Flights of Angels (Exit Unicorns Series Book 3)

by Cindy Brandner

  He made a noise and the woman turned to him, her face young and sweet. He cradled his arms and said the Yakut word for ‘baby’. It was a guess but it was the right one. She nodded and cradling her arms in return said a few words which Jamie thought meant food and sleep. She motioned in confirmation pointing to her breast. He heaved a sigh of relief. Kolya was safe and fed. He then said the word for ‘friend’, and stuck up two fingers. She again motioned food and sleep. So Shura and Vanya were somewhere nearby as well and safe.

  She left towels and a pungent brown cake of soap and indicated that he should now bathe. Knowing that his charges were safe and that Kolya had been fed, he immersed himself in the hot water with gratitude. The fire was built up high and kept the tent very warm. It was a bit like being drunk on the sheer sensual bliss of heat after so much cold.

  He considered his position. It wasn’t likely that his captors would bathe him first in order to execute him, hygiene hardly being a requisite for a well-placed arrow in the chest. Then again if they were going to commit atrocities upon him first, they likely wanted him to be less offensive to their senses.

  He washed with the brown soap and a rough cloth and felt as though he were washing off the last several weeks and emerging new-skinned into something else. By the time he got to his toes, he thought he might just go back to sleep right here in the warm water. They could cook him if they liked.

  He did fall asleep for a few minutes but was jolted back to reality when the girl returned. She mimed getting dressed, placing a pile of clothes on the sleeping skins and using hand gestures accompanied by words which, despite his very limited knowledge of the Yakut language, made it clear that his presence was desired by someone important in the village. Likely their headman, Jamie thought.

  He dressed in the clothes she had left, supple hide pants lined with fur, an old and faded cotton shirt, well worn but clean and smelling of pine and smoke, an overshirt of fur-lined leather and boots that were heaven on his feet. A reindeer coat and mittens in the same material completed his ensemble. It was all wonderfully soft and warm; he hoped that Kolya and Shura and Vanya were as well looked after.

  The girl waited for him, pulling back the flap of the tent just as he was puttling the boots on. She gestured that he should follow her. Outside, the night was lit by fires and lanterns, the moon full above, turning the snowy fields around to gilt. A strong scent of animal and urine came from the west, and he heard the sounds of reindeer grunting and feeding.

  He wondered how far off he was in his reckonings. The Yakut traditionally lived in the east, not here in what he had hoped and prayed was somewhere near the Kola peninsula. The Yakut were nomads and since the Revolution had been badly scattered and depleted due to collectivization and extermination. It simply wasn’t possible that he and his small band had wandered into Siberia. Surely even as sleep and food deprived as they were, the Ural Mountains would have caught their attention.

  Along snow-crusted paths he was led to a tent in the center of the village. The girl pulled back the tent flap but did not enter, pointing with her hand that he should go in alone.

  The tent was firelit like his own had been and beyond the fire, sitting on a pile of skins was a very old woman, her hair so white it appeared blue in the shadows. So not a head man, not a council of elders, but maybe the shaman, for though the Yakut’s medicine and folklore came down through both the men and women, women were considered the more powerful. And this woman, despite being very small and fragile-looking, emanated power like few people Jamie had met in his lifetime. Her face was framed by the fur-ruffed collar of her coat, the high bones beneath still speaking of beauty and dignity. Her eyes were pools in the firelight, black as currants and set deep above the winged cheekbones.

  She gestured that he should sit across from her on a pile of skins similar to hers. He sat, bowing his head to her so she would know he understood he was with someone of great importance.

  She studied his face for several moments and Jamie looked back into her eyes, allowing the regard. Finally, she took a deep breath and said something to herself. Jamie didn’t catch much of it other than the word, he thought, for ‘sun’. This guess was confirmed when she leaned over and touched his hair, allowing it to lie on the palm of one hand as she smoothed it with the other. He supposed men with golden hair were in short supply in these regions but she seemed more than normally fascinated. Having little choice in the matter, he merely sat and allowed her attentions.

  She sat back soon enough and addressed him in Russian; flawless Russian with the north winds in its threads. Most Yakut of her generation would have been educated in Soviet schools, inculcated into a regime and culture that must have been more foreign to them than if they had been transported to Mars. But she was of an age to be rooted firmly in her own culture before the dislocation had occurred.

  “You are welcome here.”

  He replied as he thought right. “Thank you, Mother. I am honored to be your guest.”

  She nodded, for this was so. Jamie knew that to the Yakut, especially a shamanness such as she, the mental and spiritual abilities of a white Westerner were laughable, that he was little more than an intelligent dog in her view. He wondered, not without some trepidation, what she wanted with him.

  Outside, a lone drum began to beat slow, in tempo with blood and heartbeats, primal in the spine and cells. She reached to the side and poured something from a vessel that sat beside her on the floor into a horn cup and handed it to him.

  “Drink this,” she said. “It is what is necessary for you and me to speak directly.”

