Rosa and the Veil of Gold (31 page)

“I will.”

The car revved and then pulled off, tyres crackling over rocks and fallen leaves. Rosa watched until the taillights disappeared around the bend, then took a deep breath. Her stomach was itchy with excitement. She had to be back in bed by midnight.

She had packed, but not because she was taking anything with her. Rather, there was a finality in packing her things and stacking the cases neatly at the foot of the bed. She had chosen clothes for her journey—a blue velvet jacket and black lace skirt—which would be all but hidden by the heavy overcoat slung over the chair waiting for her. Daniel liked her in blue.

Rosa held her breath between her teeth for a moment.
Daniel.
Was he still alive?

Of course he was. The urgency wouldn’t still be in her if he had died.

She got into bed and pulled up the covers, careful to hide the wrist which was adorned with her mother’s bracelet. She closed her eyes to wait.

It must have been midnight. The faint hum and tap of a bee inside her window. She stilled her heart and breathing. Let it bump around for a few minutes before sitting up and switching on the light.

“Oh, poor little thing,” she said. “Are you trapped? Let me help you out.”

She stood on the bed, as she always did to open the window for a bee, but she didn’t open the window.

Swiftly, without a moment’s hesitation, she snatched the bee into her hand. It bumped about inside her fist, buzzing angrily. She wasn’t afraid of it stinging her. This bee, she knew, had a strong instinct for self-preservation.

“I’m sorry, but there is only one way to do this,” she said, and she opened her mouth and threw the bee in. It battered itself behind her clenched teeth. She picked up a cup and filled it with cooled water from the kettle then, careful not to open her teeth too wide, filled her mouth with water.

And down went the bee. She felt it knocking and vibrating all the way down her throat, down her gullet, then finally into her stomach. “Got you,” she said.

Something caught her eye and she looked down. Across the floor spread two shadows: hers, feminine and slight, and another hulking, male shadow.

“Come on, Anatoly,” she said, seizing her overcoat and heading for the woods, the field, the veil which would now bend to her will. “We’re going on an adventure.”

Em paused at the edge of the woods, waiting for her eyes to adjust properly to the dark. The path was narrow: a dirt track, really, less than a foot across. Around it were tightly packed spruce trees, tall and skeletal with drooping limbs and mottled bark which made Em think of disease and decay. The smell was pungent: the clean spike of the spruce fighting with an unpleasant smell of rot and damp. She moved between the trees, her weary legs protesting every step.
Sleep, sleep
, her body cried.

“Forget sleep,” she said. “Concentrate.” Artur and Mirra said that Bone-Legs only lived a short distance into the woods, but she couldn’t see any glow of light which would indicate a house nearby. She stumbled over a rock, righted herself, and kept moving.

A dip in the road, then a gentle rise, and she saw Bone-Legs’ house. The trees squeezed right up against it, shadowing the eaves. Em stopped for a moment and looked. It was a strange, round building sitting up on odd skinny stumps. She moved closer, peering into the dark. They looked like giant birds’ legs, the clawed feet driven into the ground, with grass sprouting like feathers around the knuckles. A dirty bone-coloured set of stairs led up to the front door, but Em didn’t approach. Something held her back.

The smell of the place made her feel sick. Acrid and oily. Burning. Like roasting flesh. The light from inside was strange: flickering and flaring, as though there was an enormous bonfire burning within. The sound, too, was extraordinary. A pressure had gathered around her ears, a high-pitched whine, beyond the range of ordinary human hearing, intensifying nearby.

Yet it was more than what she could smell and see and hear that held her in the shadows. A profound unease, located just below her navel. An instinct that told her not to go a step closer.

“This is ridiculous,” she said. Exhaustion was taking its toll, that was all. How could she think straight when she was so tired she couldn’t even walk straight? Artur and Mirra had been clear: they had to have fire from Bone-Legs. No other fire would do. As Daniel needed somewhere to stay until he was recovered, and as Em needed specific directions to the crossing by the Dead Forest, it would pay to keep them happy. She glanced up at the cottage again. It was just an old lady’s house.

She started up the front path.

Don’t go in there.

“Oh, shut up,” she muttered. She didn’t know where these voices in her head came from, but they multiplied the more tired she became. What she had to do now was get the fire, go back to Daniel, wait for him to wake, then go home.

Then sleep and sleep and sleep…

Em lifted her hand and rapped hard on the door. A second later it opened.

“Hello—” she started, then realised that nobody stood on the other side. She hesitated, looked behind her. Noticed that the stairs she had just climbed were not bone-coloured but actually bones. Dirty, mouldy old bones that looked like they had been pilfered from centuries-old graves.

“Come in,” a weak voice called from within.

Just an old lady.

“Hello?” Em said, moving into a narrow, dark hallway. “Artur and Mirra sent me. I’m looking for Bone-Legs.”

