Nevertell

by Katharine Orton

  The feeling she’d had in the breach, the sense of being watched, hadn’t gone away. In fact, it had gotten even stronger. It was almost unbearable.

  The stone hanging from its necklace sent out a pulse of startling heat. What was happening? This second shock, together with her fear, was too much. She couldn’t go on. “Stop. Something’s wrong — really wrong.”

  Alexei, who’d overtaken her at quite a pace, turned and fixed the weak beam of the flashlight on her. His glare betrayed his fury but also his fear.

  “What is it?” snapped Vadim, next to her ear. “Do you want us to leave you here?”

  “I can’t explain,” said Lina. “But we’ve been followed.” Could it be her mother? So soon?

  “It can’t be Katya,” said Vadim, following the same train of thought. “Not yet.” His breath was ragged from running, but he was trying to steady it.

  The stone sent out pulses of heat that stung her skin, just as it had done earlier.

  Right before she had crossed paths with Commandant Zima.

  This time, Alexei seemed to read her mind. “Guards?” he said darkly.

  Old Gleb wrung his hands. “It’s the spirits of this place. They know. We’re in trouble.”

  The driving wind died away. In an instant, Lina’s battered ears could hear every shuffle the others made. Beyond their panting breath, which sent up plumes of shuddering fog, Lina heard the crunching of snow. It could only be footsteps. She glanced around at the others. They’d all heard it. Everyone was still now, listening. Alexei passed the flashlight to Old Gleb, who covered it with his hand, so all Lina could see were dim shapes.

  Vadim still stood close behind Lina, his face pressed to her ear. “Did anyone see you when you came to us?” he whispered. “Any of the guards?” His breath felt hot and wet on her face.

  Lina didn’t answer. She couldn’t. She was remembering the sound Commandant Zima’s boots had made earlier as he paced toward her across the grit path.

  Old Gleb’s hands started trembling over the flashlight. “We have to run,” he said. “I won’t stand here like this, waiting for death.”

  “No,” said Alexei in a low voice. “Sounds like just one. We’ll ambush him. Leave a diversion for the dogs, if any others come.”

  Lina heard metal scrape leather and knew Alexei had pulled out his hunting blade.

  The crunching of footsteps got closer. She stared into the darkness where they’d just been, seeing nothing but patterns made by the falling snow. Lina itched to see more. Not even the light from the guard tower was visible now.

  In the darkness, something moved. A spectral shape against the snow. The figure stopped, and so did the footsteps. He’d seen them — or perhaps sensed them. Lina felt Alexei tense, ready to attack.

  The figure surged toward them. Alexei lunged forward too.

  “Stop!” cried Lina.

  Startled, the others turned to stare at her — even Alexei.

  The figure kept coming. But he was slight and scruffy and short — not tall and broad like Commandant Zima. Lina gasped. She knew just who it was.

  Bogdan. Her best friend.

  Bogey?” she said.

  “Lina? That you?” came his small voice, in between quick, shallow breaths. “Thought I’d lost you. I can’t see much.”

  Old Gleb groaned — a mixture of relief and dismay. A bluish beam of light cut through the dark. He had uncovered the flashlight again. In front of them was indeed Bogdan. Alexei looked back at Vadim. They exchanged a glance over Lina’s shoulder that worried her. She saw Alexei tighten his grip on the knife.

  She had to step in. Quick.

  “You leave him alone,” she said, glaring at Alexei. “Bogey won’t tell, I swear.”

  “You’re right about that,” said Bogdan. “Because I’m coming too. Couldn’t let you take this risk on your own, could I?” he added to Lina, eyeing the others — Vadim in particular.

  “What?” Lina was aghast. He couldn’t come. His boots were little more than rags, and they were full of holes. His jacket was standard issue, and that was old and worn out too. Already he shook with cold. The storm would freeze him solid.

  “You can’t,” she said. “Bogey. Go back.”

  Bogdan laughed. “You think I’m going through that again, Lina?” he said through chattering teeth. “I was lucky enough to make it out. I’m not about to break back in.”

