Maybe Maria was as good as her word. It could be true—all of it. But just because the church was here, she told herself, that didn’t mean Vasily was, or that he’d be crazy enough to want to risk his life on the word of a stranger.
She moved with the shadows into the doorway of the church. Chyort! The lock was a big old-fashioned iron contraption that would shrug off any attempts of her knife. With another muttered oath she skirted around the side of the building, all the time scanning for any movement in the darkness, and at the back where the fields crept close to a scrubby yard, she found a small door, its lock flimsier. Immediately she set about it with the tip of her blade.
Sofia worked quickly, concentrating hard and careful to keep the sound low, but her pulse missed a beat when the shadows abruptly grew paler around her. A light must have been turned on somewhere close. She edged stealthily back to the corner of the building, her body becoming part of its solid mass, and holding her breath she peered around into the street.
The solitary light gleamed out at her like a warning. It came from the window of a nearby izba. And as she watched, a man crossed inside the rectangle of yellow lamplight from one side to the other, a tall figure moving in a hurry, and then he was gone. A moment later the izba was plunged once more into darkness and the sound of a front door shutting reached her ears.
What was he doing out so early? She hadn’t bargained on the village coming to life before dawn. Didn’t he sleep? A bat darted across her line of vision, making her jerk away awkwardly, and her hair felt slick on the back of her neck. In the street, footfalls sounded as clear as her own heartbeat in her ears, and she saw the figure pass. His determined stride and speed of movement made Sofia nervous, but still she crept forward to see more.
He was heading away from her down the street, picked out in detail by a brief trick of the moon. It allowed her to make out that his hair was clipped short and he was wearing a rough workman’s shirt, which struck her as odd because he moved with the easy assurance and confidence of someone who was used to a position of command. Sofia breathed again and her hand relaxed on the knife.
Could it be Vasily?
She almost stepped out into the street and called his name. Except of course it would be Mikhail Pashin, the name Anna had said he was using. “Mikhail Pashin,” she whispered, but too softly for anything but the moon to hear. She struggled to subdue a wave of excitement and to rein in an unruly surge of hope. Surely she couldn’t be so lucky? She’d learned too well that nothing was ever this easy, and yet after all she’d been through in the last months, maybe it was time for a bit of luck. She scuttled along the front of the church, and as she peered out into the shadows that were wrapped around the village, her luck held and the moon gave up flirting behind the clouds and bathed the street in solid silver.
He was there, in front of her, clearly outlined, moonlight robbing him of color, so that he could have been a ghost. A ghost from the past. Is that what you are, Mikhail Pashin?
She saw him turn off the street up a steep rutted track that led uphill to the vague outline of a long dark building that she could only just make out. She was tempted to follow his footsteps, but something about him made her certain she would be discovered. There was an alertness that even in the dim light came off him like sparks.
She sank to the ground, waiting, invisible in the black overhang of the church, her back pressed firmly against the wall to keep her still, and her patience was rewarded ten minutes later when she heard the sound of a horse descending the track, its hooves lively on the dry earth. She exhaled with relief because the rider was the same man. He’d obviously been up to a stable and saddled his horse for an early morning start, his cropped hair and broad shoulders painted silver by the moonlight once again.
But to her surprise, behind him a man on foot was also trotting down the track, a small, slight figure, middle-aged but very light on his feet. They were talking in low voices, but there was a certain curtnessin their manner toward each other that spoke of ill feeling. Sofia’s gaze remained fixed on the rider.
Anna. Her lips didn’t move but the words sounded sharp as ice in her head. I think I’ve found Mikhail Pashin. Her hand touched her face, and she was shocked to discover her cheeks burning.
Just then the two men reached the point where the rutted track joined the road, and the rider turned abruptly to the left without a word. The second man, the small one, turned right, but not before he had run the palm of his hand lovingly down the massive curve of the horse’s rump as it swung away from him. Then, with his shoulders lifting and falling repeatedly, as if he were trying to uncage a painful tension in his neck, he stood staring after the horse and man.
The only sound in the night was the clink of a bridle and the soft shuffle of hooves in the dirt.
