Rosa and the Veil of Gold (42 page)

The young rake returned with a gun. He shot me twice. I fell. They left. I lay there a long time, chuckling to myself about the merry game I was playing. When Yusipov came back, wanting to dispose of my body, I sat up and grinned at him. He shrieked and hid behind the table, and I walked out.

They got me again in the yard, another two bullets, slamming into my body. I fell again, and let them drag me to the river. I stilled my laughter as they heaved me into the water. This time, I intended to let them think the job was done. What a trick it would be to visit Yusipov the following day, inquiring after my coat! I sank under, bubbles fizzing through my beard. Their dark shapes waited above. I sank low, swam a hundred feet and surfaced. I began the walk home, cold and wet, chuckling over my intentions to upset Yusipov. I did not know that all my intentions were about to be foiled by an unexpected force.

Love.

I can explain it no more than any other fool can. I dragged myself out of Moika Canal, hummed my soul back into my body and quickly healed my wounds. Koschey the deathless fears no bullet or poison. I took a back route through dark, snow-lined streets, far from the electric lamps: damp stone, rotted vegetables dumped in alleyways, and the scent of fatty boiling mutton. An urban emptiness which is always inhabited by cold, and bad smells, and poverty. This is where I nearly stumbled over a bundle of rags which lay on a tiled doorstep.

As I sidestepped it, the bundle moved and whimpered. Perhaps the dramatic events of the evening had worn my nerves down.
I jumped in fright. Then, when I realised the bundle was no more than some poor wretch freezing to death, I resumed my step and walked on.

“Papa?” a little voice wavered in the dark.

I turned. Everything changed.

The little girl was sick and pale, on the verge of death. Her eyes met mine and held them. A shiver of fate hissed across my body; some transformative power emanated from her.

“I’m not your papa,” I said sternly.

“No, that’s right,” she replied. “My papa is dead.”

“And where is your mama?”

“She is in the same place. And my brother. They are all dead. I was sleeping when you walked past, and something about your footsteps reminded me of my papa.”

I swallowed hard, and tried to make sense of these feelings. I still do not completely understand them, but every man, no matter who he is and where he is from, is on a journey. Love is a part of every man’s journey, whether he admits it or not. Finding Totchka led me on a new path, one which now beckoned with the sweetest promises.

“I must be on my way,” I mumbled, with no conviction.

She raised her skinny arms, as though she assumed it perfectly natural that I would pick her up. “Will you take me with you, Papa?”

And when I did, it was perfectly natural.

In Skazki, the progress of Totchka’s illness was halted. Her own death couldn’t find her, but as she had been destined to die as a child she remained a child. No fate as a woman existed for her to fulfil. She was forever a little girl.

My little girl.

I did not enjoy my last laugh on Yusipov the way I had hoped. Never mind. I am certain, however, that he saw me climb out of the water that night. Why else would he have bothered to drown an old tramp, fill him with bullet holes and ensure his body washed up a few days later? They pointed to the corpse, bloated and death-eaten beyond the barest recognition. They said it was Rasputin. He told his co-conspirators that his plan had succeeded. In time he
even managed to convince himself. It must have helped that I did not return to Mir.

Life with Totchka was simple and busy. I fed her, kept her warm, made her safe. I made the best of the fact that circumstances kept me in Skazki. I sent word to Nikolai that I would petition my fellow magical creatures, that he was to wait and hope for my return. I set up a stream of meetings and councils, all the while keeping Totchka safe and hidden in my cottage. Perhaps I wasn’t as dedicated as I should have been to this cause, because I was unprepared to leave Totchka alone. Many of the hostile spirits of the far east didn’t respond to my invitations, Baba Yaga refused to leave her home, and Perun and Veles sent to tell me to let it go, that life was perfectly acceptable to them without the weight of millions of worshippers. Perhaps if I’d been able to attend them in person…but it’s too late for self-recriminations. Totchka’s tearful anxiety at any suggestion of my departure was enough. I didn’t go.

Support for a military alliance with Nikolai was thin. A year later, I was only just starting to win over the witches of the south. Then word came, from the bright lands of Mir, that a revolution had swept the land. The Tsar and his family no longer ruled in Russia, but they were still alive and well.

I took this news with mixed feelings. They were still alive, Anastasia and Aleksei. No separation was imminent. I had settled into a different kind of life with Totchka. Perhaps Perun and Veles were right. Perhaps this half-dream of life in Skazki was enough.

Yet, this half-dream of life was still dependent on Mokosha’s blood living in Mir bodies. Aleksandr’s stupid promise had made it so. If both Aleksei and Anastasia died without offspring, then everything changed. The final separation would occur, and Totchka would be ejected from Skazki, to die her own death in Mir.

