The Republic of Birds

by Jessica Miller

  I begin to worry. There’s nothing I want more than to find Mira and bring her home. But wanting something and being able to do it are two very different things.

  Apart from the idea that I should head northward, I have no idea where I’m going. Not really.

  I don’t even have a scale map, save the small maps in Great Names in Tsarish Cartography. Father made very sure, last night, to keep the large map out of my reach.

  I should stop composing this dispiriting list of the challenges that lie before me, but I keep on.

  Even if I do make it to the border of the Republic, it’s highly likely I, too, will be captured by the birds.

  In fact, I’ll be lucky if I’m captured by birds and not killed on sight.

  If I do make it over the border and into the Republic of Birds and, by some happy accident, I find Mira, what then? It’s not like I have a plan…

  Stop it, I tell myself. Just stop it. I compose an alternative list in my head. ‘Reasons Why This Expedition to the Republic of Birds is the Best Option’:

  1. Mira is there.

  2. Mira is there.

  3. Mira is there.

  4. Now that Father has uncovered my secret it’s only a matter of time before I am sent to meet a dreadful fate at Bleak Steppe so there is no reason not to go to the Republic.

  5. Mira is there.

  There. That’s better. I go through the forest with a new sense of purpose. The snap of frost-brittled twigs under my boots feels good, and I settle into a steady rhythm. With each step, each snap, I am closer to Mira.

  Then, out of nowhere, a clean whistling sound shoots past me, somewhere near my left ear, followed by a sharp thunk. I realise the sound was made by the arrow currently pinning the left sleeve of my coat to the trunk of a birch tree. At first I am frozen with shock, but then instinct takes over. I try to wriggle out of my coat, but before I am free of the sleeve another arrow whistles through the air. This one pins my right sleeve to the tree, leaving me dangling like a puppet. My heart comes into my mouth, and I watch, with nauseous panic, as a boy walks through the forest towards me. His bow is strung taut with another arrow and this one is pointed at my chest.

  ‘What have we here?’ he asks, putting his pinched face very close to mine and bringing the arrow’s sharp head so close that it almost touches the skin of my neck.

  I swallow hard.

  ‘An infiltrator,’ he says. ‘An obtruder. A creepsome, interloping prowler. The sort to stick her nose in things that are none of her business.’

  ‘I’m not an interloper,’ I protest weakly.

  He lowers the arrow and nods at the plush mink collar of my coat. It’s a stark contrast to the worn, leathery clothes he wears. ‘You don’t expect me to believe you’re from around here, do you? What kind of preposterousity is that?’

  ‘Okay,’ I say. ‘I am an interloper. But not a sticking-my-nose-in-places-where-it-doesn’t-belong kind of interloper. I’m just—I’m just passing through,’ I say, trying not to sound too nervous.

  ‘Well,’ he says, ‘you are powerfully blanched. White, that means, as white as paste.’

  ‘I have to confess, I’ve never been stuck through with two arrows before. I’m feeling rather…rather…’ I search for exactly the right word before finishing triumphantly, ‘discombobulated.’

  ‘Discombobulated,’ he repeats, turning each syllable over on his tongue. He lowers the bow and he plucks the arrow from it and slots it into the quiver he wears over his shoulder. ‘What are you doing in the Between, then, if you’re not sticking your nose into other people’s business?’

  ‘Where is the Between?’ I ask. ‘Here?’

  The boy nods.

  ‘I’m looking for my sister,’ I say.

  ‘And you think you’ll find her here?’ he asks.

  ‘I think I’ll find her north of here. In the Republic.’

  He looks at me warily, then braces himself against the birch and pulls the arrow from my left sleeve and then the other one from my right sleeve. ‘Come with me,’ he says and he turns to go. ‘I can help you.’

  I stand there for a moment, wondering if I can trust someone with a quiver full of arrows and a sharp aim. But before I can decide, I realise the boy will disappear into the forest in a few steps and I find myself running to catch up.

  He leads me to a clearing where a man hunches over a small fire, poking at a meagre pan of what smells like some kind of stew. Beside him is a grubby hessian sack, half-full of something. The man looks up when he sees me and quickly pulls the sack closed.

  ‘This is Fedor,’ says the boy, pointing at the man. ‘And I’m Fedor,’ he finishes, pointing at himself.

