by Kim Wilkins
Rosa grabbed the pot and thundered down the stairs, striding across to the hives. A fine cloud of bees swarmed and separated around his head. He turned to watch her approach.
“What is it?” he asked irritably.
Heedless of the bees which spiralled around it, she dropped the pot onto the top of a hive. “Don’t ignore me.”
“I’m not ignoring you, I’m busy,” he said. “You should go back to your guesthouse. You’ll get stung.”
Rosa could feel a bee had settled on her hair, another on her upper arm. “I don’t care about getting stung. I care that you still haven’t spoken to me, and I have this to show you.” She indicated the shoot.
Anatoly lifted the edge of his veil and peered at it. “What is it?”
“It’s the seed that you gave me yesterday afternoon.”
A number of emotions chased each other across his face in a moment. Surprise, disbelief, puzzlement. Then he adopted his usual sombre expression. “You’ve done well. Keep going with the spell.”
“I need new spells. I don’t care to grow trees, Anatoly. I will be satisfied with nothing less than crossing to the other world, and that won’t happen while I’m teaching Makhar decimals.”
She had raised her voice, and Anatoly glanced around nervously. He used the back of his glove to brush the bee out of her hair. “Come with me,” he said, dropping his equipment.
Back at the guesthouse, the door safely closed behind them, he removed his veil and gloves and fixed her with a steely glare.
“Why aren’t you afraid of me, Rosa?” he asked.
“Should I be?”
“Everyone else is.”
“We had an agreement. I’ve been here three days and I’ve taught your son and stuck labels on jars and washed dishes every night. You’ve taught me one spell that I didn’t care to know.”
Anatoly’s top lip twitched, and Rosa braced herself: she didn’t know if he was repressing a laugh or a snarl.
He smiled, shook his head and chuckled. “Will one spell a day satisfy you?”
“Yes. I suppose.”
He nodded, his fingers on the end of his beard. “You are much stronger than I thought, Rosa. I’m sorry. Don’t come to me again out in the open. Ilya may have arrived at any moment.” He squeezed her hand. “Meet me at the front gate in ten minutes. There is something we must do together before we can proceed any further.”
Anatoly kept her waiting for twenty. Divested of his bee-protection suit, he now wore a stained pair of overalls and a musty flannel shirt. He handed Rosa a button.
“Here,” he said, “keep this safe a little while.”
While he unlocked the gate she turned the button over in her fingers. It was shaped like a bow, and most of the yellow paint had come off to reveal brown plastic beneath. “Whose is it?”
“It’s Luda’s. I pulled it off one of her shirts.” He ushered her out and locked up behind him. “Rosa, her jealousy is an impediment to us getting any work done. I love my wife, but she isn’t reasonable.” He smiled. “Perhaps I love her because she isn’t reasonable.”
“So what are we going to do?”
“A simple hiding spell. One can use it for specific things—hiding an object, for example—but it’s also possible to use it to create a blindness in another individual. Not just to an object, but to an activity. Provided you have something they treasure to bury.”
Rosa looked at the button again. “She treasures this?”
“She treasures the shirt. Her mother sewed it for her as a wedding present. It is long since too threadbare to wear. Now, keep your eyes open for an ant hill.”
They trudged into the woods. Each ant hill she pointed out was dismissed by Anatoly as not being the right one.
“So what kind of ant hill is the right one?” she said finally, when they had been searching for forty minutes.
“One with nine paths leading up to it.” Anatoly had stooped over another little mound, peering at it. “You see. This one has five.” He pointed out the streams in which the ants were leaving and returning.
Rosa bent to count them, then straightened her back. The low sun hit her eyes. Anatoly’s two shadows forked out from his feet. At the tip of the first shadow, she spotted another ant hill.
“There,” she said, hurrying over. “One, two…Yes, there are nine.”
“Good work,” he said. “Now where is the button?”
“Here.”
“You remember the structure of the zagovor?”
“Yes.”
