There is something ominous in Anastasia’s sudden enthusiasm, but I know there is no point in objecting when she speaks like this.
When we arrive at the Beneficent Home for Retired Ladies in Waiting, Varvara opens the door. ‘Well,’ she says, when she sees Anastasia, Mira and me on her doorstep. ‘This is a pleasant surprise.’
A surprise? I thought Varvara could read the future. Some voyant she is, I think, and Varvara gives me such a narrow-eyed glare that I resolve not to think anything else for the rest of the visit. When she is finished glaring, she invites us in.
Before Varvara has had time to pour the tea, Luda, Glafira and Anastasia withdraw into another room and shut the door behind them. Mira and I sit across the parlour table from Varvara in awkward silence.
‘It’s nice weather we’re having,’ Mira ventures.
‘Nice?’ Varvara’s eyes flick over the sludgy windowsill.
‘I mean interesting,’ says Mira, desperately. ‘Don’t you agree it’s interesting…to have snow so late in the season, Lady Varvara?’
‘Hmm,’ says Varvara. ‘It is unusual, now that you mention it, to have so much snow at the start of April, even here in the Borderlands. Though I do remember a similarly snowy start to the month some years back—1863, I think it was, or 64…’
From the folds of her lap she produces a small drawstring velvet bag. She opens it carefully and dips her fingers inside. Her eyes go misty. ‘1867,’ she says at last. ‘It was 1867 and the Neva was still frozen over. The ice was thick enough to skate on, all the way to the first week of May.’ She takes her hand out of the bag. ‘Well now, what are you two staring at? I suppose you’ve never seen a memory bag before!’
I shake my head.
‘When you’re as old as I am,’ she says, ‘you’ll find you have more memories than you have room in your head to hold them all. Which is why I keep my memories—some of them at least—in this bag. Memory bags are not easy to come by. You can’t buy one off any old yaga. But with the right connections…’ She coughs. ‘Here,’ she says and pushes the bag across the table to us. ‘Why don’t you try it? It’s quite simple. Just put your fingers inside.’
Mira dips a hand inside the bag. ‘Oh!’ she gasps. ‘It’s wet!’
‘That’s right, my dear,’ says Varvara. ‘Now move your fingers around and you’ll find a current of memory. Your surroundings will start to ripple around you as you enter the memory. Once there you can walk around without anyone noticing you, but do be careful which doors you open—you can never know which memory will be waiting on the other side.’
I look at Mira. Her eyes are just as misty as Varvara’s were a minute ago.
‘You try too, Olga,’ Varvara says. So, I pull my chair next to Mira’s and dip my fingers into the velvet bag. They splash into an icy liquid that feels more like ink than water. I hear strange voices, as if two people are talking at one end of a long corridor and I am standing at the other.
‘Wait,’ I say to Varvara. ‘How will I know how to get out?’
‘It’s easy enough,’ says Varvara. ‘Just look for the places where the memory starts to ripple around its edges—you’ll see.’
I hold my hand still in the cold pool of liquid. I hear more voices, not quite as far away now. I make out words, snatches of conversation, scraps of music. I taste fresh snow and slightly burnt toast and sweet, smoky tea. I smell the sharp tang of an orange just as it is sliced. Are these Varvara’s memories? I look up at her but looking is like trying to see through water: the whole parlour is rippling and turning darker.
I start to feel ribbons of liquid flowing between my fingers, each moving in a slightly different direction to the others. I grasp hold of one and feel it pull me inside. The memory comes to me in flashes: a bright gown, footsteps on a stone floor, a sudden cold in my bones. But then the memory spills open, growing wider and wider before me until it fills every corner of my vision, and I am not in the grubby parlour of the Beneficent Home any more.
I am in the Stone Palace, in one of the Reception Halls, I’m sure. I’ve been in this room, or another highceilinged, gilt-wallpapered room just like it, at a Spring Blossom Ball rehearsal. A group of women stand around a ceramic stove, taking it in turns to press their backs against it and warm their fingers on its tiles.
Outside is pelting rain. Every now and again a crack of thunder rattles the windowpanes.
