Rosa and the Veil of Gold

by Kim Wilkins

  Em stopped where Daniel’s clothes were hung to dry. The fur cloak was still sodden, so she decided to take it inside and hold it by the fire a while. The activity would keep her awake, and Daniel would need dry, warm things when they got going again.

  She crept in, careful not to wake the family. She crouched by Daniel, whose eyes were flicking back and forth under his lids. Dreaming. How she longed to dream. She stood, spreading the cloak between her arms in front of the fire. After five minutes her shoulders ached. That was good, that was a ward against sleep. She yawned, shifted her weight, lost her balance.

  Dropped the cloak on the fire.

  “Shit!” she cried out, reaching for it, snatching the edge and pulling it free. It was too wet to catch alight, but a far worse outcome had resulted.

  The fire had gone out.

  Her shout woke the family. An instant later, Mirra’s querulous voice in the dark: “I can’t hear the fire.”

  “The fire’s out, the fire’s out, the fire’s out,” Slava began, droning into a panicked chant. “It’s out, it’s out, it’s out.”

  Artur crawled across the floor to the hearth, his hand reaching towards the mouth of the fireplace. “What have you done!” he cried. “Our fire! We cannot live without fire!”

  “Calm down, calm down. I’ll light another one,” she said.

  “We can’t just light a new fire, the old one has been with us all these years,” Mirra said. “It’s never once gone out. It protects us from those who would hunt us. You have destroyed our safety with your carelessness.”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to.”

  “She’ll have to go to Bone-Legs,” Artur said, his voice dropping to a portentous rumble. “For Bone-Legs’ fire is where the last spark in this hearth came from.”

  “Bone-Legs, Bone-Legs,” Slava chanted.

  Em, mentally fatigued as she was, had trouble following all this. “Who is Bone-Legs?” she asked.

  “Our neighbour,” Mirra said quickly. “Artur is right, you’ll have to go to Bone-Legs for fire.”

  “Does she live close? Couldn’t I just start a fire for you? I can rub two sticks together.”

  “No,” Artur snapped, “this is not just any fire.”

  “It’s very close,” Mirra said, smoothing over his words with a practical tone. “Just a little way into the woods. Follow the path. The first house you come to.”

  Em dropped the damp fur. “All right, if you’re sure—”

  “Bone-Legs, Bone-Legs,” Slava repeated, and Em was made suspicious by his smile. It was childishly mean, the expression of a little boy taking pleasure in another’s punishment.

  “Do I just knock on her door?”

  “Say Artur and Mirra sent you. Say we need fire. She’ll work out the rest.” They were already pushing her out the door, their eyeless faces anxious and grim. “Go, go. Do not leave us too long without fire.”

  Em found herself outside in the soft dark, the door slammed shut behind her. She turned and headed towards the woods, setting her feet on the path to Bone-Legs’ house.

  Under shadowed gradations of sleep and dreams, Daniel was becoming aware of himself again. He had been tucked away in a hollow, then cast into the back of a cart. Finally, he had heard Em’s voice and tried to fight his way back up to her. He was cold and his body ached, but there was a fire nearby and soothing sounds around him. The shadows were lifting, but he was bound in a cocoon of immobility. Wakefulness flickered on and off, words heard here and there dappled into comprehension.

  Then, the fire went out. He felt a cold hole where it had been. And shouting voices.

  Em’s voice, then a door closing.

  The voices of the others—who were they? where had she left him?—and the shadows were weighing on him again, pressing him back under.

  “You ought not have sent her to Egibinicha.”

  “What else could we do? Old Bone-Legs will have Slava’s eye if we ask her ourselves.”

  “We could have built our own fire.”

  “Only Egibinicha’s fire will keep away the spirits.”

  He was losing his grip on consciousness again, but panic spiked his heart. Egibinicha. Old Bone-Legs. Em didn’t know, she had never heard the stories, but Daniel had, and he knew those names. They were names used so her real name, which was taboo, need never be spoken.

  The most powerful and malevolent witch in all of Russian folklore: Baba Yaga.

