Nevertell

by Katharine Orton

  Danill hesitated.

  Katya pressed her face up against the bars. “Stop dithering and give her the keys, Danill.” Even in her weakened state, Katya hadn’t lost her sharpness.

  Danill glanced over his shoulder, and when he turned back, he looked calmer somehow. “She’s a good person, your mama,” he said to Lina. “Even if she is always rude to me.” He fumbled with something on his belt, then passed it to her: the key. He turned to Lina’s mother and said, “You’ve always deserved better than this place, Katya. We all have.”

  With that, Danill fled.

  Lina jammed the rusty key into the lock. The mechanism groaned and then clunked. She yanked open the door.

  Free from the cell, Lina’s mother stumbled straight into her. It was supposed to be a warm, loving embrace, but it felt more like being run over by a tank. Lina didn’t mind. She squeezed back as tight as she could. “Mama,” she wheezed, “I found her.”

  “What? Found who?” It took a lot of energy for her to speak, Lina could tell.

  “My grandmother. I found her. She’s here.”

  Katya shook her head and made a noise that was half amusement, half disbelief. “Lina, you couldn’t have.” When Lina’s expression didn’t change, Katya’s eyes widened. “But how? How did you manage to find her? And so quickly? After all this time here, I’d started to lose hope that I’d live to see her again.”

  Lina smiled. “She was already looking for us.”

  Back outside, Tuyaara, Michil, and Dolan had joined Bogdan and Svetlana. They were all collecting peaches.

  Lina smiled. “Bogey? What’s happening?”

  He grinned over his shoulder at her — a big, wide, lopsided beam. “Hurry up, Lina. We need your help. We’ve got to take these to the square. Svetlana says the peaches you grew are so powerful that they’ll turn into more trees as soon as they touch the ground. If we’re quick, we can put a barrier between the guards and the rest of us — make it harder for them to use their weapons.” He handed her some fruit.

  Behind Lina, Katya emerged from the tunnel, blinking in the light. She’d told Lina to go on ahead while she caught her breath. Svetlana froze at the sight of her. Then she reached for her daughter and cupped her face in her palms. “My malyshka,” she said. Tears rose in Katya’s eyes. She and Svetlana clutched each other and didn’t let go.

  Lina’s voice was thick when she next spoke. “Mama, you stay with Svetlana while she picks more peaches. Make sure no one sneaks up on her.”

  “Are you joking, Lina?” said Katya. She drew back from Svetlana and quickly wiped her face. Already there was energy in her voice and color in her cheeks, as if she had drawn strength from her mother. “As much as we have to catch up on, there are more urgent things to do right now. I’m coming with you.”

  Svetlana nodded. “I will join you there.”

  Havoc still reigned in the square. People were running everywhere, but no one seemed to know what from — the guards, the dogs, the invisible wolves, or the three escapees who seemed to have returned from the dead.

  More gunfire crackled from one of the towers. The guards were firing in panic. Who knew what — or who — they were even aiming for?

  Lina lobbed several of the peaches as far as she could. Bogdan did the same. Tuyaara and her brothers joined them, their arms filled with peaches. Lina couldn’t help admiring Tuyaara on the ice horse, her silky hair flowing in the breeze. She really was incredible.

  Right away, green shoots rose up from where the peaches had landed — they grew thick and strong in an instant, unharmed by the trampling feet and the crush.

  Screams went up in the crowd as the trees continued to grow. Then, an eerie silence fell. Everyone was mesmerized by what they saw. The shoots became sprigs, which became branches, which became towering trees — monstrously, abnormally tall.

  On the other side of the square, Svetlana appeared, surrounded by a cluster of lights. She handed out peaches to the stunned prisoners: peaches for throwing, no doubt, so that more trees would grow. Lina cast the rest of her fruit into the crowd too.

  Leaves were forming on the trees, followed by a shock of delicate white flowers that hung in the branches like snow. The petals fell, catching in everyone’s hair. Guards and prisoners were staring, openmouthed, at them.

