Rosa and the Veil of Gold (29 page)

Em let the silence sit for a while, gently massaging her jaw. The pain was constant but dull. The quiet crackle of the fire was soothing. Outside, rain fell, its rhythmic pattering restful. She feared sleep, so she prompted Mirra to keep talking. “How did you lose your eyes?”

“Egibinicha took them. First mine, one at a time. Payment, she said, for allowing us to live. These woods belong to her, and all that dare to live in them must make the payments she asks for. In return, we can hunt the woods, and she protects us from the leshii.”

“She takes payment in eyes?”

Mirra shook her head. “Not just eyes. All manner of things. She took our eyes when we displeased her. We try very hard not to displease her. She left Slava with one eye so he could continue to hunt, but the pain and the distress of losing his other sent him mad.”

Em stood up and paced.

“Are you worried for your friend?” Mirra asked.

She stole a long glance at Mirra’s face, the way the firelight made deformed shadows in the hollows under her eyebrows. “I’m worried I’ll fall asleep,” Em said. “My friend and I are under an enchantment. If we sleep at the same time, we could wake up anywhere.”

“Who put you under this enchantment?”

“I’m not sure. Have you ever heard of the Snow Witch?”

Mirra frowned. “No. But witches are to be feared greatly.”

Em shook her arms and stretched them over her head. All her nerves and muscles were singing to her to lie down.
Sleep, sleep.
Mirra fell silent and Em paced, making plans and calculations. Eighty miles north, on the edge of the Dead Forest, there was a crossing between Skazki and Mir. It made much more sense to forget about the Snow Witch, and head for the exit. She’d still have to bring the bear, of course. It was the enchanted ticket to enable them to cross. She allowed the fog of despair to lift. Daniel might be better in a few days, and they would be well-fed before they set
out. They could make it. She glanced at Mirra. The woman was nodding into her chest, and Em didn’t want to disturb her, but being inside the sleeping house with its soothing sounds was a danger to her. She left the gloomy room behind her, and went out into the cold rain to wait.

They would be hours yet, but she feared nothing from the cold, and the discomfort would ensure she didn’t drift off unexpectedly. She sat with her back leaning against the front door, gazing out across the misted fields. The door creaked open behind her and Mirra stuck her head out.

“Em?” she called.

“I’m right here,” said Em, tugging the hem of the woman’s skirt.

“You don’t want me to make a bed for you?”

“No. I have to stay awake.”

“You’ll freeze out here in the rain.”

“No, I won’t.” Em stood and ushered Mirra back inside. “Go to bed. I’ll be fine. I’ll wait here for them to return.”

The insistent rhythm of the rain, hour after hour, took its toll on her wakefulness. Despite intense discomfort, her body kept crying for inertia. Em wouldn’t give in. She paced and, when pacing became soporific, she recited television scripts. She might have been amused by the situation, under other circumstances: pacing in the rain in Russian fairyland, talking to nobody about the sex lives of North Sea puffins. But exhaustion had dulled her sense of humour along with all her other wits. Two nights without sleep, and who knew how many more she had to endure. As long as Daniel was unconscious, she had to stay awake.

Daylight was just a shade away when the cart finally became visible. Em walked out to greet them.

Artur and Slava had oilskin cloaks on, but Daniel was curled, still unconscious, under his sodden fur in the cart. Artur sat in the back with him.

“Has he woken at all?” she asked Artur.

“I cannot see to know,” he replied, as Em jogged along beside him. “I didn’t feel him stir. Ask Slava.”

“Slava?” she said, turning her attention to the younger man, who was on horseback. “Has he stirred? Has he opened his eyes?”

“Once, a little,” Slava said. “Once, a little. Once, a little.” He repeated the phrase over and over, stuck in a senseless loop.

Once. A little.

Em knew, then—she
knew
—that this would work out. Daniel was coming up. As soon as he did, she could seize a few hours’ sleep and they could be on their way. To the exit, just eighty miles north of here.

