Flights of Angels (Exit Unicorns Series Book 3)

by Cindy Brandner

  Volodya took no notice of Jamie’s movement. One of the guards was barking commands now, a mixture of fear and fury in his words. Jamie spared him a sideways glance and then looked back up to Volodya.

  “What is a man’s worth? Is it measured in grams, in bread that a dog would turn its nose from were it not starving? Is it measured by unfulfilled dreams? Is it measured by all the days lived without freedom? How was it measured for all those ghosts in the bell tower? They ring the bells sometimes at night—ring them until there is no sleep. I hear them so often now. Do you?” He looked down at Jamie, his eyes fever-bright.

  Jamie had drawn even with Volodya, taking care to keep the guards within his view. He thanked God that it wasn’t Boris and Vlad who had been assigned to supervise the small feast, for he had no doubt either would be happy to put a bullet in his spine.

  He held out a hand to Volodya. “Come down man,” he said softly, trying to provide him a way out of the fraught situation that wouldn’t end in tragedy or humiliation. They had only a few minutes grace before the guards would change their mind about dealing with the situation themselves.

  Volodya looked him directly in the eyes, his deep blue ones alight with a despair so pure that Jamie felt his heart plummet. And then he spoke, words low and quiet so that only Jamie might hear him.

  “I have doused the light and left open the door

  For you, so simple and so wondrous.”

  He recognized the quote, and understood its import all too well. He kept his hand up to the man, praying that he understood it was his only hope for salvation. Long minutes passed, the tension crawling up the very walls of the dining hall, building thick and black until it seemed impossible that anyone could breathe in such an atmosphere. Jamie could feel beads of sweat begin to run down his backbone but he kept his hand steady and held out to the man. Volodya stared at Jamie’s hand as if he could not quite understand why it was there. But finally he stretched his own hand out, and Jamie could feel the guards coil like springs ready to explode behind him.

  Volodya slid his hand into Jamie’s, grasping it tightly. Jamie grabbed back hard and put his other hand on the man’s upper arm, pulling him down to the ground as fast as he could, dropping his own body amid the shouts of the guards and a small cry of dismay from Violet.

  He held him down to the ground, his body shielding the man from the guards, hoping to God that they didn’t decide to shoot him in lieu of Volodya.

  “Stop it, for the love of God,” Jamie hissed. “They are losing patience with you.” For Volodya was still talking, voice high and hagridden with pain. Volodya ceased at Jamie’s admonition, as quiet suddenly as if he were dead though tears ran in an unceasing stream down his face.

  “It is too late,” he said, and smiled through his tears, but the smile was hollow.

  The man’s words sent a trickle of ice through Jamie’s innards. Volodya seemed resigned but vindictive at the same time, as though something beyond the visible events had taken place and would, like the night-blooming mushroom, only reveal itself in time. Later he would think he should have known, should have understood what the man was saying, but even then, it was too late, just as Volodya had said.

  In the hut, Violet sat by the light of the fire, rocking Kolya. The baby had fallen asleep some time ago, but Jamie understood the need for the reassurance after the scare they had all experienced in the dining hut. He was profoundly grateful for Valentin’s latitude in allowing them this space as a married couple. He needed to be with his small family tonight, to banish the darkness that had swum up around Volodya’s actions. He still couldn’t shake the feeling that he had missed something, overlooked something the man had said or some gesture he had made.

  She looked up, a question in her eyes.

  “Shura dosed him with a sedative and he’s being held in the isolation hut for now.”

  “Will they punish him further do you think?” she asked, and their eyes met over the baby’s head. They both knew the answer, though Volodya had harmed none but himself.

  He took Kolya from her arms, holding him fast for a moment, breathing in the sweet milky scent of him, feeling the warm heat of his tiny slumbering form. Jamie’s own body relaxed in response and he put his head to the curve of Kolya’s, wishing he could always shelter him so but knowing well that he could not. Kolya would soon be a year old, and he was very aware that time was running out swiftly for the child.

