The Secret History of Moscow

by Ekaterina Sedia

  A bird perched on the sill of the tiny window, its black feathers slicked and its head cocked, the black shining bead of an eye trained on the bits of fruitcake strewn on the floor.

  "It's no use,” Yakov said. “It's not going to come."

  "And how do you know that?” Galina asked without turning.

  "We have no luck,” Yakov said. “Don't you get it? When Likho and Zlyden are both around, we have no chance. Any time anything can go wrong, it will."

  Galina didn't answer and crouched lower. Her fingers grew numb from crumbling the cake; it crumbled and crumbled and turned to fine dust.

  They used to feed pigeons, she and Masha; Masha was only little then, and for some reason she wanted nothing better than a pet pigeon. Galina smiled, remembering the wooden crate they found by the back door of the neighborhood liquor store, and how it smelled of fresh wood shavings and sour spilled beer; how they found a stick and borrowed a ball of yarn from one of the morose old ladies who liked to knit sitting on the bench by the entrance of their apartment building. Of how they propped the crate up with a stick wrapped in bright cerulean yarn and crumbled day-old bread under it. How they waited, breathless and giggly, for the pigeons to crowd under the crate, as if impatient to be caught.

  Galina wished to feel like she felt that day-a bit flustered and apologetic, ready with excuses for any grownup who would question their purpose in trapping the pigeons, but happy with anticipation, happy that her little sister looked at her with such admiration, was so impressed that Galina, generally useless and awkward, was in possession of such arcana as building pigeon traps. Usually Masha, only five at a time, treated Galina with the kindness and sensitivity extended by adults to ailing children. Galina was not ungrateful-on the contrary she was convinced that Masha was the only person under the sun generous enough to love the unlovable-but she cherished the rare glimpses of memories where she was competent.

  She frowned when she remembered the pigeon they managed to trap in the frantic scattering of other birds and the heavy thud of the crate, how the bird flapped against the wooden slats of its prison, almost lifting the crate off the ground. The crate hopped on the pungent heated asphalt if the yard as if possessed, and they laughed guiltily, and hurried to examine their prisoner. It was an average enough pigeon, gray under most circumstances but blooming with greens and purples, like an oil slick on a puddle, when the sun rays struck its feathers at the proper angle. Masha seemed pleased and stroked the bird. “Its heart is beating so hard,” she said. “I can feel it jumping on my fingers."

  It was then that Galina noticed that the bird was not quite right-its feet, clawed and leathery and reptilian, seemed bigger than they were supposed to be, a swollen purple in color.

  Masha noticed too, and gasped. “Look,” she said, and pointed at a dirty bit of thin string dangling from one of the pigeon's feet, and cried. Galina tried not to cry too when she realized that someone-probably the boys who terrorized the local stray cats and spent most of their time playing in the concrete pipes of the nearby construction site-had trapped this bird before, bound it with string and flown it like a kite. The string was tied too tight and cut off the circulation in the bird's feet-this is why it was so easy to trap the second time.

  Galina wiped Masha's tears and led her home, the poor bird still nestled in her hands, not fighting its capture anymore. The bird with the swollen feet lying passively in the five-year-old's open palms stood clear in her mind, as perfect an image of defeat as she could wish for. They tried to remove the string, but the swelling was too great-the scaly skin bunched over it, and the pigeon trembled every time they touched its injured feet. Soon, it couldn't stand, and they took the bus to the vet clinic. The pigeon died on the bus and they saw no point in getting off but traveled to the final stop and waited for the bus to turn around and take them back home. They buried the pigeon in the remaining orchard patch, and never tried to trap another one again.

  The bird on the sill hopped onto the floor of the corridor, hesitant, studying Galina and the crumbled fruitcake with one eye, then the other.

  "Just be still,” Galina whispered to Yakov. “Please, I beg you, be still."

  He didn't answer but stopped his pacing. Galina couldn't see his face, but she imagined he watched the bird's reluctant progress and frequent backtracking with the same intensity as she.

  The bird pecked at the crumbs tentatively, glancing sideways at Galina's hand resting on the floor palm up.

