The Mussorgsky Riddle

by Darin Kennedy

  “What do we do then?”

  “If what you speak is true,” Mussorgsky says, “then we are the boy you call Anthony. You and he created this place, so if it is to end, it will take all of us.”

  “But how?”

  “There is one picture you have yet to visit.” The witch stretches out her wiry arm toward the far end of the gallery. “A place I believe holds the answers all of us seek.”

  I rack my brain, working through the various movements in Mussorgsky’s magnum opus. I study each of the gathered characters in turn, my gaze meeting the witch’s as I come to “The Hut on Fowl’s Legs.” the penultimate piece of the suite. Then it comes to me. The album cover from Anthony’s favorite version of Pictures at an Exhibition. The trio of arches below the Russian double-headed eagle.

  “I remember. The last movement of the suite, the last picture.” Glancing down, Antoine’s innocent smile fills me with hope. “We must find The Bogatyr Gates.”

  he Bogatyr Gates, the legendary Russian ‘Gate of Heroes.’ How fitting as we gather here at the end.” Mussorgsky’s wistful grin melts into a befuddled frown. “Still, I don’t believe the myth of the Exhibition’s missing picture is going to help us very much.”

  “Like this whole place isn’t something out of myth.” I wander from one end of the hall to the other, counting the alcoves as I pass to assure myself I’ve visited them all. “You’re right, though. There are no more alcoves. No more paintings.”

  If possible, the composer’s frown deepens. “Thus, the word myth.”

  “But it must be somewhere in the Exhibition. Anthony has recreated the entirety of your–I mean Mussorgsky’s–magnum opus down to the last detail. There’s no way he would have missed an entire movement, especially not the big finale.”

  “Apologies, dearie, but even I know nothing of the Gates beyond the legends.” Baba Yaga climbs down from her mortar and creeps toward me, her wicked grin cold as she kicks the prostrate form at my feet. “What about you, Versailles? Do you know where it’s hidden? You seem to be the one keeping all the secrets these days.”

  She glares up at the witch, defiant. “I haven’t the first idea where it would be, hag.”

  “Hag, you say?” Yaga drops to one knee and leans close to Versailles’ ear. “Give me half a minute with that pretty face of yours and no man alive will ever give you a second glance again.”

  “Stop it, you two.” I step between the two women before Versailles can throw any more gas on the fire. “There’s no time for this.” I help the schoolmarm to her feet and pull her away from the others. “Every moment that passes is a chance for Madame Versailles’ counterpart on the other side to put a bag over Anthony’s head and finish him. Do any of you want a repeat of what happened in the witch’s wood?”

  I search the eyes of Anthony Faircloth’s many faces for a spark of hope.

  “Modest,” I ask. “Your conductor’s baton. Can it help?”

  Mussorgsky smiles and holds up the implement of his station. “This simple foot of maple and mahogany may weave spells of melody and harmony, but it is no magic wand.”

  I turn to Modesto. “What about your castle? One door led to the Catacombs. Perhaps another of the doors there, or one of the tapestries.”

  “I know every inch of my abode.” Modesto crosses his arms. “The Gates are not there.”

  Goldenberg and Schmuÿle stare at me as one.

  “Maybe one of the paintings in your home, Samuel?” I ask.

  Bizarre in their silence, Goldenberg shakes his head while Schmuÿle looks away, doing his best to ignore the question, if not the questioner.

  In the opposite corner, Antoine stands sobbing. Despite all that has happened, Madame Versailles moves to comfort him, or at least I hope that’s her intent. Regardless, I block her path with an outstretched arm.

  “Sorry. The kid is off limits.”

  Versailles tries to conceal a baleful glare as she steps back. “Of course.”

  Hartmann steps forward. “Then it’s over. All of it. First Juliet, and now the rest of us.”

  “I will not allow that to happen.” I rest a hand on Hartmann’s shoulder. “There must be a way.”

  “Excuse me.” The quiet voice all but lost in the creaking of nearly two dozen feet on the parquet floor, I almost miss it. “There is one thing you haven’t considered.”

  As one, we all turn and look into Tunny’s muddy brown eyes.

