Nevertell

by Katharine Orton

  Lina felt a twinge of happiness, but it turned quickly to pain. “Bogey, what if Mamochka didn’t make it out . . . ?”

  Bogdan slapped Lina’s shoulder. “She will have. If there’s anyone alive who could do it, it’s your mama.”

  “Thanks, Bogey.”

  “And listen,” he said, resting his elbow on her shoulder, “we’ve got each other now. I mean, we’re more or less family ourselves.”

  Before Lina could respond, the temperature of the stone hanging around her neck shot up. She yelped in pain and clawed at her chest.

  “What is it? Lina?” Bogdan tugged at her arm. She barely felt him.

  They all heard the next sound at the same moment — the howl of a wolf or hound, scenting its prey. It was joined by another, and another, and another.

  Afifth howl joined the chorus. It was the hunting pack.

  “Quick!” said Lina, recovering fastest. “Run!”

  The mine with its snow-covered entrances was far behind them now, but the snow underfoot was still unpredictable. Last night’s storm had sculpted a new landscape over the old: a false floor laced with tricks and traps. Sometimes it held up against the pounding of their feet. Other times their legs plunged right through it up to the knee.

  The howls got louder at a shocking speed. Now Lina could hear the beasts snarling and panting right behind them. She risked stumbling to glance over her shoulder. Nothing. For miles. Nothing but her own breath.

  It couldn’t be.

  The creatures were so close that Lina could hear their claws tearing up sod and snow. But they were nowhere to be seen. It didn’t make any sense. There was only one explanation: that Old Gleb’s stories — about the ghost hounds — were true.

  She pushed the panic down into her stomach, as far from her thoughts as possible. She could hear the hounds gaining on them. At this rate, they’d be caught in moments. She had to think.

  Lina glanced left. There, a sheer ridge dropped away into who knew what? A bed of sharp rocks? A ravine? There was no other option.

  “This way!” Lina grabbed Bogdan’s coat sleeve and dragged him with her. She leaped without hesitating, and so did he. They plunged straight over the edge.

  Her stomach lurched. Her feet pedaled air. She sailed above trees. Snow. Rocks.

  Then she dropped. Bogdan did too. The ground rounded up to meet them like the curl of a giant’s tongue. They crashed down its slope — steep but cushioned with pine needles and snow. Lina lost her grip on Bogdan as they tumbled and slid. Space opened up between them in a yawn. A sharp rock scraped Lina’s palm, drawing blood.

  She didn’t have time to dwell on the pain. She was still falling fast. The slope — mottled brown with scratchy twigs and needles — was leveling out, but not fast enough. A pine forest loomed up ahead. Saplings slapped against her limbs, slowing her fall. Lina took one in the stomach.

  The others came leaping after them. Lina heard their cries as they fell through the same hazards. The slope. The rocks. The saplings.

  Finally at a stop, Lina lay in a ball, trying to draw breath. It wouldn’t come. Her head swam. She had to breathe. She had to.

  The stone on her necklace, which had been red-hot against her skin, subsided to its steady warmth. It was calming, the heat traveling inward toward her heart. Its pounding slowed. She managed to pull some air inside her, and as she did, the tightness in her throat gave way a little. Then a little more. She focused for as long as she could on breathing. Just to make sure she had it right before she checked around.

  Her sack, once full of vegetables, now hung on the branch of a lone tree high up on the slope, like a white flag. Their food littered the ground. Nearby, Bogdan moaned and then raised his head. A gash in his hairline trickled blood.

  The baying of the ghost hounds had faded away.

  Lina sighed with relief. “You OK, Bogey?” Her wobbly voice surprised her.

  Bogdan touched the cut on his head with an unsteady hand, testing its wetness, and studied the blood on his fingers. “Um. Think so.” All around, the others were groaning and picking themselves up and checking themselves for injuries too.

  Old Gleb limped over. He was staring at her.

  The relief of their escape made Lina furious. She screwed up her face into a scowl — because if she didn’t, she thought she might cry. “What is it now, old man?”

