By Christine Cohen

When people built a new house or moved to another place, they took their

domovoy with them. How could it be otherwise? A new house would be

vulnerable without the domovoy’s protection.

—Slavic Chronicles

By the time we left the old country, they had all forgotten me, except for the little girl. She had a long and lovely name that I cannot remember. Nor can I remember my own.

Ours was a stately home, resplendent in years, and I was proud to guard it. Servants swept the ashes from my hearth and stacked logs on the fire. Sometimes the little girl would kneel and look for me in the flames. Sometimes she would lie on the stone slab to soak up my warmth. Sometimes she would sing, and I would glow more brightly to show I was pleased. It did not take much to please me: a respectful tone, a twining bundle of rosemary, weathered logs from the hazel tree. Simple gifts, and I would chase the darkness back over the threshold. 

By the end, the darkness was everywhere in the old country. I could no more stop it than I could call the stars down from their thrones.

I knew what was happening before the little girl did. The flurried packing, the quiet knocks, the whispered calculations.

One more week.

Ten hours by foot. 

Three extra coats.

I shivered in the ashes as they counted and planned, and the little girl slid down the banister singing the old songs quietly.

When she pulled me from the hearth, I felt a horrible, sucking pain like a ripping in two. I wanted to scream, but I was too weak, and then it was done, and I was tucked inside the pocket of her wool coat.

A hollowed-out husk, glowing dimly amidst the lint.

~

I do not know the specifics of our journey. I never left her pocket. She fed me slips of paper, and I ate them greedily. I rolled up frayed bits of wool for warmth. I missed my hearth and its thick stone slabs. 

All I knew was what I heard. The little girl’s crying. The murmur of her parents. The crunch of footfall on dry leaves. Time spun slowly. 

Then, a new and deafening sound. 

Sharp staccato bursts. 

Screams.

Silence.

The little girl went still, quieter than the mice who scoured my hearth at night. Her cold fingers crept into my pocket and brushed against me, and we both shivered. 

Soon, there were other voices around us, speaking in strange tongues. The world swayed, and the little girl trembled so that I could hear the rattling of her teeth.

I knew the exact moment we left the old country. I felt it like a reopening wound. A second rending, deeper than the first. 

I was never going back. 

~

When next I emerged from her pocket, it was not into an august mansion or a handsome hearth. The little girl carried me from room to room (there were not many), and everything hummed in its newness and shone with infantile years, and not a single chair or dresser or windowsill carried an old song within it. 

The little girl brought me to the kitchen where I had time to see a bright red clock hung crookedly above the sink before she spilled me out of her palm and down a narrow tunnel. I came to rest beside a small, blue flame. 

I stared up in shock. Between the cold, metal slats, her bright eyes regarded me sadly. 

“It’s all there is,” she whispered.

“Here, I’ll show you how it works.” Her mother’s voice nearby. 

There was a tick, tick, tick sound. The blue flame burst to life and I, startled, erupted with it. 

~

The blue flame is terrible company. He does not speak nor eat nor sing. 

At first, the little girl sang to me when she made her breakfast, and I licked up the egg drippings that fell from the pan and wished they were rosemary. Her mother told her to stop singing songs from the old country. Train your voice to carry a different lilt. Try to fit in. 

Now she speaks in a language I do not understand. She barely glances at me after she summons me with that infernal clicking. 

She should have left me in the old country.

~

Some days, I do not feel like rising. I sit on the blue flame to dampen him and listen to the 

tick

tick

tick 

until they give up. 

If they persist, I emerge in a whoosh of incandescent rage. 

They startle and shriek and I glow brightly, pleased. 

~

I have almost forgotten the old country. 

The little girl is grown. She has moved out. 

The old songs died the day she shut the door.

~

Someone is coming to visit. Cinnamon and sugar summon up a memory: dripping candles and strung garlands and gifts. The little girl’s mother is baking something familiar, and when she puts butter in the saucepan, I obligingly emerge. 

A child stands in front of the stove, her eyes level with mine. At first, I think she is the little girl, walking backwards through time, but no, her eyes are a lighter brown. Her hair curls in tight ringlets. 

She can see me.

A smile lifts the corners of her mouth. I don’t understand her words, but I know their meaning. A woman crouches down beside her, and this, I realize, is the little girl. She wears the stateliness of years well. 

She says my name, and I remember everything.

The old country gathers itself around me. 

She hums my favorite song. 

Her daughter joins in and, after a slight hesitation, her mother too. They sing together in the kitchen that is not the hearth of the old country, nor the pocket of a wool coat, but a haven for both.

I glow brightly, and we are all pleased, and no one minds when the butter burns.