Slava pulled the horse and cart around the back of the cottage, and he and Artur carried Daniel inside. The rain had eased, and the sky was brightening.

Mirra woke when they arrived, and she helped Em with Daniel while Artur and Slava curled up on a mattress and slept. Em was grateful for the activity. Hope had given her a second wind. They stripped Daniel of his wet clothes, and Em hung them with his fur outside, under the narrow eaves. The drizzle still misted over the clothes, but Em hoped that the rising sun would soon burn through the clouds and dry them.

Mirra brought blankets, and they wrapped Daniel and dragged him close to the fire. Mirra poured off a little broth from the previous night’s stew, and Em sat Daniel in her arms and tried to get a few drops down his throat. He stirred, grunted, drank a mouthful, then lapsed back into unconsciousness.

Very promising.

“Have you heard of an enchantment like this before, Mirra?” Em asked, as she settled Daniel once again, smoothing his hair from his sleeping brow.

“I’m not certain.” Mirra sat back and turned her blind face to Em. “Russalki did it to him, you say?”

“Russalki.”

“Then you have little to fear. They meant to drown him, I suppose. They only wanted him to sleep long enough that he couldn’t escape the water. He will come out of it eventually.”

“How soon?”

Mirra shrugged. “There is no way of knowing.”

Em rubbed her eyes. “I just want to sleep.”

Mirra reached out, feeling for Em’s hand. Em thought that it might be a gesture of affection, but Mirra squeezed her fingers so hard it hurt. “You have been treated lightly by Skazki,” she said,
her voice growing bitter. “Do not complain to me of sleep.” Then she released Em’s hand and stood up. “I go to fetch water.”

“I’ll come with you. I need to keep busy.”

“As you wish.”

Em filled the day labouring with Mirra—fetching water, uprooting vegetables from a scrawny patch behind the shed, bringing in wood for the fire, feeding and watering the horse—and every time she entered the house, she hoped she would see Daniel sitting up, eating soup and ready for action. When she asked Slava if Daniel had stirred again, he went back into his “once, a little” loop. Artur said he’d heard Daniel mutter something incoherent, but nothing else.

For Em, all her physical discomforts had blurred into each other. She was tired because she was cold, she was cold because her jaw ached, her jaw ached because she was tired. Weariness was lead in her veins, and had robbed her of all precision of speech and movement. She longed for oblivion, but clung stubbornly to wakefulness.

Daniel stirred around nightfall. He muttered something in English, and it had been so long since Em had heard the language that she couldn’t make sense of it. Then his eyelids fluttered once, and he fell back under.

It must be soon. It must be soon.

Phrases got stuck on repeat in her head, until she was nearly as asinine as Slava. She was a zombie, barely able to go through the motions, dropping her food and bumping her elbows on walls.

Day flickered out, night relaxed into place. The fields outside were dark under clear skies, and all her hosts were sleeping quietly inside. Em walked around and around outside the house, fighting sleep. As soon as Daniel was awake, she could rest. Then they’d have to be on their way.
Eighty miles north. Eighty miles north.

Em stopped where Daniel’s clothes were hung to dry. The fur cloak was still sodden, so she decided to take it inside and hold it by the fire a while. The activity would keep her awake, and Daniel would need dry, warm things when they got going again.

She crept in, careful not to wake the family. She crouched by Daniel, whose eyes were flicking back and forth under his lids.
Dreaming. How she longed to dream. She stood, spreading the cloak between her arms in front of the fire. After five minutes her shoulders ached. That was good, that was a ward against sleep. She yawned, shifted her weight, lost her balance.

Dropped the cloak on the fire.

“Shit!” she cried out, reaching for it, snatching the edge and pulling it free. It was too wet to catch alight, but a far worse outcome had resulted.

The fire had gone out.

Her shout woke the family. An instant later, Mirra’s querulous voice in the dark: “I can’t hear the fire.”

