Rosa and the Veil of Gold (17 page)

“Oh, east and east and north a-ways,” the domovoi said. “Look out behind you.”

Daniel spun. A dark shape was heaving out of the wall, long fingers stretching towards him. He yelped and ran. Em was at the door of the other hut already.

“What the hell is—?”

“Just run,” Daniel shouted, pulling her onto the path. And when she turned in the direction they had come from that morning, he said, “No, too dangerous. Go south, just for now.”

They ran across the sodden field, an army of shadows pouring from the village to chase them. Daniel’s heart pounded like a jackhammer in his chest. His feet skidded on the muddy ground, but he clung tight with his toes and kept running, Em two feet behind him shouting for explanations.

The woods beckoned, towering trees which bent in the wind and showered hours-ago raindrops on them. He glanced over his
shoulder. The horde of revenants slowed when they saw the woods, frightened by dull remembrances of life and the enemy who had stolen from the woods to end it.

“Straight into the trees, Em,” he called. “They’re too scared to follow us in there.”

“Should we be scared too?”

“Probably.” His feet pounded across the field, until finally he reached the sanctuary of the woods. Em was a half-second behind him. They kept running, disappearing into the trees, until finally Daniel felt they had lost their pursuers. He bent over, holding his knees, panting.

“What…the hell…just happened?” asked Em between gasps of breath.

Daniel waited until his breath returned to him. “Revenants,” he said.

“Explain revenants.”

“Like a cross between a ghost and a vampire,” Daniel said. “They don’t steal blood, they steal life. They possess you and drain you.”

“And how did we come to have an army of revenants on our tails?”

“The domovoi. The house spirit where I was hanging out the cloaks. He demanded gold and thought I wasn’t going to pay. He called them.”

“So you’ve used one of our pieces of gold. Did you get anything useful out of him? About the Snow Witch.”

Daniel smiled weakly. “East and east and north a-ways.”

Em groaned. “Shit!” She kicked a log, then sat on it. “At least it’s stopped raining.”

Daniel leaned his back against a tree. “The domovoi said something else, Em. It’s really troubling me.”

“Go on.”

“In Russian folklore, everyone has their own death. They are fated to die a certain way: illness or old age usually, or unavoidable accidents. When someone dies very unexpectedly, through a series of awful coincidences, say, or because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, they are said to have died a death not-their-own. You follow?”

“Yes. Why is this bothering you now?”

“If you die a death not-your-own, you’re doomed to wander revenant until the date of your own death. But here in Skazki, your own death can never find you. So you won’t die of old age. I guess you could even live forever if you could avoid the hostile creatures. But if you do die, there’s no rest-in-peace…” Daniel trailed off, so horrified by the idea that he couldn’t give words to it.

“I see,” Em said. “What you’re saying is that this is a place where ‘a fate worse than death’ is more than a B-movie cliché.”

“That’s right.”

She was quiet for a long time, and Daniel turned his face up to the sky to watch clouds blow away and the distant stars shine through.

“Daniel?” she said, and he didn’t like the note of panic in her voice.

He turned to see that she was searching around them with frantic eyes.

“What is it?”

“Did you bring the food?”

“The food was with you.”

“I thought you had it. You had the packs.”

“I had one, yours.” He braced himself. “You didn’t bring the other? It was at the end of the bed.”

“I didn’t see it,” she said, softly. “I left it behind.”

“We have no food?”

“We’ve lost it all.”

Rosa looked at Anatoly and Ludmilla differently now. Over dinner, as Anatoly carved the chicken, Rosa read the lines on his face as signs of anxiety, not sourness. Helping Ludmilla fold clothes in the dank little laundry at the back of the house, she saw the older woman’s bony shoulders as those of a mother who has too great a burden to bear. The revenant spirit of a man killed too soon, through some unpredictable circumstance, was a dangerous thing to his young wife. He would blight her life, sap her energy, have her join him. This was the cause of Elizavetta’s sickness.

But why could Anatoly not cure it? Why could a volkhv of such power and energy fail to banish a single revenant spirit? He was clearly desperate to do so.