  He put Kolya in his cot, built with his own hands, with raised sides to keep him safe through the night, and joined his wife in the bed. In the darkness, she stretched out beside him, the scents of the day coming with her. Jamie sighed and turned toward her so that they met along their lengths. Her skin radiated heat and she smelled still of the earth and garlic and butter, and of female desire. She was impatient, seeking reassurance and oblivion from the dark feeling that had fallen like a thick curtain around them all in the dining hut.

  Inside, she was even warmer and he groaned softly against her mouth for he knew neither of them was going to last long. He moved slowly, lingering, relishing the feel of her skin under his hands, the small cries she made and how she said his name over and over like a sweet prayer for release. This he gave her, pressing himself against her, feeling the life that beat all around them. It held an edge of desperate relief for the narrow miss they had all experienced in the preceding hours.

  “I love you, Yasha,” she said afterwards, her forehead leaning damply into his shoulder.

  “I love you too,” he replied, because it was true.

  Jamie awoke in what seemed only moments later to see Shura bending over him, holding a lantern in his hand, a look on his face of utter panic.

  “What? What is it? What’s happened?” Beside him, Violet sat up, clutching the quilt to her body, eyes wide with sudden fear. Kolya was stirring in his crib, making the small noises that meant he would soon be in full roar.

  “Two of the guards, the ones who ate with us—one is throwing up blood,” Shura said, and Jamie saw that indeed the man’s thick hands were covered in drying blood, black and crimson.

  “And the other?” Jamie asked.

  “Dead,” Shura said bluntly. He didn’t need to add anything more, but the words seemed to hang on the air as though he had indeed uttered them. As are we, once the other guards realize what has happened.

  “He picked plenty of the white ones,” Jamie said, remembering with a lurch the strange look Volodya’s face had worn when he saw Jamie watching him put the frail white mushrooms into his basket.

  “The gauzy looking ones, coming up out of a veil like they are a bride or angel?” Violet asked, her voice sharp with fear.

  “Yes,” Jamie said, his stomach dropping several inches.

  “Those are pure poison,” Violet said, grey eyes wide and dark as the depths of a lake.

  “Destroying Angel,” Shura whispered, his face impossibly white over the broad bones. “They will all die. There is no way to save them from such poison.”

  Jamie got up and hastily threw on his clothes, shoved his feet into the camp regulation boots and followed Shura out into the night.

  Outside the weather had done one of those swift and brutal turnarounds that were native to autumn. It was freezing, the wind howling down like Baba Yaga in a black bitch of a temper. Beyond the wind there lay a terrible silence. He looked about, rain lashing at his face, drawing visibility down to a flickering glimpse of a lit window, and the impression of two pale faces in the dark at the side of Volodya’s hut.

  “Yasha…” Shura said at his back, a note of warning in his tone, but Jamie was already halfway across the mucky expanse of ground toward the pale faces that hovered in the air.

  Suddenly he saw why Volodya was so still, and thought he might be sick there in the freezing cold mud. Volodya was still because Volodya was dead, a bone-handled knife stuck through
his throat, pinning him to the rough lumber of the hut, his face horribly blank above the blade.

  “What the hell have you done?” Jamie managed to gasp out. Gregor stood in the rain, rivulets gathering in his hair and forming small rivers down his body.

  “It had to be done,” Gregor said roughly. “It would go much worse with him if they took him. Now it is over. He has had camp justice.”

  Jamie saw that for Gregor it had not been an act of violence, but rather one of mercy. He was right. He had done what needed doing and he had been the only one with the foresight and courage to see that it was necessary.

  “I will help you bury him,” Jamie said. Gregor gave him one of those long, unflinching looks that always made Jamie feel like his soul was being scoured, then nodded.

  “We will have to do it soon or they will make us leave him to rot, to make a point.”

