Anya and the Nightingale

by Sofiya Pasternack

  With horror, Anya realized everyone was going to wash their hands. Everyone was going to say that blessing. She didn’t know it.

  Anya strained her ears to hear what everyone was saying, but they were all being so quiet, she could make out only a word here or there. Misha was all the way at the table on the other side of the room, standing silently. She wished he were closer so she could ask him what on earth was going on.

  Someone put a hand on Anya’s arm. When she turned, Dvorah smiled at her and said softly, “You look like you’ve just been sentenced to death.”

  Anya swallowed hard against a dry throat. “I . . . I’ve never done this before.”

  She expected Dvorah to look surprised or exclaim her disbelief, but she didn’t. She just nodded a little bit and said, “I’ll go with you. Stand by me.”

  Anya did, and the two of them waited until everyone else was done and gone to the dinner table. Dvorah and Anya stood side by side, and Dvorah talked Anya through the steps. Fill up the cup once and pour it over her entire right hand. Fill the cup again and pour it over her entire left hand. Set the cup down. Say the blessing.

  “After you say the blessing, you don’t speak until after Ha-Motzi,” Dvorah whispered. In her soft singsong, Dvorah said, “Baruch atah Adonai, Eloheinu, melech ha’olam, asher kidishanu b’mitzvotav vitzivanu al n’tilat yadayim.”

  Anya repeated each word, comforted at the familiarity of most of it. She dried her hands on the cloth and followed Dvorah to the table. Rabbi Galanos pulled the cover off two perfect golden loaves of challah, picked up one, and held it in careful hands while he said Ha-Motzi in exactly the way Anya’s family did. Halfway through, he set the one down and picked up the other, then tore off a piece of the challah and passed it to Misha. Misha passed it to the person next to him, and around they went until everyone had a piece. Together, they ate the bread, and Dvorah pulled Anya close in a sideways hug and whispered, “You did great.” And Anya believed her.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The entire congregation didn’t stay for dinner. There were about a hundred handshakes and head nods and declarations of “Shabbat shalom” as the room emptied. Misha’s little cousins tackled Misha’s legs, and he waded to the door with them after their parents, who collected them and waved goodbye. Soon it was just Misha and his family, plus three of Dvorah’s friends, and two men who were likely friends of Rabbi Galanos.

  And Anya.

  Dvorah sat on Anya’s right, and Ilana slipped into the seat at her left. Misha sat by his father, across from Anya, and Nava sat on Misha’s other side. Misha smiled at Anya, and Nava tried to stare a hole into her forehead.

  To distract herself from Nava’s glare, Anya studied the food. The two challah loaves were passed around and pieces torn off. A long, deep dish held fried fish that had been cooked in what appeared to be onions and . . . other things Anya had never seen before. Small, wrinkly, dark purple nuts? Nuts, perhaps, if nuts were squishy. They smelled sweet and tangy, and the dish was colored rich gold in places and olive green in others. Beside the fish was a smaller bowl with red jam inside it. The fragrance out of that bowl was heavenly—that was where the fruity and flowery scent was coming from. It smelled too good to eat. In the last bowl, dark green leaves mixed with cooked onions and the wrinkly purple things and some smallish white things. It smelled wonderful too, and as Anya struggled to keep herself from openly drooling over the food, she found herself realizing they might be celebrating something she had intruded upon. Besides Shabbat, of course.

  She counted on her fingers under the table. If it was Friday, that meant Sukkot was in two days. Would she be done in Kiev and back to Zmeyreka in time for Sukkot with her own family? Was her sukkah even still intact? She assumed that without her supervision, Zvezda had eaten most of it by now.

  From the table’s other side, Rabbi Galanos smiled and said, “Anya. So. Where did you come here from?”

  Her tongue stuck to the top of her mouth. Where had she come from? Not a shtetl, whatever that was. Not Kiev. Just Zmeyreka, a tiny village with a grand total of four Jews in it—three, with Papa gone—who all prayed differently than this community she sat with.

  The raised eyebrows around her told her she’d been quiet for too long. She blurted, “Mologa.”

