The Devil_s Garden

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Elena Keskkula knew they would come at midnight, bathed in the blood of ancients, just as she had known so many things in her fifteen years. As the ennustaja of her village – a fortuneteller and mystic whose readings were sought by believers from as far away as Tallinn and St Petersburg – she had always been able to glimpse the future. At seven she saw her family’s small potato farm overrun by vermin. At ten she saw Jaak Lind lying in a field in Nalchik, the blackened flesh of his palms fused around the face of St Christopher. At twelve she foretold the floods that washed away much of her village, saw the peat bogs choked with dead livestock, the bright parasols adrift on rivers of mud. In her brief time she had seen the patience of evil men, the heartbreak of motherless children, the souls of all around her laid bare with shame, with guilt, with desire. For Elena Keskkula the present had always been past.

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