“Oh, nobody calls me that any more.”

Em snapped her head around. It sounded like the voice had come from a different direction. In front of her, the hallway split into three, down twisted corridors of shadow. How was this possible? The cottage seemed so small from the outside. Light beckoned at the end of the corridor on her right, so she headed that way.

“Artur and Mirra sent me,” she called again. “Your neighbours. I’m here to get some fire for them.”

“They call me Baba Yaga.”

This time the voice came from directly behind her, but she turned and found she was still alone in the corridor. The name, however, touched her. She had heard it before…somewhere…

Not just an old lady.

She was nearly at the end of the corridor, and took the last bend into the light-filled space. The fire was enormous, built like a bonfire in the centre of a round room. Its flames shot up to the ceiling, which was scorched black but didn’t catch. Smoke choked her. The floorboards, rough and unpolished, were stained brown and black with blood. The stench was unbearable. Body parts were strewn from one end of the room to the other. A bloodied arm, gnawed at the shoulder, lay at her feet. Flies buzzed about, their black wings vibrating with excitement at the feast laid on for them. Em took a step back, turned to run.

And found her way blocked by a monster.

She screamed. She had never screamed before in her life, and hadn’t realised what a physically demanding act it was. Her lungs, her throat, her stomach all ached with it. Shocked to the heart.

The creature before her was a foot taller than her with a head resembling a lump of granite carved like a witch’s face, thick black hair-like fur sprouting across the square brow, no discernible neck, a hunched back with long skinny arms hanging from it, and spidery, bony legs with huge hairy feet splayed outwards. Her eyes were white and dead and her teeth, which she had bared, appeared to be formed of sharp metal spikes.

Em jumped backwards, feeling for the wall. The creature was frozen, watching her. Em found her way around the fire and to the back wall, all the time hoping that Baba Yaga wasn’t real, that she was just an apparition thrown up from her overtired mind. She chanced a look over her shoulder, saw a doorway, edged towards it, her heart pounding out of her chest.

Unhurriedly, Baba Yaga followed. Her movements were horrible to watch: almost birdlike, with her head flicking, agitated, from side to side. The pressure on Em’s ears intensified again. A not-really-there ringing, which made her feel as though her eardrums would burst. She turned and ran for the door.

Em had only a moment to register that the door handle was made out of finger bones, that a cage suspended from the roof of the corridor contained a semi-decayed human head. She ran down the corridor, expecting to find a back door. Instead she found more corridors.

This can’t be.
The corridors snaked off from each other, and there was no way of telling how far they stretched away. Em heard the scratch and shuffle of footsteps behind her, muffled by the bubble of pressure over her ears. She chose a corridor and ran, pulled up sharp when she realised the corridor was narrowing in front of her, pulsing like a biological thing—a length of intestine or a fat earthworm—and slipping from side to side so that the exit was obscured then revealed.

The thing was after her. She had to go.

She ran, fighting the sticky walls of the corridor. Wherever she touched the wall, it sucked at her skin coldly. She struggled against it, finally emerging into a dark room with close walls. In front of her, four doors waited, each with a handle made of bones.

Em went to the first and threw it open. Thickly packed mud, with a narrow opening drilled through it. A tunnel. Em crouched and peered in. The tunnel narrowed dramatically. She had a feeling that if she crawled in there, it would press the air from her lungs and make her easy prey. She moved to the next door, which opened onto a raging bonfire. Flame licked out and scorched her hand. She slammed the door closed and hurried to the next. This time, three steps down to a dark, stinking stream of water. Em took two steps then backed out again. It was impossible to tell how deep the water was, or would become.

She heard the monster behind her and took her chances on the fourth door, shutting herself into a freezing corridor where the air crackled with frost. A faint phosphorous light lit the dark space. Stalactites of ice hung from the ceiling. The cold didn’t bother her and she kept running.

And running.

And two minutes later she was still running and getting nowhere. The corridor stretched off into infinity, a nightmare made manifest. No light but the light of ice, no end but being captured by the horrid creature behind her. Angry spitting noises followed
her, as the corridor bent and she kept running. She slid, knocked the wall, realised it was made of ice.

“Ice,” she whispered to herself, and her breath was a fog in front of her. Panting, she began to smile. “It’s ice.” This was a trap. Baba Yaga had intended to chase her in here to perish: anybody else would have succumbed to the cold by now. Em took a deep breath. This was surely a temperature which could stop lungs moving, yet she was immune. She flattened her body against the ice wall and waited in the dim blue-grey light for her pursuer.

A moment later, the witch came hurtling around the bend. Not expecting Em to be there waiting, she ran a few steps past her before screeching and turning, her feet slipping on the cold ground. By this time, Em was already away, back in the direction she had come. She flew up the corridor, slamming the door on Baba Yaga’s approach. She turned the handle of bones, then snapped it off for good measure. Baba Yaga thundered on the door. Em didn’t pause. She fought her way through the pulsing corridor and through the bonfire room, then clattered down the bone stairs.

