved stretch, he went to the kitchen to start prepping dinner. He’d picked up a couple sweet potatoes to roast, but… did he really need both?

He peeled and cut them both into wedges, but only seasoned half and split them over two baking sheets to roast. The usual chicken breasts went in their pot, and one more for himself in the pan. At the last minute, he steamed the rest of the broccoli with a little butter. 

Chicken and broccoli were confirmed preferences. The sweet potatoes were an experiment, but Shane hoped they were well-received. Lots of good fiber and vitamins, plus the complex carbs would burn more steadily for longer. He dumped the doggie dinner in its regular bowl, set it out by the porch steps, and went back inside to plate his human-friendly version. He opened up a book on the formative years of the KHL (one he’d read before, but a refresher would serve him well) and ate his dinner in considered silence. 

He was just polishing off the last few bites when he heard it. Plastic on gravel. The sound of a bowl being pushed around. Taking his feet in an instant, Shane threw the front door open. In the glow of the porchlight, Leshak froze with his face ear-deep in the food bowl. Slowly, he raised it, looking at Shane with a potato wedge hanging limply from the side of his mouth. Shane had to bite back a laugh at the comical sight. 

“Hey,” Shane called. 

There’s no reason. At least, not a special one. Yes, the woods were dangerous and the nights were still chilly. There was always the risk of floods or treefalls or rockslides or fires. Hunters bigger and faster lurking in shadows. The long, angry reach of humans who see other life as expendable. But Leshak had survived all of that for years. He had no need of Shane’s man-made comforts. Shane hoped maybe he would take them anyway.

“You want to come inside for the night?”

The dog regarded him for a long moment, shoved his face back into the bowl to finish off the last few scraps, then trotted up the stairs like he’d done it a thousand times. Shane felt so completely relieved, he couldn’t even complain when Leshak went straight to the couch and curled up on the cushions. He looked like he belongs there. 

Shane decided he was  not going to dwell on how useless of a thought that was and joined Leshak in his lounging. As he sat down, his phone pinged an alert. MLH App: Catch the highlights: Montreal @ Buffalo, Round 1 Game 5. 

Playoffs started the same week as Shane’s trip. The Metros spent the season with spare hopes of contention, sitting squarely in the conference’s mushy middle. But a surprise hot streak in late March let them pass Detroit to snag the second Wild Card slot and punch their ticket to the dance. 

The Buffalo Blades had been terrible for years. Almost a decade and a half since their last playoff appearance, a stat topped only by the Ottawa Centaurs. But their most recent rebuild attempt was finally paying off and they’d upset the entire division by finishing not only first, but with the President’s Trophy. 

Shane clicked the notification and played the highlight reel. Things started off well for Montreal. They held the majority of the puck possession in the first half. Then their captain, Nate Shimura, sent a beautiful fakeout pass from the slot to his winger in the low circle and opened the scoring. The kind of play Shane would’ve made.

He hadn’t played with Shimura much; the guy was young like most of the team around Shane’s retirement. But he was a top-tier center and the kind of steady locker room presence they’d come to expect from a captain. He’d earned the C in spades. He carried on the work Shane had done in slowly excising the casual racism and misogyny from locker room talk. The Japanese name sprawled proudly across his back felt to Shane like the next step in the visibility he’d pioneered. 

But the team was young. They’d lost that experience-built consistency that carried them to three Cups in ten years. And by the back half of the second period, that inconsistency started to show.

While Shane watched the Metros second line allow a breakout he saw brewing twenty seconds previous, Leshak’s heavy head found its way onto his thigh, ears forward and eyes alert. Without really thinking, he angled his phone screen so the dog could watch. There’s no way he knew a damn thing about what was going on, but the sounds seemed to interest him. Maybe the players scurrying over the ice reminded him of mice in the snow or something. 

The game just devolved from there. Buffalo’s aggressive forecheck kept the puck on their sticks and Montreal’s defense hemmed into their zone. A few goals scored in quick succession sealed the deal. In a gentleman’s sweep, the Blades would advance to Round 2 while the Metros booked tee times. 

He tried not to, he really did. But every time Buffalo scored, all Shane could think about was where the team went wrong and what he would have done to fix it. Their defense kept pinching too low, and they seemed wary of finishing checks even though the refs weren’t calling much. Shane catalogued at least four scoring opportunities that were missed by improper positioning. The Metros could have won that game. But Shane wasn’t there, and they didn’t. 

He let out a heavy sigh. Fuck, he really should have stretched his shoulder earlier. He clicked off his phone, but then Leshak shoved his nose forward, sniffing at the darkened screen and thumping a paw on Shane’s wrist.

“What is it, bud?” Shane asked. Leshak just pawed at the phone again. “You like watching hockey?”

Of course Shane would find the one dog in Russia that liked hockey. Of course he would. 

“Okay, no need to twist my arm.” With a fond smile, Shane pulled up the highlight reel for Seattle @ Edmonton, and then a few games from earlier in the week. Leshak just stayed there, eyes focused on the tiny skaters buzzing about and panting softly against Shane’s leg. Eventually, the panting slowed and his gaze went a little droopy. 

“Yeah, bedtime is a good idea.” Gently dislodging the dog, Shane went about his nightly routine. Leshak was waiting for him outside the bathroom, and stayed close on his heel as he walked down the hall to his bedroom. With its nice, very clean, very white sheets that Shane just changed yesterday. He read the dog’s intentions just before it made a move. Just when Leshak went to shove past him, Shane stuck out a leg and body blocked the beast as he slipped inside and held the door to a narrow crack.

“Sorry, bud. No dogs allowed on the bed.” 

Leshak sat down with an indignant huff as Shane closed the door on his face. He would be just fine sleeping on the couch. 

Sleep refused to come easy. He kept thinking about the hockey game, and the youth of the current Metros, and what it felt like to be that young. A different lifetime, full of excitement and potential and terror and fighting for scraps of belonging in a sport that held his heart but fucked with his head. God, he’d been so high-strung back then. Not on the ice. Hockey was the easy part. The worth it part that carried him through the media training and management politics and litigations in the court of public opinion. But he was so afraid to do or say the wrong thing, to disrupt the narrative he’d facilitated and maintained around himself.

He’d tried so hard to be things he wasn’t. Lived for the few people who saw through Metros #24 to Shane Hollander. His parents. Hayden and JJ. Rose. 

Rozanov.

It had been such a weird mix of terror and relief. Standing in that locker room shower, Ilya’s hazel gaze piercing right through Shane’s constructions to the lonely, starving animal underneath. The quiet, complete acceptance of it. The mercy of leaving it unnamed. 

Sasha’s words echoed over the memory. Generous, in many respects. Safe. What they’d done was objectively unsafe. A room in a hotel full of hockey players and parents and coaching staff. Literally fraternizing with the enemy the night before they faced each other in the tournament final. Hell, they hadn’t even used condoms!

But it hadn’t felt that way. It was generous. It was…permission. By unspoken compact, they’d crafted a space insulated from the rest of the world for just a little while. A place without judgement or consequence. A place where feeling wasn’t punished and contact rendered with gentleness instead of force. 

Fuck, he’d revisited this memory so many times it was Pavlovian. The way the blood rushed and the front of his briefs grew tight. And, well… he wasn’t going to sleep any time soon. Might as well. Relaxing against the mattress, Shane took himself in hand and let the memory drown him.

The sex of it was the same as always. Maybe worn a little around the edges with time, but colorfast in that way important memories tend to stay. Soft and earnest and butterfly-inducing in all the best and worst ways. 

That’s not why Shane keeps coming back. It was all the pieces around the sex. The gentle teases on Rozanov’s tongue. The way he grinned ear to ear watching Shane fold up his clothes before getting on the bed. The check ins and the sarcasm and the way he’d been so unexpectedly kind about Shane’s lack of experience. 

Them laying in the bed after, sweaty and sated and slightly hysterical over the fact that not only had they just fucked their biggest rival, but they’d gotten away with it. But that it had been so…good. Somewhere in the middle of it, the heat of taboo stopped being a factor and they were just two boys giving each other something nobody else could. 

Their idle chatter, minutes stretching long as they talked about the tournament, and the state of the league, and in artfully avoiding discussion of the draft wandered into more personal territory. 

Last summer before the big leagues. Any fun plans?

Not particularly. Just the usual, probably.

My parents have a cottage up in rural Quebec. We go there every summer for a couple of weeks. 

Mmm. That’s your idea of fun?

What, not enough parties for you? You should try it sometime. Nature’s good for you.

I know that, Hollander. I’m not all…what’s that fucking word? City slick?

City slicker. 

That one. My mother’s parents used to live out in the country. We would to go up there in summer. Get lost in the woods. 

Oh, yeah? And it was fun?

Not as fun as getting lost down here…

And then Ilya had buried his head between Shane’s thighs and dragged another round out of both of them and the hand on his pec and the heat of his mouth and —

Shane bit his lip as release found him, accompanied as it usually was by the frighteningly adorable giggle Ilya let out as Shane fumbled for the hotel stationery and wrote down his phone number. Cheekily signed it, “Jane.” Folded it up and slipped it into his wallet. Shane had wanted to put that laugh between his own teeth and hold it safe inside his lungs until next time. 

In moments like these, sometimes his breath still caught on it. 

Shane inhaled slowly. The rest was mechanical. Wipe off his hand, readjust his clothes, let the afterglow carry him off to sleep. Except he’d barely snagged a tissue from his bedside table when a weird noise ripped through the quiet. It was so unexpected that Shane couldn’t categorize the sound until it repeated itself. 

Barking.

The whole time Shane had known Leshak, the dog had never made so much as a whine. The incongruity of it had Shane bolting out of bed, awkwardly fixing his briefs and scrubbing a tissue over his palm. Something must be wrong if—

Shane threw the door open, scanning the hallway for any sense of what may be happening. His attention was distracted just long enough for the dog poised in his bedroom doorway to shove a snout into his crotch. Shane recoiled a few steps back, a startled sound jumping from his lungs. Leshak just followed, determinedly sniffing away until Shane got a hand in his thick scruff and physically pulled him off. 

“Bad dog!” Shane cried, mortified though he logically shouldn’t be. Leshak was a dog. Dogs didn’t understand shame or privacy. All he was thinking was oh, new smell! Still … boundaries. 

Leshak, for his part, failed to appear affected by the scolding. In fact, he just gave himself a quick shake and rocked back onto his haunches. Shane realized what he was about to do right before—

“Don’t you dare—”

Before he could stop it, Leshak was on the bed. Sniffing around while Shane just stared dumbfounded. Curling in front of the pillows where Shane had thrown the covers back. Green eyes trained straight on Shane, those puppy eyebrows canted in a manner that said, move me, I dare you.

Shane pursed his lips. “Nope. Not gonna happen. Get off the bed.”

Leshak didn’t move. 

Shane put a knee on the mattress and gave the creature a light shove. Nothing. Another one. If anything, the dog hunkered down deeper, dead weight against Shane’s efforts. And Shane could just lift him off, if he let his right arm do most of the work. He wasn’t as strong as his playing days by a mile, but he could handle eighty pounds if careful. 

But … Leshak trusted him. Seemed to care about him, in his strange feral-dog ways. The prospect of damaging that trust felt like skating on bad ice. Ugh, he was really going to let this happen, wasn’t he?

“Fine,” Shane sighed, then found space to lay next to the stubborn creature. “Just this once.” 

Whether it was the soft memories of Rozanov still drifting through his brain or the warm weight of Leshak curled up at his side, sleep finally came with the silken ease of a fish slipping into water. 

For the first time, he has gone somewhere it can’t follow. In its mind, it knows this is not wholly true. He has gone many places without it. Places that leave strange smells on his loose-pelts and unfamiliar soil clinging to the bottom of his paw-covers. But when he leaves for those places, he does not know it is watching. Does not realize he can ask it to come along. 

This time, he has deliberately left it behind. Disappeared behind an entrance-barrier, slipping through it in such a way as to specifically keep it on the other side. It does not know what to do with this. How can it properly protect him if it cannot see him? Cannot check his scent for fear or sickness? Cannot hear the smoothness of his breathing or the steady thump of his heart? It lets out a huff. Fine. It will just…stay here. Plenty of times has it guarded him from a distance. It can do it again.

It curls up on the hard floor in front of the barrier, eyes towards the den entrance and ears pointed back at him. He slept so deeply, when they were pressed together on the bedding in the den’s main space. He must feel very safe here, to do so. In the forest, a lack of awareness could mean death. 

So it does not sleep deeply. It slips into a familiar torpor, only spending energy on the most essential of tasks. Senses lax but still alert for any changes. It has just resigned itself to a familiar night of its own company when it hears. A bitten-off whimper. A salty, unplaceable smell spiking so hard it can scent it from here. 

What is happening to him? Is he hurt? Ill? It does not know and it does not like not knowing. It will have to do something. As if summoned by its desperation, a hard lurch in its stomach crawls up, scraping against muscles long-disused in its throat until a harsh noise leaps out. It had almost forgotten it could do this. It does it again.

It hears movement in the space beyond just before the entrance-barrier falls away. Good, he is upright and mobile and still fast on his paws. But that—

That salt scent engulfs his usual autumn leaves and sharp-ice, but it is strongest right there. It presses in to investigate, following even as he backs away. There’s something double-familiar about this smell. An old recall of it on some other dogs, though most of them were too stupid or too intimidated by it to be worth its attention. 

But then something even older. Something from… before. They come in snatches. Senses and feelings it does not know what to do with. Hands on skin, somehow without a barrier of fur between them. Tall-creature laughing and gasping and chatter it cannot understand but feels maybe it could. A heady, complicated feeling, of getting what is wanted but thinking maybe it was stolen. Its mind struggles with the concept. Survival means taking. There is no belonging of things. Only places, and only temporarily. 

It does not know why it feels this. Why it thinks this. It feels and thinks anyway. 

The hand in its scruff is delightful until he grips down and pulls its face away. The feelings and the thinkings flee like startled rabbits as clean air invades its lungs. He is chattering at it, tone displeased but scent still dripping satiety. He is not really upset. 

Still, it shakes off the lingering feeling and takes stock of the room. He is fine, there is nothing in here that doesn’t scent like it’s been here a long time. Straight-line things made of wood along the walls, ever-ice covering holes with a view of the lake. Bedding piled up much larger than the one in the main space. 

Did tall-creatures really carve out different spaces in their dens just for bedding? Wasteful. But … the dregs of the before memories cling to it like wet leaves. It faintly remembers the feeling of tall-creature bedding underneath its body. Or something like it. The memories are good. Happy. Sated. 

It wants that. So it ignores his sounds of protest and leaps into the pile. It thinks, as it curls up on the bone-melting softness, that he can shove him off if he wants to. But when he makes a half-hearted attempt, it knows he is being untruthful. It lets him play out the feeling like a puppy testing how hard it can bite before a littermate takes offense. 

