The Republic of Birds

by Jessica Miller

  ‘Maps,’ comes a hoarse voice from across the room.

  Londonov lurches towards me and pulls a piece of paper from inside his jacket. He drops it into my lap. ‘Maps,’ he says again. ‘Here’s a map for you.’

  I unfold the map carefully and study it in amazement. ‘You did it,’ I say. ‘It was supposed to be impossible, but you did it!’

  ‘What’s he done?’ Devora asks.

  ‘Mapped the Unmappable Blank! Are you sure, quite sure, that I should have this?’

  But Londonov has already shambled away. ‘Maps,’ he says softly, from the corner of the hut where he stands next to the broom.

  ‘Mapping the Unmappable Blank…’ muses Devora. ‘I guess that’s what he was doing when I found him all the way out there,’ she gestures to the white landscape through the window.

  I sit up straight. ‘Were you out in the Blank?’ I ask sharply.

  Devora’s eyes turn misty and faraway. ‘That’s right,’ she says. ‘I was wandering much deeper into the Blank for—well, for certain reasons, shall we say. I was charged with hiding something rather important.’

  ‘Hiding something?’ I say, leaning forward on the ottoman. I think I know what Devora was hiding.

  Devora thins her lips. ‘Oh, yes,’ she says at last, ‘it was a very important task. I had to conceal—how should I put this?—an object. An object that many people wanted to hatch.’

  I am careful to keep my voice light—almost bored—when I ask, ‘Where exactly did you find Londonov?’ And I push the map towards her.

  She presses a blue-tinged fingernail into the centre of the map. ‘There,’ she says.

  ‘Somewhere around there?’ I ask.

  ‘No,’ she is firm. ‘There exactly.’ She points again, then curses under her breath, as her finger crumbles away.

  There’s only one reason I can think of for Devora travelling so far into the Unmappable Blank. She must have been hiding the egg when she stumbled across Londonov. There’s no better place to start looking than the place on the map Devora has just pointed to. While she is distracted by the business of reattaching her finger to her hand, I scan the cluttered table, and, underneath the plate of biscuits, I see a greasy pencil stub. I take it and mark the map with an X, and then drop the stub into my pocket.

  Londonov notices and I see a flicker of understanding light up his eyes.

  I trace my finger over the X. As I do, I feel ice-sharp cold. I taste snow. I see white. I pull my finger quickly away.

  I look up and everything is still. Devora has fallen asleep under a mound of blankets and is snoring like the dead. Londonov is back in his armchair, snoring like the dead, too, but technically he is the dead, so I suppose that’s how he should snore. Even the spiders are still and silent in the hut’s corners.

  My finger moves back to the map. I place my whole hand over the X. At once, coldness travels through my palm, up my arm, down my spine—I feel like my blood is on the brink of freezing. Cottony whiteness fills my view. But it’s not the blank white I saw the last time I tried to find my way into the Unmappable Blank—I guess, because the Blank isn’t unmapped anymore. This whiteness is bright and real, and I’m standing in it.

  I push forward but each step is a strain. I search my mind for feelings and memories that I can use to anchor myself, but I feel like my brain is leaking, like I’m disappearing.

  I pull my hand away from the map. What did Basha say about pushing too hard? I will have to strike out into the Blank for real.

  I fold up the map. I pull on my coat and my gloves, and I creep to the door, hardly making a sound. Until—

  Creak!

  I’ve stepped on the wrong floorboard. With my breath tight in my throat, I scan the hut. Devora is still snoring under her blankets. Londonov is still slumped in the armchair by the fire.

  But his eyes have snapped open.

  And he is staring straight at me.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Searching the Blank

  I LOOK AT LONDONOV.

  Londonov looks back, unblinking. He points to the map in my hand, and he hauls himself out of his armchair and lumbers out of the door, out into the snow. I watch through the window, confused, but then he turns and beckons for me to join him. I go outside and Londonov points up to a star, one that shines bigger and brighter than all the others.

  Of course! The North Star. All the cartographers—not just Londonov, but Golovnin and Pavlev and Karelin, too—navigated by it at night. It’s very kind of him to show me, but it’s not enough: I couldn’t find my way in the Blank with only a star to guide me.

