In the Country of Shadows (Exit Unicorns Series Book 4)

by Cindy Brandner

  Later, when the talk quieted and a certain soporific contentment stunned the company like a hive of bees well smoked, Yevgena rose and went to her vardo, returning moments later with a battered violin case in her hands.

  “I have fed you,” she said to Jamie, “and now I want some music in return. I do believe,” she turned and smiled at Shura, “I saw a balalaika in your hands earlier.”

  She placed the violin beside Jamie and then plucked Kolya from his lap so that he had no excuse not to play. He looked somewhat bemused by the instrument even as he took it out of its case.

  “You play the violin?” Pamela asked, and her voice held a note of incredulity that caused Jamie to laugh.

  “I am a rich man’s son,” he said wryly, “do you honestly think I could have escaped my childhood without music lessons of every sort? How many instruments do you play?”

  She laughed. “Touché, Mr. Kirkpatrick. The answer is I play none well, but I play three passably.”

  Jamie bowed to Yevgena and then gave a quick nod to Shura, who picked up his balalaika and settled it on his lap.

  “My technique is rather rusty, so let your ears be forewarned.”

  Jamie played far more than passably. In fact, she was taken aback at just how well he did play. She had spent many months living in his home over the years, and she had never once known him to pick up an instrument.

  The balalaika took the low road, frolicking along the lane, stopping to smell the flowers, heating up slowly as the notes rushed ever faster. The violin took to the air, Jamie keeping pace with Shura, and Shura’s face lit with joy at finding this unexpected partner in music. They played half a dozen tunes back-to-back, all gypsy melodies, Shura only needing the opening notes to follow Jamie seamlessly through the songs. Jamie put the violin back in its case at the end of the sixth song.

  “My bowing hand has found its limit,” he said, and Pamela thought for some reason this was not true, and that he simply did not want to play any more music for reasons he wasn’t about to share.

  The fire was making her pleasantly drowsy, and the enjoyment of the evening showed in the faces around her. The children were exhibiting signs of sleepiness too, though Isabelle still wriggled on her lap like an electrified eel. Like her father, she was not one to sit still often or for long.

  “Yasha, will you tell us a story?” Vanya said now that the last rollicking notes had dissipated into the night. He turned to Pamela, “Yasha told us many stories in Russia by the fire at night. He had us all under his spell.”

  “I have no doubt of that,” she said. Jamie merely raised one gull-winged brow at her.

  “Oh yes, Jemmy, please do, I have not had the pleasure of your storytelling in many years,” Yevgena said.

  He sighed. “I know when I’m outflanked. Well, Conor-lad, what will it be tonight?” he asked, looking down at the small boy who was snuggled in to his side.

  “Hedge tales,” Conor replied without even pausing to think about it. Once she had been well enough, after her illness, to sit in on Jamie’s nightly storytelling, she too, had listened raptly to the ‘hedge tales’ each night.

  She looked over Conor’s head at Jamie, even Isabelle settling in as a hush fell over the gathering. The fire lit half of Jamie’s face, leaving the other side in shadow. It looked like a mask, one of both comedy and tragedy, a storyteller’s face. Conor leaned in toward the fire, his own small face alight with anticipation. He loved Jamie’s stories, both because they were always magical and because they had provided him with a foundation through their telling when his mother had been sick.

  Jamie began with those most ancient words that storytellers had used since time immemorial. “Once upon a time…” And so the magic began, as his words slipped around them all, binding them in his spell.

  “Once upon a time there was a boy who lived near a hedge that was forty feet high. The boy had never been beyond the hedge for it was forbidden. Children had been known to disappear and never return when they had wandered too near the great hedge and there were terrible tales about a troll that lived on the other side of it. Fledge was always careful to give the great shrubs a wide berth when he was driving the cows home of a night, even though in late summer the berries hung on it ripe and red and sweet and ever so tempting. But on this particular night when our tale takes place, Fledge drew near to the high dark hedge, for he could hear for the first time, all sorts of things going on beyond it—the bright, rollicking notes of a squeezebox, the shimmering call of mares to their foals, bare feet dancing, and the smells—oh, the smells—nettles rolling in a boil of lavender water, cotton fresh plucked from sun-steeped bushes and woven into blankets, blackberries newly fallen from their thorny perches and sweet as sugar in the nose.”

