And saw not herself, but another.
She had seen a painting of the three sisters once. Mileva Vostroma had two sisters: Atiana and Ishkyna. Mika had never realized it before, but she looked very much like them—sharp nose and soft chin and rounded cheekbones. Even the dark curve of her eyebrows was not so different from theirs.
“Come,” came her own voice, “you can’t be as surprised as all this.”
It was her own lips moving, her own throat uttering sounds, but by the ancients she had not willed it. Her skin trembled, and the face before her laughed.
“Who are you?” Mika asked. She was able to use her own voice, but it was something granted, like a glass of cool water given to a long-held prisoner.
“Have you no guesses?” the voice called.
Mika’s skin crawled with each utterance from that other voice. She felt trapped within her own body, her mind clawing and scratching to free herself, but it felt as if she were flaying her own mind to do so.
“Enough,” the voice said.
Still she fought, until one hand reached over and used its nails to claw along the length of the opposite arm. She felt it burn, and somehow this pleased the presence within her. She forced herself to calm, though she felt as if she were giving up a piece of her soul to do so.
“I asked you a question,” the voice said to her, her own eyes widening in the darkness.
“You’re the Duchess Mileva.”
As a laugh was released from her own throat, Mika felt the mirth from the presence within. It sickened her.
“Close, dear one.”
Mika was surprised. She had thought surely… But then she realized there was another. The duchess’s sister, Atiana, the very woman Mika was now portraying in the ballet, was even more gifted than Mileva. It was said she could touch the aether even while awake, a very rare gift among the Matri.
“The Grand Duchess,” Mika said.
Her head shook sadly. “A third guess I’ll grant you, but no more.”
Mika’s skin went cold. A shiver ran through her like death itself.
There had been another sister… A woman lost during the early days of the war with Yrstanla. She was not nearly as gifted as her two sisters. For a time she was thought lost to the aether when she submerged herself in it too deeply. She hadn’t been, though. Like a snake casting off its dried skin she had merely shed her mortal coil. She was little more than a specter now, a soul lost to the world beyond, left to drift about this one in search of substance. Mika’s mother used to scare her with stories of the third sister. Watch yourself, she would say when Mika had been naughty, or death’s daughter will come to get you.
Mika was about to say the name, but she paused. She wasn’t sure what Ishkyna was getting at, nor why she wanted Mika to recognize her, but before she could, footsteps creaked against old floorboards.
“Mika?” Istvan’s weary voice called from the far side of her sitting room. He had his own key. He’d come, perhaps worried over her. He stepped into view, taking lumbering steps weighted by sleep.
No sooner did she see his silhouette than the feelings inside her vanished. At once the tightness within her shed from her frame like the leaves of a willow after an early winter shock.
“Mika?” Istvan called, his voice notably more alarmed.
She tried to speak, but for some reason her body refused to respond. She took one step toward him, and her legs collapsed beneath her.
Istvan was there in an instant, and suddenly the shame of being taken so overwhelmed her, and she began to cry.
“Oh, there, there, my love. Tell me what’s wrong and I’ll fix it.”
Her voice had returned, but she couldn’t answer. She merely cried into his night shirt as he held her close and rocked her back and forth.
“Don’t say a word,” he whispered to her softly. “It will come in time.”
But it wouldn’t, she thought. It wouldn’t. She was about to lose herself to Ishkyna, and there wasn’t a thing she or Istvan could do about it.
“I’m lost,” she said after a time, pleased to hear her own words.
“Then we’ll find you, won’t we?” He kissed the top of her head. “We’ll find you.”
She wanted to believe him.
She wanted to. But in those words she heard no truth.
No truth whatsoever.
At practice the following day, the duchess did not appear.