  ‘Thank you,’ I start, ‘but—’

  He holds a finger to his lips, then takes my hand and presses something into it: something cold and hard and gold.

  A compass.

  I’ve never held a compass before, let alone worked one. But I remember Great Names in Tsarish Cartography, Chapter Eleven: ‘Plozhny’s Last Attempt to Traverse the Taiga’. It was one of the most boring chapters, because, in his letters and journals, Plozhny never wrote about exciting things like getting stuck in quicksand or racing to cross a frozen lake before the ice cracked. But he did write about compasses, and magnetic north, and degrees, and orienting arrows.

  I line the compass up so North faces the North Star then I twist the compass dial so that the orienting arrow and the magnetic arrow line up. Then I turn the map to match. And now I know I must travel east to find my way to the X on the map.

  I am ready to strike out into the snow, when Londonov scuffs through a snowbank some way, then turns around and jerks his head. He means for me to follow him. He walks to where the white dogs were sleeping against an enormous snowdrift. Now they are awake, yelping and bright-eyed. They run around Londonov and tussle together in sprays of snow.

  Meanwhile, Londonov is attacking the snowdrift, kicking it with his big boots and taking wild swipes at it with his arms. The snow falls away in a sheet, and underneath it is a sled.

  My breath catches.

  A sled. It is crusted with ice, but it is a sled all the same.

  Londonov brushes the rest of the snow away and I run my hand carefully over its bow, then up its rails, all the way to the handlebar. ‘It’s yours isn’t it?’ I say. ‘This is the sled you took on your expedition.’

  He smiles. Then he points at me. ‘Yours now,’ he says. He gives a long low whistle and the tumbling, tail-wagging tangle of dogs forms a neat pack of six sled-dogs, who obediently allow themselves to be harnessed. Londonov shows me how to jog the reins, and how to press on the footbrake to bring the sled to a halt.

  I clap my hand to my mouth. ‘You know,’ I say, ‘in any other circumstances, this would be a dream come true. Boris Londonov, letting me take his sled out into the Unmappable Blank.’

  Londonov looks at me, faintly puzzled. But somehow this only makes it easier to keep talking. ‘Of course, ideally, Mira wouldn’t be held hostage in the Republic of Birds,’ I say. ‘And you’d be…well, slightly more alive than you are now. But alive or not, you’re one of my heroes. I’ve memorised all your letters, all your journals. I’ve read your account of summitting Mount Zenith so many times I almost feel like I was there with you. And now I’m going to ride through the Blank on a sled—your sled.’

  Londonov gives me a wry, slow smile.

  ‘It’s almost like I’m going on a cartographer’s expedition myself,’ I say. ‘Only, I’m not drawing up a map, or finding a treasure. I’m looking’—I lower my voice—‘for something that shouldn’t be found. But, if I find it, I hope you’ll understand why I did it—you and Devora.’

  Londonov points out into the Blank. ‘Go,’ he says.

  I plant my feet on the foot board. I button my collar tight and clutch the reins in my gloved hands. I turn to Londonov. ‘Thank you,’ I say.

  ‘Go,’ he says again.

  I jog the reins and the frozen ground slides out from under me as the dogs take off through the snow, bounding east, further into t
he Blank.

  I go and I don’t look back—at least, not until the hut is just a blurred, faraway shape. Maybe my eyes trick me, but I think I see another faraway shape beside it, even smaller and more blurred. It looks like Londonov is still out there, watching me as I make my way deeper and deeper into the Blank.

  And then it is just me, alone. I feel the wild thrill of speeding through the snow behind a pack of excited dogs. I feel the night rushing by and the snow spraying up each side of the sled, as we cut through the Blank’s whiteness.

  For a time, the sky is bright with stars. One by one, they start to fade then disappear. The sky turns hazy grey, then dull pink. I travel on until the sun is rising, red and small and distant, before me on the horizon.

  In the light of day, I see just how white, and wide, and vast the Blank is—and I sense just how small I am in it. I try to push away the feeling that the Blank is swallowing me up.

