The Wolf Princess

by Cathryn Constable

  On the way back to French, Sophie allowed herself several footsteps to savor the thought that, for the first and only time in her life, something wonderful and magical had happened. Then she sighed.

  There was just one problem. A big one.

  Rosemary.

  Sophie was right to be pessimistic. The paperwork for the trip came back in a large brown envelope with one of Rosemary’s scrawled notes paper-clipped to the top: No can do. Much too expensive. In another pen, she had added, Away for most of school holiday. Best get yourself invited to a friend’s.

  Sophie stuffed the envelope into her bedside drawer, then lay on her bed and stared at the leaden sky. She could understand Rosemary not wanting to spend the money: She knew there wasn’t much of it around for Sophie, and the little there was had been earmarked for school fees. Rosemary was keen on Sophie’s “education” largely because it meant they had to spend very little time together.

  It was hard not to think about how different things could have been if … No. She wouldn’t allow herself to think about her father. Nothing would bring him back.

  Sophie straightened the photo on the windowsill. She tried hard every day to remember everything she could about him, but he was starting to fade. She couldn’t stop it. And trying to remember him was like trying to remember a dream. Sometimes she had a sudden memory of climbing onto his knee to put her finger in the cleft of his chin, or snatches of a song he sang in the car, or the way he used to laugh as he wiped her face after he’d let her use ketchup for lipstick … but she couldn’t force these memories to come without them feeling damaged in some way. And she couldn’t remember his voice. All she really knew about the night he had died — through listening to Rosemary on the phone years later — was that it was dark and it was raining and her father had borrowed someone’s car to drive home after his poetry reading.

  “Have you handed in your form?” Delphine had come back to the room to pick up a forgotten workbook. She plucked it off her shelf and pushed it into her oversized Chanel handbag.

  “No.” This would make it even worse. Her two closest friends were going on the trip … and they didn’t even want to go. Delphine kept going on about how cold it would be, and Marianne said she was actually interested in Thomas Hardy’s cooking.

  Delphine raised one eyebrow.

  “It’s Rosemary,” Sophie muttered. “I need her permission and she won’t give it.”

  Delphine put out her hand. “Give the form to me.”

  Sophie handed the envelope to Delphine, who whisked a pen out of her pocket.

  “But you can’t!” Sophie gasped. “That’s illegal.”

  “Look, the office isn’t going to check. They just want a signature. The only time they go back and check is if something goes wrong. And nothing ever goes wrong on a school trip, does it?” She dashed off a signature with a flourish. “Anyway, I’m doing Rosemary a favor. Mrs. Sharman will send home anyone who isn’t traveling, and she won’t want to be stuck looking after you while everyone else is on the trip. So it’s better for everyone if you come with us.”

  “But what about the cost?” Sophie said, her stomach heavy.

  Delphine shrugged. “It’ll go on her school bill. And by that time it will be too late. She’ll just have to pay up.”

  “I don’t feel very happy about this,” Sophie whispered.

  “You don’t have to feel happy,” Delphine said. “You just have to hand it in at the office and start thinking about what you’re going to pack.” She shook her head. “Or should that be not pack?” She laughed. “My mother still talks about the little English orphan who came to stay in Paris for a whole week with a plastic bag as her luggage.”

  “I didn’t need anything else …” Sophie started to say, although the image of Delphine’s mother opening the door of the small but incredibly chic apartment, and shaking her head as if Sophie were from another planet, made her scalp tingle with embarrassment.

  “Don’t worry.” Delphine sounded confident. “My mother is sending me some clothes from Paris. There’s bound to be a few things that will fit you.”

  Sophie held the signed form in her hands. Could she do it? She looked at the signature and realized that this was more than just a piece of paper: She was holding snow and a forest and a dream in her hand. Of course, it wasn’t her dream, it could never be her dream, but the thought of going to Saint Petersburg, to Russia, made her scalp tingle in a different way. She had glimpsed something magical, as if a butterfly had landed on a boring textbook. For a moment she remembered the glamorous visitor who had made it possible, then the sense of unease she had felt in her presence. She put them both out of her mind.

  She would go!