Yes, I lied to Rosa. Would you not?

Nikolai and his family were imprisoned, at first in their own palace at Tsarskoe Selo. Then, by degrees, their circumstances grew more and more dire. From Tsarskoe Selo to Tobolsk, but still with a full retinue of servants. Finally, to Ekaterinaburg, to a house with bars on the windows, where their guards were loyal Bolsheviks who took joy in humiliating and frightening their prisoners.

I watched uneasily in my magic mirror, but always told myself that had the Bolskheviks wanted them dead, they would have killed them by now. As the spring bloomed into summer, I saw signs that all was coming undone.

What agonising I endured, deciding what to do with Totchka. If I took her with me, she might die of her illness, but to leave her was to fear for her vulnerability, to miss her tender cuddles, to see her cry until her skinny body shook.

“No, no, Papa, no!” she sobbed, clutching at my knees. “I will die if you go. I cannot bear to be alone, what if something awful happens to you? Or to me?”

“Hush, Totchka,” I said, peeling her off me and sitting her firmly at the table while I pulled on my coat. “Nothing will happen to me. I can’t die. Nothing will happen to you so long as you stay here in the cottage, within the special circle of sunlight I have made for you.”

She stretched out on the table and sobbed so hard I feared she would hurt herself. I tried to be strong as I tied my boots on, but her pale, terrified face as I picked up my staff nearly undid me.

“So you are going then?” she said, on a shuddering breath. “You are leaving me here all alone? Any monster could come from the forest—”

“No, child, you are safe in here.”

“I fear I am not.”

“Then I will make you safer,” I said, and I put my staff down and closed my eyes and raised my hands above my head. I imagined extra layers of sunlight, building a shield around the cottage. I felt the magic moving in my body, aching in my muscles and weighing like lead in my bones. I gave it everything I had in those few moments, making Totchka’s circle of light impregnable.

When I opened my eyes, Totchka was staring at me horrified.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Look at yourself,” she said.

I went to the mirror, and saw that my hair was now streaked with grey, my eyes had gathered bags and my skin had sagged under the weight of a dozen new wrinkles.

“Don’t be alarmed, Totchka,” I said, turning to her. “It only means that I have used as much magic as I could find in my body to make you safe. These lines are evidence that no harm will come to you. I wear them proudly.”

Despite my reassurances, she was still wailing when I steeled myself and slipped through the veil, took two crossings and arrived in Ekaterinaburg. All I hoped was to convince Nikolai to allow me to take Aleksei and Anastasia with me back to Skazki, where I would keep them safe until the tense times had passed.

The night was warm. I shed my coat. Nikolai’s home was three miles north of the crossing, and I was perspiring long before I arrived.

I did not know that which had already been set in motion: an evil scheme of assassination. A truck with a loud engine had been left running outside to mask the sound of gunshots, fifty gallons of sulphuric acid had been delivered to a deserted mine nearby, along with two hundred gallons of gasoline. The family, their cook, their footmen, their housemaid and their doctor had been ushered into a stinking basement room. They were told it was for their own safety. Anastasia, a young woman of seventeen, had dressed in a special gown. Inside its bodice were sewn all her jewels, which she hoped to take with her if they were forced to leave Ekaterinaburg. Aleksei, still only a boy, had brought his own treasure with him: the Golden Bear.

They waited for half an hour. Sunny’s hands fluttered about, Nikolai’s hooded eyes darted from side to side. The children argued with each other softly, keen for any distraction from the awful waiting. Then a uniformed man led a group of soldiers into the room.

“Nikolai Aleksandrovich,” he said, striding over to the Tsar where he was sitting, “by the order of the Regional Soviet of the Urals, you are to be shot, along with all your family.”

“What!” Nikolai said, but his exclamation was drowned by the sound of guns and screams of fear. Blood flowed, smoke filled the air. Aleksei, hit by one bullet in his shoulder, moaned on the floor. A soldier held the barrel of his pistol directly to the child’s head and fired twice. Under the pile of bodies, Anastasia still cried. The same soldier seized a rifle and stabbed her with a bayonet: once, twice, three times. She fell silent.

The soldiers turned to each other, pleased with the sudden silence. They congratulated each other, and went upstairs to order the truck to come around.

This is when I slipped into the room.

Ah, it’s not so hard. A little magic, a narrow basement window hidden behind a staircase. I could sense already that Anastasia was not dead. The jewels in her bodice had protected her from the bullets, and the bayonet wounds had missed her major organs, but she was dying, no doubt of it. Her body was catastrophically wounded.