  I distract myself with practicalities. Without the North Star to guide me now that it’s morning, I need to orientate myself with Londonov’s compass so that I keep heading eastward. I look down at its quavering golden arrow as the sled pelts through the snow.

  Londonov’s map of the Blank is rough. Its landmarks are few. But, after a while, I start to pick them out. A frozen lake. An icy ridge. With each new feature, I can orient myself better, adjust my navigation. As I go, and as my eyes become more used to the whiteness, I pick out things not yet marked on the map. Caves and ice-fields. Even, in the distance, mountains and glaciers.

  I stop to let the dogs rest. I stretch. My legs are tight and my hands are clawed from gripping the sled’s handle. I wriggle my fingers until I can move them properly again and then I find the stubbed pencil in my pocket.

  I mark the lake and the ridge and the caves and the mountains on the map. I’m sure Londonov won’t mind. It’s only a small patch of the Blank’s expanse, but I feel proud to add these details. I try to ignore the spark I feel when my fingers meet the paper, but the excitement charges through my body and energises me all the same.

  With the sun full in the sky, I check the compass once more to make sure that I am going the right way. I should be getting close to the X now.

  The problem with an X is that it is easy to draw on a map and much, much harder to locate in reality. My hands are hurting and my legs are cramped and I am cold—the thin slice of my face that is exposed between my hat and my collar feels like it might fall off.

  When I finally get there, the place where my map is marked with an X is nothing but the flat, snow-covered plain. I stare hard at the plain around me, feeling myself getting colder and colder. Then I notice a faint warmth coming from the memory bag. It is the feather that the smugglers gave me. I take it out of the bag. It has turned from brown to coppery to vivid gold, the colour of sunlight. And it is as warm as sunshine, too. I turn the feather from side to side, wondering why it is acting so strangely. But strange or not, it is wonderfully hot. I tuck it into my glove to keep at least one hand warm.

  I unharness the dogs. One after the other, they flop in a panting heap by the sled. I look at them enviously. I want to flop, too. But I remember Londonov’s frostbitten nose and I shudder. The best way to keep warm, I tell myself, is to keep moving. And though this might look like a frozen wasteland, somewhere inside it, under one of its folds of snow, I know the egg is hidden.

  I pace the Blank in ever-widening circles, looking for something—some small sign—that will lead me to the egg.

  I walk until the sun is low and night is creeping in. I find nothing. And I sink between the sleeping dogs and their comforting warmth, pushing my face into their pillowy white fur. And I sob.

  It wasn’t that I was sure I would find the egg—but I was, I realise now, hoping to find it. There’s no hope left anymore. For me, or for Mira.

  I nestle in closer to the largest of the dogs. Night has fallen properly, and the snow is dark and shadowed. I slip into a dreamless sleep.

  Long before the sun edges over the horizon, I wake, and I start my search again. I search for hours, while the sun climbs over the horizon. My muscles ache and every part of me except my hand in the glove with the feather is bone-deep cold.

  I turn back to the sled. I have now been two days in the Unmappable Blank. I haven’t found the egg. I have failed to rescue Mira.

  Slowly, sadly, I harness the dogs, take out the compass and point the sled back in the direction of Ptashkagrad.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  The Firebird’s Egg

  WE SPEED ACROSS the snow. The sun is well above the horizon now and its rays turn the white plains an icy pink. The dogs fall into a pattering rhythm and I relax the reins. Their panting and grunting and the soft spray of snow are the only sounds out here, and I am left alone with my thoughts.

  I had set out from the Imperial Centre for Avian Observation with no plan at all, just the idea that I would find Mira. I never thought about how I would do it. I just kept going, knowing it was the only thing I could do. Have I been completely foolish? Perhaps, also a little bit brave?

  Everything has unravelled, and I am returning to Ptashka empty-handed. I don’t know what will happen to Mira. Or what will happen to me.

  But if I had found the egg, I would be delivering it straight into the hands of Tsaretsvo’s enemy—and who knows what harm Ptashka could wreak with a firebird at her side? Surely it’s better that it stays hidden. If only Golovnin had just left it where it was in the first place. Stupid cartographers, I think bitterly.

