Riding Icarus

by Lily Hyde

  “They said it had to be a relative,” Masha said. She wished that she had called Gena and his mother instead.

  “He’s not your relative,” Gena objected.

  “No. But he’s supposed to help. Mama promised when she went away that he would,” Masha said fiercely. “He’s horrible. He only sent his driver.”

  It was hard reliving the storm and the night while sitting here on cushions, the sun slanting in through the windows and drawing out a dim, baking smell from the furniture. Especially the Cossack – that was almost the strangest part of the adventure. Their walk home together along the mosquito-humming, black lapping river seemed absolutely dreamlike. He had kept on calling her a boy, until she became too embarrassed to correct him. He told her about his grandsons who helped look after his melon patch, making sure no one stole any melons while he was gone. He told her another story about the devil that made her scalp tingle, although his voice seemed to slither into the river and emerge again all smooth and wet and quiet as she walked along, sleepier and sleepier, the words washing into one ear and trickling out of the other…

  When they had arrived back at the trolleybus he had taken charge at once, looking over her grandmother gently, telling Masha to run for help, reassuring her that Granny would be all right. Yet when the ambulance came, red light circling in the darkness, she’d forgotten him in all the confusion. He must have disappeared sometime when she’d been climbing into the back, because when she remembered and looked out to say thank you, there had been no one there.

  There was a silence when she finished.

  “Wow,” said Gena eventually.

  “Really?” he added.

  “I mean … is that all really true?” he asked.

  Masha threw a cushion at him. “What do you mean, is it true?” she shouted. “Do you think I made all that up? Look at Granny and the trolleybus and everything! It was the scariest night of my life; of course it’s true.”

  “But – it’s just not possible.” Gena was trying to believe as hard as he could, but nothing he knew about trolleybuses and thunderstorms had ever given him the idea that such a wild ride could happen.

  “I suppose Icarus got struck by lightning,” he said at last doubtfully, “and that’s where he got the electricity from to drive away. But how did he start up again? I’m sorry Masha, but how come he’s back in the same place now? You’ve got to admit that’s more than weird.”

  Masha bounced on the divan with rage. “Idiot! Moron! You’ve been there. He isn’t in the same place. He’s parked the other way round!”

  Gena frowned, considering. This morning, when he’d gone to the door of the trolleybus, it hadn’t been in its usual place. Was Masha right, and Icarus had turned round? The door was now on the other side, facing the bank. But then he wasn’t entirely sure he could remember where it had been before. It was all very confusing, especially with Masha glaring at him like that.

  “What’s all the shouting about?” Gena’s mother came into the room. “Why, what big eyes on the pair of you,” she commented. “I’ve just come off the phone to Igor.”

  “What did he say?” Masha clutched a cushion anxiously.

  “Well, he was somewhat surprised you didn’t go back to his house with the driver. Quite put out, in fact.” Ira seemed rather put out – and a little puzzled – herself. “However, he’s going to keep in touch, and he says he will contact the hospital. I called there too, and we can go and visit tomorrow, so there’s something to look forward to.”

  Chapter 5

  Lying in bed in Gena’s flat was familiar yet utterly strange. This had been Masha’s own room once. Now Gena’s grandfather lived here in winter, and all summer, when the old man moved to the dacha, it was empty and closed up. It was her old bed she was lying in, but without the pillowcase and quilt cover printed with Olympic bears that she’d slept with as long as she could remember; those were in the trolleybus now.

  The room had a slightly stuffy smell and felt very inhabited with bits of her past. A little, six-year-old, eight-year-old Masha seemed to have crept out – from where? From under the bed, perhaps – and was lying in this familiar bed, missing her papa with urgent misery because he had only just gone away; wondering where Mama was, gone to work in that far-sounding sunny place called Turkey, and hating her for not coming back.

  On top of those six-year-old and eight-year-old aches were the new ones, an extra skin of the ten-year-old Masha lying in the dark with a strange silence in her ears. Here was no sound of the river whispering, no goats snorting and dreamily bleating. No Granny heartily snoring, because Granny was lying in hospital with her eyes closed, looking very small and unrecognizable under the thin hospital sheets, not snoring at all because of whatever the cross nurses and the tired, brusque doctors had done to her.