  “Can’t you move your stuff, Delphine?” Marianne kicked two metal suitcases out of her way as she crossed the room. “I knew you didn’t have a headache! You just wanted extra time to pack!”

  It was the day before the end of term and, by Sophie’s reckoning, only fifteen hours and seventeen minutes until they left for Saint Petersburg.

  “Normally, I would have laid everything out at least two days in advance!” Delphine picked up a canvas tote from the floor. The suitcases remained where they were. “But of course in London you are expected to pack in half an hour!”

  “We’re not going until tomorrow!” Marianne said, throwing her math books onto her bed. “Why all the fuss?”

  Delphine ignored Marianne and started wrapping a pile of cashmere sweaters in tissue paper. “Can I put some of my clothes in your bag, Sophie? I’ve no more room in mine.” She looked across at Sophie’s small pile of clothes and frowned. “Although I hope you’re taking more than that.”

  Sophie laughed. “Do I need anything else?”

  Delphine sighed. “What about a dress? For the evening? It said on the itinerary that we were going to the ballet. You can’t go to the ballet in Saint Petersburg in a pair of jeans.”

  Sophie dug out a little sequined summer dress from her narrow wardrobe and held it up. It had looked pretty in the summer, she thought, with flip-flops. But now, in the gray London light, she knew it looked cheap and flimsy. A couple of the sequins were hanging down from the hem on long threads. And it wouldn’t be warm enough for Russia.

  Delphine shuddered. “Don’t worry,” she said. “You can borrow something of mine, like I said.” She looked suspiciously at Marianne. “Have you even started packing yet?”

  “It’ll get done.” Marianne lay full-length on her bed, reading a guidebook on Saint Petersburg. “But you know, all I really need to take is a happy smile!” She beamed over the pages at Delphine. “My mother says it’s the most important thing to wear!”

  “Oh yes, I can just see it on the catwalks,” Delphine mused. “Clothes by Yves Saint Laurent … lunatic grin by Marianne!”

  She ignored the book thrown at her head and calmly put several shoe boxes into Sophie’s rucksack, placing Sophie’s clothes carefully on top. “What’s this?” she asked, picking up an old-fashioned wooden pencil box. She stuck her fingernail in the tiny indent and slid the lid to one side.

  “Just … stuff …” Sophie said. “I’ll put it in my rucksack.”

  Delphine picked out a heavy gold cuff link.

  “My dad’s,” Sophie muttered.

  A small piece of lace was next to come out. “It must have been from one of my mother’s summer dresses,” Sophie said.

  Delphine put them carefully back in the box. “And this?” she asked, unfolding a piece of paper that looked as if it had been torn from a magazine. Inside was a large colorless stone on a piece of old string. It looked like a piece of dirty glass.

  “I don’t know, really,” Sophie said. “It’s just something of my dad’s. He used to hold it up to the light and it would suddenly have all these other colors in it.”

  “Prism,” said Marianne.

  “What?” Delphine held the glass up and little sprinkles of light seemed to jump out.

  “Refraction!” Marianne
said. “When light is split up into its component parts. Like in a rainbow. Don’t you ever pay attention in physics?” She added, “It looks a bit like my lucky druid stone.”

  “Mon Dieu,” Delphine muttered. “How can you be so superstitious and so clever?” She held the piece of glass up to her ear. “It’d make a nice earring, though.”

  “Except there’s only one.” Sophie sat down on her bed. “I don’t have a pair of anything. Rosemary got rid of most of my parents’ things in one of her big spring cleanups.”

  “I’m surprised she hasn’t got rid of you in one of her cleanups!” Marianne said, trying and failing to lighten the mood. “Sorry,” she added.

  “I wonder what it would be like to be one of a pair …” Sophie whispered. “Or a family …”

  There was an awkward silence and then Delphine said softly, “It’s all right being the only one, Sophie. It means you’re unique.”

  Sophie smiled, although she didn’t feel happy. Talking about her parents always made her feel their loss more keenly. She took the box from Delphine, wrapped the piece of glass back up in the torn magazine page, and put it neatly back in the box. Then she put the box in her rucksack. Her father had promised to take her on a magical journey. Of course, he probably meant traveling by flying carpet, or charging along in a time machine. She couldn’t manage either of those, but she would take what little she had left of him with her. That way she could take him on a magical journey.

