Rosa and the Veil of Gold

by Kim Wilkins

  “Where did you get this?” she asked.

  “I’ve always had it,” he said cryptically. “These clothes too. A hero’s costume…or should I say, a heroine?” He moved to stand next to her, indicating the embroidered apple. “You see? The apple rolling over the saucer is the symbol of travel in distant lands. Nine drops of pearls, three pearls in each group, represent the twenty-seven lands of Skazki.” He took Rosa by the hand and led her to the clothes. “And here is the rest of your costume.”

  “I don’t want to wear fancy clothes,” she said. “I just want to wear my blue jacket.” She indicated where it was hanging over the chair near the stove. “Daniel likes me in blue.”

  “Heroes wear red, not blue,” Grigory said firmly. “You must be dressed properly for your journey.” He pushed the door open and Rosa saw Voron, the sleigh, waiting in the front garden. “We shall equip you fit for a hero’s journey through the lands of Skazki.”

  By mid-morning, the sleigh was packed and Totchka and Grigory were fussing around her as she waited, in her underwear, to be dressed for the journey.

  “First,” said Grigory, “the fiery sarafan.” He held out the dress for her to step into. It was made of deep red silk, embroidered with gold brocade. “Here,” he said, indicating the pattern across the bottom of the skirt, “is the six-winged fire dragon. May his flames keep you warm wherever you go. The sun, the moon and the stars decorate the sleeves, so that they may always illuminate your way.”

  Rosa allowed Totchka to tie the dress across her bust. Little bells hung at the ends of the ties.

  “Listen,” the little girl said, rattling the bells. No sound. “They are magic bells, for they will always be silent until danger lurks near.”

  Papa Grigory held out a wide belt, which he wrapped around Rosa’s hips. “This dreaming girdle will help you while you sleep. It will send you dreamed warnings of danger, or good counsel when you are lost or confused.” He touched her mother’s bracelet, still wound together with the one Daniel had given her. “You already have some of your mother’s magic, and a link to find your lover.” He touched her other wrist. “Here, you have three protection knots remaining. I shall give you another charm to hang about your throat.” He reached into his pocket and withdrew a leather strap. Hanging from it was a spearhead.

  “A thunder arrow,” Rosa said, reaching for it. “Is it flint?”

  “It’s made from a fallen star,” Totchka said, eager to correct her. “Isn’t it, Papa Grigory?”

  “A fallen star, just so,” he said, knotting it around Rosa’s neck. “Sata, Rosa. You know what that is?”

  “A meteorite,” she said. “Yes, I know.”

  “I found it myself out in the north-eastern forests. All the trees for a hundred miles had been flattened like grass. You wear a star about your neck, Rosa. Few could bear its weight, but you are special.”

  Rosa touched the spearhead reverently.

  “Last,” Grigory said, “these shoes.” He held up a pair of leather shoes, which Rosa could tell at a glance were far too small.

  “They won’t fit,” she said.

  Grigory frowned. “This costume has been waiting here for centuries. For you. Everything else fits.”

  Rosa sat and pushed her toes into the shoe to demonstrate. “See? Far too small. What are they, anyway? Lucky shoes?”

  Grigory’s dark expression told her she had been too flippant. “They are death shoes, Rosa. Should you fail, should you die, these shoes will take your spirit back to the one place you can know great happiness. You will avoid the fate of other revenants.”

  The thought moved her temporarily to silence. What would be the one place she could know great happiness? In Vasily’s kitchen eating fried eggs with her uncle? Sitting with Daniel late on a summer night on his tiny back patio? Or could she go further back in time? Back to the first precious years on Prince Edward Island, years of gentle mists and rustling green, her parents happy and in love, all the ugly twists of fate as yet unanticipated?

  “She can tie them on her belt, Papa,” Totchka said, “then put them on if she dies.”

  “If she is dead, she can’t put her shoes on,” Papa said.

  The puzzled frown again touched Totchka’s face, and Rosa realised she understood death no more than she understood time.

  “She’s right in a way,” Rosa said. “I’ll get some kind of warning from the bells. I can squeeze into them if I have to. Tie them on my belt.”