  Lina smiled and couldn’t stop. In truth, she was so relieved to see him.

  Bogdan grinned back with just one corner of his mouth: his signature smile.

  Maybe they could both make it out here in the snow, Lina thought. Besides, did Bogdan really stand a better chance at the camp — alone, working more and eating less each day?

  “Everyone else has a purpose here,” said Vadim to Bogdan. “What can you offer us?”

  “Maps,” said Bogdan. “Some on paper. Some up here.” He tapped the side of his head.

  Lina couldn’t see Vadim, but she imagined him sneering again. He frightened her. Vadim was a rarity at the camp. His links to organized crime meant that, unlike most of the prisoners, he probably had done something terrible to end up there. He wouldn’t hesitate to have Alexei hurt Bogey if he thought he might mess up his escape plan.

  “Maps would be useful,” said Gleb, glancing between Alexei and Vadim, his face gaunt and his eyes huge in the weak flashlight. “I mean, I can navigate, no problem, but to be able to cross-check . . .”

  Alexei gripped Bogdan’s arm. “Maps or no maps, we have to move. Now. Listen!” The wind had lulled, but now it picked up again with new and brutal force. From somewhere behind them came a howl that curdled Lina’s blood. Not the wind, this time. It sounded more like dogs.

  One howl joined another. And another. A whole pack of them — rallying one another to join the hunt. Were they dogs? Or wolves?

  Either way, no doubt they were the pack’s prey.

  Old Gleb’s face loomed toward Lina out of the snow-peppered darkness. “It’s them,” he said, wild-eyed. His gaze darted this way and that — he didn’t seem to know where to look. “It’s not those stupid guard dogs — it can’t be. It’s the ghost hounds. I knew they would come.” His voice grew louder and more panicked. “You still think it’s a joke, do you, Vadim Ivanov, O great and —?”

  “Get a grip on yourself, Gleb,” hissed Vadim. “Or shall we leave you as bait for your ‘ghost hounds’?”

  Old Gleb made a strangled sound. Lina’s heart went out to him.

  “Just try it, Vadim.” Lina raised her voice above the roaring wind. “Think you can build shelters without him? Find your way?” She shrugged Vadim off and took Gleb’s hand. He looked down as if only just remembering her. “Come on, old man,” she said. “Nothing can track us in this if we keep moving. Let the ghost hounds try.”

  Finally they were all agreed on something. They ran with all of their strength.

  The wind lashed at Lina. It tore the air away before she had a chance to breathe it. Her left side started to twang. It was what her mother called a “stitch” — when your muscles didn’t get enough oxygen to work. If the pain kept spreading, she wouldn’t be able to go on running for much longer.

  The hunting pack’s barks sounded strong. Full of stamina. Old Gleb was right about one thing: These weren’t the fierce but feeble creatures that guarded the camp — animals that could only charge for short bursts. These were something else. Would a normal wolf even want to hunt in this storm?

  Lina’s stitch spread until the only thing she could think of was the pain. It mingled with the searing heat from the stone pressed against her chest.

  As she slowed, Bogdan came up alongside her — Bogdan with his wheezy lungs from working in the mine. She couldn’t see much of him in the dark — only hear his struggle to breathe in tired gasps.

  An ear-piercing howl cut through the darkness. It sent a shiver through Lina’s blood. A chorus of other howls joined in. And then, all at once, they fell silent.

 
; The group kept running in the darkness until Vadim shouted for them to stop. Lina collapsed to the ground in a heap, gasping for breath. Her stomach cramped and all her muscles ached.

  Everyone listened for the animals, but there was no more noise from them. Just the roaring wind, rising and falling — and the ethereal swishing of diamond dust as it whipped across plains of snow.

  A hand gripped Lina’s shoulder. Bogdan crouched over her, urgently catching his breath. The loud churning noise that came from deep in his chest scared Lina. She’d never gotten used to it.

  She reached up to cover his ice-cold fingers with a gloved hand. Her mind was on other things. There’d been a sound before the final chorus of howls. A high-pitched screech. A whistle, perhaps.

  Had somebody called off the pursuit?

