Tsarina

by Patrick, J. Nelle

  “Let me show you what to look for,” he said, placing a warm hand between my shoulders to lead me into a patch of light. It was a broken branch, fallen but not rotted. “The outside’s wet, but I can break this and get to the dry wood inside. So long as it’s not rotted, it’ll work.”

  “How many do we need?” I asked. In the moonlight, his eyes looked the same silver color as the frosted field.

  “As many as we can carry,” he said, giving me a dire look.

  “All right,” I said, jumping as something rattled in the trees behind me.

  “And let’s not go that way,” Leo muttered. We stepped out of the light in the opposite direction of the noise.

  We worked in silence, listening carefully for the sound of the train or Emilia’s voice. The world was mostly still, and after a while, we began to stray farther and farther from each other, so focused on the task at hand that the eeriness of the forest faded away. My arm grew sore and tired from carrying the wood I’d collected—surely between Leo and I, we had enough by now to build a decent-sized fire? I looked back at him. He was a shadow in the darkness, his silhouette ruined by the branches poking out of it.

  There was a fallen tree ahead. I could see its roots, pulled up from the ground when it fell, and found myself wondering if they were the same shade of ghostly white that the bark was. I stepped closer to see. I felt like a voyeur, staring at parts of the tree people weren’t meant to see, cringing at the hairlike bits of root that hung amid clumps of dirt. I inhaled, and the scent of earth flooded my lungs.

  The roots weren’t white—they were brown, just like any other tree. I sighed, turned around, stepped toward the fallen limbs to salvage what I could for the fire.

  My boot slid under an exposed root and I hinged forward. I tried to balance, but the armful of firewood was awkward in my arms. I tilted forward, everything I’d collected sliding from my hands. There was just enough time to turn my body and take the brunt of my fall on my side instead of my face.

  “Are you all right?” Leo called, his voice far away.

  “I’m fine,” I shouted back, coughing to regain the breath that’d been knocked out of me. I sighed, glared at the fallen tree accusingly, and began to gather the wood I’d dropped, shaking stray hairs out of my eyes. I finally rounded it up into a pile, then went to lift it.

  Something breathed.

  Something breathed behind me, a snorted, rattled sort of breath, like a horse’s. A crack, a shuffling sound.

  I froze. My eyes were on the ground, my face turned the opposite direction. I needed to look, to see, to run, but I couldn’t move, afraid even the slightest motion would spur whatever lurked behind me to attack. It took another breath. My stomach knotted, everything tensed so hard my knees began to shake. I opened my mouth, intended to scream, to shout for Leo, but no sound came out.

  Another rustle of animal feet on the ground. It was getting closer, closer, and then a plume of fog floated by my face, the creature’s breath. I wrapped my fingers tightly around the closest piece of firewood. I closed my eyes, summoned my courage . . . If you can outrun the Reds in Saint Petersburg, you can outrun a monster in the forest.

  I flipped around, rising to my feet at the same time and stumbling backward. My arm was extended, ready to strike, prepared for teeth and fangs and blood, the cry of a wolf or the growl of a boar. My heart raced, my lungs tightened.

  It was not a wolf. It was not a boar. It was certainly not a monster. Though it was terrifying.

  It was an elk. Enormous, twice the size of any horse, larger than any animal I’d seen up close. A bright white hide, whiter than the birch bark—it looked like a phantom looming before me. Its head was lowered, gray nostrils flared as it snuffed at the ground. The elk took a small, uneasy step toward me, the hump on its back swaying as it did so. It wasn’t until it moved that I truly saw its antlers—they were covered in brown velvet that blended in with the forest, wider than I was tall, so wide I couldn’t see them in their entirety without turning my head.

  I lowered my arm, let the stick fall. My heart was still beating fast, my feet frozen in place, but I no longer felt the horrible stillness, the utter fear that I was moments from dying. The elk lifted its head a bit—I flinched at how close the massive antlers were to my face—and looked at me through watery, soft black eyes. It stretched out its neck, inhaled, sniffing the air around me, then whined, a single, bright note that made my ears ring.