  I kneel by the trembling gnome. “What did you say, Tunny?”

  “There is something you haven’t thought of,” he says. “Something simple.”

  “Spit it out, gnome.” The witch pushes past me and grabs Tunny’s collar before I can stop her. “Let’s hear it.”

  “Get off him,” I shout as I pull them apart. “Give him some space.” I glare around at the crowd as they draw close around Tunny and me. “All of you.”

  Modesto steps up behind me. “You heard the Lady, everyone. Back off.” His crisp British accent replaced with Jason Faircloth’s mild Southern twang, the troubadour glances across his shoulder at Tunny. “Let’s hear what the little guy has to say.”

  A tear of sap begins a long sojourn down Tunny’s cheek.

  I take the gnome’s hands, his tree bark skin rough against my fingers. “What is it, Tunny? What do you know?”

  “It’s just, when you first came here, there weren’t pictures or halls or anything. If what you say is true, and each of us is nothing more than a tune playing in a boy’s head, then maybe you don’t look for the Gates along this hallway, but―”

  “In the music itself.” I turn to Mussorgsky. “Modest, what can you tell me about the last movement of Pictures at an Exhibition?”

  “The final movement opens with fire and thunder.” The composer strokes his beard, his eyes glassing over as if in deep thought. “A royal fanfare. Maestoso in tempo. Forte in volume.”

  “And just before that?”

  Mussorgsky’s gaze shoots to Baba Yaga.

  The witch cranes her neck around to stare back at her alcove. “My hut sprints one last time across the listener’s imagination.”

  I step to the witch’s side and study her in profile. “It’s up to you now, Baba Yaga. Help me. Help us. Help… Anthony.”

  “As if I have any choice in the matter.” The witch’s lips curl into a half-smile, half-sneer as she raises her arms to the ceiling. She claps her hands in rhythm, a couplet followed by two triplets and a quick succession of six. Bowing her head, she begins humming the menacing tune that has accompanied her every appearance along the Exhibition. In answer, music fills the space, an entire symphony of unseen instruments mirroring the odd sequence of claps and the unintelligible syllables rolling off the witch’s tongue. Then, overpowering the invisible orchestra, the sound of the hut’s legs ripping through the forest underbrush as it races toward us fills the air. As the sound grows closer and closer, a pair of terrifying realizations crosses my mind.

  The size of the witch’s hut.

  The size of Yaga’s alcove.

  Though the witch’s mortar and I passed the aperture of her painting before with ease, my heart fills with a strange certainty this time will be different.

  “Everybody, down!” I leap at Antoine and force him to the ground, covering his fragile form with mine as Baba Yaga’s hut explodes through the gallery wall. The storm of shattered brick, mortar and plaster flies at us and then… nothing.

  Peering out from behind my clenched fists, I find the entire assemblage untouched by the ton of shattered masonry.

  “But… how?”

  Yaga laughs. “My alcove. My hut. My rules.” She taps her temple. “As you remind us at every turn, the Exhibition is all up here.” The witch’s strange home lowers itself to the ground and Baba Yaga bends at the waist in a humble bow, her outstretched arms gesturing toward the hut’s open door. “Lady Scheherazade, your chariot awaits.”

  “Thank you.” My gaze passes across the assembled pieces of Anthony Faircloth�
��s psyche. “But, this chariot isn’t for me.”

  Before I can utter another word, a voice rips through the hall. The inflection reminiscent of Madame Versailles sans the French accent, the words echo from somewhere far away.

  “Damn him. Everything’s a mess.” The metallic click of a gun being locked and loaded fills the air. “Nothing to do now but finish this.”

  The witch’s eyes grow wide. “We must hurry. It would seem your friend has returned to finish the job.”

  I peer inside the hut, confirming there’s room, and step away from the door. “Everyone inside. Now.”

  One by one, the various characters that populate Anthony’s Exhibition step into the witch’s home. I give each a solemn nod as they pass, thankful they obey me without question. If what I am planning is to work, it must be all of them.

  All of them, that is, save one.

