The Fallen Queen

by Jane Kindred

  Before I could collect myself, the door swung open with a rush of

  air, stirring the dust in an eddy around me. I flinched from the glare of the middle-aged woman standing on the threshold, but she was staring

  down at my feet.

  “Grishka!” She scolded the cat with affection, then shooed it out

  into the corridor and closed the door without a word to me. I held

  my breath, sure she would return and demand to know what I was

  doing there, but I heard her footsteps receding outside the door. In a moment, the alarm stopped and the bright light went out.

  After a few minutes passed without another sound, I crept into

  the passage. Light flooded the base of the stairs to my left. I hurried down them with my heart pounding. Like the rooftop and the palace

  exterior, I recognized the hallway at the bottom of the landing. Little details were different, the decorations were not ours, but I knew every one of these rooms.

  I gripped the banister upon reaching the family’s floor. At the end

  of this hallway were the columns of the rotunda, bathed and gilded

  in the light of the resurging sun streaming through the oculus in the

  dome. The doorway to the formal dining room lay beyond, and on the

  other side…

  64 JANE KINDRED

  I covered my mouth against a wave of nausea, every instinct

  telling me to run the other way, to go back through the attic room

  and the little window, and to forget I’d ever seen this place. But I was drawn with a cruel fascination, as though my shade-self escorted me

  to my inescapable fate and whispered in my head, it is your turn now.

  I stopped between the columns. Another stern-faced woman

  approached the rotunda. I’d forgotten I was trespassing. This was

  someone else’s home.

  In the same manner as the first woman, she was dressed in the

  sensible peasant garb of this world. They did not seem exactly servants, but they were surely not the occupants of this place. I braced myself

  once again for rebuke, and once again I was passed by unnoticed.

  Perplexed and unnerved, I watched her disappear into the gallery.

  These peasants moved through the palace as if it belonged to them,

  ignoring me—a phantom of an insignificant past.

  I bit my lip. Was I only a phantom? Perhaps the surreal events of these past several days were only a dying dream while I lay bleeding

  on the dance floor of the concert hall. Looking about, it was easy to

  believe I had never left the Firmament at all. Perhaps I was in Elysium still and had not snuck from the palace on that night, leaving my shade to face my fate. Kae had slain me with the others.

  I could not go any farther toward that room where I might find my

  mother lying on the threshold, her blood pooling into the carpet like

  a carelessly overturned goblet of wine; where I might find my father

  and sisters sprawled with the indifference of broken dolls cast aside

  in an untidy, bloody nursery. I lurched into the library, my father’s

  library, steadying myself against the walnut panels, among the comfort of books.

  The leather smelled of Papa. I could picture him here, seated at his

  desk with his head bent over a pile of papers, or wandering along the

  upper gallery with his hands clasped behind his back in thought. His

  preoccupation had been nearly equal to my cousin’s in the last months

  of his life, and I’d had no idea why.

  “Papa.” It was a whispered incantation. He’d always made time

  for me, no matter how busy he’d been. As a young girl, I had often

  come here and sat by the massive, white granite fireplace and swung

  THE FALLEN QUEEN 65

  my legs while I watched him work. Not here. I had never been here before, no matter how familiar it looked.

  His desk—or one nearly identical—sat by the fireplace behind a

  velvet rope. I climbed over the barrier and ran my fingers along the

  walnut surface of the desk and then stopped short, arrested by a set

  of portraits arranged along one end. They were extraordinary images

  of the sort the demons called photographs, colorless subjects captured in the uncanny likeness of life. But the likeness captured in the first of these portraits was my father’s.

  With a shock, I peered at the grainy image. No, it wasn’t Papa after

  all, but the beard and mustache were remarkably similar to his own,

  and the eyes held the same gentle promise of comfort, with a slight

  crinkle of permanent worry.

  If this resemblance was astonishing, the next was even more so.

  I gasped and picked up the framed photograph behind it. The same

  prince sat beside a solemn queen, and gathered around them were four

  daughters whose bright eyes and warm smiles spoke of their closeness

  to one another; four daughters in piled and tumbling curls, posed as if they might fall together laughing at any moment—and a frail young

  boy who seemed their darling. Somehow, the House of Arkhangel’sk

  had been captured on this paper, our images stolen from Heaven and

  trapped forever into shades of light and darkness.

  As with the first portrait, on closer inspection I saw it was not my

  family. They were like us in poise and spirit, and yet the faces not quite so, the hair not quite right, actors made up to play our parts.

  “Who are you?” I murmured.

  As if in answer, the pages of a book lying open on the desk ruffled

  in a sudden breeze. I was sure I heard a whisper behind me. I set down the photo, but no one was there. The curtain on one of the windows

  overlooking the garden billowed in with the shape of someone

  standing behind it. I stifled my alarm and pulled back the fabric. The window was open just a crack. It was only the wind.

  When I turned back to the desk, I saw I had knocked over the

  family portrait. The paper backing protruded, jarred from its position in the frame. I picked it up and opened the back to straighten it.

