Rosa and the Veil of Gold (27 page)

She dived into the water and surfaced, breaststroking her way across to the other side. The current pulled her slowly off course, and she reached the opposite bank about twenty feet downstream of Daniel’s fur cloak. She returned by foot, picked up the cloak and folded it over her arm. He would need it, when she found him.

Daniel had indicated that the russalki didn’t like to be too far from the water, so it was reasonable to assume that sticking to the bank of the river was her best option for finding him. But should she move upstream, back to where they had passed through the colony of russalki the previous day? Or downstream, in the direction they had brought him to remove his cloak? They were already three hours ahead of her, so she had to make the right decision.

Em searched the muddy ground. Footprints led back into the water. They had swum with him, but in which direction?

She looked left, right, at the ground again. Had no idea which way to go.

Downstream.

The word popped into her head with a cold hiss. It reminded her of the noise of car tyres driving through a freezing puddle. The frozen line on her wrist tingled, and she felt again the echo of Morozko’s touch.

“Downstream?” she whispered to the dawn. There was no reply.

She turned and headed downstream.

An hour’s journey away, she found the rest of Daniel’s clothes, cast haphazardly along the bank. She bent to pick them up. The sling lay amongst it all, empty. So the russalki had the bear. She tried to make sense of the prints in the mud, but they were chaotic and illegible.

Em straightened, hooking Daniel’s clothes over her frozen forearm. She gazed off down the river. Quiet trees hung over it, the odd silver-violet of the sky lending their green leaves a bruised lustre. A misty haze hung over the river, obscuring the bends in the distance. How far had the russalki taken Daniel, and were they still on the move? If they were swimming with the current, they could be miles ahead of her. She could be following them for days before she caught up with them. The further south she went, the further she moved off the path to the Snow Witch.

“Damn Daniel,” she muttered, then remembered it was her fault that the russalki had his name to bind him. She shivered, wishing the sunlight slanting through the trees could penetrate her skin. Her best hope was that the russalki would take Daniel to a fixed location, home in a pond or a cave. If they stopped, even for half a day, that would give Em a chance to catch up.

Her stomach growled, her heart was cold and her body ached. But Em kept moving. Downstream, as Morozko had instructed.

As the dream continued, Daniel began to forget about Before. Life above the water had been cruel, intractable. Now Lobasta had helped him cross into a violet- and green-dappled world buzzing with pleasures. Beyond the surface, the sun had risen, and the light pierced the water and refracted into daydreaming shards which quivered around him. The russalki swam with him downstream, passing his pliant body from one set of arms to another. Their hair trailed in his mouth, their soft breasts crushed against his back, and their lips pressed into his lips every few seconds, pushing sweet breath into his lungs and sending tiny bubbles fizzing around his face. With their breath came more than air to keep his lungs moving, but a forgetting mist, erasing his thoughts of how he came to be here, or whether he should try to escape, even of who he was. If they didn’t repeat his name over and over, he would have forgotten it by now.

Eventually—hours or moments later—they dragged him onto the bank again. They rolled his body between theirs, laughing and singing his name, playing with him the way kittens play with a ball of wool. Sensual pleasures embraced him, and more time passed without him knowing. The sky grew dim, the last of the daylight was vanishing. Lobasta took his hand and walked him to the water’s edge.

“What is it?” she asked him.

He regarded her dumbly, no understanding of what she meant.

“Down there.” She pointed to the water. He saw only dim currents.

“Ah,” she said, then passed her fingers over his eyes. “You need a second sight.”

It was like a dark cloud breaking open onto blue sky. Now he could see into the water, as though it was lit by phosphorescence. A carved figure rested on a rock beneath the surface, between billowing weed and darting fish. It was a golden bear.

“I don’t know,” he said, but couldn’t feel the words pass his lips.

Lobasta understood him all the same.

“Think harder,” she said.

“A bear,” he replied, then time grew elastic again and it was deep in the night. The girls all around him were sleeping, their soft white limbs flung out casually. He lay tight between them, naked, but not cold. Their combined body heat kept him warm. The river flowed past, midges settled their delicate feet over his torso. He felt no stinging pain, as though his skin was now only alive to pleasure.