  It edged closer, closer, till it was a wall of white in front of me, its sides rising and falling as it took deep, long breaths. Without thinking, I lifted a hand.

  The elk jerked its head up; I yanked my hand back to my chest and cringed, certain it was going to trample me. But no—it bobbed its head before me, lips quivering, nose growing closer, closer, closer to my withdrawn hand until we finally touched.

  A feeling raced through me, one I couldn’t place at first—it was hot, liquid lightning rushing around my veins. It washed away my shaking, my fear, the frozen feeling in my feet. It washed away everything frightening about the forest. It wasn’t a strange place. It was a place I knew, a place I knew well, despite never having been here before. The elk rubbed at my fingertips until I flattened out my palm against its wide muzzle, ran my hand up to the spot between its eyes where the hair splayed out in different directions. It stepped in closer, forcing its head over my shoulder. My hand moved, ran along the elk’s thick neck, its antlers looming above my head like fleeced tree limbs.

  My mind felt still, waiting, waiting for the moment I would understand. When it happened, I wanted to cry and smile at once; instead I turned toward the animal, let my forehead rest against it.

  Alexei was the tsar.

  Alexei loved me.

  The Constellation Egg was working. The tsar and those he loves.

  I healed fast, I wasn’t as cold as I should have been, I wasn’t nearly as hungry as I should have been. Frost melted, a dead sunflower sprung to life, and now the animals . . .

  I had been a noble my entire life. I’d had fine dresses, furs, shoes, jewelry—most of what I owned was just as lovely as anything the grand duchesses had. I went on trips and lived in beautiful houses and ate expensive food. And yet, until this moment, I had never truly felt royal. I had never truly felt rich. And I had never truly felt unworthy.

  The elk snapped its head up, snorted loudly at a sound in the trees. It jarred me back to reality. With the creature’s head raised, I could easily see under its neck—Leo. His eyes were wide in the moonlight, his mouth open in fear. In his right hand, a stick broken off to a point, which he held aloft like a spear.

  “Come to me,” he murmured. It took me a moment to realize he was talking to me.

  I shook my head, tried to find the words to explain—and yet, discovered I didn’t want to. I didn’t want anyone to know, anyone to realize that I was now a part of something so much larger than myself. Instead, I lifted my own hands, placed one on the elk’s shoulder.

  “He’ll kill you if you don’t move,” Leo whispered. His voice was shaking—he was afraid, more afraid than I’d ever seen him. “Run. I’ll distract him while you run . . .”

  I ran my hand along the elk’s shoulders, letting my fingers drag through the thick hair under its chin, then stepped away. Leo kept his eyes on the animal as I walked toward him. He flinched when the elk suddenly bugled, a high, haunting sound that echoed through the forest like a wail. I saw Leo’s grip on the stick tighten.

  I reached up, put my hand over his holding the makeshift weapon. Leo turned to me, furrowed his brow in confusion. I pulled his hand down gently, my eyes on his the entire time.

  “It’s all right,” I said. “I don’t need you to protect me, Leo.” I wasn’t sure I needed anyone to protect me ever again, though I was afraid to say so aloud. Leo seemed unconvinced, and put his other hand on my shoulder, guiding me toward him.

  �
�What just happened?” Leo asked breathlessly, looking from me to the elk. It was slowly tromping away now, its massive antlers cracking against the lower branches of trees. It faded into the trees, swallowed by the black.

  “Nothing,” I said swiftly. I realized my hand was still on Leo’s, that we were inches from each other. Leo seemed to notice this at the same moment and froze, giving me a chance to step away. I began to hurriedly gather the wood I dropped, avoiding his eyes. “I think it was blind. It didn’t know what I was.”

  “It didn’t look blind,” Leo said, voice steady, disbelieving.

  “I don’t know,” I said. I stood up, branches gathered like a bouquet and tucked in the crook of my right arm. “Maybe it was sick.”

  Leo exhaled, looked at the place where the elk disappeared. “Maybe,” he said. He turned back to me; several long moments passed before he spoke again. “I’m glad it didn’t hurt you.”

