Rosa and the Veil of Gold

by Kim Wilkins

“We’re everywhere. We’re all over this land. Wood demons, fire demons, water and wind demons, witches, shape-shifters, magicians and hunters and the unclean spirits of the dead. You’ll find Skazki is infested with magic, mostly bad magic.” He tapped his pocket. “We’re all happiest when we’ve got some gold in our pockets.”

  “You’re not going to ask for more, are you?” Em said.

  “No, no. Fair is fair, and we made a deal. Skazki folk are cruel, but not unpredictable. You’re safe as long as you stay here.”

  “But as long as we stay here we can’t get back home?”

  “That’s right. You’ll need to return the bear to the Snow Witch.”

  “And Daniel and I can never sleep at the same time?”

  “I wouldn’t advise it. Not if you want to be certain where you’ll wake up.”

  Em took strange comfort in this: there were rules and they were simple. No sleeping at the same time; gold would bribe demons; the Snow Witch could get them home. “Do you know anyone else who can help us find the Snow Witch?”

  He pondered this, his bushy eyebrows drawn down hard. Minutes ticked past and Em wondered if he ever intended to answer her question, but finally he said, “There are those who know. And there are those who know where to find those who know.”

  Em took a second to untangle this logic. “I see. So we just keep asking as we travel?”

  “If you don’t get eaten first.”

  Em was growing irritated by all this talk of getting eaten. “And gold will buy us goodwill?” she asked, making a mental inventory of every gold item she wore. Now that her watch was gone, she was left with a ring and a pair of earrings. Perhaps Daniel had more.

  “Oh, yes. We don’t have any gold of our own in Skazki, so we’re very fond of it.” He laughed. “You just don’t want to run out of gold before you run out of questions.”

  Em opened the stove door to check the fire. A whoosh of bright heat flared out, making carbon streaks on the surrounding mosaic. She slammed it closed and oiled three bread tins, wondering for the first time what was taking Daniel so long. She hoped he hadn’t wandered off in his hysterical state.

  “Anything else?” he said.

  She smiled. “Why are your clothes on backwards?”

  “Maybe yours are,” he replied with a nonchalant pout.

  “My friend is taking a long time with the eggs,” she said. “I might go and hurry him up while the bread is rising.”

  “As long as you come back to make my pancakes.”

  “Of course.”

  He caught her gently by the wrist, his odd green eyes connecting with hers. “I still think you should abandon him. He’ll weigh you down on your journey.”

  “I’ll think about it,” Em said, and wondered if she meant it.

  The empty basket rested at Daniel’s feet and the chickens pucked and clucked around him as he sat, chin in hands, on the dirt floor of the coop.

  His strongest urge was to cry, but he refused to submit to it. Em was in there, cool and practical, finding information and making plans. Daniel’s fear, however, had paralysed him. He was capable of nothing more than sitting here among the cobwebs, surrounded by the smell of chicken droppings, staring into hopeless middle distance.

  Anger bubbled in his blood. Anger with himself, for not being able to cope. With the situation, for being so incredible that it made his brain hot. With Em, who was so even-headed it made him want to rattle her bony shoulders until her teeth popped out. What was she? Some kind of alien who felt nothing?

  A chicken ran over his toe, and he kicked out at it savagely. Missed. Felt guilty.

  “Daniel?” Em’s voice from the house.

  Daniel leapt to his feet and began searching the crudely-built boxes for eggs. They were warm in his hand.

  “Are you okay?” Em asked, peering into the dark.

  “As well as can be expected,” he huffed. “You’re fine, I see.”

  She raised a perfectly-arched eyebrow. “Stuck in another dimension full of people-eating goblins? Yes, absolutely fine.”

  He turned, felt his body sag. “Damn it, Em, I feel so helpless and overwhelmed.”

  She snapped her fingers, a schoolteacher’s gesture. “Don’t assume that I don’t feel those things,” she said. “Just gather the eggs and bring them inside. Vikhor is leaving as soon as I’ve made him twenty-seven pancakes. He was very specific about how many he wanted.”

