Excerpt from Stork Mountain by Miroslav Penkov, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

I wanted to ask the girl how she was feeling. Had the glass cut her? But once more I was ashamed of speaking. Besides, she kept her eyes closed, as before, smiling. I too closed mine and tried to steady my breathing. The wine was hot on my tongue and salty; the sand scraped my throat each time I swallowed.

"Wake up, boy. Take this." Someone shoved in my hand a piece of bread, a chunk of white cheese. Red Mustache had opened his wife's basket and was passing food to the peasants. She didn't seem to mind it, herself sucking a morsel. I wasn't that hungry, but it felt good to be eating, each bite pushing away the darkness. And so we ate, hidden behind the benches, fearful and relieved and excited. An eerie silence had filled the station, and when someone hiccupped, a woman burst out laughing. In no time we were all gasping, not in the least sure what was so funny. Only the girl by my side kept quiet. Her eyes swam under their closed lids, her face now entirely drained of color.

I turned to see her better and it was then that I touched the blood pooling between us. The wine had obscured it—black blood, thick and sticky, oozing through the sleeve of her silk dress.

"Are you touching my wife?" her husband barked, and jumped up, ready to fight me.

"She's cut," I mumbled. "Look, she's bleeding." My tongue felt limp, unresponsive, but I kept babbling until the man understood me. He pulled back the sleeve and we saw the girl's wrist, slashed open.

"Sweet mother," the man said, "I feel dizzy." He stumbled back and collapsed against the wall of the station. The peasants flocked around the girl like vultures. One slapped her face; another told her to wake up. Her eyes flicked open—as black and shiny as the blood flowing—and she gave us a sweet smile.

"I feel like a feather."

"We need to stop the bleeding," I heard myself saying. I pulled off the headscarf and wrapped it around the girl's wrist, then showed an old man where to press it, not to let go. In a daze I sprinted to retrieve my backpack, sand still lashing through the broken windows, though no longer as harshly.

"Are you a doctor?" someone asked, so I said no, I wasn't. But I carried a first aid kit, knew how to dress wounds. I kept babbling, drunk on the sound of my language or on the adrenaline maybe.

Once I'd tied the makeshift bandage the girl's eyes opened.

"I could do with some water."

I brought my bottle to her lips and she drank a few small sips.

"Stay away from my wife, you hear me?" Her husband had sprung up to his feet once more, but when he saw the blood pool his face twisted and he sat back down.

"Mouse heart," a woman's voice whispered, and the peasants burst out laughing. Even the girl giggled.

"What kind of a man fears blood?" someone mumbled.

"How does he slay kurban, then?"

The man rose again with great effort. He pushed through the crowd, scooped his wife up, and, leaving a trail of bloody steps in the sand, carried her to the other side of the station. He laid her down on the floor and in his spite began to remove her bandage.

"Another man touching my wife," he said, fuming. "And you fools are laughing." In the end he threw away the bandage and wrapped the scarf around his wife's wrist.

"Mouse heart, am I?"

I looked about. But the others only shrugged and crept back to the benches. Even Red Mustache didn't seem too bothered.

For some time I watched the blood-soaked bandage on the floor, where it gathered black sand. I watched the man pressing his wife's wound, his eyes fixed on the stripped beams of the ceiling. Then I picked up my backpack and hurried to the most distant corner.

Outside, sand hung in midair like a dry mist, but the worst of the storm had passed us. I leaned my head against the wall, closed my eyes, and listened. The sand whooshing, whispering, drumming against the roof and the empty panes of the windows. What in the world was I doing back in this country, chasing after a man I hadn't seen in fifteen years? A man I hadn't spoken to in the last three. My flesh and blood. My childhood hero. A man who'd vanished without a word even.

Excerpted from Stork Mountain by Miroslav Penkov. Copyright © 2016 by Miroslav Penkov. Excerpted by permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.