  And so she was finally ready to leave, her battered lace-up black boots in odd contrast to the traditional costume. She took heavy furs for Daniel and Em, as Grigory said they had lost most of their supplies. The sleigh was packed, the sun gleamed dully on its black curves. Her heart was in her throat with anticipation. Grigory helped her into the padded black-velvet seat.

  “Voron will take you wherever you want to go. You must find Daniel yourself, the same way you’ve found him before.” He touched the bracelet. “Return to me soon, Rosa, with that damned Golden Bear. I think I know how to reward you.” His eyes met hers, their strange paleness shrewd.

  Yes, he knew.

  “I’ll do my best,” she said.

  Grigory smacked the side of the sleigh once. “Up, Voron,” he said. “Rosa’s in charge now.”

  The first tilt into the air nearly unseated her; she held on and the sleigh lifted upward. Her stomach dropped, her spine turned to water. Voron arrowed through the protective bubble around Grigory’s house, speeding her into cool violet air. Laughter bubbled on her lips as the wind rushed onto her cheeks and sent her hair streaming. At first she clutched the bar in front of her, then released it, felt the giddy half-falling sensation of being skyborne. She risked a glance behind her, was thrilled by the steepness of the angle. Below, she could see Totchka and Grigory waving, doll-faced miniatures with white hands. She watched them until they disappeared behind her and the sleigh levelled off.

  Rosa held out her wrist, her fingers searching for the swallow charm on her mother’s bracelet. She opened her second sight, was dazzled by the veins of silver and gold that ran through the sky.

  “Which way?” she asked.

  The swallow turned, then stopped to point: “North-east, Voron,” she said.

  The sleigh bobbed, tilted, turned, then sped off into the clouds.

  Em was dying, and Daniel couldn’t deny it any longer.

  She pushed on bravely through the endless grass, but all the colour had fled from her cheeks and her breathing was coming in shuddering rasps. He insisted that they rest around twilight, afraid that her heart would simply stop if she went any further.

  “You have to rest,” he said. “Sleep a little while. I can scout ahead and see if there’s any food.”

  “Sure,” she said, gratefully. “I’ll rest a little while.” She lowered herself to the ground and lay on her back, her hand over her heart, and closed her eyes.

  A tide of dread and sorrow washed through him. She would die; he would be alone. Then he would die too. This was the end, certainly. They hadn’t eaten in days, and had only drunk from muddy puddles. Em had started complaining of stomach cramps, and would almost certainly have vomited if there was anything inside her to get out.

  Daniel moved on, knotting grass stalks as he went so he could find his way back. In every direction, there was nothing but more grass stretching away on indifferent fields which led to nowhere. The sun set as he crested a low rise. He hoped to see something, anything: a stand of trees, the gleam of a river, a distant village. Anything but more grass.

  This time, surely.

  His heart sank as he topped the rise. More grass, as far as he could see. Another hill to taunt him in the distance. He opened his freshly-acquired second sight, scanning for crossings. Nothing. Just sky.

  For days it had been the same: the constant hope that the landscape would change, the constant cruel disappointment. He couldn’t escape, even in his dreams, which were filled with vast grassy steppes, under dull twilit skies, rolli
ng on endlessly and endlessly to the end of time.

  He turned and headed back to Em.

  She opened her eyes as he sat beside her. “Didn’t find anything?”

  “No.”

  “I didn’t think you would, but I was still hoping.”

  “I wonder when we’ll stop hoping.”

  “Maybe we never will. Maybe hope is biological. A survival instinct.” She didn’t sit up. The grass formed a sheer curtain around her so he couldn’t clearly see the haggard death’s mask her face wore.

  “I’m sure we’ll find something tomorrow,” he mumbled.

  “I’m not so sure, Daniel.” She sighed. “Let’s play a game, keep our minds off it.”

  “I can’t play games, Em—”

  “For me. Please, Daniel. I can’t bear to just lie here watching the stars appear and wondering if I’m going to die before the sun comes up.”

  “Em, don’t say that.”