As much as she was puzzled and, although she hated to admit it, concerned about the family’s problems, she simply had to focus if she was ever going to get Daniel back. She allowed a respectful twenty-four hours to feel sorry for Anatoly, but began pestering him for more spells directly after school on Monday.

“Come then,” he said. “We’ll go out to the grove, away from the farm. I’ll show you a magic knot so powerful that you can take it with you to the other world and keep yourself wholly safe.”

This time, they didn’t leave by the front gate. Anatoly took her down to the stream and showed her a narrow strip of mud and two stepping stones which led around the side of the brick wall encircling the farm. Once on the other side of the wall, he led her up the muddy bank and past an enormous spruce tree which had twelve knives embedded in its trunk.

“What are these for?” she asked.

“Not important. I’ll tell you another time,” he said, taking her hand and pulling her smoothly behind him. “Today, protection knots.”

They entered a shaded grove. The stream trickled gently beside them, the ground was soft and grass grew only sparsely. Rosa gazed around her. “Is this where you come to do your magic?”

“Sometimes, yes. Not at night.” He glanced around. “It’s not safe here at night.”

Rosa knew he referred to Nikita’s visits.

“Do you ever do magic in the bathhouse?”

He smiled. “It’s a guesthouse.”

“You never use it for magic?”

“Well, perhaps I do now and again,” he said, “but we have seasonal workers who come to stay in the summer harvest, so we need space for them.”

“Is there still magic in the walls?”

“I pulled it all out before you moved in.”

“I see.”

“Elizavetta was born in there, and Makhar. My father died there, and I hope to die there too, but even a volkhv must be practical, and we have no money for a new building.” He gestured around. “A shaded grove can work just as well, though the magic tends to escape into the treetops.”

Rosa looked up. Weak sun struggled through the thick branches. She almost imagined she could see it, violet smoke circling the tips of the trees and then diving inside to be absorbed into the sap.

“Why here today?”

Anatoly pulled out a length of black wool. “Because this is not just ordinary magic. This is difficult magic; this goes beyond a yammering zagovor.” He handed her the wool. “This knot will be your shield in the other world.”

Rosa wound the wool over her fingers. “Okay, tell me what to do.”

“Seven double knots,” he said. “With each one, we name the places you will be safe.” He coached her through the process, and she did one practice run without tying the knots. Then, summoning up the magic in her fingers and wrists, she worked the spell.

“As I travel on the road,” she said, tying a double knot. “In the field.” Another knot. “Through the crossroads…between the houses…across the seas…into the woods…over the trembling marshes…” She threw the knotted yarn on the ground. “None shall come near me. My word is firm. So shall it be.”

Anatoly lifted his eyebrows. “Shall we see if it works?”

“Go on.”

He took a step towards her, his foot hovered above the yarn and crossed it. His other foot the same.

Hollow disappointment. “It didn’t work.”

“No,” Anatoly said. “It didn’t. It’s a good thing you don’t have to protect yourself from me.”

Something about the cool delivery of these words made her prickle. “I don’t?”

“Of course not, Rosa, you know that.” Now he was warm again, his arm hooked around her shoulders. “Let me try the knots. Perhaps we have the wrong wording.”

Rosa watched as his grubby fingers unpicked all her knots. The wool was beginning to fray. “You made these very tight, Rosa.” He straightened the yarn in his fingers and cleared his throat. “As I travel on the road…” He went through exactly the same process as Rosa had, casting the knotted yarn on the ground.

“Now,” he said, beckoning her from his side of the yarn. “Try to cross.”

She lifted her toes, tried to step over the knots. An invisible blow to the bottom of her foot sent her pitching backwards. She landed hard on her backside.

“Ow!”

Anatoly helped her up. “It worked.”

She rubbed her lower back. “Yes, obviously,” she said irritably. “Why for you and not me?”

“I’m much more powerful.”

“But my magic is growing.”

“Not as quickly as we thought.”

She remembered the bee in her window on Saturday morning, how it hadn’t responded to her. “It feels like I’m going backwards.”

