The Breathing Sea II - Drowning

by E. P. Clark

  “They’ll let her stay, my head for beheading,” said Oleg. “At the very least, they won’t turn her out into the woods. We’ll be gone three or four days, no more, and back in plenty of time to set off with the rest of you for Pristanograd. We can bring them Pyatnyshki,” he added to Dasha. “As a gift. That will sweeten them towards you, not that it’ll be needed.”

  “I don’t want to give her up,” said Dasha. “I don’t want to give her as a gift to someone who won’t take care of her.”

  “They’ll take care of her. It’ll be a good life for her, better than anything she’ll find here. Better for her than making the long trek to Pristanograd, and then all the way back to Krasnograd. She’d probably founder completely if you tried.”

  Dasha had to agree, if reluctantly, and so it was decided that they would leave the next morning for the sanctuary of the Sisterhood of the Forest.

  “I hope Vladya agrees,” Aunty Olga told them. “She may not want to let Dasha out of her sight.”

  Oleg laughed. “Vladya may be the ruler of Lesnograd, but she’s not the ruler of me. Nor of Dasha, for that matter. We can come and go as we please.”

  “She may make you wish you hadn’t,” Aunty Olga warned them.

  “She may have all of you trembling in your boots, but we’re not afraid of her, are we, Dasha?” said Oleg.

  “No,” lied Dasha. In truth she was very afraid of Vladya, but the chance to go visit a sanctuary, especially this sanctuary, where her mother had found so much help and council, and where, Dasha was strongly beginning to suspect, she herself had been conceived, was too good to pass up, no matter how much it might displease Vladya. “She’ll understand,” she said, with more conviction than she felt, and went off to pack up her things.

  ***

  There was a sharp disagreement that afternoon between Oleg and Mitya, which Dasha was fortunate enough to witness only the tail end of, over whether or not Dasha should bring the rest of her guards along on this little side-jaunt.

  “If anything happens to the Tsarinovna, Boleslav Vlasiyevich will have our heads,” Mitya said. “And worse things too. I’m not risking it.”

  “I think from Boleslav Vlasiyevich’s point of view, you’ve already forfeited your heads,” Oleg told him, with a smile that Mitya did not return.

  “Will the sanctuary even allow them to enter?” Dasha asked. “I thought they were very strict about not allowing men on their grounds. Or so my mother always told me,” she added, blushing at their sudden attention and the words she had just said.

  “If they’ll allow him”—Mitya pointed at Oleg—“they should allow us as well!”

  “You and I are not quite the same, lad,” said Oleg, looking amused.

  “I don’t want to do anything that might make them turn us away,” said Dasha, but then added quickly, as Mitya swelled with indignation, “but perhaps you could accompany us as far as the edge of the sanctuary?” She turned to Oleg. “Do you think that would offend them?”

  “They keep their own council,” Oleg told her. “But we can try. We’ll see how far they get. The prayer wood may turn them away.”

  “They never had any trouble in the prayer wood in Krasnograd,” said Dasha, puzzled. “Prayer woods are for everyone. And we all made it past the prayer wood surrounding the castrates’ sanctuary, too.”

  “Well, this one is different. Each one is different. But if you’re set on going, lad, you can come. You’ll do just as much good there as you will sitting around with your arms folded here.”

  “All of us should come,” Mitya said, not looking at all pleased at that last remark. “The Tsarinovna should have all her guards with her.”

  “And who will guard Susanna Gulisovna and Svetochka, then?”

  “Svetochka doesn’t need a guard, and there are more than enough guards here to keep Susanna Gulisovna busy—safe. Safe.”

  “What if something were to happen to her? Are you really so willing to risk a breach in relations between Zem’ and Avkhazovskoye?”

  “As you wish,” said Mitya, looking more and more disgusted, as Oleg looked more and more amused. “Seva will stay here with Susanna Gulisovna, and Alik and I will accompany the Tsarinovna.”

  “What do you think, Dasha?” Oleg asked. “They’re your guards, after all. You should dispose of them as you see fit.”