A woman with long blonde hair takes the scratchy-looking fabric of her dress between finger and thumb. ‘You’d think wool would at least keep us warm.’
‘I miss my silk gowns,’ sighs the woman next to her.
‘Your gowns,’ snaps a stern-faced woman, ‘are being put to patriotic use. You know they’re needed for patching the military balloons.’
‘I know.’ Another sigh. ‘But I still miss them.’
The stern-faced woman snaps open a pocket watch. ‘Back to work,’ she says, making her voice loud over the rain, and the rest of the women peel themselves away from the stove, and sit in a circle on the carpet. I creep to the edge of the circle. They are binding flint heads to arrow shafts.
‘It’s enough to make you miss embroidery,’ says the sighing woman.
All around the circle, the women are muttering to one another.
‘Tsarina Pyotrovna doesn’t know what she’s doing,’ says one.
‘She’s rushed into this foolish war,’ says another, ‘without thinking of where it could lead.’
‘And the banishment of the yagas—it’s outrageous! Where am I to get my love potions now that there are no yagas in Stolitsa?’
There is a loud crash, as loud as the thunder that has been rolling and cracking around the palace, but this sound is different. The sky is lit with yellow gun smoke. I hear a sharp cry. A balloon, punctured, falls to the ground. A body, silhouetted against the sky, follows. I suck my breath in as the falling figure hits the ground. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything so awful.
The women stiffen and pull their mouths down and go on with their work like they haven’t heard anything. But their chatter has stopped.
So, this is war. The same sort of war Father is in danger of starting, I think, with his search for the firebird’s egg.
And then there is a loud shriek. The sky darkens. A flock of birds passes, strong wings beating the air. The women tense. They hold their arrowheads poised. Then the flock passes over and the women pick up their conversation as lightly as picking up a dropped stitch.
‘And don’t get me started on the banya!’
‘It’s filthy without the bannikhi there. Simply filthy!’
But I can’t stay as calm as the women. What if another body falls from the sky? What if it makes the same sick thunking noise? I need to find the places where the memory turns rippling and wobbly so that I can leave.
Outside, another flock of birds flies past the window. I hear wild shrieking. I hear claws dragging over the roof. I run to the nearest door, fumble the knob, and burst through.
And I find myself in…the same room. Exactly the same room, down to the gilt wallpaper. But now, the room is filled with women in bright gowns and men in evening dress. Birds perch on the chandelier and glide overhead. These birds don’t have the same grim menace of the birds I’ve seen at the Centre. They fly in crisscrossing patterns, like dancers in an elegant ballet. They make bright chirruping sounds as they fly. They are wonderful to watch.
A band starts up with the plink-plunk of a balalaika. Some birds dip and soar in time to the music. People start to dance. This is a grand celebration.
In a corner, next to the band, I sense a rippling movement—my way out of the memory. I walk towards it slowly, enjoying the feel of gowns swishing around me, the soft tickle as, every now and again, a feather floats against my cheek.
I am halfway across the room when I see a group of three women standing apart from the rest of the crowd. One has scarlet-red hair. One is old, as crooked and knobbled as tree bent over by the wind. One has a raincloud ho
vering over her head. Rain falls around her, but she doesn’t seem to get wet.
These women must be yagas.
I am drawn to them, in the same magnetic way I was drawn to the globe on the Centre’s observation deck. I swallow hard. I don’t want to be drawn to them.
I turn on my heel and rush to the place where the memory’s edge is rippling, just to the left of the balalaika player. The scene starts to wash away, like when rain soaks the pages of a newspaper and all the headlines dribble together. Soon, the parlour of the Beneficent Home seeps into my peripheral vision. I ease my fingers out of the memory bag and blink a bit, and my eyes stop seeing everything in a wobbly, underwater way. Finally, the room falls back into focus.
Mira has taken her fingers out of the bag, too. ‘Was it really like that in the palace?’ she asks Varvara. ‘Birds flying through the trees and singing such beautiful songs?’
Varvara nods. ‘For a time,’ she says.
‘How wonderful,’ sighs Mira.
‘What memory did you see, Mira?’ I ask, suspecting it was not the same as mine.
