I think of the cold I felt through the map and I shiver all over again. But I just shrug, like I don’t know what Mira is talking about.
She turns her shoulder to me and snaps, ‘Don’t forget, it was the yagas who stole the firebird’s egg. It was the yagas who started the War in the Skies.’ She wrings out her wet hair. ‘I think it was very wicked of them to take the egg for themselves.’
‘Well,’ says Masha. ‘It didn’t happen exactly like that.’ She pours more water on the stovetop and waits for the sizzle to subside. ‘Fire is dangerous, you know. A bellyful is more than enough.’
‘What does that mean?’ I ask.
‘It means that from the moment Golovnin brought the firebird’s egg back, things changed. I know—a small, quiet bannikha can overhear a lot of interesting talk in the banya, if she cares to. The birds worried that the Tsarina wanted the egg for herself. The firebird, once it hatched, could be tamed and trained. Now, training the bird wasn’t easy—unless you were a yaga, that is. But a trained firebird could be a powerful weapon. The Tsarina already had fleets of balloons. With a firebird at her command, she could take over the skies. And the humans worried, equally, that the birds might take the egg.’
‘Is that why the Imperial Coven took the egg?’ I ask.
‘The yagas wanted to keep it safely away from birds and humans alike,’ says Masha.
‘I find that hard to believe,’ says Mira, in her most teacher’s-pet-like voice. ‘Yagas are evil, deceitful creatures.’
I stop working my washcloth over my shoulders. A trickle of soapy water runs down the back of my neck. It is hard to think of yagas keeping something safe.
‘I can guess you’ve never met a yaga,’ Masha says to Mira. ‘The yagas I met in the Imperial Banya were kind and clever. And I don’t doubt they meant to safeguard the egg. Not that it helped. It wasn’t the egg that started the War in the Skies. It was the idea of the egg. From the time it arrived in the Stone Palace there was plotting and planning. I heard it all in the banya. If you ask me, Golovnin should have left it well enough alone.’
She sniffs. ‘I was happy in the Imperial Banya. Then, a squabble over—what?—a silly egg, a bit of sky—put an end to it all,’ she says. ‘And creatures like me suffered the most. Sent to the very edge of the Kingdom—some even further. I expect there’s hardly any of us left at all, now.’ She blinks hard, like she is holding back tears.
Mira takes one of Masha’s long, spindly hands in hers and presses it tight. Masha cheers up a little.
‘Still,’ she says, ‘I hardly like to think of the state of the banyas in Stolitsa now that the bannikhi are gone. I expect their chimneys are stopped up and their corners are thick with cobwebs. I’m sure their stoves hardly sizzle at all.’
‘Actually—’ Mira begins, but I talk over the top of her.
‘They’re in a terrible state,’ I say, loudly and firmly. ‘Dusty and dirty and generally falling to pieces.’ There’s no reason for Masha to know that modern plumbing has come to Stolitsa.
Masha smiles to herself. ‘I suspected as much,’ she says.
CHAPTER SIX
Spinning the Globe
WE LEAVE THE banya in a cloud of steam, pink-cheeked and scrubbed clean. As we walk back to the Centre, we see a party of Pritnip’s soldiers walking through the forest, rifles slung over their shoulders.
We reach the ladder that leads to the Centre, and Mira springs nimbly up it from one rung to the next. Two rungs from the top, she stops, and I stop below her.
A gust of wind wobbles the ladder and my stomach wobbles, too. I try not to think about how far from the ground I am. ‘I’m sure you have an excellent reason for stopping,’ I say to Mira through clenched teeth, but she only looks down to me and presses a finger to her lips.
‘Listen,’ she hisses.
All I can hear is the creak of the ladder. But then, over the creaking, I make out Anastasia’s voice coming from above.
‘The rumour I sprinkled poison sugar on Anna Brenko’s cherry dumplings is laughably false,’ she says. ‘Nevertheless, Madame Brenko did become suddenly inexplicably ill on opening night. It fell to me, her humble understudy, to play the role of Antonia in Symphony on the Moon. The critics were unanimous: that night, a shining star was born!’
I roll my eyes. It seems Anastasia is still working on her memoir.