  “Why not say it? I can feel it. I can feel my body shutting down. I know it’s coming.”

  “Are you afraid?”

  “Of course I am. My body’s sending me a million signals, telling me to keep going, to survive. I can’t bear to listen to it any more. Go on, list me five shades of blue.”

  Daniel smiled weakly and answered her questions as night deepened overhead and the stars shone. Five perennial flowers, five tropical fruits, five Spencer Tracy films, five capital cities in the southern hemisphere, five great female rulers. Finally, she said, “Now list me five things you’ll miss if you never get back home.”

  There were five million. “I’m not sure.”

  “Go on. You first, then me.”

  Daniel considered, wriggling into a sitting position so that he could see Em better under the darkening sky. “All right. First, I’ll miss food. Curries and beer in particular. Second, I’ll miss music. I’ll miss my Beatles collection. Third, I’ll miss London. I’ll miss the orange lights through the mist on winter mornings. Fourth, I’ll miss my own bed, with the hollow in the middle where I fit perfectly and the smell of the washing powder they use at the local laundromat. And fifth…” He trailed off, the game suddenly becoming far too serious.

  “Go on,” she said.

  “I’ll miss Rosa,” he said, “although I didn’t have her anyway.”

  “But you always had the possibility.”

  “Yes,” he said. “That’s it.” He sighed and leaned forward to grasp his knees. “Now you.”

  Em was quiet for a while, thinking about it. “I’ll miss shopping. I’ll miss my house, and my garden…” Another silence, then she said, “I guess I don’t have as much to miss as you.”

  The wind shifted across the grass, a sinuous movement. On their first day out here, Daniel had admired the breeze’s progress as beautiful: now it put his nerves on edge, and he longed for the calm of stillness instead of the itch of movement. He longed for vertical structures to hide beneath instead of this endless horizontal exposure.

  “How about regrets,” Em said. “What will you regret?”

  “Em, we’re talking like dead people.”

  “We are dead people,” she said lightly. “You know that.”

  “I’ll regret that I didn’t fly.”

  “I’ll regret that I didn’t love.”

  “I’ll regret that I did.” He laughed and it turned into a sob. He swallowed hard, determined to stay brave. The breeze moved across the grass again, sighing its barely-audible sigh.

  “Sometimes,” Em said slowly, “I hear a man’s voice in my head.”

  “What does he say?”

  “I’m exhausted and sick when I hear this voice. I’ve heard it before, and it wasn’t a hallucination. At least, I don’t think it was.”

  “What are you talking about?” Daniel was concerned. Usually Em was perfectly coherent, no matter what the circumstances.

  “He’s speaking to me now,” she continued.

  “What does he say?” Daniel asked again, a little slower.

  “He says, ‘Morning won’t come without me’.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I don’t know.” She closed her eyes. “I don’t mean to get your hopes up.”

  “You haven’t.”

  Em was silent a long time. Daniel waited for her to speak again, then panicked and thought she might be dead. A quick check of the pulse at her wrist told him she wasn’t, but it also woke her up.

  “Sorry,” he said, when her eyes flickered open and she caught him in her gaze.

  She grasped his fingers in her own. “Hold onto me, Daniel.”

  “I will.” He didn’t let go as she fell asleep once more.

  Voron flew at the same speed Rosa flew in her dreams, coasting and dipping over currents, chasing its own shadow over gentle rolling hills and stands of trees. The sleigh was made of iron and wood, but sometimes under her fingers she thought she could feel the twist of lithe sinews, or the swell and shrink of breath. The sky sped past as they crossed a forest, and smoke rose into the air. Rosa looked down, but could see nothing through the trees. Was it burning wood or burning flesh she could smell? It was hard to remember she was in hostile territory when she felt such exhilaration.

  “Isn’t this fun, Anatoly?” she shouted.

  Anatoly was still. Perhaps he’d given up fighting her. Her senses prickled, and she snapped her head up. Ahead, the sky was splintered. A crossing.

  “Are we going through there?” she asked. Voron didn’t waver in his path. The veil draped the sky, miles in each direction. “I guess we are.”