  A long time went by while everyone recovered themselves. Nobody spoke. Each of them listened. For all they knew, the wolves — or whatever they were — could still be out there, hunting them. Nevertheless, the storm was now ferocious, and the temperature of the wind had plummeted. It would be impossible to keep going.

  They found snowdrifts with the flashlight and dug shelters with their hands — under Gleb’s instruction. They started low and dug a tunnel upward into the drift. The angle would help keep warmth in, apparently. Then they scooped out a hollow that could fit one or two people inside, as long as they crouched or lay flat. Unless someone spotted the tunnel opening, the shelter would look just like a normal heap of snow after a storm.

  It was so dark they did most of the work blind, but for the weak blue flashlight beam. Alexei shoved the flashlight toward Lina for her to hold while he worked on scooping out snow. It was lightweight and had writing scratched on the side: PROPERTY OF CAMP NINE HOSPITAL. DO NOT REMOVE. Her mother’s handiwork.

  Lina’s heart stung. Even if her mother made it out, would she ever find them?

  Lina and Bogdan took a shelter together, while the others made their own. It wasn’t exactly warm inside, but at least they were out of that freezing wind.

  Once Bogdan had clambered in too, Lina stuffed the vegetable sack down by their feet. She could barely shift it anymore. Her whole body ached. All she wanted now was to sleep. No one had tried to take the sack from her — that was a good thing. If she could keep charge of their food rations, it would be one more reason for the others not to leave her and Bogdan stranded. Before her mother joined them, that is.

  She curled up next to Bogdan on a small, thin blanket Vadim had given them. It covered part of the snow floor, at least, which had been trodden down smooth and compacted into ice. Bogdan was shivering uncontrollably. Shivers wracked her too, but not as badly. She wriggled out of her jacket and laid it over them both.

  The stone against Lina’s chest grew warm, but not as sharply as it had done before. It settled at a consistent warmth that seemed to reach her blood and carry around her body. It thawed her bones from the inside. And with it pressed between their hearts, Bogdan’s shivering soon subsided too. Was this what her mother had meant when she said it was precious and would help Lina?

  They slept — Lina in fits and starts. Nightmares of being buried deep underground chased her into the waking world — where each time she’d forget where she was — and then followed her back into sleep again. And so too did the howls of the hunting pack.

  Something was in the snow shelter with them.

  Lina sat up in an instant, her hands balled into fists. “Wha-wha?” Her words wouldn’t come — fright had chased them away.

  But she could relax: It was only Old Gleb. He grinned, showing the gaps in his teeth. “Up you get, kids.” His crackly voice sounded businesslike but warm — one a father might use to wake his own children. For the first time, Lina wondered what Old Gleb’s life had been like before the prison camp. Unlike her, he’d grown up beyond the wire. No doubt he’d had a livelihood once. Perhaps even a wife. And children?

  He hadn’t always been this wiry, malnourished man with licks of gray in his matted hair and half the screws loose in his brain. That was a strange thought.

  She twisted a fist into her eye and shook Bogdan with her other hand. He hadn’t moved a muscle since Old Gleb barged in. In fact, since the shivering had stopped, he hadn’t moved all night. She shook him harder, relieved when he finally stirred and started coughing.

  “Come on, up, up, up,” said Gleb. “Our dear mother hen, Alexei, is preparing breakfast.” He caught the look on Lina’s face and his grin vanished. “Sorry, kid. No sign of Katya yet.”

  All of Lina’s fears for her mother gushed through her again, like a river channeling a thaw.

  Gleb squeezed her shoulder and ducked back out of the small exit tunnel. Daylight filtered in after him and splayed across the lumpy ice ceiling.

  Lina sighed heavily and dislodged the vegetable sack from the snow wall. Bogdan caught her arm before she could leave. “Wait. What is that?” He pointed to where the stone — the source of their warmth through the night — lay under her overalls.