We climb up the ladder and creep into the kitchen, so she won’t enlist us to take down her ramblings. Here we find Father and Colonel Pritnip deep in conversation, their heads bent over a map on the kitchen table.
Seeing the map is enough to tense my nerves.
The best thing to do, I think, is to stay far away from it. But even as I’m thinking that very thought, I’m walking towards the map.
The next-best thing to do, I tell myself, is not to touch it. But I am reaching out a finger to the edge of the map.
‘We shall extend our surveillance in a north-easterly direction,’ Father is saying and Pritnip is nodding in agreement. I brush my hand across the map and my fingers fall over the Borderlands. I don’t feel anything under my hand. No sharp cold, no prickling ice. Nothing except paper.
I am relieved, in an empty way. Now I know the coldness of last night really was just a dream.
But then I feel a strange taste rising in the back of my throat. The taste of earth, tangy and mineral. I try to swallow it away but it grows stronger.
‘Olga,’ says Father, ‘What do you think you’re doing?’
I pull my hand away. The taste disappears.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘I didn’t mean to interrupt.’
Father looks at me and knits his brows. ‘You’re pale,’ he says. ‘Are you feeling unwell?’
I run my tongue over my teeth to make sure the taste is gone. ‘I’m fine,’ I say. ‘A little tired.’
‘I’m a little tired,’ I tell Mira later, when she asks why I keep staring into space while we are playing a game of cards in front of the fire.
‘I’m a little tired,’ I say again, when Anastasia asks why I’m not eating my bowl of stewed mushrooms.
But when I do go to bed, I can’t sleep.
Great Names in Tsarish Cartography with all its maps is under my pillow. I can feel it there. I slip my hand under the pillow and my fingers brush against the book’s spine.
I know it’s not natural to feel maps. To taste maps. But if I can keep it secret, no one need ever find out and I won’t be sent to Bleak Steppe. I just need to be careful, that’s all. I take the book from under my pillow and stuff it between the mattress and the bedsprings.
But sleep still doesn’t come and now my fingers keep itching towards the mattress edge.
I push back the covers and get out of bed.
The house is still and silent. Everyone is sleeping. I pace up and down in the parlour for a while but the parlour is too small for me to pace up and down in any satisfying kind of way. So, I climb the ladder up to the observation deck, where I can look through the glass at the rippling mountains and the dark sky. It makes a much better backdrop for someone anxiously wondering if she might be sent to Bleak Steppe.
It’s a clear night. The sky is dusted with stars and an almost-full moon glints off the periscope and the curved surface of the globe in the corner.
The globe!
As soon as I notice it I feel a thrill of unbidden excitement.
Then reason sets in. Don’t touch it, I think to myself. You are plain, unexceptional, utterly normal, Olga Oblomova. And you’d better stay that way.
But reason is nothing against the magnetic pull of the globe. I reach out with just the very tips of my fingers and I spin it. Continents and oceans blur together. It’s hypnotic. When they finally still, I let my hand fall on a glossy patch of painted blue. The Squalid Sea.
But instead of touching the smooth surface of the globe, my fingers plunge into water. I feel the cold swish of the sea. So cold it makes the hairs on my arm stand on end. I look down as a wave of salty wat
er gushes from the globe and sloshes onto the floor of the observation deck.
I know I should do something but I stay where I am. Fixed to the floor. Standing in briny water that’s halfway up my shins now. Water pours out of the globe, wave after wave after wave. In the corner of the room I spot a bright school of fish.
The water is licking at my waist, but I don’t pull my hand from the globe. I feel electric. Like I’ve unlocked a hidden door and I’m about to step through into something wonderful.
In the corner of my eye I sense a flickering movement. I flick my head around, all my excitement turning to dread. I am waiting to be discovered. But there is no one there.
No—wait.
There is something outside the window. A bird on the sill, squat and dark. It watches me through a small beady eye.
I let my hand drop from the globe. The water shrinks back and disappears. The floor is dry. I am dry. There’s not even a salt crystal left on my fingers.
The bird opens its wings and flies off into the night.
What did it see? Why was it here?
I lean against the window. I feel ill. All the energy that coursed through me is gone, and I am left only with the terrifying certainty that I am—that I must be—a yaga.