  Lina held out her hand and caught some of the petals before they blew away. When she next looked up, fruit weighed heavy on the branches. Cheers and calls of excitement went up. Some prisoners were trying to climb up the trunks to reach the fruit.

  “Look,” said Katya, pointing. Her voice was dark.

  Several of the guards had gotten tangled up in branches that seemed to be reaching out for them. They were whisked off the ground, screaming, and trapped up high in tightening tree limbs.

  As Lina watched, the guards tangled up in the trees disappeared. Vanished, completely. The branches closed in on nothing, becoming empty, jagged coils. Only the odd scrap of torn cloth, a single boot, or the mist of breath remained. Where had they gone? To the nothing world?

  “Keskil!” Lina turned at the sound of Tuyaara’s voice.

  A guard who’d been taken into a tree had hold of Keskil’s arm and was pulling him closer to the snatching branches.

  Tuyaara shouted again and galloped toward Keskil. The crowd leaped out of her way, opening a path in front of her. She wrapped an arm around Keskil’s waist and dragged him back. The guard who’d grabbed him froze at the sight of the ice horse and its frosty, snorting breath and let go. A moment later, he vanished into thin air.

  Keskil clambered onto the back of Tuyaara’s horse without a second glance. It was Tuyaara he was mesmerized by.

  Then Lina noticed a crowd gathering in a circle around something. She strained to see.

  Commandant Zima. Some prisoners had caught him and were pushing him toward the center of the square.

  Boos rang out — and calls of “Kill him!”

  Lina’s mother shook her head. “Never lose yourself to a mob,” she said quietly, as if speaking only to herself.

  This had gone far enough. “No. Stop!” shouted Lina. Don’t become him, she wanted to say. Don’t taint yourselves with blood. But her voice paled against all the shouting. No one but Bogdan and her mother heard.

  “Hey!” Bogdan tried. “Just think about this, all right? He’s not a threat now. You don’t need to do that.” His voice was louder, but it too got lost in the clamor.

  “Kill him!” called the crowd. It became a chant — the voices harmonized and spoke as one. Became deafening. The circle around Zima closed in.

  Panic gripped Lina. “No.”

  Katya pulled at her daughter’s arm. “You don’t want to see this,” she said, trying to lead Lina away.

  Tears streamed down Lina’s face. This wasn’t why she’d freed the prisoners. She wrenched her arm out of her mother’s grasp. “No, stop!” Lina screamed again. She fought her way through the crowd gathered around the commandant until she was close enough to pull some of them away from him.

  “Stop!” she said again. “Hurting him now, for revenge . . . It achieves nothing.”

  A few people backed away, and Zima reappeared with a gasp of breath, arms flailing. His hair and clothes had been tugged and torn. His skin was drained of all its color. And yet, Lina could already see the fear and humiliation in his eyes changing into anger. Before he could act on it, though, he staggered backward, his legs still unsteady. Straight into a peach tree.

  The branches grasped his pistol arm and wove up the length of it, holding him fast. “Lina?” he said, his voice soft. “Little Lina. I —” The tree clutched him tighter, drawing him in.

  Lina cried out. She wanted to reach out to him, to make everything slow down and just stop. She heard her mother run to her as if in slow motion, felt Katya lift her to carry her away, but Lina was transfixed by what was happening to her father. Nobody could do a thing. Not her. Not Bogdan. Not Tuyaara.

  The commandant was already gone.

/>   The first Lina knew about where she was or what was happening was when her mother heaved her into a snowbank. “Aargh, my back.” Katya straightened and clutched at the base of her spine. “I never thought I’d be carrying you at twelve.”

  Bogdan crouched next to Lina and held her hand. “You OK, my friend?”

  Lina was not OK. She couldn’t stop shaking. Every small sound caught her attention. Bogdan himself looked twitchy. They were by the wire fence, a little ways from the square, and they could still hear the shouts of the prisoners and the guards.

  “Nevertell.” Natalya must have left the other shadows to join them. Lina appreciated her presence.

  Svetlana came around the corner toward them.

  “What happened?” Bogdan asked her. “What was that? Why did the guards disappear in the trees?”

