The Republic of Birds

by Jessica Miller

  Masha ladles water over the stove, and a cloud of steam arises, warm and pine-scented. The knots in my muscles start to unravel. The tension eases in my joints. Masha brings a dish of soapy water and, while I scrub myself, she works through the tangles in my hair.

  It takes so long to get me clean that the fire in the stove burns low. With a throat-clearing noise, Masha bends over it, and belches out a neat cloud of flame. Then she turns to me and, through a cloud of ash, says, ‘I suppose you’re not so much impressed by that anymore.’ Her eyes twinkle. ‘Once you’ve ridden a firebird, my own modest fire-breathing must seem quite tame.’

  I stiffen. We were seen, after all. ‘Masha,’ I warn, ‘you can’t tell anyone. If Father found out, or Pritnip—’

  ‘I won’t tell anyone,’ she says, then she shrugs. ‘Besides, who’d believe me if I did?’

  She spills another dish of warm soapy water over my shoulders. ‘But I have to tell you, Olga, that golden bird lighting up the sky, you astride it, your face aglow—you were glorious.’ She takes my hand in hers and starts working at the dirt embedded under my fingernails with a scrubbing brush. ‘I always knew you were…that way,’ she says.

  ‘A yaga, you mean?’ I ask.

  She nods. ‘I only have a pinch of magic, myself,’ she says, ‘but I have enough to recognise it when I see it in someone else.’

  I look down. ‘But I lost my magic, Masha. I’m not a yaga anymore. I’m back to being the way I was before. Ordinary Olga.’

  Masha clicks her tongue. ‘Not a yaga? And I suppose if I lost the ability to do this’—she clicks her fingers and a spray of glistening soap bubbles appears in the air—‘then I’d just stop being a Bannikha!’

  ‘Well…wouldn’t you?’ I ask.

  She looks crafty. ‘Tell me this, then,’ she says. ‘Did that firebird just appear out of nowhere?’

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘It hatched. Out of an egg.’

  ‘And who hatched it?’ she asks.

  ‘Well…I did.’

  ‘And do you suppose anyone but a yaga could have hatched that egg?’

  ‘No,’ I say.

  ‘And do you suppose anyone but a yaga could have hopped up on the firebird’s back and ridden it home?’

  ‘Well…probably not.’ I feel the start of a smile at the corners of my mouth.

  ‘You’re a yaga, Olga,’ she says. ‘A yaga is simply what you are. Magic will always be a part of who you are. Now, put out your foot, Olga dear, I’ve just seen the state of your toenails. Anyone would think you’d walked into the Republic barefoot!’

  Later that afternoon, I sit with Father and Pritnip on the observation deck, and I tell them the story of my journey into the Republic from beginning to end. Well, I leave out some parts. Like the bit where I was carried by a yaga’s hut to the Bleak Steppe Finishing School for Girls of Unusual Ability, the bit where I learned magic. And the part where I ventured into the Unmappable Blank to search for the firebird’s egg. I certainly don’t tell them about finding the firebird’s egg, hatching it or riding the firebird out of the Republic.

  So, it might be more accurate to say that I sit with Father and Pritnip on the observation deck and give them a few carefully chosen anecdotes extracted from my journey.

  Nevertheless, they are pleased with my account, and Father writes it all down in an Intelligence Briefing and sends it to Tsarina Yekaterina at the Stone Palace. And Tsarina Yekaterina is pleased, too. So pleased that, later that evening, Father receives a telegram:

  TSARINA YEKATERINA CHARGES ME TO CONGRATULATE YOU ON FIRST-RATE INTELLIGENCE STOP OBLOMOV YOU HAVE EXCEEDED EXPECTATIONS AS CHIEF AVIAN INTELLIGENCE OFFICER STOP IN REWARD HER IMPERIAL HIGHNESS WISHES TO REINSTATE YOU AS CHIEF ARCHITECT OF SKY METRO STOP A MILITARY ESCORT WILL ACCOMPANY YOU BACK TO STOLITSA AT YOUR EARLIEST CONVENIENCE STOP RESPECTFULLY YOURS IMPERIAL UNDER SECRETARY IVAN DEMENTIEVICH

  Father reads it to us at the dinner table. Anastasia makes him repeat it three times.