  Rabbi Galanos nodded slowly. “Where is that?”

  “North.” She answered faster that time. “By Ingria.”

  “I’m not familiar with that area,” the rabbi said. “How long did it take you to travel?”

  Anya didn’t know. Again, she couldn’t say a few minutes, so she guessed. “Ten days on the road.”

  Rabbi Galanos’s eyes widened, and Dvorah’s head snapped toward Anya.

  “Ten days?” Dvorah gasped.

  Maybe that was too long. But Anya was sold to the lie now. She nodded.

  “All by yourself ?” Dvorah said.

  “No,” Anya said. “Two of my friends came.”

  Dvorah leaned back in her chair, fanning herself. “Three little girls all alone? For ten days? In the winter? Where are they? Are they still in Kiev?”

  While Dvorah spoke, something hit Anya’s leg. She started and looked up. Misha was on the other side of the table, his eyes big like his father’s. He shook his head side to side, just a tiny bit.

  Had he kicked her? He must have. And what was he shaking his head no to? There was no way to ask him, so she answered Dvorah, “Uh, no. They got scared when the Nightingale—”

  Ilana and Nava both gasped out loud, and Dvorah and the other three women all spoke at once in various volumes.

  “The Nightingale?”

  “You saw the Nightingale?”

  “That maniac?”

  “How did you get away from him?”

  Anya ran through the actual events in her head, and the first one that didn’t involve Ivan’s magic was . . . “The tsarevna and Misha and some other archers chased him away.”

  Misha’s face lost its color as Dvorah and the other women turned to him.

  “What a brave son I have!”

  “Our Mikhail is out saving pretty girls from monsters?”

  “Is that what you do with the tsarevna all day?”

  “Dvorah, are you comfortable with him risking his life like that?”

  While Misha shrank back in his seat, Nava slid out of hers and disappeared under the table. She resurfaced a moment later between Anya and Ilana, and whispered to Anya, “What actually happened?”

  Anya cleared her throat. “That’s what happened.”

  Ilana hissed, “Nava, you’re not supposed to crawl under the table like that!”

  Nava ignored her sister. “What else happened?”

  “Nothing,” Anya said. “Do you not believe your brother could do that?”

  “Of course he could,” Ilana said.

  Nava put up her hand, fingers splayed, in Ilana’s face. “That’s all he wants to do. He knows bowstrings and arrow shafts like he should know Torah.” Her eyebrows lifted. “Mama and Papa let him stay with the tsarevna because the tsar specifically asked for him, and they don’t want to make enemies in the castle.”

  Ilana knocked Nava’s hand out of the way. “You’re such a gossip, Nava.” But she leaned closer to their conversation and whispered, “I was cleaning Misha’s bed one time and I found some texts on military strategy hidden under his mattress. I didn’t tell Mama or Papa about them.”

  Anya peeked at Misha, who was still being interrogated about his heroics against the Nightingale. His father had said nothing and just sat with his lips pursed. The other men at the table had also said nothing. She regretted saying anything about the Nightingale.

  Finally, Rabbi Galanos said, “Well, Mikhail, we’re very glad you were there for Anya and her friends when they needed help.” Dvorah and the other women sat back, trading glances back and forth.

  Softly, Misha said, “Thank you, Papa.”

  With a smile, Rabbi Galanos turned to Anya. “Tell us about your family, Anya.
What does your father do?”

  This conversation was taking a turn for the worse. Anya wanted to slide under the table like Nava had, but not resurface. “Um . . . he’s a farmer.”

  “A farmer,” Rabbi Galanos said. “Interesting. What does he farm?”

  “Goats,” Anya said. “I guess that’s not farming, really. Mama is the farmer. She grows onions.”

  Rabbi Galanos nodded. “Goats and onions. Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

  “No,” Anya said, and everyone turned their heads at her.

  Everyone except the rabbi. He said, “Do your parents know where you are?”