“Comrade Chairman Fomenko,” the small man called out sharply, “don’t push the horse too hard today. His leg is still sore and needs . . .”
In response the rider shortened the reins and pushed the animal into a canter and then a gallop. Steadily, man and horse disappeared toward the far end of the village until their outline merged with the night and they were gone.
“Comrade Chairman Fomenko,” the small man growled once more, and he spat fiercely into the dust. Alone in the street and with the lightness stolen from his step, he headed up the road.
Sofia was shaking. She stumbled again into the blackness behind the church and rested her burning cheek against its cool bricks. The rider wasn’t Vasily, he wasn’t Mikhail Pashin after all, but someone called Fomenko. Fomenko! Damn the man! And damn her own stupidity! She’d gotten it wrong. As she wrapped her arms around herself, disappointment lay like a cold lead coffin in her stomach.
What else had she gotten wrong?
EIGHT
THE stranger is here. I can feel it. She’s close.”
The words vibrated in the dark room and stirred the night air inside the small izba at the far end of Tivil, where two dark-haired figures leaned close across a table within an uncertain circle of light. A measured sprinkle of aromatic powder sent a spiral of flashes swirling out from the single candle flame that burned before them. Together they inhaled its delicate fragrance.
“I’ve drawn her close,” Rafik murmured. “So close I can hear her heartbeat in Tivil.”
His hand hovered over a black cloth on which lay a heavy crystal sphere. It gleamed, shimmered, and seemed to pulse in the darkness as the gypsy’s hand circled above it, slow and attentive, listening to its voice.
“What do you hear?” whispered the olive-skinned girl.
“I hear her heart tearing. I hear blood spilling, drop by drop, and yet . . . I hear her laughing.” The sound was sweet as birdsong in his ears. “Now tell me, Zenia, what you see.”
The girl swirled the copper goblet that stood in front of her, so that the dark damp leaves inside it caught a glimmer of the uncertain light. Rafik loved to watch his daughter at work, to observe the passion for it that burned in her black eyes as she bent close. Though her gypsy skills differed greatly from his own, they seemed to bring her greater joy than his ever brought to him. He could feel her excitement burst forth, filling the drab little room with life, yet at the same time as fragile as blossom in springtime. It pleased his soul, and he gave thanks once more to the spirit of her long-dead mother. His own skills lay more like a heavy weight in his mind, like a meal that was too rich for the stomach and has left it feeling glutted and uncomfortable, churning over on itself on the edge of pain. That was how his mind felt now.
“Zenia, what do you see?”
“I see danger, a dark gray coat of danger that she is trailing behind her to Tivil.”
Silence, cold as moonlight, settled in the room.
“More?” Rafik demanded.
The girl shook her tangle of wild black curls and shifted the goblet. She touched her lips to its rim and closed her eyes.
“It’s wreathed in smoke,” she breathed, but her eyelids fluttered, fast and fre
tful. “Behind the veil of smoke I see something else, something that sparkles brighter than the sun itself.” She pursed her full red lips and shook her head to clear the image. “She seeks it, but it carries a shadow on it. It is the shadow of death.”
“Does she understand why she is here?”
“She understands so little . . .”
Her hand was starting to tremble, and Rafik could sense the layers of darkness descending on her mind. Quickly he reached out, removed the warm goblet from her fingers, and silently touched a finger to his daughter’s wide forehead. Her eyes brightened.
“She must choose,” he said. “A fork in the road. One path to life, one path to death.”
NINE
SOFIA was standing outside the kuznitsa, the smithy.
Nerves were prickling on her neck as though the darkness itself were running fingers down it. She ducked out of the way of a thin wavering strip of moonlight that rippled up the street like water. The old weather-beaten door was locked and she worked fast, digging the point of her blade into the dried-out wood around the lock. In less than two minutes she was inside the kuznitsa.
