Danilo and I were out hunting for deer. I had my gun at my back, the autumn wind rubbing my blonde hair wild. His sandy blonde-brown locks had grown long. They curled like a shepherd boy. A bit of peach fuzz clung to his face, and I laughed as we waited with our rifles. He sparked the flintlock over and over, like a bug was up his hind.

“I am an impatient man. Hunting does not suit me. When we are married, you will hunt – I will tend the animals of your father’s dacha,” Danilo joked, winking his blue eye at me.

I patted him on the back. He wore a leather jacket – it was real American bullhorn. Prokovitch had brought it back from his trip to carve a statue for the Carnegies. Real Texan leather. “Are you a cowboy, Dany?”

He squared his shoulders and waggled his eyebrows: “I lassoed you with a pearl necklace. Tell me, Katya, what would you most like to carve out of stone? I make plants, you make animals. I like your reptiles the best. What inspires them?”

I smiled softly as the wind through the Urals drew old wounds up. “I never had a mother, Danilo. I suppose… neither did you. I like how lizards lay their eggs in the sun, under sand or soil. It seems like they must care for them an awful lot. My mother left me in the sunny care of deduhska – so I must think, she loved me an awful lot too. And so, my mother inspires every working I do.”

Danilo grinned. “You have the biggest heart of anyone I know, Katinka.”

We held hands. I was eighteen. I was beginning to wonder what the graces of a woman given in marriage to a man were. My hips were rounding, petals of large breasts were fruiting, but I was still shy around boys. And I mostly kept to Azovka. I couldn’t stand dimwit girls.

“You have the biggest ego, shepherd boy.”

He rubbed the back of my thumb. I shuddered. “Only because I won you.”

“You haven’t won anything yet. Haven’t even dared to kiss me. Fell me a white deer, and then you will win my heart.”

“But I’m a lousy shot.”

“Then work on it while shepherding.”

His azure eyes creased: “It would scare the flocks, dearest Katinka.”

“Eh, excuses, excuses.”

A holly grove ruffled. I shushed him.

It was a doe. A piebald doe, with a white head, and speckled white spots.

“A white deer!” Danilo started, shooting it true and clear. The recoil knocked him on his bum. He had shot it through the heart. “There, I have your heart!” he teased gently, massaging my shoulders. “I hate blood. Can you set the meat?”

“Sure.”

I inspected the kill, then set to cleaning it. We would haul it back on Rubenya’s horse. “It’s a piebald. Only a smattering of white, so shards of my heart you own. The rest belong to Azovka.”

Danilo smiled as we tied rope around the doe’s legs and hitched it to the mare. Riding front saddle, I guided her home to Copper Mountain with Danilo at my back. He kept almost falling off.

Danilo and I liked to hunt for Alexei, as he was a busy man, blessing the Ural Mountains for minerals, tending to gemstone clusters and sheets of lapis lazuli. Rubenya cleaned, Azovka cooked, and Danilo and I sourced the meat, cheese, and eggs.

Azovka was gardening in the dacha atop Copper Mountain. She pulled up red cabbage clusters and turnips and carrots, all in a wheelbarrow. She was dressed in the cutest outfit: a milkmaid dress, moony from tending the cows, with hay stuck in her hair.

“Danilo! Katinka?” Azovka called in delight. She was eighteen too. I had forgotten – Danilo was nineteen. That was why he was rowdy. All that man juice in his veins.

“This venison will go perfectly into an autumn stew! Here, let me help,” Azovka said. She sent her lizards to carry the doe away, down into Copper Mountain, where Rubenya would set to preparing it for Azovka’s cooking. “A piebald?”

“Yes, a pie that lost its hair. A Pie Bald. I frightened the roots away. Now, it’s venison mincemeat,” Danilo regaled us with his fable. He liked to make up skazes.

“You are full of gravy, as always, my Danilushko,” Azovka sighed. “Here, help me in the garden. The Farmer’s Almanac says frost is coming tomorrow – it will be good for the winter vegetables, and make the Orient persimmons ripen, but I have to get the early fall crops in.”

