by Kim Wilkins
Em climbed to her feet and dived in a second behind Daniel. The water was cold and sour, and her furs dragged her down. She swam behind Daniel to the bank, where they climbed up a rocky outcrop and onto dry land. While Daniel lay panting, she watched the boat disappear around the bend.
“He’s days away,” Daniel was saying. “I don’t think he can catch us now.”
Em wrapped her arms around her knees and shivered. “At least we’ve had a wash.”
“Our clothes too.”
“We have to get out of them. We have to start a roaring fire and dry off properly.”
Hunger and desperation made them casual, and they risked collecting wild mushrooms to cook as the light bled from the sky. Em had stripped down to her blouse and pants, Daniel to boxers and a T-shirt. The bear made an odd lumpy bulge under his shirt. Their fire, built with an abundance of enthusiasm, was nearly four feet high. Em sat as close to it as she could. The rest of their clothes hung behind her on a branch. The sky was clear, which meant moonlight and cold breezes.
“Well, we’re not dead,” Daniel said, licking mushroom juice from his fingers.
“Not yet, anyway,” she replied, touching her wrist. “Would the food have tasted foul if it was poisonous?”
“I don’t know,” he shrugged, “but at least we won’t die of hunger.”
“Daniel, would you mind if I took the first sleep tonight?” Em said. “I’m tired and headachy and feeling unwell.”
He looked at her sharply. “Not from the mushrooms?”
“No, I’ve been like it all day.”
“How is that wound?”
“Oh, healing up okay. Don’t worry.”
Daniel frowned, then nodded slowly. “Of course, have a good sleep. You’ll feel better.”
“Wake me, won’t you?” she said. “After six hours, just like usual?”
“Just get some rest. We’re warm and we’ve eaten and I’m feeling calm.”
Em settled on the soft grass, nursing her sore wrist in front of her. She closed her eyes and told sleep to come. The pain wanted to keep it at bay, but Em could always close down those signals to the brain which kept it alert. She just had to let her body take the sleep it needed. One breath, two breaths…quiet and still. Slowly, she fell asleep.
When she woke, though, it was in a rush.
Daniel wasn’t there. She sat up. Some noise had woken her, but what? She peered off into the dark and saw Daniel about two hundred feet away. Perhaps he was taking a late-night pee.
Then she heard it. A woman’s laugh, high and girlish.
“Wait!” she called after him, scrambling to her feet.
Daniel! Daniel!
“No, don’t follow her!”
Daniel stopped, turned, his face in shadow. Em dashed towards him.
Before she could reach him, a sinuous figure with long pale hair had seized him, and dived into the water.
NINETEEN
Rosa, no longer able to rely on herself to wake, now relied on the sun. Each night she left her curtain parted so the warm shaft of six o’clock light would traverse her pillow and tickle her eyes open. Since the morning tiredness had become relentless, she had slept through the start of Makhar’s lessons too many times. She determined to fight it, though, and was this morning already dressed and furnished with a cup of coffee. Her mother’s notebooks spread out before her, Rosa lay on her bed to spend some time with the books before work.
It was simple. If she had no magic, then she had to rely on her brains. These notebooks contained magical secrets: why write them in code otherwise? If Rosa could crack the code, she would have something to use to improve her situation. If she could find her mother’s charm bracelet, even better.
The letters swam in front of her, their meaning impenetrable. She had a sheet of paper next to her where she scribbled her notes. She tried rearranging letters, tried a numerical sequence, looked for regular clusters of letters which might signify names or other important words.
Got nowhere.
One thing she kept coming back to, though, was the final page of the first notebook. On it, her mother had written two paragraphs with a space between them. Four lines in each, punctuated at the end like poetry. Rosa was certain that this was a poem, and that if she could just figure out which one, she could crack the code. But which poem? Her mother was very fond of poetry, and had named a number of favourites over the years: Mayakovskiy, Lermontov, Akhmatova. There was nothing to say, either, that this wasn’t a poem of her own composition, written in code out of artistic timidity.
