Rosa and the Veil of Gold

by Kim Wilkins

  He took a breath as though to say something, then thought better of it and merely nodded once before disappearing into the dark garden.

  Buzzing woke her. Late-morning sunshine was slanting through the high window. That, combined with the electric heater she had left on, and the layers of blankets, made her uncomfortably sticky.

  Still, it took her a moment to move. She sat up and rubbed her eyes. Weariness weighed down her arms. She checked her watch. Nine hours’ sleep and she had woken up tired. It probably had something to do with the intense mental and physical effort at the veil the previous night.

  Her eyes went up. A bee was knocking itself against the timber boards of the ceiling. She stood on the bed and opened the window, hoping the bee would find its way out. Then she lay down on her back, and watched it for a while.

  Bees were such clever creatures: they built colonies, made wax and honey, were masters of teamwork. But a bee’s only defence was her sting, which pulled her guts out with it. Rosa yawned and stretched her arms over her head. She hadn’t had a chance to try Anatoly’s bee-control incantation; perhaps she could persuade this bee to leave with magic.

  “Summer breeze, I call on you; Tsar air, hear me.” She launched into Anatoly’s zagovor, felt the warmth of magic in her elbows and fingers, then demanded that the bee leave.

  Nothing happened.

  Rosa frowned. Had she forgotten some aspect of the spell?

  She was too tired to think about it. There was no doubt her magic was growing, but it would take time. She picked up a book and shooed the bee out the window, closing it firmly and wondering where the insects were finding their way in.

  Rosa went up to the house to shower and dress, then asked Ludmilla for directions to town.

  Ludmilla drew her a map, then said, “Why are you going to town?”

  “I have to phone my Uncle Vasily back in St Petersburg,” she said.

  “You can use the phone here.”

  Rosa shook her head. She had things to ask Vasily which she didn’t want Anatoly to overhear. “I’d like to get out, see the town, look in the shops.”

  “Good luck,” Ludmilla sniffed. “There’s a petrol station, a tavern and a general store. You’ll find a phone box in the car park.” She picked Anatoly’s wallet up off the kitchen bench and handed Rosa a few notes. “I need some groceries. Will you pick them up for me? It will save me a trip.”

  “Sure.”

  The phone started ringing, and Ludmilla tossed the wallet on the bench. “I must get that. Check the day book for the shopping list. Make sure you staple the receipt in when you get home.” She pointed to a household diary in the hutch, where all the daily tasks had to be enumerated and checked off. This was how the Chenchikovs kept their farm running on such short staff.

  Ludmilla dashed off and Rosa found the right date. The list was in Ludmilla’s neat hand: two dozen eggs, a pound of butter, a jar of instant coffee. Rosa smiled, thinking that maybe Anatoly’s wife didn’t hate her after all. At the top of the page were some scribbled notes, a different handwriting. Anatoly, maybe? Rosa tried to read it, but couldn’t. The language was foreign to her, even though it was written in Russian letters.

  Rosa pocketed the money and Ludmilla’s hastily drawn map. “See you this afternoon,” she called.

  As the sun moved overhead, the day grew warmer and Rosa shed her light jacket and rolled up her sleeves. The air was humid, and the sun felt good on her bare arms. The blue Ford was where she had left it, and she wondered who it belonged to and whether they were looking for it. It started first time and she backed out and turned the car around, pointing it towards the main road.

  The drive was longer than she’d expected—a little over an hour—and the town much smaller. She pulled into a potholed car park behind the tavern and saw the phone box Ludmilla had spoken of. A scrappily handwritten sign across the front read, “broken”.

  Rosa sighed, picked up her bag and let herself out of the car. She would have to try her luck in the tavern.

  Inside, the ceilings were low and the lights were dim. The echoing cool was a pleasant contrast to the sunny warmth outside. The decor was at least fifty years old, but the picture of Stalin over the bar was too prominent and too dust-free to be a relic of another time. The smell of cooking reminded her that she’d skipped breakfast and it was already lunchtime. Two wiry drunkards held up the bar, the clink of their glasses loud in the emptiness. The long orange towels arranged across it were soaked and stank of vodka. Rosa approached the bartender, a fortyish man with a defeated expression.

