The Midnight Land: Part Two: The Gift (The Zemnian Trilogy Book 2)

by E. P. Clark

  Her mother led them to another, slightly larger, room with a table and benches. They all sat down silently, except her mother, who went off and came back a little later with tea, and then, after another trip, pies.

  “It’s simple fare,” she said. “It’s all we have here.”

  “Of course,” said Slava. “Thank you.”

  “So tell me your long story,” her mother commanded. “I did receive your letter, it came in yesterday, but it seemed so outlandish…I decided it was a joke, or the work of a halfwit. Sometimes people send me letters begging for my help, but they are all halfwits, and I have learned to ignore them. The good-hearted Empress—did you know that’s what they called me? When I ruled I answered petitions day and night, but I no longer rule. I retired to this sanctuary for a reason. So I have learned not to listen to such petitions, and besides, as I said, it was obviously the work of a halfwit. It couldn’t possibly be true. Our Vladya would never do anything like that. It had to be the work of an imposter, someone seeking to play on my fears for her own ends.”

  “But I wrote it with my own hand!” cried Slava, her heart sinking even deeper than before.

  “You never did have a very clear hand,” said her mother. “How was I to know? And your news seemed so far-fetched—I knew it couldn’t possibly be true. So tell me your story.”

  For a moment Slava wondered if her mother had been struck by the curse as well, or if she was just much more slow-witted than Slava remembered her. But as there was nothing to be done about it now, Slava told a very shortened version of the story of her journey with Olga, and finished with her return to Krasnograd, Vladya’s strange behavior, and their final scene together and Slava’s decision to run. Perhaps, she told herself, once her mother heard the truth from Slava’s own mouth, she would come to her senses and offer her help.

  “But what provoked her?” her mother asked when she had finished. “Why would she think you had designs on her? You have never shown the slightest aptitude or appetite for rule, and it’s not as if you have any heirs for whom you would want to take the Wooden Throne.”

  “Ah, well…” said Slava, blushing deeply. “As I mentioned in my letter…”

  “Slava!! Really?!?” Now her mother straightened up and began to look animated.

  “Really,” said Slava. “In the fall, if the gods are kind,” she added.

  “Slava! And the father?!!”

  “Is in Severnolesnoye,” said Slava.

  “Oh,” said her mother, sounding disappointed. “Aren’t you going to marry him, then?”

  “That seems unlikely,” said Slava.

  “But to abandon him like that…Men cannot take care of themselves, you know, they’re not strong like women…What does his mother think? Didn’t she insist he be turned over to a wife’s care?”

  “I don’t think she’s around anymore,” said Slava, who had not until that moment thought for an instant about what Oleg’s mother would think of their connection, and had a hard time not laughing, now that she had.

  “Oh…That’s too bad…”

  “He is older than I am,” said Slava. “He already has daughters with other women.”

  “Oh…Well…Well, that’s good too. A man isn’t really a man until he’s had a few daughters, although a man who’s been shared with other women...It’s not natural, you know: men were made to belong to one woman and one woman only, in order to continue the line. They’re not like women, always needing to seek new blood for their children…”

  “I did suggest that he come back with me,” said Slava. It was much harder to confess that than she would have liked, or expected. “But he wouldn’t…He has other duties…” As she said it she knew, even more strongly than she had when she had actually asked and Oleg had refused, that that was just a convenient excuse, and of course he hadn’t had other duties, he had just been too afraid to come back with her, but she resolutely refused to say that, or even keep thinking that thought.

  “He’s not already married, is he?” her mother demanded. “Because that would be a complication. The wife could claim that the child was her property…Although in this case she would surely lose.”

  “No,” said Slava, and then realized that Oleg was, in fact, already married. “He was,” she added. “But the wife is no longer an issue. No, he has other duties…He did not want to abandon them to come with me to Krasnograd…What I mean is that he couldn’t…”

  “Oh nonsense,” said her mother. “What could be more important than a child, and the heir to the Tsarinovna? He probably just wanted to be talked into it properly. You should have put your foot down and insisted—he would have thanked you later. You know how men never know what is good for them—or can make up their minds to accept it, even if they do know. Sometimes they have to be forced for their own good. They’ll just keep running away from you if you won’t learn that lesson. But that is neither here nor there…What I mean is: why? What came over you?”

  This led to a second, and much longer, description of Slava’s journey, after which her mother sat in stunned silence for a long time.

  “You’re joking,” she said, when she finally spoke.

  “No, I’m not,” Slava told her. “I really am with child, and Vladya really has gone mad and driven me out of Krasnograd.”

  “Are you sure you haven’t done anything to provoke her?” Slava’s mother repeated. “You can be very provoking at times, Slava my dear, you know, and Vladya has many cares upon her shoulders—you mustn’t burden her even further with your own selfish troubles. And it’s not as if you’ve never threatened to do something that might be…might be deemed to be treasonous. I haven’t forgotten how you…how you threatened to,” her mother flushed with old hurt and suppressed shame, but carried on, “threatened to raise the steppe princesses if you didn’t get your way.”