  Daniel reached into the next box, came out with a handful of chicken poo. “Thrice-nine,” Daniel said, wiping his hand on his pants. “In Russian folklore it’s a lucky number.”

  “Is that right?” Em said.

  A short silence ensued, and Daniel supposed that Em had left noiselessly. He turned and she was still there; her dark eyes had grown thoughtful.

  “How do you know that?” she asked.

  “Know what?”

  “The thrice-nine thing?”

  “My Russian nanny, Rima,” he said. “The one who taught me the language. She told me all the old stories.”

  “So why are the leshii’s clothes on backwards?”

  “To confuse his enemies.”

  Daniel continued collecting eggs, and Em didn’t ask any more until he had finished. He put the full basket on the ground.

  Em tilted her head. “How much more do you know?”

  “About what?”

  “About these fairytale creatures?”

  Daniel thought about Nanny Rima’s tales; they seemed both magical and unnerving, like half-forgotten dreams. He’d never imagined that any of it could be true. “A lot, I guess.”

  “Daniel, do you see? You have information which could keep us safe until we get out of here.” She touched his shoulder. “I’m glad you’re here with me.”

  The first beam of light cut through the fog of his fear. Em was right: he knew about this world. This hopeful realisation was immediately chased by a new fear, a more specific fear: if the leshii was real, then what other horrors out of Nanny Rima’s stories lay waiting for them?

  “We stick together, okay?” Em said firmly.

  “Of course.”

  The door of the cottage opened and Vikhor stepped out, frowning and waving his arms. “Pancakes!” he shouted. “What’s taking so long?”

  Em took Daniel’s basket. “He’ll be gone by nightfall, then we have a lot to talk about.”

  By sunset, Vikhor was ready to leave.

  “I’ll be back in a week. You’re welcome to stay or go as you please, use my bed, take clothes and food. Just let the chickens into the garden in the mornings, and if anyone comes selling milk or honey, get as much as you can. Use eggs for payment. And don’t tell them you’re from Mir. It’s best that word doesn’t get around.”

  Daniel watched Em as she bustled around the leshii, handing him wrapped packages of food and straightening his green cloak as though they were an old married couple.

  “Thank you for your help,” she said. “Any last piece of advice?”

  “Gold helps with everything,” Vikhor said. “Don’t be too foolish with that bear. If you need to barter with her for your life, do so. I wish you luck on your journey.”

  A cold spear to Daniel’s heart. What journey? Weren’t they staying here until…Actually, he hadn’t thought that far ahead. He’d been relying on Em to sort this out. What if she couldn’t?

  The leshii left, closing the door behind him.

  Em turned to Daniel. “You’d better sit down.”

  “We’re not leaving the cottage, right?” he said, finding himself a chair.

  “Who’s the Snow Witch?” she said.

  “I’ve never heard of her.”

  “Nanny Rima’s stories?”

  Daniel thought hard. “No. No recollection.”

  “Damn.” Em chewed her lip for a few moments. “Okay, I’ll tell you what I know, and we’ll work out what to do next.”

  She filled him in about the bear, the Snow Witch, the gold, and the fact that they could never
be asleep at the same time. As he listened, he grew horrified at the idea that they should leave the safety of the cottage.

  “But, Em, we could die out there,” he said. “If we just wait here…”

  “What, Daniel? What happens if we wait here? We live with Vikhor happily ever after?”

  Daniel stared at her. Outside, night was closing in and a breeze freshened from the north. Tree branches rubbed and scraped on the roof and eaves.

  “Rosa,” he said at last. “Rosa will come for us.”

  Em paused. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “She’ll figure it out. She believes in enchantments, she knows we have the bear.”

  Em laid her hands on the table calmly. “Okay, Daniel. But what if she doesn’t?”

  “She will.”

  “But what if she doesn’t?”

  Daniel pressed his fingers to his forehead, screwing his brow into a frown. “I don’t fucking know.”

  He heard her chair scrape back, and when he looked up she was pulling bread and honey out of the pantry. “What are you doing?” he said.