  I step into Madame Versailles’ path as she moves for the door. More than one gasp sounds behind me, but I know better than to take my eyes off the teacher from Tuileries for even a second.

  “So, Mira. You plan to leave me here to suffer alone?” Versailles turns her head to one side, the glint in her eye identical to that of a woman no doubt standing over my body in a place a million miles from here. “An eternity with no one to talk to save myself?”

  “If you think you have eternity, Versailles, you are sorely mistaken.”

  Yaga stands in the door of her crouching home, watching my every move. “What now?”

  A revelation hits me. “Lock your door, Yaga, and take the hut into the maelstrom.”

  “The maelstrom?” For only the second time in our many encounters, fear invades the old witch’s eyes. “But we cannot go there. The door is locked. More, it is forbidden.”

  “Forbidden? By whom? You? Anthony? By the very trauma that birthed all of you?”

  “That way leads to death.” Mussorgsky stares down at me from a triangular window in the side of the house. “For all of us.”

  “Death.”

  Lyrics flit through my mind, the same strange anthem Anthony sang as he lay on the couch. I can only remember the ending, and pray it will be enough.

  I lock gazes with Versailles. “A boy I know recently shared with me a truth.”

  “Don’t,” Versailles whispers, her eyes wide with fear.

  The invisible orchestra from before swells, filling the room with piercing brass and booming drums.

  “Death…”

  “Stop it.” Her eyes grow wide in fear.

  “Is…”

  “You’ll destroy everything!” Versailles leaps at me and we go to ground in a tangle of arms and legs.

  Despite her claws at my throat, I belt out the last word, the others within the witch’s hut all joining me in a chorus Mussorgsky himself heard only in his wildest dreams.

  “Life…”

  Before she can utter another word, a mighty wind pulls Madame Versailles from my body and hurls her into the nearest wall. I half expect her to leap back to her feet and charge again, but instead her crumpled form lies there beneath the fractured plaster, bent and still.

  A single moment of silence passes before the sound of tumblers echoes in the hall. As one, the various fragments of Anthony Faircloth’s mind, already ensconced in the witch’s home on taloned feet, scream out in terror.

  “The door,” Modesto shouts above the others. “It’s opening.”

  The lock falls to the floor, the thunderous crash of metal on wood pummeling me with physical force. Then, as if I’ve angered the Exhibition itself, a hurricane wind fills the hall and blows the doors off their hinges. Beyond, the spectral whirlwind of color awaits.

  No.

  Beckons.

  “Death.” Tunny’s voice squeaks with panic. “The maelstrom means death for us all.”

  “Congratulations, Schmuÿle.” Goldenberg’s first words in what seems like years have an edge I’ve never heard before. “It seems, here at the end, you were right.” His despondent gaze bores into me. “About everything.”

  “Do not despair, Samuel,” Schmuÿle says to the surprise of all present, his grating tone almost tolerable for once. “Perhaps there is still hope.”

  “Of course there is hope.” From atop the crouched hut, Baba Yaga looks down from her mortar as if she were the captain of a ship. Or in this case, it would appear, an ark. “Now, storyteller. You would have me take all of them into the unknown based on nothing but your word?”

  “Yes, oh trusted storyteller.” Versailles rises from the floor, her broken form somehow restored and her eyes full of hate. “What would you have them do now?”

  “Go.” I motion to the doorway filled with light. “All of you.”

  “Come with us, Scheherazade,” Tunny shouts from a window. “Don’t leave us to face the maelstrom alone.”

  “You are not alone.” I catch the composer’s gaze in one of the hut’s windows and give him a quick nod. “None of you are. Not anymore.”

  “Thank you, Mira.” Mussorgsky returns my nod and grins. “For all you have done and all you’re about to do.”

  “Keep them well, Modest.” I glance up at Baba Yaga and gesture to the end of the hall. “Get moving. I’ll catch up.”

  The witch’s lips grow wide in an iron smile as she raises her arms anew. She claps but once, the sound augmented by a single orchestral hit that brings the hut to its feet. Two more claps and the hut takes two steps, the pair of footfalls accompanied by a deafening symphonic couplet. Then, the rushing music begins anew and the pair of enormous chicken legs propels the strangest piece of architecture I’ve ever seen toward the swirling whirlpool of light and color.