And so, we dug up turnips and carrots, cracked open peanuts, and gathered cabbage and leeks. Soon, Azovka was cutting away at the venison with a golden knife, her English copper pots boiling the veggies in beef stock, and we had an autumn stew with dacha goods. I would bring some home to deduhska – he was away with Alexei in Mount Azov, propiating Veles, the god of the green underworld and earth, whose serpents and lizards had blessed the Popovas with bounty, when Saint Clementina had heard the first stone sing, and carved the Copper Men out of rocks.

Veles had given a Copper Man life in order to give Saint Clementina a husband, and thus the Popovas were born. They had taken Clementina’s last name – I’d make any husband of mine do that too! Danilo didn’t have one, as far as I knew, an orphan bastard who grew up begging and riding the rails. At least Prokovitch had made something of Danilo.

“Ow!” Azovka cried out.

“What’s wrong?” I bellowed, rushing to tend to my best friend.

Azovka whimpered, her jade eyes brimming with tears, as she showed her thumb with a green slice of blood on it. “I cut myself.”

Danilo looked on knowingly. “Can I try something, Azovya?”

She bit her lip. “Okay, another harebrained idea from Danilo.”

“Hares do not have many wits about them.”

“Just help her!” I crowed, rocking my dear Azovka. She did not like pain!

Danilo pulled out his carving knife, then began to sing. The iron of the knife glowed, and suddenly, so did Azovka’s wound. It was not a language he sung – no, it was wind through the pine barrens and bears in their nests, regaling their cubs with tales of what lay in the green, green grass above.

Azovka’s eyes turned glowing gold, her whites and pupils gone. Her copper red veins shone with that same ghostly energy. My best friend’s body resonated like Teacher Alina’s tuning fork, and it was like Stravinsky was playing as Danilo sang his tune.

The wound healed. The bleeding stopped. Danilo smiled secretly.

I began to shake. Who was this man? A boy who could not only sing stone but carve Copper Men up like Saint Clementina herself.

“Get away from my Azovka, you miscreant! Never experiment on her again!” I yelled, throwing a kettle at him. Azovka had fallen into a happy sleep in my arms.

Danilo ducked. “Hey, hey, girl whose pieces of a heart I own – I was just trying to help!”

“But it could have gone terribly wrong! No human has been able to sing stone since Saint Clementina. Only Veles can do that. Or the Copper Men. What are you, Danilushko?”

Danilo’s face turned stony as together, we tucked Azovka into the green wingback settee to sleep. He began to cry. “Katya, my one and only bride, you do not understand. Veles has marked me. I was born with this,” he said, then rolled up his shirt to his chest.

A green ouroboros bloomed on his breastbone. I gasped, making sure Rubenya was far away so she could not see.

“What is that?” I asked softly. “That is a godsmark. You are no Christian.”

“You aren’t either.”

“I’m a Copper Guard, it’s different. That’s why you can sing stone! Your soul is owned by Veles. But Dany, that means someone somewhere in your family is from Veles’ line – one of your ancestors was the child of the god of the underworld!”

He cried harder. “Please don’t tell anyone. I just want you to know. I couldn’t bear to see her in pain. If you are my wife, Azovka is my muse. I only carve stone so that I may someday please her.”

I held his hand in mine, then hugged him.

“Stone has always called to me. And a calling from far under the Urals, in Veles’ land of the dead. Someday, I fear I will disappear beneath Mount Azov and never be seen again,” Danilo admitted.

I mustered up my courage. My cheeks flamed bright orange. “I will not let anything ever happen to you and my Azuvya. We three are family, got it? It’s good that you can sing stone – you are destined for great things. Russia, the way it’s going, has full well need of saints. You should tell Prokovitch. He is like a father to you. And he might know something about stone singers, and Veles himself. All Stonecutters pay tithes to Veles here in old Podentsky. Who knows? Perhaps you could forge weapons for the Copper Guard themselves, or help Alexei summon minerals on his trips throughout the Urals.”

“I only want fame, Katya – fame enough to buy us a rich house. I am a stone cutter, stone singer, no difference. I just want you. And I want to protect our beloved friend Azovka. She who will one day be Mistress of Copper Mountain.”

He looked at Azovka with such tenderness, all façade of teasing gone, that I knew she was worth more to him than all the diamonds in Yakutia.

“Promise me this, Katy,” Danilo said.

I smiled, holding his hand. “Anything, Dany.”

“We’ll give the rest of our hearts to Azovka.”

We swore it on Mother Mokosh.