“Have you checked on your sapling? Is it still well?”

“I haven’t looked since the weekend.”

“Then let us see.”

Anatoly pocketed the magic knot, and they returned to the guesthouse. Rosa opened the cupboard door, and was appalled to see that the wych elm had withered. The green shoot on the end was spotted and dull.

“It’s dying.” Hollow panic crept into her stomach.

“You’ve been saying the spell?”

“Every morning when I wake.” Was she stuck here forever?

Anatoly stroked his beard, pulling on its wispy ends. He made a noise, somewhere between a hum of consideration and a sigh of unhappiness. Rosa grew uneasy.

“What do you think is wrong?” she asked, dreading the answer.

“It does appear that your magic is diminishing.”

“But it shouldn’t be.”

“No. But nor is it unheard of. We did a lot of work in the first week. I have said before it’s like training for a long run. If you do too much too soon, you can set back your cause.”

“Are you saying I’ve had some kind of training injury?”

“Ha!” He offered her a reassuring smile. “Yes. That’s how I’d see it. The only thing that would fix it…”

“A rest,” she said, closing the cupboard door and sagging back on it. “That’s what you’re going to suggest.”

“Yes, it is.”

“How long?”

“Until you’re better.”

“A day? Two?”

“I’d leave it a week.”

Impatience galvanised her body. She launched herself forward and grabbed Anatoly around the wrists. “I can’t bear to wait that long. He could be dead by then. I must get across to find him.”

“You have no choice.”

“There must be something. You’re a strong volkhv, couldn’t you send me across?”

“And be left without my own magic? I have things to do here, very important things.”

Rosa remembered his trouble with Elizavetta and bit her tongue. “It’s not just the veil I need magic for,” she said. “I have to hide that hire car. The police will be looking for it.”

“I know you are frustrated, Rosa,” he said, his voice growing gentle as he peeled her from his wrists. “You may still accompany me all this week and watch the magic I perform. You will learn, but passively.”

“But the car—” she said, dropping onto the bed.

“Don’t worry about the car. Nobody will find it. We’re beyond the edge of nowhere out here.” He sat next to her and stroked her hair. The gesture was fatherly but proprietory. “Leave it a week and don’t worry, Rosa. A week will make all the difference.”

The days crawled by. She was tired all the time, and this was the only thing that kept her from lying awake at night cursing that she was stuck here, not moving, while Daniel battled on without her. If he had been alone, she would have given him up for dead already. She still hoped that Em could keep them alive until she got there.

She dragged herself out of bed and dressed for the day, hearing voices in the garden while she brushed her hair.

“I don’t feel well.”

“Just sit in the sun for half an hour. It will do you good.”

“I want to go back to bed.”

Rosa opened the door of her guesthouse. Ludmilla had Elizavetta by the hand, and was leading her out to a mouldy deckchair she had set up in full sun by the herb beds.

“The sunshine will help, Elizavetta,” Ludmilla was saying. “The fresh air is good for your lungs.”

The girl grumbled but allowed herself to be dropped into the seat. Rosa crossed the garden quickly, offering them both a quick wave, and found Makhar sitting at the kitchen table waiting for her.

“History this morning, Roshka,” he said. “You promised to tell me about Ivan the Terrible.”

Rosa could have wept. History lessons with a nine-year-old. How was it possible that she was stuck in this mundane cycle? “Let me use the bathroom and make some breakfast. It’s only a quarter to nine.”

“Hurry, then.”

“Start reading ahead. I want you to read three pages before I sit down.”

“Ivan the Terrible came to the throne in 1547, aged only seventeen…” His little voice followed her down the hallway, earnestly reading out of his history book. On the way back from the bathroom, she noticed Elizavetta’s door was ajar.

Makhar read on. “In 1553, he gave the order to build St Basil’s Cathedral in Moscow, to celebrate victory over the Tatar Mongols…”

Rosa hesitated half a second, then went in.

The stale air was thick with the smell of sleep and dust. The bed, an old timber four-poster, had curtains hung around it. An ancient dresser, stained dark brown, provided the space for nearly a dozen photographs in frames. Rosa bent to study them.