  “And I haven’t forgotten why I made that threat,” said Slava. “But in the end, both you and Vladya saw sense, and there was no reason for me to carry it out. Mother! You must intercede! You must make Vladya see reason, or I fear the realm will be drawn into open rebellion and war. If Vladya really has taken the heir of Severnolesnoye into captivity, and if she makes her threat to me known to the whole country—or if, the gods forbid, she were actually to carry it out—then ten to one both the North and the steppe would rise against her.”

  “Oh Slava!” said her mother, looking very tired. “If you would only stop provoking her…”

  Slava saw, even more clearly than before, how little her mother wanted to be dragged into this quarrel, and how little she wanted to admit that Vladya was a poor ruler, and how much she, Slava, would have liked to join her in that denial, and how impossible that would be for her, Slava, to do so. She had left her mother’s care a long time ago, like it or not, and now there was no one to stand up for her but her.

  “I provoke her just by breathing,” said Slava. “And if she were to manage to do away with me, I’m sure I’d provoke her by not breathing, too. But now she has provoked me.”

  “You know,” said her mother, “I always thought you were like me, Slavochka. But now I see you grow more like your father with every passing year, in both mind and body. You look like him now, you know, and you act like him, too. So much wildness! So much fierceness!” She smiled painfully. “I would be glad, but it brought him to no good end. The wild ones rarely end up well.”

  “I look like him?” said Slava, surprised. “I thought he was huge…”

  “So he was—to a girl of four,” said her mother. “But you never saw him from any taller height. To a grown woman he was barely of normal size. That didn’t stop him from being the boldest man in Zem’—everyone said so. Until he got himself killed, that is.”

  “He was a hero,” said Slava. “Everyone says so.” For a moment she was overcome with disorientation, overwhelmed as she was between this new, unexpected connection between herself and her father, one that she had never thought of before. Everyone said he had been a hero, and now th
ey were saying that Slava was a hero, too. The mental seasickness was so strong that Slava had to resist the temptation to grab hold of the table to steady herself. And then the vision she had had of him lolling drunkenly and laughing at things that were a fitter subject for tears rose up before her, and she wasn’t sure which was her real father, and she knew that she would never know, and she would have to be a hero on her own, whether or not he had been. For after all, his heroism had consisted in running away, running away from her, his only daughter, whom he had said he loved more than anything else in the world. So if Slava were to be a hero, as perhaps her father had been, she too would have to take in some of that thoughtlessness, that callousness, that heedlessness of others, that had allowed him to leave her and go off on his final journey. Only she would have to use it to run towards, not away. She wasn’t sure yet what she would have to run towards, rather than away from, but she knew that she would, because, as she had been told, she was meant to be a hero.

  “Yes,” said her mother. “A hero. Hacked to pieces by Horde warriors, somewhere far to the East. They sent me back the shattered bones. You don’t know,” her mother smiled painfully again, “how many times I wished I’d put my foot down then and not let him go on that journey. I learned my lesson then, and I wish you’d learn it from me. If you wish your child to have a father, you had best drag him in and keep him close to you, because like as not he can’t be trusted to stay by you on his own.”

  “I don’t think I want my child to have a father whom I have to keep tied to my side,” said Slava. “Let him run off and leave us if that’s how he is. A bad father is worse than no father at all. And my own father died so that his companions might live. Everyone says so.”

  “So fierce,” said her mother, still smiling painfully. “I don’t know whom you resemble more, Slava: those hot-headed steppe warriors like your father, or our very own Miroslava Praskovyevna. I always thought you were like me, but now I see I was wrong. And who knows which is worse, a bad father or no father at all? You certainly never had the chance to find out. Neither of my girls did. Vladya’s own father never gave three straws about her, and your father loved her even less. No wonder that she chose that awful man as her husband—after all, I chose one just as bad for her father, and one hardly better for yours. Not that he couldn’t have been worse. He loved you well enough—when you were clean and dressed and smiling prettily while everyone told him how much the little Tsarinovna took after him. I don’t think he would have thrown you to the wolves, if they were circling about you, but he as good as did so when he went off on his final adventure. Sometimes foresight is worth more than heroism. You lost your father forever, and the Tsarina’s husband died so that lesser men, men whose only duty was to die defending him, might live. An unfair trade, some might say.”

  “Those men’s wives, and sisters, and mothers, and daughters, might not,” said Slava. “They might say their men’s lives were bought cheaply.”

  “Slava! Your own father! Your own father, who died when you were still a child!”

  “Yes,” said Slava. “I might say so. But you might say that he never loved me all that much anyway, so it was best that I never found out. And those other women might say that their men’s lives were bought cheaply, and that my father died a hero.”

  “Well, perhaps he did,” said her mother. “But they still sent me back the shattered bones, and I buried them next to your sister, the one who died before she drew her first breath. Oh Slava! If only you’d had another sister! Sometimes I think…Sometimes I think how much happier things might have been for you, if she had lived.”

  “Yes,” said Slava. “Because if she had lived, then you would have had no need to marry my father and get another daughter, just in case something happened to the ones from your first husband, and I never would have been born at all.”

  “Slava!” cried her mother.