Yuri came to her as she was stretching against the barre. She tightened at his presence. She had never been overly attracted to Yuri. He was a beautiful man, but she never found her soul roused as she often did with Istvan when he was speaking of his art. Yuri was a wonder to behold on the dance floor, but for her that was as far as it went. Perhaps in another world, she thought, or another time, before she’d met Istvan. But now there was the reality that she had lain with him, or that Ishkyna had in her form. The mere thought sent her gut to churning, and she began walking away.
Yuri snatched her hand. He looked down at the long red scratch marks in her skin. He frowned, but then pulled her close to kiss her.
She caught him by his broad chest and pushed him away.
He shook his head, genuinely confused.
“I’m sorry, Yuri,” she told him, looking over his shoulder to Klara as she stepped onto the stage and began clapping. “I wasn’t myself yesterday.”
She tried to pull free, but his hand gripped her arm, holding her in place. “Is it Istvan?”
“Nyet,” she said, wrenching her arm free, “it isn’t Istvan.”
This time he didn’t stop her as she walked to the center of the stage and practice began in earnest, yet soon enough she was back in his arms, moving as Atiana, and he, Nikandr—the heroes of the Restoration. Yesterday, despite the reasons she’d been handed this role, she had fallen in love with it. She had moved with Yuri in a way she’d rarely experienced before, each a part of the other. And now it all felt foul, as if it had only been so that Yuri could get close to her.
And then a thought occurred to her.
By the ancients who watch over, had Ishkyna arranged for Anzhelika’s fall? Had she inhabited her mind to make her lose her balance, to catch her foot awkwardly so that Mika could take her place?
The very thought of it threw her completely out of time with Yuri. She’d been floating above him as he supported her hips, but as she struggled with what all of this meant, the senselessness of Ishkyna singling her out, she tipped awkwardly forward, but Yuri was as quick and lithe as he was strong. He dipped down and caught her, one arm across her shoulders, the other around her hips, and even then she struck the floor a glancing blow.
“Pull yourself together,” Yuri said as he set her down roughly.
“I’m sorry,” she said lamely.
Yuri frowned and moved toward the far side of the stage to stand by Inga and Sasha.
As he did, Klara kneeled next to her. “Are you feeling well?”
Mika looked to the rayok and saw, entering through the swinging doors at the rear, the Duchess Mileva and two of her streltsi. She had to speak to the duchess, Mika thought, and there’d be no better chance than now.
“Nyet,” she said to Klara. “I’m not feeling well.”
Klara looked worried, and she clearly knew something was going on between her and Yuri, but she left it alone for now. “Go sit,” she said. “We’ll practice the opening.”
Mika took the steps down to the theater floor and sat at a bench along the side so she could watch the stage but still see the duchess from the corner of her eye. She waited as Klara clapped her hands and the company began to move like starlings about the stage. Her stomach was twisted and knotted. She had to confront the duchess, but she had no idea how to begin. The dance continued, and still she sat, frozen in fear. The first act was coming to an end, at which point surely Klara would go and speak with the duchess.
It was now or never.
Mika stood, walked over to where the duchess was sitting, and sat next t
o her.
The streltsi noticed, but remained standing where they were.
“That looked like a nasty fall,” the duchess said.
Mika resisted the urge to touch the bump on her forehead. “It was nothing.”
“She may not have shown it, but Sirina was very excited.”
“Pardon me, Your Highness?”
“My granddaughter. She really is a promising child. Much like you were. Are.”
Mika took a deep breath. She couldn’t speak of the duchess’s granddaughter. Not now. “My Lady Duchess, there is something I must say to you, and I hope you won’t take offense.”
The duchess paused, watching a furious exchange between the male dancers on the stage. “Go on.”
“I’ve been going through a strange transformation these last handful of days. My memory has become spotty. I’ve gone to sleep in a bed but woken in the middle of the city. I’ve warmed a bed with a man I’ve never loved.”
“These are nervous times. The celebration is important to us all, you not least of all, I’m sure. And now that you’ve just stepped into the shoes of the prima, it’s little wonder you haven’t felt yourself.”