  “No!” Versailles hurls herself after the rushing house on chicken legs. “You can’t leave me alone like this.”

  I again step into her path. “Their fate is not yours, Versailles.”

  “Out of my way, Mira.” In a flash, a gleaming rapier appears in her hand and she wastes no time thrusting its razor point at my heart. I dodge to one side and slide the bejeweled dagger from the sash at my waist.

  “You will call me Scheherazade.” I hold the gleaming blade before me. “And even if it kills me, I swear you will never leave this place.”

  Her eyes narrow. “You believe that name gives you power, don’t you? Your little stories may serve to sway the others and may have even allowed you to best the witch, but you’ll find your words have no effect on me. Surely you have guessed by now I am not like the others.”

  “Guessed, you say?” I raise an eyebrow. “I’m counting on it.”

  “Don’t you realize?” The bluster in her voice is replaced with uncertainty. “The boy needs me too. I’m as much a part of him as the others.”

  “Oh, he needs you, all right.” The dagger pulses in my grip, ready. “Here. Now.”

  The witch’s bizarre home continues its slow progress as the invisible orchestra playing “The Hut on Fowl’s Legs” grows louder and faster. Trumpets sound from every corner. The sound of French horns oscillates high and low. Screaming violins alternate with blasting tuba. Then at the end of a long run that weaves together strings, woodwinds, and snare, the witch’s tune transitions into a different piece of music altogether.

  Rich and brazen, the fanfare sends Versailles into convulsions. Screaming as if her very soul has been set aflame, she stares past me with bleary eyes. I spin on my heels and nearly drop the dagger in awe as the swirling light takes shape. At the edges of the billowing color, a giant frame forms, though this one stands as wide and tall as the hall itself. Within the frame, the spinning maelstrom of light grows slower and more muted until the radiance resolves into a surface. This last canvas depicts an enormous triple arch of stone and brick.

  The Bogatyr Gates.

  The hut slows its pace, marching in time with the new melody and stepping with every other beat like a bride promenading down the aisle. With each step, the painting of the massive triple gate grows more defined even as the Exhibition around me begin
s to dissolve into random bits of light and darkness. Six stories high and just as wide, the enormous structure stands open on a landscape of slate and pine. Neither man nor beast guards these arches, and for the briefest of moments, I let myself believe the way is clear and the surprises at an end.

  Yaga sends the hut through the shimmering canvas and onto the path leading to the Gates. I wave after them, though my fond goodbye comes out as a scream as a searing pain rips through my shoulder. I fall to the ground in agony.

  Versailles stands over me, crimson blood dripping from the tip of her rapier.

  “Forget about me, did you?” The smile occupying her face somehow makes Yaga’s seem almost pleasant. “As if some silly piece of music could so much as slow me down. Confidence may be a virtue, Scheherazade, but overconfidence leads only to failure.” Versailles leaves me writhing on the floor and races at the shimmering canvas.

  The composer’s final lesson echoes through my mind.

  “Speak again, storyteller, for time has almost caught us.”

  And three more words that fill me with fire.

  “You must believe.”

  I grip the hilt of my weapon and touch the tip to my wounded shoulder. “Just when all seemed lost, the magic of the Sultan’s dagger closed Scheherazade’s wound.” Before I can finish the sentence, the pain in my shoulder dissipates as the skin knits itself back together. I launch myself from the ground and sprint after Madame Versailles. As fast as I run, though, I’m still a good thirty paces behind her when she looks back with a vicious grin and steps through the frame of the final picture of the Exhibition.

  “Farewell, Scheherazade,” she shouts across her shoulder as she reappears on the winter landscape and rushes after the witch’s hut, the bizarre structure continuing its jaunt atop its pair of massive chicken legs. I arrive seconds later and dive after Versailles into the painting. Driving snow falls from an undulating prismatic sky, yet the air is warm and smells of tea and vanilla. The hut continues its slow progress and nears the Gates with Versailles close behind. The witch glances back from her perch atop the roof and levels the pestle at Versailles.