  Svetlana narrowed her eyes. “A Vanishing. I thought it might occur. The guards have been pushed out to the edges of this world. To the mist. We may never find them.” Lina looked away, but she could feel Svetlana studying her closely. “However,” she said, “know at least that the guards and the commandant are somewhere, and they are alive.”

  Lina didn’t know what to think, or feel — about any of it.

  Svetlana paused for a moment, then went on. “Lina. I have a surprise that might be of some comfort to you.”

  She stepped aside to allow Old Gleb to approach. Lina gasped. He let out a big belly laugh and slapped his thigh. “Kid,” he said. “You’re one sight for sore eyes, you are!”

  Lina hugged him tight. “And the others?” she asked.

  “They’re fine,” said Gleb. “Or, as fine as they ever were.” He bent toward Lina’s face and kissed her cheek. “You know, I had a dream you were with me,” he said. His dark eyes glimmered, reflecting the snow. “It’s hard to explain because I don’t understand what happened, but . . . all through that long nightmare, it felt like you were looking out for me. My lucky star.”

  Later, Lina sat with her mother while Bogdan and Svetlana built a fire. Lina could just make out the hazy shape of Natalya at the corners of her vision. Tuyaara and her brothers were with Keskil somewhere. They’d all stayed out of the square as the sky darkened and night fell, although from where they were, they could see the glow of many other small fires. Angry cries had given way to laughter and singing. It sounded like a big party — the first of its kind that Lina had ever known. Not that long after her birthday too.

  Svetlana had called her wolves back and brought the guard dogs under control. She seemed to have a way with the dogs. They were sound asleep in one of the guard complexes now, having been fed from the kitchen and given fresh water to drink.

  Every so often, Bogdan would duck out of his fire-building duties to scout around, and he’d come back with a report. People were organizing themselves, he said. Some had taken over the kitchen, rationed the food, and were dishing out meals. Others, directed by Tuyaara, her brothers, and Keskil, had climbed into the trees and were throwing down peaches for others to eat. There would be no more Vanishing now that the fighting had stopped — Svetlana had reassured them of that.

  Friends of Katya’s were collecting the pits from the peaches that had been eaten and taking them to the greenhouse to be planted. While the peaches on the trees replaced themselves with new peaches right away, the pits themselves no longer became trees immediately. “All enchantments have their limits,” Svetlana explained.

  These peach pits would need proper nurturing if they were to grow. Lina knew her skills would be needed in the coming months. If this place was to be a haven now, instead of a prison, that is.

  Lina wanted that.

  As the evening wore on, Lina remained with Bogdan by the newly built fire as he tucked into the hot peach stew and warm black bread that had been handed around to everyone. Lina sipped her own. She’d never tasted anything like it. It was delicious — sharp and sweet and spicy, all at once. Instinctively she checked for Natalya and quickly found her: a small silhouette, admiring the fire.

  Lina’s mother still sat on her other side, with Tuyaara wrapped up in blankets next to Keskil — both beside Bogdan. Tuyaara’s brothers milled around, as did Svetlana, who was still keeping busy. Perhaps so she didn’t collapse with exhaustion. Tuyaara had already been talking about how they could protect others from harm — using the peach forest as a kind of hidden sanctuary. It could definitely work. Tuyaara, Lina, and Bogdan would have a lot of ideas to discuss.

  Lina soaked it all in, determined to remember this happiness. It didn’t matter that they weren’t in Moscow, in her imaginary apartment block. This was what she’d always dreamed of.

  Katya squeezed her shoulders, and Lina nestled into her warmth. Her moth friend scuttled around on her fingers, its delicate brown wings folded over itself. She’d recovered the bead with the note earlier. To her amazement, the moth had still been with it.

  “Did you love the command — I mean, my father?” Lina asked her mother.

  “Once,” said Katya. “He was different when I first came here. He wasn’t in charge then — the power and resentment hadn’t gone to his head. Zima was once just someone who didn’t want to be here, the same as me. He did love you, Lina. In his way.”