  The other guards were nowhere to be seen, though the lights of the infirmary blazed, giving them a good idea of where they were occupied. The fences and fear would keep the inmates in place.

  They dug near the edge of the camp, just beyond the ring of pines. The rain felt like needles of ice pouring down Jamie’s collar, soaking the earth and making it heavy and cumbersome to move. Winter was on its way, breathing down from the great Arctic plains. Winter in all its killing ferocity, locking them in for another brutal season. He could sense eyes on them but they were left to bury their dead in peace.

  Gregor heaved the last spadeful of muck onto the grave and stood for a moment with his head bowed. Jamie bowed his accordingly while streams of freezing rain formed a stream down the hollow of his spine.

  “Yasha, you say a prayer. I don’t know how to talk to God, but you do.”

  Jamie looked up and across the mounded dirt at Gregor. The man was perfectly sincere. And so he said a prayer from his own world, a prayer from the West, brought here with a mind and soul that had lived in the light and warmth of those philosophies all its years. As, were God merciful, Volodya should have done as well. American lines for a Russian man. The words came back to him as poetry always did, like a soft breath of air from one of the vortices in his mind and heart, hidden but waiting for the time it was needed.

  …This covert have all the children

  Early aged, and often cold, --

  Sparrows unnoticed by the Father;

  Lambs for whom time had not a fold.

  The atmosphere of the camp changed swiftly in the wake of the guards’ deaths. It came as no surprise to any of them, but it brought with it a cloud of doom that seemed to hang over all their heads. Jamie was banished back to the communal bunkhouse that he had previously shared with Nikolai, Shura, Vanya and Volodya. Even at night, the normal chatter amongst the men was subdued, for they all felt Volodya’s ghost lingering in their midst.

  His time with Violet and Kolya was severely circumscribed, and often several days would pass without his being able to hold the child in his arms. Valentin had been apologetic but Jamie knew the man was in an untenable position. He had to come down on them all or it was his own head that was going to find its way onto the block, if indeed it wasn’t already there. They were all waiting, breath held, for an official visit. The fact that it was so long in coming only contributed to the unease that wrapped around the entire camp.

  He managed a few minutes with Violet before nightfall most nights, saying good night to her in a public place, the falling dark the only measure of privacy they were now allowed. In the Empire, you learned quickly to take what you could get and hang onto it with both hands. Around them the camp grounds were uncommonly quiet, the orange glow of the sodium lights falling in patches here and there. The air smelled like the possibility of snow. She shivered and he put his arms around her, wishing he could will his heat into her.

  “What is it?” He asked, for he sensed something off in her, some fear that she could not keep from him, though he knew she tried.

  She looked up at him, expression pensive. “Last night I dreamt of mushrooms, an unending field of them, Yasha, and I am at the edge of this field but cannot walk into it. To dream of mushrooms is a sign of tears to come. A huge field of them like that,” she shivered again and he held her more tightly, “what can that mean?”

  “I think it might be odd if you hadn’t dreamt of them considering all that’s happened in the last weeks.”

  She shook her head, copper hair a dull gleam in the dark. “That is your rational Western mind speaking, Yasha, but your Russian half knows better.”

  “My Russian half?” he said, laughing a little.

  The face that turned up to his in the dark was entirely serious. “You cannot stay here this long, Yasha, and make a family out of a bunch of prisoners, cannot love us and have us love you without becoming Russian yourself. And once you are Russian, you are Russian forever. This country has changed you. Can you deny it?”

  “No, I would never deny that,” he said and leaned down to kiss her forehead. She was right. His Russian side had told him there was dark trouble stirring that night when Shura had stood to sing that cursed song. He had known it then but it had already been too late. There was more trouble coming and that was, he supposed, the dark Russian wind rising in his spirit, telling him thus. Though one didn’t exactly need to be Baba Yaga reading the portents to know that what Volodya had done was going to come back to curse them all. Even his rational Western mind could see that clearly.