  With Jamie’s words, a breeze sprang up, as if it had been conjured expressly for his purposes. They sat rapt for the next half hour, even the children quiet, Isabelle asleep on Pamela’s shoulder, Kolya drowsing in Yevgena’s lap and Conor gazing up at Jamie’s face, as Jamie wove a world for him from glowing threads of adventure and adversity and friends and foes. He placed each of them within the story with small details here and there: a faun with amethyst eyes, a shortish man who had a way with poetry, a Gypsy woman with a secret past and the ability to tell outrageous fortunes and a woman who came from the sea and could not find her way back to it. And in the center of it all, a boy named Fledge, who roamed the world over the hedge and had the sort of adventures in which boys both little and big delighted.

  A half hour later, the words began to slow, indicating that Jamie was wrapping it up and slowly releasing them from his tale.

  “…as far as Fledge’s eye could cast itself were caravans and animals and women in brightly-colored clothes and men in rough leather jerkins and boots with worn down heels from many miles of traveled roads. There were camels and packhorses and stallions screaming as they scented mares in heat. There was music and raucous laughter and women calling for children. The children were everywhere. He had not expected children, for the journey beyond the Edge of the World was a very difficult one.”

  Jamie smiled down at Conor, who was leaning into him, half asleep. “I believe that’s the best place to stop for the night.”

  Jamie and Conor had formed their own relationship when she had been sick. She knew Jamie had done everything he could to allay Conor’s fears about her, and now Conor trusted him completely.

  She always felt like the world stopped when Jamie told one of his stories, and time was hesitant to take up its run once again when he finished. For a brief moment she had forgotten herself, and the world around her, as if she had been suspended in that far land beyond the hedge. The same regret she felt was printed on the faces around her, as though they were all emerging back into this world and finding the light too harsh.

  Kolya was fast asleep by the time the story was done, limp with exhaustion in Yevgena’s arms, tiny thumb stuck solidly in his mouth. Jamie walked over and picked him up, easing Kolya’s thumb from his mouth with a soft pop.

  “I need to put this little man to bed,” Jamie said.

  “Bring him along to the other vardo,” Pamela said, “he can sleep with Conor and Isabelle.” Jamie’s own caravan had been set up a small distance away, in the shelter of a large oak, expressly for the purpose of tired children.

  She stood, holding out one hand to Conor, her other arm wrapped firmly around Isabelle.

  “Come back for a little brandy, darlings, when you have the little ones down. We can easily hear them from my vardo,” Yevgena said, and gave Pamela’s shoulder a quick squeeze.

  The blue caravan sat within the shelter of an overhanging oak, which cut the worst of the night’s chill wind. Isabelle was limp in Pamela’s arms; her tiny mouth open in the deep and dreamless sleep of the very young and Pamela laid her down and tucked the blankets around her snugly. The caravan was cozy, for Esme had lit the fire in the cast iron stove a little while ago, so that it would be warm enough for the children to sle
ep.

  Jamie stepped up behind her, and she looked over her shoulder at him. The night wind had ruffled his hair, and the gold of it shone brightly against the flame of Kolya’s head nestled on his shoulder. “Fatherhood suits you, you know,” she said, smiling over at him.

  “Thank you, but it seems rather selective in the arena it chooses for success,” he said, his tone dry, with a note of something else underneath.

  “Julian?”

  “Who else?” He smiled at her over Kolya’s head, but there was a particularly bleak quality to his expression that told her things had not improved since Julian’s visit of a few months ago.

  “Have you heard from him lately?”

  “Yes,” Jamie said and the brevity with which he spoke the word, made her hesitant to ask anything further.