  Anya took in a slow breath. Did she admit she had basically run away? Or did she lie to the rabbi? Either one was equally distasteful, because she didn’t want to lie to the first and only rabbi she’d ever met, but she also didn’t want anyone to send her home. She thought about pretending to be ill and escaping back to the castle, but Dvorah had put her coat somewhere and she didn’t know where. Also, Misha knew where she was staying. He’d be able to find her.

  And so Anya found herself fibbing. “Mama knows. She didn’t like me coming”—that would be true—“but we didn’t really have a choice.”

  The rabbi lifted an eyebrow. “Didn’t have a choice?”

  Anya shook her head. “My papa . . . got conscripted. Our village’s old magistrate lied to the conscription officers. We just found out about it, and I came here to ask the tsar to send him back from Rûm.”

  Several people around the table gasped. Rabbi Galanos didn’t, but he looked surprised anyway.

  “I’m sorry that happened,” he said. “But you shouldn’t be asking the tsar. One of the men should be. What does your rabbi think about this?”

  Oh no. Anya tensed as she said, “We don’t have a rabbi.”

  The surprised stares weren’t accompanied by gasps that time. Misha’s cheeks and throat were bright red.

  Rabbi Galanos recovered and said, “No rabbi for the moment?”

  “No rabbi ever,” Anya said.

  The rabbi was contemplatively quiet, and this gave Nava the opportunity to blurt, “Why would you live somewhere with no rabbi?”

  “Nava!” Dvorah scolded.

  “Does that mean you don’t have a synagogue?” Nava asked, and then she said, “Have you ever seen a Torah?”

  Anya winced. “Of course I’ve—”

  “When?” Nava demanded, and then said, “I knew you weren’t good enough to marry my brother!”

  Misha blanched, and his mouth dropped open.

  Ilana smacked Nava on the back of the head. “You’re so rude! She is so good enough! It doesn’t matter if she’s never seen a Torah!”

  “I have seen a Torah!” Anya was on her feet. She didn’t even remember standing. “I’ve held it! I’ve read the whole thing! Babulya brought ours from Sarkel, from their synagogue, when it was burning!” She fumed, then realized everyone at the table was staring at her again with matching expressions of shock and embarrassment.

  She decided she’d rather freeze walking back to the castle, and she scrambled out of her seat. “Thank you for dinner,” she mumbled, even though she hadn’t eaten anything, and escaped out the door into the cold night.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Anya made it one street with her arms curled into her chest before she desperately regretted fleeing without her coat. The nights here were so cold. A frigid wind whipped up and down the streets like it was racing itself somewhere. But she wasn’t about to go back, so she just hiked up her dress and ran up the street, trying to remember which turns Misha had taken to bring them there. It would be easy to find her way back to the castle, she reasoned, because she could see it up on the hill, and she just had to keep heading that way. But the streets twisted and seemed to always scoop her back down the hill, away from the castle, and she felt like she was about to just lie down and turn into an ice maiden when she heard someone call, “Anya!”

  Misha. She turned toward his voice. He trotted up the street, holding her coat. When he got to her, he wrapped the coat around her shoulders and, after a slight hesitation, pulled her to him and rubbed his hands up and down her arms.

  She stood there, hunched, shivering, expecting him to scold her for running around in the cold like an idiot. So she was surprised when he said, “I’d rather freeze to death than get judged by my family too.”

  Anya let out a laugh that ended with an audible chattering of teeth, and Misha said, “I’m sorry. Let’s get you back to the castle.”

  She nodded, and they walked side by side up the hill. He pulled off his kippah before they crested the hill and stuck it in his pocket again.

  “So Kiev is safe,” Anya said, “but you hide your kippah anyway.”

  He shrugged. “My family moved here from Spain a long time ago. The king there made Jews convert to Christianity or he’d kill them. He took the children away from their parents so Christians could raise them. It was bad. So my family left and wound up here.”

  Anya listened with a profound ache of understanding in her heart. “My saba died in Sarkel. If Babulya hadn’t run away, she would have died too.”

  Misha nodded. “My father says we have to be proud of what we are. Even though he mounts the mezuzah on the inside of the door instead of on the outside, where it should be. And I am. But I . . .” He sighed. “I don’t want to be a rabbi. Vasya said she wants me to stay in her guard and one day be the captain of it. She wants me to lead the army’s archers.”