  That night it was his Russian mind that dreamt. He was on horseback in a forest, the light an emerald gloom, and catching at the sides of his vision were small creatures, wizened and horrific, whisking in and out of the portentous dim. He had the sense that he was lost, but did not know how he had become so. Just lost in a way that left him without root or ground beneath him. Around him the forest grew thicker and thicker the further he ventured into it. This was Russian bor, forests that grew league upon league around the curve of the globe, unending, dense and dangerous.

  And then he saw her, a willowy flicker in the trees, the scent of her filling all his senses, green and chill and amber-thick. She was the old forests incarnate, the ones that held witches and winged bears, and lakes so deep that an ever-running chain would never plumb the bottom of them.

  He followed, because it was a dream, because he had always been meant to follow, for from the beginning she had been trying to tell him something, to make him understand. It was like following quicksilver; a flash here and a glimmer there, a darting in the dusk. Once or twice he thought he had lost her to the thick gloaming. Then he smelled something, a scent long familiar, one that lived in his blood and marrow, and it was this he followed.

  The edge of the forest came up suddenly and his horse stopped under him, whickering gently at the wind that rose from a great sea. The woman stood on the shore, the water lapping at her feet, wind blowing through her pale stripling hair, looking out over the waves with a great yearning in her face.

  She turned to him and upon her face was an expression of such exquisite sadness that it cut his heart to witness it. He started toward her but she backed away and disappeared with a flicker of watery green into the forest, which grew thick and dark right to the edges of this strange sea.

  He stepped to the edge of the water, felt it foam around his feet, bent and cupped its salt and shimmer to his face. And then he looked up and over the great rolling waves, the swift running verdigris light that ran on into eternity. He understood the yearning in her face. He felt it himself, strong as any swift-running tide, as deep as any cold current.

  Beyond the sea, he knew, lay the West. A place he had once called home.

  The Tale of Ragged Jack, continued.

  Each night when Jack lay down on his bed, he watched the tapestry as it moved in the soft breezes that stole through every crack in the tower. And he noticed that the Knight’s face was sadder and a little older each time he looked, while t
he Lady retreated further and further into the shadows of the tower. It gave him an uneasy feeling that leaked into his dreams and woke him up in the middle of the night, leaving him staring into the dark. Then day, such as it was, for time was a muddle here, would come and he would go out in the little walnut wood boat with Muireann and she would play her silver pipe, and he would forget what it was that so bothered him in the quiet.

  One night the Knight came to him in a dream, a dream so vivid Jack couldn’t be certain he wasn’t awake at the time. Even later he would doubt it, for it wasn’t fuzzy as dreams often were when he awoke, but a memory with a clarity like mead. In the dream the Knight had been out of the tapestry and they had been sitting together on a fallen tree, thick with moss and lichens, with tiny primroses growing out of the fissures in the bark.

  “You cannot stay, Jack—such things are not possible in this land between worlds. She must go on, beyond the Hollow Hills, and you must find the Crooked Man and then return home. You know it in your own heart. You just don’t want to listen. Please Jack, if you don’t leave, the Lady and I will be trapped inside that tapestry forever, as surely as you will be trapped here with Muireann for all time.”

  Jack awoke cold and sweaty, the dream lingering all day like a frosted spiderweb around his senses, and he knew no matter how many boat rides they took, or picnics in the great golden harvest field, no matter the enchanted music and the water that tasted like honey and snowflakes, that he could no longer stay here. Only the pathway out seemed to have disappeared, if it had, indeed, ever existed at all. Not too many days later, he caught a glimpse of himself in the still water of a moon-soaked pond and reared back in shock. He had grown older in his time here, his hair grown long and wild, the bones of his face closer to the surface with a scurf of whiskers clouding his chin. He rubbed a hand slowly over his face, wondering when this transformation had occurred. Looking down he saw that his pants were far too short, his shirt threadbare and the sleeves well above his wrists. Aengus too had changed, for he was large now, and there was the odd grey whisker in his muzzle.