Eventually he sees the sense of keeping it close. Piles bedding on top of himself and curls towards the middle. It keeps gentle watch of his slack features, his scent and his breathing and his heartbeat. Quiet and watchful through the darkness of the night until the milky light of dawn begins to seep over the horizon.

Chapter End Notes

I KNOW Montreal made it to the ECF this year and beat Buffalo to do it. But making Shane suffer about hockey is a theme here, okay? It’s for the plot. For the six of you who care, the Metros under Shimura really hit their stride next year and make it to the Cup finals but lose to Seattle in 6. Then get there again in 2028 to win the Cup against Houston.

Chapter 8: Reflections

Chapter Notes

Special thanks to everyone in the GCL Discord server who answered my questions regarding journalistic ethics. This chapter wouldn’t be the same without y’all and I appreciate your help dearly.

For the reference hunters, there are TWO NHL-MLH analogues in this chapter and no new Russian hockey surnames. They're a little vaguer than usual so, if you need help, your clues are “merchant” and “letter-y alliteration."

THE NEXT DAY

Upon waking, the first thing Shane noticed was weight. Draped across his right side, forcing his spine deeper into the mattress and giving just a little resistance to the apex of his inhales. It felt nice, and threatened to lull him back down into the deep, steady slumber he’d fallen into.

Except the next thing Shane noticed was the heat this weight was radiating, held against his skin so long he was already soaked in sweat from hip to armpit; his thin sleep shirt tacky and damp. The discomfort brought him fully to wakefulness, instinctively wiggling away until his left shoulder found the open air off the side of the bed. Shane threw the covers off in an attempt to find relief, only to be met with a displeased sniff as the lump created by the folded-over sheets began to move. 

Leshak’s head popped out by the pillow, brows drawn down in an expression Shane would’ve classified as annoyed if dogs were capable of such emotion. He shucked off the invading covers and stretched over to give Shane a few licks across the cheeks. Fuck, why was this dog obsessed with licking his face? He was already damp enough! 

Giving Leshak a groan and a sleepy shove, Shane ran a hand down his arm, trying to wipe off the disgusting combo of sweat and fur that clung to it and generally failing. He didn’t want to think about the state of the sheets. Why had he let this creature into the bed, again? 

He went into the hallway, intent on running a long, hot shower. But then Leshak left his perpetual position at Shane’s heels to lope towards the front door, glancing back at Shane with his tongue wagging just past his front teeth. Right, potty time.

Abandoning his own needs for a moment, Shane opened the front door and let Leshak exit into the yard. He did his business while Shane lingered on the porch, then went about halfway up the slope before stopping. He looked at the treeline, then back at Shane. Then once more. Was he…asking permission?

Shane didn’t own this dog. Its movements were its own. But still… 

“See you tonight?” he asked, voice carrying across the yard. The creature gave him one last long look, let out a sneeze that looked all the world like a nod, then turned tail and slipped into the forest. 

It was probably better Leshak spent the day on his own, Shane thought as he finally got into the shower. Shane himself was going to be spending most of it in Moscow; his final trip back before his return flight. He’d hate for a creature so used to freely roaming to be confined by itself in the tiny world of his rental house. Little shit would probably tear up the couch or shred the curtains. Or maybe just run him out of toilet paper trying to relieve boredom. 

Maybe he could grab one of those lick mats or puzzle feeders on his way back. To give Leshak something to do in the evenings that wasn’t plastering himself against Shane’s side watching hockey videos. Was screen time as bad for dogs as it was for small kids? 

Shane’s hands stilled where they were scrubbing his scalp. What the fuck was he thinking? Just five minutes ago he was thinking about how Leshak wasn’t his dog. He was leaving Russia in less than a week. He couldn’t buy him any equipment. Olga would probably charge him an extra cleaning fee for all the dog hair already. 

He needed to focus. This next interview was going to take a lot of delicacy. Shane needed to be at his best. Which is how he found himself walking the steps to the Russian State Library a solid half hour ahead of his scheduled meeting time. The building was an imposing thing of right angles and vertical forced perspective. Built on the bones of Brutalism but with a thin veneer of Neo-Classical in the reliefs and statues that lined the pediments. 

Shane wondered what Irina would think of a place like this. 

The interior gave more ground to decadence, with its parquet flooring, marble columns, and nods to Art Nouveau in the woodworking details. The place felt old, but…solid. There was something frozen about libraries; a feeling Shane hadn’t quite identified until he spent time in publishing houses. All that creative freneticism and desperation for success buzzed like wasps around a kicked nest. Libraries were where that energy went to die. A place of finished things, content but unmoving. Prideful, almost. Especially national ones like this, which were as much monuments to the state as they were functional spaces. 

He’d rented a private study room well ahead of time, so it was a quick process to pick up the key from the circulation desk and navigate the labyrinthine rooms until he found the corner of the building he was looking for. To his surprise, his interview subject was already waiting by the door. 

Evgenia Rozanova looked like her uncle. Or, maybe that wasn’t quite right. It was more accurate to say they both looked like Irina. Hazel-green eyes and curly blonde hair, though she wore hers in a shoulder-length bob with thin fringe where Irina’s had been long. Her style was pure Slavic teenager, though. Baggy jeans and a black tank with a printed short-sleeve button up worn open over top, beaded bracelets stacked on her wrist and a few more around her neck. 

Evgenia perked up when she caught sight of him, slipping headphones off her ears. “Mr. Hollander?” she asked in English. “It’s nice to meet you.” She offered him a little wave in lieu of a handshake. 

“Nice to meet you, too, Evgenia,” he answered in kind. She seemed a little antsy, which was to be expected considering the circumstances. He switched to Russian and asked, “Would you like to go inside?”

She gave him a nod, and in they went. Like most of his interview subjects, he hadn’t gone looking for Evgenia Rozanova. Shane initially tried to contact her father Alexei, though he hadn’t been hopeful of a response. What he hadn’t expected was the extremely rude and homophobic return email he’d gotten essentially telling him to fuck off and possibly die. 

Needless to say, Shane didn’t try again. 

But his final interviewee had come in handy for him once again, reaching out asking if he’d be willing to speak with Ilya’s niece. Shane had gone back and forth on the decision. Evgenia was a minor and obviously doing this without parental permission. But she seemed very eager to contribute and a part of Shane balked at the idea of publishing without some direct input from the Rozanov family. At least this way, he could take the general temperature of any fallout. 

The room was well-lit but comfortable, with dark wainscotting and paint a shade of forest green that absorbed some of the brightness. The table where they sat was the same color wood and looked all the world like the one in his grandmother’s dining room, minus the hand-tatted doily gracing the center. The one window looking out on the wider library floor had blinds, but Shane left them up and the door unlocked. He offered her the chair closest to the exit. She took it.

As he set up his equipment, Shane informed her, “Since you’re under eighteen and you’ve indicated a preference for your parents not to be notified, I’ll be taking your statement on background only. This means I can’t refer to you by name in any documentation, or allude to your identity on anything made publicly available in such a way that a reasonable person would be able to infer it. For the transcript, would you like to pick a pseudonym or should I just use something generic?”

Evgenia folded her fingers together on the table. If the fact that Shane was reciting all that Russian legalese from memory was obvious to her, she didn’t mention. He waited patiently as she deliberated. Eventually, she said, “You can call me ‘Liya.’” 

Shane smiled. “Alright, Liya, it looks like my translator is all set to go. This transcript won’t be made public, so don’t feel like you need to hedge around any questions. If you need to take a break, or no longer wish to continue, or have anything you want to say completely off the record, let me know and we’ll make that happen. Do you understand?”

She gave a resolute nod. 

“Okay then.”

INTERVIEW CONDUCTED BY SHANE HOLLANDER.

DATE: April 24th, 2026

NAME: UNDISCLOSED (Hereafter referred to as “Liya.”)

AGE: UNDISCLOSED

BIRTHPLACE: Moscow, Moscow Oblast, Russia

RELATION TO SUBJECT: UNDISCLOSED

With full understanding and consent to speaking on background only, the above interviewee attested to the following: 

Q: How did you know the Rozanovs?

A: Ilya is my uncle on my dad’s side, though I was not even a year old yet when he went missing. Obviously I knew Grandfather — well, his father before he died, and his brother and sister-in-law. 

Q: Did Ilya have any other family?

A: His father had a second wife, but she didn’t stick around after he died. None of us really count Polina.

Q: All right. (Chuckle.) So I take it you heard about Ilya growing up?

A: Yes, but … not frequently. My father didn’t really talk about him, and so my mother didn’t talk about him. And grandfather died in 2017, so I don’t remember him very well, much less if he said anything. I didn’t really understand my father had a brother until after I was ten or so. 

Q: Do you remember finding out?

A: Not especially, sorry. It was in pieces, you know? Until I overheard my father talking about him and finally put it together. 

Q: They didn’t keep any family photos around the house?

A: Not out in the open. My mom kept an album, so I’ve seen pictures. I think I look more like him than my dad. (Laughs.)

Q: What kind of pictures were in there?

A: Everything they had, I think. Lots of baby photos and some stuff from when he was little. Then it’s mostly hockey pictures. Oh, wait! I also found some DVDs of his hockey games. I used to watch them sometimes on my laptop but the discs are so old they don’t really work anymore.

            SHANE: Yeah, I have a few of those, too. 

            LIYA: He was a really good player, wasn’t he?

            SHANE: Yes, he was. (Long pause.) 

            LIYA: Who was he most like?

            SHANE: I’m sorry?

            LIYA: As a player, I mean. I saw some people compare him to Chad Mercante but he’s so tiny.

            SHANE: (Laughs.) He certainly had a mouth like Mercante. But playstyle-wise I’d put him next to somebody like Jaroslav Janka, at least when he was young. (Pause.) I digitized my DVDs a while ago. Do you… do you want me to send you a copy?

            LIYA: Really?

            SHANE: Of course, if you want them.

            LIYA: That would be awesome, thank you.

            SHANE: You’re welcome. Back to it?

            LIYA: Oh, yes.

Q: You said your parents didn’t talk about Ilya except infrequently. What did they say when they did talk about him?

A: It wasn’t…it wasn’t anything particularly nice. 

Q: Can you be specific?

A: My father seemed to hate him, if I’m being honest. Called him a traitor to the family for disappearing when he did. That he abandoned them in a time of need instead of helping like a good son. 

Q: What was this “time of need”?

A: See, that’s what they never talked about! But I had a suspicion it had something to do with Grandfather, so after Svetlana told me about your book I went looking and I…found an old box of paperwork and then it all made sense!  (Opens phone and shows a series of photographs.) Uncle Ilya disappeared on February 13th, right? 

            SHANE: Right.

A: Well, look at this! All these medical records starting in August of 2009, doctor’s visits and hospital tests and then bam! It’s official! Grandfather was diagnosed with early-onset dementia ten days before Uncle Ilya went missing. 

            SHANE: Cheryl, give us a moment.

INTERVIEW PAUSED.

“Evgenia,” Shane started once Cheryl put down her mask. “Is it wise for you to be sharing this information?”

“It’s helpful, isn’t it?” she asked, head tilting a little. Fuck, she was so young. She didn’t understand what she was doing. 

“These are someone’s medical records,” he said, trying to keep his voice steady. “I’m not comfortable citing these directly.”

She asked, “Well, you got the rundown from me, right? You can use my words?”

Shane resisted the urge to grit his teeth. “In North America this is protected information. I wouldn’t get in trouble for publishing it, though it’s in a really gray area ethically, but you absolutely can for disclosing this to me. If not legally, then with your parents. It’s already risky for you to be doing this and then you go and snoop through your father’s things?” 

Shit, maybe this girl was more like her uncle than she knew. This is the exact kind of recklessness that sent people sneaking through hotel hallways for stolen touches the night before a gold medal game. These fucking Rozanovs were going to be the death of him. 

Evgenia hunched back into her seat and Shane’s heart clenched. She was just trying to be helpful. Trying to do something good in the name of her uncle’s memory. 

Shane took a deep breath. “I’m not trying to scare you. I just need you to understand that there are rules here. I want you to be safe about this.”

Some time during his speech, her eyes found the grain of the table and hadn't left since. “So what? Are we done, then?” she asked, picking at her fingernails.

“Only if you want to be.”

Her hands stilled. The tightness that had crept into her shoulders relaxed just a fraction.  “You don’t… you don’t want me to leave?”

“Do you have more you want to say?” Shane asked. 

She nodded. 

Shane would be lying if he said the information wasn’t extremely tantalizing. The kind of knowledge that had the potential to reframe everything he’d learned so far about Ilya’s disappearance. But he wouldn’t use any of it if it could link back to Evgenia. She looked him in the eyes again, their hazel depths sparkling with an eager energy. She wanted to contribute. He would do his best to be careful now, but even if Shane couldn’t comfortably use a word she said, it was important to her to say these things. 

“Alright, let’s resume.”

INTERVIEW RESUMED.

Q: In light of the family’s “time of need,” did Alexei ever mention how he expected Ilya to contribute?

A: I… I don’t know anything for certain, but he was going to play MLH, right? That’s a lot of money, especially in Russia. He probably wanted that. 

Q: Possibly. (Pause.) I’ve heard from other sources that Ilya was approached by a KHL team in addition to being drafted by Boston. Did Alexei have an opinion about that?

A: He has a lot of opinions about Ilya. A lot of them don’t make sense.

Q: What do you mean by that?

A: Well, from what I gathered he’s pissed at Uncle Ilya for wanting to “run away” to America. Maybe he wanted him to play in Russia? But he also wanted the hockey money, and he would’ve made a lot more of it with MLH. After the disappearance, I guess it was the worst of both worlds. No Ilya around to help and no MLH money for… taking care of needs. 

Q: From what you gathered?

A: Yes.

            SHANE: Liya.

            LIYA: (Long pause.) Fine, I asked him about it when he was really drunk. And that’s what I got. I doubt he remembers the conversation, anyway.

            SHANE:  I appreciate your eagerness to contribute here, but please don’t ever take risks like this again. It’s not worth your safety. 

            LIYA: I’ll be fine, Hollander. 

Q: (Pause.) Let’s talk about Ilya’s disappearance. I understand you were very young at the time, but did your family ever talk about it while you were growing up?

A: No, not for a very long time. I knew my father used to have a brother, like I said earlier. But I thought he just died until I was thirteen. Someone at school tried to bully me for my “crazy uncle.” I didn’t know what he was talking about. My mom finally sat me down and told me that he went missing and he probably killed himself.

Q: Did both of your parents believe this?

A: I know when my mom is just parroting my dad. It was definitely my dad’s opinion. Probably thinks he was running from his problems instead of being a (In air quotes.) “real man” or whatever. 

Q: I take it you don’t share that opinion.

A: Depression runs in the family, even if nobody wants to talk about it. I have it, Grandmother definitely had it; probably Uncle Ilya, too. 