  When he finishes, she weeps into her soup and, through her hiccoughs and tears, she says, ‘At last! At last, we’re going home!’ She is so happy that I almost feel happy, too.

  And now, the day is here. We’re finally leaving the Imperial Centre for Avian Observation and going home. Though Stolitsa doesn’t feel like home for me. But if Stolitsa isn’t home, where is? The Centre, where there’s nothing to eat except mushrooms? Bleak Steppe, where yagas learn to use their magical abilities? I think for a while of what I could have learned if I had stayed there, but then I push the thought away. I used my magic to save Mira—what better use of magic could there be?

  There is a knock at the door and I feel a tugging pain in my chest. Is the escort here, already?

  Anastasia rushes to answer the knocking. She has hovered by the window all day, with a smile dancing at her lips. She can’t wait to leave.

  She manages to keep the smile on her face when the door opens to Glafira, Luda and Varvara, instead of the soldiers she was hoping for.

  ‘We’ve come to say goodbye,’ says Glafira.

  ‘And to wish you a pleasant journey,’ adds Luda.

  ‘Oh, the journey will be pleasant enough,’ says Varvara, ‘except for a two-hour delay at Strezhevoy, and an inexplicably bad odour in the train carriage.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ says Anastasia. ‘I do hope there’s some way to avoid the bad odour.’

  ‘There isn’t,’ says Varvara firmly. ‘In fact—’

  Anastasia quickly interjects. ‘Would you care for tea?’ she says.

  Soon, the ladies are seated and supplied with tea.

  ‘We’ll certainly miss you,’ says Luda. She looks at Mira and me. ‘You’ve only just got back, and now you’re leaving again.’

  ‘It’s a miracle you got back at all,’ says Glafira darkly. ‘We thought for certain you were lost.’

  ‘It wasn’t a miracle,’ says Mira. ‘It was Olga.’

  I look down into my teacup so no one sees me blush.

  ‘Oh, Olga,’ sighs Luda. ‘It seems impossible. Pritnip and his soldiers tried and tried to bring Mira back—and you succeeded where they failed! I can’t think how you did it.’

  ‘I can,’ says Varvara, with a satisfied smile.

  Thankfully, no one seems to hear her.

  Then Glafira, fiddling with the handle of her teacup, shyly begins to ask, ‘We did wonder…’

  ‘Yes?’ asks Anastasia.

  ‘We did wonder…’ Glafira begins again.

  ‘If perhaps,’ continues Luda, ‘Mira wouldn’t mind—it’s just that we’ll miss her dancing so, and—’

  Here, Luda stops, because Mira is already on her feet and clearing a space in the middle of the room.

  And then she dances. She waves her arms this way and that, head swaying like a flower on a stalk, and she leaps into the air and hangs there so long, it’s more like she’s floating. She flies like she’s a bird.

  Luda and Glafira and Anastasia all coo and aah. But I find myself gritting my teeth, trying to keep the familiar acid of envy from rising up in my throat. But how can I be envious of Mira, now? How can I resent her after everything I did to save her?

  ‘Oh,’ says Varvara, ‘the two are quite compatible.’

  I place my tea on the table and turn to her. ‘What do you mean?’ I ask.

  She waves a hand airily. ‘Love. Envy. One doesn’t magically cancel out the other, you know.’

  ‘And envying someone doesn’t mean you don’t love them,’ I say dully. ‘I suppose you’re right.’

  ‘Well, of course I’m right,’ she says. ‘I’m not in the habit of being wrong. And I expect you’re feeling especially envious right now, Olga.’

  I make my voice low. ‘It’s just that for so long I thought Mira was the only special one, the only talented one. And then I finally found something I was good at—great at. But now it’s gone,’ I say as I fiddle with the hem of my skirt. ‘I don’t know if I’m still a—’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ she says impatiently
. Then she whispers, ‘Of course you’re still a yaga, just as Masha told you. Besides, there’s more than one kind of magic. And there’s no need to tell me you don’t know if you want to go back to Stolitsa because don’t feel you fit there now. But be honest, Olga—did you fit there to begin with?’

  I shake my head.