  "It's all right,” Galina whispered. “Go ahead, eat."

  The bird did, its neck bobbing with each peck. Its crop swelled with fruitcake, and the bird appeared thoroughly absorbed in its dinner. Galina moved her hand, centimeter by centimeter, until it almost touched the bird's foot. The bird stopped pecking and studied the hand that again came to rest on the floor.

  Galina chewed her lips, feeling the dry skin peel under her teeth, giving way to tender flesh and pungent wet blood. “Don't move,” she whispered, “be still."

  The bird hesitated, and Galina lunged. She hit her head on the metal bars of the door-she had forgotten they were there, and the impact made her cringe with pain. Her hand grasped at the bird and brushed against the wing just as the startled bird took flight, avoiding capture without much effort. It disappeared through the embrasure of the window at the end of the hallway, and still Galina grasped at empty air, her overextended arm aching in its socket, creaking at the elbow. She felt a hand on her shoulder.

  "It's gone,” Yakov said. “Don't feel bad-you almost got it."

  "Almost is never good enough,” she whispered. That's what her mother used to say anyway.

  "What would you have done with that bird?” Yakov said. “Think about it-if Likho can talk to the birds, it doesn't mean you can do the same."

  "We have to try,” she said. “What, you want to rot here?"

  Yakov opened his mouth to answer but a flapping of wings interrupted them. A fat white rook squeezed through the window and half-fell, half-fluttered to the floor. In short hops it approached the cell.

  "Finally,” it said. “It took me forever to find you."

  "Sergey!” Galina picked the bird up and cradled it, resisting the urge to give it a kiss. “How'd you find us? Why did they let you go?"

  "I played dumb,” the rook said, and even its high-pitched bird voice couldn't hide its self-satisfaction. “They didn't think I was important enough to chase-they were talking to Zemun and Koschey."

  "What about Timur-Bey?” Galina asked.

  "Him? I don't know. He's human, so they probably put him somewhere to get to his luck, if he has any left after all these years underground.” Sergey chuckled, pleased with his wit. “So I went to look for you, but you'll never believe what else I found."

  * * * *

  Sergey couldn't fly, since his clipped wings were useful enough to buffer a fall but too short and ragged to support real flight. He hopped and fluttered his way out of the barn and into the first-story window of the palace; there, he traveled from one room to the next. He found many birds and a few more soldiers, some of them French. All of them paid him no mind and he soon discovered why-albino birds perched on windowsills, mingling with black-feathered newcomers, and pecked at the fruit in the tree branches outside. Sergey still found it strange to think of himself as a bird, but he had to admit that in this case it was handy, a perfect disguise. He hopped across the hardwood floors and hand-woven runners striped in red, yellow and blue; he flitted awkwardly up onto the sills and out to the balconies, hopped up the winding staircases, lost direction in the endless corridors and galleries of empty rooms inhabited only by dust bunnies. He stopped caring after a while if he came into the same room as before, and wasn't particularly sure if he was moving up or down.

  He didn't remember how he arrived at the entrance of one of the seven towers; he only knew that he had to crane his neck to see the next turn of the wide staircase that swept up and to the left, its steps stacked at a slight angle so that it took them
a whole floor to turn all the way around. He hopped upwards, thinking that only a really tall tower would have a staircase with such slow turns. He spiraled upwards, occasionally zoning out and thinking that he was still guarding a silo, still in his human form, and that his corporal had sent him to fetch something from the storage facility. Then he came to and saw that the sun was setting, and then it rose again-funny things happened to time on that staircase.

  It was then that he heard the singing. The voice sounded small and ragged, and stopped often to gulp air in large noisy swallows, and resumed again, trembling, weak and uncertain. At first, he imagined a child, a sick child perhaps, a little boy with asthma who passed the time in his sickbed by pretending to be in a church choir. Then another voice joined the first, and a feeble duet echoed in the stairwell. The third attempted to sing but coughed, wailed and dissolved into sobs before falling quiet again.

  Sergey hurried up the stairs. The voices didn't sound like Likho or its soldiers, and he decided that there were prisoners. They didn't sound like Zemun or Koschey, or even Galina for that matter, but he hurried, hoping to find out who it was that sang so piteously.