  Masha felt the terrible tears begin to trickle down her cheeks, lots of them, from four years ago, from two years, from yesterday, from today. She had nobody left, not even Gena, who didn’t believe her so they’d quarrelled. Trying not to cry made her cry all the more. She desperately didn’t want anyone to hear, so she stuffed her head under the sheets.

  She dreamt she was down by the river. She was home, the sky shone like glass and the grass was warm under her bare feet. Beside her the goat kid was pushing its tickly twitching nose into her hand. She rubbed its nubs of horns, and thought how much the black slits in its yellow eyes looked like the money slots in a piggy bank.

  “Bah,” said the little goat reprovingly.

  Masha realized that they really were money slots, and wondered what she could put in them. She didn’t have any money, not a kopek. She picked off one of her fingernails instead; it came away quite easily and was round like a thin pearly coin. She carefully posted it through the slot.

  “Don’t be confused by the new calendar, Masha,” the kid said. “I know they tell you your birthday is on midsummer’s eve, so you’ve already had it and now it’s too late. But don’t you believe it. Like all Ukrainians, you’ve got two birthdays. There are two midsummers, and the important one is coming up. You’ll get your present then, if you remember to look for it. The devil will try to trick you, so keep your wits about you. And there are people here who’ll help you find your birthday present, your heart’s desire.”

  “But when’s my second birthday?” cried Masha.

  “I told you: midsummer’s eve. Don’t forget.”

  “And what’s my present?”

  “Time’s up,” the kid said, blinking. “Baaaa.” It wandered away nibbling the grass, bleating thoughtfully to itself. It was dazzlingly white against the riverbank. Masha had never seen such gloriously bright colours, the flashing jewelled blue of the water, the grass a dense, delicious green. And there, a sudden splash of cherry red, up in the tree, but not a bunch of cherries. The toe of a red boot.

  “Who’s that?” called Masha.

  “Me,” said the boot. Or more accurately, the wide satin green trouser legs; to be more precise, the white embroidered shirt; in fact, a whole little Cossack girl sitting swinging in the tree and, yes, eating cherries.

  “Who are you?” asked Masha, sitting in the tree too, which bounced comfortably in the breeze.

  “I’m here to help you, that’s who,” said the little Cossack girl. “You’re going to need me, I knew that as soon as I heard you crying.”

  “How could you hear me crying?”

  “You woke me up. You sounded sad.”

  “I was,” said Masha. “But I’m not any more, now I’ve got my second birthday to look forward to.”

  “Lucky thing,” said the Cossack girl enviously. “I only get one birthday.”

  “You can share mine,” said Masha, and the girl smiled happily. “We’ll find out when it is together.”

  “And find your present together. Is it a deal?”

  “It’s a deal.”

  Masha leant forward to shake hands with her new friend. At that moment she tumbled out of the tree, right into the room that
had once been hers, just in time to see Gena’s mother come in to open the curtains and let in the morning sunshine.

  Chapter 6

  How much better life looked in the morning (once she’d checked her fingertips, that is: all ten nails present and correct). The sun beamed down with cheerful, innocent clarity; there were little pancakes with jam and sour cream for breakfast; and Gena had forgotten they were arguing and let her borrow his rollerblades. Masha zoomed breezily down the road past the market and car parks and garages until the rollerblade wheels bogged down in the sandy bank that led to the allotments and the trolleybus. It was a good thing the sand was there, actually, as she hadn’t worked out how to stop yet.

  As she let out the goats and tethered them to their metal stakes, she eyed the kid suspiciously, thinking about last night. Dreams, she knew quite well from Granny, were to be taken seriously.

  “Two birthdays,” she mused. “And a present. What was that all about, kiddy?”

  The money slots in its eyes were black and mysterious, but the kid just nibbled at the hem of her shorts and then skipped off in search of something juicier.