  “I need to use your phone,” she said.

  “Long-distance or local?”

  “Long-distance. St Petersburg.”

  “Five hundred roubles for ten minutes only,” he said.

  Rosa shook her head. “That’s too much. Did you break the phone box yourself?”

  “You could always drive to the next town.”

  Rosa found the money in her purse and gave it to him. “I’ll have a bowl of pelmeny also. Some rye bread on the side.”

  He reached behind himself and handed her the telephone, still anchored to the back wall.

  “You don’t have something more private?”

  The bartender glanced at the two men on the other end of the bar. “They aren’t listening and I don’t care.”

  Rosa shrugged, and dialled Vasily’s number.

  It rang four times before he answered, giving her time to brace herself against the hysterics which she suspected might ensue.

  “Hello, Vasily Beletsky.”

  “Uncle Vasily. It’s me.”

  “Roshka?” His voice was immediately frantic. “Where are you? What has happened?”

  “I’m fine, I’m fine. I’m staying with a family about a hundred miles north-west of Oksovsky.”

  “I thought you were in Arkhangelsk! Where’s the bear?”

  “I’m still trying to find it.”

  His voice grew soft. “Ah, Roshka, I don’t care about the bear. Just come home. I’ve been so worried.”

  “You’re not to worry, I’m perfectly well.”

  “Do you have anything to do with the missing American woman?”

  “Which woman?”

  “It’s been on the news. A television reporter and her assistant. They went missing on the way to Arkhangelsk. They were booked into the same hotel as you, and there was talk that they’d come with a strange artifact. Did you give the bear to television people?”

  “I don’t know who you mean,” she lied. Better that Vasily knew nothing, just in case investigators came to ask him questions. She would certainly have to rid herself of the car very soon. “Look, I can’t expect you to believe anything that has happened to me, so it’s best if I don’t tell you.”

  “But, Rosa—”

  “Is there anything else of Mama’s at your place? Any of her magical things?”

  Vasily was silent for a few moments, and Rosa knew he was suppressing a thousand questions. “I think there are some old books,” he said at last, “but they aren’t here, they’re in storage.”

  “Can you send them up for me?”

  “I can. It may take a day or two.”

  “As soon as you can, Uncle Vasily.” She gave him the address and the phone number at the Chenchikovs’ farm, and warned him against speaking of her mother to whoever answered the phone if he called.

  “I’m hardly going to unburden my heart to strangers,” he said.

  “Sorry, Uncle Vasily. Just in case, don’t mention the books you’re sending me. Anatoly Chenchikov is a volkhv.” Rosa was aware that the bartender had just glanced up, and cursed herself for not speaking more quietly. She turned her back. “He doesn’t want me to bring any of Mama’s magic into the house, but I need it.”

  “Rosa, forget the bear—”

  “It’s not the bear I care about,” she said. “It’s the boy who went with it.”

  “You’re breaking my heart, Rosa.”

  “I’m n
ot responsible for your heart, Uncle Vasily. I’m sorry.”

  “When will you be home?”

  “I don’t know. A few weeks maybe. You’re not to worry. You managed perfectly well without me before I arrived in St Petersburg, and I wouldn’t have stayed forever anyway.” Her meal landed at her elbow, and she surveyed it warily. Pale meat dumplings floating in broth with a chunk of antiquated sour cream on top. The yellow cast of the cream and the overripe smell of the meat told her that she’d regret eating it. “I have to go, Vasily,” she said, even though her ten minutes wasn’t up. “Someone’s waiting for the phone.”

  “I love you, Roshka,” he said.

  “I love you too. Goodbye.”

  “Thank you,” she said to the bartender, hanging up and turning to leave.

  “You didn’t eat your lunch.”

  Rosa shook her head. “I wasn’t hungry once I saw it.”

  “Are you staying with Anatoly Chenchikov?” he asked.