  ‘People call me Big Fedor,’ says the man. ‘To avoid—’

  ‘To avoid perplexity and suchlike,’ says Fedor. ‘And you are?’ He gestures at me.

  ‘I’m Olga,’ I say.

  ‘What are you doing here, Olga?’ says Big Fedor. He takes one look at my mink collar and makes the same assessment as Fedor. ‘You’re not from here. Although’—he wiggles a finger through the hole in my left sleeve—‘it seems Fedor gave you a warm welcome. Not very hospitable of you, Fedor.’

  ‘She says she’s looking for her sister—in the Republic of all places,’ scoffs Fedor, and I can feel the blood rising in my cheeks.

  Big Fedor draws the sack closer to him. ‘Something to eat, Olga?’ he asks. ‘Breakfast’s nearly ready,’ he nods at the bubbling pan.

  Even though I’ve only been walking for a few hours, I am starving. And I want to find out how Fedor can help me. But I don’t have time to sit around a campfire. My stomach betrays me with a thunderous rumble.

  Big Fedor chuckles and pats the ground beside him. ‘I’ll take that as a yes,’ he says.

  I sit down, cross-legged, on the cold ground. Fedor hands me a bowl. We all eat quickly. The stew tastes as good as it smells: it is simple but warm and spicy, and I can feel it filling my empty stomach.

  ‘And what about a cup of tea to finish?’ asks Big Fedor. I nod gratefully.

  He dips a hand into the sack and produces a battered kettle and three tin mugs. Something black and glossy and leaf-shaped floats out of the sack and hangs in the air for a moment before it falls, very gently, to the ground. I pick it up and stroke it through my fingers. ‘Is it a feather?’ I cry.

  ‘It seems you’ve found us out,’ says Big Fedor with a shrug.

  ‘Took you long enough, too,’ says Fedor. ‘Not very perspicacious of you, I must say.’

  At the risk of sounding even less perspicacious, I venture, ‘Found out what?’

  ‘We’re feather smugglers,’ says Fedor proudly.

  ‘It’s an honest living,’ says Big Fedor. ‘Nearly honest.’

  ‘We hunt for feathers in the Between. And sometimes…a little further than the Between.’

  ‘What do you do with them?’ I ask.

  ‘Sell them,’ says Fedor. He shakes the sack of feathers out onto the ground, and he and Big Fedor begin to sift through them. Fedor holds up a fluffy white feather. ‘Ones like these we sell for stuffing,’ he says. ‘For pillows and eiderdowns and the like. One like this’—he holds up a glossy blue feather—‘we can sell for trimming. Feathers make very elegant trimmings for gowns and coats.’

  ‘No one in Tsaretsvo would dare wear feathers,’ I say. ‘Not after the War.’

  ‘There’s plenty of French ladies will pay a high price for a feather from the Republic of Birds,’ says Big Fedor.

  ‘Now’—Fedor seizes a long, iridescent feather in an emerald shade—‘a particularly fine feather like this one could be used to decorate a hat.’ He runs it over his palm. ‘This is a particularly serendipitous find.’

  ‘This one’s not,’ says Big Fedor bluntly, and he pokes at a dry, brown feather with the toe of his boot, sends it floating through the air. ‘Worthless.’

  The feather falls on the ground before me. Fedor is right, no one would possibly pay money for it. It is the colour of
a dead leaf.

  I pick up the feather and draw it over my palm. Even though it looks brittle, it feels good: soft and fluffy and just a little greasy. I wonder where it came from. Could it have been dropped by one of the birds that snatched Mira? I think of her alone and scared in the Republic, and I remember I have no time to waste.

  ‘What can you tell me about the Republic?’ I ask.

  ‘Typical,’ spits Fedor. ‘All she wants to know about is the Republic. No one has a care for the Between. I don’t like being inconsequentialised.’

  ‘I’m sorry!’ I protest. ‘I just didn’t know there was anything here…there’s nothing marked on the map.’

  ‘The thing is,’ says Big Fedor, ‘The Between isn’t just the border that divides one land from another. It’s filled with people—and creatures—that don’t really fit there,’ he jerks his thumb towards the Republic, ‘and don’t really fit there either,’ he jerks his thumb back in the direction of Tsaretsvo. ‘Do you see?’

