by Jade White
He nodded once in confirmation. “My sisters helped as well.” Amelia couldn’t place his accent.
“Thank you,” she offered, pouring as much sincerity as she could manage into those two, simple words. Thinking about it, Amelia could vaguely recall two other snow leopards helping. She supposed she would have to track them down to thank them, too. “I’m Amelia Lark,” she added, since actually introducing herself to the man who had saved her life did seem prudent.
“Aibek Niyazov,” he returned easily. “I do not know what you were doing out there to begin with, but just leaving you out there was not an option I was comfortable with,” he replied wryly. “Leaving a—you are a cheetah, yes? Just you do not really look like one.”
Amelia folded her arms across her chest and lifted her chin proudly. “I’m a king cheetah,” she corrected, with sharp emphasis. “Super rare.”
His eyebrows rose slightly. “Well. Perhaps this is an appropriate setting, for a snowflake such as yourself.” He smiled the slightest bit when Amelia scowled at him. “Regardless, leaving a cheetah out in such weather, there would have been a casualty before sunrise.”
“You had very convenient timing,” Amelia pointed out with some bemusement.
“I was already patrolling when I found you,” he replied, one shoulder lifting in a shrug. “I could smell that there was someone here who should not be.” He tipped his head to one side, observing her placidly. “That does still leave the question of what you were doing out there,” he pointed out. “I doubt you simply decided to go on a mountain jog.”
“No, I didn’t,” Amelia groaned, lifting a hand to pinch the bridge of her nose before dragging her hand back through her hair. “It’s…a really long story. A really long, difficult story.”
“Then after something to eat and drink would probably be best,” Aibek suggested, and he turned sideways to make enough space for her to fit through the doorway. “The kitchen is through here,” he explained, “though you will probably be accosted once you are in there.”
“By your sisters?” Amelia guessed as she stepped through the doorway and followed him down the hall.
“Among others,” he agreed as they walked into the kitchen.
Much like the den they had just walked out of, the kitchen was tiny. Rather than a proper table, there was an island, and between that and the appliances, the space was very effectively filled up. When Amelia turned around, she saw a door that presumably led into a bathroom, but she didn’t see any other doors or hallways. She wasn’t actually sure where anyone was supposed to sleep, unless passing out on the rug in front of the fireplace was an everyday thing.
And then she noticed the woman sitting at the counter. She was a dainty, middle-aged woman with a braid of brown hair trailing down her back. She had pale skin and a waist that had been tiny once upon a time, but had rounded slightly with time. Her eyes were bright blue, and her lips were curved in gentle amusement as she watched Amelia try to get her bearings. Presumably, she was Aibek’s mother, but there wasn’t much of a resemblance between them.
“Finally rejoining the land of the living?” she asked, her tone light and playful. Amelia was pretty sure her accent was Russian.
“How long have I been sleeping?” Amelia asked, baffled, as she looked at Aibek over her shoulder.
“Eighteen hours, perhaps?” he suggested before he shrugged, unconcerned. “We tried to wake you up to eat and drink something a few times, but you were very against the idea, and we decided that trying to funnel feed you was a bit beyond your dignity and my patience.”
With a roll of her eyes, Amelia brought a hand to her chest and mustered up as much sarcastic sincerity as she could manage and she said, “I thank you from the bottom of my heart.”
Aibek nodded with an earnestness that almost managed to seem genuine, before he pulled open the fridge and pulled out a bottle of water. He tossed it to Amelia, and once she fumbled it against her chest, he turned to leave the room, offering over his shoulder, “I should go tell the others that our guest is awake, or I will probably wake up to a dead bird on my pillow.”
To Amelia’s mild surprise, she heard the front door open a moment later, and she had to wonder if all the others, however many there were, were all out in the snow. She didn’t really dwell on that, though, more concerned with the fact that it was just her, alone, with Aibek’s mother.
“You must be starving!” his mother declared, as if it had only just occurred to her. She hopped to her feet and began to bustle around the kitchen, pulling out a pan and a pot and gathering ingredients from the cupboard and fridge. “I hope you don’t mind Italian,” she carried on as she filled the pot with water. “Everyone here’s fine with it, and I figure it’s pretty innocuous.”
“That’s fine,” Amelia replied faintly, still bewildered. She lifted the water bottle to twist the cap off and take a drink, mostly just for something to keep her hands occupied.
As soon as the water hit her throat, it occurred to her that the headache was probably from dehydration, and it took a concerted force of will to keep sipping at a reasonable pace, rather than downing the entire bottle in a few gulps.
“You may call me Faina,” Aibek’s mother added pleasantly, as she set the pot on the stove to begin boiling. “And you are?”
“Amelia,” she answered, finally at something like an appropriate volume. “Nice to meet you. Are you a snow leopard, too?”
With a gentle laugh, Faina answered, “I’m not, no. My grandfather was, though, so I wasn’t terribly surprised when I met my husband.”
“In Russia…?” Amelia guessed slowly, as she finally convinced her legs to work so she could sit down at the counter.