For my purposes, though, she was still alive. I seized her poor broken body, and the Golden Bear, and I took her back to Skazki.

As for the rest of the royal family, they were butchered, burned and dumped down a mine. Of course the Bolsheviks knew that one of their victims was missing (why else do you think that so many legends have been able to cling to the name Anastasia?), but as long as all that remained were charred fragments, there was no need to tell their superiors. Losing a dead Romanov was probably unpardonable.

I expect you wonder what happened next. How I treated Anastasia, how I enlisted Morozko the father of the frost to aid me, how the Golden Bear arrived back in St Petersburg. They are all stories for another time. Now is the time to act.

I have left Totchka only once, and only because so much depended on it. Now, I think you’ll see, I need to leave her again. Briefly, only briefly. Long enough to negotiate the crossings to the Snow Witch’s palace and stop Rosa Kovalenka before she does something we will all regret.

Although the sense of vertigo never really left him, Daniel had to admit that flying was not the nightmare he’d once thought. Certainly, Rosa’s company helped. While she was snuggled under his arm as they sped through the sky, he felt he was holding onto something safe and sure. He wasn’t, of course: he knew that. Perhaps the fear of flying had simply become redundant. He had witnessed so many other horrors that falling from the sky seemed almost a pleasant way to die.

Not that he thought he would die. Not any more. With Rosa, her magic, and the sleigh to travel anywhere, he believed he would get home again. For now, he didn’t allow himself to entertain thoughts of how empty home would be without Rosa. Instead, he listed all the things he would do when he returned, all the things he hadn’t been able to commit to before. Finishing his book, finding a job, making a life.

“What are you thinking about?” Rosa asked.

“About how cold it is,” he said, “and how it’s getting colder.”

She reached up to adjust the hood of his new fur. “I’m warm as toast,” she said smugly.

Below, a huge forest had given way to snowy hills. The last dots of dark green vegetation sped by, and the grey rocks wore white mantles. Ravines opened up in hillsides, and icy water poured into black pools below. The slopes grew steeper, the snow thicker. Voron swooped higher. The ground evened out. Gentle undulations under snowy brilliance. The sky was grey-violet; the sun, distant though it was, illuminated crystalline patterns on the snow. White, white and white.

Daniel squinted against the brightness. “I knew the Snow Witch would live somewhere snowy, but—”

“Do you think we’re getting close?” Rosa asked, leaning over the bar to look below her.

Daniel’s heart lurched to see her so close to the edge of the sleigh. “Rosa, careful.”

She looked around and smiled. “I’m fine, Daniel. I can look after myself.”

“I know.”

He sat back, pulling his fur tightly around himself. He watched her leaning out, her hair streaming in the wind, her sweet mouth curled up in a delighted smile. What could he say or do to convince her to come home with him? If she didn’t get sick until she was in her late thirties, that would still give them ten good years together. Ten years was better than nothing. Who knew? Before ten years was up, either of them might die crossing the street. She was giving up too much happiness to prevent unhappiness.

Not that he could say any of this to Rosa. Not now. But he would. He only had to think of the right way to phrase it. He had wandered for weeks in a dangerous magic kingdom…he was no longer afraid of Rosa’s temper.

A sudden dip had him clutching at the bar of the sleigh.

“What was that?” he asked.

“I think Voron’s taking us down,” she replied. “Hold on.”

He closed his eyes and braced himself for the descent, which was rough and fast. The seat dropped from underneath him, and he yelped. The sleigh caught him again, and he heard Rosa laughing. He opened his eyes and took a deep breath, and then he laughed too at the thrill of plummeting through the air on a magic sleigh. Something he would never feel again once he returned to Mir.

With a whoosh and a skid, the sleigh pulled up on a bank of snow. Rosa looked around, twisting in her seat.

“I can’t see anything,” she said. “No palace.”

“Me neither.”

“Then why has Voron brought us here?”

“I don’t know.” He climbed down from the sleigh. “Let’s have a quick look around.”

“Okay.”

He put out a hand to help her, and she landed on the snow next to him. Against the white and grey backdrop, she was a gorgeous drop of colours: crimson dress, black hair, blue eyes.

“You go that way, I’ll go this way. Meet back here in five minutes,” she said.

“Got it.”

He trudged up the embankment and saw only more snow. Carefully, he eased down the slope and began to walk across the white fields. The snow was thick, and his leg muscles had to work hard to move him forward. He left deep tracks behind him, and his shoes began to feel damp and cold. Up ahead, the edge of a ridge. From here, he could see down into a shallow valley. No palace. Between two banks of snow, though, he thought he could see a deep shadow. A cave? He let himself move down, following the curve of the bank.

