The Wise and the Wicked

by Rebecca Podos

  He nodded, his hand pulsing inside hers. “Not since I was ten. They warned her they’d cut her off, but Mom didn’t back down. She let me pick out new clothes, and cut my hair, and we moved school districts so I could start again as a boy. And we just kept moving—she says it’s safer that way, without the family. When I started high school, I started hormones. And here I am. And . . . you’re staring at me,” Dov said, eyebrows knitting together.

  Was she? Yes, she’d been studying his face, his rumpled black hair, the small, solid muscles in his shoulders, wondering what it meant that she wanted him. Because against her will and despite her scheming, she wanted Dov Mahalel, in a way she’d never wanted anybody before. She wasn’t altogether sure she ever had wanted anybody, but in this, she was sure.

  And he wanted her.

  The realization was a pocket of warm, bright air inside of her. Dov didn’t know who she was. If he did, he wouldn’t have told her his story, offered up the details of his legacy, helplessly tangled with hers. He wasn’t using her—which shouldn’t matter, because she was, in fact, using him, but it did. He didn’t know her, but he wanted to. And it felt like tea on a cold day, like a nightlight in the dark, like happiness.

  Ruby shook herself. “Sorry. It’s just . . . if I’m being honest, I’m really not comfortable with the fact that . . . you’re allergic to eggplant.”

  “Tomatoes, too, if that does anything for you.”

  “Stop, it’s too sexy.”

  He laughed, winced, pressed his bandaged hand to his ribs and winced again.

  Bottling her guilt inside of her, she forced her voice to coolness and nodded at the hand. “What did you mean, that it was supposed to hurt?”

  She watched him search for the words. “It’s . . . You know flood control channels? They’re these empty cement basins you build along roads for water to overflow into, like big gutters. So it stops the streets from flooding in heavy rain. It’s kind of like that.” He examined his palm, brushed his bent fingers against the dressing. “I didn’t know what I was doing when I fixed Talia. Everything I took from her could’ve broken me, or burst out. But Mom said when I burned my hand that day, it created a channel. The pain made a space for more pain to flow into, to stop me from flooding.” Dov let his hand fall back to the bed sheet. “But I almost never practice, so I don’t know how much it would hold, or what would happen if it didn’t.”

  “And you don’t miss it? The gifts?”

  He shrugged. “Like I said, they were never mine. But no, not really. Talia’s the heir, and that’s great for her, but I think it’s heavy, too. You can see it weighing her down, sometimes. I just feel . . . like I used to be a character in a story somebody else wrote for me, you know? But not anymore. I walked off the page, and now I can do anything.”

  It sounded wonderful, when he put it like that, and it broke her heart a little.

  Dov looked up at Ruby, his fever-bright eyes two searchlights. “You’re taking this, like, suspiciously well, for somebody who worships Carl Sagan.”

  “You think so?”

  “Maybe you’re in shock,” he suggested.

  She couldn’t rule it out. But he had given her his truth. And though for one hundred reasons she shouldn’t, she wanted to give him the same—at least, however much of it she could—so she swallowed the rawness in her throat. “Carl Sagan didn’t believe in superstition or the supernatural. But . . . he also said, ‘Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.’ So I just always figured, if I ever discovered something new—if I ever had information he didn’t—he’d want me to learn everything I could, and understand it.”

  “Am I something new?” Dov’s lips twitched.

  “Maybe you’re something incredible,” Ruby answered, wishing at once that she could take it back.

  But when his still-pale cheeks dimpled, she knew it was too late.

  • Twenty-Five •

  Ruby did not tell her mother about Dov.

  At least, she didn’t tell her who he had been before he became the boy she . . . had feelings for. What did it matter? He was who he was now, and the past was irrelevant.

  The rest, she recounted in her mother’s motel room as she sat on one of the beds, eating mini cookies out of a foil package from the vending machine. Ruby had driven straight from Dov’s house, and since she’d been too busy studying Talia at lunch to eat lunch, she’d been starving by the time she arrived. Wiping cookie crumbs on an already-greasy-feeling quilt, she told her mother everything she could think of, starting with that beautiful disaster of a date, the lightning and the voices and the fall. How Dov had hurt himself to heal her, and what his mother had said about the Chernyavskys being good at survival. How she’d threatened Ruby even as she’d dismissed her. How Ruby had snuck back to hear the whole story of the Volkovs, and how the woman in the woods had been their downfall.

