Nevertell

by Katharine Orton

  Bogdan was already on the case. “Flicker once for yes and twice for no,” he said, and asked a flurry of questions.

  “Are you a girl?” One flicker. That meant yes.

  “Are you young?” Yes.

  “Are you the same age as us?” No.

  “Younger?” Yes.

  Bogdan narrowed her age down to eight. Lina glanced at the door, through which came the occasional muffled clank of a pan, or a thud and crackle as Babushka stoked the fire. She was busying herself on the other side. But for how long?

  “Where are you from?” Lina asked the shadow. She hadn’t quite gotten the hang of the yes-or-no questioning. “I mean . . . Are you from Siberia, originally?” No.

  “The countryside somewhere?” No.

  “A big city?” Yes.

  “Moscow?” Yes.

  “Did Svetlana take you away from your family?” The light flickered once. Yes.

  “How did you come to be trapped by Svetlana?” said Lina. She slapped her own forehead. “I mean —”

  “Lina, my friend, you’re doing it totally wrong,” said Bogdan. “Watch me.” He began again, “Are you —?”

  “Are my little rebyatishki dressed?” It was Babushka’s voice on the other side of the door.

  Lina looked at Bogdan, startled. “Coming,” she called.

  Babushka was warming more water on the hearth when they came out — this time for them to drink. “Hot water is as good as medicine, out here,” she said.

  Lina sniffed it suspiciously, then breathed more deeply. The steam filled her lungs. Fresh, warm, delicious water. She drank.

  “I can take you to where you’re going,” said Babushka suddenly. “If you’ll just tell me where. And why.”

  Lina froze and peered over the rim of her cup.

  Babushka smiled, showing her sharp tooth. “I promised to help you, didn’t I? Don’t I remind you of someone who could?”

  In the stories, Baba Yaga did sometimes help people. Other times, she tried to hurt them. Often, she tried to eat them. One thing was certain, though: Baba Yaga could never be trusted. Lina looked the old woman up and down. If this was Svetlana, what was she up to?

  “How could you help us?” asked Bogdan slowly.

  “My house will take us there.”

  “Your house?”

  “Just tell me where you’re going, go to sleep in your beds, and in the morning — we’ll be there.”

  Lina and Bogdan looked at each other. “Moscow,” said Lina finally. “That’s where we’re going.”

  Babushka laughed. “Moscow! Then you really are going to need my help.” Both of them were silent. “What is it, rebyatishki? Do you still not believe me?” She took a potted plant from a shelf. It looked leggy and unwell. Lina could immediately tell that it needed sunlight.

  Babushka touched the plant. Its tendrils sprawled out like a person stretching after a deep sleep. Leaves unraveled, bright green and waxy. The stalk plumped out and darkened, turning flaky and woody. It became a miniature potted tree. But Babushka hadn’t finished. Several furry green fruits bulged from its branches, flushing yellow and pink as they grew, and became fat with juice.

  Lina gaped. She remembered the branch that had sprouted under her touch in the forest. Was she magical like these people too — like Svetlana and Babushka? Were there others?

  The stone burned against Lina’s chest in warning.

  Babushka plucked two of the blushing, globe-like fruits and offered Lina and Bogdan one each.

  “What is it?” asked Lina. She could barely keep the dread out of her voice. The stone’s reaction had shaken her. And yet her heart thudded with excitement. The sweet smell had made her mouth water involuntarily. Could she grow something like this?

  “Try one,” said Babushka, watching her again through narrowed eyes. “Fruit like this grows in my homeland but not here. Except with a little encouragement.”

  Lina still hadn’t taken the fruit that the old lady held out. As if to tempt her, Babushka made its stem bulge a little, and a tiny, waxy leaf popped out. A cold smile stretched across Babushka’s lips.

  Lina took the fruit from her carefully. Her stomach felt knotted.

  “Can you make anything grow?” asked Bogdan, studying the fruit in his hands. He seemed more interested than afraid. Lina felt a twinge of hope. Perhaps he’d believe her, after all, if she told him what she’d done — what she could, perhaps, do again?

