Anya flourished in school, deftly walking the realms between man and spirits.  Keeping the secret of her family was like breathing.  She felt like a visitor to the Earth, a cast-off ship of dreams, left to travel the world with sails the lapis blue of things forgotten. 

Anya often pondered forgotten things, like her beloved nechist and how they had faded from Russian memory, relegated to the realm of myths.  No one in America knew of Baba Yaga, and in Moscow and St. Petersburg, where Morozko took her to parks and museums, why, there were no gods at all.  Anya wondered if, when the Zoryas shone down on Russia, if...