Elizavetta, plump-cheeked and smiling—almost unrecognisable—in the arms of Nikita. He was in his late teens, with the easy smile of a man who has never wanted for female attention; thick dark hair growing over his collar and falling into his eyes, a navy T-shirt and blue jeans. The next photo featured him in a serious pose, staring straight into the lens with a full-lipped pout. Then a photo of Elizavetta and Makhar with Nikita leaning in behind them. Rosa quickly scanned the rest. Nikita riding a horse. Nikita drinking from a beer can. Nikita and Elizavetta in wedding apparel. Every photo featured Nikita. There were none of Ilya.

“In 1560 his wife died, and he went mad with grief…” Makhar diligently continued reading, his voice muffled down the hallway.

Rosa turned, assessed the bed. Nobody would know. She parted the curtains and knelt on the mattress, flipping up the pillow. The place every superstitious teenage girl keeps her most precious things. A lace handkerchief: inside, a lock of dark brown hair and a gold wedding band. The inscription inside the ring read
Elizavetta and Nikita, eternal love.

Rosa hid the items again and moved to the window. She peered around the edge of the curtain, and could see past the laundry and out to the hives. Anatoly and Ilya, in their bee-protection suits, were busy scraping wax from frames. What did Ilya think of this room? It was little more than a shrine to Elizavetta’s first husband.

Footsteps in the hall. Rosa turned. Makhar was standing in the doorway.

“Roshka?”

“I thought I saw a rat.”

“We don’t have rats. Papa scares them away with magic.”

“Just a shadow then.” She had her arm around his shoulders. “Don’t tell Luda. We don’t want her to worry about rats.”

“I don’t want her to worry about anything,” Makhar said, and Rosa knew he understood she had been snooping. “I’ll close Elizavetta’s door so nothing else gets in.”

It was Ilya’s job to collect the mail from town every Monday. Makhar found this occasion profoundly exciting, although none of the letters were ever addressed to him. He and Rosa were taking a science lesson in the woods—a thin excuse for Rosa to smoke a cigarette—and he had already acquired a healthy collection of grasshoppers when the sound of the car echoed down the long dirt road nearby.

“That’s Ilya,” Makhar said, ready to discard his jar of grasshoppers with careless haste.

“Wait, wait,” Rosa said. She had only just lit a cigarette. “Why are you so excited? Are you expecting something?”

“Sometimes my aunt in Moscow sends me a comic book.”

“How often?”

He shrugged, time being immaterial. “Sometimes.”

“Okay, we’ll go back. But slowly. I want to finish this cigarette.”

“Smoking’s bad for you, Roshka,” he said, running ahead. He tapped the trees with his palm, muttering a song under his breath.

Rosa took a last quick drag and butted her cigarette. “I’ll race you,” she called, and they dashed back to the house.

They arrived at the same moment as Ilya dropped a packet of letters on the kitchen bench. She thought of her request to Vasily, and tried not to look too hopefully towards the pile.

“So, Makhar,” she said, settling with the little boy at the table. “Shall we go on with long division in decimals tomorrow?”

Anatoly descended on the mail, began flipping through the envelopes casually. One caught his eye and he pulled it open to read.

“I’m sick of long division,” Makhar said. “Can we do something else?”

“If you like. Percentages?”

“Elizavetta makes a pie if we do percentages. Then we cut up little percentages to eat.”

“Then we’ll make a pie.”

Anatoly sniffed, and threw the letter in front of Rosa. “For you,” he said tersely. “Are you careful who you give our address to?”

Rosa was momentarily stunned. “Did you open my mail?”

“It’s from somebody named Vasily.”

“My uncle in St Petersburg. It’s private. You shouldn’t have opened it.”

“No secrets here, Rosa,” he said.

Rosa’s blood was burning. She quickly glanced over the letter: a few stern words about his hopes for her return, but mostly chat about golf and business. No mention of her mother’s things. She wondered if he still intended to send them. “I have a right to private correspondence,” she said, biting back her anger for Makhar’s sake.