Q: Have you been professionally diagnosed?

A: No. 

Q: What makes you think that, then?

            LIYA: You really want me to answer more questions about medical history?

            SHANE: You know what? I don’t.

            LIYA: (Long pause.) Can I ask you something?

            SHANE: Sure.

            LIYA: Just… don’t hold back, please? I know my dad doesn’t like what you’re doing and you want to be ethical and polite or whatever, but… he deserves the truth. 

            SHANE: I…I’m going to do my best, I promise.

Q: You don’t have to answer this, but do you have any thoughts about what happened to him?

A: I can’t say for sure. But I hope he walked away and found happiness wherever he went. 

END TRANSCRIPT. 

Shane quietly signalled to Cheryl to stop recording. For the second time in almost as many days, he had an interview subject in front of him teetering on the verge of tears. Unlike with Sasha, Shane didn’t make any motions to leave. Just stayed sitting quietly across from Evgenia as she scrubbed away the single tear she allowed to fall and sniffed the rest back. 

“I hope that was helpful,” she said.

“It was,” Shane answered. Maybe not in the ways she wanted it to be, but he’d known that going in. Speaking to Evgenia was getting a secondhand account of a secondhand account. Useful for gathering potential avenues of investigation and providing general background, but too problematic to cite directly. The most important thing she’d given him was the right questions to ask, if he could find the right person to answer them. None of his previous interviewees had been close enough to the Rozanov family to have any hope of helping, but his next one…she might.

What he could cite directly was mostly in the subtext. He’d long suspected it, but now he had verbal confirmation that Alexei and Ilya’s relationship was antagonistic. The particular choices in his manner of speaking to both Shane and Sasha suggested a few reasons why. His disdain for Ilya’s chosen career path, a few others.

Mostly he was happy that, if just for a little while, Evgenia had someone to talk to about it. Living with those kinds of shadows in your closet was suffocating, even if you’d long learned how to breathe through the cracks. He reached over and offered his hand.

“Thank you so much for meeting with me,” he said.

“I look forward to reading the finished product,” she replied, taking to her feet. And then in English, “I’ve been practicing a lot. I want to go to Canada or America for university, if I can.” 

Shane smiled. “Well, your accent is already very good.” So familiar it sent a bitter thrum through the space behind his breastbone. “I’ll get those video files to Svetlana so she can forward them along.” He released her hand. Then, before he could convince himself otherwise, he grabbed a notepad and pen and began scribbling a phone number in the corner.

For a brief moment, Shane was somewhere else. There were so many differences. Yellow legal pad versus hotel stationery. Different color pen. Different phone number, but same area code. Signed with a simple “S.H.” instead of a silly pseudonym. But here he was, fifteen years later, giving himself to a Rozanov again.

As he wrote, he said, “This is my personal number. If you ever need anything when you hop the pond, please don’t hesitate to reach out. I’ve got people in a lot of places and a lot of favors I’ve never cashed in.” He ripped off the corner and held it out to Evgenia.

She blinked a few times, as if trying to decide whether or not he was serious. With gentle fingers, she slipped the paper scrap into her palm. “Thank you.” 

Business concluded, she took her leave. Shane watched her through the window as she disappeared into the stacks, then just sat there for a moment. The full gravity came to him in pieces. Ten days. Despite the unusability of the information, the date and diagnosis on the last document was burned into his brain. Early onset dementia, February 3rd, 2010. Just ten days before Ilya went missing.

Exploring diagnoses starting in August 2009, which meant there were likely noticeable symptoms for months before that. A Boston contract left unsigned, a CSKA offer waiting in the wings. Perhaps Ilya waiting on the doctors to make his decision? 

But that little sticking point stuck again. The phone number. Ilya wanted Boston; Shane knew that. And knowing that led him to only one likely conclusion. Ilya hadn’t left that contract unsigned because he wanted to, or because he was waiting on more information. It was left unsigned because Ilya felt he couldn’t.

It wasn’t lost on Shane, the optics of a high-ranking Party member, even retired and post-Union, becoming visibly infirm. The instinct would be concealment, and concealment meant limited resources. Records locked down and relegated to an old file box, not a word of it leaving the confidentiality of a doctor’s oath and a family’s silence. The circle kept as small as possible to prevent any leaks. A sick father, an eldest son clearly resentful of how he was expected to step up, placing expectations on his successful younger brother to bail the family out of a precarious situation socially and financially.

Everything Shane had learned about Alexei Rozanov pointed toward someone preoccupied with control. A police officer who inserted himself into his brother’s investigation despite conflict of interest. Frequently drunk, likely his preferred method of escapism as one of the few allowed outlets for Slavic men. Invested in maintaining his worldview and his pride despite the way it hurt the people around him. 

He’d seen the type in plenty a locker room. Men who did not know assertion without dominance. Could not steward without possession. An environment like that doesn’t take well to a long arm. Ilya would have been expected to subordinate his own desires for the sake of the family. To acquiesce to the word of the patriarch. If Alexei asked him to sign with CSKA over Boston…

The question Shane couldn’t answer — the question he would never get an answer to — was whether or not it was that pressure, or the suspected depression, or some combination of both, or something else entirely that sent Ilya into the forest that night. But it was a decent bet. Enough that something that had sat frozen inside Shane’s gut ever since he first saw the headline splashing Ilya’s disappearance across his disbelieving eyes finally started to melt. 

He didn’t know. He would never know. But now at least, at the very least, Shane had an idea. That would have to be enough. 

His drive home was somber, despite the cheery weather. Spring was really starting to turn now, days hotter and nights losing their frigid tinge. The sun was just beginning to brush the tops of the trees when he pulled down the driveway back to his rental. A part of him expected (read: hoped) to see Leshak waiting for him on the porch or in the lawn. What waited for him instead was something else entirely.

For perhaps the first time, Shane saw Raisa Ivanova further outside her home than the front or back porches. She was standing on the driveway, eyes fixed on a puddle that had stubbornly persisted through the sunny days since the rainstorm, surprisingly unmovable even as Olga beside her grew visibly frustrated. Shane stopped the car. As he exited, Olga looked up at him with a grimace, but Raisa Ivanova’s eyes never left the puddle.

“Is everything okay?” Shane asked.

“Everything is fine, Shane,” Olga said curtly before turning her attention back to her mother. “Mama, you need to come back to the house. You should not be walking this far on your own.”

Raisa flapped a wrinkly hand at her daughter. “I will go inside when I am good and ready! It is not time yet!”

Shane stood awkwardly, at a loss for what to do and why this was happening. Did it have something to do with Raisa Ivanova’s connection to the forest, or just her age? Well, if it was forest-related, maybe she would listen to Shane?

“Raisa—” he began, but Olga cut him off sharply.

“I can handle it, Shane. Mama, let’s go inside, please.”

“It is not time yet!” Raisa Ivanova repeated. “The moon is entering Pisces and I want to see.”

“You can see the moon from the house,” Olga insisted.

Just as Shane asked, “See what?”

Olga’s posture turned rigid. “Shane, I appreciate you want to help, but this is a private family matter so I must ask you to leave it alone!” Her final words were laced with a creeping panic as Raisa took another step towards the puddle. Another step towards the treeline. Her shout echoed against the hillside, the ground underneath sending an uncomfortable prickle up Shane’s feet that made him take a half-step back. 

Shane heard it a split second before he saw it. A brisk rustling from the treeline before a gold-and-cream blur shot out from the underbrush. In an instant, Leshak was in front of Shane, hackles up and teeth winking behind his lips. Olga gasped, likewise interposing herself between Raisa and the wild creature before them. The standoff put them on either side of the puddle, just as the pale shadow of the waxing moon drifted into its reflection. 

“Woah woah, hey!” Shane cried, leaning forward and putting a hand on Leshak’s scruff. The dog jumped at the unexpected contact, but kept its position. “It’s okay,” Shane said, voice much softer this time. “We’re okay. Everything’s fine. Stand down, buddy.”

But Leshak refused to relax. His lips went down over his teeth, at least. But he still stood there in springcoiled tension, the animal determination to fight if necessary evident in every line of his frame. For a split second, Shane seriously thought he might have to fall on top of this dog and let whatever injuries come to prevent him from lunging at his landlady.

And then Raisa Ivanova started laughing. The bright, airy sound split the tension, all eyes going to hers still fixed on that puddle. “And what a sight it is. Olga dear, it is time for dinner.”

Shane watched the tension bleed out of Olga and Leshak. Raisa Ivanova for her part gave no attention to the wild animal on the lawn, slowly sauntering off in the direction of her home like she hadn’t both created and resolved the strange tableau taking place behind her. Shane’s lungs deflated like an untied balloon. He held the dog in place as he stepped up alongside him, ready for… he didn’t know exactly what, but the way Olga was staring at the green-eyed creature made him nervous. 

Shane opened his mouth to apologize, but Olga spoke first. “When did this happen?”

Sheepishly, Shane answered, “After he kept knocking over the trash cans, I started leaving food out. I know you told me not to, I just…” he really didn’t know how to explain it. 

“You have…tamed him?” she asked.

“No,” Shane said, “At least I don’t think so. He just kept hanging around and I kept letting him. I’m sorry. I know you don’t want forest animals on your property.”

Olga waved off his apology with an absentminded wrist flick. She just kept staring at Leshak, calm and poised behind Shane’s leg, eyes watchful and ears forward but no longer on high alert. Just relaxed and watchful, like usual. 

“Shane, nobody has been able to get close to this dog.” 

Shane swallowed. Was that truly the case? Leshak had been so…invested in him. Lingering around his rental at night, finding him in the forest, making himself at home on Shane’s couch and in his bed, finding every possible opportunity to press himself against Shane’s body. With him, Leshak acted more like an abandoned pet than a wild animal. It hadn’t struck Shane, until the contrast was pointed out, just how strange that was. 

“He just looked like he needed someone to take care of him.”

Olga’s eyes finally found his. Shane didn’t quite know what to make of their expression. “I have to go take care of my mother.”

Shane nodded, letting the moment die. He looked down at Leshak while Olga walked back to her mother’s side. He was looking at the puddle now, too. Would it be rude to go into the house with the dog at his heels? Right in full view, if she cared to look? 

Well, in for a penny, in for a pound. Shane took a few steps towards the porch, expecting Leshak to follow. But he didn’t hear movement. Looking back, the dog was still standing with its green eyes locked onto still water. 

“Hey!” he called. Leshak raised his gaze, blinking slowly in the evening light. “Dinnertime?”

That got his attention. Leaving the puddle behind, Leshak caught up to Shane and they walked into the house together. 

The old one is on the move. Not often does it sense this, despite how much time it has been spending on her land. The old one is always there, her presence like a burr caught on the end of its tail. Unnoticed unless it pokes into skin. But she does not stray from her straight-line den. Except now.

It watches her walk on frail legs into the yard near his den, intent on something it cannot discern until she finally stops. Water on the ground. A reflection of the sky. It wonders what she hopes to see in there. More than most tall-creatures, no doubt. Most of them are blind to the forest’s knowings. But a few see more. Ones that have roots buried inside them. It has roots, it knows this. For so long it stopped noticing them. Almost forgot about them.

It has begun to notice them again. 

The young one, the one this land listens to, runs after the old one. She is agitated, and her land is responding to that. It takes a few strides back into the cover of the trees. Not so far it cannot see, but far enough back the discomforted prickles stop sparking against its toes. 

Then, the rumble of a not-beast sends its ears flicking in the direction of the hard-stone path. It trundles along slowly, coming to a stop just short of the women and he climbs out of its guts. The young one grows more agitated. It can hear words thudding through the still air. The old one remains insistent in her attention. 

Then he says something and the younger one bristles, her anger rippling through the land underneath her feet. Her posture is defensive, the will of her property gathering underneath her, ready to unleash itself against any perceived threat. 

It will not let her hurt him.

Leaving cover, it braves the hostility of the land to place itself between him and her, the fur on its back standing straight up and its teeth slightly bared. It holds back a growl, for now. She moves between it and the old one, who shimmers with her own sort of power. Not the kind that comes from tall-creature land, but the rock-and-river thrum of the forest that holds her close. 

The young one stares at it, not with the anger it often sees on tall-creature faces but…something else. Is she…surprised by it? It does not have time to contemplate that, for a familiar hand buries itself into its scruff, fingers tightening but falling short of a true grip. He chatters to it, pulling its attention away and falling into a soothing tone. 

Is he not concerned what she might do? Still her power stands at the ready, but…it supposes she has not used it yet. But it will not stand down while that remains a possibility. 

And then the old one laughs. He and her both jerk at the sound. The land’s wrath falls away, power unbunching itself and relaxing back into the depths of the soil. She says something, looks at it, then down at the puddle, then turns on her heels and begins to walk away. 

He and her are talking. It is no longer paying attention. It looks into the lingering water; the remnants of a storm still holding the memory of power. The moon, growing in strength as it drifts through the late-day sky above. 

It has seen its face in water before. 

This is not that face.

This face is a tall-creature face, hard-angled and pale and surrounded by a thicket of yellow curls. Strong and stubborn and terribly sad. Why is it so sad? 

But the eyes.

The eyes are the same. 

Why does this face have its eyes?

His voice breaks the spell. It looks up, having not even noticed he has started walking towards the den. It asks him a question. It does not know how to answer. 

Instead, it just follows him to the front door. And even when it is given food and water and shelter — or maybe because of it — it cannot banish the sight of that face from its mind. 

It begins to think maybe it wasn’t always a dog.

Chapter End Notes

The Russian State Library is in fact an actual building and I am BEGGING you to look up a picture of this place. There is, quite literally, no better metaphor for modern Russia than THIS FUCKING BUILDING.

My one concession to Alexei as a human being is that he kicked the coke habit for the sake of his daughter, though he still drinks to excess because I still need him to be a shitbag.

Magic Worldbuilding! In traditional Western astrology, Pisces is the sign of the Zodiac associated with mysticism, the unseen, illusions, and the blurry lines between reality and imagination. The Moon is the planet associated with the internal or private self as opposed to the Sun which is representative of the projected self that others see. So of course Raisa Ivanova would be curious what she’d see with a Moon like that.

Chapter 9: The Stars, Part 1

Chapter Notes

CONTENT WARNING we are exploring a little more of that Suicidal Ideation/Attempt tag AND going into some details about Irina’s canon suicide. See end note for specific spoilers. Once again, the content is bracketed off for those who would prefer to skip.

Remember that “fun little inversion of some established conventions” I mentioned? Well, here it is! We’re barreling headlong towards the endgame, my friends. And it will certainly not be all sunshine and rainbows.

I would say this has a good chance of being the fic’s longest chapter, but we’ll see how Chapter 10 goes, lol. Can you believe I once thought I could fit this story in about 20K?