“It’s much more than that… It’s as though another has been … making decisions for me. As if another soul has slipped inside mine.”
Mika was not looking directly at the duchess, but she could see her stiffen, could see her staring straight ahead at the dancers, as if taking the time to measure her words. “Is that so?”
“You know of whom I speak.”
Again a pause as the dance wrapped and Klara began speaking with Yuri and Vatrom, pointing them about the stage. They followed her direction, leaping together and landing in slightly different poses than they’d just done.
“I haven’t seen her for many years,” Mileva said softly. “But perhaps she’s been drawn by the thought of seeing Atiana and me together once more.”
“She’s…” Mika swallowed. “She’s done this before.”
“She has,” the duchess allowed.
“And how long does she…”
“It depends. Sometimes it can be a day or two. Other times, months.”
Mika’s insides tightened. Months?
“Is there anything you might do? To make her leave me?”
“I doubt it.”
The words were spoken so casually it made Mika wonder just how many times it had happened before. “But, forgive me, Your Highness, but you are her sister, and the Duchess of Vostroma.”
Mileva snapped the fan she held in one hand and began fanning herself. “I know very well my title, dear child. And I know very well who my sisters are.” She turned and leveled a flinty stare against Mika. “What you fail to realize is how fixed Ishkyna can become. Try to dissuade her from her chosen pet, and she will want you all the more. In all likelihood she will move on in a week or two, and you’ll be none the worse for the wear. We’ll compensate you when she moves on at last. You’ll want for nothing for a long while after, believe me. Perhaps you can even start a school of your own. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
Mika could only stare. Any words that might come out of her mouth now were sure to get her clapped in irons or slapped by the streltsi standing at the door behind her.
Mileva reached over and patted her knee. “Now go on. Return to the stage. I’m sure it will all be over soon enough.”
Mika felt herself rise, felt herself move to the aisle and walk toward the stage where Inga was watching her with a fretful expression. But Mika paid her no mind. She was thinking of her days as a child, the way her mother would scrimp and save pennies from the money their father gave them to buy food at the market or new shoes from the cobbler. She’d brought Mika to lessons in secret, first to Mordva, a still-gifted dancer from Bolgravya who ran a small dance school for children. They’d hidden it from their father for years, until, mere months before his death, they’d finally brought him to a recital. He’d cried that day. He’d watched her and stood silently when she was done, tears streaming down his face, and when she’d stepped off the stage, worried that he would rage at her for the money she and her mother had spent in secret, he’d taken her up in his bearlike arms and hugged her so tight she could barely breathe.
She’d gone on to rise in the ranks of two more schools until Klara had found her at the age of thirteen. And since then she’d been in the royal ballet, working hard to please Klara, to please her mother, but most of all, to please her father, wherever he might be watching from the world beyond.
And now it was all being taken away by a princess. A half-dead princess who felt it was her right to take whomever she fancied. To use them like puppets and toss them away when she was done. How many, she wondered. How many had been treated so? How many had been paid for the privilege afterward like a whore in the red-lamp streets of Evochka’s west end?
She didn’t truly care what the answer was, she decided. She wouldn’t be that way. She was her mother’s daughter, and she wouldn’t allow anyone to treat her thus.
She turned and stepped back up the aisle. “Tell her to stop.”
There was mild surprise in Mileva’s eyes, but only the kind that made it clear she didn’t think Mika had had it in her.
“I will not.”
Mika stomped her foot and raged, “Tell her to stop!”
In the moments that followed her shouted words, the theater was reduced to utter silence.