  ‘I see,’ I say. I think back to Stolitsa and my awkward attempts to fit in with the other Spring Blossoms. I think of the look that came into Father’s eyes last night when my magic brought the map to life. ‘I see exactly.’

  ‘My grandparents came from the Northern Plains,’ Big Fedor continues. ‘The War in the Skies was bitter there. It was bitter most places, from what I hear, but the Northern Plains were hit the hardest. My grandparents took shelter in the Between, like so many others, and waited until they could return to their home. They had brought hardly anything with them. A few Azkabi carpets. A moonstone necklace. The family dictionary—I’m sure you’ve noticed, young Fedor has a most prestigious vocabulary.’

  ‘A most prodigious vocabulary,’ corrects Fedor.

  ‘But by the time the War was over,’ says Big Fedor, ‘the map was changed. And my grandparents’ home didn’t exist anymore.’

  ‘But a place can’t just disappear, can it?’ I ask.

  ‘Oh, it’s still there,’ says Big Fedor. ‘Only, by all accounts it has changed so much it’s a different place altogether. With a different name, too. The birds call the city Ptashkagrad now.’ He slurps the last of his tea. ‘Ptashkagrad’s the capital of the Republic of Birds. That’s where your sister will be.’

  Ptashkagrad. It must be named after Ptashka I, head of the Avian Counsel and leader of the Avian Army during the War in the Skies. ‘How do I get there?’ I ask.

  ‘Find the River Dezhdy,’ says Fedor.

  ‘And how do I do that?’ I ask.

  ‘You’ll know you’re close when you reach the Dead Wood,’ says Fedor. ‘The Dezhdy flows through the middle of it.’ When he catches my expression, he explains, ‘It’s not as terrible as it sounds. In the War in the Skies, most of the forest here was burned away. And for some reason, the Dead Wood never grew back. You’ll come upon the Dezhdy if you go far enough into the wood, and then all you need to do is follow it upstream to its source, and then the Republic will open out before you.’

  I nod. The source of the Dezhdy is in the High Stikhlos. And the Republic lies on the Stikhlos’ other side.

  I slurp the dregs of my tea, and thank the feather smugglers. I know where I’m going, more or less. I have a full stomach. I feel almost optimistic.

  I stand up to go and notice I am still holding the dull brown feather. ‘Here,’ I say as I hold it out to Fedor.

  ‘Keep it if you like,’ he says. ‘We’ve no use for it.’

  I tuck it into Varvara’s memory bag, and I bid the Fedors goodbye.

  I haven’t gone far when Fedor appears behind me.

  ‘Here,’ he says, and he presses an arrow into my hand. ‘Take this. Not everyone in the Between is quite as hospitable as we are.’

  n the weeks after Golovnin returned to court with the firebird’s egg, there was talk of little else, but one question intrigued more than any other: when would the egg hatch? The Court Scholars searched the Old Stories. They were filled with tales of fierce, proud firebirds: birds that could singe whole cities with their fiery wings. Birds that lived for a thousand years before combusting in a brilliant burst of flame and cinder that left only an ashen egg behind, then hatching from the egg anew. But the Old Stories said nothing about how the egg would hatch. The Palace Voyant was consulted but her prediction—that the egg would not hatch for more than a hundred years—was dismissed as preposterous. The Imperial Horticulturalist tried potting the egg in rich soil in the conservatory as if it were a rare orchid that might be coaxed to bloom; the Court Alchemist tried his recipes on the egg to no avail; Ptashka I, the Head of the Avian Counsel, tried sitting on the egg three nights in a row in the hope that the warmth of her feathers would tempt it to hatch. Not a single crack appeared on the egg’s coal-black shell.

  Then, the egg disappeared. It was taken in the night, out from under the watch of the armed guards who surrounded it. It did not take the Tsarina long to deduce what had happened: after all, the egg wasn’t the only thing missing. Her Imperial Coven had vanished, too. The Palace Voyant was once again consulted. The Coven, she said, had hidden the egg in the Unmappable Blank. The Tsarina’s once-trusted magical advisors had proven false and sly.

  Excerpted from Glorious Victory: An Impartial Account of the War in the Skies by I. P. Pavlova. Chapter Three: The Deception of the Coven.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  An Unexpected Encounter

  THE TREES GROW closer together. The forest grows darker. I keep walking, one foot in front of the other, towards the Dead Wood.

