Torchlight danced as old Godrelka scratched on the door of the hut. Behind her cowered the villagers, terrified and dangerous in their fear, willing to do anything to banish it. Only the wizened Godrelka, with her milky eye and her ancient walking stick, calmed them even long enough to see if the rumors were true. What kind of baby had been born behind this door?

The door swept open. Yanusz, the baby’s father, stood in the doorway, sweaty and defiant. “What do you simpletons want? We’ve done nothing wrong. Don’t you have better things to do than to frighten young mothers and their babes?”

Angry mutterings sizzled through the mob. Old Godrelka raised a liver-spotted hand for quiet. “The mark, Yanusz. The wind says the baby has the mark. We must see. We must know.”

“You dare?” he bellowed, staring the villagers in the eyes one by one, until they looked away in angry shame. “You dare march to my home and demand to inspect my child, like one of the Czar’s oiled bureaucrats? You, Byorgy, who we fed from our larder after you lost your finger to the wolverine’s bite? You, Tadausz, who lounged idly in the town square, drunk on nalavka, while my wife helped your wife bring in the beet crop? Go to hell, or go home to your pitiful lives, whichever is worse.”

Again, old Godrelka spoke. “There is no need for anger, Yanusz. What must be done, will be done. We are but servants of a higher will.”

In a flash, Yanusz was holding a rifle, sweeping the barrel in an arc across the mob. “Anyone who dares step forward – you too, you old crone – dies!” But a soft voice behind him said, “No, Yanusz. Let them pass.” Yanusz looked uncertainly at his wife, then lowered the gun and stood aside. They jostled in to find Tatyaba on the straw bed, cradling the child by the glow of the fire.

As one, the mob inhaled. There it was, on the baby’s wrist – the mark!

But it wasn’t the ugly demonic smear they were expecting. It was…beautiful. Blue, white, and silver, it bore systolic and diastolic blood pressure and pulse readings on a large, easy-to-read LCD. Godrelka crossed herself, muttered a prayer, and took the child’s face in both hands, showering kisses on the sleeping cheeks.

“The Mark of Fitness,” the old lady wept. “It has been foretold that a child would arise capable of making one-touch blood-pressure readings and saving up to 60 of them. This is the child. This is the mark. So blessed, so auspicious. This calls for a celebration. You keep any nalavka in the house, Yanusz?”

He did. And they danced all the night, in joy instead of anger. Such was the power of the Mark of Fitness.

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