The streltsi approached, but at a wave of Mileva’s hand, they stopped. “I told you, did I not,” Mileva said as she stood and rounded on Mika, “that my sister was a dancer once? I would never dream of admitting it at the time, but she was more than fair at it. And then my father gave her to that pig of a husband of hers. He took that and many other things from her. So many of her dreams, snuffed with that one simple union. And in the years that followed the dying of her dreams, the wasting came, and the constant attacks by the Maharraht, and the war with Yrstanla that destroyed the spire that you and children like you take for granted. My sister died in that conflict. There may be a part of her that remains, but so much of her was lost, given in the battle to save your world, something you seem pleased enough to dance tribute to but have no real concept of.” Mileva pulled herself taller while pointing a finger at Mika’s chest. “So if my sister wants to experience those things that were taken from her, you should grant it to her with a smile and a bow and a thank you for all that she’s done for you, for it was no small thing.”
“I owe her much,” Mika said with a quavering voice. “I owe you and your sister and your mother and father and everyone else involved in the war. I know that, and I do not take it for granted, but that gives her no right to use me as a plaything.”
Mileva ran her gaze over Mika’s form. “I beg to differ.”
“I won’t allow her to have my body.”
At this Mileva laughed. She laughed and turned away and strode toward her streltsi as if Mika were little more than a scuff on her boot.
“See if you can stop her,” she said over her shoulder.
And then she was gone, leaving Mika feeling cold and abandoned.
She’d made an enemy this day, but she wouldn’t bend. Ishkyna wouldn’t have her.
And yet, despite her vow, despite her feelings of anger and frustration and impotence, she found herself leaving arm-in-arm with Yuri, found herself slipping into his bed once more, found herself gliding across his naked form, touching him—and being touched—in ways she’d never done before, not with Istvan and not with anyone else before him.
She went home when Ishkyna had left, and tried to speak to her in the mirror once more. But Ishkyna never responded.
There were many times when she tried to speak to Istvan of it. She sat in his studio one morning, sipping tea as he prepared clay for a new sculpture. She cleared her throat, attracting his attention, but no words came. She willed them to, but they refused. Ishkyna refused. And then Ishkyna did something that horrified her more than all the rest comb
ined. She forced Mika to stand, made her take halting steps forward until Istvan noticed her. With Istvan watching, rapt, Ishkyna slowly pulled open the robe from Mika’s frame, allowing it to fall on the paint-mottled floor. And then she took Istvan in her arms, ignoring the wet clay on his hands, and made love to him there while Mika silently screamed for her to stop.
When they were done and Istvan was washing himself clean, she slipped out and returned to her home. She cried for hours, until at last she had cried herself to sleep.
In the days that followed there were times, like with Yuri, when she was all too aware of Ishkyna’s presence, and other times when she would wake up in the middle of the night, wandering the streets, confused as to the third sister’s purpose. There were other times still when she felt as if Ishkyna were merely watching, most often when she was dancing. It felt as though Ishkyna were a spectator, or perhaps a student, learning from Mika as she danced. To Mika’s dread, as opening night crept ever closer, she found that Ishkyna was watching less and dancing more. She was learning to dance in Mika’s body.
It was the last thing Mika had as her own. Her dancing. And now Ishkyna was stealing that from her as well.
When the first day of the Restoration celebration finally came, Mika woke feeling herself once more. Ishkyna had left, though who knew how long it might be before she returned?
Mika stood in front of her mirror, looking herself over. She hardly recognized herself, though whether it was due to the bags beneath her eyes or how foreign it felt to be alone in her body once more, she wasn’t sure. She felt numb, standing there, naked.
She felt alone.
So completely alone.
She didn’t know what gave her the idea, but once it had sprouted in her mind, it grew like a vicious weed. The scary part was not the idea itself, but how utterly attractive it now seemed.
She stepped into the kitchen and took up the carving knife from its place by the moldy loaf of bread that had been setting there for days now. The knife had been her father’s. One of the few things she owned that had been his. She returned to the mirror and stared at the bright gleam of it as she trailed the tip over her exposed wrist, the same one Ishkyna had scraped with Mika’s own fingernails.
Lest Our Passage Be Forgotten & Other Stories Page 9