Rosa heard a bang, a thud and a yelp outside. Her window was ajar to release the morning bee invasion. She stood and looked out. Over at the hive, Ilya hopped about, rubbing his foot, panicky bees swarming around him. A frame lay cracked on the grass.
She climbed down off the bed and left the guesthouse, crossing the dewy lawn in bare feet and with the sun in her hair. Ilya looked up, and made a gesture that she should stay away.
“Bees are in a bad mood,” he called.
“Come here, then. Let me look at your foot.”
Ilya approached, peeling off his veil and gloves. He limped slightly, but Rosa didn’t care about his foot particularly. It was the rest of his body she found intriguing.
“Here,” she said, crouching in front of him. “Let me see.” She had her hand around his ankle and was already loosening his shoelace.
He winced. “I dropped the corner on my toe.”
“I hope it’s not broken,” Rosa said, removing his shoe and peeling off his sock. She pushed the leg of his jeans up over his calf, letting the fingers of her right hand close firmly around the hard muscle. “Does this hurt?” she said, manipulating his toes.
“A little.”
“I don’t think anything’s broken. Just bruised.” She gazed up at him under her lashes. Her face was level with his crotch and this made him blush. “You should get some ice on it. To stop the swelling.”
“Rosa? Ilya?”
Rosa looked over her shoulder. Anatoly stood near the garden, watching them. Rosa felt her body tense and grow warm.
Ilya pulled away, and she got to her feet. “Come on, Ilya,” she said. “I’ll help you back to the house.”
“I can walk.”
“No, just lean on me,” she said, slipping her arm firmly around his waist. She felt his muscles tighten, then relax as he leaned into her. He was very warm and very hard and all her senses flared with electricity. Her fingers pressed into his ribs. “Hold me very tightly,” she said, dropping her voice to a whisper.
Ilya said nothing, but Anatoly was with them in an instant, leading Ilya off and clucking about Rosa not being strong enough to help him. She laughed and let Ilya go, turned her eyes to the kitchen window where Ludmilla was staring at her icily.
Makhar came banging out of the house, shouting with excitement about Ilya’s injury. He turned to Rosa and called, “Where are your shoes, Roshka?”
Rosa looked down. Her feet were damp and cold with dew. The linked pattern of decorative cuts now stretched halfway around her ankle. The early ones had faded to pink, the more recent were crimson. She counted them with her eyes. Eighteen. Time was crushing her.
“Roshka?” said Makhar, who had come to her side and was now tugging her hand.
“I’ll just put some on and come up for lessons. Poetry today, Makhar.”
He made a face and dashed back inside.
When she joined him, the morning’s excitement had died away to nothing. Ilya, his toe bandaged, had been dispatched to the laundry to mend a leaking tap. Anatoly was on the phone to a buyer, and Ludmilla was scrubbing the bath. Makhar waited at the table.
“Why poetry?” were his first words.
“Because we can’t do maths forever,” she said. “Do you have any poetry books in the house?”
Makhar pointed to the well-worn hutch where dozens of grubby-spined books were shoved carelessly. “Up there,” he said.
Rosa approached the h
utch, sliding past Anatoly where he leaned on the kitchen bench, talking in serious tones. The day book was open in front of him, and he tapped a pen on it restlessly. He gave her a look which she was at a loss to understand. Was it anger? Or jealousy? Or desire? Perhaps it was all three. In any case, she chose to ignore it. She found a dog-eared treasury of Russian poetry in the hutch and brought it back to the table.
Rosa was distracted that morning, flicking through the poetry book in spare moments. “I’m looking for a special poem, Makhar. Is this the only poetry book you have?” she asked the boy, who answered with a decisive nod and returned to composing his own poem, an ode to space pirates from New York.
There had been a poem her mother had recited to her as a child, something about a butterfly and a cliff and loneliness, but Rosa couldn’t call to memory much more than a shred of a line, and certainly not its title or author. Again and again she tortured her memory, then cursed herself for being unable to recall it. She hated it when her brain failed her. It made her feel strangled and helpless.