A dark opening, about seven feet high.

“Rosa!” he called. “I’ve found something.”

He hurried towards it, pulled up too late. Sinuous shapes moved at the edge of his vision. He turned. A bolt of adrenalin. Three snowy-white wolves closing on him.

“Shit!” he exclaimed, turning to run. The snow was too thick; he tripped. His breath was knocked out of him as he hit the ground, and the first wolf sprang forwards. He saw eyes, teeth, paws advancing, and threw his arms over his face to protect himself.

“All the spirits of the snow, hear me!” Rosa’s voice, ringing out over the snow.

The expected blow didn’t come. Daniel uncovered his eyes. Rosa stood at the top of the ridge in her crimson dress, holding out her hand and sending her words across the frozen landscape. Her voice collected icy reverberations. The wolves had stopped, shocked, to listen. Their breath was visible on the crisp air.

“Tsar north wind, I invoke you! As your icy breath can churn the skies, so may I move these creatures. My word is firm, so it shall be.” She swept her arm through the air. “Move! Move!”

Daniel turned to the wolves, who were scampering off into the snowy distance, tails bent between their hind legs. Rosa hurried down the slope and helped Daniel to his feet.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“You just rescued me. Again.”

“Did they hurt you?” She was feeling along his arms.

“No, I’m fine. But I have to rescue you next time, okay?”

Rosa frowned, irritated. “What nonsense, Daniel. We help each other. If you want a simpering princess for a companion, I’m not your girl.” She brushed snow off his fur coat.

He shook off his embarrassment, indicated the opening in the snow. “A cave,” he said. “I think the wolves were guarding it.”

“Then that’s exactly where we should go.” She patted his side, feeling for the bear which was strapped against his body. Her nearness was the easy and familiar proximity of lovers, and it hurt him that it wasn’t to last. “No matter what happens, don’t give that bear to anyone or anything. Protect it with your life. Got it?”

“Got it.”

She leaned up to kiss him, then said, “Follow me.” She led him across the snow towards the cave, while he wondered what hope he had with a woman who could charm wolves.

Rosa caught her breath when she saw the inside of the cave.

At the entrance, it had appeared to be only a dark, rocky fissure, but around the first bend, it opened out into a frosted wonderland.

“Oh, my God,” Daniel gasped, pulling up behind her.

The ceiling soared twenty feet above them, decorated with icicles which glowed silver-blue like crystal, lending the cavern an eerie half-light. The snowy walls and floor were studded with diamond-bright chunks of ice in swirling patterns. A latticework of ice was suspended from the ceiling. As the wind rushed into the cave, it whistled through the lattice. The music it made was eerie: tinkling and creaking in formless melodies, now shrieking and loud, now breathy and low depending on the force of the wind. Carved archways and alcoves gleamed with ice-blue treasures.

Ahead, two round tunnels sprouted.

Rosa turned to Daniel, her breath frosting on the air. “This is it. This is the Snow Witch’s palace. Voron brought us as close as he could.”

Daniel shivered. “It’s cold.”

“Hold my hand,” she said, and tried to send him some of her
warmth. She clutched his fingers to forcibly contain her excitement as much as for safety. “Let’s take a look around.”

“What are we looking for?”

“We’re looking for signs that a Snow Witch lives here.” The thought sobered her. “We must be careful. If we get separated, we meet back at Voron. Okay?”

“Okay.”

Three deep blue shadows followed them in the icy corridor: Daniel’s, Rosa’s and the ever-present Anatoly’s. Their footsteps were soft, the icy music chased their shadows. Sculptures in ice lined the corridors: wolves, foxes, owls. Dazzling wheels of icicles hung like chandeliers. For a long time, it seemed that they would hear and see nothing more than inanimate objects. Then Daniel stopped.

“Can you hear something?” he said.

Rosa tuned into her hearing, and thought she could make out a faint sighing reverberating down the corridor.

“That way,” she said, indicating the entrance to a tunnel on the right. “It sounds like—”

“Somebody crying,” Daniel said.

As they drew closer, Rosa agreed. “Crying, or moaning in pain.” She remembered the magic mirror Grigory had been watching, the night she slept in his cottage. Similar sounds had come from its gleaming surface. “There, on the left. Do you see an opening?”

“I do, but it doesn’t look inviting.”

Away from the main thoroughfares of the ice palace, the ceiling was much lower, the icicles dimmer. Rosa’s flesh prickled under the distinct sense that something unpleasant or unnatural was nearby. She squeezed Daniel’s hand and realised she was holding her breath.