The vision of the bear niggled at the back of his mind. Something important…he couldn’t quite catch it. A sinuous arm wound about his throat, dragging him up into a warm lap. It was Lobasta.

“You’re awake,” she said, delighted.

He tried to speak, but no words emerged, and soon his mouth was filled again with warm wet kisses.

It was close to dawn when the thought came to him again. The bear, which Lobasta had stored down in the rock pool, who was she?

She.

Somebody had given him to her. A beautiful face crossed his mind, but melded in his imagination with Lobasta’s face.

“Who are you thinking of?” Lobasta said, her eyebrows twitching with anger.

He shook his head, realised his skin was prickling with cold.

“The bear,” Lobasta said. “Where did you find her?”

A word insinuated itself into his mind. Rose?

“What’s he doing?”

“Why does he twitch so?”

“He’s cold. Is our spell broken?”

At once the word was on his tongue, and for the first time since this sensuous dream began, he heard his own voice. “Rosa!” It was a hoarse, desperate cry, and it frightened him. The dream shattered, he was freezing and wet.

“Throw him in the water!”

“He has betrayed us!”

Lobasta was sobbing. Daniel tried to climb to his feet, but his body was too weak.

Insistent hands closed on him, dragged him roughly. He hit the water with a splash, and began to sink. A spark of instinct made him move his legs and arms, propel himself to the surface.

Then Lobasta was there again, her lips closing onto his. He expected the sweet breath that he had grown used to since they took him, opened his mouth willingly.

But instead of pleasant air, a pall of black fog poured into him. A harpy’s shriek sounded in his ears, and he fell: under water, under consciousness.

As the sun climbed high in the violet sky and sent trembling shafts of light across the river, Em kept moving. She followed the bank past rock pools and shallow cliffs, and then down into flat muddy fields and through trees and rotting undergrowth. She was hungry, but didn’t stop to forage for food. Anyway, the cold inside her made the hunger mild by comparison. Here and there she would see signs that the russalki had passed this way. A long silken hair caught on a branch and glinting in the sun, or skidding footprints in and out of the water. Once she thought she heard laughter, far ahead of her.

With determination, Em closed the distance. As the day bloomed and then faded, she moved and didn’t rest. Even though she had
walked for hours and sometimes she had run, her body temperature had not risen even a fraction. Frost lived under her skin, the marrow in her bones was iced over.

The irony was not lost on her: people had always said she was cold.

The wound, however, had started to heal. It itched, didn’t appear so red and raw, and the pain had withdrawn. The yellow substance had frozen to white and, while taking a brief rest, Em had picked up a pointed twig and scraped some of the poison out. When the skin healed up, she didn’t want the poison trapped inside. Hope still lived in her: one day, she might be back home. Perhaps then she could thaw.

The shadows grew long and the sun sank in a splash of golds and greens. Voices were carried up the river to her, and she knew she was close. Perhaps they would stop and camp for the night. She moved slower now, trying to be quiet. Dusk had settled, night was a shade away. Laughter ahead, female voices, not Daniel’s.

Em clung to the shadows of the trees. The bank of the river sloped away onto a little flat outcrop, perhaps a hundred feet distant. Grass grew down to the edge of the rocks, and below them was a still pool, six feet across. This is where the russalki had stopped.

At first Em couldn’t see Daniel. Daylight had fled, and branches and bushes blocked her sightline. She counted three or four girls, though. They moved about, fussing and giggling. She inched a little closer, crouched beside a fallen tree, and peered over. No, there were only three: one pale blonde, one with streaming ginger hair, and a third who appeared almost green. Lying between them, looking as though he was already dead, was Daniel.

No, not dead. His head lolled to the side and his eyes were glassy, but he was alive, his gaze tracking one of the girls.

All of them were completely naked, but didn’t appear to be suffering from the evening cold.

The redhead moved, sat on the outcrop and dangled her feet in the water. She called something back to the others, and there were more giggles. Daniel had closed his eyes.

Em placed Daniel’s clothes on the ground, sat on them and watched for a while. How could she get near enough to take
Daniel away from them when they were all crowded so close? Morozko had said they weren’t strong, but they outnumbered her and, besides, Daniel would resist going.