It was late in the week, mid-morning, when Elizavetta came out of hiding. Makhar had run off to find Ludmilla, to give her a phone message from the bakery in town. Rosa sat at the table to wait for him in still sunlight with the smells of honey and lingering sleep all around her. She heard the door open in the hallway, and turned, expecting Anatoly or Ilya. Anyone but Elizavetta.
Her pale face peered around the threshold. She ascertained that Rosa was alone, and shuffled down the hallway. Her wrist bones jutted from her skin, her eyes were hollow and shadowed.
Rosa leapt from her seat. “Let me help you,” she said. “Luda is outside.”
Elizavetta brushed her off. “It’s not my mother I wish to speak to. It’s you.”
Rosa stood back, surprised, as Elizavetta fell into a chair at the kitchen table.
“Me?” she said.
Elizavetta raised her pale eyebrows. “Is it such a surprise? You’ve lived here for weeks and we’ve barely spoken. I thought it time that I ask you some questions.”
Rosa sat down. “Questions?”
“I hear a lot. Lying there all day, and the walls are like paper in this house. I hear a lot of things, and some of them I don’t like.” The pupils in her blue eyes were shrunk to pinpoints. Rosa compared this shrivelled girl to the healthy, smiling woman in the photographs with Nikita. No wonder Anatoly was desperate. She looked as though only a fine curtain hung between her and death, as though she might slip through it at any breath.
“You’d better explain,” Rosa said. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Really? Then I’ll tell you. The last two nights I have heard my mother and father talk about you, and about how you have set your sights on my husband.”
Rosa was momentarily confused, was about to say, “Nikita?” when she realised that Elizavetta meant Ilya.
“Is it true?” Elizavetta said.
“What do you care if it’s true?” Rosa replied with a shrug. “You don’t want him.”
“He’s my husband,” she replied petulantly.
Rosa stood and walked to the window. She could see Ludmilla and Makhar. He danced about while she pegged clothes on an old rope strung between two lemon trees. Rosa turned and dropped her voice low. “Elizavetta, you are too busy with your first husband to pay any attention to your second.”
Elizavetta’s face snapped into a scowl. If the girl had possessed any shred of energy, she may have risen and slapped Rosa’s face. Instead, she made a spitting noise, then said, “What do you know about me? Nothing. What do you know about Nikita? Nothing.”
“I know more than Anatoly,” Rosa said. “I know that the reason Nikita won’t cross over is because you won’t release him.”
“That’s nonsense.”
“Anatoly is a powerful volkhv. He is so full of magic that his blood tastes of it. Yet he can’t banish one simple revenant, the spirit of a sullen boy. He thinks there’s something wrong with his zagovor, but I know the real problem. You’re going to Nikita willingly, but nobody around here—not Ilya, especially not your father—can see that.”
Elizavetta dropped her head and muttered, “What goes on in this house is none of your business.”
“What I do with Ilya is none of your business.”
“Yes it is. He’s my husband.” Her head was up again, her pale eyes blazing.
“What do you want him for? You don’t love him, you never speak to him, you don’t share his bed.”
Elizavetta sniffed dismissively. “What’s the point of sharing a bed? He can’t fulfil his duties in that department. As to why I want him? I want him because he’s mine.”
“So he’s there if you change your mind about Nikita?”
Elizavetta’s eyebrows shot up, and Rosa realised she had hit on a vein of truth.
“Is that it? Are you tired of your illness? Are you tired of the caress of moonlight?” Rosa sat on the table in front of her. “Do you worry that you won’t love Nikita forever?”
“Don’t use his name. Your mouth isn’t fit for it.” Elizavetta pulled herself to her feet, brushing off Rosa’s offer of assistance once again. “I can manage. I don’t need your help.”
“At least tell your father the truth. Tell him he wastes his time. Tell him you won’t let Nikita go.”
“You stay out of this,” Elizavetta said, as she shuffled weakly up the hall. “It’s not your business.”