  “Yes,” said Babushka. “In the right conditions.”

  “You could feed whole villages like that, couldn’t you?”

  “Or a labor camp,” muttered Lina.

  “That is my warm magic,” said Babushka, “and warm magic needs warmth. I come from more temperate climes, far from here, and I haven’t been back in many years. So my warm magic has suffered. And besides, it takes a certain positivity of spirit to grow more than a few peaches, which I am not so inclined to anymore.”

  Bogdan took a bite of the fruit. It made a sucking noise against his teeth, and a blossom-like smell wafted around Lina’s nose. As Bogdan chewed, his eyes got wider. “Lina!” he said after he’d swallowed his mouthful. “You’ve got to try it!”

  “Go on, child,” said Babushka, smiling. “Your friend is enjoying his.”

  Lina looked at Bogdan, who nodded, his eyes still huge and flickering with excitement. The peach didn’t seem to be poisoned — which was good for Bogdan’s sake.

  “What are you waiting for?” snapped Babushka impatiently. “Try it.”

  Lina hadn’t expected her sudden flare of temper. She flinched from the lash of Babushka’s words and bit down, deep into the fruit. “Ow!” She’d bitten through soft flesh and into something hard. Her teeth ached. She ran her tongue over them. It was fine. None of them seemed loose.

  “Be careful of the pit,” said Babushka. She still sounded irritable. “Have you never eaten a peach before?”

  Lina sank her nails into the puncture marks her teeth had left in the skin of the peach. Pink juice welled up around her fingers and trickled down her wrist. She peeled a chunk of the velvety fruit flesh away. Beneath it there was a stone.

  A stone just like the one hanging around her neck.

  Without a word, Lina handed the fruit with its exposed stone to Bogdan, who stifled a cry with his hand.

  “If you’re impressed by peaches, I can show you some real magic while you eat the rest,” said Babushka, who must have misunderstood Lina’s and Bogdan’s reactions. “Powerful magic.” She bustled to the edge of the room and grappled with something behind one of the tapestries, chattering as she went.

  The juice from the peach dried onto Lina’s skin in sticky trails as she waited. She was still reeling from what she’d just seen. The magic stone she wore around her neck wasn’t a stone at all but a peach pit. Her heart pounded. She could barely believe it.

  Her mind still whirring, Lina thought of that note, tucked inside one of the beads on her necklace: “My darling Anri, I give you the gift of my heart.” What did it all mean?

  “Help me with this, please,” said Babushka from across the room. Now that she’d wrestled a tapestry to one side, she tugged at an old, round frame propped against a battered chair. It came up to Lina’s chest when she got close.

  “It’s heavy,” said Lina, eyeing Babushka. “Do you usually do this all on your own?”

  Together, all three of them rolled the frame into the center of the room and lowered it down flat onto the floor.

  The raised edge was beaten silver. The inside of it was black. Babushka took a glass jug filled with water from the shelf above the hearth. “Some melted snow that I had left over,” she said as she poured the water into the frame. It created a shallow, swirling pool. Light bounced and wobbled all over its surface, reflecting the cobwebs dangling from the ceiling’s rafters.

  “It’s a water mirror,” she said. “Kneel down around it with me, and I’ll show you how it works.” She crouched next to it and laid her hands on her knees. Opp
osite her, Lina and Bogdan did the same. Out of the corner of her eye, Lina saw the telltale flutter that meant their shadow friend was with them.

  Babushka narrowed her eyes. Her smile was gone now. “Cold magic comes from coldness — of spirit and of place. What better place than this for it? And living so long in isolation, I have cultivated my coldness of spirit. The reward? It lets me peer into other worlds. Summon spirits. Even see a person’s real self in their words.” She paused as though noticing something for the first time, before continuing, “And it allows me to spot secret snakes.”

  Before Lina knew what was happening, Babushka leaped to her feet in a whirl of blue shawls and tussled with the air.

  Not the air, Lina realized. Their shadow friend.

  Babushka shrieked, “Insolent servant!”

  Now Lina knew for certain who they were dealing with: Svetlana.