  “This?” Lina pulled the necklace over her head and held it in her palm between them. Its string was threaded with tiny wooden beads, all odd sizes, some with fragments of chipped paint in reds, purples, and blues. It looked old. The stone itself was pale brown and woody — perhaps not a stone at all. It had cooled overnight, but it wasn’t as cold as it should have been. Not like a normal stone. “I don’t know. My mamochka gave it to me before I left. It gets warmer when I’m cold. And to warn me about stuff. It told me you were there last night, you know. Otherwise . . .” Lina trailed off. Without the warning pulse from the stone, there was no doubt she’d have kept on running, with no idea that Bogdan had followed them — and he would have been lost. Frozen stiff. Or found by someone other than her. Is that what had happened to her mother?

  “Looks like a shriveled old wasp nest,” said Bogdan, sniffing and looking at the stone.

  Lina could see what he meant. She peered into the stone’s tiny dark holes. It did look like something could be inside it — though not wasps. Not unless they were miniature ones.

  Something besides heat seemed to emanate from it, but Lina couldn’t say exactly what. It was the way you could tell the difference between something dead and something alive, without having to see it move. Lina knew about this from the plants inside the greenhouse. They were obviously living. Just in a different way from her. A slower, more subtle way that she could feel in her fingers whenever she stood near them — a kind of thickness to the air, an electric tension. It was the same with the stone.

  “So you’d never seen it before?” said Bogdan. “Ever? You reckon your mama had it all this time, then?”

  Lina didn’t answer. A memory was unfurling at the back of her mind. It was from a particularly cold winter when she was little. She’d gotten ill. Really ill. So ill they’d sent her to the hospital, which everyone in the prison camp knew was a last resort. Her mother had layered blankets on top of her and stuffed something warm under her mattress. “Shh. Don’t tell,” she’d said to Lina.

  Instead of answering Bogdan’s question, Lina put the necklace back on and tucked it safely inside her overalls again.

  Bogdan seemed to understand that she didn’t want to talk about it anymore. “I’ve got something too,” he said. His eyes flashed and one corner of his mouth curled upward in the start of an involuntary grin. “I wasn’t lying last night, about the maps.” He ferreted around inside his boot and pulled out a bundle of parchments, which he unfolded and laid flat between them.

  “Bogey!” Lina couldn’t believe it. “More of them? I thought they were stolen.”

  “My one of the camp was,” said Bogdan. “Not these. These are some of my papa’s drafts. Look — there’s one of Leningrad, where I’m from, and one of Moscow. Your grandmother’s there, isn’t she? We can find where she lives, easy. You know her address, right? And these two are other parts of Siberia.” He pointed to them as he explained. Each one was etched with roads, rivers, monuments, mountains
— and the finest curled writing Lina had ever seen. It must’ve been Bogdan’s father’s. He was a mapmaker from Tuva. The maps were so beautiful she couldn’t believe they were just drafts.

  It must have been wonderful to grow up with a father, as Bogdan had. To know he was a decent person.

  Lina shook her head in disbelief at the maps. “If the guards at the camp had found these . . .”

  “Not a problem now, is it? Lina, I’m going to make a map of our journey. It’s just what he — Papa — would do, if he were here. Do you know how important this could be? Civilian maps of these areas are unheard of. When I find him again, he’ll be so amazed. I’ve started already — see?” The parchment Bogdan pointed at now had a square sketched onto it, representing the camp, a winding route and a rough drawing of paths and tunnels with the words CAMP’S MINE underneath. Somehow he must’ve made it on his trips back and forth when working there.

  She had to hand it to him. He was definitely determined. And stubborn. Maybe that was why they were friends.

  Lina pulled her jacket on while Bogdan collected his maps. She eyed his flimsy clothes. Should she swap jackets with him? She had the stone for warmth, after all . . .

  Bogdan crawled out of the shelter before she could make up her mind. He would never ask her for it, she knew. In these conditions, it would be like asking someone in the sea for their life jacket. So it was up to her to offer it — and even then he might refuse to take it.

  Outside, Alexei carved up stale black bread with his knife. They must have pillaged it from one of the kitchen workers, Lina guessed. There would be even less to go around at the camp today.

  Alexei grunted and jabbed the knife toward Lina’s vegetable sack. She took that to mean he wanted some.