  “Making dinner. We haven’t eaten since we got here.”

  Of course. Making dinner. Like everything was normal. “You amaze me,” he said, and he heard that his irritation was poorly concealed. “How can you be so calm?”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Daniel, I would have thought under the current circumstances, you could find more to be amazed about than me.”

  “Sorry,” he said, finding the ragged edge of a fingernail with his teeth.

  “I’m sorry too,” she replied, then came to sit next to him. “We’re in this together. We can’t snipe at each other. It’s dumb.”

  “I know that,” he said. “I know that, it’s just…”

  “We’ll stay here, but only for a week. If Rosa doesn’t come, we have to move.”

  Dread swirled in his stomach.

  “I know you hate it, Daniel. I know that fear is strangling you and all I can promise you is more uncertainty,” Em said. “Whatever happens, just breathe and keep breathing. As long as you’re breathing, you’re alive. As long as you’re alive there’s nothing to worry about.”

  They flipped a coin to decide who would sleep first and Daniel won. Em was glad, because he looked exhausted and pale, and the oblivion of sleep would give him a chance to escape. She was glad for her own sake too; he was wearing her out.

  She sat with her back to the stove staring out the window into the dark overgrown garden, breathing deep and regular. Daniel was awake for a while: she heard him tossing and turning. Eventually, an empty stillness in the room told her that he had dropped off. For light, she had one candle. When it burned down it was time to wake Daniel, and give him a fresh candle to last until dawn.

  And so, in the dim cottage, she waited.

  Outside, the wind grew fierce, the tiny panes in the windows rattled.

  She hoped that Daniel was right, and that Rosa would come for them. Rosa seemed capable and intelligent, and she clearly knew more about enchantments than either Em or Daniel, but Em would not rely on her.

  She eyed the bear, who sat wide awake on the table. The candlelight flickered gold and amber on her bright surface.

  “You started this,” Em whispered. “Are you going to help us get home?”

  There was no answer of course and, anyway, Em knew that the bear didn’t care if she and Daniel made it home or not. They were expendable.

  Outside, in the distance, there was a crash and a thud—like a tree being pulled over. Em glanced over her shoulder at Daniel. He stirred but didn’t wake. Em crept to the window, pressed her face against the glass. Her breath made fog which obscured any view through into the thick foliage.

  Another crash and thud. Curious, she went to the door and stepped out into the dark. She pulled the door behind her, but kept the handle firmly in her palm. Sounds drifted towards her on the wind.

  A scream. A crash. The howling of a sucking whirlwind which rattled off into the icy reaches of space.

  Then, a baby crying.

  She paused on the doorstep and listened. Another tree came down, somewhere miles into the woods. The crying continued, louder or softer depending on the strength of the wind. Rattling and howling and trees shaking and falling.

  Abruptly, the crying stopped.

  Em let herself back into the cottage. Daniel hadn’t woken. She took up her position next to the stove, resumed her deep, even breathing. Best that Daniel hadn’t heard the noises, especially not the crying and its sudden cessation. Daniel’s imagination was a slave to uncertainty. Em’s was not.

  Vikhor had been right, when she’d asked him what work he did in the woods…she didn’t want to know.

  Rosa didn’t come.

  Dawn followed dawn, and Daniel saw them all while Em slept. No light footsteps approached the cottage, no soft voice called him from the fields, no raven-haired beauty in a lace dress appeared, ready to take him home.

  The possibility of her coming grew more remote with each sunset in the leshii’s cottage. Even if she crossed the veil, how would she find them? They could be a thousand miles from where they first entered this strange land.

  Em kept him busy with tasks around the cottage, her mouth a firmly drawn line of determination. Cooking bread and pancakes, sewing together cloaks and backpacks from the pile of furs and skins they found at the back of a cupboard, repairing hats and gloves. If they did speak to each other, it was about anything but the impending journey. Em loved to play logic games, she was a phenomenally bright student of Russian, and her memory for things she had seen and done was astonishing in its detail and scope. She could recite almost all the words from every documentary she had ever narrated, and was happy to fill the time by telling Daniel everything she knew about the Crusades, or the lives of puffins on the Faroe Islands, or the latest advances in genetic technology.