  She leaped to her feet. So did Bogdan.

  The babushka — Svetlana — was shouting, “Do you think you can abandon your duties? Sneak around here without me knowing? Your punishment is to wander the nothing world.” She pushed her hands toward the water mirror. To push the shadow in.

  “Stop!” shouted Lina.

  Bogdan dashed behind Svetlana, trying to pull the old lady backward, away from the mirror. From the other side, Lina tried to pull the invisible girl from Svetlana’s grasp. It felt like her arms flailed in slow motion against a great weight of water, as if she were moving through a nightmare. Svetlana only laughed — a callous, bitter sound. Above that came a piercing squeal, like an animal in pain or fright.

  Lina realized it had to be the shadow girl, screaming.

  “Stop it. Stop,” shouted Lina again. “She’s our friend!”

  Lina couldn’t hold on. Her fingers slipped through the shadow girl. Bogdan, thrown back by Svetlana’s struggling, launched in a second time to try to hold her still. “Do as Lina says,” he yelled. “Let go of her!”

  Noise bounced around the room. Filled Lina’s head. But all their voices paled against the sudden roar of the wind down the chimney. A billow of black smoke covered everything. It clung around her face and caught in her throat, lingering too long to be normal. It drifted and swayed in front of her, like a reflection in dark water that had been disturbed.

  A hand clasped Lina’s, and she screamed.

  “Nevertell,” came the whisper.

  Time slowed down. The hand held tight. Svetlana and Bogdan were nowhere to be seen. Hidden in the smoke? Or gone? Was Lina even in the hut anymore? It felt like dreaming and fainting, mingled together.

  The billowing, inky black hung around her.

  With it came other things. The echo of an unfamiliar voice. Small scratching sounds. A smell of wood shavings and lead. The cloud shifted and she saw an outline: a girl with pigtails. She was sitting at a desk, writing. On the cover of a second notebook next to her was written a name: NATALYA.

  Lina looked at this child and knew exactly what she was witnessing: a memory. “This is you, isn’t it? From before. So your name’s Natalya . . . Were you at school?”

  “Nevertell.”

  The child at the desk dropped her pencil and froze. Lina froze too. Her stomach lurched. The memory-Natalya was looking right at her. Or was she? Was she actually looking behind her, at something that would’ve been there? Out of a window, perhaps?

  The vision of the girl at the desk collapsed in on itself. Split. Became two new shapes. Natalya again. This time crouching rigid on the ground, a hand raised to protect her face. In front of her was the faintest outline of a wolf in silhouette, a ghost wolf, poised with its hackles up. A voice rang out, and it was Natalya’s, clear and pleading: “Please. I won’t tell what I saw. I’ll never tell!”

  The wolf leaped.

  The smoke cleared. Natalya’s memory — if that’s what it had been — vanished along with it.

  Lina staggered backward. It took her a moment to remember where she was. In front of her, Svetlana still grappled with the shadow girl. It was as if nothing had happened. Had she been the only one to witness the memory?

  Bogdan was clinging to Svetlana’s arms, as he had been before the smoke cloud. He’d definitely regained some of his old strength since being away from the mine — and even stopped coughing as much. Lina leaped forward again too, determined more than desperate this time. Perhaps Svetlana knew they were about to overpower her, because she let go. She whisked her hands behind her back like a naughty child and laughed.

  Anger flashed in Lina’s heart. Svetlana had tried to hurt their friend. Now she was mocking them. She clenched her fists. “What’s so funny?”

  The fluttering at the edge of Lina’s vision told her that the shadow girl had hurried to the corner of the room, where she looked much smaller. All bundled up. She had to be crouching, clutching her knees.

  Lina turned back to the old lady. “Well?” she demanded. “What’s so funny? That’s our friend you just tried to, to . . .” Lina realized she had no idea what Svetlana had tried to do. Banish her to the “nothing world” of the water mirror? Kill her? A thought flashed into Lina’s mind, connecting what she’d just seen with what Svetlana had done. “Is it because she saw something she wasn’t supposed to, once? Out of the window of her classroom?”

