Flights of Angels (Exit Unicorns Series Book 3)

by Cindy Brandner

  They fell into the filthy snow in a tangle of limbs and rage, Andrei’s legs scissoring him through the air and squeezing his ribs until they gave. He rolled away from Andrei, through the snow, ash thickening the air until it was as heavy as overcooked oats in a man’s mouth. He slid sideways and fought for purchase, Andrei as slick and slippery as an eel, snapping and sliding under him. Andrei was still yelling but Jamie couldn’t make sense of the words, couldn’t understand anything but the singing fury that coursed through him like the thunder of a forge anvil. His arm was across Andrei’s throat, an iron bar, his entire body pulsing with the savage power of it. He would kill Andrei and then the guards would kill him, and it would all be done.

  Then with a rush of fire the anvil came down on his own head and the world spun briefly, stars and water and fire, before it all went black.

  He came to in a pool of slush, head filled with lead shot… or so it seemed. He was both boiling hot and freezing cold. Someone was saying his name, the soft Russian diminutive and for a moment he thought he smelled dark cinnamon, then realized it was only ashes and blood that were clogging his airways.

  “Yasha!” The voice was imperative with panic. He risked cracking one eye though the pain it caused hardly seemed worth it.

  Andrei was above him, and behind Andrei, like particularly ugly and brutish angels, hovered the faces of Vlad and Boris, the bumpkin farmer boys who had been fated to serve out their conscription here on the edge of a frozen world, guarding an encampment of lunatics, poets and thieves. It all had a comfortingly Irish feel about it, so he risked opening the other eye and immediately wished he had not been so foolhardy.

  Andrei glared at him then turned to the Russian version of Tweedledee and Tweedledum, to yell at them with such ferocity that both were stumbling backward at a run before he got halfway through his castigation of them.

  “For the love of all that is holy, will you shut up!” Jamie said acidly, in Russian, which proved, he thought rather smugly, that his brain was still in working order even if it did feel a wee bit too large for its packing crate at present.

  “You could have killed me,” Andrei said. Jamie squinted up at him, noting the thick smears of bloody soot on his face and what might have been a ring of bruises across the width of his neck.

  “I wanted to,” Jamie said, then rolled over to spit a mixture of blood and soot onto the ash-speckled snow. “It was a near thing.” His face stung and throbbed in places too numerous to count. He would be avoiding mirrors for the next while. Just as well, he supposed, that the camp had none.

  “Christ,” Andrei said, with a wheeze that might have been laughter, “I needed that.”

  “So did I,” Jamie said, taking slow stock of his injuries before daring to sit up. He had yet to get past his head and all its various cuts, contusions, bumps and bruises. “You’ve loosened my teeth, you bastard. And I think I’ve got a broken rib.”

  “One of my fingers is broken and I think I’m blind in my left eye. Rest assured that you gave as good as you got.”

  “Once the swelling comes out, you’ll be able to see again,” Jamie said unsympathetically.

  “I can see well enough to know the devil when he’s in my view,” Andrei retorted with a noise that sounded suspiciously like amusement.

  “He is not nearly as handsome as me,” Jamie said, coughing as ash drifted into his open mouth.

  “Well, if anyone would know, it’s you,” Andrei said and collapsed on his back in a pile of filthy snow. “Come, Yasha, the snow will numb your bruises.”

  Jamie was too tired to argue and crawled toward the drifts of snow farther away from the fire. Andrei lay winded in a patch as fluffy as cotton, looking like Picasso’s version of a snow angel.

  Andrei sat up long enough to bark sharp orders at the guards, who had retreated to the edge of the firelight, uncertain what to do. This hail of verbal bullets seemed to help them decide and they headed for the sanctuary of the bell tower. Comrade Yelivosky was treated to an even more blistering tirade when he poked his snout out of the security of Valentin’s office. It was odd but not entirely surprising that no one was willing to interfere.

  “They only wanted to put the fire out, and possibly put a bullet through me,” Jamie said.

  “Let the fucking thing melt into the ground. It’s too late to save it now and besides, how often do we get the chance to be warm in this country? If I can’t kill you, they sure as hell aren’t getting the pleasure of it.”

  Jamie laughed, causing his ribs to move in the manner of glass ground over glass. He settled his bruised and battered body back into the shell of snow.

  They lay thus while the fire died slowly back, having consumed all but the framing of the hut. It stood in a shining pool of water, reflections of crimson, gold and emerald oiling the surface, as beautiful as a Monet painting.

  Above, the sky had turned its face to night, the stars so clearly imprinted upon it that it seemed they had been placed by an ancient hand merely for man’s pleasure. It was a spring sky, he noted, the wheel of the year was turning even in this frozen land. Orion was low in the sky while Gemini took center stage, with the bright stars of Castor and Pollux, the heads of the celestial twins.

  When Andrei spoke, his voice had changed remarkably, as though he were no longer the same man who had entered that hut a scant hour ago. He sounded hollow, as though he had become a straw man.

  “Do you love her?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “My boy—what is he—how…”

  “He’s beautiful, healthy as a horse and he looks like a bloody Cossack, just like his father.”