It was a long time since she’d been in any kind of smithy, but instantly the smell of scorched iron enveloped her, stinging her mind with childhood memories as it crept out of the heavy beams. She fumbled in the rawhide pouch that hung from her waist—damn it, what was wrong with her tonight? She was still shaken by what had happened, by her unguarded eagerness to claim any man—who looked roughly the right age—as Vasily. It had shocked her. She wouldn’t make the same mistake again. More caution. She pushed a strand of fair hair out of her eyes and at last found her precious box of matches, took one out, and struck it.
In the sudden flare, the darkness edged backward and Sofia felt better. She licked her dry lips and looked around. The smithy was narrow. Above her she could just make out that the roof was made of sods of turf packed down on blackened laths and one wall was hung neatly with the tools of the trade: tongs and hammers, bellows and pincers, all kinds of blades and chisels. This smith, whoever he might be, was a tidy man. Just as the flame burned down to her fingers, Sofia reached out into the darkness that descended and her hand closed around the haft of a small ax. The church lock wouldn’t stand a chance against it.
Moving fast, she emerged into the street and retraced her steps to the church, or assembly hall as it now was. But as she approached it, she was aware of feeling light-headed. She hadn’t eaten all day, and only a handful of berries yesterday. This was her opportunity to fill her stomach. As the night breeze drifted up from the river that threaded through the valley and brought her the warning scent of wood smoke, she crept on past the church and chose the last izba before the tangle of rocks and forest. From there, escape into the trees would be easy if she was disturbed; she ducked low and slipped around to its vegetable plot at the back.
She peered through the blackness at the shabby wooden walls, patched in places with rough timber, a big fat water butt and a roof line as knobbly as a goat’s back, but everything looked quiet. Searching among the rows of vegetables, she yanked up a couple of cabbages and thrust them into her pouch, then dug down with the ax and scrabbled from the earth whatever came to hand: a young beetroot, an onion, a radish. She glanced in the direction of the house, nerves taut, but the black shape of the izba remained solid and silent. Her stomach growled at the prospect of food, so she rubbed the radish against her sleeve and opened her mouth to bite off the end.
But before her teeth could close, a blow to the back of her head lifted her off her knees and sent her spiraling into blackness.
SOFIA shuddered. Where the hell was she? For one appalling moment she believed she was back in the iron grip of the labor camp. Maybe a crack on her head from one of the bastard guards amusing himself with a rifle butt. But no, she could hear a young goat bleating and stamping its feet somewhere nearby, and she knew for a fact there were no goats in the Zone. Anyway, she was lying on a bed, not a bunk. Her hands brushed against soft cotton sheets under her, and she knew the camp commandant would not be so obliging. So. Not Davinsky camp then.
But where?
She tried opening her eyes, surprised she hadn’t thought of it before. But the light stabbed spear points straight into her brain, and she heard a voice cry out in pain. Instantly a spoon touched her lips, a male voice murmured soft words she couldn’t understand, and a sickly sweet liquid trickled down her throat. Seconds later, she felt herself sliding backward, skimming over fields as agile as a dipping swallow, and coming to rest in the warm black pool of the Neva at low tide.
She slept.
SOFIA struggled to the surface.
Time. It floated from her grasp.
Faces drifted in and out.
Once, a voice cursed, a female voice. Sofia found herself telling her all about the wolf and the boy with the tawny eyes in the forest and about the long dangerous journey from the northern taiga all the way to Tivil. She told how her feet bled until she stole a pair of valenki and how at one time when she was starving in the forest, she could actually hear music in the form of bright flashes of a Rachmaninov symphony, like lights in the dark green world that had devoured her.
It was only when she’d finished that she realized she’d forgotten to open her mouth to say any of these things aloud, but by then she was too tired. So she slept.
A noise. A scratchy sound that scraped on the empty cavern of her mind. Remembrance came quickly. She lay still and opened her eyes just the faintest of cracks. The effort it took astonished her, but the thin strip of light that flickered between her lashes brought reality tumbling into focus and it didn’t look so bad. She began to hope.
A mass of wild dark hair, that was what she saw first, around a young female face. A wide forehead and strong red lips. She was sittingin a stiff-backed chair beside Sofia’s bed, bent over something on her lap, and that was where the noise was coming from. Without moving her head, Sofia tried to take in her surroundings, raising her eyelids a fraction more, but the sight of the room set her sluggish heart racing.