  “Does it matter to you?”

  “It matters to me if a pretty girl gets herself in trouble with a devil.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “Will you?”

  Rosa didn’t answer, pulling open the door and walking out into the bright sunshine.

  Dying for a cigarette at eleven p.m., Rosa kicked off the blankets. She had been trying to sleep for an hour and she was tired enough, despite her late morning sleep-in. But her mind was full of thoughts which would not lie down and be quiet, so neither could she.

  Ludmilla’s rule about not smoking inside the walls of the farm was starting to annoy her. Rosa pulled on her coat and shoes, leaving her warm pyjamas underneath, and shoved a packet of cigarettes and lighter in her pocket. She braced herself against the cold clear night, and left the guesthouse.

  One light on at the cottage, deep inside. The kitchen was dark, no flicker from the television.

  She followed the stone fence around and approached the gate, slowed and hung back when she heard Anatoly outside. She pressed her back against the cool stone and inched along to listen. It sounded as though he was at the edge of the woods; the wind picked up his voice and carried it back to her.

  “I beseech the moon and all the stars…”

  Rosa realised he was performing magic and moved closer to the gate to peek around the pillar. He turned in each direction, begging assistance of all the shadows from the north, the south, the east and west. He broke a glass at his feet and cut his palm on the shards as the zagovor grew more and more complex. Rosa focused on his voice, which was passionate, almost desperate. What was the spell for?

  Finally, he crumpled to his knees and threw back his head. Clearly and loudly, he announced his intention. “As this blood soaks the earth and is absorbed within it, so may Nikita Kirygin’s revenant spirit be absorbed into the night sky and leave my girl alone.” He let his head fall forward, his voice dropping. “My word is firm, so it shall be.”

  Rosa moved back into the shadow of the fence and closed her eyes a second. Now she understood what poison infected the heart of the Chenchikov family.

  They were being haunted by Elizavetta’s dead husband.

  THIRTEEN

  As the sun rose full on the first day of the journey, the clouds on the horizon burned off and the sky dazzled Daniel’s eyes. It was silver-blue at first glance, but he had the sense that if he looked deep—behind dense layers of air and light—there lurked swells of green and aches of violet. He was so preoccupied with trying to define how these impressions of colour were created that he lost his fear for a while in wonder.

  The leshii’s well-worn path from the cottage to the woods was wide enough for them to walk side by side. New growth sprouted everywhere, the sun and shadows playing on the sticky new leaves. Under his feet, remnants of the previous year’s autumn were scuffed and displaced. Daniel glanced at Em. Without make-up, in an unforgiving shaft of summer light, her skin was sallow around her eyes giving her a tired appearance. The roughly sewn travelling outfit was bulky and ill-fitting on her slender frame, and her hair was tucked under a dirty woollen cap. Despite all this, she still had a glamour about her, the spell of her resolute determination and uncanny mental abilities. She was pretty too, of course, but “pretty” seemed almost a ridiculous word to apply to such a serious, shrewd creature.

  “What are you looking at, Daniel?” she asked, without glancing in his direction.

  He averted his eyes. “Sorry, I was…admiring the stitching on your…coat. You’re full of hidden skills, aren’t you?”

  She didn’t respond and Daniel fell two or three steps behind her to nurse his embarrassment. The path widened in front of them. The woods grew thinner, giving way to maple and elm, and silver-leaf birch which shimmered against the soft breeze. The light moved differently on the leaves here, illuminating sinuous and unexpected colours: a touch of blue-green in the darker leaves, a shiver of gold in the pale maples. Daniel had to admit, despite his longing to be back home in his own world, that this place was beautiful.

  “How long do you think we should walk before taking a break?” Em called.

  Daniel caught up to her. “What do you think?”

  “We don’t want to walk until we drop. We’ll get further if we take regular rests. Perhaps every hour?”

  “All right. Yes.”

  “We’ll camp around sunset. Are you still happy to take the early sleep?”

  “Are you still happy to take the late one?”

  She stopped and turned to him, a patient smile on her lips. “You decide. It will be character building.”