  He took the drink and neither inhaled nor looked too closely at it. He did not know its component parts, though he had a very bad suspicion about them. He could not refuse it, however, for to do so would be to insult this Mother. The taste could not be avoided, sharp and astringent with the flavor of smoke and earth at bottom. He finished it and set the cup down, wondering how long it would be before it took effect. He was not frightened, for he had known such things before, but considered that it was unfortunate that he had not eaten much in many days. The Celts used this too but they had smoked it or used it in steam lodges. The effect, he believed, was much the same.

  It occurred to him while his faculties were still in normal working order that he knew who had Yakut relatives—many times removed—but had them nonetheless. So it wasn’t likely they were going to cook him. But anything else was entirely possible.

  The Mother took his hands and smiled. Afterward, he never knew if she spoke aloud or if she merely thought the words into him, but he felt them, their shapes and rhythms, rather than hearing them through his ears. “Come dream with me, son of the green land.”

  The drums were louder now and felt as though they beat inside his head, in his blood, each thump pulsing through vein and cell, into muscle and bone. Suddenly, without moving, they were in a field and the moon was bright overhead, pouring silver over them, over every hump of snow and sparking off the coats of the great beasts that moved amongst and around them.

  They walked to the edge of a body of water, a lake that lay uncommonly still in the dark night. Jamie felt a sudden rush of vertigo, for the night was reflected perfectly within the bowl of water and it seemed that they stepped out into nothing, stars above and stars below, everything falling away, forever, into infinity, including himself and the woman whose hand held his own. The sense of falling was disturbing at first but then it felt natural, as though there were no bottom to hit, nothing to harm in this universe of stars. He simply had to let go, for he was too tired to do otherwise. He closed his eyes and surrendered to it.

  The stars were a river, a great serpentine flow of fire and ice, stretching and roiling out to the edge. The colors that rippled and burst before his eyes were like nothing he had ever seen before. They defied description, and there were no names in his lexicon fit for such wonder.

 
The woman who stood before him looked like the Mother, old and wise beyond time and the boundaries of human thought. Yet he understood it was not the woman who had taken his hand, but someone—something far older who had existed forever. She held a spindle in her hands, a thing that gleamed and spun and threw out light in great shudders. Suddenly she drove it down through the ground at her feet. The ground opened and then came a flood of light and dark, of the sun and the moon. Mountains formed beneath her feet and the oceans flooded all around them, smelling of life and birth. Coiled around her foot was a serpent, a sign of the infinite and of boundless wisdom.

  She touched his face and he knew that it was both women that touched him, one through the other, but the touch held peace within it and the agony of life itself, which was both its terror and its beauty.

  “There are endings,” she said softly. “Sometimes the thread snaps but in that ending is always the thread that will be spun into a new beginning. The thread is infinite and always in the act of creating. For you, this is a time of both ending and beginning.”

  And then he began to laugh, for covering him, resting with feet so light they were like velvet-shod calyxes, were butterflies, hundreds of butterflies in all the breathing colors of the universe and the river of stars that he waded within.

  He awoke near morning, the light still deep blue but with ashes around the edges that told him dawn was on its way. There was a girl in the skins with him. He had not wanted this part, not at first, but his mind had failed to communicate this adequately to his body and his body, missing its appetites, had done what was necessary.

  It was the girl who had filled the bath and taken him to the Mother. She slept deeply, bare-skinned as he was, warm and smelling sweetly of sex and some unidentifiable perfume. He fell back into the swaddled arms of Morpheus feeling strangely peaceful.

  When he next awoke, it was morning and there was still a woman in the tent but it wasn’t the soft-skinned partner of the night before. There was only one woman to whom that perfume belonged, the scent of dark cinnamon on gardenias.

  “Yevgena,” he said.

  “Open your eyes, Yasha, your breakfast is here.”

  He opened his eyes. Above him was a pair of dark eyes framed by high and disdainful cheekbones, unmistakably Russian but clothed comfortingly in the robes of his childhood.

  Clad in furs and a red hat, her dark hair and eyes were a solid point in the universe. And when she wrapped her arms around him, he too instantly became real. Because it was Yevgena and because he was tired and weak he could feel the tightness of engulfing emotion in his throat. She merely held him harder, hands rubbing his back, murmuring a soft, throaty shush into his ear that was as comforting as hot tea and vodka.

  “We will feed you and then we must leave. I have transportation waiting,” she said and he could tell by the edge in her voice that she was near tears but would not do that to him just now. He sensed something else below that, as if there were words that must be spoken but that she would not utter yet. An uneasy feeling slid through him, for what news could cause such worry when he had survived the gulag?

  “I’d like to get dressed,” he said, for something must be said, must be done, before she told him news he was not ready to hear.

  She smiled at him. That smile from his childhood that had always made him feel safe and loved.

  “I will turn my back. Will that do?”

  “That will do,” he said and stood as she turned, slipping into the furs, the boots, the leather, his stomach suddenly loud at the thought of food.

  They ate well of the soured mare’s milk and fried bread and cold, roasted meat which he knew now was reindeer. There was tea after, hot and sweetened with honey. It tasted like nirvana.

