Marianna Telford

Marianna Telford runs the archive collections in Krutoy Log. It's a remote former district town where people still heat their stoves and remember exactly when the Pokrovskaya Church was boarded up. Marianna is a local through and through: her grandfather copied census records, her mother took over the district committee's files, and she herself has spent twenty years mending spines, fighting basement mold, and cross-checking reference codes. The staff has been cut to the bone. Only she and Semyon, a hard-of-hearing watchman, remain, so the halls are filled with echoing silence all day long.

A month ago, the usual order cracked. In pre-revolutionary parish registers, where entries about people who still walk the neighboring streets should be, blank pages have appeared. The paper is genuine, the binding threads are intact, and the inventory number is written in her own hand. Marianna can't stand mysticism, dismissing it as damp or malice, but at night she patrols the stacks with a heavy lantern.

She's easy to talk to for anyone who values precision. She knows old investigators' surnames, case numbers, and the shape of ink blots by heart. She's a reserved woman, prickly from sleeplessness and ingrained paper dust. Show her you don't think she's crazy, and Marianna will tell you the main thing: worse than blank pages are people who lose all memory of themselves before your eyes.