“The fire’s out, the fire’s out, the fire’s out,” Slava began, droning into a panicked chant. “It’s out, it’s out, it’s out.”

Artur crawled across the floor to the hearth, his hand reaching towards the mouth of the fireplace. “What have you done!” he cried. “Our fire! We cannot live without fire!”

“Calm down, calm down. I’ll light another one,” she said.

“We can’t just light a new fire, the old one has been with us all these years,” Mirra said. “It’s never once gone out. It protects us from those who would hunt us. You have destroyed our safety with your carelessness.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to.”

“She’ll have to go to Bone-Legs,” Artur said, his voice dropping to a portentous rumble. “For Bone-Legs’ fire is where the last spark in this hearth came from.”

“Bone-Legs, Bone-Legs,” Slava chanted.

Em, mentally fatigued as she was, had trouble following all this. “Who is Bone-Legs?” she asked.

“Our neighbour,” Mirra said quickly. “Artur is right, you’ll have to go to Bone-Legs for fire.”

“Does she live close? Couldn’t I just start a fire for you? I can rub two sticks together.”

“No,” Artur snapped, “this is not just any fire.”

“It’s very close,” Mirra said, smoothing over his words with a practical tone. “Just a little way into the woods. Follow the path. The first house you come to.”

Em dropped the damp fur. “All right, if you’re sure—”

“Bone-Legs, Bone-Legs,” Slava repeated, and Em was made suspicious by his smile. It was childishly mean, the expression of a little boy taking pleasure in another’s punishment.

“Do I just knock on her door?”

“Say Artur and Mirra sent you. Say we need fire. She’ll work out the rest.” They were already pushing her out the door, their eyeless faces anxious and grim. “Go, go. Do not leave us too long without fire.”

Em found herself outside in the soft dark, the door slammed shut behind her. She turned and headed towards the woods, setting her feet on the path to Bone-Legs’ house.

Under shadowed gradations of sleep and dreams, Daniel was becoming aware of himself again. He had been tucked away in a hollow, then cast into the back of a cart. Finally, he had heard Em’s voice and tried to fight his way back up to her. He was cold and his body ached, but there was a fire nearby and soothing sounds around him. The shadows were lifting, but he was bound in a cocoon of immobility. Wakefulness flickered on and off, words heard here and there dappled into comprehension.

Then, the fire went out. He felt a cold hole where it had been. And shouting voices.

Em’s voice, then a door closing.

The voices of the others—who were they? where had she left him?—and the shadows were weighing on him again, pressing him back under.

“You ought not have sent her to Egibinicha.”

“What else could we do? Old Bone-Legs will have Slava’s eye if we ask her ourselves.”

“We could have built our own fire.”

“Only Egibinicha’s fire will keep away the spirits.”

He was losing his grip on consciousness again, but panic spiked his heart. Egibinicha. Old Bone-Legs. Em didn’t know, she had never heard the stories, but Daniel had, and he knew those names. They were names used so her real name, which was taboo, need never be spoken.

The most powerful and malevolent witch in all of Russian folklore: Baba Yaga.

There was a time to move and a time to stand still, and Rosa knew that she had stayed too long with the Chenchikovs. A month had passed, and she couldn’t spare another. Her suspicions of Anatoly grew rapidly. He was powerful and dangerous; and powerful, dangerous men could twist logic to make themselves appear innocent.

When you are at my elbow, I am certainly not stealing magic.

But Rosa was not always at his elbow.

She was armed now: with her suspicions, with the tarabarshchina, with a clue to the location of her mother’s bracelet. Somehow, this week, she had to make a move.

Constant tiredness was taking its toll, her mind was distracted and Makhar had noticed.

“Roshka? Is there something wrong?” he asked, after she had made her third mistake in his long division corrections.

Is something wrong?
What was she to tell the boy? That his father was a thief? “I can’t concentrate today,” she said. She needed a cigarette, her fingers danced on the tabletop. “How about another science trip? Into the woods?”