I come away from the window. No one else must find out. I must avoid the globe. I must keep my distance from maps. As for Great Names in Tsarish
Cartography…I bite my lip. I need to get rid of it.
I creep down the ladder and back into the bedroom. I ease Great Names in Tsarish Cartography out from under the mattress. I go to the kitchen and start to build a fire in the stove.
I am still sitting by the kitchen stove when Mira walks in, yawning.
‘I didn’t hear you get up,’ she says. ‘I normally do, you know. You’re not what Madame Tansevat would call light-footed.’
I didn’t get up because I’ve been up all night. But I don’t tell Mira this. Instead, I tear a page from Great Names in Tsarish Cartography and force myself to feed it into the stove.
‘Olga!’ Mira cries and rushes forward. ‘What are you doing? Your favourite book!’
She grabs Great Names in Tsarish Cartography out of my tired hands.
‘I’m sick of reading it! I want to burn the whole thing,’ I say.
‘No, you don’t,’ she says and gives it back to me.
I sigh. She’s right. I could never give up Golovnin’s map of the Infinite Steppe, Karelin’s chart of the Dezhdy, the sad story of Boris Londonov and his failed expedition into the Unmappable Blank. I’ve been trying all night to throw the book into the fire, but I just can’t make myself do it.
‘You’re very strange this morning, Olga,’ Mira says.
‘No, I’m not,’ I say firmly. ‘There’s nothing strange about me.’
Mira studies me with a look of confusion, but the look quickly passes. Soon she is bright and smiling again, and she gives my shoulder a squeeze before she lugs the pot onto the stove for our breakfast porridge.
Later, we are sitting at the breakfast table with Anastasia and Father. Anastasia is comparing her tarnished teaspoon unfavourably to the silverware we left behind in Stolitsa, and I am doing my best to ignore her, when a large grey bird glides past, swooping close to the window. There is menace in the slow, deliberate way it flies.
Father topples his chair in his rush to get to the window but the bird is gone. ‘Well,’ he blusters. ‘I wonder what that display was in aid of. Ptashka’s sending me a message, I’ve no doubt. Trying to intimidate me.’
Pritnip is sent for, and in no time he and Father are sitting at the table. The breakfast dishes lie untouched between them as they discuss the problem of the birds. Father is frowning and shaking his head. More than once he smooths his moustache.
He notices me in the corner watching and shoos me away. He closes the door, but if I stand close outside, I can still hear everything they say.
‘The egg is hidden in the Unmappable Blank—and not ever Londonov himself could find his way out of the Unmappable Blank, much less find something hidden inside it,’ says Pritnip.
‘But if everything I’ve heard is true, a trained firebird is a weapon far more powerful than an army’s worth of guns and cannons,’ says Father. ‘A firebird can burn an entire village into nothing with one blast of its fiery breath. If it shook a feather loose it could singe half a city out of existence’—I hear the snapping of fingers—‘just like that!’
‘Indeed,’ says Pritnip.
There is a long silence.
When Father speaks again, his voice is changed. He sounds almost excited. ‘Think,’ he says, ‘what a victory it would be if we had the egg for ourselves.’
I slink away and into the parlour, back to Anastasia and Mira. I don’t want to hear any more.
A few minutes later, the door slams and Pritnip storms past us. Mira twists her hair around her finger. ‘Why is Pritnip so angry?’ she asks.
‘I’m sure it’s nothing,’ says Anastasia.
But it can’t be nothing, because outside we hear him shouting orders at his men. Soon, the sky is filled with military balloons, far more balloons than I’ve ever seen. Father comes out into the parlour and stares at the balloons through the window.
‘Aleksei?’ says Anastasia.
He turns, with a broad smile on his face, and says, ‘Start packing your bags, my dear. If this venture is successful, well…’ He adjusts his top button. ‘I expect it won’t be long until I’m reinstated as Head Architect for the Sky Metro.’
‘Why, that’s wonderful!’ cries Anastasia at the same time as I say, ‘What venture?’
Father turns back to the window. The balloons are floating away from the Centre, heading east. ‘I’ve commanded Pritnip to set up a military camp here, beneath the Centre. They have mounted a preliminary expedition into the Unmappable Blank,’ he says. ‘To retrieve the firebird’s egg.’
