“If you want to take your chances, you go ahead. I’m leaving. At the first opportunity,” says Kotelnikov. “And I’ll take anybody who wants to come. Maria? Madame Bulygina?”
How can I? If I go with him, we may wander the forest for days before we find the crew—days during which we’re pursued by the koliuzhi, days in which we’ll need to fend for ourselves with no food, no shelter, and no firearms. It’s the middle of winter. The cold alone could decide our fate.
Besides, I don’t want to see our crew. I hate Timofei Osipovich. My husband is a coward. How can I forgive them so easily? I know these are the vengeful thoughts of a little girl who imagines she’s been betrayed, and not an eighteen-year-old married woman, but I don’t care. I don’t.
“They don’t want us,” I say. “There’s no point.”
“That’s not true,” says Kotelnikov. “Be rational. We can’t stay here. They’re going to kill us eventually.”
“They’re not going to kill anybody,” Yakov points out.
I agree with Yakov. The koliuzhi have shown no inclination toward murdering us. If Kotelnikov were to go and the rest of us were to stay, would that change? And if I decided to go with him, leaving Yakov and Maria behind, what would the koliuzhi do to them? I can’t leave them to the mercy of the koliuzhi.
“I’m not going,” I decide, “and I don’t think you should either, Filip Kotelnikov. We should stay together.”
“Then come with me. All of you. There’s no other way.”
“We wouldn’t even get to the river,” Yakov says.
“Please, Filip Kotelnikov,” I beg. “Please don’t go. At least wait a few days before deciding. Maybe Yakov is right.”
“Two days then,” he says. “I’ll give you two days to make up your mind. Then I’m leaving, and you will too if you have any sense.”
The dense forest repels the rain but traps us in its twilight. We left mid-morning and except for one break to eat, we haven’t stopped. We’ve been walking for hours at a brisk pace, so I’m sure we’re a long way from the Tsar’s house. I haven’t walked this distance since the days after we abandoned the brig, before we were captured. My feet have blistered in the same places. Though it’s not raining, we’re walking through mist. My clothes are soaked, and my hair is so wet and straggly I don’t even bother to push it from my eyes.
I have no idea where we’re being taken, or why, or what’s happening with Maria and Kotelnikov, or where Nikolai Isaakovich and the rest of the crew are.
Except to urge us on, no one speaks to Yakov and me.
Kotelnikov’s two-day deadline proved meaningless. Early this morning, before we were offered food, he was pulled to the door by three men.
“Let go,” he cried. He tore one arm from their grip and struck one of the men. The man wrenched Kotelnikov’s arm back and Kotelnikov screamed.
“Let go! I told you to let me go!”
I looked at Maria, then Yakov. The koliuzhi dragged Kotelnikov through the doorway. Perhaps they intended to try and negotiate his release with the crew. But I knew that made no sense. Eventually his shouting faded in the distance.
I waited for them to come for the rest of us. Instead, the morning routine resumed. Koliuzhi Klara offered us fish and grease that she scooped from a round, shallow dish shaped like a bear or wolf, its tail the handle. I could barely eat.
Once we finished, Yakov was pulled to his feet and nudged toward the door. When halfway there, a man pulled me up as well. “Ahda,” he said, and I yielded. I didn’t know what was happening, but it gave me shaky confidence that Yakov was to be part of whatever it was.
I turned when I reached the doorway. “Maria?”
She’d stood but the man who’d pushed me down held her forearm. The lamestin woman was beside them. “Baliya,” she said, followed by an incomprehensible chain of words.
“She can’t stay here by herself!” I cried. “Yakov! Do something!”
“The eye can see it, but the tooth cannot bite it,” he said. “What can an old man do?”
Yakov and I were led to a small canoe on the riverbank and nudged into its bowl. I sat backward, facing the house. I looked for Maria, but the doorway was blocked with koliuzhi. I saw the woman with the silver comb. I saw Koliuzhi Klara and the Murzik. From the distance that stretched between us, I couldn’t guess what any of them were thinking.
We landed on the north side of the river. I gagged. The reek of the grey-brown mound was stronger on this riverbank, and the squabbles of the crows much louder. But the decomposing corpse itself seemed to have disappeared. I didn’t want to look but it puzzled me, and so, I did, and when I couldn’t locate it, I concluded it was my perspective. I just couldn’t see it from where I stood.
The koliuzhi led us into the gloomy forest.
“This is the wrong way,” I said to Yakov. “Nikolai Isaakovich and the crew are upriver.”
Yakov shook his head and said nothing.
The trees thin out a little and allow the silver light to reach us. The forest floor here is covered with crisp leaves, yellow, orange, and brown, which rustle as we walk through them. The trees are neither as tall nor as imposing as the conifers. A few have silvery bark that reminds me of the birch forests I’d visited often with my parents.
My father liked to wander in the forest. He’d see something—an unusual fork in a branch or an abandoned nest or freshly dug earth that suggested an animal might have had a den nearby—and he’d wander off the path. My mother preferred to stay on the trails and insisted always that I stay with her.
“I knew this girl,” she began one day when my father had disappeared on one of his diversions. “She lived in a certain village—not far, not near, not high, not low. She was walking in a forest just like this when she came across a necklace lying on the path.”
“Where did it come from?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” she said dismissively, and continued. “The necklace was extraordinarly beautiful. So beautiful that she forgot about the incantation.”
“What incantation?”
“I will tell you. I will teach it to you. But you must promise me that you’ll never forget it.” She waited. “Well? Do you promise?”
Warily I said, “I promise.” I hoped my father was too far away to hear.
“Good,” my mother said. “Now repeat what I say:
Earth, earth, close the door.
One necklace, nothing more.
Earth, earth, I command,
One necklace, in my hand.”
When I was able to recite the whole thing by myself—it was easy—she continued. “Without the incantation, she took the necklace. She put it in the box with her other jewellery. That night, when she was asleep, a voice woke her up. ‘Give me back what is mine,’ the voice said.”
“Who was it?” I asked. “Voices have to come from somebody.”
“Ah, you sound like your father. Listen. I will tell you,” she said. “There was a man beside her bed. It was his voice. She was terrified, so she said yes, she would give it back. When she opened her box to get it, the necklace was gone.”
“The man took it?”
“I don’t know who took it.”
“This is not a real story. It’s not possible.”
“It is a real story. It happened to my friend,” she said. “Don’t you want to know how it turned out?” I nodded.
“The man was very angry. He said, ‘You’ve taken what belongs to me. Now I will take you.’” I was old enough to know what she meant, but I still didn’t believe it. “He told her never to tell anybody or she would die.
“Every night, it was the same thing. I know it sounds crazy but—my friend said he would show up as a flying serpent. He’d transform into a man and then—take my friend as though she was his wife. Until finally one day, after a long time and a short time, she couldn’t take it anymore and she told me.”