  ‘You’re a yaga,’ she says again, ‘and that will never change. So, if you feel you don’t fit somewhere’—she takes my wrist—‘change it until it fits you.’

  There is a flurry of noise and activity under the window. Mira stops mid-arabesque. Anastasia rushes to the door. ‘They’re here!’ she calls. ‘Aleksei, they’re here at last!’

  Varvara still holds my wrist. ‘You don’t need to fit Stolitsa,’ she says urgently. ‘Stolitsa needs to fit you.’

  I thank Varvara and ease my wrist out of her grip. I am putting my arm into the sleeve of my coat when I realise I still have her memory bag. ‘Varvara,’ I say and I hand it over. ‘Thank you—it was very helpful. More helpful than you imagined.’

  ‘It was exactly as helpful as I knew it would be, thank you, Olga,’ she says and she takes the bag. She opens it and inspects its contents. ‘Here,’ she says, checking that no one can see her as she gives me the firebird’s tail feather. It has dulled now to the same ordinary brown it was when I first saw it at the feather-smugglers’ camp, but I’m sure I can still see a faint glow around its edges.

  ‘Keep it,’ says Varvara. ‘You never know when it might come in useful.’

  I slip the feather in my pocket. Anastasia and Father are already at the bottom of the ladder and Mira is climbing down, too. I turn to leave when Varvara cries, ‘Wait! This too, Olga. These are yours.’ She takes Londonov’s map and compass out of the memory bag.

  I unfold the map, and turn it over in my hands. It is Londonov’s map, but it has my marks and notes and changes on it too. I put it in my pocket with the compass and the feather.

  ‘I’m sure you’ll know what to do with them,’ Varvara says, as I start down the ladder.

  EPILOGUE

  Home

  SINCE OUR RETURN to Stolitsa six days ago, Father has been busy redrafting plans for the Sky Metro. He is in Tsarina Yekaterina’s favour once more, and this time we all hope he stays there. Mira has been just as busy, rehearsing for her role in Diazhilov’s new ballet. Anastasia keeps herself occupied, too. Mostly running her fingers over her mahogany tables and her mother-of-pearl combs and her porcelain salt shakers, as if she is trying to convince herself that they are real—that she is really, truly back in Stolitsa.

  Today, I am sitting in the Birch Forest Tea Room, high above Stolitsa’s rooftops. The walls of the Tea Room are lined with mirrors that reflect the steaming samovars and the white-jacketed waiters steering cake trolleys between tables. Each mirror’s reflection is thrown back by the mirror opposite, so the steam and trolleys and tables stretch out to infinity, and the Birch Forest Tea Room seems to contain the whole world. Though the world I know now is far bigger and wilder and stranger than anything the Birch Forest Tea Room could hold.

  Across the table from me, snapping her fingers for service, sits Anastasia. Once she has secured the attentions of a waiter, she turns back to me.

  Her lips are twitching. She can’t contain the smile that breaks open over her face. ‘Oh, it’s too wonderful, Olga!’ She reaches over the table in a jangle of bracelets and necklaces and clutches my hand. ‘I’ve spoken this very morning with Boris Lavrov,’ she goes on, ‘and Studio Kino-Otleechno has decided to make a movie. Of us!’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I say, reaching for another cake. ‘Of us?’

  ‘Is that your third cake, Olga? We haven’t been here more than ten minutes!’

  I blow on my tea, and ignore her comment about the cake.

  ‘It’s a most cinematic story, you must agree,’ she continues. ‘It begins with exile, with Stolitsa’s most graceful Spring Blossom ripped away from the city, and sent, along with her family—handsome father, charming younger sister, elegant, admired, beautiful stepmother—’

  ‘Modest stepmother,’ I mutter into my cup.

  ‘—into exile in the Borderlands! Though they’ll use a studio set for the Borderlands, of course. Disaster strikes when the younger sister is kidnapped by birds and—well, then the story follows your adventure. Boris Lavrov says Studio Kino-Otleechno is convinced it will be a smash hit! And why not? It’s got everything!’

  I smile to myself—neither Anastasia nor Studio Kino-Otleechno know the half of it.

  ‘Of course,’ Anastasia continues, ‘it could have ended later, when your Father was officially pardoned, or when we returned to Stolitsa, or when Mira made her debut performance in Diazhilov’s new ballet production.’