  “Ah…well, I think your plan is sound, Mitya. And I am grateful for the concern you have shown for my safety. We will do as you suggest. But you must be prepared to stay outside of the sanctuary grounds once we arrive.”

  “They should have different rules for the Tsarina or the Tsarinovna,” complained Mitya. “It’s not as if you’re some peasant girl who came stumbling up begging for shelter from a cruel stepfather.”

  “I think part of the point of a sanctuary is that there are no different rules for anyone,” said Dasha. “I’m sure we’ll all be perfectly safe while we’re there. And this way we’ll all be perfectly safe when we return to Krasnograd, and Boleslav Vlasiyevich demands an accounting.” She smiled encouragingly at Mitya, and after a moment he smiled faintly back, although he seemed to find the idea of Boleslav Vlasiyevich demanding an accounting much more terrifying than she did. Well, and that was only fair: he didn’t have to deal with Vladya’s prickliness. They were even, Dasha though, even if Mitya might not see it that way.

  “I’m sure it will all be fine,” she said, with another encouraging smile, and left them to continue their preparations.

  ***

  Since her clothes from Krasnograd still hadn’t been returned to her, and when she asked, she was told that the trousers had been turned into rags and the kaftans were being mended, Dasha had very little to pack. Among the things she did pack was A Compilation of Tales. She thought about asking Aunty Olga or Vladya permission to take it—what if she lost it, or got it wet, and then had to confess what had happened! That would be embarrassing!—but then decided against it. When she imagined doing so, it sounded silly and little-girlish to the ears of her imagination, and if they were to ask her why she wanted to take it with her to the sanctuary, she would be forced to explain, and that would be bad. Vladya would probably be even more scornful of her than she was already, and Aunty Olga would worry about her health and her sanity even more than before if she were to find out that Dasha kept hallucinating that she was reading a different book than she really was. Dasha held up the book and examined it from multiple angles, flipped through all the pages, tried looking at it with one eye, then the other, then with both eyes squinted, but it stubbornly remained A Compilation of Tales, and each individual tale was a proper tale, with no sign of the scholarly descriptions she remembered from her dreams or whatever they had been. She found the tale of Snezhenka again, and shuddered. Why had she found herself reading that tale in particular? What did it mean? Was it true?

  It’s a tale, she told herself. Her tutors had always told her that tales were not “true” in the same way the histories they taught her were. They might—might—be based on things that had happened, but they were distorted by the limited understanding of the people who told them, not like real histories set down by scholars. Priestesses and sorceresses held a different opinion, Dasha knew, but what it was was subject to change, depending on the priestess or sorceress one consulted. Some said they were true tales, just like the histories set down in the scrolls in the Krasnograd library, and some said they were true in the same way that dreams and visions were true. Which was not, Dasha thought, very comforting, when she considered how true her dreams and visions were tending to be.

  The priestesses will tell me something, she assured herself. And maybe there will be a sorceress or two there as well. Sorceresses often spent many of their days in sanctuaries, she knew, even though they weren’t proper sanctuary sisters, because sanctuaries often had libraries, and many sorceresses preferred the quiet of a sanctuary to the bustle of a city. Most of them did not tolerate the presence of other people very well.

  If I had a
magical gift, a real magical gift, like a sorceress, I could retire to a sanctuary too, Dasha thought, even though she knew that wasn’t true. Still, it was fun to pretend, and she spent a while imagining what it would be like to be a sorceress who lived in a sanctuary, or even a sanctuary sister, and what the sanctuary would be like, and what they would find in this prayer wood, that Oleg said was more dangerous and threatening than the prayer wood in Krasnograd. Dasha remembered stumbling around in the melting snow in the Krasnograd prayer wood before they had set off. That had seemed pretty threatening, she had to admit. But could this wood here be any worse than what she had already gone through, when she had left the domovaya and made her way back to the road herself? Surely not! With that bracing thought, Dasha stuffed A Compilation of Tales into her smallest pack, and thought no more about it.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Vladya, predictably, was not pleased with their decision to go to the sanctuary, and made a number of comments about how she wouldn’t wait for them if they were late returning, but Oleg said, with a laugh, that he thought he could find his way to Pristanograd at least as well as she could, which did nothing to sweeten her mood, but made Dasha feel slightly better as they set off the next day in the early morning chill. A heavy mist had settled over Lesnograd in the night, filling the air with a dank closeness and making it impossible to see even to the next bend in the zigzagging street they followed out of the kremlin to the edge of the city.