  “Okay, I’ll take the early sleep.”

  “Good.” She resumed her pace. “The days are getting longer, and we can’t expect eight hours each a night. Three or four should do us. I’m certain it will only be in the short-term. A few days and we’ll be home in our own beds.”

  Daniel allowed himself to be persuaded by her positive tone.

  The path widened again, and a slope dropped away on their right. Daniel could see now that they walked the ridge of a hill. From up here, he viewed a rolling landscape of golden-green light and blue-violet shadows. The sky was an enormous clear vault above them. The sight took his breath away.

  “Wow,” said Em, her eyes as wide as a child’s.

  “It’s—”

  “Beautiful,” she finished for him. “Though that word feels very mundane.”

  Two black birds took off from a tree nearby, skimming off into the distance. Daniel watched them disappear. “So do you really think it will only take a few days to find the Snow Witch?”

  “Maybe. Maybe a week.”

  Daniel tried to discern whether she really believed this but she was, as ever, impenetrable.

  “Fork in the road,” she said, indicating ahead where the path turned back into woodland.

  “East and east and north a-ways,” Daniel said.

  “North it is, then,” she said.

  They moved back into the shade, and Daniel thought he heard a rustle and a clunk off the path. “What if we don’t find her that soon?” he said. “What if we wander for weeks or—”

  “Let’s play a game,” she said. “List every animal you can think of starting with an ‘a’.”

  “I’m sick of lists.”

  “What then?”

  He regarded her in the dappled light of the woods. “Have you ever done anything really dumb?”

  “Of course.”

  “Okay, then. Tell me the dumbest thing you’ve ever done. Then I’ll tell you.”

  Em shrugged. “I was at university, in a sociology exam. The question called for a two-page answer, but I misread it as a two-paragraph answer.”

  “Did you fail the exam?”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  Daniel repressed a laugh. “I think you’ve misunderstood what I meant by dumb,” he said. “I guess I meant embarrassing, funny, ridiculous.”

  “Oh.”

  “For example,” Daniel said, warming to
the topic and keen to shut out the sound of unknown things moving amongst the trees. “About a year ago, I went for a job interview. I’m not good at interviews, so I was very tense and it was for quite a high-paid job as a research co-ordinator with the BBC. The interview panel was three men, all dressed in grey suits and very sombre-looking. One was a human resources officer, a plump florid chap with a bowl haircut. We were in his office, grouped under a window. I referred to him respectfully as ‘sir’ throughout, but as the interview wore on he became more and more icy towards me. I couldn’t figure out what I was saying or doing wrong, and became really nervous and desperate to impress him. The other two seemed anxious about the tension between us. Everything was falling apart, and in my desperation I started toadying to him, saying things like, ‘a man of your great standing’ and so on…other embarrassing things.”

  They were walking up a gentle incline now, and Daniel took a minute to catch his breath. “The final straw came when I was leaving, and I caught a glimpse of a photograph on his desk. A very attractive young woman. I picked it up and said, ‘Is this your beautiful wife?’

  “He replied, ‘No, that’s my daughter.’

  “I was mortified, of course, and made to cover my loss quickly by saying, ‘You must be a very proud father.’

  “He couldn’t stand it a moment longer. He snatched the photo from me and said, ‘In fact, I’m a very proud mother’.”

  Em began to chuckle.

  “I immediately reassessed the situation, realised that despite her mannish suit and haircut she was, indeed, a woman. I had no idea what to say, realised nothing could fix it, but still found my tongue galloping away with me.

  “‘I thought you were a man,’ I said, then instantly regretting this, I added, ‘I expect I won’t get this job.’

  “They agreed and saw me out.”

  Em smiled. “Okay, yes. That’s pretty dumb.”

  “Your turn.”

  She pursed her lips, thinking. “Back home, my first break was reading the traffic report live on the radio during drivetime. One morning, there had been an accident on the corner of Hoob Road, but I read it as an accident ‘on the corner of Boob Road’. My colleagues thought that was pretty funny.”