  “That’s incredible,” Anya said.

  Misha stared into the distance. “Yeah. It is. It’s my dream.”

  “Not being a rabbi?” Anya asked.

  He shook his head. “If my father knew, he’d never let me go back to the castle.” Misha fiddled with his coat seam. “And if the other archers knew I’m Jewish, I don’t know if they’d accept me. So I wear my kippah for my father, and take it off in the castle.” He laughed, the sound humorless. “I think that makes me a bad person.”

  Anya shook her head. “I think the magistrate who lied about my father being Slavist is a bad person,” Anya said. “He would rather Papa be dead than Jewish.”

  “That’s pretty bad.” Misha walked in silence for a few feet, then said, “So . . . you and your friends didn’t come here for the Nightingale?”

  Anya chewed on her lip. Ivan had told Vasilisa they’d come for the Nightingale, but Anya had just told Misha’s entire family something different. “We, uh . . . I mean, Ivan came for the Nightingale. And I tagged along because of Papa. And . . .”

  Misha patted her arm. “I’m not going to tell her,” he said. “If my father was caught up in a war, I’d do whatever I could to bring him back.”

  Anya’s lip trembled as she said, “Thank you.”

  Misha smiled, cleared his throat, and said, “My father is the first rabbi you’ve ever met?”

  Anya grimaced. “I wish I hadn’t told everyone that.” She thought of Nava’s outburst. How could Anya have seen a Torah without a rabbi? Without a synagogue?

  A question rose in her mind, digging claws into her. If she had grown up without a rabbi and synagogue, did that make her less Jewish than they were?

  She didn’t want to think about it, so she changed the subject before Misha could press on. “So, since I don’t actually know anything about the Nightingale, could you tell me about him?”

  Misha snorted, sending puffs of white air into the cold night. “I really hope your friend can get rid of him. I could have shot the Nightingale a couple of times. I might have killed him. But Vasya stopped me. Alive, she said. Because that’s what her father wants.” He shook his head. “He’s terrorizing us. I don’t understand why we can’t just kill him.”

  “Is he human?” Anya asked. “Or is he . . . I’ve just never seen a human being with so much magic before.”

  “He’s not human,” Misha said. “Do you know much about history? About the war with the Drevlians?”

  Anya had no idea
what the Drevlians were, so she shook her head.

  Misha took a deep breath. His cheeks were bright from the cold, and his eyes sparkled. Either he really loved history, or he really loved this war in particular. “When my grandfather was a young man, the Grand Prince of Kiev was assassinated by a tribe to the west called the Drevlians. They aren’t men. Not really. They look like us, like people, but then you get close and they look more like trees. They live in the trees, tend them, and change colors with them. My grandfather called them the tree people.”

  Anya straightened. The tree people? Hadn’t Dyedka lost his legs and his eye to the tree people? Was it the same ones?

  “The Grand Princess was widowed and alone with her very young son, the future tsar,” Misha continued. “She knew the Drevlians would kill him, so she acted first. She sent troops to the Drevlian capital and burned it to the ground, leaving no one alive.”

  Anya grimaced. “That doesn’t really sound like a war.”

  “They fought back,” Misha clarified. “With all their magic. It wasn’t an easy victory.”

  “I guess,” Anya said. “So is that what the Nightingale is? One of the Drevlians?”

  Misha shrugged. “I don’t think so. They all died. The Grand Princess made sure of that. But he’s one of the tree people. He changes colors with the seasons. They’re supposed to hibernate in the winter, though, and he doesn’t. Vasya and I think he’s from another tribe, related to the Drevlians. There are a few. Some from the north, the Alvolk. And some even farther north, from the lands of the Varangians. Fierce, all of them. And in the forests they can vanish”—he snapped his fingers—“like that.”

  “Why is he here?” Anya asked.

  “To avenge the Drevlians, maybe,” Misha said. “To collect information for a future attack. We don’t know. It doesn’t matter. He’s dangerous.”

  “Has he killed anyone?” Anya asked.