“So, tell the button your spell and then bury it.”
Rosa sat on the ground, holding the button over the ant hill. “Spirits of the wood, I beseech you. Mother Moist Earth, I seek your aid.” Rosa thought for a moment. “In a city on the gulf, there was a girl who would keep a secret hidden. Her uncle didn’t know, her lover didn’t know, her mother and father were dead and knew nothing. She angered her uncle and still did not tell. She lost her lover and still did not tell.” Rosa’s body grew warm, and she knew the magic was working. “She dishonoured the blessings of her dead parents and still did not tell. As her secret remains hidden, so will my dealings with this volkhv remain hidden from Luda Chenchikova.” She pushed the button into the opening of the ant hill with sweaty fingers. “My word is firm, so it shall be.”
Rosa turned to Anatoly, who met her gaze with a serious expression. He was silent for a few moments, then said in a measured tone, “Very well done, Rosa.”
She stood, brushing off her hands and trying not to smile. “What can we expect will happen now? Will she not see us?”
“She’ll still see us and hear us, of course, so we have to be careful not to be too open in our dealings. But she’ll not notice little clues, she’ll not read anything into our time spent together.” He rose and glanced back towards the farm.
“What about Ilya and Makhar? What if they put ideas into her head?”
“The ideas won’t take hold. She doesn’t like you, Rosa, and she still won’t like you. However, she won’t notice if we are missing at the same time, she won’t come looking for us at the bathhouse.”
Rosa noted that he’d used the word “bathhouse” instead of guesthouse, but didn’t question him.
Anatoly took a step closer, gazing down at her. “Rosa, we could do whatever we wanted. Luda won’t know.”
Rosa felt her body shrink from him, but held her ground. “All I want to do is learn magic,” she said firmly.
“Are you sure?”
“What are you suggesting, exactly?”
“I should very much like to get inside you, Rosa.”
“I should very much like you to stay right where you are.”
He chuckled softly. “You know, I have had lovers before. You wouldn’t be the first, nor the last. And a volkhv knows things about a woman’s pleasure that no other man knows.”
Rosa hated her stupid body for betraying her with a quick rush of curious excitement. She felt herself blush. “No,” she said. “Thanks, but no.”
He held his hands out. “The offer remains, should you change your mind. I won’t insist, and I won’t ask again.”
The spell was strong and effective. Ludmilla didn’t notice Rosa and Anatoly returning together from the woods, nor did she think anything of the way he visited her each afternoon while dinner was cooking inside.
Rosa found that now she was using her magic every day, she could endure more readily the tedium and indignity of her work at the farm. On Wednesday, Anatoly taught Rosa how to cure his toothache. On Thursday, Ludmilla reported a mouse leaving the fireplace: a fire omen. Anatoly made a magic square to hang on the mantel while Rosa prepared an enchanted egg to burn in the hearth. On Friday, Anatoly showed Rosa his spell for controlling the bees without the aid of smoke, but Ilya interrupted them before she could try it. Each night, she said a little blessing for Daniel and drew a little blood in his name. Each day, she could feel the magic growing in her muscles and sinews; the joints of her fingers were
tight with it. She put off phoning Uncle Vasily—what would she say to him?—because she knew, she knew, that by the end of the week she would be strong enough to cross the veil.
On Friday night Rosa slipped out the gate with midnight at her back. She waited until she was well into the woods before fumbling for her cigarettes. The trees were quiet and calm, the clouded sky still and mute. She picked her way through the trees, more certain of her route this time, rehearsing in her head the zagovor she would use. An owl sat blinking on a nearby branch, and she hooted to it softly. It spread its wings and flapped away. Under the flapping, Rosa could hear something else. A distant shushing. She turned her eyes upwards. The air was still…no, the tips of trees on the dark horizon were moving. A shiver crossed her body. Cold from the approaching wind, but also anticipation. Bad magic stirred the air.