  I swallowed, looked down. “Right. We should get back to Emilia.”

  “Of course.”

  Leo wound his way back to where he’d dropped his firewood—it was thrown about, and I suspected he’d merely let it drop to run for me when he heard the elk whine. When we reached the edge of the forest, Emilia was wringing her hands nervously.

  “What was that noise?” she asked immediately. She stepped forward to take some of the firewood from my arms, and the three of us started back to the train.

  “It was an elk,” Leo answered. “An enormous one.”

  “You saw it?” Emilia asked, eyes widening.

  “It was old,” I said swiftly. “It didn’t bother us.”

  Leo made a quiet noise, something in his throat that told me he still didn’t believe me. Emilia didn’t miss it; she gave me a curious look that I answered with a shrug, something I knew wouldn’t fully satisfy her. She kept quiet, though—we walked back in near silence, then tossed the firewood into the car. Leo gave Emilia a leg up to climb in, then went to help me. He leaned in, threaded his fingers together to give me a place to step and leaned in.

  “Strange place,” he muttered, looking up and meeting my eyes. “Friendly elk and . . . that.” He turned his head, looked out over the field.

  When we walked toward the forest, the field was silver, gilded with frost. Hard, the memory of growing crops in its distant past. But now the field was rich, dark brown, almost black. It made the white birch forest look like a castle in a still ocean, and when the wind blew, the heavy scent of fresh soil spiraled around my head.

  “Strange,” I said, but I was shaking. Leo met my eyes longer than I would have liked, then nodded toward his hands. I placed my boot firmly in his palms, and heaved myself back into the train car.

  The fire warmed the car quickly, its heat traveling through the metal floor to the point that I slid my boots off, warmed my feet on the ground. Leo and Emilia huddled so close to the flames I suspected they’d fall in were the train to jerk suddenly. I wasn’t as cold as them, but the realization that the Constellation Egg was healing me made me huddle closer to the fire to cure a very different sort of chill.

  We didn’t speak for a long time, listening to the crackling of the flames combining with the wheels of the train and the rush of wind. I played with Emilia’s hair absently. I considered taking my own down for the rest of the trip—what did I care how I looked?—but it felt wrong to do so, a betrayal. After all, I looked so little like a noble now, felt so little like a noble. A hairstyle was my last tie to my old life. Leo watched me braid and unbraid Emilia’s hair for a few moments, then spoke.

  “How do you do that trick, Emilia?” he asked. “With the hairpins and the locks?”

  “Oh, it’s easy,” she said, beaming—I could tell she was pleased to brag about her skill. “Give me that padlock.”

  Leo lunged across the floor and grabbed hold of the lock from the crate as Emilia rose and went to sit down beside him. He clicked it shut and handed it to her. Emilia laid it on the floor, took the hairpins from her dress pocket, and jammed them into the lock.

  “You just have to feel for the bits that turn,” she said. “Don’t try to look.” The lock opened easily; Emilia grinned, closed it again, and handed it to Leo along with her hairpins.

  It took Leo the better part of the evening to figure it out, but I was grateful for the distraction—it gave me something to watch, something to occupy my racing mind. I slowed my rambling thoughts and simply stared into the fire while they worked, talking as if we weren’t Leo’s prisoners, as if Emilia wasn’t planning to help me get him arrested as soon as we reached Moscow.

  Hours later, when the stars were bright white in the sky and Emilia rested her head in my lap, Leo continued to pick the lock. It seemed more an exercise to busy his hands than to actually practice.

  “What do you suppose your wedding dress will look like, now?” Emilia asked, startling me—I thought she’d fallen asleep.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, if you leave Russia,” she said, “you and Alexei, I mean, then it isn’t a royal wedding anymore. You can wear whatever you like instead of those traditional Russian ones.” There was a strange lilt to Emilia’s voice—like she was reminding me that I would one day marry Alexei. Did she think my spirits had fallen to the point that I doubted it?

  I smiled a little and answered. “I don’t mind the traditional ones. Besides, Alexei’s mother didn’t wear a traditional dress. Remember the pictures?”