“Think, Em, think,” she muttered. A net? Rope? She had neither of those things. She had only her hands and her brain.

Of course. Just wait until they slept.

She relaxed against the log, turning her back and gazing at the first pale stars glimmering above. The russalki had probably stopped to rest for the night. Once they were sleeping, Em would steal down there and drag Daniel away. But if they woke…

Daniel, if he wasn’t under their spell, could help himself. He was only vulnerable to his name, so Em would have to ensure he couldn’t hear them say it. She picked up the edge of his woollen scarf, and unpicked a thread. Earplugs, then. Maybe even some mud to clap over his ears. The activity would keep her busy.

She glanced over her shoulder, and saw that the blonde russalka had taken Daniel to the water’s edge. He was glassy-eyed and cadaverous, barely able to move his own limbs, as though the person he had been was buried under flesh and bone. She wanted to turn her gaze away, not see him so naked and depleted. But the russalka was pointing at the water and asking something. Em couldn’t make out the words, but thought she might have said, “What is it?”

There was a long pause; Daniel looked confused. He mumbled something.

The russalka whispered in his ear. He drew his brows down, concentrating, then said, “A bear.”

Em drew a little gasp. The bear was in the rock pool. Her plans would have to involve recovering it as well as Daniel.

The russalka was asking Daniel more questions, but he had closed his eyes, and the other girls gathered around him and laid him down on the bank. They hovered over him, pressing their bodies and mouths against him, and Em turned away. To see him naked was one thing, to watch him take part in group sex was quite another.

She yawned. Soon the russalki would tire and then sleep, but she couldn’t. If she and Daniel were oblivious at the same time, they could wake up somewhere far worse, perhaps leaving the bear in
the possession of the russalki. She watched the movement of the branches in the evening breeze. There was no point in her building a fire: she had nothing to cook and no use for heat. So instead she hugged her knees and ran over her plans in her head.

There was a long period of quiet, and Em watched the encampment with eager interest. Daniel slept; two of the russalki slept. But the third, the blonde one whom Em had come to regard as the leader, sat up and gazed at Daniel. It was difficult to see her features clearly in the dark and at such a distance, but Em was fairly certain the girl was in love with Daniel. Her gaze never left him, her breasts rose and fell in melodramatic sighs, her hands went over and over to his ribs and chest, forlorn thumbs extending childlike into the hollows of his throat and armpits. Daniel would stir, she would kiss him and he would sleep again.

The night was very long. Em had suffered through hunger and she had suffered through cold, and learned that the body could endure them well enough with an act of will. But tiredness…Sleep was insistently pressing on her brain.
Put your head down, close your eyes, give up consciousness.

She paced. She leaned upright against a tree. She did star-jumps. She recited poems under her breath. She thought up complicated sentences and translated them into as many languages as she could. Still the blonde russalka stayed awake. Em was starting to think she might have to go down there and drag Daniel off, taking her chances with his new lover.

But then Daniel woke and with his awakening all the other russalki woke too. They purred and fondled and probed him, and she kicked a rock and muttered, “Shit, shit,” and looked away.

The night had grown still, and their voices rose up to her on the ridge. The girls made tiny gasps of giggled pleasure, but Daniel sounded like an animal: incoherent grunts and moans, as though he no longer possessed any consciousness of his dignity or humanity. It made her think that perhaps Daniel was already lost, that he wouldn’t be returning from this adventure. In that case, it made sense for her to get the bear first and worry about Daniel later.

The orgy went on and on, and Em sat with her head in her hands trying not to listen. She sneaked one curious peek, but was
rewarded only with the sight of flailing limbs and cascading hair. It had been a long time since she had thought about sex. Not because she didn’t enjoy it: she was as much attracted to bodily pleasure as anyone. Rather, sexual relationships rose out of other relationships, the kind of relationships that she couldn’t form. The problem of what to do with erotic urges had plagued her for many years. Was she to make love to a piece of machinery, or pay a handsome stranger? Neither option had felt like her style, so she had simply willed herself to be dead to those urges. Any glimmer of physical desire was greeted with a quick and certain mental blockage, the way thieves are met with steel security screens in banks.