  Lina bit her lip when she saw Svetlana’s look. She’d given away too much.

  Svetlana raised a wizened finger. “She showed you something. Didn’t she? Somehow you and she made a connection. Ha! I’ve caught you. I knew you had powers.”

  Lina stood, panting. “I don’t know what you mean,” she replied after she’d caught her breath. “Come on, Bogey. Let’s leave.” She knew as she said it that, even if Svetlana let them, they couldn’t really just leave. It would be dark out there, and the storm still raged. She was starting to think they’d be better off taking their chances in the storm, however. To the old woman, she said, “We know who you are. You’re Svetlana! You’re dangerous.”

  Svetlana smiled sweetly. “I haven’t said I’m anyone, my darling. But look at me. I’m an old woman, yes. I’m a sorceress as well. You’ve seen I have powers. I can help you to understand your power. Don’t you want to know what you’re capable of? I do. I want to see what you can do with the water mirror when you try. You want to know too, don’t you? Be honest.”

  Lina hesitated. The truth was she was both desperate and terrified to know what she might be able to do, in equal measure.

  “Come, look into the mirror,” Svetlana said. “Let me show you what I mean.” She sat at the edge of the frame, tucking in her skirts.

  Bogdan looked from Lina to Svetlana and back, astonished. Lina felt queasy. He had to be wondering what powers Svetlana was talking about.

  Slowly, Bogdan and Lina lowered themselves too.

  Svetlana sat back and smiled. She looked smug. “Think about the men you traveled with, Lina. Concentrate on them while you stare into the water — and make them appear.”

  Lina and Bogdan looked at each other.

  “Go on,” said Bogdan.

  “Why would I want to see them again? They tried to kill us,” Lina argued. But something stirred inside her even as she spoke. It was the feeling she got when she touched plants and made them grow — yet it was more like the forming of a cold shudder than a rush of warmth. She really did want to know if she could look into this “mirror” and make the men appear.

  Lina tried to picture their faces. The memory of Old Gleb poking his head into the snow shelter that she and Bogdan had shared came to her. She thought of his face, broad and freckled, his gray-streaked mess of hair — and his eyes, with the odd dark fleck in the white. More than anything, she remembered his singsong voice. The way he’d spoken to them both, so cheerfully. As if they were his own children.

  The reflections in the mirror twisted and took on new shapes. The cobwebbed ceiling was no longer visible.

  “A face!” cried Bogdan. “I can see a face!”

  The water swelled and rose until it looked l
ike an upside-down drip. “It’s turning into the shape of a person,” said Lina in awe.

  Not just any person. It was Old Gleb. Only not quite as Lina had remembered him. His cheeks were more sunken than ever, his skin ashen. Colorless. And his eyes. His eyes were dull: seeing but not seeing. She thought she could read pain and confusion in them — and in the way his teeth were set together. As far as Lina could tell, he walked in endless mist.

  “You’ve done it!” gasped Bogdan. He jiggled in excitement before he composed himself enough to sit still — but his look of awe remained.

  Svetlana narrowed her eyes at Lina. “And quickly too,” she said. “So you have power with the mirror as well. But how much of it? And why?” She drew back, the way you might from something that could bite.

  Behind the image of Old Gleb, two more bulges rose out of the mirror. Alexei and Vadim. Both were hunched and sallow-skinned. The sight of them made Lina feel ill. She remembered what Svetlana had told them about the men being wolf-bound. They were becoming shadows like Natalya. “How long will it take before they disappear?” she asked.

  “A while yet. At the moment, they are still changing — into something not quite human, not quite animal. And they are displaced while they change. They crave warmth but won’t find it here. This is a place where spirits live. What an honor for them, as former criminals. Now they will finally be able to serve a purpose.”

  “The person who did this was callous and cruel.” Lina’s face felt hot with anger. “Just another tyrant the world doesn’t need. Like Commandant Zima.”

  “Perhaps. Or you might say they’ve been given another chance, beyond the limits of their otherwise base little lives,” said the old woman curtly. “The opportunity to be productive. To finally contribute to something greater than themselves. That is an honor.”