  He stretched his mouth into a big, wide, toothy grin. His lip was split but, other than that and the limp, he looked unharmed. “Kid! Do you know what you’ve done?”

  Alexei and Vadim stalked over then too. Alexei was clutching his arm at a funny angle against his body. It looked bad — perhaps even broken. Both of them wore dark expressions.

  Not Old Gleb, though. He leaped forward and ruffled Lina’s hair. “You’ve saved us, that’s what. From the ghost hounds. From whatever thing is using them to come after us. Who knows — maybe it’s even Baba Yaga herself. My child, you must be our lucky star.”

  Alexei slapped Old Gleb’s hand out of Lina’s hair. “Old fool,” he roared at him. “You’re not here to make friends with them.”

  Vadim’s glare sucked the wind out of Alexei, and he said no more. Lina had never seen anyone of Alexei’s size look so small, so suddenly.

  The trees loomed tall and seemed to crowd in from all angles. The snow hadn’t reached the floor in the denser parts of the forest, and shadows shouldered together. It smelled different, even right at the edge of the wood. A mixture of the pines’ sap and a cold, earthy dampness. A jumble of growth and decay.

  Some of the trees had ribbons and colored scraps tied around their trunks. Muddy white, yellows, and greens. Some were tied to their branches too, where they swayed a little on the breeze. Farther in, symbols had been painted directly onto the bark. They looked like eyes. Signs that others had been there before them. Traveling reindeer or horse herders, perhaps, or people from a nearby village.

  “Spirit trees,” said Gleb. He gestured at the ribbons, the painted symbols. “Shamans have been here, see? This place connects the worlds — ours to the other realms.”

  “I’m sick of hearing your fairy tales,” muttered Alexei. He stalked away from them, tore one of the sacred ribbons off a tree, and wrapped it awkwardly around his battered arm, struggling with his other hand and his teeth.

  Lina scowled at him. To whoever put them there, those ribbons meant something important.

  Alexei seemed shaken after the fall — and not just because of his arm. They all were. There was something unsettling about this place, as if the whole forest were holding its breath and watching them. Lina knew Alexei felt it too — however much he pretended he didn’t.

  Lina looked around. As far as she could tell, they were in a basin. There was no way back out — at least not the way they’d come. That meant they’d need to move extra quickly if they were going to reach the meeting point before dark.

  “Hey, leader,” she said to Vadim. “We’ll just have to look for a way around this ledge and back up to the top. Maybe if we go far enough we can loop back on ourselves and —”

  “Don’t be an idiot,” growled Alexei from over by the trees. He grimaced as he clutched his bandaged arm. “There’s no way we’re getting back up there.”

  Lina blinked back tears as it dawned on her what this meant. She vowed to make her voice stronger than she felt, however. “Come on. We don’t have time for this. We’ve got to get a move on. Mamochka will be waiting for us.”

  Vadim turned to Lina with narrowed eyes, this time without the usual smirk. He was dead serious. “Alexei is right — there is no way back.”

  “No. Mamochka trusted you. We can’t abandon her. She did her part for us, didn’t she? That means we stick to what you agreed and we —”

  “Did you really believe Katya would make it out after us?” said Vadim in his acid tone. “Let’s face it, her chances were nonexistent, even with her luck. I didn’t expect her to escape, and I doubt she did either — not really. Why do you think she pro
mised us a reward from your grandmother? It was so we’d still take you to her, even if Katya wasn’t there to make sure of it. The meeting point was just a half-hearted fantasy. Her first priority was always you, and she made that clear.”

  “No,” Lina said again. If anyone could manage it, against the odds, Katya could. That’s what Bogey had said. Lina turned to Bogdan. He frowned and looked away.

  She turned her back on Vadim. On all of them. The tears were bubbling up now, forcing their way free.

  She wouldn’t accept it.

  With a burst of energy that surprised even her, Lina took off marching back toward the slope. She’d get to the meeting place. She’d do it. She’d show them. And if her mother didn’t come, she’d just march right back to the camp. She’d get her out. Somehow.