She hesitated. Should she run back to the guesthouse? The speed the wind was approaching wouldn’t allow her even to make it back to the gate in time. She glanced around for a place to hide, but how would she hide from an enchanted creature? They were cunning, they knew the woods and were not confused by the dark. She froze as the wind bore down, making branches creak and lifting fallen leaves.
The shadow slid past two hundred feet to her right. A sizzle of adrenalin. Only the corner of her vision caught it and she turned her head to follow it with her eyes. It had already disappeared into the trees.
Rosa paused. Then followed.
The woods were alive with creaking and thudding and rustling. The shadow slipped between trees ahead of her, always too far ahead for her to see it clearly. Was it a leshii? A demon of frost or fire? This close to a crossing, it could be any kind of creature. Rosa both longed to see it, and was so terrified that her heart jumped in her chest.
Somewhere in the darkness, she lost sight of it. She stopped, panting, gazing around her. Turned in a slow circle.
It hit her from behind. A thud in the centre of her back which sent her flying to the ground. She cried out, quickly scrambling to her feet. It kicked her feet from under her and she landed again, this time on her back. It loomed above her.
Not a leshii or a demon. A young man with his face in shadows.
“Hey,” she said. “Who are you?”
He shook his head mutely then turned to run. Rosa stood, pressing her hand into her back. “Wait,” she called, but her voice was carried backwards on the wind.
He had disappeared.
Rosa brushed leaves off her clothes. Was it the same young man she had seen before, with Elizavetta? She was so angry at being knocked over by him that she considered heading back to the guesthouse and telling Ilya that his wife had a secret lover.
But that wasn’t why she had come out tonight.
The wind was dying down now. Just a random night breeze, not an omen of bad magic after all. She turned back the way she had come, finding her way to the field.
The veil waited. Her second sight revealed the bright colours and distant music. She walked right up to it, her palms brushing the space just outside the soft gold and violet waves. Her fingers tingled, her scalp prickled.
With a deep breath, she said, “Sister moon, I beseech you. Tsar air, I beg your aid.” Eyes turned to the clouds, she told her tale. “On a small green island in the cold sea, the youngest of three sons was born. His name was Daniel, and he fell in love with a rose who offered him only her thorns.” Rosa bowed her head, waiting until the pang of guilt and loss had passed sufficiently for her to continue. “She led him far and far away from his home and comfort, until he crossed the veil from this world to the next. As he has crossed, so may I cross this veil. My word is firm, so it shall be.”
Rosa stepped forward. This time, instead of the veil disappearing, it held. She felt resistance against her body, elastic. But she couldn’t push through it.
She stepped back and said the spell again. Tried the veil once more. The elastic gave a fraction, began to separate and dissolve into stars, but then sprang back stronger than before.
Half an hour passed, an hour. Over and over she said the spell and tried to step through the veil, until her body was sore from beating itself against the resistance, and sweat ran in rivers under her clothes and hair.
“Damn it!” she said at last, collapsing to her knees. She picked up a rock and threw it at the veil, watched it hurtle through to the other side and land in the field.
She took a moment to catch her breath, closing down her second sight so the colours couldn’t taunt her. She swore at the veil in every language she knew and lit a cigarette.
It was simply taking too long. Already Daniel had been gone more than a week. What if it took weeks or months to grow her magic? She felt a twinge of the raw panic she had been suppressing all week.
“Okay, patience, patience,” she said, pulling herself to her feet and making her way back through the woods. She thought of her mother’s bracelet. Anatoly had called it a worthless trinket, but if it was so useless, why did he have to keep it from her? And if it was more powerful than he said, then could it help her cross the veil? Maybe if she could find it without Anatoly knowing…
Footsteps in the forest had her withdrawing behind the trunk of a tree. She heard the footsteps pause too, as though wary of her. She waited, listening.
“I know you’re there!” a man called, and he sounded desperate and angry. “Leave her alone! She’s mine!”