  Someone had written out the names over the positions of the children,

  66 JANE KINDRED

  and a number: 1916. I had begun to recognize the letters of this earthly alphabet, and after a bit of struggling, I made them out: Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Alexei, Anastasia. A chill ran up my spine. These were almost

  our names. Anastasia. It was a pretty, storybook version of my own.

  I put the picture back and sat at the desk, wondering what this

  meant. This earthly city shared its topography in many ways with

  the capital city of the Firmament of Shehaqim, their principal rivers

  nearly sharing the same name. Heaven’s River Neba, I had learned,

  was even the word for Heaven in the language of this place. And here

  in the midst of the dusty realm of Men sat the palace taken straight

  from Elysium’s square.

  These things I might dismiss as a strange coincidence, though I

  would be hard pressed to believe it to be nothing more—but not the

  photographs. No, something else was at work here I could not make

  sense of. The photographs were old and faded, and 1916 must represent

  the year they were taken, nearly a century ago by the measure of this

  world. These people did not resemble us. We resembled them.

  The curtain billowed in again from the window. Another eddy

  of wind seemed to circle the desk and flirt around me like a sentient

  force.

  Come, dyevushka. I froze, and the breeze circled me, slowly and deliberately. Come, dyevushka. We make un
seen. We wait.

  I held my hand out to see if I could touch what I could not see, but

  felt only air. My skin prickled with gooseflesh. Perhaps the spirits of the family in the portrait lingered here. “Who are you?” I whispered.

  A rustle of unintelligible sound surrounded me, several voices

  speaking at once, and then a single voice came again. The Unseen

  make unseen. You must come, dyevushka. We tire. Unseen cannot stay.

  The air around me rippled with insistent energy, almost tugging at me, and then was still.

  “Chto delaet?” This voice, indignant, came from a very corporeal source. A uniformed guard stood glowering in the doorway. If I had

  been invisible before, I was no longer. He marched toward me, yanked

  me from the seat, and slapped me on the side of my head with a rough

  palm, yelling in rapid Russian. The only word I caught was “hooligan.”

  Finding nothing after patting me down and turning out my empty

  THE FALLEN QUEEN 67

  pockets, he barked a question at me, waited briefly for an answer, and then hauled me from the room and past the enfilade to the grand

  staircase. I stumbled along behind him, realizing these rooms were not lived in at all. Except for exquisite works of art, carefully displayed, there was almost nothing in them to indicate the palace was occupied.

  Whoever had lived here once, it was now a museum.

  The guard ushered me down to the atrium and out into the

  courtyard, and shoved me toward the gilded gates on the square,

  yelling about the militsiya. I darted through the gate and past another shouting guard, not waiting to see if they would carry out the threat

  of arrest. I fled, running through the streets of the Russian city until I was hopelessly lost.

  Stopping to catch my breath, I leaned back against the sooty

  brick of a tenement wall and found myself surrounded by a flurry of

  white tufts, floating on the breeze like goose down escaping a feather mattress. I found out later they were the bursting seedpods of poplar

  trees, which the locals called pukh, but for that moment, I might have been transported to the realm of the fairies.

  Shining through the pukh like a miniature palace—perhaps the

  palace of the Fairy Queen herself—was a building of blue domes and

  gold spires topped with thrice-crossed posts that pierced the pale blue sky. I tried to remember where I had seen such architecture before.

  It was nothing of Heaven, but I had seen such images before, I was

  certain. And then I recalled a book Papa had given Azel, a fairytale

  about the world of Man. This was a cathedral, where the children of

  Men tried to reach the Heavens.

  I cannot say what drew me to it, but I wanted to get closer. Perhaps,

  like the children of Men, I thought to reach Heaven. I pushed away

  from the wall to cross the stone walkway. On the street corner beyond

  the cathedral stood a man with an unmistakable thatch of dark, spiked

  hair. With his back to me, Belphagor scanned the open street. But I

  was not ready to be found—no longer certain I wished to be found at

  all. I ducked my head and pulled open one of the heavy wooden doors.

  Inside, the quiet and the dark greeted me with unexpected comfort.

  Candles flickered on their posts at various stations, illuminating walls lined with ancient, painted panels depicting holy men and scenes of

  68 JANE KINDRED

  spiritual devotion. More of the magnificent icons looked down from

  soaring arches overhead, streaked with gold. Drifting through the

  open room with the seeming aimlessness of the censers’ smoldering

  spices, believers genuflected and quietly repeated words of ritual.

  An old woman in a headscarf shook her head at me with

  disapproval and pointed to my hat. The women in the cathedral all

  wore headscarves, but the men’s heads were bare. And to her, I was

  a boy. I pulled off my cap and the woman nodded, satisfied. Self-

  conscious, I ran my hand through my shorn hair and looked up into a

  beam of sunlight that seemed to come directly from the hands of the

  painted god above me. How sad it would make these humble people

  to know that no such being lived in Heaven—at least not the Heaven

  I knew. Looking into the glittering rays, I almost yearned for it not to be so.