  Lina’s tears made a blur of the trees, the ribbons. She batted branches out of her way and clambered upward. The slope steepened sharply. The steeper it became, the more the ground crumbled under her feet. It wasn’t long until her foot slipped. She couldn’t cling on, and she slid all the way back down on her hands and knees, bashing into the odd hard rock on the way.

  Lina came to a stop at the foot of the towering slope and looked up. She’d barely managed to get a quarter of the way up before she’d fallen. There really was no way back. It was hopeless.

  A mocking laugh pealed out from somewhere behind her — Vadim’s. Lina got to her feet stiffly and dusted herself off, but she didn’t turn around yet. Her cheeks burned. She felt feverish from being upset, the way she would after a long cry as a child. Her hands shook. She wanted to kick something. Preferably Vadim. And yet she could see the truth now.

  Lina wiped her eyes. She may not be able to see a way to save her mother right at this moment. But she didn’t have to accept she’d lost her either. She’d go on to Moscow and find her grandmother. Her grandmother would help save Katya. All those stories Lina’s mother had told her, about how powerful her grandmother was . . . She may even have the ear of the Great Leader. One word to him, along with information from Lina about which camp Katya was in, was all it would take.

  Perhaps that was why Katya had made Lina promise to find her grandmother? So that Lina wouldn’t do anything stupid — and so she really would stand a chance of helping her mother if she got stuck behind? That had to be it. Of course.

  Lina took a deep breath to steady herself. If there was any chance to set her mother free, it lay in Moscow, with her grandmother.

  Back with the others, Lina found handfuls of clean snow to wash her scratched hand — and the cut on Bogdan’s head. Bogdan flinched, making a kind of inward hiss at the coldness. “You OK, Lina?” he asked gently, when she’d finished.

  Lina couldn’t reply. She wanted to, but her throat felt squeezed by grief. What an idiot she’d been to believe her mother could escape too. Even if she’d sneaked out of the guard tower, Commandant Zima would’ve been waiting. He’d told her as much. And with Lina gone, they’d surely suspect Katya had been in on the plan.

  Heart racing with thoughts of her mother, Lina rested her hand against a nearby tree and felt a surge of heat travel down her arm and tingle through her fingers. She gave a little jump as the bark creaked and something scratched her hand. Lina pulled it back, fast. Where her palm had rested, a tiny jut of branch had appeared, with a few fresh, minuscule pine needles poking out.

  Lina glanced at Bogdan to see if he’d noticed, but he was crouched down, pressing more snow to the cut on his head.

  Lina turned back to the tree and the new bud. Strange. It had been the same feeling she’d had in the greenhouse whenever she touched the plants — but stronger. More concentrated. Had she imagined it? She held her breath and pressed her hand over the bark again. She focused on building the warmth, drawing it along her arm. When she pulled her hand back, there was no mistaking it — the branch was longer with yet more needles, bright green, fresh, and new.

  How was it possible? What did it mean?

  They carried on into the heart of the forest until dusk, with only a short stop to eat some of the food they’d salvaged from the slope: green beans and more of the black bread. Even so, Lina’s stomach cramped painfully with hunger. She didn’t mention it, although she didn’t need to count up Alexei’s remaining loaves of bread to realize they were going to run out of food soon. Surely they knew that too. Who would be the first to say so?

  They collected large branches to make shelters and smaller ones for a fire. The smoke shouldn’t be easy to see among the trees, they decided, and as far as Old Gleb was concerned, with ghost hounds around, a fire was the least of their problems. He was in charge again briefly — giving basic instructions, showing them what to do. They built the frames of their shelters out of the large branches, interlocking at the top, then threaded the frame through with twigs and used leaves for cover. As they did so, Lina couldn’t help absently massaging her palm where she’d felt the tingle of heat — and seen the tree branch beneath it, newly grown.

  Again, Lina and Bogdan built their shelter together. Lina glanced at him as they worked, and she wondered if she should tell him how she’d made a branch grow earlier. Her heart lurched at the thought of what he might say, and she decided not to. He’d think she’d lost it, wouldn’t he? And he’d be right. Stuff like that was impossible.

  Building took her mind off everything else, at least.