Crunching, grinding, angry sounds followed her. The beast was in there, and still on her tail. Em plunged off the path and into the woods to catch her breath. From behind a tree, she saw Baba Yaga throw the door to her cottage open. She stood on the top step, head moving birdlike on her hunched shoulders as she scanned the area. Then the creature opened her mouth and let out a screech like nothing Em had ever heard.

It was as though that pressure which she had felt on her ears was gathered up, sucking the air from the world around it, then violently unleashed. The screech went on and on, vibrating in invisible concentric circles through the woods. Branches shook and cracked, birds fell dead from their perches. Em’s head felt like it would split in two, her brain seemed to shudder and her teeth all jumped in her head. When the sound finally stopped, Baba Yaga stood for a moment at the top of her stairs, white eyes wide and unblinking. Then she took one step out, and Em realised she was hovering in the air.

“Oh, God, she can fly,” Em groaned, picking herself up to flee again. She took one glance back, and saw Baba Yaga—her back pillar-straight—propelling her way through the air with some
invisible oar clutched between her spindly fingers. Em picked up her pace. Branches whipped her face, rocks kicked at the soles of her feet. She suspected getting back to the cottage would offer her no protection, but she had to run anyway and find Daniel. She understood, with a deep primitive instinct, that she couldn’t let this creature catch her.

A horrific screeching noise roused Daniel momentarily. The inertia which had gripped him fled and he sat up and opened his eyes.

Two people he didn’t know were hovering near the door of the tiny, dark cottage he was in.

All at once, his body collapsed under him again, and he landed with a thump on the floor. He couldn’t move, and sleep was encroaching on his senses. Something was wrong. Where was Em?

“She’ll come for us, she’s angry,” the woman was saying.

“How did the Mir woman get away?”

“It signifies nothing. It’s us Bone-Legs will punish.”

“What if we offer to help?”

“Get Slava to go out after the woman. Then the witch will know we’re on her side. That the woman was an offering.”

“Yes, yes. Throw her friend out, too. Bone-Legs can have them both.”

“Slava!”

Darkness came, then fluttered off again. He felt rough hands under his armpits, his feet being dragged across the floor.

“Hey, be careful,” he tried to say, but no words came out, just an incoherent groan.

He fell under again, and was at peace once more. Then something broke through the dark haze, a pleading voice.

“You must try to wake up, Daniel.”

“Em,” he said. Or tried to say. He moved his limbs, they all went in the wrong directions. Her arm was around his back, pulling him to his feet. He dropped his weight on her and tried to move his legs again. Found his feet could shuffle if he didn’t concentrate on them too hard.

“Good, good. Quickly now. If you can.”

He ran into something. She cried out. He still couldn’t open his eyes or talk, and he feared the inertia returning.

“Hold this,” she said, thrusting something into the crook of his arm. He pressed it against his ribs, wondering what it was, where he was, who he was…

“You’re doing great. A little further…”

Then her voice faded out and he was lying down again, slipping under. Far away, he felt her hands pummelling him, then that sensation was dissolving too. The soft peace of sleep returned.

As long as Daniel had been semi-awake, Em had allowed herself to believe they would get out of this alive. But now he had lapsed into unconsciousness again, she felt hope run through her fingers.

He lay in the grass next to her, the bear still pressed against his side. The ringing pressure in her ears told her Baba Yaga was drawing closer, and away in the moonlit field she could see Slava. He only had one eye, so she had managed to sneak by in his blind spot so far, but he would soon spy her standing here next to Daniel.

So don’t stand.

“Yes, of course,” she muttered, crouching so that the long grass hid her. She pulled Daniel a little way, to a hedge surrounded by rocks. She tucked Daniel under it, threw herself on top of him and pulled the damp fur over the both of them. Her elbows drilled into damp ground, her head rested on Daniel’s shoulder.

“Think, Em, think,” she said, pressing a hand over her eyes. It wouldn’t be long before they found her. The witch and the boy had no light, but she was stuck in one place unless she abandoned Daniel. She was easy prey. And what would they do to her when they got her? She shuddered, and envied Daniel his unconsciousness. She was too weary to run, too weary to fight, and too weary to think about how close she had felt—just hours ago—to escaping home to Mir.

Then the solution occurred to her: if she and Daniel slept at the same time, the bear would move them.

They might end up in snowfields, or in a village of hostile revenants, or on a leshii’s breakfast table. They might also end up safely in empty fields. The fact was, if Em didn’t do it, she and Daniel would be returning to Baba Yaga’s charnel house to have their throats bitten open and their bones sucked for marrow.