Rosa lowered herself off the table and took a deep breath. It was her business. If Anatoly knew the truth, that Nikita wouldn’t go no matter how many spells were fired at him, then Rosa might be able to get her magic back.
Makhar clattered back into the house, wearing clothes pegs on his ears. “Look, Roshka,” he said, “aren’t I beautiful?”
Rosa didn’t intend to avoid Anatoly forever. She only intended to register her displeasure with him, maybe even make him nervous that she might leave. By the end of the week, he was knocking at the door of her guesthouse after dinner. She quickly hid her mother’s books under her pillow, and opened the door.
“Good evening, Anatoly,” she said with a smile. “Come in. I thought I might see you one night this week.”
He closed the door behind him, wearing a surly expression. “It seems to me that this week you haven’t wanted much to do with me.”
“That’s right.”
“Up until now, you’ve been very eager to work at my elbow, to learn my zagovory and see me do my magic. What has changed?”
“I’ve realised that you are stealing my magic.”
Anatoly looked stunned.
“Yes, Anatoly. When I am working at your elbow you are sucking magic from me as sure as a fox sucks the contents of an egg.”
“I am not, Rosa,” he said, finding his voice. “I swear I am not.”
Rosa realised that his surprise was not a result of being discovered, but of being accused.
He turned his palms up. “How could you think such a thing, Rosa? When you are at my elbow, I am helping you build your repertoire of spells and incantations. I am helping you to grow. I am certainly not stealing magic.” He took three fingers and made a cross over his chest. “I swear it.”
Puzzlement momentarily stole her words. Could she be wrong? Only a volkhv knew how dangerous it was to swear to a lie.
“Rosa, what made you think that?”
“I…my magic is diminishing.”
“I explained that. It’s only a temporary setback. It will surge back, stronger than ever.” He made an emphatic fist. “I promise you. You must not give up, Rosa. It could be only days away.”
Confused and tired, Rosa palmed her eyes. “I’m sorry, Anatoly…I thought…But what about Ilya?”
Anatoly’s eyes grew dark. He moved further into the guesthouse, and Rosa fought the urge to shrink towards the armchair.
“What about him?” Anatoly said. “Why concern yourself with him at all?”
“He’s the seventh son of the seventh son. Yet he has
no magic.”
“And I’m accused of theft again?”
“Not by Ilya. He has said nothing,” Rosa said. “I just thought…”
“As to his being a seventh son of a seventh son, not every man of that birth possesses latent magic. The lore tells that, if he should possess it, it will be stronger than seven men’s combined.” He wagged a finger. “You have been jumping to conclusions, Rosa.”
Rosa crossed her arms protectively over her chest, realised that the stance made her look timid, and uncrossed them again. “I’m only looking out for myself, Anatoly,” she said.
Anatoly’s sombre expression broke into a smile. “Ah. I see.” He advanced, holding out his left palm. “Do you see this cut on my palm?”
She peered closely, but could see nothing but calloused skin. “No.”
“That’s right, Rosa, but the other night, I sliced it open and you touched it.”
“Was it your left palm?” She reached for his right to check, but it was whole as well.
“Still looking for Anatoly to play tricks on you?” he said, his fingers tightening on her hand and holding her. “Rosa, your touch healed me.”
Rosa pulled her eyebrows close together, trying not to sound sceptical. “It did?”
“You see for yourself, I have no scars. This means your magic is returning to you.” He held her in his gaze, and Rosa felt a frisson of expectation and desire shiver up through the floorboards and pass through both of them. His thumb stroked her palm. “We must resume our instruction very soon.”
Rosa withdrew her hand. He let go without resistance. “All right, then. Tomorrow.”
“I look forward to it.” He was glancing around her room, almost as though he could sense that there was competing magic in there somewhere.
Rosa pointedly ignored his curiosity, turned to the electric kettle. “Would you like me to make you a cup of coffee?”
He waved her suggestion away. “I never drink the stuff. I should get back to the house.” He moved, then stopped and cleared his throat. “Ah, Rosa. One other thing.”