TWO DAYS BEFORE

It wakes as usual, in response to growing daylight. In its old den, the scent of sunshine on the thick leaf loam that partially concealed the entrance was the perfume of its mornings, marking the transition from resting to hunting. Especially in these hotter days when the sun lingered on the horizon, and the heat of midday was more for digesting off a kill than any sort of movement. 

But this morning, the scent of leaves is different. Spicier, warmer, off-season and more precious for it. Counterpointed with a shock of sharp-ice and smears of its own animal smell twisted up in it. It wakes up not in its den, and not with any hunger or thirst clawing its belly. The surface beneath it is not smooth-packed earth but a soft bed. The sunlight paints the whiteness of it to glowing pale gold, a nudge of possibility more than a demand. 

It chooses not to move for a while. He is still sleeping, anyway. And despite now being able to label the entrance-barrier that separates this space from the rest of the den a door, it still cannot open one by itself. No, better to just wait for him to awake. It has long proven it can be patient. 

It does not have to wait much longer. The brightening day sets him stirring, and eventually a weak groan escapes his throat. It sniffs across his cheeks, chancing a few licks to the star-dots before a hand reaches up to gently shove it away. This is how they spent the previous morning, also. It wants to keep doing this. The act makes it…happy. 

It leaps off the bed with him, standing back to let him open this door, and then the one that opens to the grass outside. It relieves itself while he stands on the porch, one hand on the door. It has learned now that he will not always be perfectly clear in his wants for it. Sometimes he is inconsistent, like commanding him to stay on the wood floors while he does his tall-creature things to food, but still feeding it scraps of his own meal if it sits nicely and uses a gentle mouth. Or that he will grumble and groan about it jumping onto the bed, only to quickly fall into a steady sleep with it by his side. 

So it waits. Stands in the grass, waiting for him to make a move. Would he send it out into the forest as he’s done before? Or ask it back inside? He looks at it for a long moment, face pinching before smoothing out again. He raises a hand and beckons it back to the door. It goes.

It would be so easy to spend the day inside with him in the comforts of scents and sounds and sights growing increasingly familiar. But there is a restlessness inside its paws. Not from the land, but from the roots that tangle deep into itself. They chafe against things it has long stopped paying attention to, drawing its thoughts back to the face in the puddle.

It has the strangest feeling his food and his water and his shelter have done this. Pulled it out of the forest just a little; just enough that its strides fall differently on the earth and echo out of sync with the trees. The snap of a branch where there would have been silence. 

The forest has sheltered it for many long cycles of the sun. Such roots don’t let go so easily. It presses against his leg, accepting the rubs he gives it behind the ears. But when he makes to go back inside, it does not follow. He stops, looking back with that pinch in his face again. He asks it a question, the same as the day before. 

It will return as the sun goes down. But only then.

So it goes about the tasks of survival as it has always done. Checking and reinforcing the scent lines around its chosen hunting ground. Keeping one ear out for the movements of birds and beasts. Chasing off a fox that was overly interested in the shallow scrapes it intended to dig into a proper den. 

It really should work on that. The rainstorm proved it needed better shelter than a little divot under a rocky boulder could provide. Instead it wanders off to the thinnest corners of the forest, where the tall-creature structures back up against its branches. The sun is high, but the hard-packed stones and straight-line places are quiet. 

The before memories are harder to ignore. They come in fits and starts; snatches of sounds it cannot place, sensations against skin and movements of the body impossible to its current shape. Feelings it cannot describe but gnaw at its core deeper than hunger ever bit. Again and again it sees that strong, sad, same-eyed face in the water.

No starvation claws its belly. No drought grips its throat. The forest stands behind it, familiar and eternal, offering safety in the shadows it hides from the sun. The roots inside it tremble. Out in the sunlight, there are tall-creatures with cruel hands and a thousand things it does not understand. 

It walks out of the woods anyway, into rough stone and strange smells, chasing the growing awareness that plagues its mind. There is something here to know. Something the forest does not see. It will learn nothing hiding in darkness.

It lets its paws take it to the center of the tangle; a place where structures loom close together around a flat square split by two hard-stone paths. It sticks to the edges of the place, wary of being spotted by any tall-creature. It is not here to eat their food, but they don’t know that. Thankfully, the heat of the day has driven them inside their shelters. 

One structure scents more strongly than the rest. Warm and bitter and rich and earthy, like some foodstuffs he has eaten but much fresher. It chances moving closer to this place, its paw pads scraping on the prickly stone, nose twitching and ears in opposite directions. A place like this was called something more than just building. It had…a name. 

Then a wholly different scent floods its nose. A smell like dead fire, acrid and heady and snaking its way down into its lungs like it was standing next to burning leaves. It tastes the smoke on its tongue, its mouth and hands twitching in a memory of motion it cannot perform. A flick of a thumb, a hard-bright sound, a pinch of lips, heat against palm and wind chill against knuckles. 

A storm in its chest that the familiar smoke-scent does nothing to calm. A sucking, jagged hole at the center of the maelstrom, pulling everything down and down and down, cutting it all to ribbons. It wants to forget this feeling. It needs to forget this feeling. It would do anything to forget this feeling. It fears what forgetting means.

The smoke-scent vanishes as quickly as it appears. It stands in broad daylight, scent of fresh food drifting back in through the memory, tail between its legs and ears pinned to its skull. It retraces its steps carefully back to the treeline. And once its bright pelt is shadowed once again by the embrace of the trees, it runs. Runs back to his den, scratches at the door though there is much time before the sun touches the horizon. He lets it in. It seeks comfort. It tries to forget. 

ONE DAY BEFORE

The next morning is comfortably repetitive. Wake with the sun, wait for him to stir, steal a few licks across his cheeks. Then back out under the sky. It dreamed last night. It does not often dream. In sleep, it walked in an unfamiliar rhythm, something cold and heavy in one hand. There was a smell almost like sharp-ice, but burning against its nostrils and harsh on the tongue, competing with the taste of dead fire. And the feeling returned. But duller somehow, numbed alongside the exposed flesh on its face and fingertips. It woke unable to decide if the numbness was better.

The roots chafe harder now. They wiggle loose inside it, like the soil they’ve long anchored in is shifting in response to deeper forces. The before memories crowd closer. Ideas fall from them, labeling ever-ice glass, hard-stone paths roads, the pellets of dead fire and the sticks they once were cigarettes. It can now name the taste in its mouth cigarette smoke. Unfamiliar, but remembered.

The tuggings of the before memories pull uncomfortably close to the place of the fallen tree. But they do not pull it there. Not yet. Instead, it exits the trees further down the slope, where buildings line the road in two straight rows. This place is wrong. The memories are still hazy and indistinct, but it knows that much. Perhaps wrong is incorrect. This place has…changed.  

For a moment, it despairs. How is it supposed to clear the haze if it cannot find the correct places? It blindly wanders the road for a moment, listening to the wind through the nearby trees and the occasional sounds of tall-creatures moving inside their dens. Then it catches a scent. A sweet scent that shoves a before memory to the forefront of its mind; a vague memory of rough bark beneath its hands and feet, and a soft voice calling out. 

It follows the smell and the echoes of the voice in its ears until its progress is blocked by a row of flat wooden boards. Rocking back on its haunches, it can just see a dark tree blossoming with small white petals on the other side. It needs to go there. Tracking along the bottom of the boards, it finds a dip in the ground the angles of the wood can’t compensate for. Digging it out a little, it creates enough of a gap to slip underneath. It’s so focused on tracking down the memory, it doesn’t think about what it may find there until its too late. 

The grass on the other side is short and springy, a completely different texture from the long and wild hillside behind it. The tree dominates the space, shading part of the grass and the den beyond. A thing made of wood and rope dangles from one of its branches. That wasn’t there before. Long ago, it climbed this tree in the summer. Watched the flowers turn to the small green beginnings of fruits. Watched those fruits grow. It names them plums.

It remembers being sad it could never stay long enough to watch the green darken to purple. How it had to content itself with sweet jam spread over black bread or stirred into a mug of strong tea. How she would cut the crusts off the bread because it complained otherwise. The way her hair would shine gold in morning sunlight, softly humming as she moved around the room. 

She’s gone now. It knows that with bone-crushing certainty. The fruity smell sours, ferments into a strong and burning coat on its tongue, sipped not for taste but for the numbness it brought. But the numbness didn’t work. It just made the hole suck deeper, the jagged edges sharper. It cried while it thought of her that night. Tears unleashed by the pain and the cold and the bottle of vodka it drank just as much as it poured to her memory. It remembers removing the thing from around its neck and the hard, desperate resolve that made it hang her cross from the doorknob. It almost reaches for that long-empty spot at its throat. But its legs can’t move like that. 

She had a name. Why can’t it remember her name?

The door to the den swings open. A female tall-creature comes out, posture rigid and hoisting something long and hard-looking in two hands. It does not need before memories to know what will happen next.

Before she can leave the porch, it runs for the hole it dug and slips through. Angered shouts follow it as it retreats back into the forest. As it lopes the familiar routes back towards his den, it shakes its head a few times as if that will clear the tangled cobwebs from its mind. It was stupid to linger there that long, in full view from the other side of the windows. 

That kind of foolishness got creatures killed. Resisting that foolishness had ensured its survival. Uncertainty was poison, hesitation as deadly as a bear’s jaws. In all its remembering what it was, it could not afford to lose sight of what it is.

What is it, exactly? Did it have a name?

THE DAY

The morning of the third day, it knows where it is going long before it actually chooses to go there. When it rescued him from the forest, it approached the place of the fallen tree from upslope, moving out of the deep woods towards tall-creature land. This time, it tracks a similar path to yesterday, exiting the trees just for a little while to walk the last stretch of the road between the buildings and the forest. It lets the sunlight warm the thick fur on its back for just a moment, then walks back into shadow and the nameless secrets they conceal.

At first, it feels little but the forest. The pinch and poke of the roots inside it, slipping and catching but still present. Always present. It is not until it turns from the main path, onto the old trail slowly being reclaimed by ferns and brambles, that the before memories find it again.

It was cold, that night. He walked through snow so deep the tops of his boots disappeared into powdery lumps and soaked through their tops. His gait was stumbling, made unsteady by the numbness and the uneven ground and the jagged, grasping black hole in his chest. If only he could just implode into that hole, then maybe he would escape the fate laid out before him. He had an escape. He had a plan. He had everything he ever wanted waiting for him on the other side of a dotted line, and then it all had turned to ash in his hands. 

There was no escape. None that a sane mind could fathom. None that human hands or words could create. And so he walked, deeper and deeper into places where humans feared to tread. But not him. The forest was his friend. He had spent so many hours safe under its branches, so many summers walking its hills and meadows, whispering secrets to the trees. It gave back for those secrets. Led him to beautiful rocks or blooms of wildflowers or a pristine raven’s feather glistening like an oil slick in the light. 

He had more secrets to share, now. Years worth of secrets. He shouted them all now, tongue thick in his mouth but ringing clear against the quiet. He told the forest every ugly thing inside himself, everything that made him a bad son, a trophy on a shelf, a perennial boon and an endless disappointment. Everything that made him like his father and like his mother and the worst kind of fool for thinking that didn’t have to matter. That he could be happy, somewhere. That he deserved to be happy. 

The forest cares nothing for “deserve.” It is simply a place of giving, and of taking. 

Take me away from here.

The cloudy sky roiled in darkness. A crack of lightning illuminated a small clearing cut in two by a fallen tree. Its roots reached unnaturally for the sky, ripped and grasping and already rotting, a life cut short by forces much bigger than itself but still clinging to the shape of it. Just like him. He shed his jacket, heedless of the cold. Or perhaps desperate to feel it.

He had a way out. One his father pressed into his hands at the tender age of thirteen, a relic from his old Army days. He had carried that knife in his pocket for years with very little occasion to flick it open. His thumbnail found the catch all the same. The handle was freezing, though his fingers and arms were so cold he barely noticed.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

He brought the blade to his throat, felt a sting through the numbness as the point dug into tender flesh. Did Mama hesitate, when she brought that pill bottle to her lips? Did she regret it once she became too weak to vomit them back up? Did she want to do it or did she feel like she had no other choice? 

He did not want to do this. But what other choice did he have? He was damned if he stayed and damned if he left. Better to let the forest rot his flesh and bones away, gift his resources where they will be appreciated. He was so cold. Maybe it wouldn’t even hurt. He dug the point in deeper, felt the gentle parting of flesh. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

But then a strange feeling crept up his legs, like summer vines wrapping tight and squeezing, no, digging in. Lightning flashed. Thunder rumbled over the dark hillside. Something, he does not know what, filled his head with a thought that is more meaning than words: this isn’t how it’s supposed to go.

The feelings stunned him, and the knife fell from his grip, painting a tiny smear of blood upon the snow. He could not even succeed at this. A hoarse, jagged, desperate scream ripped from his throat. If not this, then what else?

A gratitude, his mother taught him, was made of three things. Something given, something asked, and something returned.  A cycle of reciprocity. A tincture of black tea and plum jam libated onto roots, a request for protection and nourishment, a bountiful harvest and aversion of thieves; round and round and round like the turning of the seasons. He gave this forest so many secrets, so much pain, the very blood from his veins. He asked for a way out.

The forest answered. The vines around its body tightened, thickening into sturdy roots that threaded all the way down to his bones, cracking and reshaping them. A haze took his mind, clouding it in a thick mist that obscured memories one by one, working backwards from the present moment, taking the hopelessness and the pain and the disappointment and the dread. 

But then even further back. Into memories of competition and accomplishment and the thrill of stolen moments dripping with the promise of more. Further still, every joy and every ill and everything in between. It took limpet-blue eyes gone dark and wide in club lighting. It took thick spiral curls twined around his fingers. It took her limp hand sprawled on the bathroom floor. It took her smile as she sang in the kitchen. 

Further back, obscuring things that formed the very core of himself. What color is his hair? His eyes? How old is he? Does he have siblings? Friends? What is his father’s name? His mother’s? Everything. By the time it is done, there is nothing left. Not even its own name. The world utterly, irrevocably fractured into before and now.

But it need not always be this way.

When it woke up, there was little in its mind but hunger, thirst, and the need for shelter. No, not just shelter. The need for home. It knew, deep in those places where the forest’s roots wrapped around its soul, it needed a home, and… a name. The before memories were not so distant, in those days. It had not spent so long forgetting them. It remembered the warmth of tall-creature dens, and the comfort that could be found there. Maybe one of those dens could be its home. Maybe one of those tall-creatures could remind it of its name. 

It quickly learned to stop trying. The wanting for home receded with every raised voice, every harsh cracking sound, every hard object thrown its direction; replaced with fear and caution. Tall-creature land was dangerous. The forest was safer. The forest held onto it, sheltered it within its branches and earth. It knew the forest. Where to hunt, where to sleep, where to find water. It learned to ignore the ways the shadows chafed against its skin. The way its eyes yearned for starlight. 