  “That’s definitely us, right? Vladlena, I mean.”

  It was almost dark in the room, the bedside lamp the only light on, and its glow cast Evelina as a stone, pale and unmoving. She wasn’t looking at Ruby, but out the motel room window at the cold, dry sky. At last, she pressed her fingers to the dip in her collarbone, where Polina’s necklace rested. “Yes,” she said simply. “That’s her.”

  “I thought so,” Ruby said. Her head swam with strange knowledge, question upon question like breaking waves. “Except . . . they don’t seem to think it happened the same way we do.”

  Her mother twisted Polina’s locket around her neck, dragging it back and forth across its thin gold chain with a zip, zip, zip. “Stories are living things, Ruby, not just ink on a page. Stories are power. They’re born, and they grow with time, and they die off if they’re not cared for or fed. They exist to fulfill a purpose. They can be dangerous. And sometimes, they lie.”

  That made sense. Of course, Mrs. Mahalel—and everyone who’d come before her—would lie about what had happened to the Volkov men when they’d gone looking for Vladlena Chernyavsky. No, when they’d hunted her and her daughters, because that was the real story, not the soft version Dov had been told as a child. She shouldn’t be surprised that the Volkovs were the heroes in their own tales, instead of the villains they truly were. Why else would they have chased the Chernyavskys out of Russia and all the way to America? Why else would Dov’s mother threaten Ruby?

  And Dov? If he truly wasn’t a player in all of this, stripped of the role when he was ten years old, then what was he to her?

  That last was a question her mother couldn’t answer, so instead, Ruby asked, “What did Polina tell you about the Volkovs?”

  Evelina’s eyes snapped back to Ruby. “Not much more than I’ve always told you. That men came into the woods, wanting to pry Vladlena’s gifts from her. Vladlena managed to chase them off, but knew more would follow, so she packed her daughters’ trunks, loaded them onto their horse cart, and sent them far away, where they’d be weak but safe without their secrets.”

  “Except we’re not safe.”

  “No.” Evelina clasped a white-knuckled fist around the locket, then let it drop. “But we’re not weak, either.”

  “How did Vladlena get rid of the first Volkovs when they came for her?”

  “That she didn’t tell me.” Evelina said, something like a flame of anger in her voice, but it had cooled completely when she spoke again. “Have you told your sisters about this yet?”

  Ruby shook her head.

  “That’s good. They’re safer if they don’t know, for now. Ruby . . . I’m leaving town tomorrow morning.”

  Creeping tendrils of panic climbed her heart, until Evelina reached across the bed and laced Ruby’s fingers through hers. Her hand looked like Ginger’s, small and hard-knuckled and practical, but it was warm. It was as a mother’s hand should be.

  “Only for a little while. There are some supplies I can’t find in Hop River, shockingly, but we’ll need them if we’re going to get started.”

  Ruby clutched at her mother, fingertips
pressing down. “To change my Time?”

  “If you’re ready.”

  “Yes,” she breathed with relief, then held her breath again as she asked, “Can I come with you?”

  She smiled kindly. “It will take me a week or two, and I think your sisters might notice. Besides, isn’t your cousin’s party this weekend?”

  Her mother was right; Cece’s party had finally been rescheduled, a date found at the end of March, past the respectable mourning period for Polina. And Ruby should be there. Whether Cece wanted it or not, the party was her rite of passage, even if they were always the same. Piles of traditional food, the family in their fanciest dresses, the ritual of the Recordings.

  Her mother’s hand pulsed in hers. “But there’s something you can do while I’m gone. Something we need in order to help you.” She watched Ruby closely in the feeble light. “This Volkov woman. Do you think her son would want to see you again?”

  Ruby nodded, hoping it was dark enough that her blush didn’t show.

  “Good. Because we need something from their house—a glove, a comb, anything, but the more personal the better.”

  “Why?”

  “You remember the story of Vasilisa? The price?”