It was like no room she’d ever seen. The low ceiling was plastered and painted midnight blue with a hundred stars glittering and shimmering across it and a pale ethereal moon in each corner. Strange colored planets with rings of white ice seemed to swirl among them, creating a blur that Sofia felt was not just in her unsteady head. And at the center of this strange ceiling lay a huge painted eye at least a meter across. It was shaped like a diamond, its pupil as black as tar, and it stared down at her on the bed. It gave her the shudders. She looked away. The movement was slight, but instantly the dark head lifted and large black eyes fixed on hers. They were suspicious.
“You’re awake.” It wasn’t a question.
Sofia tried to nod, but the thundering pain at the back of her skull burrowed deeper, so instead she blinked. Her mouth was bone dry and her tongue too heavy to use.
“You must sleep.”
Her guardian stood up, and Sofia could see the objects in her hand. They were a pestle and mortar. She caught a glimpse of small shiny black seeds, some ground to a powder.
“No,” Sofia mouthed.
The faintest of smiles touched the full red lips but not her eyes. “Yes.”
Sofia felt a sharpening of her senses. She’d been wrong in thinking this person a full-grown woman. Despite the abundant curves of her breasts and hips, which were clothed in a black dress delicately embroidered with colorful stitching so that glossy birds and butterflies peeped out between the folds of her skirt, she was little more than a girl, sixteen or seventeen years old. With a young girl’s translucent skin and long unruly curls that sprang into life at every turn of her head.
Across the room she started to pour liquid out of a dark brown bottle into a spoon. It smelled of musty earth and damp forests. Wary of what was going on here, Sofia took a deep breath and sat up. Instantly the room and the girl cartwheeled in a spinning blaze of color that set Sofia’s teeth on edge, but slowl
y she forced everything back into place. Even so, she leaned over the edge of the bed and vomited, nothing more than a dribble of saliva onto the hessian matting that covered the floor.
“Who are you?” she managed to ask the girl.
“I am Zenia Ilyan.” Her voice was low and full of a kind of heat, as if her blood flowed fast.
“Why am I here?”
The girl came over to the bed, reached out a hand, and touched the nape of Sofia’s neck. Gently the fingers started to massage it.
“You’re here because you needed help. Now lie back.”
The girl eased Sofia’s shoulders down onto the pillow, and with one hand she wiped the sweat from Sofia’s forehead while the other nudged a spoon against her lips.
“No,” Sofia whispered.
“Yes. It will help you.”
“No, I’m not sick.”
“You don’t know what you are.” Then very slowly, as if speaking to a particularly stupid child, she said, “You will heal faster if you sleep. When you are well, we will wake you.”
Sofia’s eyelids started to grow heavy, but she jerked them wide open when she noticed a row of candles burning on a shelf, sending shadows and the smell of tallow swirling through the air. Only then did it occur to Sofia that the room possessed no window. Like a cellar. Or a prison. The pain in her head ricocheted around her skull.
“Sleep,” the girl murmured.
“Sleep,” Sofia echoed and opened her mouth.
TEN
RUN, Pyotr, run.”
Pyotr Pashin tore down the dusty track, legs pumping, arms driving him on into the lead. Hot on his tail, nine other boys panted and scrabbled after him. And he felt a kick of joy as sweet as molasses in his stomach at the sight of nobody between him and the winning post. It was nothing more than a rusty stake hammered into the hard ground, but right now in the bright sunshine it gleamed a burnished gold.
Suddenly he felt breath moist on his bare shoulder and turned his head just enough to catch a glimpse of its owner. One final burst was all it would take to beat Yuri and a quick dip of his chest, like a waterfowl pulling weed, to get over the line in first place, but instead Pyotr put on the brakes—not hard enough to show, of course, but enough to do damage. In ten strides Yuri had out-paced him and was hurtling past the winning post. He watched the other boys crowd around Yuri, tumbling over themselves like puppies to be his best friend.
The Red Scarf Page 6