  Despite that, Dasha felt light and free, glad to leave behind the Lesnograd kremlin and all its squabbles and troubles. “How long a ride is it to the sanctuary?” she asked Oleg, looking around at the streets and buildings disappearing into the mist with interest.

  “On a good day? Less than a single day. With this weather, and with that horse?” He nodded towards Pyatnyshki. “Maybe a day and a half. But we should make better time on the way back.”

  “So we’ll have to spend the night in the woods?” All of a sudden the prayer wood, whose dangers Dasha had dismissed so cavalierly the day before, seemed much more threatening. “Will we have to camp?”

  “Maybe so.”

  Mitya and Alik both groaned.

  “Anyone would think you were pampered princes, not members of the Imperial Guard,” Oleg told them.

  “No one ever said anything about camping in the woods when I was recruited, Oleg Svetoslavovich,” said Alik.

  “I never thought to hear a man from the steppe complain about camping,” said Oleg, his eyebrows raised. “Or are they raising them weaker than they used to?”

  “Camping in the steppe’s one thing, Oleg Svetoslavovich,” Alik said. “The woods are something else.”

  “Lucky for you two mama’s boys that I’m here with you, then,” Oleg told them. Alik and Mitya both snorted at that, but they complained no more about spending the night in the woods, although Dasha could tell that they liked the idea no more than she did. Which was silly! They had all spent the night in the woods before, and it wasn’t even that bad! Or so she could tell herself now, with the prospect so uncertain and distant.

  The fog continued to hang over them, clinging to Dasha’s face and eyelashes and making her hair annoyingly sticky, as they went out the gates and picked up a wide dirt road that led North. Off to the East Dasha could make out a faint glow, and she thought that the sun would soon burn off the mist and clear the air, but they rode at least five versts before the fog began to recede, and even once they could see more than a few paces in front of them, the air remained heavy and close.

  Her few days of rest in the kremlin stables had invigorated Pyatnyshki, or maybe she could sense that she was heading towards a permanent home where she would be treated gently, for she kept pace easily with Poloska and the others, and after ten versts or so Oleg declared that if they kept up their current pace, they would make it to the sanctuary by evening. Everyone cheered up at that thought, and they took only a short rest at midmorning before carrying on.

  They passed a couple of small villages, whose inhabitants all knew Oleg and came out to wave at him and shout out greetings as they passed, and then small collections of cabins that could not be dignified with the name “villages,” and then individual cabins tucked back in the woods, barely visible from the road, and then there were no more cabins at all, only little trails that could have been deer tracks leading off from the main road.

  When they stopped for their midday meal, the spruces and firs stood tall above them, so tall that Dasha could see that this forest had never known the axe. Even though they were protected from the sun, and could only catch glimpses of it here and there, as it rode in the sky directly above them, the air under the trees was still hot and stifling, and Dasha wished for a breeze. She fanned herself as she fed Pyatnyshki and Poloska each a few handfuls of oats—there was no grass for them to graze on, this deep in the woods, only moss and fallen needles—but sweat still ran down her neck and sides, and between her breasts. The men were no cooler, and Alik and Mitya had taken to speaking in whispers, or remaining silent entirely.

  “I wish there were a breeze, at least,” Dasha said, giving Pyatnyshki the last of her oats and scratching behind her ears, only to draw away her hand sticky with sweat.

  A faint breath of wind brushed against her face. Dasha thought it was just a fluke, maybe caused by Pyatnyshki raising her head, but then another, distinctly cool, breath of wind lifted the tendrils of hair that had fallen from her braid out of her face. Dasha shivered, tingles spreading out across her scalp and neck.