  “She risked her life to find the cure for death,” Ruby recounted dutifully.

  “This ritual, when we do it, will buy you more time than Nell could ever pay for. We’re talking about years, Ruby. Decades without repeating the ritual, if we do it right. But we’ll need a powerful token for that. Something from another who has abilities. Our enemies.”

  “So . . . you want me to take it from Dov?” She winced without meaning to.

  Her mother shook her head. “That won’t do it. He doesn’t have the power, and neither do his possessions. We need something belonging to a Volkov woman, anything she touches regularly. Just promise me you won’t let her catch you. It could be dangerous—”

  “I can do it,” Ruby promised, oddly relieved. She didn’t want to steal anything from Dov. She only wanted from him . . . whatever he was willing to give her. Though it was true that stealing from Mrs. Mahalel would be harder.

  “I know you can, brave girl. You’re a Chernyavsky. That means you’re a survivor. And we’re going to make sure of that, me and you.”

  Ruby clutched Evelina’s hand, feeling the fullness of her own heart. There was so much more to talk about, but it could wait until her mother returned. Right now, she couldn’t think of a single question worth tossing away this feeling, this tentative hope she wanted to cup her palms around and protect. Hope for a chance at a longer life, a real life. For the years ahead spent with her mother, with her whole family, and—why not?—with Dov. Anything seemed possible in this moment, a perfect jewel glittering among sands that stretched on and on forever.

  • Twenty-Six •

  Cece’s party was held at Great-Aunt Vera’s house, an hour’s drive north in Abbot, some of which Ruby spent staring at the monochrome landscape as it blurred by, searching for that anonymous spot along the highway where Galina might have died. The place where her grandmother’s choices supposedly led. But the piled snow and guardrails and tall, dead-gold weeds looked exactly the same, mile after mile.

  They parked on a street of refurbished Victorian homes painted every shade of lilac and spring green and bright berry red. Except for Vera’s; hers was buttercup yellow once, but had faded to bone over the years, and she’d never repainted. “The house and I, we’re both old,” she’d said whenever her daughters, Ruby’s aunts, offered. “Let us age beautifully together.” And so it had aged, from its scalloped siding to the wine-colored shutters to the round porch, like a carousel stripped of horses. In late spring, the front garden would burst with lilac bushes, but in March it was an icy, dead-looking hovel of sticks studded with ceramic lawn gnomes. What’s more, these were imported gnomes from Russia, not just bearded but with their faces and hands thatched with hair, bursting from their bright tunics. Vera called them her “domovoi” and joked that they guarded her house.

  She claimed it was a joke, at least. But Mikki said her grandmother left bowls of milk or oatmeal or salt in the flowerbed for them, rolls of bread and pinches of tobacco from her cigarettes.

  The place hadn’t been a part of Ruby’s childhood quite the way Polina’s had been. She had never sat silently in a kitchen chair, short legs dangling, watching Vera cook solyanka, a soup made from every kind of meat and every sour thing you could possibly keep in your pantry. Nor had she ever vomited on the lace tablecloth after her very first bowl of solyanka. But she knew the house, full of polished wood and tchotchkes from Vera’s travels. She knew the smell of her great-aunt’s cigarettes, steeped into the thick woven drapes and rugs, which Ruby found welcoming when Vera ushered Ruby, Dahlia, and Ginger inside. Their great-aunt was always the first to greet them at the door, despite her age and position in the family; Polina had never once met them on the front steps, not even when they came for visits, but expected the sisters to let themselves in and wander toward the kitchen, just as she had barged into their houses.

  Gone was the mourning veil. This time, Vera greeted them in a peacock-green satin pantsuit and orange lipstick. “Come, girls, the guest of honor has just arrived.”