  “But he wouldn’t let Grandfather work in the greenhouse. And he killed Valentin. And he was cruel to us and to everyone else. He let us nearly starve!”

  Katya frowned and looked away without giving an answer. There was a lot that Lina didn’t understand. But she did know how complicated people could be. Perhaps she’d figure it out more over time.

  Katya sniffed. “You became something good to focus on, in this place. The only thing, really.” She ruffled Lina’s hair and twisted the tips into spikes. She was clearly enjoying playing with it again.

  “All the years you had it, did you know that the peach pit was magical?” asked Lina.

  Her mother shrugged. “Not exactly. Your grandfather gave it to me when he started getting ill. I knew it got warm in the cold, and hot when there was danger, but that was about it. I kept it with me at the hospital for when patients were really struggling. I used to wrap you up in a blanket with it when you were a baby to ward off the cold.”

  Katya squinted into the distance. Firelight danced on her face. “Svetlana says this place isn’t really here anymore — that the officers who were coming for Zima’s ruined banquet won’t find us,” she said, turning back to Lina and glancing at the moth in her daughter’s palm. “She says no one can find us, unless we want them to, because it’s ‘tethered by the life force of the sorceress and the guardian.’ Do you have any idea what she’s going on about? I thought she was the sorceress. I always told you she had great power, didn’t I?”

  Lina smiled and studied her tiny moth friend. She knew. Lina was the sorceress. Her moth friend, the closest creature to her when she’d made the peach pit grow, beginning the transformation of the camp, was now the guardian of this place. Already the tiny moth was growing stronger. One day, perhaps, it would be as powerful as Svetlana’s giant fish, Pechal.

  She’d decided to name it Nadezhda. It meant hope.

  In the days after the liberation of the camp, many took all the bread and peaches they could carry and set out in search of long-lost family and friends. Despite the transformation of the place, many couldn’t wait to get out. It had caused them so much suffering, after all.

  Some were forced out. Former guards who hadn’t been caught up in the peach trees. Prisoners who’d bullied or terrorized the others. These people were given a choice: to live by the new rules here or have no part of it. Above all, Lina wanted this to be a place where people had what they needed — food, warmth, shelter — and felt they could thrive, in peace. Lina had pinned her hopes on finding such a place in Moscow, ready-made. But when she’d seen the city through Natalya’s eyes, she’d found that the dangers she’d hoped to escape lurked there too. The arrests went on. The danger was real. What Lina had created, here at the camp, was what she’d alwa
ys wanted to find elsewhere. This was home now. A proper one.

  All the weapons in the camp were thrown into the karker, and the karker was sealed off forever.

  Vadim, Alexei, and Old Gleb were among those who left. After their ordeal, Alexei didn’t want to return to life as a butcher. From what Lina understood, he hoped to work in an old friend’s bakery in Bulgaria, and Vadim had asked to be his assistant. Both men would leave their fearsome reputations behind. “They both say,” Old Gleb explained, “that, when we were like shadows, they had waking nightmares about everything they’d ever done — that they had . . . visitations. I reckon they’re looking to live a little differently from now on.”

  Old Gleb wanted to find his sons.

  “Good luck, old man,” said Lina, squeezing him tight.

  “You too, little miss.” He gave her a pat on the back. “You’ve got a good thing going on here. I reckon if there’s anyone who can make a success of it, it’s you.”

  She watched him leave with tears in her eyes. She felt Natalya’s arm slip around hers to offer comfort. But the truth was that those like Gleb — the ones who left — would never find their way back. Not without help. If they turned to glance over their shoulder as they walked away, for one last glimpse, they would see nothing but mist.

  Bogdan said he would stay — at least for the time being. Lina was glad. She dreaded him leaving more than anything.

  Word from Svetlana was that the Great Leader, Stalin, was getting old and ill and, in time, when he died, many political prisoners might even be pardoned. If they were still alive, there was a chance Bogdan’s parents might be freed. She hoped, above all, he would one day find both his parents alive and well. And when the time came to look for them, as long as everything was running smoothly here in the forest, she secretly thought about going with him. If he didn’t let her, she might just sneak along anyway.