  Old Gleb sent them out looking for kindling next: dry leaves and the like. While they scavenged, Lina approached him. He’d been keeping his distance since the fight with Alexei. Now, when he wasn’t giving orders about the shelters and the fire, all he had to say were mumblings about angry spirits.

  He didn’t look at Lina as she sidled up, but said, “You saved us when you brought us down here, kid, but Vadim’s done us in by camping in this forest. It’ll find us — our Baba Yaga. Our evil spirit. It’s only a matter of time. If we’re caught by its ghost hounds, we’re finished.”

  He stepped close, all of a sudden, and pushed his frowning face into hers. Lina jumped. It was the first time in hours he’d even looked at her. “Don’t sleep tonight,” he said. He tapped the side of his head, hard, with a bony finger. “Stay alert. There’s things in the trees — spirits and wolves. This place is theirs, not ours. Listen hard — to everything. If you have to run for it, your best bet is to keep heading that way.” Gleb pointed through the trees. The way looked dark and damp, with shadows overlapping shadows.

  Lina nodded but didn’t say a word. She worried that the fall into the forest had made mad Old Gleb even crazier. Her mother had told her to trust him, though, hadn’t she? Despite everything, Lina realized with surprise that she did.

  As night fell, everyone sat in a circle around the small fire. Nobody spoke about the day. Old Gleb in particular looked wracked with worries. Shadows cast by firelight danced across his brow and slipped down the slope of his cheeks.

  “It’s my birthday tomorrow,” said Lina, breaking the silence. Then she laughed. Once she’d started, she found she couldn’t stop laughing. It had more anger in it than she’d expected. Not even Old Gleb, usually so full of cantankerous spirit, laughed with her. Everyone just watched her until she’d finished.

  “It’s funny,” she said, wiping her eyes. “If anyone had told me I’d be free on my birthday — out here, beyond the wire, stuck with all of you . . .” She trailed off.

  Soon afterward, Lina and Bogdan made their way to their shelter — this time, they were under a canopy of branches instead of a ceiling of snow. Once they’d settled down for the night, Lina tried her best to stay awake, to listen hard, as Old Gleb had warned her to. But each one of her bones felt heavy, with sadness as much as exhaustion, and the crackle of the fire and the sound of the others’ low mumbling lulled her.

  She couldn’t be certain what had woken her up. The stone, perhaps, and its sudden flash of heat. Bogdan muttered something, but he was asleep — she could tell by his drawn-out, gravelly wheezing. She could’ve kicked herself for s
leeping, after Gleb had warned her not to.

  She listened. The others must be awake still, because she could hear them beyond the shelter — speaking in a hush. Despite their low voices, something about their tone told her they were arguing.

  “I’ll do it. I’ve got no problem with that.” That was Alexei, blunt as ever. “I’ve still got one good arm.”

  It was Old Gleb who answered him. “Come on. Open up your heart for once, will you?”

  “Idiot! I told you not to get friendly with her. You’ve only got yourself to blame.”

  “Who saved our skins from the hounds? That’s right: She did. The kid. You can’t do it. It’s too brutish. There must be another way . . . And we’ve got plenty of vegetables to go on, for now. There’s enough for all of us —”

  “A handful of green beans. A few onions. We won’t last on that and you know it, Gleb. Not after we lost so much food in the fall.”

  “Alexei, if nothing else touches your heart, at least think of the reward from her grandmother, would you? Vadim, what do you say? Make this brute see sense. Please.”

  “Reward,” grumbled Alexei. “That’s if there is one. Katya could never know that.”

  There was a pause. Then Vadim spoke in the voice he used when he’d impressed himself by being clever. “There wasn’t enough food, even before this friend of hers turned up, and since the fall, there’s even less. They may be sharing rations, but that’s still more food than I’m prepared to lose out on. The reward for the girl means nothing if we starve first. We’ll do it tonight — both of them. Gleb, you’ll help me hold them still. Then, Alexei, you go in with the knife . . .”

  “Vadim. No.”

  Lina covered her mouth with her hands to prevent herself from crying out. She thought she was going to be sick. What had she done to deserve this? They were going to kill her and Bogdan — for what? So they could eat their rations?