  She took Kolya from him carefully, though once he was asleep there was little short of the Russian Army marching through in full cadence, which would wake the child. She put him in beside Isabelle, making certain they were well covered. The two tiny heads lay in contrast, like that of night and flame.

  It took only a matter of moments to get Conor settled, and then Esme showed up at the door, a small stack of books in her hands that she offered to read to Conor.

  “I will sit with him,” she said.

  Pamela accepted gratefully, pausing to plant a kiss on each of the sleeping children’s foreheads and to give Conor a hug and a kiss. He was snug in the quilts with the two babies fast asleep on the other side of him, Finbar curled up on the floor below, Esme with a book already open in her hands, pink cheeks aglow in the warmth of the vardo. Pamela suspected some of the pink in her skin came from the glances she had cast toward Vanya all night. She sighed, and wondered not for the first time why love always had to be so complicated.

  Jamie was waiting for her at the bottom of the vardo’s steps.

  “Shall we?” he asked, and offered her his arm.

  They walked back together, quiet, the wind rushing through the branches above them, whispering softly through the new leaves of spring. It was a time of year that Jamie loved, both for the eternal hope of spring’s promise and the temperamental nature of the weather. It had been a strange day, one of those where the atmosphere seemed especially thin, as though ghosts flitted through the air around and eyes peered from behind the young greenery. He had long wondered what it was that was present on such days, but was thankful they were rare for it always unsettled him deeply.

  He glanced at the woman who walked beside him. She appeared fully recovered now, if still a little too thin. He had been aware of her observing him tonight and had been careful to school his face for he did not want to make her uncomfortable again. The reserve between them had been noted, he knew, on both sides.

  In the vardo, Vanya was still chattering away happily in Russian with Yevgena and the scent of Russian tea filled the small space with its rich smoky smell. Shura had left to go back up to the house, pleading exhaustion and still looking like he had been hit by a bolt of lightning.

  Pamela settled in on the ornate built-in bench beside Jamie. She smelled of the night—smoke and food and wine, with the threat of rain threaded through her hair. Jamie put his hands on his knees to steady them.

  Yevgena sat across from the two of them, a crimson shawl wrapped around her, highlighting the dark hair and eyes. She was ageless, Jamie thought, and still a beautiful woman. He thought it a pity at times that she did not have a man in her life anymore. She had told him once, that after his grandfather died she had closed the book on romance. There would, she had said, never be another. He often wondered how badly she missed him.

  Around them the vardo creaked, protesting the brisk wind that had sprung up. A smatter of rain sounded against the windows. Pamela picked up the cup of brandy Yevgena had set before her and took a long swallow, her eyes watering as she put it down.

  “Yevgena,” she said, and something in the three simple syllables made Jamie turn to look at her. There was a nervous eagerness in her face and he feared he knew exactly what she was about to say.

  “Yes, darlink?”

  “Would you—would you read my cards? Please, Yevgena. I asked you once before and you said no, and I understand why. Tonight, though, I would like you to read them for me.”

  Yevgena looked up at Jamie and he saw the worry in her face at the request. Yevgena could read cards in different ways, and usually it was no more than reading the person and their tells and adding in a few things they wanted to hear. But there was another way, and Jamie knew when it happened she had little control over it. This night, this thin spring night, with the wind moving through the treetops like the lament of a ghost…he shivered, this night could well bring a reading of the other sort. Later, he would wish he had stopped them both right there, had claimed a headache and bustled Pamela on her way. Regret was like that—it saw things so clearly in hindsight.

  “Because it is you, darlink, I will do it, but they are just cards and they can only make guesses, they cannot give you the exactness you desire.”

  Yevgena’s dark eyes held Pamela’s green ones in the flickering light of the candles.

  “I know,” Pamela said, “it does not matter.”

  Yevgena retrieved a carved wooden box from a drawer under the vardo’s bed and brought it back to the table. It was filled with small velvet bags and Jamie knew each bag held a different set of the tarot.