“Will there still be mud? We could collect worms,” he replied.

“Let’s go and see,” she said. “Just let me go back to my guesthouse for cigarettes.”

“Cigarettes are bad for you,” he said with a frown.

“Are you going to wait here or come with me?”

“I’ll come with you.”

He ambled alongside her as she crossed the garden to the guesthouse and back. They stopped to tell Ludmilla they were going for a walk in the woods.

“I’d prefer it if you didn’t smoke around my son,” Ludmilla called after her, seeing that Rosa clutched a packet of cigarettes.

“Sure,” Rosa said, waving. “Come on, Makhar.”

She lit a cigarette as Makhar locked the gate behind them. The first drag was heaven, and she took a moment to savour it.

Makhar was pouting.

“What?” she said.

“I don’t want you to die of cancer.”

“I won’t.”

“You might.”

She shook her head. “I promise you, I absolutely won’t. I know for sure.” They wound into the woods.

“What’s it like?” Makhar asked. “Smoking?”

Rosa shrugged.

“Can I try?” he asked.

“Sure.” She handed him the cigarette. He took a shallow puff and coughed loudly.

“It’s horrible,” he said, but made no move to relinquish the cigarette.

Rosa lit another. “Oh, yeah. It’s horrible. No mistake.”

Makhar puffed again, jamming the cigarette between pouted lips like a miniature rock star. He struck a pose, no doubt learned from American music clips. “Do I look cool, Rosa?”

She felt a twinge of guilt. “Don’t smoke it if it’s horrible.”

“Hey look, what a great stick.”

The cigarette was cast aside as he pounced eagerly on a long, crooked stick in the undergrowth.

Rosa squashed the butt with her shoe and admired his new prize. “That is a great stick,” she conceded.

He began to hobble, leaning on the stick for support. “I’m an old lady,” he said.

“Are you the kind of old lady that collects worms for science class?”

“Yes, I collect them and then I eat them.” He lifted the stick and beat it rhythmically on the trees as they passed, muttering a little
tune. Rosa walked along beside him, too preoccupied to notice at first the words of the song. He did it every time they were in the woods for science. It had never seemed significant, but slowly it dawned on her what he was singing.

“One hundred and two and turn to the left; six on the left then move to the right.” He swapped his stick from one hand to the other. “One hundred and eight, one hundred and nine, all of the trees in the woodland are mine.”

“Makhar,” she said, grasping his free hand and pulling him roughly to a stop.

“Yes, Roshka?”

She crouched in front of him. “What are you singing?”

“A song my papa taught me.” He looked taken aback, and Rosa realised her sudden crazed enthusiasm must have frightened him.

Anticipation bubbled, but she smoothed her voice. “Do all these trees have a number?”

He nodded, wide-eyed.

“And you know all the numbers?”

He nodded again.

“Can you tell me the numbers?”

He shook his head this time, then twisted his lips thoughtfully. “I don’t know.”

“It’s just, I’ve thought of a great maths game we could play.”

“I love maths games.”

“I know. So, I could give you sums to do in your head, and you’d have to find the tree which has the same number as the answer.”

He beamed. “That sounds like fun.”

“I’m sure your papa wouldn’t mind if we played it. It’s not like I’ll remember how the trees are numbered. It sounds very complex…” She pulled a dopey expression.

Makhar laughed. “Don’t, Roshka. You’re not so pretty when you make that face.”

“All right then, what’s twenty-three squared?”

He nodded once then set off with a determined gait deeper into the woods. Rosa followed. The sky was grey and she feared rain would set in before much longer. That would drive them inside.
She had to get him to the right tree quickly, but without arousing suspicion.

“When did you learn all the numbers?” she asked him as she finished her cigarette and mashed it against a tree.

“When I was very little.” A self-important nod followed. “Papa says one day I might have to take over the woods and the farm.” He stopped and whacked his stick against a tree. “There,” he said.