“Stay close,” she said.

He nodded.

“Let’s go and see her.”

The doorway drew closer. The moans and cries grew louder. Heart in her mouth, Rosa tentatively peered around the threshold for her first glimpse of the Snow Witch.

“Oh,” Rosa gasped.

No evil queen sitting on a throne carved of ice. Instead, a bed of stained straw laid on the frozen ground. Lying on it was the
prostrate figure of a young woman in a champagne-coloured dress. Rosa inched into the room, pulling Daniel behind her. She moved closer to the straw bed, gazing down. The woman’s dress was torn and bloodstained. Blood was matted into her fair hair, her lips were blue and her eyes rolled back in her head.

“Is she alive?” Daniel whispered. His words echoed softly in the dark chamber.

In confirmation, the woman contorted and groaned, her eyelids fluttering.

“Ah, ah,” she cried. “Ah, dear God, an end. An end!” Then she lapsed again into stillness, except for the rough rise and fall of her chest. She moaned softly, her breath misting on the air.

“I don’t understand,” Rosa said. “This is the Snow Witch?”

“Perhaps it’s not. Perhaps it’s one of her victims.” Daniel moved closer. “She’s only young, a teenager. How did she get these wounds?”

Rosa moved to Daniel’s side, her heart contracting in sympathy with the woman’s pain. Human suffering always made her feel stripped bare. No matter how many films and television shows worked to desensitise her, the real thing, with all its existential weight, always gutted her. Veles’ words came back to her:
Once you see her, all will be clear.

“No, no, Daniel. This is her. I’m certain of it.” She released Daniel’s hand and crouched next to the bed to touch the woman’s wrist. It was ice-cold. “That’s what Perun and Veles were trying to tell me. Grigory hasn’t been honest. This is no nightmare creature.”

Daniel met her gaze across the room. “This is no nightmare?” he asked. “Kept in a freezing room, injured and bloody, with no relief from pain?” Suddenly, his hand flew to his ribs. “Oh. Rosa. Something’s happening with the bear.”

“Stand back,” Rosa said, hurrying to his side. “She’s pulling it towards her.”

“Why don’t we just give it to her? It might stop her crying.”

“Don’t be foolish. We don’t know the whole story. We should get back.”

“Listen to Rosa!” This was a new voice in the room, and Rosa whirled around to see Papa Grigory standing at the entrance.
Except he looked different. His hair was white and his face was haggard, as though he’d aged ten years since she had last seen him.

Rosa blocked Grigory’s path to Daniel. “Leave Daniel alone,” she said. “He has nothing to do with this.”

“Pish! I’m not going to hurt anyone,” Grigory said, advancing towards them. “Just give me that damned bear, and everything will be fine.”

“Explain this first.”

Grigory lunged, and Rosa thrust Daniel away, pushing him out the door.

“Run!” she shouted, doing the same thing herself, in the opposite direction to Daniel. Grigory paused in the corridor, trying to decide which one of them had the bear. Daniel was moving swiftly up the corridor. Grigory was turning his attention that way.

“The Golden Bear is mine to keep,” Rosa stopped and called. He hesitated, turned to her.

“Rosa. What’s all this nonsense?”

“I’m not giving it back,” she said, and started to run.

Then he was barrelling down the corridor towards her, his advanced age no handicap, and she was flying away from him. Her feet skidded on the ice and snow as she wove through the tunnels of the Snow Witch’s palace. Up ahead, she could see daylight, so she ran directly for it, emerging from the icy half-light into full sun. Before her spread a frozen lake. She paused, wary.

He was right behind her.

She put her foot on the ice, and picked her way over it, towards the other side.

Grigory had pulled up on the edge. “Rosa, what are you doing?”

“Running away from you.”

“You, of all people, know how dangerous the ice can be.”
Crack.
A split in the ice fissured in a crooked line ahead of her. Its awful creak echoed in her memory, all the way back to the night her father died. She pulled up sharply, turned.

“Did you do that?”

In answer, another crack appeared beside her.

“Stop it,” she said. “Let me go.”

He had her trapped on the ice, and he moved towards her deliberately and unhurriedly. No matter. Daniel had the bear. He
would climb into Voron and get away from here. Wouldn’t he? Her body was trembling all over, even though the sarafan kept her blood warm.

“As I see it, you have three choices,” he said as he drew closer. “You can die like your father, you can die like your mother, or you can listen to me and have your wish. Do you understand?”

“Who is she?” Rosa asked. She swallowed hard, thinking of the poor soul suffering inside the palace. She raised a hand and pointed back the way she had come. “Who is that?”