Rosa recognised the voice as Ilya’s, and stepped out of hiding. “Ilya? It’s me, Rosa.” She could see him in the distance, near the edge of the wood. She waved and he waved back slowly. She hurried over to join him.
“Hi,” she said, catching her breath.
“What are you doing out here?”
She looked around and shrugged. “Oh, forbidden things.”
He frowned. “What forbidden things?”
“Smoking cigarettes, mainly.” She pulled out her packet and offered him one.
“I don’t smoke.” He narrowed his eyes. “You’ve come a long way from the front gate for a cigarette.”
She lit one and took a long, slow drag. “I guess I have.” She tilted her head to the side, pouted and expelled the smoke in a lazy stream directly over his head. “Who did you think I was, Ilya?”
“What do you mean?”
“You said, ‘leave her alone’. Who were you talking to?”
“It’s a private matter. A family matter.”
“Who did you want him to leave alone? Elizavetta?”
“I must get back to the farm,” he mumbled, turning his shoulder to her. “It’s cold. It’s late.”
“Not that late. You look like you don’t sleep until dawn anyway. Worrying about your wife?”
“Of course I’m worried. She’s sick.”
Rosa took his arm, crushing her unfinished cigarette under her shoe. “Ilya, come back to the guesthouse with me. I’ve got a jar of stale coffee and an old kettle down there. We can talk.”
“We have nothing to talk about,” he said softly.
“How do you know that? Perhaps we do. Come on.” She led him away firmly, through the gate and around the garden. He didn’t resist. Grey shadows collected around the house, and a night bird called far off. In the guesthouse, she stripped off her coat and plugged in the electric heater. Ilya took the armchair while she made coffee.
“I can’t offer you sugar or milk,” she said.
“I don’t mind.”
She handed him a cup and perched on the edge of her bed. “Anatoly has a possession of mine, a silver charm bracelet, and I’d like to get it back. Do you have any idea where he might have hidden it?”
“Perhaps you should ask Anatoly.”
“He doesn’t want me to have it.”
“Then you’ll never find it. He can hide things so you’ll never see them again.”
Rosa thought about the button in the ant hill and knew this was right.
“There’s more to you, isn’t there?” Ilya said, nursing his cup between his strong finger
s. “I knew it when I met you.”
Rosa eased off her shoes and folded her legs under her. “There’s no point in denying it, but Anatoly thinks it’s a secret,” she said. “I need to learn magic, and quickly. Anatoly’s helping me.”
“Is that why you were in the woods?”
“Yes. There is a veil out there, between this world and the next. Someone I love has slipped through, and I intend to go after him.” She lifted her cup to her lips, watching Ilya over the rim. His oddly-matched eyes were turned down, and she took the opportunity to admire his smooth olive skin and his wide mouth. He was very still, and Rosa sensed a great unhappiness in him. “What about you? Is there more to you? What part do you play in Anatoly’s secret world?”
A smile broke through the serious expression. “I play no part in secrets.”
“Nothing mysterious about you, then?”
He shook his head. “No. I do what I can to help with the bees, but I don’t feel or see anything extraordinary.”
“You can see Anatoly’s two shadows, though?”
“Oh, yes, anyone can. When we’re in town together, I have to walk next to him to block the light. It requires some pretty fancy footwork.”
They laughed, and Rosa felt him soften towards her. She pushed her advantage. “So, Ilya, who were you looking for out there in the woods?”
The goodwill evaporated. “It’s private.”
“I’ve seen someone out there, you know. A dark-haired man. I saw him just this evening.”
“Then you should be careful, because he is dangerous.”
“Not to me,” she said. “I think he was looking for someone else.”
Ilya stood and handed her his untouched coffee. “Goodnight, Rosa,” he said.
“Yes, you’d better get to bed,” she said, still digging for information. “Elizavetta will notice you’re gone.”
“I share a room with Makhar,” he said. “Elizavetta’s sleep is too easily disturbed.”
She saw him to the door, his mournful expression stilling her next question. “I’m sorry. Sleep well,” she said.