  At the top of the staircase there was a single door with a narrow slot at the bottom. Sergey squeezed through the opening with some effort; his biggest worry was to encounter a cat or to be forcibly ejected by the inhabitants, but he did not expect to feel such fierce pity and anger.

  At first, he thought that he was looking at three naked women chained to the wall; whatever small sordid joy might've stirred in his heart at the sight of female bondage had evaporated as soon as he saw the long bloodied bruises on the wrists of narrow fingerless hands, the drooping narrow breasts and the bird's feet so swollen that puckered flesh half-concealed the manacles. The faces that reminded him of Byzantine saints and angels-with large dark eyes that took up half of these narrow faces, the fine-boned Eastern cheeks that tapered into small sharp chins, and small but perfect lips half-opened in suffering.

  Then he noticed that their naked bodies were shapeless sacks, reminiscent of plucked chickens, and he realized with a start that they were the bodies of birds-picked clean of feathers, with just a few downy tufts and jutting feather shafts remaining in place.

  "Who are you?” he whispered to the bird-women.

  One by one they lifted their faces, their eyes half-hidden under heavy dark eyelids, and whispered in turn, “Alkonost,” “Sirin,” “Gamayun."

  17: Alkonost, Sirin, Gamayun

  Yakov interrupted. “What happened next?"

  Sergey ruffled his feathers. “I would've told you already if you hadn't interrupted me. So just listen, yeah?"

  Yakov nodded and kept quiet.

  Sergey continued with the tale-how he froze to the floor by the door, unable to turn away or rush forward to help, paralyzed by a mix of terror, revulsion, and pity. How he also grew acutely aware of his own small and fat bird body, and imagined what his wings would look like naked-handless sticks covered in blue puckering skin-how he shuddered.

  The dark Byzantine eyes watched him from the wall, drawing him in, and he was unable to look away at the rest of the room, just their eyes and bloody manacles holding the unspeakable, unimaginable abominations.

  "Why are you here?” he croaked finally. “What are they doing to you? Why…” He wanted to ask why they were naked, but thought better of it. “What happened to your feathers?"

  "They took them,” Sirin said in a halting but sweet voice, and her lips trembled. “They took them to make into charms, to give to evil men."

  "They grow back,” Alkonost added, “but they take them again."

  "You will die twice,” Gamayun hissed, her eyes burning with insuppressible madness.

  "Can I do anything to help?” Sergey whispered. Sadness filled him as no feeling had ever done; he thought that it was the first time in his life that he truly felt something. He wanted nothing more than to help them.

  "Take my last feather.” Alkonost shifted awkwardly, turning to expose her flank, naked but for a single small white feather. “It's a charm."

  "What does it do?"

  "I don't know.” Alkonost bit her lip and almost cried. There was nothing majestic about her now.

  "Take mine too,” Sirin said, and twisted, moving her heavy body to the side, exposing the dusty-gray feather in the hollow under her wing. “It's a spell."

  "Take them all!” Gamayun struggled against her bonds wildly, drawing blood from her ankles and wrists. “Take my curse, take my hate, take everything we got, but stop this degradation.” When she ceased struggling and hung helpless and exhausted against her manacles, her head on her chest, Sergey saw the black smudge of a feather in the nape of her neck.

  He collected the three feathers, and stopped in the doorway. It seemed impossible to leave them like this. “I'll come back for you,” he said. “I promise."

  The three bird-women said nothing; Alkonost started with her song again, a childish lullaby Sergey had heard too many years ago to remember the words of, but the melody stirred his heart with an unfamiliar longing for the happy time without responsibility, for the time when he could be tucked under the thick quilted blanket and no worry could touch him there. He swallowed the bile rising in his throat and squeezed through the slit in the door. He felt lighter somehow, emptier.

  He moved his wings, trying to explain. “It's like this, see,” he said. “Nothing will ever be the same again. It's like my life broke in half. Do you know what I mean?"