  Tied to the door of the trolleybus was a woven Cossack belt, pink and orange and red with long tassels. It hadn’t been there the evening before, when she had come down with Gena’s mother to collect a few things and ask the car park nightwatchman to keep an eye on the place. Who did it belong to? The big fat dancing Cossack? Or her friend, the little Cossack girl in her dream? Masha untied the belt and wrapped it round her waist. It went round lots of times, and the tasselled ends dangled down and tickled her knees.

  On the way back, she called in at the car park. Fyodor Ivanovich the nightwatchman was sitting up in his cabin, yawning and drinking coffee. He was a good friend of Granny’s and Masha’s, and he cheered as she speeded in on the rollerblades and had to grab hold of the gate to stop herself.

  “You’ll put me out of a job,” he said. “Who needs a car when you’ve got those things? How’s your grandmother?”

  “I don’t know; I’m going to see her today. Fyodor Ivanovich,” Masha went on hurriedly, “did you see anything strange happen with our trolleybus on the night of the storm?”

  “The strangest thing I saw was you coming up here for help, pale as a rusalka fleeing from the lightning on the river,” he said. “What a state you were in! That was quite a storm. Seemed to have more than just wind and rain in it; seemed to have … I don’t know, ghosts…” He shook off a slightly troubled look. “Anyone could have stolen a car from right under my nose that night if they’d wanted to.”

  Or a trolleybus, Masha thought. “And what about last night? Did anyone go near Icarus? A Cossack, for instance.”

  “A Cossack? There aren’t many of those around, these days. No, there wasn’t a soul,” he assured her. “I heard one of your goats bleating away, but that’s all.”

  Mysterious indeed. Masha sped back to the flat pursued by a hundred questions.

  Perhaps Gena’s mother could answer some of them.

  “Ira,” she asked, “who are Cossacks, exactly?”

  Ira had yellow hair like Gena’s, but in big bubbly curls, and she wore a lot of green eyeshadow. She and Masha’s mother had shared a room in the hostel when they’d both been students, and become fast friends. Masha had known her as long as she could remember.

  “Well now, you a Ukrainian and you don’t know who Cossacks are!” Ira chided. “Cossacks were escaped serfs, or adventurers, or soldiers – all sorts of people who ran away to live freely in the Ukrainian steppe, back in the days when there were no trees or villages, just grass stretching as far as you could see. Later they established a centre for men and boys called the Setch, on an island in the Dnieper River, and fought against Turkey and the Ottoman slave raids on Ukraine. They had their own government, their own army, their own stories and songs and dances. Does that answer your question?”

  “I think so,” Masha said, rather sadly. She was thinking of her own mother’s stories about history. Back when they had been a family, Mama had sometimes described the landscapes and songs and battles of Ukraine’s past so vividly that Masha could almost see and hear them happening.

  “But when was this?” she persisted. “Are there Cossacks now?”

  Ira looked puzzled. “I’m a history teacher; I can tell you about four hundred years ago, but now? It depends on what you mean by Cossack, I suppose. There are descendants of Cossacks. There are dancers and singers. But historically speaking the Cossacks were gradually incorporated into the Russian army by Catherine the Great, and lost any rights and privileges over the years until they were little more than mercenaries.”

  That was too technical to be relevant. Masha went back to a more interesting-sounding bit.

  “What do you mean, a centre for men and boys?”

  “Well, the Cossacks didn’t let women and girls share their fighting and drinking and dancing. None were allowed into the Setch. Really there’s no such thing as a female Cossack.”

  Rubbish! thought Masha indignantly. What about her dream friend, the little Cossack girl? And couldn’t she herself Cossack dance just as well as Gena?

  “Have you seen this?” she asked, tickling the back of Ira’s hand with the tassels of the Cossack belt she’d found.

  “Now isn’t that beautiful!” said Ira admiringly. “Was that a present from your granny?”

  “It’s a present from a Cossack. A girl Cossack.”

  Gena’s mother laughed. “I’m glad to hear it.”

  The mention of presents brought Masha to her next question.