But always, always that wanting for home lay somewhere inside it. Slowly buried by the weight of years. Finally uncovered by…him. He felt like home. 

But it did not know its own name anymore. In all these before memories rioting around its skull, that continued to elude. How could he be its home if he did not know its name? A thing without a name is just that. A thing. It cannot be invited inside, not really. Acquired, perhaps. Entertained. But not invited. Not…loved. Love needs a name to carve reality from silent air.

A thing without a name can never be loved. 

APRIL 25TH (TWO DAYS BEFORE)

Shane once again woke to dampness on his cheeks. Ugh, was this going to become a regular thing? Why had he let Leshak in the bed again, last night?

Of course, Shane knew the reason. They were both rattled by the confrontation in the yard, a little off-balance and a little clingier for it. Shane went through his dinner preparations on pins and needles, just waiting for the text from Olga which would force his hand and make him turn the creature out of the house. But even after the food was done, after he and Leshak had eaten their fills, after Shane went through his evening routine, after another episode of the K-Drama he barely paid attention to (some breakthrough in the curse-breaking ritual that sent the male main character off on a side quest)…his phone stayed silent. 

But Shane couldn’t count on it. Maybe Olga was too busy tending to her mother to bother with her phone. Maybe that text would come tomorrow, and Shane would have to bar his door and eat the rest of the chicken in his fridge by himself. So yeah, Shane let Leshak sleep in the bed with him again. It was too cruel to contemplate otherwise. 

He let the dog out into the yard and watched him wander. Shane knew it would be selfish to keep Leshak inside with him all day while he just sat at his computer. But the threat of never having him again loomed from the rented rafters. He beckoned the dog back onto the porch. Leshak trotted up and leaned heavy against Shane’s leg. He gave the dog a few scritches between the ears. 

But when he stepped back over the threshold, the dog didn’t follow him. Shane looked back, confusion pinching his features. The dog shifted from paw to paw, then turned its head toward the treeline. Shane tried so hard not to put a hand to his chest. Not reveal the clench in his heart. But Leshak was his own dog. It wasn’t on Shane to dictate his comings and goings. All he could do was pray that the door could stay open for him to come back inside.

“See you tonight?” he asked. 

The dog doesn’t answer. But he does chance one look back as he approaches the treeline, green eyes locking onto Shane’s despite the distance. Shane chooses to be hopeful. He doesn’t know what he’d do otherwise. 

Taking a deep breath, Shane buries himself in work and leaves his phone in the kitchen on silent. He’d come to the point in his research where, barring any earth-shattering revelations from his last interview, he had enough information to start outlining the first draft in earnest. So he pulled up his timelines and his transcripts and all the publicly-available hockey information on his computer, kept the manila folder full of police records next to his coffee mug, and started making bullet points.

The story that unfolded in Shane’s word processor was not the easy narrative many had assumed. Boy grows up, plays hockey, gets good, gets drafted, suddenly disappears. There was so much more to Ilya Rozanov than that. The story Shane plotted, fragmented and rough-sculpted as it was, defied easy assumptions. 

An unhappy childhood borne of an unhappy marriage, survived by a relentless dedication to sport. Summers a bright point in which the long shadow of a demanding father could be slipped off in favor of the forest’s gentle shade. A terrible tragedy at such a tender age; one that pushed him out of the house and into the comforts of friends and strangers. The hockey a lifeline and a noose in equal measure. Promise. So much promise, slowly backed up by results until a professional career transitioned from possibility to certainty. 

And then expectation. So much expectation: to win, to make money, to constantly comport himself with the utmost dignity. Outside uncertainties that hovered over even the most triumphant of accomplishments. A choice. A terrible, impossible choice laid at his feet, the split halves of himself no longer able to coexist. The dutiful son who won for his country’s pride and listened to the word of the patriarch. The generational talent with a shining, lonely, uncertain world at his fingertips. A choice that not even someone as strong, intelligent, and beautiful as Ilya Rozanov could make without shattering to pieces. 

The story that was spreading out under Shane’s fingertips left him feeling a soft sort of melancholy. Like he’d found the correct posture to move that stolen laugh further up his lungs. Like he could finally grieve. 

As he worked, Shane wrote down questions. His last interviewee was perhaps the closest to Ilya of any. She’d be coming down in two days, at her own insistence. Maybe the details she filled in would finally pull that last piece of Ilya back into his mouth, where Shane could taste it one last time before setting it free.

When the words started to swim, Shane knew it was time to break for a late lunch and his PT exercises. He was just wrapping up his last set when an old, unexpected sound came from his front door. Scratching. In all his time here, Leshak never came by while the sun was still so high. It couldn’t be any later than three in the afternoon. 

And, well… he had yet to hear from Olga at all. Shane opened the front door, barely moving aside in time to avoid the fur missile that launched itself over the threshold. It didn’t take a dog expert to know something was up with Leshak. He was panting hard, and that could be from the heat of midday, except his tail was tucked down between his legs and his ears kept swiveling like he was expecting danger at any moment. 

“Woah,” Shane said, closing the door and turning his attention to the shivering beast. “What happened out there, buddy?” He crouched down, and Leshak answered by burying his head in the pit of Shane’s stomach. Moving into a proper sit, Shane threaded his hands in the creature’s fur and rubbed gentle circles on his neck. “Something spooked the shit out of you, huh?” 

Leshak just pressed closer. Shane kept petting him, head thudding back against the wall. They stayed there for a long time, until the dog’s breathing evened out and his muscles stopped trembling under Shane’s hands. Shane himself was reluctant to get up off the floor. The weight of the work he’d done this morning, finally given a quiet moment to process, dragged at his limbs and his head. He probably should get some more work done today. But Leshak was still out of sorts and he had time tomorrow. If he configured his VPN appropriately…MLH Network’s morning postgame coverage would be starting soon. Maybe a little playoff hockey was just the thing to get both their minds off their troubles for a little while.

APRIL 26TH (ONE DAY BEFORE)

By midmorning the next day, the oppressive quiet of his phone notifications became too much to bear. Maybe Olga was giving him time to take a hint, but Shane was historically very bad at taking hints and knew he would just stew in what-ifs until she told him directly. So, he took a brief trip into town to buy eleven purple hydrangeas and a nice vase. He owed her flowers, anyway. Maybe they would remind her of how grateful Shane was for her home and help.

Neither of them were on either porch when Shane walked over. He couldn’t decide if that was a good thing or a bad thing; the knot in his gut remaining hopelessly tangled. On the one hand, she hadn’t immediately chewed him out for letting a wild animal sleep on her property. On the other, one of the first things she’d warned him against was feeding the local fauna, and Shane had spent nearly two weeks doing exactly that. But as much as he feared the answer to his question, he respected Olga too much to avoid her like a misbehaving child. He would take his lumps, hope for the best and…hope for the best.

Shane knocked on the front door, cradling the massive bouquet in his good arm. Olga answered it after what was probably a reasonable pause but to Shane felt like forever, once again with a frilly pink apron overtop workman’s clothes. She looked at Shane, then at the flowers half-obscuring his head, and then back at him, eyebrow quirked. Waiting for him to make the first move.

“I, um, got you flowers,” Shane said lamely. “To thank you for all your help.”

“Hydrangeas,” Olga said. “I assume they’re meant to mean, ‘thank you for understanding’ as opposed to vanity.”

Shane resisted the urge to hide behind the clusters of petals.

Olga pressed her lips together and smiled. “Come in, Shane.” She took the flowers from his death-grip and carried them inside.

Olga and Raisa’s home felt old. Not in the decrepit sense like Shane sometimes felt in nursing homes. More like a well-cared-for antique, polished and mended for the value of its endurance even if a newer model would work more efficiently. The layout was identical to Shane’s rental, but the decor was much more personalized. Knitted throws, portraits on the walls, an assortment of tchotchkes and fridge magnets accumulated over time rather than artfully curated. 

Olga placed the vase on the center of the kitchen table, adjusting the angle so the best of the flowers faced forward. That made Shane relax a fraction. His gift had been accepted. She pulled out a chair and indicated Shane should sit. He complied, and she went into the kitchen, preparing something Shane could not see. 

“I hope your mother is doing well,” Shane said, desperate to break the silence.

“She is fine, the silly old bird. Just resting in her room.” Olga answered. 

He took a deep breath. Might as well get started. “I’m sorry I upset you, the other day. I was just trying to help.”

The sounds from the kitchen stilled for a moment. “No, I should apologize to you,” Olga said. “I was very worried about her and that made me short-tempered.”

“I get it,” Shane said. “She’s your mom.” His own parents were still more than capable of taking care of themselves, but it wasn’t lost on Shane that they would start needing help sooner rather than later. He hoped he could be half as caring towards them as Olga was towards Raisa Ivanova. 

“Yes, and she has been through much,” Olga continued. “And you know the forest. What it can do. So you must forgive me for…” For fearing she might walk under its branches and never come back. Yeah, Shane understood. 

“You’re a very good daughter,” he said. 

Olga laughed and re-entered the dining room bearing a tray laden with a delicate china tea set. A thin trail of steam rose from the spout of the teapot. “I like to think so. Tea?” she asked, as if there weren’t two cups and saucers already arranged on the tray. Shane nodded and let Olga pour him a cup. It smelled strong and floral, but not like black tea. Something more herbal. Lavender? He took a sip. Better than he was expecting, honestly.

Olga took her own sip, then said, “So are flowers the only reason for your visit?”

Curse this wily woman, coaxing him into letting his guard down for just a moment. Now there was nothing he could do to stop the hot flush from creeping up his cheeks. “I’m so sorry. It’s your property and I just let this dog inside but I promise he hasn’t destroyed anything! Mostly he just bothers me for table scraps and gets fur all over the bedsheets.And I’m more than happy to pay for a professional cleaning service to get rid of all the dog hair, I know that’s an allergen issue for any incoming guests—”

Olga put a weathered hand over Shane’s own. The rest of his rambling apology died in his throat. “Shanya,” she whispered, “I’m not upset about the fucking dog.”

You’re…not?” Shane asked, a bitter mixture of relief and confusion swirling on his tongue.

“I will likely take you up on that cleaning service,” Olga began, “and I knew you were leaving food out against my instructions long before you opened the door for Leshak. But I am not upset.”

A frightening glimmer of hope lit in the depths of Shane’s stomach. “So you’re not gonna make me throw him out the house?”

Olga let out a scoffing laugh. “Why would I do that? Shane, I have seen this story a thousand times. Russia has many stray dogs and many soft hearts. At least twice a year you see someone grow attached to one of them and start doing exactly what you do. The other night, I was just surprised you had grown attached to Leshak of all creatures. 

“These green-eyed dogs are different, all of us here know that. They are much smarter and much more wary than the average stray. They don’t form bonds with people. The fact that you have been able to prompt such loyalty from him…it is a special thing. I am happy he has found someone he trusts.”

Shane had to blink away tears. He didn’t quite know what to say to that. Olga stayed silent, giving him space to gather his thoughts. “I wasn’t really trying to do anything,” he admitted.

“Sometimes we are at our best when we are not trying.”

Shane chuckled wetly. “If only everything were that easy.”

Olga took another sip of tea. “Speaking of effort, how fares the research? I know your departure date is coming up soon. Did you find everything you needed?”

Grateful for the change of subject, Shane said, “It’s going really well, actually. I started outlining the first draft yesterday, and it’s been such a different experience. My last two books weren’t anything like this. I didn’t have to make so many guesses or track down so much secondary information. I got…a lot more than I was bargaining for.” Then it occurred to Shane that, barring their first conversation, he and Olga hadn’t talked about Ilya. And that he’d failed to ask her a very important question. “Did you know him at all?”

Olga shook her head. “I knew Irina, distantly. I was a few years younger than her, so I saw her around school. But that was it. And I had long moved to Tver by the time Ilya went missing.”

Right. Raisa Ivanova had mentioned Olga lived there most of her adult life. Which also prompted him to remember that other part of their conversation. She’d given up her old life to come home and take care of an ailing parent. A lot like Ilya was expected to do. And Shane was getting far too comfortable asking probing questions in re: Rozanov, because he blurted, “How did you feel about moving back to Ozerovsk?”

Olga set her cup down with a soft clatter. “Am I an interview subject, now?” she asked.

Shane swallowed. “Sorry. I’m just…making conversation.”

If she sensed the half-lie inside of that statement, she chose to take pity on him. “It was a big adjustment,” she admitted. “I had a job, a routine. And I had to upend all of that. But if I’m being honest? It wasn’t as big an adjustment as people seemed to think it should be. I liked my life in Tver, but I also really like my life here. I love my garden and my neighbors and the lake. And my mother, of course.” They both chuckled.

“What did you do up here?”

“I was a fucking insurance adjuster, if you can believe it.”

Shane had to admit, it was rather strange to think of this hardy woman, with her sun-tanned skin and callused fingers, plinking away at a corporate desk job. 

Olga continued, “I think property manager suits me a little better, don’t you think?”

Shane nodded. “So you’re gonna stay? After?”

Olga returned his nod. “My mother can be a handful, but I really do enjoy living here. I’ve found contentment in this place and my role in it.” She regarded Shane for a long moment. In the silence, he thought about his own attempts at contentment. The beautiful, quiet cottage in Lanaudiere that failed to be what he needed. Or maybe the other way around. The way he’d regained some of his old fire writing hockey biographies. The work really did interest him, and he was proud of what he’d accomplished as an author. But nothing would ever compare to the game. He rolled his shoulder a few times, an ache creeping up from the depths of his ruined socket. 

“But I’ve never been one for big living,” Olga went on. “I am not like you, or Rozanov, or, who the fuck else superstar material, Artyom Panchenko, maybe? It takes a different kind of desire to seek such things. The kind that makes one chronically discontent with the simple life. Am I correct?”
Once again, his sharp-eyed landlady had cut right through the bullshit. As much as Shane wanted to find the kind of peace she had, that would never be in the cards for him. But maybe that was his karma for being so incredibly lucky. He’d gotten to live his dream. How many people can say that? 

He’d lived the dream. What’s more, he’d excelled at the dream. Already the HHF was talking about Hall of Fame nominations. He’d become one of the greats. And…Ilya hadn’t. Ilya Rozanov never got to know greatness. 

It dawned on Shane with a strange, sudden clarity. A part of him felt guilty about that. Not that he’d lived the dream and Ilya hadn’t, though the notion had always made him sad. But that, with Shane Hollander’s retirement, there was little reason to ever mention Ilya Rozanov at all. The unflowered bud of their rivalry was a piece of him Shane had carried onto the ice every game, every night under the arena lights. A piece of Ilya, now no longer relevant and at risk of being completely forgotten.

Was this book a means of keeping Ilya Rozanov relevant to hockey? A way of keeping him alive? He had so many reasons for doing this. There were the ones he gave his publisher. Exploring the enigma, finding the reality behind the media circus. It made for a good story. That was enough for the likes of Michael. But then there were the reasons he gave his interview subjects. I knew him, once. I just want to make sure someone gets this right. A personal connection designed to authenticate his intentions. And then there were the reasons he’d held tight to himself. 