  TWENTY-THREE

  There was a time to move and a time to stand still, and Rosa knew that she had stayed too long with the Chenchikovs. A month had passed, and she couldn’t spare another. Her suspicions of Anatoly grew rapidly. He was powerful and dangerous; and powerful, dangerous men could twist logic to make themselves appear innocent.

  When you are at my elbow, I am certainly not stealing magic.

  But Rosa was not always at his elbow.

  She was armed now: with her suspicions, with the tarabarshchina, with a clue to the location of her mother’s bracelet. Somehow, this week, she had to make a move.

  Constant tiredness was taking its toll, her mind was distracted and Makhar had noticed.

  “Roshka? Is there something wrong?” he asked, after she had made her third mistake in his long division corrections.

  Is something wrong? What was she to tell the boy? That his father was a thief? “I can’t concentrate today,” she said. She needed a cigarette, her fingers danced on the tabletop. “How about another science trip? Into the woods?”

  “Will there still be mud? We could collect worms,” he replied.

  “Let’s go and see,” she said. “Just let me go back to my guesthouse for cigarettes.”

  “Cigarettes are bad for you,” he said with a frown.

  “Are you going to wait here or come with me?”

  “I’ll come with you.”

  He ambled alongside her as she crossed the garden to the guesthouse and back. They stopped to tell Ludmilla they were going for a walk in the woods.

  “I’d prefer it if you didn’t smoke around my son,” Ludmilla called after her, seeing that Rosa clutched a packet of cigarettes.

  “Sure,” Rosa said, waving. “Come on, Makhar.”

  She lit a cigarette as Makhar locked the gate behind them. The first drag was heaven, and she took a moment to savour it.

  Makhar was pouting.

  “What?” she said.

  “I don’t want you to die of cancer.”

  “I won’t.”

  “You might.”

  She shook her head. “I promise you, I absolutely won’t. I know for sure.” They wound into the woods.

  “What’s it like?” Makhar asked. “Smoking?”

  Rosa shrugged.

  “Can I try?” he asked.

  “Sure.” She handed him the cigarette. He took a shallow puff and coughed loudly.

  “It’s horrible,” he said, but made no move to relinquish the cigarette.

  Rosa lit another. “Oh, yeah. It’s horrible. No mistake.”

  Makhar puffed again, jamming the cigarette between pouted lips like a miniature rock star. He struck a pose, no doubt learned from American music clips. “Do I look cool, Rosa?”

  She felt a twinge of guilt. “Don’t smoke it if it’s horrible.”

  “Hey look, what a great stick.”

  The cigarette was cast aside as he pounced eagerly on a long, crooked stick in the undergrowth.

  Rosa squashed the butt with her shoe and admired his new prize. “That is a great stick,” she conceded.

  He began to hobble, leaning on the stick for support. “I’m an old lady,” he said.

  “Are you the kind of old lady that collects worms for science class?”

  “Yes, I collect them and then I eat them.” He lifted the stick and beat it rhythmically on the trees as they passed, muttering a little tune. Rosa walked along beside him, too preoccupied to notice at first the words of the song. He did it every time they were in the woods for science. It had never
seemed significant, but slowly it dawned on her what he was singing.

  “One hundred and two and turn to the left; six on the left then move to the right.” He swapped his stick from one hand to the other. “One hundred and eight, one hundred and nine, all of the trees in the woodland are mine.”

  “Makhar,” she said, grasping his free hand and pulling him roughly to a stop.

  “Yes, Roshka?”

  She crouched in front of him. “What are you singing?”

  “A song my papa taught me.” He looked taken aback, and Rosa realised her sudden crazed enthusiasm must have frightened him.

  Anticipation bubbled, but she smoothed her voice. “Do all these trees have a number?”

  He nodded, wide-eyed.

  “And you know all the numbers?”

  He nodded again.

  “Can you tell me the numbers?”

  He shook his head this time, then twisted his lips thoughtfully. “I don’t know.”

  “It’s just, I’ve thought of a great maths game we could play.”