  Beside him, in the pooling slush, Andrei was still, face turned up toward the heavens.

  “I remember the first time my father took me out to see the stars. We sat on the roof of our dacha and he pointed Orion out, and told me the story of the great blind hunter. At first, I was enchanted, but then I got scared because for the first time the vastness of the universe struck me and I felt so small. Even my father looked small and I knew suddenly he could not protect me in a space so very large. All my life I have been trying to break that space down into something more manageable, something that could be categorized, put into a book, labeled and made palatable to human fears. A fool’s errand, I see now. I still look at the stars and feel small, but now they make me feel hopeless as well. They never used to do that. Because now I know I will never show my son those stars.”

  Jamie contemplated the blaze of Betelgeuse, clear red beating against the tops of the firs so that it looked a living thing capable of fire and mayhem. The sky was the only thing that represented freedom to him these days, that and the thought that the same stars shone over the heads of those he loved who were far away. There was some small comfort to be taken from that.

  “I will show them to him, if I am able. But, perhaps you—”

  Andrei cut him off swiftly. “No, Yasha. We will not speak of it. It’s impossible.”

  Jamie, having long been a father who had lost sons, was familiar with that tone of voice. He would speak of other things. It would not lessen the wound but it would distract for a moment.

  “I—I had an experience when I was sick last year,” he said, feeling the onrush of emotion that had often taken him unawares since Kolya’s birth.

  “Yes?” Andrei prompted.

  “Do you think it’s possible to reach out across the miles, across the breadth of the planet and make contact with someone without the aid of telephone or letters, for two souls to touch simply through longing?”

  “Will you tell me what happened, Yasha?”

  Jamie told the story in brief, realizing how small and beggared the words were in comparison to what he had felt that night, had known in that time out of time. That he had not only touched, felt and smelled Pamela, but had heard Casey, had felt the brute
strength of a man with whom his relationship had been less than cordial and could certainly never be described as close.

  “Doesn’t this point to the likelihood of it being a real event? She is the common thread to which you both hold. It would seem that the three of you are bound together and so are inseparable. And he would be there to keep her safe, from what you’ve told me. Were it merely a dream, I doubt you would have brought him into it.”

  “But couldn’t it have been the fever affecting my brain?”

  “To the point where you held her scent on your hands long after? No, I don’t think so.”

  Andrei was silent for a long space. “Yasha, I have told you much of my work—or as much as I was allowed over the years, but even that barely touched either surface or truth of what we have been doing, studying, testing—all of it, both that which we can prove, and that which remains a puzzle that only tantalizes without resolution. All of this has only made the world in which we live, the universe itself, a greater mystery than it was before. The older I get, the less apparent are the answers. If indeed, the answers exist. But… there have been thousands of studies on one variant or another of this exact thing you speak of. And yes, there is proof that people can communicate across vast distances, even across time.”

  “And yet…” Jamie said, but found suddenly he did not wish to express any skepticism, nor feel it to be truthful, and knew he must accept the incident for what it was, whatever the small fold of time and space in which it had occurred.

  “There is no reason not to believe, Yasha. You know it was more than a fever dream. You know it happened, even if the truth of it only resides in your cells and memory. After all, what is love? Can we touch it, hold it, show it to people in a tangible form? No, but we know it exists, and that something invisible is the greatest power in the universe should tell us all that we need to know or ever will need to know.”

  “You are waxing romantic tonight, Andrei. Where’s your hardheaded Soviet philosophy?”

  “I am not Soviet,” Andrei said, “I am Russian, and we are the world’s biggest romantic fools. And when things are ending, one finds a truth that one did not perhaps seek. It is no less true for all that. Truth and beauty does after all exist outside the confines of political boundaries and history.”

  “Do you truly believe that, Andrushya?”

  “I will tell you what I believe,” Andrei said softly. “I believe that somewhere out there you and I are still those two boys, daring the wind, ready to dive into a deep blue void just to know life. Somewhere both within and without we still exist as those boys, just as this night will echo somewhere always, and so we are always here and there, forever. Those boys are not ghosts. It is now, here, that I am a ghost and yet the world would tell me that the only reality is the present moment, that I am imprisoned by each minute. You and I know this is not so. Don’t we?”

  And suddenly he felt it, the eternal moment they had forged on the tower that night. Andrei was right, that would exist forever somewhere, somehow.

  “I am sorry I could not be the raven that bore you out of here, Andrushya. I am more sorry for that than I can ever tell you.”

  “You are no raven. You are like the phoenix, Yasha. It is why so many are drawn to you. You are the fire that warms chilled souls, that can draw the ghosts in from the night. It is why I loved you from the first. It is why I am here now and it is why I do not know how to forgive you, or myself, for I have loved and hated you in equal measure all these years. I think now though, it is love that will remain with me when you are gone.”

  “It is all there ever was, Andrei. We just weren’t wise enough to see it.”

  “You are the only friend I have left on the planet, Yasha. If you are still my friend, that makes me far richer than most men. Especially here in this country. Are you still my friend, Jamie? After all this?”