  “True,” Emilia said. “I suppose Alexei won’t wear a military uniform either, will he?”

  “Not if the Reds have their way about it,” I said, looking up at Leo. I meant for my words to cut a bit, but he was staring at the flames, like he wasn’t listening to our conversation at all. With his head at this angle, I could see the bags under his eyes. I hesitated, then spoke. “You can sleep.”

  He looked up at me. So he is listening. “What?”

  “I said that you can sleep. I’m assuming you didn’t sleep last night?”

  “If memory serves, Miss Kutepova, yesterday you said you might roll me out of the car and into the lake.”

  Emilia gave me a horrified look. “I was only joking,” I said, though neither she nor Leo looked convinced. “Anyhow, you can sleep. If you like, I mean.”

  “Thank you for your concern, but I’ll be all right.”

  “Fine,” I said shortly. “Stay up. Stay up for your entire revolution for all I care.”

  Leo gave me a steady look, one that made me even angrier—I would sleep, if this were reversed. I trusted him at least that much, after all we’d been through. Why couldn’t he trust me at all? I looked back down at Emilia’s hair, braided another strand. She kept her eyes bouncing between Leo and me, as if expecting one of us to say something else. Leo was the one to finally break the silence, his voice angry but steady, quiet.

  “I’m sure it’ll be a lovely wedding, Miss Kutepova. No matter where it is or what you wear.”

  I opened my mouth, found myself at a loss for words. Emilia, however, smiled, turned over so she could see Leo better.

  “It will be. You can keep Russia, Leo. It’s cold and you burnt half of it to the ground anyhow. We’ll get married in Paris, right, Natalya?”

  “Of course,” I said, though the words felt stilted in my mouth. “You’ll meet some outstanding Parisian man, I’m sure.”

  “And he won’t care that I wear my hair down,” she added. Across the fire, Leo chuckled, stirred the wood a bit with a spare board. He finally lay back, removing his coat—it was, unbelievably, warm enough in the car to do so—and using it as a pillow. He glanced at me, swallowed, then closed his eyes, like doing so answered questions I wasn’t asking aloud. It didn’t take long for his breathing to become rhythmic, his body to curl up like a child’s. Emilia was next, still mumbling about her wedding party as she went.

  I stayed awake. I tended to t
he fire, put new wood on, kept an ear out for footsteps on the roof, in case one of the train employees saw the glow and came for us.

  But mostly, I thought about Alexei. I thought about the wedding we’d never have—and the wedding we might have yet. I thought about Paris and Saint Petersburg and castles and cottages. I thought about how the thing we never said to each other, the thing we never said aloud—I love you—Alexei was able to say with the Constellation Egg. I blinked, realized I was watching the rise and fall of Leo’s chest as my mind wandered.

  Alexei got to say he loved me. When would I be able to say it back?

  THE SACRISTY

  Maria stood across from the Babushka in the monastery’s sacristy. The Constellation Egg mocked them; it sat silently on a polished table, like nothing more than a trinket. Around them, dozens of other once-powerful mystics gathered, watching, waiting, longing for the moment when the egg’s spell would be broken and their power would return to the high priestess.

  The moment had not come. The moment, in fact, seemed farther away than ever. The mystics were silent. Maria could feel the nervousness in the room increasing with each version of the claiming ceremony she tried. She’d cut her palms to ribbons, used her blood as a conduit so many times she knew there would be scars. She’d prayed to every star in the sky, and still . . .

  Maria worried the others doubted her. Most were older than her, after all, more experienced. But she was the most powerful, by birth and by practice. They knew that—Maria herself knew that—but still. She wanted to prove herself, show them how strong she was. She wanted to save them by undoing the evil Rasputin had committed.

  “Why, why, why?” she muttered under her breath, grabbing fistfuls of hair on either side of her head. She lowered her eyes so she didn’t have to see theirs. “Why? There has to be a way. If he can create the magic, I can surely uncreate it . . .” She paced back and forth in front of the egg, licking her lips furiously. “Yes. Yes—perhaps we’re trying to separate the egg from the Romanovs, when what we really must do is separate the Romanovs from the egg.”