  ‘What are they planning to call this movie?’

  ‘Well,’ she smiles, ‘the working title is Travels in the Land of the Birds: The Tale of a True Heroine.’

  ‘A true heroine?’ I ask. ‘Is that referring to—’

  ‘To you, Olga! You’re the heroine, of course! Though, technically, it refers to me.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Well’—she plucks at a strand of pearls at her neck and looks down at them, smiling—‘Lavrov says that with the right lighting and make-up I can pass for a much younger woman, and…he’s offered me the part of Olga. I’m to play you! In my long-awaited comeback to Tsaretsvo’s silver screen! Isn’t that exciting? What do you think?’

  Anastasia is just as exasperating now as she was before we were exiled, before I went into the Republic of Birds—but when I think of how I used to resent her, I feel ashamed. I remember how she cut up her snowy white mink so I could stay warm on my journey.

  Now she is studying my face carefully, almost anxiously, waiting for my reaction.

  ‘I think that’s wonderful,’ I say warmly.

  ‘It is wonderful, isn’t it,’ she says. ‘And it’s wonderful that Aleksei is Head Architect at the Sky Metro again—two weeks, he says, and they’ll be ready to open. And wonderful that Mira is rehearsing for her first part with Diazhilov’s ballet company. And you, Olga,’ she says brightly, ‘You’re just…just wonderful, too.’

  Anastasia can’t think of anything particularly special about me, but I don’t mind. I know what I’m capable of doing—and I know just what I’m going to do next, too.

  After our tea and cakes, we ride back through the streets of Stolitsa. I watch the buildings through the window of our taxi. As we pass the Imperial Society for Cartography, I press my hand against the window, as if I could touch it through the glass. Before we left Stolitsa for the Imperial Centre for Avian Observation, I could never have imagined walking through those gates. But since then, I’ve done all kinds of things beyond my imagining. And tomorrow I’m going to walk right through those gates and knock on the door.

  Later, in my bedroom, I take Londonov’s map out from under my pillow and press my hand to it. I feel—nothing. Just paper, dull and flat. I’ll never feel a map coming to life beneath my hands again, never travel through a map to a distant place.

  But I’m still a yaga. And though my magic might take a more ordinary form, now, I’m sure it’s still there.

  I take out the second paper that is folded under my pillow and spread it open across the bed. It is a good map, and it is just about finished. It shows part of the outline of the Unmappable Blank, with the landmarks Londonov plotted and the features I found, too. It charts, for the first time, the Between, the place between the Borderlands of the Tsardom and the Republic. It shows Ptashkagrad and the surrounding plains, the High Stikhlos, the Low Stikhlos, the Infinite Steppe and the winding River Dezhdy. There is a neat border around its edge and a compass rose in the corner. All that is missing is a title.

  I lean over the paper and across the top I write: ‘Map of a Journey into the Republic of Birds’.

  There. I hold it up. Still, I’m not quite satisfied. I bend down to write three more words in the map’s bottom corner:


  Olga Oblomova, Cartographer.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thank you to everyone at Text, with special thanks to Jane Pearson, whose wise and inspired edits were my map through this story. Thank you to Imogen Stubbs for the luminous cover design, and Manuel Šumberac for the gorgeous illustration.

  Thank you to Catherine Drayton and Claire Friedman at Inkwell for their invaluable guidance.

  Thank you to the School of Communication and the Arts at the University of Queensland, especially Dr Kim Wilkins and Dr Natalie Collie.

  Thank you to my writerly friends in Berlin: Jane, Sharon, Som-Mai, Anna, Sarah, Dunja, Jan, Tihana, Erin and Lesley.

  Thank you, Miller family for reading and/or encouraging this story, and to Charlotte for her maps.

  This book was written over many years, and in many different parts of the world, but one person was with me through all of it—thank you, Tim.

  Jessica Miller grew up in Brisbane and now lives in Berlin. Her debut novel, Elizabeth and Zenobia, was shortlisted for the Text Prize and the Readings Children’s Books Prize. It was commended as a CBCA Notable Book and named one of Kirkus Reviews’ Best Middle Grade Books for 2017.

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