‘I was in the palace gardens,’ Mira says. ‘It was spring. The trees were in flower and their branches were full of birds. And—oh, Olga, they were singing! It was like nothing I’ve ever heard before!’
I remember the shriek that ripped the air before the flock passed overhead in my memory.
‘What did you see?’ Mira asks me.
‘Oh, nothing,’ I say. ‘Nothing so exciting.’
Mira looks like she wants to know more, but I am saved by Anastasia’s appearance in the doorway with Luda and Glafira. She is beaming.
‘I have news,’ she announces.
Glafira looks at me, and then at Mira, and then at me again. I know, with a sinking feeling, that she has compared the two of us and found me wanting. She lets out a low, heavy sigh and says, ‘It will be a challenge, Olga. But we are prepared to instruct you for the Spring Blossom Ball.’
My heart drops.
Glafira shuffles closer, looks me up and down once more. ‘I think it would be best,’ she says, ‘to begin immediately.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
Dancing Lessons
EVERY DAY, THE balloons go up. Pritnip’s soldiers head for the Unmappable Blank. Every evening they come back empty-handed.
Pritnip tells Father that what he wants—to find the firebird’s egg that the yagas hid in the Blank—is impossible. As soon as the balloons get near the Blank’s edge, Pritnip explains, the navigational equipment stops working and the snow falls so thickly that the soldiers can’t see more than a few inches in front of their faces. It’s only a matter of time, Pritnip tells Father, before one of the balloons doesn’t come back at all.
But Father doesn’t listen. He is determined to find the egg and please the Tsarina, no matter the cost.
So, the balloons go up again and again and again.
Every day, too, brings a new telegram from the Stone Palace. Tsarina Yekaterina is most pleased with Father’s efforts. Anastasia is so confident that Father will be back in favour and we will be brought back to Stolitsa in time for the Spring Blossom Ball, that she has another one of her wonderful ideas.
A dress rehearsal.
Perhaps because there is so little in the way of entertainment here in the Borderlands, everyone, except me, thinks it’s a wonderful idea. The ladies at the Beneficent Home brew nettle wine in preparation. Anastasia finds a flattish area of ground on the mountainside that will serve as a dance floor. Pritnip and his men have donated a torn parachute silk to our cause and Glafira, as the nimblest sewer, has transformed it into a marquee.
The dress rehearsal is all anyone can talk about. Even the soldiers in their camp talk excitedly of the dancing and the wine. I expect it will make a nice change from patrolling the freezing grey skies with their rifles cocked and ready, or making dangerous forays to the edge of the Unmappable Blank. The soldiers always come back from the Blank with beards and moustaches icicled white from the cold, and more than one has lost a finger to frostbite. I suppose I can’t blame them for welcoming the distraction that the dress rehearsal will bring.
I wish I could get as caught up in the bustle of preparations as everyone else. But all I can think about is what happens when I put my hand on a map. No matter how hard I try to stay away I keep finding myself standing before the globe on the observation deck. And no matter how much I try to tell myself otherwise, I know I am a yaga and I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to hide it.
Never mind trying to become a graceful dancer, adept in the arts of polite conversation and fan-fluttering for the Spring Blossom Ball. I need to work hard just to be a normal girl. The alternative is Bleak Steppe, and the thought of that terrifies me.
‘One-two-three, hop, kick.’ I concentrate fiercely and chant under my breath, ‘One-two-three, hop, kick. One-two-three, hop, kick.’
The dress rehearsal begins in five hours. I am dancing in the parlour of the Beneficent Home. Glafira sits in a corner, squeezing out a mazurka on a battered accordion. Mira sits next to her, tapping the rhythm with one dainty pointed toe. Anastasia, Luda and Varvara are on the lumpy sofa watching me. I can’t look up from my feet, or I will lose track of the steps completely, but I can tell by Anastasia’s tuts and Luda’s small sighs that I am not impressing them.
‘One-two-three—’
Gunshots drown out the accordion.
No one even so much as flinches. ‘I never thought I’d get used to the sound of gunfire,’ says Luda, ‘but I’ve grown quite accustomed to it.’