  A shiver of apprehension went through him as he watched Pamela look over the bags. Jamie knew no answer the cards could provide was going to satisfy her. Nothing short of directions straight to a very much alive Casey was going to satisfy her, and that just wasn’t going to happen. Despite what she had said, he knew it did matter, it mattered to her too much to play around with half-answers.

  “You have to choose the deck. Close your eyes, your skin will know the right cards,” Yevgena said.

  Pamela’s fingers hovered over the velvet bags, sweeping one way and then the other. She touched a black bag, embroidered with tiny crescent moons. “This one,” she said and opened her eyes.

  “La Luna,” Yevgena said, her voice distant like she spoke from a place far away. “O Shion. You have chosen the lunar deck. Take the deck out and shuffle it, Pamela.”

  Pamela did as she was bid, and slid the deck out. Yevgena looked at it and then flicked a quick look up at Jamie, a look of puzzlement. About what he did not know.

  “You keep shuffling, I just need to get one more thing.” Yevgena stood and went to the narrow cupboard beside the little stove and returned with an object cradled in both hands. In the center of the table, she set a large and lustrous stone, which held in its core the light of the moon. It was the biggest moonstone Jamie had ever seen.

  “During the Middle Ages,” Yevgena said, “it was believed that if you gazed long enough into a moonstone, you would fall into a deep sleep and dream of the future. The Romans believed moonstones were a bit of the moon fallen to earth, magic made solid. I believe they help the cards to align properly and therefore the reading is more powerful.”

  Jamie looked at the cards in Pamela’s pale slender fingers as she shuffled them. The backs were dark with no discernible pattern or script. He recognized them now and he understood the look Yevgena had given him. He had never known her to use these cards.

  “You will remember these cards, Jemmy. Your grandfather traded a perfectly good watch for them in a souk in Marrakesh. I scolded him over that—giving up a nice watch for a tattered old deck of cards.”

  A grue rippled up Jamie’s spine. Oh yes, he remembered it all too well. Yevgena had not been present so she didn’t know the whole story of that day’s events. He and his grandfather had been deep in the souk and his senses had been swimming with the scents and sounds of the medina: the smells of turmeric and cardamom, fenugreek and cinnamon, saffron and cumin; the bright and vivid colors of the silks and wools and cottons; the baskets spilling over with figs and dates and salted almonds and lemons; the screech of caged b
irds and the flicker of dark-eyed girls in silks that flowed like ink and the singsong chant of the vendors hawking their wares.

  The seller of potions and ingredients for black magic was in a tiny stall with dark cloth covering its walls. Jamie was only fourteen at the time, and was, of course, fascinated by anything occult. He had left his grandfather haggling with a man who sold silk shawls and entered the little shop alone. At first he had not seen the man behind the counter, for he’d been mesmerized by the oddities surrounding him. There had been a fortune teller’s table in the middle of the small space, with the seven symbols of Arabic magic carved into its surface. There were tiny drawers stuffed to brimming in a cabinet—filled with strange things: feathers and fur, small balls that looked like twists of string and let off a foul odor, stretched skin that appeared to have once belonged to a reptile, oils with black things suspended in them and spices that smelled bitter and were as dark as jet. There was one last drawer he peered into and then drew back, for it contained human hair of a variety of colors and lengths of cutting. There was something repulsive about it.

  The walls were hung with cages and in the cages were live chameleons, cobras and salamanders, rabbits and mice and in one corner, a caged falcon, his back to the room, huddled over in a miserable ball of dusty feathers. The falcon turned as he passed its cage and the one golden eye met Jamie’s, sealing both their fates in that moment. Because in that eye was the final desperate plea of an imprisoned animal, whose life was flight. To cage a raptor was worse than killing it.

  The man emerged then, startling him, for he moved as silently as a snake. In his hands he held the contents of the last drawer into which Jamie had peered. A snarled ball of hair, black and red and brown. But not a single thread of gold.