  She was really going!

  She allowed herself to think about it — really think about it — for the first time. Of Russia. Of vast lily pads of ice slipping down the inky river Neva. Of uprisings and royal bloodshed. Of the story of the poet who fought a duel on a bitter frosty dawn for the sake of his skittish young wife. And everywhere — under the hooves of the horses pulling sleighs through the streets, on the onion domes of churches, or covering the parks of ornate baroque palaces — snow.

  Twenty English girls stood underneath the clock in the Moskovsky Vokzal train station, waiting for their host families to arrive. The early start from school, the excitement of the flight from England, and the taxi across the city had left them all exhausted.

  Miss Ellis, their language teacher, clapped her hands. “We are now in Russia!” She spoke loudly, as if she were addressing a huge crowd rather than a group of twenty schoolgirls. “Remember — and this especially means you, Nadine” — she glared at a sixteen-year-old whose hair had been backcombed into a Marie Antoinette birds’ nest and who was picking the silver varnish off her nails — “that you are ambassadors for your country! You are ambassadors for womanhood! You are ambassadors for New Bloomsbury College!”

  Sophie didn’t care about being an ambassador. She was in Saint Petersburg! She was actually here. Not only that, there was a blizzard outside. Real, proper snow. Wild, magical weather instead of London drizzle. And the station itself was as beautiful as a palazzo. She felt as if she were already somewhere enchanting, somewhere full of possibilities.

  Sophie looked out over the crowded concourse. Men wore fur hats. Their faces, under the lights, were the color of the meat in a pork pie. The women looked bored and disdainful in long fur coats, but glamorous and foreign with their bright, waxy lipstick and thick black eyeliner. In between the crowds, young soldiers in greatcoats wandered around, their faces impossibly clean, their eyes sleepy. They carried large black machine guns on leather straps over their shoulders.

  As the crowds parted, Sophie noticed a woman at the station café, beautifully if showily dressed in a long tapestry coat with a high fur collar. Unlike many others in the station, she wore no hat. Her short hair, which curled around her wide cheekbones like orchid petals, was very black and almost as shiny as her high patent-leather boots. Every few seconds, the woman checked the time on her watch and glanced over to the station clock above Sophie’s head. Sophie found her concentration fascinating. What was the woman so concerned about that needed such careful attention to the passing of time? Perhaps she was a countess, smuggling secrets, about to take the train through the snows and the forests to some dangerous assignation with a foreign agent? Or was she about to start work on a cosmonaut base, training brave young Russians to travel to the stars? Or was she even, Sophie wondered as she watched the woman lift a tiny cup to her lips, a famous ballerina who simply wanted to find some anonymity away from adoring audiences and a grueling dance schedule?

  Delphine, dressed in a gray-and-silver tweed coat, a soft silk scarf at her neck, and a gray man’s homburg hat pulled down low over her loose blonde curls, pointed her toe and photographed her shoe.

  Marianne, wearing her navy school coat, jeans, and sneakers, nudged her in the ribs. “Why are you taking photographs of your feet?”

  “For my visual diary!” Delphine explained. “Don’t you think my shoes are pretty? And the herringbone pattern of my tights? I’m going to make a film when we get back to London.”

  “Your feet?” Marianne repeated. She shook her head and waved her guidebook at Delphine. “With ‘all the splendors of the Tsars’ to be seen, you’re going to make a film of your feet?”

  Sophie slipped her copy of the itinerary out of her rucksack. Their hostess was called Dr. Galina Starova. That sounded like a good name. A glamorous name. What would a woman with a name like that be like? Sophie thought. She decided she would greet her in Russian — if she didn’t become tongue-tied at the last minute.

  How would she say hello? “Strast-vooo-id-tye,” she muttered.

  This Dr. Starova, decided Sophie, was probably responsible for scientific research at a top secret institute. She would be beautiful and clever, but also do wicked things like smoking, playing cards, and wearing fur. She would be an excellent shot. She would definitely be wearing thick black eyeliner and too much lipstick.