  His brain felt like it had been scoured with a wire brush, scrupulously gleaned for every bit of lint and ephemera it held as well as the more concrete things. Which wasn’t, it had to be said, the optimal state in which to meet with his godmother.

  The girl brought Kolya to him after breakfast. She said something in Yakut and Jamie understood that Kolya had been fed and had slept well, wrapped tight in furs alongside the woman’s own child.

  Yevgena saw the look on his face. “She was widowed last year, her husband lost to the sea. If she has given you comfort, know that you also have given such to her.”

  The woman’s eyes on him were soft, and he remembered particular moments from the night, and returned the look in kind. He was grateful, for somehow the night had removed some of the thorns from his soul. She was a stranger and she had done this for him. He thought somehow that she understood this.

  He held Kolya facing forward on his lap, the boy’s hair a halo of copper in the morning light.

  “And who,” Yevgena said, as a startlingly blue pair of eyes goggled at her, “is this?”

  “This,” Jamie said softly, “is my son—Nikolai Andreyevich.”

  Chapter Ninety

  The Summons Home

  It was, in those first hours, almost more than he could manage. It was life returning: the business of it, the details, the responsibilities. But Yevgena had fed them out as on a fine line, invisible on its own but freighted with news, gossip, and correspondence. He ought to have known, and had he been sharper, less distracted, he would have understood that beneath the glittering waves of all these morsels lay the dark water hiding, as was its way, the monster whose presence was felt long before it was seen. She had given him those two days in which to sleep, to mend a bit and to readjust a little to the idea of returning to the West, to home, to civilization as he understood it. Only he thought, perhaps he no longer did.

  Two letters, written on his own personal letterhead and therefore they could only be from one person. But why was Yevgena acting as though she carried an incendiary device? He took the letters, his eyes still on hers, questioning.

  She merely looked at him and then quietly left the room. They were in his Paris house, having felt it was not wise to stop on their flight from Russia until they were very far away. He glanced at the clock on his nightstand. It was nearly noon and he had slept twelve hours.

  One was written in a hand he recognized vaguely, the other in Pat Riordan’s broad and immediate slash. He felt something seize just below his breastbone at the sight of that bold writing—Pamela? No, he could not countenance that. He opened the other letter first and understood why it had seemed somewhat familiar, like an echo so far back in his mind that it was barely registered much less heard. It was from Robert who was, despite his own lengthy absence from the land of the living, his secretary.

  Jamie took a deep breath and began.

  Dear Lord Kirkpatrick—the title alone made his head swim—he had been Yasha for so long that the thought of any of the many names and titles he carried in this other world had the effect of either making him want to laugh or hide somewhere for a good, long time.

  He resumed, eyes taking in the neatly-blocked letters as well as the sense of the man writing them. Economical with his words—well, he would be from what little Jamie knew of him.

  I hope this letter finds you well.

  That, thought Jamie, was a matter entirely up for debate.

  We are, of course, rejoicing here to know that you are safe and whole and will be returning to your home soon.

  The ‘we’ gave Jamie pause—who was ‘we’? Robert and Maggie? Montmorency and the horses?

  Not wishing to waste your time, I will get down to business.

  How very Scots and thrifty of him, Jamie thought, picturing the small owl face of the man he had met so briefly under less than ideal circumstances.

  The wee Scot had a very to-the-point style and Jamie felt that he had a good grasp of what had taken place in his companies in his absence.

  It was wise of you to appoint Mrs. Riordan as your legal heir in your absence. S
he has been most astute from the beginning, making the hard decisions when they had to be made, but also exercising compassion when it was a personal matter. She has proven herself tough in negotiations too, though I daresay that her face alone addles her opposition so much they barely know that they’ve agreed with her before they are being hustled from the premises with whiskey in their bellies and yearning in their hearts.

  Yes, Jamie thought wryly, no doubt they did leave in that state. Though he had never known Pamela to indulge in vanity of any sort, still she was shrewd enough to use her looks when she needed to. He could well imagine some of the tough foremen from the linen mills being entirely discombobulated in her presence.

  She has a mind that adapts readily to the ups and down of the markets, both those of goods and finances. She tells me she was well trained by you to understand these things, and that now she knows why. I am politely paraphrasing here, of course.

  He laughed out loud, for he could well imagine just how Pamela had reacted to the news that she had the running of his home and businesses.

  I shall miss working with her. We have formed a well-functioning team these last two years and I have become very fond of her and her family. I look forward, however, to working with yourself whom, I am assured is no slack taskmaster, and I am informed that I will not have time to miss her. I think she underestimates her charms, though. I will, of course, miss the children as well for I have come to regard them as part of this house and its daily rhythms.

  Children? Jamie’s eyes slid further down the page. So Pamela and Casey had another child. The thought of it made him suddenly feel unmoored from the earth, as if he had been gone so long that nothing would be familiar upon his return. Nothing was familiar, that was already too apparent. He wasn’t sure he even wanted to go home, and he knew how irrational that was considering how much he had missed it these last three years. But Russia had turned him into someone else, someone unrecognizable in the mirror even now that the small niceties of shaving and showering had been re-introduced to his world.