  But soon the snap of twigs beneath my boots isn’t the only snap I can hear.

  I stand very still and listen.

  Snap…snap…snap.

  I’m not the only thing moving through the trees.

  Still, I tell myself, that’s no reason to get spooked. All kinds of things live in a forest. I’m hardly going to let a few little faraway scuffling sounds stop me from finding Mira.

  I set off again, walking in a brisk, unbothered way, swinging my arms to give a general appearance of nonchalance. And I nonchalantly curl my fingers tight round Fedor’s arrow.

  But the thing moving behind me—whatever type of thing it is—is a thing undeterred by my nonchalance. The faraway scufflings and snappings grow nearer. Louder.

  I decide to try a different tactic. I’ll turn around and wait until I see what’s following me. I’ll look at it coolly, assess whether or not it’s a threat. Just like Londonov did, on his expedition to the Bloodlands, when he came upon a pack of red wolves. He stood statue-still and stared them down until, one by one, they whimpered away.

  Yes. I’ll do exactly as Londonov did. And whatever happens, I won’t scream.

  I stop and turn around.

  I scream.

  A yaga’s hut is lurching on its chicken legs towards me, rustling leaves and branches as it goes. It hurries over to where I’m standing, then sinks to the ground. It seems expectant, like it’s waiting for something. But I don’t intend to find out what.

  I pelt through the trees. I don’t look back, but I can hear it behind me, crunching and snapping. I can feel it too, the big, mossy bulk of it.

  But what am I running from exactly? Why am I running from a yaga’s hut when I am a—

  It still makes me feel faintly ill to admit, but I am a yaga. And a yaga’s hut is nothing to be afraid of, and neither is the yaga who lives inside.

  I turn around. I can see the hut scurrying to catch up to me. My breathing is short and shallow. There’s a difference between thinking there’s nothing to be afraid of and actually not being afraid. I’ll keep making for the Dead Wood, I tell myself. I’ll just nod at the yaga’s hut and keep going.

  Maybe I’ll even knock on the door. Maybe the yaga inside will be grandmotherly and full of wise and practical advice. Maybe—just maybe—walking up to a yaga’s hut and knocking on its door is a good idea.

  I flex my hand around the arrow, just in case I’m wrong, and I head straight for the hut.

  The
re’s no smoke coming from the chimney. The roof tiles are thick with moss, and the window is dulled with a layer of grime.

  The hut stands before me, its chicken feet curled neatly under itself.

  Its door falls open. And before I can think about whether it’s a good idea I step inside.

  The hut is empty, dark and musty, veiled with tattered cobwebs and thick dust. There is no yaga here. The most sinister thing I can find is a heap of old bones rattling around in the bottom of a copper pot, but I suspect these are the remains of some long-ago dinner.

  I pick up a yellowed newspaper from beside the fireplace. It is dated 17 May 1824 and its headline reads: ‘Tsarina Pyotrovna and Avian Counsel in Deadlock Over Hot-air Balloon Question’. I think of Pritnip and his soldiers and the fleets of balloons they send up every day. The next report is titled ‘Imperial Alchemist Claims: “I Can Hatch Firebird’s Egg”’.

  1824. That’s more than a hundred years ago. I feel strangely sad to think the hut has been empty that long.

  There’s no yaga here. No one to give me advice or help me find Mira. I reach to open the door to go back into the forest and continue my journey, but the hut lurches sideways. I’m tipped to the floor, tangled in chair-legs. The hut lurches again.

  Somehow, I find my feet and go to the window.

  Of course. The hut is standing on its chicken feet. It bounces up and down on its legs, in a way that feels more encouraging than violent, though a milk jug falls from the shelf and shatters on the floor.

  The hut picks its way, unsteady yet swift, through the trees. We are covering a lot of ground but we seem to be going in the wrong direction—away from the Dead Wood.

  The hut makes a sharp turn. Now we are going in the right direction. I look out the grimy window. The trees are blurring together as the hut races past them. I give the wall a stroke. ‘Take me to Mira,’ I say and the hut skips a little before it returns to its speedy stride.

  When it is nearly dark, the hut slows, and it soon stops and sinks to the ground as if settling in for the night.