  They found Cece in the living room, surrounded by family. Ruby almost didn’t recognize her at first; her cousin wore a moss-green dress with long sleeves that buttoned at the wrists, and her white-blond hair, typically uncontained, was wound into a perfect ballerina bun. She looked so unlike herself in general, Ruby felt a twinge of loneliness, as if her cousin had aged overnight. They hadn’t seen much of each other in the week since her catastrophic date with Dov. While Ruby was driving back and forth between school, the Mahalels’, and the Molehill Motel, Cece had been pulled into her mother’s preparations for today; Ruby hadn’t even had the chance to share all she’d learned with her cousin. But when Ruby finally managed to lure Cece from her party into the cramped downstairs bathroom, she told her everything—everything except for the Mahalels. Talia was still an unknown threat, after all, and her mother was right. Her cousin was safer in ignorance.

  It would be worth the secret, Ruby decided, when she’d saved Cece from her Time.

  The rest, she spilled willingly, starting with Evelina. She shared the translation of Vasilisa the Beautiful, and the story of the Volkovs (also relayed by Evelina, Ruby claimed). The ritual from the other night, and the cost of time, and Ruby’s resolution to pay it. That part was tricky, without mentioning the Mahalels, but she managed through careful editing.

  Cece stood pressed against the sink basin, pulling at the buttons on her dress. Her green eyes glowed—Aunt Annie must’ve done her eye shadow in classic beiges and browns—and they were wide with disbelief. “Why didn’t you tell me you were going to your mom?”

  With everything she’d just been told, that was her first question?

  Ruby shifted against the towel rack that dug into her back through her own plum dress, a thrift-store find of Dahlia’s with the tacky white collar carefully exorcized. “Was I supposed to? I thought it was my choice.”

  “Right, of course it was.” Cece frowned. “I just thought we were working together.”

  “We are!” Ruby rushed to say. “It’s still our thing.”

  “Our thing?”

  “Our mission, or whatever. Evelina is . . . she’s helping. She wants to help us. First we fix me, and then we’ll know how to fix you. Or, your Time. You know what I mean.”

  “Just be careful, okay?”

  Be careful must be the most useless two words in the English language. Whoever told you to be careful was obviously convinced of your recklessness, yet had no actual advice or instructions to offer. Ruby clenched her fists around her slightly overlong sleeves, but swallowed her sharp reply. It wasn’t Cece’s fault, and she shouldn’t be annoyed with her. Cece wasn’t . . .

  She was different from Ruby, was all.

  “Nothing has changed, I promise. It’s still y
ou and me, working together.”

  Cece’s eyes slivered. “I don’t know. You should have told me. Because I sort of had this whole plan for today, but now—”

  “No, let’s do your plan!”

  “Don’t patronize.”

  “I’m not, Cece, I want to hear it!”

  So she listened as Cece told her, green eyes aglow once more.

  After they’d rejoined the crowd, there were appetizers and mayonnaise-based salads to make it through, and so much family chatter—baby cousins shrieking as their mothers plucked them away from sharp corners and delicate collectibles, Oksana gushing about her date to the upcoming spring dance at Oakleaf Prep, aunts oohing over each other’s beaded dresses, their pearl necklaces and pinned hairstyles. It seemed hours before Vera finally summoned them all into the living room, where she followed the script for parties as set by Polina. Ruby stood on her toes, trying to see over the crowd—there wasn’t as much space or seating here as the house on Ivory Road, only a few mismatched chairs and a patchy velveteen chaise lounge—while Vera presented Cece the Recordings. “Write down your Time, Cece. Write your truth.”

  Aunt Annie gave her daughter a thick-tipped pen.

  “It . . . um, it might take me a while,” Cece said, her voice like a rung bell, clear but trembling.

  “You’ll have as long as you need. Choose a private place, and we’ll wait for you here.”

  This was always how it happened, so Cece hadn’t really needed to ask, but this was her plan, so she was in charge of it. And if she sounded nervous, who in the family would blame her? She was about to set her death down in writing . . . or close enough. Aunts and cousins split to leave a path for Cece, and as she passed by, she cut her eyes toward Ruby for only a second, then set her teeth and walked on, shoulders pulled low by the weight of the book.

  Ruby waited a few minutes while the room resettled and the chatter picked up, then tapped Lili on the shoulder. Her cousin was dressed like the sugarplum fairy in a pale pink corset dress that glowed against her dark skin, its tulle skirt full and beaded. Her dark hair was scooped into an updo topped by her natural Afro puff, and she smelled like coconut oil and lip gloss.