  “Oh thank the gods!” Mitya exclaimed.

  “You won’t be so grateful when the storm hits,” Oleg told him.

  “Right now I’d rather be soaked by a storm than suffer heatstroke,” Mitya said.

  “Well, you’re likely to get your wish. Come on: let’s go. The longer we sit around, the longer we’ll have to spend out here.”

  “The storm will hit in midafternoon,” Dasha declared.

  Oleg looked like he wanted to ask her how she knew that, and then he guessed the truth, that it was the lingering effects of Vika’s influence, and his mouth flattened into a thin white line, and he mounted up without saying any more about it.

  Once they were on their way again, the breeze died down and they rode for several more versts through the damp still air. When they looked up, they no longer caught glimpses of the sun through the treetops, but more and more thick, fluffy clouds with dark bottoms. Even so, Dasha could feel the tingles and prickles running up and down her spine, spreading out across her whole upper body so that she wanted to scratch and roll in the fir needles and cry out in frustration.

  After another couple of versts, they came to a tree with prayer ribbons hanging from its branches. Even the ribbons looked lank and dispirited in the heat.

  “We should stop,” Dasha said. The tingles were getting worse.

  “You’ll get plenty of chances to offer prayers once you get to the sanctuary,” Oleg told her.

  “But this is the edge of the prayer wood, is it not?”

  “More or less. Some would say we’ve been riding through it ever since we left the last settlement. But this is the edge of the deep wood, yes.”

  “So I should offer a prayer. For all of us. You said yourself that it might be dangerous for Mitya and Alik; I’m going to offer a prayer for them.”

  “You don’t even have anything to offer,” Oleg argued, but Dasha was already pulling Poloska and Pyatnyshki to a halt in front of the tree. She dismounted and rummaged around in her pack, while thunder rumbled off in the distance and Oleg fidgeted impatiently on Belka, until she pulled out a faded hair ribbon.

  “It’s not much,” she said. “But it’s better than nothing.”

  “More than enough, Tsarinovna,” said Alik quickly, as thunder rumbled more menacingly. “I’m sure if you just tie it up there quickly…”

  Dasha dropped onto her knees in front of the tree, the movement hiding a slight twitch that ran through her body just then. All the men stifle
d groans behind her, but she ignored them. The prickles continued to spread out across her neck and arms, and she knew that she could soon have a fit.

  Please help us, she thought. I don’t know why I have to take this journey, but I do, and I’m…I’m afraid. I’m afraid of what I’ll find out at the sanctuary. I’m afraid that there’s something terribly wrong with me, that can’t be fixed, and that’s the wisdom I’ll discover there. And I’m afraid that these men behind me will suffer and come to harm because of me, even if none of us wish it. I’m afraid that…

  “Look!” Mitya’s exclamation was more of an exhalation. Dasha lifted her head up from her prayer. A doe was gazing on them, only her head visible through the trees.

  “Hello, sister,” Dasha said softly.

  The doe blinked at her, and then whirled about and disappeared.

  Thank you, Dasha thought. All the prickling tingles were gone. She stood to tie the ribbon to the nearest branch. There was a chittering above her. She looked up. A red squirrel looked back down at her.

  “Thank you, sister,” Dasha told her, pulling down on the branch to tie her ribbon to it. There was another ribbon already on the branch, so faded it was impossible to know what color it had once been, but still stained with old blood from its original sacrifice.

  May that prayer also be granted, Dasha thought. The person who offered it must have been even more frightened than I am.

  “The storm will pass us by,” she told the men, returning to Poloska. There was another rumble of thunder, so far off she could barely make it out. A cool breeze, bearing with it the scent of distant rain, ruffled her hair.

  Mitya and Alik were looking at her with round eyes. “You called off the rain, Tsarinovna!” said Mitya.

  “No,” said Dasha. “It called itself off.”

  “But you…you offered your prayer, and then…” He pointed up at the sky, where a shaft of sunlight was now breaking through the clouds and illuminating them.