  Yakov nodded. He did. He knew the distinct before and after, he felt the rift that cleaved his life in two separate and irreconcilable parts, where he felt that one had nothing to do with the other; he was a different man now, and he felt like throwing himself on the cold floor of his prison and weeping and striking his fists against the boards when he thought that this rift, this separator, this memory had been pried out of his soul by the bony spirit fingers of the boatman.

  "Where are the feathers?” Galina asked.

  Sergey smirked and lifted his wings. There, among his own dirty-white feathers, there was a brilliantly white one, a gray one, and a black one, their shafts entangled securely in his down.

  Yakov picked them out, his stubby fingers particularly ungraceful, and studied the feathers. “What do we do with them?"

  "A charm, a spell and a curse,” Galina said.

  Yakov sighed and closed his fist. “What does it even mean? Everyone here speaks in stupid riddles, like if throwing words together would somehow give them meaning. Well, it doesn't; it's all gibberish to me. So don't you start talking like that, like you know what's going on."

  "Don't tell me what to do and how to talk.” Galina almost snarled at him. “Who do you think you are? I'm not your wife, so you don't snap at me every time something goes wrong."

  He shrugged and handed her the feathers. “You figure this one out then."

  Galina studied the feathers on her palm, tilting it sideways to catch the light from the window in the end of the hallway. She looked as perplexed as Yakov felt, and he had to suppress a smirk of satisfaction. “A charm or a spell?” Galina mused. “And do any of you remember any fairytales with feathers?"

  "Just with flower petals,” Sergey said. “Remember the one about the seven-colored flower?"

  Galina grinned. “Sure do. ‘Fly little petal from east to west, from north to south, and come back around, make my wish come true when you touch the ground.’”

  "That's the one,” Sergey squawked, pleased. “Think it'll work?"

  "Not the chant,” Galina answered, “But let's see what happens when they touch the ground.” She loosened her fingers, and all three of them watched as the feathers drifted down to the floor and came to rest, the fine silken fibers wavering in the gentle draft coming from the window at the end of the hallway.

  They waited a while; the feathers remained motionless.

  "Screw this,” Yakov said. “Let's get out of here, find Koschey, and see if he knows what that's all about."<
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  "We can't leave,” Galina said, and pointed at the door. As if he were stupid.

  "Sergey,” Yakov said. “Can you get to the lock?"

  "Hold on,” the rook said, and waddled outside through the slot in the bottom of the door. They heard it scraping and panting; an occasional thud signified a fall.

  "I can't reach it,” Sergey informed them, poking his head through the opening. “If you could give me a boost-but even then I don't know if I'm strong enough."

  "I am,” Yakov said, and lay down on the floor. He squeezed his arm through the opening and waited for the rook to step on his open hand. Once the clawed cold bird fingers wound around his thumb, he turned on his right side, bending his arm upward.

  "Just a bit more,” Sergey instructed. “There. I'm touching it with my beak.” There was more scraping and clanging of metal. “Can't do it-the lock's too strong."

  "Put your beak next to the tumbler,” Yakov said. “Does it go right or left?"

  "Left,” Sergey said. “Just be careful."

  Yakov grasped the bird's legs and put all the strength of his arm into forcing the internal tumbler aside. He worked blind, and his heavy breathing was the only sound in the cell. Sergey was a trooper-Yakov could feel how stiff the rook was, how hard he tried to remain motionless and rigid.

  A sharp crack startled Yakov-at first, he thought that Sergey's beak had broken. Galina jumped to the door and pushed it outward, and it gave. Yakov released the bird, picked up the magic feathers, and jumped to his feet. “Are you all right?” he asked Sergey.

  "Fine,” he answered from the outside. “Just a little sore. Come on, I'll show you the way."

  * * * *

  Yakov was not fond of violence; he approached it as something one needed to be stoic about, never deriving either pleasure or distaste from it. He tried to maintain the same perspective once they rounded the corner and encountered one of the Napoleonic soldiers; this one was French. He looked at Yakov with very round, very pale eyes, and his mouth mimicked their round shape. He reached for his musket, but Yakov knocked him to the ground with a single economical punch before he could level his piece.