  “Paj-hal-ster.” It would be good to be able to say “please.”

  By the end of the week, Dr. Starova and Sophie would be firm friends and write to each other for the rest of their lives.

  “Spar-see-bar.” And always useful to say “thank you.”

  Sophie liked the way her tongue rolled around in her mouth as she said these words. They seemed so much more meaningful than just “please” or “thank you.” It amused her the way the vowels just knocked into each other. There was nothing polite or clipped about Russian, nothing very kind or courteous about the sound of the words. Nothing limited. They sounded rich and fat, like someone laughing. Dr. Starova would teach her how to speak Russian, she just knew it. And for once, Sophie would be good at something.

  A middle-aged couple with a sulky-looking girl approached the group. The woman was holding a piece of paper. Miss Ellis spoke to them in what appeared to be very stilted Russian, then checked her clipboard and called out, “Lydia? Lydia Sedgwick? Come on! Oh, will someone pinch her and get her headphones off? Can she not go for three seconds without blasting her brain with rap music?”

  Lydia, looking slightly dazed, pushed her headphones off as her Russian hosts shook hands with her. Before the man had picked up her suitcase, however, she was pulling them back on.

  “Honestly …” muttered Miss Ellis.

  Other families arrived, and girls were quickly ticked off the list and accompanied out of the station. By six forty-five, only Miss Ellis, Sophie, Delphine, and Marianne were left.

  Miss Ellis’s own host, the head of modern languages at School 59, was standing slightly to one side, looking bored. He wandered over to Miss Ellis and they had a conversation that involved lots of looking at watches and shrugging of shoulders.

  “Miss Ellis?”

  Sophie gasped.

  It was the woman from the café, the one with the short black hair and the tapestry coat. She had appeared as if from nowhere.

  “I am sorry to be late. I am Dr. Galina Starova.” She smiled at Miss Ellis’s host and the man grinned foolishly, his bored manner completely extinguished. “Dr. Karenin! I have heard so much about you!”

  The man stoo
d taller and his shoulders seemed to broaden under his thick overcoat.

  “You will excuse me.” The woman leaned toward Miss Ellis as if she were about to tell her a great secret. “My car, he would not start. The weather!” She showed a set of extremely even, incredibly white teeth. Her eyelids gleamed with pearly blue eye shadow, which made her pale eyes look even larger.

  The way she bent like a tulip toward Miss Ellis, the slow smile, that rich voice, the enormous pale blue eyes … Now Sophie wanted to gasp again, but felt too astonished. She’d been watching this woman at the café without realizing that she’d seen her before.

  She turned to Marianne. “It’s her!” she whispered.

  “Who?” Marianne looked around.

  “The woman who came to our school.”

  “What woman?”

  But before Sophie could reply, Miss Ellis snapped, “Well, at least you’re here.” She did not bother to hide her irritation. “It is very late for the girls, Dr. Starova. They are very tired after their long journey.”

  “But of course.” Dr. Starova looked serious. She placed a gloved hand on Miss Ellis’s arm, and glanced across at Dr. Karenin, lowering her eyelids once more. “I understand. You worry! But now I am here and girls all safe!” She turned to the girls and opened her eyes wide. “So, we say good-bye to Miss Ellis and charming Dr. Karenin, and we hurry into night. Snow not worry us!” She almost pushed Miss Ellis away. “Good-bye! See you Monday!”

  Miss Ellis gave Dr. Starova a quizzical look, then turned to the girls. “Please be on your best behavior,” she said, staring at Sophie meaningfully, then started walking briskly toward the Metro. Dr. Karenin shook himself as if from a daydream, and followed slowly behind, but he kept glancing over his shoulder, as if he were no longer eager to leave the station and the mesmerizing Dr. Starova.

  “Wave good-bye, girls!” Dr. Starova beamed.

  Sophie, Marianne, and Delphine waved limply to their teacher’s unseeing back. Dr. Starova watched the escalator intently, waiting until Miss Ellis and her host had completely disappeared.