  “Is it true that Ukrainians have two birthdays?”

  “Why, do you want another already?” teased Ira. “You’ve only just had the last one. No, my dear, as far as I know, little Ukrainian girls, like the rest of the world, only have one day a year for presents and birthday cake.”

  “What about Ukrainian boys?” asked Gena, who had come in to hear the last question.

  “Little Ukrainian boys don’t deserve any birthday at all until they learn not to bring in lots of dirt on their shoes,” replied Ira smartly. “Go and clear it up, now.”

  That was a disappointing end to a promising conversation, Masha thought. Why did some grown-ups always bring the subject back to dirt, dirt, dirt? Really, sometimes she thought she was better off without any parents at all.

  “Why were you asking about birthdays?” Gena said later as they sat by the river again. The sun blazed down and the inexhaustible crickets spun out and reeled in, spun and reeled in the sound of heat steadily rising. On the island, the round-topped oak trees looked very dense and dark green across the glittering water.

  Masha glanced sideways at him. “I’m not sure I’m going to tell you.”

  “Oh, go on. Are you still angry because I didn’t believe you? Well, I’ve changed my mind. I do now.”

  “I don’t believe you. You’re just saying that so I’ll tell you why I was asking.”

  It was too hot to argue. “Oh, go on, Masha,” whined Gena, lying flat on his back and squinting at the smooth blue of the sky through his eyelashes. “I promise I’ll believe anything you ever say ever again.”

  “Ok.” Masha sat up, inspired. “I’m the cleverest, most intelligent, super-duper interesting, beautiful person in the whole world.”

  “I believe you,” said Gena promptly, shutting his eyes.

  “And you’re the smelliest, stupidest, fattest blob in the universe.”

  “I believe you,” murmured Gena, looking at the warm rosy red inside his eyelids, and the purple shapes that swam slowly across them like fish, like whales.

  Masha had won that game so absolutely that there wasn’t much left to say, except tell him.

  “I heard somewhere – well, someone told me – that I’ve got another birthday. In fact, they told me that all Ukrainians have two birthdays. You know mine is on midsummer’s eve, so I’ve already had it. But there are two midsummers, and the second one is coming up. I’ll have my
second birthday then, and they said I’d get a present.” My heart’s desire, she thought. But she didn’t tell that to Gena.

  “Who said?”

  “Someone.”

  The purple whales were joined by luminous stars, exploding silently and re-forming and exploding again. A little shining fish of memory stirred, grew, burst brilliantly.

  “But there are two midsummers,” said Gena slowly, opening his eyes. The world around him was coldly, palely coloured now, all washed-out greens and blues. “Like there are two Christmases and two Easters. Alice told me.”

  “I know, in England they have Christmas two weeks before we do, and Easter’s different. But that’s just because they’ve got different Churches from us.”

  “No, it’s weirder than that.” The colours had deepened, warmed themselves. Gena wondered why he’d thought they were so bleached and wintry bright a moment ago. “It’s because there are two calendars, I think.”

  “Eh?”

  “It’s very complicated. There was an old calendar, but there were too many days in it for how long the year was. Something like that. So all the dates in this old calendar got more and more behind the real date.”

  Masha stared at him. “I don’t get it.”

  “How many days are there in a year?”

  “Everyone knows that: three hundred and sixty-five,” she answered impatiently. “Except leap years, then there are three hundred and sixty-six.”

  “Ok. So imagine there are three hundred and sixty-six days in every year here. That means our year is a day longer than in England.”

  “And what?”

  “Think about it. The first year, we have Christmas on the same day. But when it’s their new year we have another day to go. So our new year, January the first, is already their January the second. The second year, because our year is a day longer, our Christmas is a day after theirs.”

  “Mmm.” Masha was doubtful.

  “And the year after, we are two days behind. Then three, four, until we’re way behind England.” Gena had sat up and was frowning in concentration. “It didn’t happen quite like that really. I’ll look it up properly when I get home. But anyway, that’s why there are two Christmases and two Easters, and I guess two midsummers.”