  Hours pass before I see Ptashkagrad on the horizon. Soon the sky above me is swirling with birds. I jog the reins and the dogs go faster, kicking up flurries of snow.

  Then, from high overhead, one folds its wings and dives, direct and purposeful, towards me. I tense with fear and grip the reins.

  Wings wide and talons outstretched, the bird wrenches me from the sled. Its talons tear at my shoulders and its wings beat hard as it lifts me into the sky.

  The dogs bark and jump up, snatching at the hem of my coat with their teeth, and trying to pull me back into the sled. I reach for them, but I’m already too far above them.

  As I am dragged higher and higher, I watch them leaping and straining. I shout at them to go back, but my voice is lost in the icy air.

  The cold wind stings my eyes as we speed through the sky towards Ptashkagrad. The bird holds me tight, its talons almost piercing my coat. Its power is terrifying.

  Am I being taken back to Ptashka? And, if I am, what will happen when she finds I have returned without the egg?

  At last, the bird starts to glide. We descend smoothly through clouds and over rooftops, and soon I see Ptashka’s nest with its bright flag and firebird banners and its dark guard birds. The birds shuffle aside as we swoop towards the nest.

  I see Ptashka herself and, beside her, is Mira. My breath catches, my heart skips, and a sob, or perhaps a laugh, rises up from the back of my throat.

  She calls out. ‘Olga!’ And her face is a mixture of amazement and calm, as if she had known all along that I would come for her.

  But she doesn’t know that I have failed.

  The bird releases its talons from my shoulders and I tumble into the nest. I reach for Mira, clumsy and stumbling, but the wing of a guard bird folds out in front of me, pushing me back and blocking Mira from my sight.

  ‘As you can see,’ says Ptashka, ‘I’ve kept my promise. Your sister is here, and ready to go home with you. But you’ll only get her back if you’ve kept your promise. Have you brought me the egg?’

  What can I do? I must admit to Ptashka that I haven’t got it. And what happens after that? I feel certain I will never see Mira again. I try and keep my voice steady.

  ‘Let me see her properly,’ I say, buying some time.

  Ptashka nods and the guard bird pulls back its wing.

  Mira has always been slender, but now she is thin, and she looks weak. And under her eyes are bags as dark and swollen as bruises. Her hair, which used
to be dandelion-soft, is like dirty straw. She pulls at the end of her plait with her fingers.

  Another nod from Ptashka and the guard bird’s wing spreads like a feathered wall between us. And now my time has run out. Our time has run out.

  It was for the best, I tell myself, that I didn’t find the egg. It was for the best that I am not going to place a powerful weapon straight into the possession of the birds. Maybe not for my best, maybe not for Mira’s best—but for the best, whatever that is.

  ‘Well,’ says Ptashka, her eyes darting from mine to the memory bag. ‘Do you have it?’

  I look down at my hands, in their snow-streaked, sweat-stained gloves. And I see a bristle of feather peeking out of my left glove. It’s not gold anymore. It’s the colour of molten lava, the colour of the centre of a candle flame, the colour of the brightest coals in the stove in the banya. The colour of fire.

  And it is giving off sparks!

  I look up at the firebird banners fluttering around the nest. There are hundreds of them. Hundreds of birds, with hundreds of fire-coloured tail feathers. And I realise they are the same as the feather the Fedors gave me. The feather they thought was useless is a firebird’s tail feather.

  Ptashka is looking at me, her head tilted to the side, expectant.

  Mira twists her plait tighter around her finger.

  ‘Yes,’ I lie. I feel almost sick with nerves as the word leaves my lips.

  Ptashka’s eyes glint and flash again to the memory bag.

  ‘Yes,’ I say again, as I pull off my gloves and shove them into my pocket.

  A plan is forming in my mind. It’s a desperate plan and I don’t know whether I can make it work. But I know I have to try it, even though it might not work, even though it could mean losing my magic. No. There’s no point thinking about it. I have no other choice. I must try.

  Ptashka’s voice is soft and menacing. ‘Give me the egg, Olga.’

  I reach inside the memory bag and take out Londonov’s map and, with shaking hands, I unfold it as quickly as I can.