My stomach drops. Anastasia’s smile wavers. Even Mira, who is ten years old and hardly well-versed in the intricacies of bird–human conflict, looks unconvinced.
But Father strides out of the room and up to the observation deck before anyone can question him.
rom the day Golovnin brought the firebird’s egg to court, relations between the Tsarina and the Avian Counsel were tense. At first, they argued over who rightfully owned the egg. Their quarrel grew—they could not agree on the division of land and sky, over the Tsarina’s use of military balloons, over who should control the clouds.
It’s hard to say who attacked first: there are reports of swarms of birds in the north making raids on the Tsarina Pyotrovna’s military camps. There are reports, too, that one of Pyotrovna’s military balloons flew too low over the Cloud Palace and damaged one of its turrets. Aggressions such as these became commonplace. It was perhaps inevitable that after a particularly bitter argument between Tsarina Pyotrovna and Ptashka I, head of the Avian Counsel, that the alliance between birds and humans was formally broken, and war was officially declared.
Excerpted from Glorious Victory: An Impartial Account of the War in the Skies by I. P. Pavlova. Chapter Eleven: The Battle Begins.
CHAPTER SEVEN
A Bag Filled with Memories
IT IS SEVEN days since we arrived at the Centre. Six days since Mira and I met Masha in the bannikha. Five days since Pritnip’s soldiers were stationed here on Father’s orders.
In the kitchen, I make the porridge. As I stir, I look through the window to the mountainside and the forest.
Or what’s left of the forest. Half of the trees have been cleared on Father’s orders, to make way for the military camp. Now, the slope is dotted with tents. The silk envelopes of military balloons are spread over the ground. They’ll be inflated as soon as the sun breaks through the cloud. Soldiers move between tents, warming their hands over campfires, passing tin cups of tea and tin dishes of shaving water, fastening their red jackets.
A thick gloopy noise breaks me out of my thoughts. The porridge has bub
bled over and is splattering the wall behind the stove.
‘Olga, pay attention!’ says Anastasia. ‘Breakfast is spoiling.’
I take the pot off the stove and slop the porridge into bowls. From the communications room, the beep-tick-beep of the telegram machine sounds.
The telegram is still warm when Father, puffed up with pride, brings it to the table.
‘Read it, Aleksei!’ presses Anastasia.
Father reads:
TSARINA YEKATERINA CHARGES ME TO COMMEND YOU ON EXCELLENT PROGRESS IN INITIATING THE HUNT FOR THE FIREBIRD’S EGG STOP HER IMPERIAL HIGHNESS IS MOST PLEASED BY REPORTS OF YOUR DECISIVE ACTION STOP RESPECTFULLY YOURS IMPERIAL UNDER SECRETARY IVAN DEMENTIEVICH STOP
‘Wonderful,’ cries Anastasia, ‘ just wonderful!’
Wonderful, I think, doling out the bowls of porridge.
Father finishes his in seconds, then scrapes back his chair and hurries out. I can hear him barking orders before he’s even reached the bottom of the ladder.
Anastasia snatches up the telegram and reads it again. ‘Excellent progress,’ she murmurs. ‘Most pleased.’ And then she looks up sharply. ‘Do you know what this means?’ she asks. ‘A commendation from Tsarina Yekaterina?’
Mira and I stare at her.
‘It means,’ she explains, ‘we’ll be back in Stolitsa before we know it! I won’t have to give up my part in The Ghost in the Lantern after all! And Olga—Olga will go to the Spring Blossom Ball!’
She dips her hand into her pocket for her gold appointment book and rifles through the pages. ‘Three weeks!’ she gasps. ‘The Spring Blossom Ball is in three weeks! How can we possibly be ready in time? Olga, you will give over your days to deportment and grooming. Study the steps of the mazurka, pore over your etiquette books.’
I think I am supposed to be excited at this prospect, but I can’t manage more than a limp shrug. I can’t believe I’ll have to be a Spring Blossom after all.
Anastasia flashes me a dazzling smile. ‘I’ve just had the most wonderful idea,’ she says. ‘Why don’t we pay a visit to the ladies at the Beneficent Home? I can’t think of a more pleasant way to pass the morning!’
The Republic of Birds Page 5