  Once six nights had passed, though, she dropped all pretence of diverting him from the topic uppermost in his mind.

  “We’ll have to head off tomorrow, Daniel,” she said baldly, as he pulled up the blankets and lay down to sleep.

  “I know,” he said, pressing his toes against the chimney. He closed his eyes and prayed that Rosa would arrive some time in the night, but she didn’t.

  Morning light bathed the kitchen as they organised their packs. Daniel’s held the food; Em’s was lighter, holding only the moleskin and the bear. Daniel wore a rough woollen shirt and pants, many sizes too large, which he had found in the leshii’s wardrobe. Em had sewn herself a similar outfit, and had made shoes from bark and fur with the remnants of her old shoes and leftover squares of material.

  Daniel’s heart fluttered and he tried to focus on small things to keep his imagination from panicking. He packed bread and pancakes into the plastic shopping bag the bear had travelled in. It was only then that it occurred to him he hadn’t seen the bear all morning.

  “Em,” he said, quickly checking under the bedcovers and in the back of the wardrobe, “where’s the bear?”

  Em dusted off her hands and came to stand with him at the table. “Pick up the loaves of bread again. You’ll feel the difference.”

  “What?”

  “Go on.”

  He did as she said, unpacking the bread. The second loaf he reached for was obviously heavier than normal. He’d been so preoccupied that he hadn’t noticed.

  “She’s made of gold,” Em said. “We don’t want anyone to know we have her. She’s our ticket home. If we don’t have her when we get to the Snow Witch, then we have nothing to bargain with.”

  Daniel smiled. “She won’t be happy, packed away in a loaf of bread.”

  “No worse than a plastic bag,” Em sniffed. “Although I think we should keep her separate from our food. Somewhere she can’t get lost or stolen. Here.” She handed him a sling made of her cashmere scarf. “Tie this around your body, under your cloak. Guard her with your life.”

  Daniel did as he was told, sliding the l
oaf into the sling and tucking it under his arm.

  “Now sit down,” Em said. “One last important thing.” She began taking off the ring on her right hand. “Do you have any gold on you? Anything at all? Vikhor didn’t seem to think it mattered how big or small a piece it was.”

  Daniel sat down as she pulled out her earrings and laid them on the table next to the ring. “I’m sorry, Em,” he said. “I have nothing.”

  “Nothing at all?”

  He held out his hands, showing her a plain silver ring on his right pinky finger, and a tatty woven band on his left wrist. He didn’t even like to wear a watch, in case it increased expectations that he would turn up on time. “I’ve never been able to afford gold.”

  Em glanced at their meagre stockpile. “We have three items. That’s three questions.”

  Daniel shook his head. “Perhaps we should just stay here.”

  “You know we can’t. You know we have to leave. We have to find the Snow Witch. She’ll get us home.” Em scooped the jewellery into her palm and hid it in the bottom of her pack. “Are you ready?”

  Daniel stood, taking a deep breath. “I guess so.”

  They opened the door onto the cool, sunny morning, and headed into the east.

  TWELVE

  Rosa stood at the top of the stairs in the guesthouse doorway, staring out into the garden. A breeze from the west turned the undersides of leaves to the afternoon sun. Bees buzzed around Anatoly’s head near the hives, catching light on their wings then dropping it again as they descended. All day, Rosa had waited and still Anatoly hadn’t found time to come and speak with her.

  Three times now he had said, “When the time is right, Rosa.” But “right” for Anatoly was not right for her.

  In his white bee-proof suit, the veil over his head made him look like an alien’s bride. He slid the frames in and out of the boxes. The alternate drawing and clunking chipped at her nerves. She tapped her foot, she chewed the inside of her cheek, she longed for a cigarette.

  “Fuck him,” she said, turning and pulling open the door to the cupboard. The wych elm shoot was now six inches long: she needed to know if this meant she had enough magic to cross the veil yet. If not, she needed more spells, more exercises, more information.