Gratitude, firstly. Ilya had been his first real crush. His first taste of being shameless in the face of his own desires. His touchstone for what connection to another person should feel like. And then closure. Maybe by figuring out this mystery of a man, by sharing him with the world the way Ilya had shared himself with Shane, by finally letting himself think about the what-ifs instead of brushing them to the side…he could close the loop on his own career. Figure out what it all meant in the grand scheme of history. 

Maybe he was putting too much onto this project. But he couldn’t stop, now. Not when the sounds of the Bell Centre still rioted in his chest, a memory he could never stop revisiting but never actually inhabit. Not when every glimpse of paint under frozen white, every scent of diesel-and-freon, every sound of a clattering puck or a ricochet off the crossbar or sticks tapping against the boards made him ache with longing. He’d been hockey, he was hockey, he’d always be hockey.

But hockey wasn’t him. Not anymore. 

“I don’t know how to stop missing it.” His eyes watered, threatening to spill. Shane didn’t let them. Just stared into the brown depths of his cooling tea and tried to will his shit back together.

Olga slipped the cup out of Shane’s trembling grasp, replacing it with her own hands. They ran over the lines in his palm, up the curves of his knuckles. “It’s never left,” she whispered. “I can still smell it on your hands.”

Shane blinked a few times, melancholy momentarily buried under a wash of confusion. That was the same kind of thing Raisa Ivanova had told him, when they first met. And then again a few days ago. Rink ice on his hands. “What do you mean by that?” 

At first, Shane thought it was just a lighthearted chirp. A poetic way of alluding to his obsessions. But the look on Olga’s face as he asked that question told Shane it was so much more than that. “No one ever told you?” she asked.

“Told me what?”

“Your home arena,” she began.

“The Bell Centre,” Shane clarified, still grasping for meaning. “What about it?”

“Shane, sometimes when people spend a long time in one place; when they invest a lot of emotions into it. The place responds to that investment.”

This was something Shane already knew. Places had power, and places that brought people together for a single, high-intensity purpose had a lot of power. Government buildings, universities, military bases. Sports venues. The various moods of MLH arenas inspired any number of propitious actions. Shane hadn’t really participated beyond the usual, but he’d known plenty who had. 

“But I wasn’t—”

“You were their captain, yes?” Olga asked. “You brought them three Cups in six years? You made them great?”

Shane nodded.

“She loved you so much. She still loves you. She split off a tiny piece of herself and put it in here.” Olga released one of his hands and pressed her own into his chest. The contact should have been warm. Instead, it felt freezing. Not the freezing of a damp winter morning. No, a dry, manmade freeze. A familiar freeze. The kind he felt every time he stepped off that rubber onto her ice. 

All these years. Every time he felt hopeless or threatened or lost, his thoughts immediately turned back to her. To the burning glow in his chest every time the crowd roared his name underneath her rafters. And that wasn’t just him clinging to his glory days? She had loved him so much she wanted to be part of his life even when he could no longer be a part of hers? 

Something inside him cracked open. And he felt the burning, gooey slide of so much pain, so much regret, so much disappointment slowly drip out of him like poison being drawn from a wound. All these years, he thought hockey had abandoned him. But it hadn’t. Hockey had loved him just as much as he loved it. 

Shane covered Olga’s hand on his chest with his own. The roar of the home crowd fell heavy upon his ears. And he cried. And the Bell Centre held him safe, like she always had. 

He walked back to his rental on shaky legs. Despite only intending to visit for an hour or so, Shane’s delicate emotional state precluded getting any real work done. So he’d taken Olga up on her offer to help in the garden and spent the afternoon on the engaging but generally mindless tasks of planting, weeding, and watering. The physical work helped him come down from the high. Afterwards, Olga shoved a leftover container of borscht into his hands and wouldn’t hear a word to the contrary. Which, if Shane was being honest, he was in no position to refuse. He doubted he’d be up for much of anything except showering and collapsing into bed. 

As he fished keys out of his pocket, a familiar uneven thump pattered up the stairs behind him. Shane glanced back into the eyes of Leshak, the dog settling patiently at his heels. He didn’t look quite as shaken as he had yesterday, but there was something in his shoulders that indicated he still wasn’t quite right.

“Rough day for you, too, huh?” Shane asked, opening the door. Leshak trotted in ahead of him. 

They spent the evening quietly, the peace of it too fragile for even the sounds of hockey to be worth breaking its delicate threads. Shane was right about Leshak’s day. The dog was especially clingy, so much so Shane couldn’t find the heart to enforce the “no dogs in the kitchen” rule past some vague lip service. Coupled with Shane’s own subdued mood, they went to the bedroom early, falling into each other’s warmth even as sleep seemed to elude them both.

Shane tried to distract himself by thinking of tomorrow. His last interviewee was coming to town. After that, he’d be on a plane home and back to his normal life, whatever that was. If the thought made him pull Leshak a little tighter into his arms, that was between him and the house.

Chapter End Notes

This chapter explores the events of Chapter 5 from Ilya’s POV, including the knife and his suicidal thoughts. Once again, his intent and actions are disorganized and quickly aborted, resulting in only a single cut to his neck. He also thinks about his mother’s suicide by pills and recalls specific details of the event.

I feel like I need to apologize for this one. I really put both Ilya and Shane through the Torment Nexus here. But I promise (to Merlioske specifically, who is no doubt cursing my name while reading this) that things are simply getting worse before they get better. This is a Part 1, after all.

I literally cannot tell you how proud I am of not only finding an appropriate analog name for this chapter’s MLH player, but that it STILL MAKES A BREAD PUN! There's your hint if you needed it.

Magic Worldbuilding! The “cycle of reciprocity” is an established facet of modern pagan thinking on relationships with divine forces. My personal knowledge background on this is primarily Hellenic and Norse, so that flavors a little of how I work it in here. It’s largely as I’ve described “gratitudes” in the prose: an ongoing exchange of gifts/favors between humans and deities/divine spirits, often in the form of food or drink offerings. There’s a lot more nuance to this, but I do have a character limit, lol.
Notably, human blood sacrifices in both of these ancient practices were either 1.) deliberately prohibited and considered polluting, or 2.) EXTREMELY rare and even then dubiously attested to by surviving evidence. Since I’m not seeking to portray any specific revival tradition in this work, I consider the drop of blood to be an acceptable gratitude to a forest in which the food chain is very much operational. Human land would probably NOT appreciate this the same way.

And YES! The Bell Centre still loves her favorite captain. Shane’s understanding of the gratitude cycle is a little shakier than Ilya’s, (since Yuna was mostly maintaining her traditions as a means of honoring her parents and heritage without much concern for the underlying philosophy, while Irina was much more engaged with it) so poor baby didn’t quite understand the blessing he’s carrying until someone told him point blank.

Chapter 10: The Stars, Part 2

Chapter Notes

READ THIS PLEASE. The timeline of these two chapters, it occurs to me, are a little confusing with how the POV works over multiple days. I added some section headers to Chapter 9 to help with this, but for those who read before I added them: In Chapter 9, Leshak’s POV covers three days from April 25th to April 27th. Shane’s POV in the same chapter only covers April 25th and April 26th. It’s here in Chapter 10 that we get Shane’s POV on April 27th.

There are two NHL-MLH analogues in this chapter. The hint is in the text. Happy hunting!

While there is an epilogue upcoming, this chapter marks the end of the story. Thank you so much for reading.

APRIL 27TH (THE DAY)

Shane pushed open the door to Milena’s cafe and listened to the bell chime. He was running later than he would have liked. His last interviewee said she would be arriving in about ten minutes, which gave Shane enough time to run through his setup but forced him to rush through his order at the counter. Whatever he ended up ordering fell right out of his head as soon as it left his mouth, but Milena’s skills hadn’t let him down yet. 

He got her permission to push a few small tables together and set up his equipment. He’d scheduled this meeting later in the morning specifically to avoid inconveniencing anyone during peak business hours; but of course, that hadn’t bought him any time considering he somehow slept through his alarm and woke far too late to yet another round of stinky doggie kisses from Leshak. 

The dog was in his own sort of hurry that morning. Not sniffing around the yard as he had the last few mornings, but beelining straight for the trees like he had a mission to accomplish. And as far as Shane knew, he might. Not for the first time, Shane wondered what the creature got up to during the day. He tried to picture it; Leshak trotting through the trees, sniffing down prey scents and stalking the underbrush. The images kept wavering into memories of him curled up in front of the fireplace or chowing down on a bowl of chicken and potatoes.

Because Shane was certainly familiar with what the dog got up to in the evenings. He seemed to be growing more and more used to human things. No more misplaced concern for the fireplace. A few frustrated, if adorable, attempts to use round doorknobs. That last thing made Shane grateful the rental wasn’t fitted with L-shaped handles. The dog was enough of a menace without the opportunity to barge in on him in the bathroom. 

There wouldn’t be a reason for such worries, soon enough. His rental contract was only for two weeks, and that departure date was creeping up on him with all the inexorability of the dawn. The thought set his gut squirming. An unpleasant sensation he didn’t know what to do with. 

This was his last interview. There wasn’t any reason to stay here longer, and plenty of reasons to keep his stay as short as possible. But Shane couldn’t shake the feeling that if he left now, he’d be missing something important.

He took a deep breath like his therapist taught him. Anxiety was an old bedfellow. This dread was probably just a manifestation of his fear of potentially missing something important about Ilya. Shane reminded himself that nothing he could write based on the available sources would be perfect. Not without Ilya available for any clarifications. He would just have to be okay with that and do the best he could. 

Right as the clock struck the hour, Milena’s bell chimed once more. In strode a brown-skinned woman with a riot of coppery curls, eyes briefly concealed behind a pair of wide sunglasses before she artfully slipped them off, revealing the sharp gray eyes underneath. She was dressed comfortably, in wide-legged jeans and a light sweater, but everything about the casual affect suggested an undercurrent of the highest luxury. Shane may not know much about fashion, but he knew the price tag on an Hermes purse. 

Svetlana Vetrova was Ilya Rozanov’s best friend. Daughter of famous Soviet goaltender and one-time Minister for Sport Sergei Vetrov and American philanthropist Grace St. Claire, she held citizenship in both countries. And she leveraged that international pedigree in her chosen profession as a broker in the international art trade. Her last commission had earned her a pretty penny on the private sale of Frederico Castellon’s Forgotten Man. 

Shane had about shouted with joy when that email first landed in his inbox. Ilya’s relationship with Svetlana wasn’t terribly well-attested to, (nothing about Rozanov outside his hockey stats was) but there was enough in the margins to get him excited. The police records he obtained last week — in which she featured heavily as a character witness — provided a few more marks in her favor as a knowledgeable source. Of all the people Shane came here to speak with, Svetlana was the one who likely held the most complete picture of who Ilya Rozanov was as a person.

And she’d agreed to talk to Shane. Though, despite clocking his presence, she forewent his cluster of tables in favor of greeting Milena at the counter. They chatted animatedly for a few minutes before Milena input an order. Shane didn’t hear anything vaguely order-like come from Svetlana’s mouth, nor any form of money exchange hands. They spoke for a moment more before Svetlana turned towards his table.

Idly, he wondered if she knew this was the same land the old K&B stood upon. The last stop in civilization her best friend ever made. Shane stood on instinct, absentmindedly smoothing the front of his shirt. When she was close enough, he extended a hand and confirmed, “Svetlana Vetrova?”

“Shane Hollander,” she responded, taking his hand. Despite the delicacy of her features, she gripped his hand firmly. He did the same. She had a kind smile. As she sat down, she said, “I trust Sasha behaved for you? He can be a rascal when he chooses.”

Shane chuckled politely and took his own seat. “Sasha was very helpful. And he spoke very highly of you.” 

“Naturally,” she smirked. “I hope Russia has treated you well. She likes to keep secrets, unless you know where all her hidden corners are.”

A few pieces of information aggregated in Shane’s brain. Not in any kind of straight line, but pulled from their respective contexts into loose associations he could, if he chose, interrogate into a hypothesis. Svetlana’s father’s high-level position. Her implication of knowing how to find secrets. Her closeness with Milena. The singular social media post featuring Shane’s presence in the country. An anonymous package on his doorstep. 

He decided to let those pieces stay unhypothesized. “I guess I’ve been very lucky, then. I have a lot to work with.”

“Good,” Svetlana said. “As lovely as your company is, I’m hoping to hit a trail before I have to head back to Moscow. Shall we begin?”

“Of course. I just have one point of clarification. I understand you’re fluent in English and Russian?”

Svetlana nodded.

Shane continued, “ It’s entirely up to you, so please don’t assume I have any preference one way or the other. Which language would you prefer to conduct this interview in?”

Svetlana considered the question for a moment hand playing with the knitted collar of her sweater, then said, “Russian, please. It’s the language I think about him in.”

“Okay. Cheryl?”

INTERVIEW CONDUCTED BY SHANE HOLLANDER.

DATE: 27 April 2026

NAME: Svetlana Sergeevna Vetrova

AGE: 35

PLACE OF BIRTH: Scarsdale, New York, USA

RELATION TO SUBJECT: Childhood Friend

With full understanding and consent to speaking on the record, the above interviewee attested to the following:

Q: How did you know the Rozanovs?

A: Ilya was my best friend in childhood. Our parents hung around the same social circles: important people in Moscow government. And people who thought they were important to Moscow government. We were the only children the same age, so we became friends.

Q: At what age, approximately?

A: Oh, we must have been… about eight years old when we met? Soon after Ilya’s father was promoted to police colonel. He was hiding in the coat closet, playing Tetris on a new Gameboy. Which happened to be my usual hiding spot. We bickered for a moment, decided there was enough space for the two of us, and traded levels back and forth until our mothers found us. 

Q: So you knew him during part of the period of time he would spend summers in Ozerovsk with his mother’s family?

A: Yes.

Q: Did you ever visit him during those times?

A: No. It was very much a family thing. But he would tell me about it, when he got back to the city. I liked listening to him talk about the forest. It made him smile. 

Q: Is this your first time in Ozerovsk?

A: (Chuckles.) No. I come here a few times a year now. Ilya loved it so much that I… I like to visit and see the forest for myself.

Q: Of course. And during the rest of the year? What was Ilya like?

A: Much like any other young boy, I suppose. Wishing he was older and getting into trouble for it. (Laughs.) But his parents liked sending him over to play with me. They thought I kept him out of trouble.

Q: Was that an accurate assessment on their part?

A: No. But I was better at getting out of it, so they did not notice so much. He…tightened up, quite a lot, after the first few years. Hockey was getting serious, so we were much more focused on that. He showed a lot of promise, even that young.