  “I love maths games.”

  “I know. So, I could give you sums to do in your head, and you’d have to find the tree which has the same number as the answer.”

  He beamed. “That sounds like fun.”

  “I’m sure your papa wouldn’t mind if we played it. It’s not like I’ll remember how the trees are numbered. It sounds very complex…” She pulled a dopey expression.

  Makhar laughed. “Don’t, Roshka. You’re not so pretty when you make that face.”

  “All right then, what’s twenty-three squared?”

  He nodded once then set off with a determined gait deeper into the woods. Rosa followed. The sky was grey and she feared rain would set in before much longer. That would drive them inside. She had to get him to the right tree quickly, but without arousing suspicion.

  “When did you learn all the numbers?” she asked him as she finished her cigarette and mashed it against a tree.

  “When I was very little.” A self-important nod followed. “Papa says one day I might have to take over the woods and the farm.” He stopped and whacked his stick against a tree. “There,” he said.

  “Add thirty-one,” she said.

  He moved further. She waited where she stood. “Here,” he said.

  “Take away the square root of one hundred and twenty-one.”

  Makhar tapped his stick, singing his song low. “Here,” he said, pointing to a broad birch. Its arms stretched towards the dull sky. A knothole, about four inches across, hid under one of the branches. This was it, tree number 549.

  Rain began to spit down. “Last sum, then,” she said. “Add four fifteens.”

  He strode off, tapping his stick. Rosa reached up and into the knothole. Inside was gritty and damp, and a beetle skittered across her palm as she felt around. Nothing. But before the disappointment set in, she remembered that Anatoly would have hidden the bracelet with magic. Magic that could trick her fingers. She slid her hand in again, feeling grit, twigs…no, not twigs. Something cold and hard: her mother’s bracelet, still entwined with the one Daniel had given her. She didn’t pull it out into daylight. Anatoly would sense it if she brought it back to the farm. For now, it would have to stay where it was.

  How would she find this tree again? There were hundreds like it in the woods.

  Rosa turned and scanned around her. Rocks which looked like other rocks; fallen logs which looked like other fallen logs. A bird skimmed by close to her head, landed on a nearby branch to chirp at her. She reached into her pocket for her cigarettes. No more until next Monday when Ilya went to town again, but they would be sacrificed to a good cause. Following Makhar, she tore them into pieces and left them in a trail behind her, resting them on rocks and logs and branches. White flecks barely noticeable except to someone seeking them, all the way back to the farm.

  Soon it would be time to try the veil again. There remained only a few further things for her to wrap up.

  That evening, the wind picked up and howled over the eaves of her guesthouse, making mad dancers of the trees in the woods. Rosa settled herself in bed with her mother’s notebooks to transcribe, and a bottomless cup of coffee to keep her awake. Shortly after midnight she heard a thud over at the house, and stood up on her bed to peer out the window. Ilya had stolen from the house, but the wind had caught the door and slammed it shut. He paused, tensed against Anatoly’s temper, to see if anyone came for him.

  Two seconds passed. Three. Nobody stirred. His hair lifted as the wind rushed over him. Then he made his way around the house and off, Rosa presumed, towards the woods.

  Poor Ilya. Every windy night was a torture to him, believing that his wife’s dead husband was hovering nearby. Rosa tried to concentrate on her work, but found she couldn’t. Ilya was out there alone.

  Damn it, she had started to care.

  Rosa pulled on a coat and closed the guesthouse door quietly behind her. The wind tangled her hair, and sped the clouds across the moonless sky. She followed the fence around and let herself out the gate. From here, she could already see Ilya. He was barefoot and in pyjamas—a grey T-shirt and long cotton pants—and he stood as if in a trance gazing into the trees.

  She hurried across and touched his arm. He jumped, and whirled around.

  “I’m sorry to frighten you,” she said.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “It’s too cold to be out here dressed like this, Ilya.”

  “Leave me be. I think he’s here tonight.”

  “Nikita? And what will you do if you find him?”

  Ilya’s face hardened. “I’m not afraid of him.”