“In Kazakhstan,” Faina corrected, as she poured cream into a pan and set it on a burner. “I’m Russian; my husband was Kazakh.”
‘Was.’ Amelia was just going to avoid the topic of the probably deceased husband, then. That seemed like the safest bet. Or at least that was her plan until Faina carried on talking about him.
“We’ve been all over the place, though,” she carried on merrily as she started grating some sort of firm, white cheese. “He was something of a…an eco-warrior, I guess you could say,” she explained, with a fond laugh. “That’s how we wound up here. Temporarily, at first, but then he ran afoul of things, so we made the set up more permanent. Honestly, it would be perfectly pleasant here if I could just convince the others to remember to go shopping on time.” As an afterthought, she added salt to the pot of water before she picked up a box of pasta and dumped it in.
“Here in the Balkans?” Amelia wondered, because she still wasn’t actually sure where she was.
“Of course, honey,” Faina replied, glancing at her over her shoulder with a quizzical quirk to one eyebrow. “We’re in Bulgaria. Where did you think you were?”
Amelia shrugged helplessly. “I was pretty sure I was still in Bulgaria, but honestly, I had no real idea. I spent an obnoxious portion of yesterday locked in a car trunk, and I couldn’t tell how long exactly or how fast the car was going until it seriously slowed down in the snow.”
Faina blinked at her, opened her mouth to ask a question, and then thought better of it. “Best not get into it now,” she sighed as she began scooping up the grated cheese to dump it into the cream. “The others are all going to want to know what happened, and I’m sure you’d rather not explain the whole mess more than once.”
“That would be nice, yeah,” Amelia agreed, before she busied herself with the bottle of water again. Faina turned her attention back to the stove, stirring and seasoning the food in front of her.
The silence didn’t last for long, though. The front door banged open with enough force that the walls rattled, only to slam closed again a moment later. It was followed by the sound of boots hitting the wall. “You’re not a stampede!” Faina shouted toward the hallway. Despite that, thunderous footsteps raced down the hall, and a girl who couldn’t have been older than sixteen skidded into the roo
m in a pair of socks.
She was paler than Aibek, but still darker than Faina, with the same dark hair cropped close to her head and smoothed back, and the same vivid blue eyes. A grin that could only be described as ‘shit-eating’ split her face as she laid eyes on Amelia, and she declared in a voice that held endless amounts of cheer, “Hi! I’m Sezim!”
She was a short, broad girl, with wide hips and broad shoulders, and she looked like she was constructed entirely of muscle. And despite her height—she only came up to Amelia’s mouth—Amelia had trouble trying to describe her as small, as she and her grin seemed to fill the entire little kitchen beyond capacity.
Evidently deciding that any real conversation with Amelia could wait for the moment, Sezim whipped around to face Faina, her feet nearly sliding right out from under her in her tie-dyed socks. “Pasta?” she asked, her tone brightening further, as if someone had just promised her a million dollars. Despite her feline lineage, Amelia couldn’t help but imagine her with a wagging tail like a golden retriever.
“Yes, dear,” Faina replied as she set a colander in the sink.
Sezim darted forward, declaring, “Got it!” as she wrapped her hands around the handle of the pot and picked it up to pour it into the colander, so quickly Faina very nearly had to leap out of the way.
Amelia was getting tired again just looking at her.
Faina ushered the girl away from the sink after taking the now empty pot back. “Go make yourself useful and get the bowls out,” she sighed, as she poured the drained pasta back into the pot and poured the sauce over it. She gave it a few tosses with a wooden spoon.
Heaving a sigh like she was being told to kiss a frog, Sezim tossed herself over to the cabinet and pulled out a stack of bowls that seemed nearly as tall as she was. Amelia had to wonder how many people would be crowding into the small kitchen.
As she set the bowls down on a corner of the counter with a loud clatter, Sezim burst out, as if she couldn’t keep it in any longer, “I helped get you back to the house. I mean, kinda. Mostly I was patrolling to make sure no one snuck up on us during the walk.”
If Amelia thought very hard, she could sort of remember a third leopard bounding in circles around them for a portion of the walk. “The really bouncy one?”
With a beaming smile, Sezim nodded, clasping her hands together in front of herself. “That’s the one!”
“You’re not done yet,” Faina pointed out, and Sezim skittered over to a drawer to pull out a handful of forks. She left them unceremoniously in a pile next to the bowls. Amelia was getting the impression that meals were of the ‘serve yourself’ style in this family.
“How long have you been awake?” Sezim asked brightly, leaning into Amelia’s space, only to lean back apologetically when Amelia recoiled slightly. “Have you seen everything yet?”
“Hush, dear,” Faina sighed good-naturedly. “She’s only been awake for about a half an hour. There’s been no time for her to see anything. It’s not like anything on the mountain is going anywhere.”
“Noooo,” Sezim agreed slowly, “but it might be nice if she got to see it before it disappears under eight feet of snow.”