  Jamie swallowed. He knew Andrei was asking for a real answer, that the question was merely what it was, stripped of their past and all the wrongdoing that existed between the two of them—simply ‘are we friends?’ And it was his decision and that alone told him how precarious Andrei’s footing felt to the man right now.

  “Vsyegda,” Jamie said softly. Always.

  Andrei smiled, but it was the smile of a ghost.

  “When you go, take them with you. Take them for the sake of that boy one night in Paris, if not for the man he became.”

  “Am I going somewhere?” Jamie asked, tone light though his heart began to thud.

  “Yes, Yasha, just be ready. I don’t know the time nor will it be exact when it arrives—just be ready to go. You will have to prepare Violet as well.”

  “Andrei, what the hell do you have planned?”

  Andrei laughed. “It is not so much a plan, Yasha, as an act of desperation.”

  “Do I take your love to her?” Jamie asked.

  “No, I no longer have the right to say it… to feel it cannot be helped, but to say it is a sin now.”

  “Andrushya…” he began, but halted, without words, the space in his chest empty and quiet with regret.

  From his bed of snow, Andrei spoke, words softened by resignation. “It is as it should be, Yasha. Only one can rise from the ashes we have made and it is you who were created with the feathers of the phoenix.”

  “And you?” Jamie asked, because the words were inevitable between them, always had been. Because here under the stars there was no room for anything but simple honesty.

  “Someone must be the fuel, Yasha, for the fire to continue to burn.”

  And that, thought Jamie, watching the stars raining cold fire above him, was the answer that ended all questions between them, forever.

  Chapter Sixty-four

  June 1975

  The Clerk’s Tale

  It was quiet in the greenhouse, the lilac twilight that the Russians called sommerki, laying a soft haze over the plants and buckets of compost, the watering cans and assorted tools. He had come this evening because Violet wanted a sprig of chamomile for Kolya’s gums. Volodya was inside, hands black with dirt, humming a tune to himself. He was tending an orchid, a gift that the commander had given him for his name day. Jamie had always liked the small, bookish man and sometimes brought him tea in the evenings, as he was always to be found here with his flowers.

  Two months had passed since Andrei’s visit, and there had been no word, no coded message to tell him that escape from this place was imminent. Such things were complicated, he knew, and so he had put his impatience and fears in a tightly locked room that he kept within his mind and found a strange peace existed in the place beyond.

  He handed Volodya a cup of tea, the steam wafting off it in elegant curlicues.

  “How is the boy?” Volodya asked, and took a small sip of his drink before setting it aside. He picked up a brush so delicate it looked to be composed of no more than a few hairs. Each of the man’s movements was precise if slightly fussy, though Jamie knew him for a kind-hearted person who would not undertake the smallest of jobs without ensuring it was done well.

  “He is fine, just cutting a tooth, and fussy with it. I rubbed his gums with vodka, as per Gregor’s instructions, but Violet wants the chamomile for a tincture for him.”

  Kolya, thank heaven, despite his genes, was a very contented baby who had more fussing aunties and uncles than any child needed.

  “Volodya…” he began, and then thought better of his curiosity for the clerk was a very private man and he had no wish to intrude upon such well-guarded territory.

  Volodya turned, brush in hand and smiled. “It is alright, Jamie. You are wondering why I am here? I wondered if you would ever ask for my story. Though it is not terribly exciting, for you know small things can imprison a man in this state.”

  “I wasn’t thinking you were a murderer or anything,” Jamie said, smiling, and then abru
ptly flushed, for what if the small clerk was indeed guilty of murder?

  Volodya raised a dark brow at him. “No, I am not a murderer.”

  He paused to sip his tea and then picked up a pair of tweezers that Dima had fashioned for him in exchange for a dark pink orchid for the woman he was courting. Volodya removed the pollinia from a snowy white orchid and placed it with the care of a watchmaker into the stigma pocket of a deep lavender plant. He then recorded the date and details of the cross pollination in a small cardboard-backed book he kept for the purpose.

  “I want to make an orchid the color of the twilight here,” he said, and sat on an upturned bucket, gesturing to Jamie that he should do the same.

  Jamie sat, breathing in the scent of the soil and water and thick waxen petals.

  “I was a postal clerk in a small village near to the Finnish border. I never longed for much, just a fire of my own, some books, flower seeds for the summer and to take care of my mother, who was old and had the rheumatics very bad.

  “It wasn’t a bad life, though there was never anything in the stores, but we made do. And we always had a garden filled with potatoes and dill, beets and radishes and onions, and we kept cows for milk and meat. In the summer the woods near where we lived were filled with berries and mushrooms. That and vodka and what else does a man need?”

  “Shura tells me he’s never seen anyone with your feel for flowers, not even Violet.”

  Volodya smiled, his lean cheeks pinking with pleasure. “I love flowers and they seem to know that and so respond accordingly. It was flowers that were my downfall and that landed me in here.”

  “Flowers?” Jamie echoed, wondering how even the Soviet Union could prosecute you for growing flowers.

  “Yes, flowers. Armloads of violets to be specific. Well, that and a woman.” Volodya went even pinker at the admission, as though he had just confessed to congress with a sheep.