  “Can’t get up that way.” The words were murmured in the angelic

  tongue. Belphagor stood observing me, hands clasped behind his back.

  “We lost you at the column. When I caught site of you again outside

  this church, I thought I must be mistaken.”

  The old woman standing by the grandly carved altar shushed him

  firmly, and the demon inclined his head. With a questioning glance at

  me, he extended one hand toward the door behind him, and I followed

  his lead, stepping into the bright outdoors with a slight twinge of regret.

  I pulled on my cap and tugged it down with a sigh. How far would I

  have gotten, anyway? I did not even know if I could return to Heaven, or what I would I find if I did—certainly not home.

  Belphagor nodded toward the cathedral. “The first time I entered

  one of those I was certain a bolt of lightning would strike me down.

  Such superstition probably isn’t the stuff of angels’ nursery rhymes,

  but among the street demons of Raqia, earthly lore is oft repeated.”

  We had our own superstitions about the Fallen, though none of

  them involved anything like God. The earthly devil was far easier

  to believe in, a sort of patron of the peasant class, sowing seeds of

  discontent and tempting them to fall.

  Belphagor began to walk with purpose. “We were to meet up with

  Vasily if we found one another, but the hour’s long past. I’m afraid

  we’ll have to go back to the flat after all.”

  THE FALLEN QUEEN 69

  I shrugged. Being separated from the demons by the sea of

  humans had immersed me fully in the reality of my condition. In the

  entire world, in any world, there was neither a soul with whom I could converse, nor kin with whom to seek refuge. I was not the Grand

  Duchess Anazakia Helisonovna of the House of Arkhangel’sk. I was

  not a beloved sibling affectionately called Nazkia, or a youthful charge addressed as Nenny by a doting nurse. I was not even Malchik, the

  Boy. I was no one. Apart from these demons for whom I was no more

  than a purse of crystal facets to be spent on a fortnight of gambling

  and drink, I didn’t exist. If Belphagor wished to return to the flat he’d deemed unsafe, what was it to me?

  On the metro, thundering beneath the streets and rivers, I studied

  the bored faces around me. Above their heads, alluring posters

  advertised everything from chewing gum to apartment doors. And

  then one of the advertisements leapt out at me. A reproduction of

  the family portrait I’d seen in the library announced the exhibit at the palace museum.

  “Who are they?” I asked the demon.

  Belphagor followed my gaze. He paused a moment, mulling an

  answer, and then shrugged. “Nobody.”

  “They’re dead,” I said with conviction.

  “Of course they’re dead. They’re a hundred years old. Men don’t

  live long.”

  “But they didn’t die of old age. They died looking like that.”

  Among the half-dozen portraits on the desk in the palace showing the

  family members at various ages, not one had shown the
m any older.

  But more than that, I simply knew. As with my family, they had died

  in the prime of life.

  “Why do you want to know about them? They’re unimportant.”

  “They look… You know who they look like.” I grabbed his arm

  with sudden desperation. “Were they—?” I couldn’t finish the sentence.

  Belphagor regarded me. “Were they in Heaven, you mean?

  Elevated to the status of saints, as it says on the poster? Perhaps risen again as Host?”

  My face emptied of blood and I could no longer feel the tips of my

  fingers in the fabric of his shirt. I hadn’t considered this possibility. I’d

  70 JANE KINDRED

  only meant to ask if they’d been murdered.

  He gave me a pitying frown. “I’m afraid not, Malchik. They were

  an unfortunate family in an unfortunate time. If in another place

  and time there was another family who met such an end, it was no

  more than an echo. The events of each sphere ripple out like tides;

  the heavier the stone dropped into the pool, the deeper and more

  resonant the repeating wave. Just as this city resembles Elysium. It’s neither haphazard chance nor calculated design. It’s the way of such

  things. Men call it divine inspiration.”

  It was my turn to frown. Was it inspiration that had driven a grand

  duke of the House of Arkhangel’sk to overthrow the principality for

  a throne he already stood to gain? What earthly echo could he have

  heard from the violent deaths of a prince and his queen, four sisters, and a delicate boy? No, my cousin hadn’t been inspired. He had been

  possessed.

  And then it struck me. What if he was? The melodic laughter of an

  unseen Lady and the whinny of a riderless steed echoed in my head.

  THE FALLEN QUEEN 71

  Vosmaya: Earth, Air, Fire, Water

  The radiance of the Seraphim was blinding—not figuratively, but

  truly. Vasily could no longer see. It seemed cliché to describe the pain as burning, but there was no other comparison for the remaining sense

  left to his eyes. It was absurd. He was a firespirit. He generated fire himself, and could withstand a great deal of heat before any concept

  of pain entered into it.

  The Seraphim were pureblooded firespirits of the Second Choir,

  and though their radiance was visible in Heaven, Vasily had always

  assumed they were the same sort as himself. He could conjure fire