I am accustomed to it too, but it disrupts my sense of rhythm. I lose my footing and hop-kick into the wall with a crash, and when I try to recover myself, I one-two-three-hop-kick into the mantel and knock a dusty china shepherdess onto the floor.
Luda scoops up the decapitated figurine and smiles thinly. ‘Why don’t we stop for tea?’ she says.
The tea tastes like dust.
‘That may be true,’ says Varvara, ‘but it’s still not polite to say so.’
‘I didn’t say so,’ I tell her. ‘I thought so.’
‘Ah,’ she says. ‘Sometimes I can’t tell the difference.’
Across the room, Glafira and Anastasia are talking softly, but not so softly that I can’t hear them. ‘Of course, no one’s going to be charmed by her posture,’ Glafira says, ‘but it’s much improved since we began our lessons. And she recites ‘The Clouds Were Stained with Blood’ competently. The issue is—’
I can’t see Anastasia’s face, but I can tell by the tightness of her tone that it’s arranged in a grimace. ‘You don’t need to tell me,’ she says. ‘The poor child dances as if her legs were made of stone.’
I scowl into my dusty tea. If Anastasia only knew—this stupid dance is the least of my worries.
Beside me, Mira is drumming the tune of the mazurka against the table top with her fingers. ‘You’ve got your thinking face on again, Olga,’ she says.
‘I’m not thinking anything,’ I say. The words come out harder-sounding than I expected.
Across the table, Varvara fixes me with a shrewd look.
I take a deep breath and when I speak again, the words come out more evenly. ‘If I am thinking anything,’ I say, ‘it’s how stupid the mazurka is. Stupid and pointless. Like all dancing.’
Mira pulls on a stand of her hair. ‘It’s not stupid,’ she says. ‘Honestly, it’s not. Let me show you—’
‘I don’t need you to show me,’ I say, but she has already pushed her chair back and moved into the middle of the room. She holds out her hands. I stay in my chair.
‘Go on, Olga,’ says Luda eagerly. ‘Mira dances so beautifully. I’m sure she could help you.’
Anastasia and Glafira are watching eagerly now, too.
I stand up and give Mira my hand.
‘The steps are easy enough,’ she says. ‘One-two-three, hop, kick. One-two-three, hop, kick.’ She hops and kicks as light as air and I follow along, hopping and
kicking as light as rocks, but she smiles at me and just keeps dancing, so I keep hopping and kicking. And I do feel a little lighter—not as light as air, not as light as Mira, but lighter than before.
With a wheeze, Glafira starts the accordion, and then we are really dancing, in time to the music.
‘Now comes the hard part,’ says Mira. ‘Forget the steps and let the music carry you.’ Which is a truly nonsensical thing to say, and I am about to tell her so, but she smiles at me some more and I think it can’t hurt to try. So, I stop counting the steps and I listen to the music. I stumble at first, but when the music starts to sway leftways I try to dance leftways. And when it sways rightways I dance rightways. And when the music does a little hop, I do a little hop and when the music does a little kick, I do a little kick. And when I look up and find Mira still smiling, I smile back. It feels good.
But the music doesn’t carry me very far and before long I can’t hear which way to go or when to kick. I try counting under my breath again but my feet turn heavy and I stumble and collide with a side table, stubbing my toe against its leg. I double over from the unexpected pain of it. But the music doesn’t stop and when I straighten up, no one has noticed that I’ve stopped dancing. They’re all transfixed by Mira as she springs and leaps and kick-hops.
Mira hasn’t noticed that I’ve stopped either. She’s immersed in the music.
It’s not just her dancing that I’m jealous of now. It’s the ease of her: Mira makes the perfect Spring Blossom. I hate her, in this moment, and I hate myself for hating her. She is perfect. And I am not.
I run from the room and from the Beneficent Home, letting the door slam behind me. I’m not wearing a coat but I’m so hot with anger and with shame that I barely notice the cold.
I am stomping through the trees, not even bothering to bend back their branches, just scraping my way through, when I hear pattering footsteps behind me.
The Republic of Birds Page 6