  She braced herself as the sleigh shot through the veil, sending fragments of coloured light exploding into the air, shuddering through her and pushing her breath back down her throat. Then, she was simply elsewhere. The sky was twilit colours of blue and grey, and a great glittering river snaked below her.

  Water. The thought made her throat feel dry. Time to try a landing on Voron.

  “Voron,” she said. “Down.”

  The sleigh bobbed lightly on the air, coasting rather than propelling forward. Then the descent began, slowly drifting fractionally side to side like a feather. They settled in the long grass on the riverbank and Rosa climbed down. The route to the water’s edge was rocky, and the sarafan became the most impractical thing she had ever worn. She tucked the sides up into her underwear so the skirt hung around her knees rather than her ankles. The stars and moons on the skirt glowed faintly, adding a pale blue light to the dusk as she made her way down to the water.

  Rosa crouched there, scooping handfuls of water into her mouth. Behind her, up on the bank, she heard a rustle but when she stood to look around, there was nothing but Voron, his metal beak gleaming faintly in the twilight. She smiled. “If I didn’t know better, Voron, I’d say you were alive.” Voron remained silent.

  She turned back to the water, casting her gaze over the opposite bank. The smell came again and this time she knew: smoke weighed down with the fatty odour of burning flesh. Down here on the ground, the danger seemed much closer. She switched into her second sight, sending it through the trees to discover where the smell emanated from. Too distant.

  Then movement in the water caught her eye. She stepped back, her gaze searching into the river. A pale, dead-eyed thing was staring back at her. She let out a little shriek and scrambled back onto the bank. The swamp spirit launched itself up out of the water, rotted white hands reaching for her hair. Rosa kicked out, got away, and ran for Voron.

  “Up, Voron, up!” she cried, and the sleigh lurched and lifted, as though it knew the danger. The swamp spirit, weedy hair clinging thinly to its wrinkled scalp, caught the back of one of the skis and took to the sky with them.

  “Get off!” Rosa screamed, as she felt the sleigh’s weight shift and start to shudder. The creature was going to pull them out of the sky, and they were already up a hundred feet. Rosa’s eyes scanned the sleigh for a heavy object to beat the thing off, then she tore the thunder arrow from around her neck.
<
br />   “I said, get off!” she shouted, as she thumped the swamp spirit’s fingers with the lump of rock. As she did so, a thunderous roar cracked around her, splitting the air and echoing metallically in her ears. The creature lost its grip and fell. Voron, divested of the burden, shot upwards. Rosa watched as the swamp spirit spun through the sky, a white blur, then landed in a crumpled heap on the grass below. She retied the thunder arrow around her neck, feeling her heart slow.

  Rosa settled back in her seat, knees curled up to her chest. Grigory said that, so far, Daniel and Em had survived in Skazki: how? She had been attacked by a leshii and a swamp spirit and had had to use magic to protect herself. They had no magic. Perhaps Em was as strong as she was smart.

  Perhaps Rosa had underestimated Daniel.

  As she pondered this, a dislocated but familiar sound reached her ears. Bells. Complex patterns and combinations of high and low chimes, coming to her on the breeze. Below, the landscape was changing. Flat lands gave way to low mountains; snow, half-melted and dirty, gathered on rises. The bells grew louder, echoing through the peaks and valleys. Up ahead, on a flat hilltop, she could make out the outline of a towered building, golden cupolas gleaming in the dark. The trajectory that she and Voron were on meant that it would pass directly underneath them. The clouds grew close, a flurry of snowflakes caught in her hair. She was glad for the sarafan’s enchanted warmth, because she could feel the temperature dropping steadily. Mists blurred their path, then cleared again, as the bells reached a deafening volume. The building was directly in front of her: a palace, painted bright colours and topped with golden domes and clattering bell towers. Pagan symbols and frescoes were outlined in gold on every surface: bears and bulls, winged dragons and darting fish. Then it was rushing beneath them and behind. She turned to look at it, curiosity an itch deep inside her.

  “Voron,” she said, “go back.”

  Voron veered to the right, turning back in a circle.