“I think there’s time,” Faina remarked dryly, and she reached over to ruffle Sezim’s hair. “Do you know where the rest of your siblings have disappeared to?”
“Serik’s around,” Sezim returned with a shrug. “Dunno about the others.”
As if on cue, a new voice wondered, “Is Sezim being strange again?” and Amelia turned to see a boy peering into the kitchen from the hall before he cautiously emerged into the room.
“No more so than usual,” Faina answered. “Now be polite.”
As if he only just noticed Amelia, he shrank back toward the hallway. He was dead silent for a few moments before he mumbled, “Hi. I’m Serik.”
He looked to be around Sezim’s age, and his hair color, skin tone, and eye color were virtually identical to his sister’s. His hair was longer, though, and fell into his face like a wavy, unruly mop. He was a few inches taller than Amelia, and he was lean and lanky and looked like he was still growing into his limbs. On the whole, he gave the impression that he had accidentally tumbled into an industrial taffy puller and gotten stuck for a minute before meekly pulling himself out and scuttling away.
He offered no handshake and, in fact, looked like a sudden move might send him fleeing for the hills (or into the mountains, as the case may be). So Amelia followed his example and kept her hands to herself.
Sezim flung herself across the kitchen, flinging her arms around Serik’s neck and dragging him down to her height with a startled yelp. “We’re twins,” she supplied brightly, clearing up any confusion over how close they were in age, though Amelia was pretty sure she could have guessed as much in time. Serik struggled in her hold for a moment before going limp in resignation, like an exasperated kitten.
If she was frank with herself, Amelia couldn’t quite imagine growing up in such a remote area when she was their age. She had always been a city girl, shifting only in the house or if her parents took her out to somewhere private to do so. ‘Peace and quiet’ and ‘ample space’ were not things she was accustomed to, but she had always figured the tradeoff was worth it. Serik and Sezim seemed pretty well adjusted, though, so maybe Amelia had just been too quick to accept that only being able to stretch her legs a few times a month was a necessity.
“How do you go to school from here?” Amelia asked before she could stop herself, looking between them in bemusement.
Sezim blinked at her and released her brother from the unwanted hug to instead pantomime typing in the air in front of herself. “Cyber school,” she answered, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. Amelia supposed that maybe it was, but she had a hard time imagining Sezim actually sitting still long enough for that. She kept that observation to herself, though. Things were going better than she had expected, and she didn’t need to start being rude for no reason.
“Are you a shifter, too?” she asked instead, looking at Serik.
He nodded in reply, just a quick, jerky bob of his head. “Wasn’t there last night, though,” he added, before Amelia could ask if she had missed the presence of a fourth snow leopard in her cold-induced delirium.
“And you can all just…shift whenever you want out here,” Amelia stated, as if the very concept of it was utterly alien.
“Basically,” Sezim chirped in reply, hip-checking Serik as she did. “All the time. I mean, we try not to let, like…hikers or whatever see us, since snow leopards aren’t exactly native to the area and no one wants a hunting party tromping through the area, but hiding from regular humans is easy.”
“Not very observant,” Serik supplied in a quiet mumble, quite like he had forgotten that snow leopards tended to look like piles of snow-covered rock when they weren’t in motion and were actually in a snowy environment. Not that Amelia could disagree with the assessment. She’d had to hide from the mailman when he had come to the door once, and he had entirely missed her tail sticking out from behind the couch.
“Wait, so—” Sezim blinked up at her. “Do you mean you couldn’t, then?” she asked, scratching her temple with one hand.
Amelia snorted. “Not even close,” she replied. “I lived in Chicago. There were people everywhere, and I would’ve been spotted in a heartbeat. If I wanted to get a chance to actually run, then I had to get my mom or my dad to drive me out of the city.”
Sezim wrinkled her nose in clear distaste. Before she had a chance to voice any of it, though, Serik unexpectedly burst out, “Can you really go over a hundred kilometers an hour?”
Amelia was not even going to attempt to do that math in her head, and instead, she just assumed it added up to the right number of miles. She grinned as she confirmed, “If I have enough space, yeah.” She sighed wistfully. “I’ve only really had a chance to do it a couple times this semester.”
“Why live in the city, then?” Sezim asked, her brows scrunching
together in bewilderment. “It sounds awful.”
Amelia couldn’t quite keep back a laugh in time, and she lifted a hand to cover it. “It has its downsides,” she acknowledged, “but it’s basically all I’ve ever known. I mean, I was born in London before we moved. I’m not sure I would even know what to do with myself otherwise.”
Sezim groaned, and to say the noise was melodramatic was not doing it nearly enough justice. “You’d run, obviously!” she burst out. “And everything would be so much better.”
“Is that a professional opinion?” Amelia asked dryly, her weight shifting to one side in her seat as she leaned an elbow on the counter and propped her chin up in her hand.
“It is,” Sezim returned emphatically.
“Honestly, dear, don’t be rude,” Faina sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose between two fingers.