            SHANE: Maybe that didn’t go all the way away. I mean, I heard a story from when he was eleven, where he played a prank on some older boys in the village. Scared them in their sleep by pretending to be a pack of wolves. 

            SVETLANA: I remember hearing about that. (Pause.)

Q: I’m sorry, did I say something wrong?

A: No, no. My apologies. I remember that story. And I remember the bruises Ilya came home with afterwards.

Q: What was the source of these bruises?

A: Alexei. Those were his friends. 

Q: Was this…a common occurrence between them?

A: No. That was the first and only time. I was over at their house when their parents noticed. Grigori was very unhappy with Alexei’s behavior. (Ital. in English) Tore him a new asshole. Verbally.

Q: Do you know why?

A: Please don’t think it was any kindness on Grigori’s part. Hockey practices were starting up the next week. He was only concerned with whether or not the bruises would fade before then. He was…very concerned with Ilya’s image as an athlete.

Q: So am I correct in concluding that Grigori Rozanov was not a physical disciplinarian?

A: You are.

            SHANE: You seem like you want to say more.

A: Grigori did not need fists or a belt to discipline his sons. But he had other ways of making them fall in line. 

Q: Like what?

A: High expectations. And little grace for mistakes. It was not so bad when we were younger, but it got worse. After their mother died.

Q: Right. I understand that Irina died via suicide.

            SVETLANA: Where did you get that information?

            SHANE: Um. Father Andrei, at the church in Vysokovsk. (Long pause.) 

Q: Are you okay?

A: (Sigh.) Just… if you are going to do Ilya justice, you need to know this. But it is not pleasant information.

            SHANE: Okay.

            SVETLANA: He found her.

Q: He found her… body?

A: Yes.

Q: How long…never mind. (Long pause.) Are you okay to continue?

            SVETLANA: Are you okay to continue?

            SHANE: I think so.

Q: How did he react to that?

A: He was never quite the same. But at the time, he hid it well. We were children. I believed what I was told. Did my best to be a good friend. But we never played at his house anymore. 

Q: For what reason?

A: He did not like being there. Around his father and brother.

Q: So, Ilya’s family relationships deteriorated after her death?

A: They were not great to begin with, but they definitely got worse after.

Q: How so?

            SVETLANA: Mind you, nothing I’m going to say about it is anything I recognized as a child. These are all understandings I’ve come to as an adult. 

            SHANE: Please.

A: Grigori was always hard on both of them, but it got worse without Irina. As the oldest, Alexei was expected to pick up the slack in her absence. Especially in taking care of Ilya. But for Ilya…Grigori was always concerned with hockey. But then it became the only thing. Though, he never wanted to really be involved. I tried to impress him with statistics on Ilya’s teammates one time, and he just patted me on the head and nodded like I was telling him the sky was blue. He didn’t care for the particulars. He just wanted to hear that his son was the best. 

Q: So Ilya was…(Ital in English.) pedestalized?

A: Yes. And that fucked up any relationship Ilya could’ve had with Alexei. 

Q: I understand. Sasha told me you’re a hockey expert. Did this treatment at home affect his game?

A: He put everything he had into it. Hockey was one of the few things, I think, that made him really happy. But it was also his only point of connection to Grigori. He wanted to be a good son. Make his father proud, even if he could barely stand to be in the same room as him. He skated harder, got more physical, put more into his stickhandling skills like he never wanted the puck to come off his blade. His expected goals and possession percentages were exceptional for his age. Staying late was equal parts avoiding home and craving the ice. 

Q: And this was around the time he met Sasha?

A: Yes.

Q: And you all discovered…new outlets for your frustrations?

A: Hmm, you really are an author, Shane Hollander. Yes, we were teenage club rats. But I’m sure Sasha told you all about that. 

Q: Enough. But I was wondering, Sasha told me Ilya was averse to using party drugs. Was this for hockey reasons?

A: Yes.

Q: But?

A: But I would prefer to go off the record for a moment. The answer to your question speaks ill of both the living and the dead.

INTERVIEW PAUSED.

Shane muted the microphones. Cheryl wouldn’t divulge anything she heard, but it seemed to put Svetlana at ease to have one less ear listening in. “Off the record, why was Ilya averse to using party drugs?”

Svetlana steepled her fingers in front of her face. The fruity scent of black coffee curled from the mug in front of her. Shane took a sip of his own decaf latte to give her space. Eventually, she said, “I am only telling you this so you can have proper context. But it is…graphic.”

“Okay.”

“Irina killed herself by swallowing a bottle of prescription painkillers.”

Shane put down his mug with a loud clack. In that moment, he cursed that imagination which led critics to praise his writing as “vivid” and “engrossing.” His mind couldn’t help but play the scene the way directors envision a script. Was she in the bedroom? The bathroom? What part of her did Ilya see first? Was there vomit on her lips? Had her eyes gone bloodshot? How long had she been laying there before he found her? Oh my god he was twelve and he found her. Was her hand still warm when he touched it for the last time? He was twelve and she killed herself with pills and he found her.

Shane couldn’t talk about it. His mind wouldn’t let him. Instead, it latched onto different unanswered questions. “And the living?” he asked. “You said you’d speak ill of the dead and the living.”

Svetlana sighed. “And Alexei had a cocaine habit. Kicked it when Evgenia was born, though that didn’t stop him from drinking his liver to shreds.”

Shane swallowed, trying to regain the thread of their conversation, doing his best to shake the imaginings from his mind. They were talking about Ilya’s teenage years. The beginnings of his professional aspirations. “That makes sense,” he said. “Why Ilya would avoid those things.”

“Yes. And we can go back on the record, now.”

INTERVIEW RESUMED.

Q: Sasha told me that Ilya distanced himself from the party scene when he began receive serious attention from MLH scouts; is that correct?

A: Yes. They started looking at him around fifteen, but by seventeen it was clear he was a top draft prospect. 

Q: Did he get attention from any other leagues?

            SVETLANA: Such as?

            SHANE: The KHL, for one.

            SVETLANA: So you know about CSKA.

            SHANE: Yes.

            SVETLANA: Why ask me, then?

Q: I know the offer was made. But I was told you were the person to ask regarding his feelings on the matter. Sasha said you and Ilya talked about hockey all the time?

A: We did. And we talked about this. Ilya was proud that he was being seriously scouted by multiple leagues. He got attention from the SHL and NL as well, though those were truly long shots. Everybody knew he was MLH material, and so did he. 

Q: Did he ever express a definite preference to you regarding his career trajectory?

A: He was the number one draft pick for Boston. He was going there.

Q: If that’s the case, then do you know why Ilya had yet to sign an ELC with Boston by the time of his disappearance? It’s my understanding that the contract had been on offer for several months beforehand.

            SVETLANA: What a thoughtful question, (Ital. in English) Mr. Hollander. Your investigative abilities continue to impress. 

Q: Are you able to answer the question?

A: Yes. Soon after the draft, Ilya expressed to me that his father’s health was in decline and he would soon be in need of significant care and attention.

Q: What did that have to do with Ilya’s reluctance to sign with Boston?

A: While I know nothing of any formal diagnosis made, Ilya told me they were exploring the possibility of Alzheimer' s disease or early-onset dementia. This put Alexei, as the oldest, increasingly in charge of the family’s decision-making.

Q: What did Alexei have to say about Ilya’s decision-making?

A: He always preferred the idea of Ilya playing in the KHL. CSKA’s arena is very close to home. 

Q: In your opinion, did Grigori’s medical condition have anything to do with Ilya’s disappearance? 

A: I can’t know for certain, but the pieces seem to line up rather nicely, no?

Q: Do you have any thoughts as to what happened that night?

A: None that I would like to share.

            SHANE: Apologies.

            SVETLANA: No, it’s okay. I’m just…it is still very hard for me to talk about. (Pause.) It’s all so unfair.

Q: What do you mean by that?

A: He was so excited to go to Boston. America was supposed to be different. A safe place. Where he could be himself. (Tears up.) He could’ve been happy there.

            SHANE: Yeah. Um, speaking as another player…I think you’re right. I was certainly at my happiest when I was playing against good competition, and up until then Ilya was the best competition I could’ve asked for. He struck me as the same kind of person. I think… I think we could’ve been really good friends, off the ice. I only met him a few times, but it seemed things were going that way. Once I figured out he was actually really kind under all the sarcasm.

            SVETLANA: Why are you writing this?

            SHANE: What?

            SVETLANA: Tell me.

END TRANSCRIPT.

The question rattled Shane deeper than he was expecting. He used the moments required to put Cheryl on standby to consider his answer. He could go with his go-to’s for interview subjects. But something about that felt like lying. This was Ilya’s best friend. Someone who’d poured out a piece of her own soul sharing these memories with Shane. Who was giving him permission to share those pieces with the world. The least he could do was offer her the same honesty in return.

Drawing a deep breath, Shane said, “We were the next Crady and Ovcharkin, you know? Generation-defining rivalry, together at the top. But then it was just me, and I think it’s unfair. He shouldn’t be forgotten. I want to preserve what I can of that, while I can. And we only met three times, but Ilya was very important to me at a very important time of my life. I just…he deserves this. From me. It’s the least I can do.”

As Shane spoke, his eyes focused on a whorl in the wood near Svetlana’s hand. Something old, still keeping some of its old shape after becoming something new. This place was new, but this  land was old. Ilya had trod upon it once, however briefly. Did it remember him? Did everywhere they ever walked preserve some memory of their presence? Shane imagined that was the case. Every interaction, a tiny piece of the world around them, forever fixed to that spot like flies in amber. A sedimentation of incidences that might compress into near-oblivion, but would never disappear entirely. 

Could a mind made of those unchanging memories be kind to creatures as temporary as humans? Flawed beings who must tell stories lest they forget? Shane hoped so. He hoped the traces of Ilya that lingered in the town and the forest curled their way around Svetlana like the tendrils of a summer breeze. He hoped his words on the page could one day be half as comforting. 

 A soft gasp escaped her lips. When Shane’s eyes found hers, they were shining with unshed tears. Her words came on a whisper. They landed like gunshots. 

“You’re Jane.”

It was Shane’s turn to be stunned. A silly little joke made fifteen years ago, spoken with such gravity. A whole world that never came to be, wrapped up in just four letters. Stuck to the carpet of that hotel room and, he once thought, nowhere else. Until now. 

 Before he could think of a response, Svetlana was digging around in her purse. After a moment, she produced a single slip of paper. Yellowed with age, its torn edge frayed further, creases so deeply worn they were liable to tear at the slightest provocation. But real. So terribly, maddeningly real.

“I found this in his wallet,” Svetlana whispered. “He didn’t take it with him that night, so I swiped it before the police could search his room.” She carefully unfolded the paper. The ink was just as vibrant as it had been that night. Nine numbers. Four letters. A promise. “I caught him looking at this. I noticed because it made him smile. He…he did not smile much, those last weeks.”

“I…” Shane trailed off, unable to voice the magnitude of the emotions swirling around his chest. Here it was, fifteen years later, lovingly preserved like a beloved polaroid or a childhood diary. Real, tangible proof that Ilya thought about Shane just as much as Shane thought about Ilya. That the thought of meeting again put smiles on both their faces. That they cared about each other. And the answer to a question Shane hadn’t even known he was asking finally slotted into place. 

“I always thought, ‘maybe,’ you know? But I didn’t know. I couldn’t. But coming here? Seeing what I’ve seen? I do now.”

The tears began to fall in earnest. Everything he'd learned about Ilya floated through his brain like soap bubbles, a million tiny moments peering back at him in the reflections. A boy in the forest, cradling rocks and feathers and whispering secrets to the trees. That same boy on the cusp of his teenage years, facing down a future without that crucial person by his side, his last goodbye a nightmare. A teen in the rink, pouring his heart into the game that cradled his soul in her absence, becoming someone who could become one of the greats. The young man in the nightclub, friends by his side, the future just out of reach enough to grasp for comforts in the present. A jersey on a screen, the first time Shane heard the name Rozanov. The player in the flesh, the first time he put a real face to that name. The number one draft pick, his face turning from smiling to somber as the night wore on. The youngest son, suddenly made Atlas under the weight of his family's troubles. The lover in his hotel room, gentle and kind, a laugh poised between his teeth. The broken man in the forest, begging for an escape. And...finding one. 

Shane pushed into that space behind his sternum, where he now knew the Bell Centre to cradle his heart. She wouldn’t know the kinds of feelings that leaked from its depths. Her emotions were that of competition, elation, disappointment, resolve. He leaned into her anyway. But then…

Of course. It was so foolish of him to believe his feelings were the first of their kind she witnessed. There were so many of them. So many players who’d loved more than just the game. Shane wasn’t the first. He wasn’t even the only of his time. And he certainly wouldn’t be the last. She did not know this feeling as well as the others, but it was still there. Another thread in the tapestry of men’s professional hockey. 

Shane Hollander felt the strength of her ice underneath his heels as he finally admitted, “I could’ve loved him.”

Svetlana took his hand and pressed the paper into it. “He would have loved you.” 

It took more than a few moments to dry their tears. But once they did, they drained the last of their coffees and stood to go. But before Svetlana could take more than a few steps towards the door, Shane realized he had something important to ask her.

“Will you read it?” Shane asked. Svetlana stopped and turned around, eyebrow raised. “I mean, would you like to be an alpha reader for the manuscript? I’d really appreciate your input. I want to get it right.”

Her features dropped into a soft smile. “You have my email, Shane,” she said by way of an affirmative. “But don’t expect me to go easy on you.”

Shane could absolutely see how she and Ilya became friends. “Wouldn’t dream of it.” Then, a moment later, “I hope you find what you’re looking for, out there.”

“I haven’t yet,” she answered honestly. “But maybe one day.”

“Cheers to that.” 

And then she was gone. Shane looked forward to hearing from her again. Business accomplished, Shane packed his equipment, thanked Milena for hosting them, and drove out of the town square of Ozerovsk for what should be the last time.

When he returned to his rental, he stopped in on Olga in her garden. She greeted him warmly, joining him on the porch for a small break. His flight was scheduled for tomorrow evening, but he wanted to make sure he had all the checkout procedures locked down before the flurry of packing and cleanup the morning was sure to be. 

He expressed this to her, and she gave him a rundown of what he should do. But then she said, “And I trust you’ve made travel arrangements for your furry companion?” The question made Shane double take. Olga caught wise to his confusion and continued, “Surely you weren’t planning on leaving him behind, right?”

In all seriousness, Shane had actively avoided thinking about what would happen to Leshak. The idea of him going back to the woods was painful, but Shane had no ownership over him. A paradigm so deeply entrenched in his mind he hadn’t even considered the prospect of just … taking responsibility for him. 

“I don’t…”

“Don’t what?” Olga challenged. “Don’t know how? This is Russia, Shanya. Throw enough money at a problem and it solves itself. Or don’t have time? Registering a pet for air travel should not be too difficult. If you need an extra few days, I am more than happy to extend you.”