  “It’s true,” said Slava. “Everyone says so, including you. You told me directly that I was born to be the Tsarinovna, and it’s true. It’s what I am. I was born because she didn’t live.”

  “Slava! You can’t…You can’t say that! You can’t replace one person with another!”

  “Yes,” said Slava. “You can’t. Who knows what she would have been, if she had lived? Perhaps everything would be much better than it is now. But she didn’t live, so I had to be born. And here I am, a thorn in Vladya’s side. Poor Vladya! If only her full sister had survived! Perhaps she would be much happier than she is now.”

  “You should try to explain everything to her,” said Slava’s mother, with an obtuseness that was much more like Vladya and much less like the mother that Slava remembered. Slava could see that she was already forgetting much of what she and Slava had just said to each other, as thoughts that were much too unpleasant to be remembered. And there was that strange business with the letter…curse or no, Slava could see, more clearly with every passing breath, that there was little help to be had from that quarter.

  “I did explain,” said Slava. “But you can only explain things to people if they are willing to hear you.” She thought she spoke rather pointedly, but her mother did not seem to take the hint.

  “Well…” she said instead. “You’ll be safe here, at any rate. Stay here for a while, and we’ll see what happens. Perhaps news will arrive soon from Krasnograd.”

  “Yes,” said Slava. It was not as active a plan as she had hoped for, but they would, at least, be reasonably safe for a few days. Slava wondered what would happen if—when—the sanctuary received the command to return Slava to Krasnograd. She would like to think they would refuse and give her refuge, but she could not, alas, be certain of that. So far she had not seen anyone of Vlastomila Serafimiyevna’s strength of character, and the more she spoke with her mother, the less faith she had in her ability or even willingness to protect Slava from her sister. Far from being willing to return to Krasnograd and make Vladya see sense, her mother seemed ready to hand her over to Vladya without a second thought.

  Their evening together only reinforced her opinion. While it was clear that her mother was delighted to see Slava, and overjoyed by the news of her happy expectations—although she would have been even happier had Slava had a new husband in tow as well—it was also clear that her mother was very happy at the sanctuary, and had no intention of ever leaving. The Tsarina that Slava remembered from her childhood was gone, to be replaced by a woman whose main pleasures in life were working in the herb garden and contemplating her grown daughters’ successes in life. Furthermore, it was apparent that she had no intention of allowing anything to disturb her tranquility, especially if that involved disturbing thoughts that perhaps her daughters were not so successful as she had hoped, or that she had made a mistake in leaving them to their own devices, or that, worst of all, they were now irreconcilably opposed to each other and one would have to make way for the other. But—Slava could see her mother thinking—if that really were the case, then clearly Vladya, as the Empress, would have to get her way, and Slava would have to give way, especially as she was so much better at it. She could come and live in the sanctuary and work in the herb garden too, and they would all live very peaceful and happy lives.

  Once she realized that this was the help her mother intended to offer (providing Vladya did not press too hard for Slava to be dragged back to Krasnograd in irons, of course), Slava tried to tell herself that, despite her annoyance at her mother’s decision to let this be one of those moments when she would fall into a selfish panic and fail Slava at a crucial juncture, perhaps that really was the best thing to do. After all, she had no love of Krasnograd, while she did prefer quiet and retirement. Much as they might all talk about her unexpected resemblance to her father, she was first and foremost her mother’s daughter, and as such would almost certainly be happiest here by her mother’s side, hiding from the world and its many, many evils. She could write Vladya a letter explaining that she had decided to renounce her position as Tsarinovna in favor of Prasha
, and promise to move permanently to the sanctuary and live as a simple sister. It would solve all their problems. All her other plans—to adopt wards, to bring up her daughter, should she have the good fortune to be born, to be the gift she hoped her to be, and so on and so forth—those had just been the kind of idle daydreaming to which Slava was so predisposed, and which she should have put behind her years ago. This was a good, sensible plan, and she should do her best to bring it to life.

  Slava repeated this to herself several times that evening, ignoring the disquiet that rose up in her whenever she told herself that it was what she should do, that it was a good plan, a sensible plan, a plan that would fix everything and make everything right and everyone happy again. She could even, she thought, make Olga and Vladislava’s release a condition of her retirement to the sanctuary. Surely Vladya would have no objection to that…Surely even she would see no hidden evil in such a move…She would write the letter tomorrow, Slava decided.

  She informed her mother and the others of her intentions at the end of the evening, as they were preparing for bed, and everyone agreed that it was a good plan, the best plan. Her mother was overjoyed, and hugged her again, and told her that they had very fine herbswomen and healers there, and it would be a fine place to bear and raise a child, and no one would mind, and her daughter would be the pride of the place, and so on and so forth, and everyone went to their rooms that night in high good humor and hopes, thinking that everything was right again. Everyone except Slava, who still couldn’t quell the voice inside her telling her it was the wrong thing to do, but, she assured herself over and over again, that voice was wrong. She would write and send the letter tomorrow, and soon everything would be fixed and it would all be behind them and she could start her new, quiet life as a sister in the Deep Pond sanctuary.

  Chapter Nineteen