  Rosa was reminded of how young Ilya was, and she took his elbow. “I’m sure you could best him in a fight if he was alive, but he’s not. The dead are full of tricks and mischief.” She tugged him towards her. “Come in out of the wind. Look, you’re covered in goosebumps.”

  He made a feeble attempt to shrug her off, but she held him firm.

  “Be reasonable, Ilya. There’s nothing you can do. You know that.”

  He turned with a huffed sigh, and allowed himself to be led back through the gate. “He’ll have her tonight. He’ll steal my wife from her bed and tomorrow she’ll be weaker and sicker.”

  “You may be wrong. This may just be an ordinary windy night.” But Rosa could sense it, too, something black and needy in the shadows. It was best if they were both safely inside. “Come back to my guesthouse,” Rosa said, squeezing his hand. “I’ll make you very warm.”

  The faint buzz and knock of a bee trapped in the window greeted them on their arrival. Rosa led Ilya to the bed and shrugged out of her coat. The pool of lamplight was yellow and dim.

  “How do they get in?” he asked, looking up at the bee.

  “They hang around your window, too?” Rosa asked, realising he suspected nothing.

  “Yes, they do.”

  “I expect they find an opening and just force their way in,” she said, keeping her voice very even. She sat astride Ilya’s thighs and began to unbutton her blouse. “I’ll let him out later.”

  “Her,” Ilya said. “All the worker bees are female.”

  “Whatever.” Rosa’s kisses silenced him, and she made good on her promise to warm his blood. Afterwards, she released the trapped bee and switched off the lamp. Ilya’s warm, smooth body waited for her under the covers, and she snuggled into his side while he stroked her hair. The wind shuddered over the roof.

  At length, he said, “I shouldn’t fall asleep here, Rosa.”

  “I know.” She adjusted her position so she could see his face in the dark. “Let’s sit up and talk then.”

  “What about?”

  “About us, about anything.” She touched his brow. “Tell me about your family. Six brothers! Did you fight a lot?”

  “No. I was the youngest, I was…different to them. They left me alone.”

  “How were you different?”

  “I was sick a lot as a
child. I spent a lot of time with my mother.”

  “What kind of sick?”

  “Fevers. Fits. Heart problems.”

  “You wouldn’t know it now. You’re healthy as a horse.”

  “I know. I grew out of it.”

  “When you were a teenager?” she asked. “Did it get worse around your thirteenth birthday, then gradually better after that?”

  She could see him smile in the dark. “How did you know that?”

  “I’ve heard of that kind of thing before.” Magic, in vast quantities, was unwieldy in a child’s body. Puberty could bring the onset of new powers, and an adult body to store it all. She didn’t say any of this to Ilya, who moved his fingers absently in gentle circles on her shoulder.

  “Why don’t you tell me of your family,” he said. “Do you have brothers or sisters?”

  “No. Just me.”

  “And your mother and father? Do they live in Russia or in Canada?”

  “They live nowhere. My mother died a couple of years ago. My father when I was eight.”

  “You’re an orphan,” he said softly, almost wonderingly. “I think it might explain you, the way you are.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “How did they die?”

  “My mother from illness, my father by accident.” She sat up, pulling the covers against her chest. “It was winter and he took me ice-skating on the frozen lake at the bottom of our street. Mama was home cooking dinner. We were expecting guests. She wanted me out of the house because she was busy and I was bored, so she insisted I be taken outside to burn off some energy. It was late afternoon and my father sat on a bench nearby and I took to the ice, only it was too thin and I skated right through it, into the freezing water.” She flicked her hair over her shoulder and wished she hadn’t torn up all her cigarettes, wished she had kept just one for emergencies. “Papa came in after me. I survived, he didn’t.” Rosa heard her own brittle tone, but was powerless to temper it. The only alternative was to cry, and she wouldn’t do that.

  “I’m very sorry,” Ilya said.

  “It’s all in the past.” The past had been endured, and the wounds were painless if they weren’t prodded. It was the future that weighed on her, crushed her.