“Add thirty-one,” she said.

He moved further. She waited where she stood. “Here,” he said.

“Take away the square root of one hundred and twenty-one.”

Makhar tapped his stick, singing his song low. “Here,” he said, pointing to a broad birch. Its arms stretched towards the dull sky. A knothole, about four inches across, hid under one of the branches. This was it, tree number 549.

Rain began to spit down. “Last sum, then,” she said. “Add four fifteens.”

He strode off, tapping his stick. Rosa reached up and into the knothole. Inside was gritty and damp, and a beetle skittered across her palm as she felt around. Nothing. But before the disappointment set in, she remembered that Anatoly would have hidden the bracelet with magic. Magic that could trick her fingers. She slid her hand in again, feeling grit, twigs…no, not twigs. Something cold and hard: her mother’s bracelet, still entwined with the one Daniel had given her. She didn’t pull it out into daylight. Anatoly would sense it if she brought it back to the farm. For now, it would have to stay where it was.

How would she find this tree again? There were hundreds like it in the woods.

Rosa turned and scanned around her. Rocks which looked like other rocks; fallen logs which looked like other fallen logs. A bird skimmed by close to her head, landed on a nearby branch to chirp at her. She reached into her pocket for her cigarettes. No more until next Monday when Ilya went to town again, but they would be sacrificed to a good cause. Following Makhar, she tore them into pieces and left them in a trail behind her, resting them on rocks and logs and branches. White flecks barely noticeable except to someone seeking them, all the way back to the farm.

Soon it would be time to try the veil again. There remained only a few further things for her to wrap up.

That evening, the wind picked up and howled over the eaves of her guesthouse, making mad dancers of the trees in the woods. Rosa settled herself in bed with her mother’s notebooks to transcribe, and a bottomless cup of coffee to keep her awake. Shortly after midnight she heard a thud over at the house, and stood up on her bed to peer out the window. Ilya had stolen from the house, but the wind had caught the door and slammed it shut. He paused, tensed against Anatoly’s temper, to see if anyone came for him.

Two seconds passed. Three. Nobody stirred. His hair lifted as the wind rushed over him. Then he made his way around the house and off, Rosa presumed, towards the woods.

Poor Ilya. Every windy night was a torture to him, believing that his wife’s dead husband was hovering nearby. Rosa tried to concentrate on her work, but found she couldn’t. Ilya was out there alone.

Damn it, she had started to care.

Rosa pulled on a coat and closed the guesthouse door quietly behind her. The wind tangled her hair, and sped the clouds across the moonless sky. She followed the fence around and let herself out the gate. From here, she could already see Ilya. He was barefoot and in pyjamas—a grey T-shirt and long cotton pants—and he stood as if in a trance gazing into the trees.

She hurried across and touched his arm. He jumped, and whirled around.

“I’m sorry to frighten you,” she said.

“What are you doing here?”

“It’s too cold to be out here dressed like this, Ilya.”

“Leave me be. I think he’s here tonight.”

“Nikita? And what will you do if you find him?”

Ilya’s face hardened. “I’m not afraid of him.”

Rosa was reminded of how young Ilya was, and she took his elbow. “I’m sure you could best him in a fight if he was alive, but he’s not. The dead are full of tricks and mischief.” She tugged him towards her. “Come in out of the wind. Look, you’re covered in goosebumps.”

He made a feeble attempt to shrug her off, but she held him firm.

“Be reasonable, Ilya. There’s nothing you can do. You know that.”

He turned with a huffed sigh, and allowed himself to be led back through the gate. “He’ll have her tonight. He’ll steal my wife from her bed and tomorrow she’ll be weaker and sicker.”

“You may be wrong. This may just be an ordinary windy night.” But Rosa could sense it, too, something black and needy in the shadows. It was best if they were both safely inside. “Come back to my guesthouse,” Rosa said, squeezing his hand. “I’ll make you very warm.”