“You seem really invested in this,” Shane remarked, head spinning as his future started to shift on its axis.

“I would just hate to see you both leave each other behind.”

A world in which Shane Hollander was a pet owner started to take shape behind his eyes. Hayden had a family dog, and Rose had her mean ginger cat that liked to sit on Shane’s head while he slept. But that had never been a possibility for him. The perpetual single life plus a professional hockey career meant his schedule was too hectic and inconsistent to properly care for a cactus, much less an animal. 

But that wasn’t the case anymore, was it? The mere fact that he was considering taking Leshak with him said a lot about his current life. He expected to be home most days, and at reasonable hours. He had people nearby he could lean on if he needed to be away. He had the space mentally and physically to be okay with another living being relying on him. 

All things that were impossible during his playing days. The old ache in his shoulder crept up, but it felt less like a sting and more like a soreness. Not a mark of constant reinjury, but the creeping stretch of recovery that spoke of hard work behind and healing ahead. It would always be sore. Always hurt. But maybe he could grow around that hurt, like a tree trunk around an old nail. Maybe letting a friend in was a good next step.

Shane took a deep breath. “If you’re sure.”

Olga waved her hand dismissively. “Send me an autographed copy of your book and we will call it square,” she said. “I look forward to reading it.”

They chatted idly for a few more minutes, before the driving urge of “How to Internationally Transport Pets?” started pulling at his heels. At minimum, he would need to microchip the dog and get him vaccinated. Then there would be the issue of the airline, which Olga was probably correct in assuming would involve throwing a lot of money at the problem to make everything work. But Shane had more money than some gods, so he could afford a hefty fastball if necessary. 

As he walked off down the path, Olga called back, “And don’t forget to give him a good name!”

He would need a name, wouldn’t he? Leshak was just an appellation, a category of “green-eyed dog” that described a singular feature. And maybe Shane could just keep it, but…that didn’t feel right. The word curled strangely in his mouth, ill-fitting and unpracticed. Most of the time he just called the dog “buddy” anyway.

He briefly considered naming him Buddy, but that got tossed out immediately. Definitely didn’t fit the vibe, even if it would likely stick around as a nickname. As Shane walked, he kept thinking about the dog’s identity. He was Russian, an absolute menace and sweetheart rolled into one, and he liked to watch hockey. Maybe Shane could name him after one of those famous Soviet defectors from the ‘90s like Stepan Filonov or Egor Loktianov. 

That felt closer, but still no cigar. A text alert chimed from his phone. An unknown number, but the lone selfie in the thread identified Svetlana. She was standing on the other side of the lake, a little sweaty but smiling. Shane smiled too, happy her hike was going well. He texted her as such and kept walking.

He thought about his own hike to that spot, the first day in Ozerovsk. When he felt that presence at his back. Knowing what he knew now…was that Ilya, watching him like an opposing center? A distant memory of competition prickling the back of Shane’s neck? Those musings on the boy from the rink followed Shane up onto his porch steps. The words he’d spoken just hours before bouncing around behind his teeth. 

What would it have been like? To fall in love with Ilya Rozanov? Not like he had in this life; through scattered fragments and well-worn memories and expressions on the faces of the people who had loved him, but with the flesh and blood of him? When would Shane have first worked up the nerve to invite Ilya out to his cottage in Lanaudiere? When would Ilya have trusted Shane with the ghosts of his past? How many times would they have met in the face-off dot, the secret of their relationship hanging in the air between their faces, a private joke just under the nose of their incredibly public rivalry? 

He knew so much, now. About a man he would never see again. The thought sat heavy in his chest. Not dragging him down into melancholy but sitting there as a stone does in a river, slowly polished smooth until the current was so familiar with its shape, none could even tell it hadn’t been there to begin with. 

He’d carried Ilya Rozanov around in his heart since he was nineteen years old. Knowing what he knew now didn’t change that. But it did make him notice. Did what was left of Ilya, still clinging to this place, notice him back?

A rustling sound split the quiet afternoon. Shane turned around just in time to watch the dog — his dog? — walk out of the trees onto the grass. He stopped right there, on the border between wilderness and civilization, the twin lights of the moon and sun dangling high in the sky. They glinted off the summer-grass green that burned into Shane. That had been burning since the moment he spotted the creature outside his house.

And Shane knew. The name slotted into place like a perfect seam pass through traffic, precise and targeted and beautiful. He would name this dog in honor of the story that brought them together. 

Raising his voice against the might of the forest, Shane called, “Ilya! Come inside! It’s time to go home!”

Ilya. The word pushes into it like a breath taken backwards. Ilya. It curls around inside its bones, snaking through its veins. Ilya. The last of the roots tangled around its center finally let go. And every hope and fear and joy and hurt; every face, every touch, every name burst forth from their shackles.

His name is Ilya Rozanov. 

And Shane Hollander has called him home. 

He’s running now. Four paws underneath him, still familiar even as his mind floods with memories made on two legs. The distance between them is unbearable. But he is not so gone that he doesn’t hear the shadow-clad voice of the forest at his back.

Maybe he will always hear it. Maybe there are pieces of him that will never fully rot away beneath its leaves. Maybe there will always be one single, slender, almost unnoticeable root that will stick into him no matter where he goes.

But the forest, it tells him, will hold him no longer. His past is behind him. His home is ahead.

He’s at the porch steps. So close he can see the sun sparkling in his eyes, the dusting of beautiful freckles across his cheeks. Constellations. A map of the sky, leading him to shore. Running is no longer enough. With a final push of his hind legs, he leaps for the man whose kindness and curiosity had led him out of darkness.

The waxing moon dangling high in the afternoon sky bathes the yard in brilliant white, unveiling all secrets beneath its unblinking gaze. So bright all vision goes blind, and he can only hear and feel the rearrangement of his bones and skin and muscle. Not once does he think he will fall. Shane is there to catch him.

The light fades back to gentle sunshine. He lands heavy in strong arms, bare toes scrabbling for purchase. But he does not fall. He finds his feet, limbs stretching in unfamiliar ways, clinging onto Shane’s solid form as he remembers how to move. He’s not used to fingers. The first thing he does with them is run them along Shane’s freckles. Brown eyes find his own, which he knows will be forever stained an uncanny shade of green. Before them now is what he was searching for, all that time. His sunshine which banished the shadows. His starlight on earth. 

“Ilya?”

“Shane.”

His name is Ilya Rozanov.

And he is home. 

Chapter End Notes

Y’all. Oh my god. I did this. Would you believe that this ending scene was, in fact, one of the first things I knew for absolute certain about this fanfiction? Writing this has been such a stretch of my abilities and I feel I’ve learned so much from the experience. Magical realism draws on so many of my areas of special interest and getting the chance to stitch them all together into this just-a-little-to-the-left world was incredibly rewarding.

There will be a short(ish?) epilogue coming soon to hopefully answer some of your burning questions about what happens to Shane and de-dogified Ilya in the days, months, and years after these incredible two weeks.

Magic Worldbuilding! The method of breaking Ilya’s dog curse is inspired by werewolf mythology, specifically from Schleswig-Holstein in modern day Germany, where the cure for lycanthropy involved a loved one speaking the afflicted’s Christian name three times. Obviously I’ve heavily adapted that, but there’s something so powerful in the concept of seeing the humanity within the beast that relieves it of its animal nature.

This fic has TWO playlists, actually. Because I am extra. Don't Feed Me Official Playlist: Stars ver.

Chapter 11: Epilogue: I Will Come Back

Chapter Notes

My original plan was a joint interview in ESPN magazine about these two. Then I realized I should probably have the authors actually...write something. I like this a lot better.

I Will Come Back

by Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov

Foreword

My name is Ilya Rozanov.

For fifteen years, I forgot this.

There is much speculation around me as a person. For years after my disappearance as the Most Famous Cold Case in Hockey History, and even more since my return to the sport and the world at large. When I announced my return last year and subsequently signed with the Ottawa Centaurs as a free agent, the rumors that chased my ghost for all those years increased tenfold. Some were accurate. Most were not. 

Allow me to put that speculation to rest. Between February of 2010 and April of 2026, I was not in a human body. I spent fifteen years as a dog. 

Animal transformation is not unheard of. About a dozen documented cases have been recorded in the past 200 years, and no doubt there are many more that weren’t. But I am perhaps the first to speak so publicly about experiencing this phenomenon. I am extremely lucky for the opportunity to do so. I would not be here today without a very special person.

The details of this, and many more stories besides, you will find within the pages of this work. You will learn about the circumstances surrounding my transformation, and the steps that fell so perfectly into place to bring me back. You will learn of my days spent forgetting my past. You will learn about my first days returned, when I sometimes sat silent for hours on end because I didn’t realize I could speak. And you will learn of the long, winding path I took, not only back to the sport I love, but to the people I love even more.

But before I tell you that story, let me tell you this one.

I met Shane Hollander outside an ice rink in Regina, Saskatchewan on December 26th, 2008. We were both in town for the International Prospects Cup. He found me and shook my hand twice in as many minutes. I knew who he was. I’d seen his game tape. The first thing that struck me about him was his freckles. And then his nearly unbelievable Canadianness. I wished him good luck in the tournament. He threatened to kick my ass.

We met twice more after that. All three times are moments I held onto even as my future began to crumble all around me. I did not know it at the time, but the memory of that boy outside the rink would save my life. 

My name is Shane Hollander.

For two and a half years, I tried to forget this. 

There’s a lot said about me as a person. As a three-time Cup champion, as the one-time captain of the Montreal Metros, and more recently as the newest staff reporter for SportsTalk Ottawa. When I announced my career pivot from autobiographies to sportswriting, the rumors borne of my reluctance to engage with the sport that made me increased tenfold. Some were accurate. Most were not. 

Allow me to put that speculation to rest. After my medical retirement, I was presented a choice between the spotlight and obscurity. I spent two and a half years chasing a third option.

Identity struggles are not unheard of for retired athletes. Multiple clinical studies have described issues with depression, anxiety, and uncertainty of self following the end of a career, and no doubt there are many more who have experienced this than who speak on it openly. I am not the first of us to do this. But I count myself lucky that I feel I can. I know I wouldn’t have found this strength but for a very special person.

The details of this, and many more stories besides, you will find within the pages of this work. You will learn about the circumstances of my retirement, and my long and often circuitous path that brought me back. You will learn of my days spent mourning my past. You’ll learn about my long months of injury recovery, when I sometimes sat silent for hours on end because the only thing I wanted to do is scream. And you will learn of the long, winding path I took, not only back to the sport I love, but to the people I love even more.

But before I tell you that story, let me tell you this one. 

I met Ilya Rozanov outside an ice rink in Regina, Saskatchewan on December 26th, 2008. We were both in town for the International Prospects Cup. I found him lighting a cigarette underneath a No Smoking sign. I knew who he was. I’d seen his game tape. The first thing that struck me about him was his eyes. And then his strange ability to seem amused and judgemental without saying a goddamn word. He told me I wouldn’t be so nice after he beat me. I told him I was gonna kick his ass. 

We met twice more after that. All three times are moments I held onto even as the world moved on from our story. I did not know it at the time, but the memory of that boy outside the rink would save my life. 

When we were asked to title this book, the phrase, “I will come back” was one we hit upon very early. When asked to justify it to our editor, we came up with so many reasons he eventually just waved his hand and let us get away with it. Sorry, Michael. We’d like to give you a few of those reasons here.

I will come back from what my past turned me into.

I will come back to feeling love in places I once felt pain.

I will come back stronger and smarter than before.

I will come back … to you.

In these pages, you’ll find both of our life stories, woven in and out of the investigation that brought us back together after fifteen years. Our journeys back to hockey, to happiness, and to hope. 

We have so many people to thank for their help in this project. 

Firstly, to Michael Abbot at Victory Books, for greenlighting not only the project that set all these events in motion, but for going to bat for us with his bosses to let us make this project a reality.

To our editing and marketing teams, without whom this would not be nearly as good. You all know who you are. (And you’re listed in the back of the book. Go find yourself!)

To Cheryl Barkova, the best English-Russian interpreter anyone could ask for. She’s the reason you don’t have to be bilingual to read this book. 

To Olga Svechnikova, for all your support and the literal space that made all of this possible. We hope you and Mae are enjoying Boston!

To Yakov Sytsevich, Father Andrei Dorofeyev, Viktor Sergechev, Sasha Mikheyev, and Evgenia Rozanova (Go Martlets!) for sharing your experiences. 

To Svetlana Vetrova, the best friend anybody could ask for and our ace in the hole in re: legally resurrecting someone and moving them across the Atlantic Ocean. 

To the Ottawa Centaurs and SportsTalk Ottawa. Thank you taking second chances on long shots. 

To Yuna Hollander, David Hollander, and Irina Rozanova.

To everyone who pre-ordered, wishlisted, bought new, bought used, bought digital, or randomly picked this book up at your neighborhood garage sale for a loonie. 

To Zavidovo National Forest, for holding him safe and letting him go.

To the Bell Centre, for letting him go and holding him safe. 

To Shane Hollander.

To Ilya Rozanov.

я тебя люблю.

I love you.

Lanaudiere, Quebec.

April 27th, 2028.

Chapter End Notes

If these two pieces sound like they parallel in structure, that’s because they do! I wrote each line back and forth

Extra Content Because I Can!

1. Evgenia DOES get into McGill university and moves to Canada. She splits her time between Shane and Ilya’s house in Ottawa and her own apartment in Montreal and leaves her shit parents behind for good.

2. In case I didn’t make it perfectly obvious, Olga is a big ol’ lesbian. After the success of I Will Come Back, her vacation property becomes a minor tourist attraction and she makes tons of money on rentals. Then, one time she gets a renter who just came out for a vacation on the recommendation of a friend; (Shane) a Bostonian woman highly invested in the arts named Mae O’Rordan. And they get together, duh. (If you recognize that name…yes it is.)

3. Cheryl makes a shitload of money off I Will Come Back also, as Shane set her up with a royalties scheme instead of a flat fee for her translation work.

4. Shane and Svetlana are besties. She’s responsible for all the art on his walls and they are both very happy with this arrangement.

Magic Worldbuilding! In my mind, the forest returns Ilya not at eighteen or thirty-five, but in the body of a mid-twentysomething. When the forest tried to take Shane and the Bell Centre pushed back against that, it put the two places in a sort of brief communication. During which, the forest finally saw hockey and what that meant to Shane and recognized the similarities to Ilya’s memories. Thus it came to understand more of what it took from Ilya keeping him inside it all these years, which prompts its returning Ilya at an appropriate physical age to still be able to have a career.

Works inspired by this one

Don't Feed Me (I will come back) — Podfic by Mooseinacanoe

Don't Feed Me (I Will Come Back) Fan-Cover by spiralsublime

Cover for Don't Feed Me (I will come back) by blondietrying