The faint buzz and knock of a bee trapped in the window greeted them on their arrival. Rosa led Ilya to the bed and shrugged out of her coat. The pool of lamplight was yellow and dim.

“How do they get in?” he asked, looking up at the bee.

“They hang around your window, too?” Rosa asked, realising he suspected nothing.

“Yes, they do.”

“I expect they find an opening and just force their way in,” she said, keeping her voice very even. She sat astride Ilya’s thighs and began to unbutton her blouse. “I’ll let him out later.”

“
Her
,” Ilya said. “All the worker bees are female.”

“Whatever.” Rosa’s kisses silenced him, and she made good on her promise to warm his blood. Afterwards, she released the trapped bee and switched off the lamp. Ilya’s warm, smooth body waited for her under the covers, and she snuggled into his side while he stroked her hair. The wind shuddered over the roof.

At length, he said, “I shouldn’t fall asleep here, Rosa.”

“I know.” She adjusted her position so she could see his face in the dark. “Let’s sit up and talk then.”

“What about?”

“About us, about anything.” She touched his brow. “Tell me about your family. Six brothers! Did you fight a lot?”

“No. I was the youngest, I was…different to them. They left me alone.”

“How were you different?”

“I was sick a lot as a child. I spent a lot of time with my mother.”

“What kind of sick?”

“Fevers. Fits. Heart problems.”

“You wouldn’t know it now. You’re healthy as a horse.”

“I know. I grew out of it.”

“When you were a teenager?” she asked. “Did it get worse around your thirteenth birthday, then gradually better after that?”

She could see him smile in the dark. “How did you know that?”

“I’ve heard of that kind of thing before.” Magic, in vast quantities, was unwieldy in a child’s body. Puberty could bring the onset of new powers, and an adult body to store it all. She didn’t say any of this to Ilya, who moved his fingers absently in gentle circles on her shoulder.

“Why don’t you tell me of your family,” he said. “Do you have brothers or sisters?”

“No. Just me.”

“And your mother and father? Do they live in Russia or in Canada?”

“They live nowhere. My mother died a couple of years ago. My father when I was eight.”

“You’re an orphan,” he said softly, almost wonderingly. “I think it might explain you, the way you are.”

“I doubt it.”

“How did they die?”

“My mother from illness, my father by accident.” She sat up, pulling the covers against her chest. “It was winter and he took me ice-skating on the frozen lake at the bottom of our street. Mama was home cooking dinner. We were expecting guests. She wanted me out of the house because she was busy and I was bored, so she insisted I be taken outside to burn off some energy. It was late afternoon and my father sat on a bench nearby and I took to the ice, only it was too thin and I skated right through it, into the freezing water.” She flicked her hair over her shoulder and wished she hadn’t torn up all her cigarettes, wished she had kept just one for emergencies. “Papa came in after me. I survived, he didn’t.” Rosa heard her own brittle tone, but was powerless to temper it. The only alternative was to cry, and she wouldn’t do that.

“I’m very sorry,” Ilya said.

“It’s all in the past.” The past had been endured, and the wounds were painless if they weren’t prodded. It was the future that weighed on her, crushed her.

“Rosa?” Ilya said. “You look as if you might cry.”

“I won’t,” she said, shaking her head. “Ilya, don’t you think it a terrible thing that we’ll die one day?”

“It’s a terrible thing, but I don’t think about it,” he said. “I try to think of brighter things. You live now. You’re beautiful and clever and young, and your body is still warm and full of hot blood.” He pulled her down beside him and ran his index finger in soft circles over her stomach.

“You know this can’t go on,” she murmured.

“I know,” he said.

But Rosa suspected they were talking about two different things.

The next morning, the house was in uproar when Rosa arrived for breakfast. Makhar was crying and hanging around Elizavetta’s door, while Ludmilla shushed him and told him to get out of the way. Anatoly was barking down the phone to somebody. Ilya hovered uncertainly, not meeting Rosa’s eye.