She put her free hand to her face, the fingers touching her forehead. Not covering her eyes, really. Just... hiding.
"It's gone now," he said. "There's nothing to fear."
She shook her head. "I'm ashamed," she said.
"Of what?"
"You were so foolish in our world," she said. "But now I see that I'm a fool in yours."
Well. This is progress. "Not a fool," he answered. "I learned as quickly as I could, and you'll do the same."
"I know of no spell to make a wagon move by itself. It would take the Widow herself to do such a thing."
"The Widow wouldn't want to make a truck like that" he said, even though he knew she wouldn't understand the joke.
"Gruzovik," she said, using the Russian word he had used for the truck.
"That's good," he said. "A new word."
"How many new words are there?" she asked.
"A lot," he answered.
"A hundred?"
Let's see, he thought. Toilet, vaccine, magazine, movie, television, bank, automatic teller machine—a triple threat!—hamburger, ice cream, pizza, shampoo, tampon... No, it was not his job to explain that to her.
Whose job was it, then? What woman who spoke proto-Slavonic would be able to instruct her on how to unwrap it and insert it and...
If he had to explain it, she was going to learn about sanitary napkins. It's not like she was going to wear a bikini anytime soon.
What am I doing? What am I in for?
She stirred under his arm. "We should go on before it gets dark," she said.
"Yes, of course," he replied. "I'm sorry, I... I don't know how to begin teaching you the new words. I'm not even sure I should try, because if you go home with me to my family's house, most people don't speak Russian."
She snorted at the mention of the Scandinavian Rus'.
"I mean the language of the word gruzovik. They speak another language there, and a gruzovik is called 'truck.' "
"Truck," she said. She could not shape the English word very well.
"Never mind," he said. "Plenty of time."
But as they continued to walk toward Cousin Marek's house, he began to realize how impossible everything was going to be. He couldn't take her to America for the simple reason that she had no passport and no way to get one. There were no birth certificates in the ninth century, and it wouldn't matter if there were, no one would believe the date on it anyway. She did not exist, in fact. And the moment she opened her mouth, she would be branded as foreign, from some unidentifiable Slavic country, definitely in Ukraine illegally. However people in Taina might have regarded him with suspicion, they didn't assume he was a criminal because he talked strangely and arrived naked. It helped that it was the daughter of the head of state who led him into the village, of course, but... modern life was complicated.
If she couldn't go to America, neither could he stay here. His visa was not forever.
His visa.
How long had he been in Taina? Weeks, anyway. But when Katerina was asleep on that pedestal, a few months in Taina were eleven hundred years on this side of the chasm. Had he just pulled a Rip van Winkle stunt? Gone for a walk in the woods, and when he came back, twenty years had passed? A hundred?
No way could a Soviet-made gruzovik still be running after twenty years, let alone a hundred.
But even if he had disappeared for only the weeks that he was aware of having lived through, it must have caused terrible consternation here. Cousin Marek would have become alarmed by nightfall, and the next day there would have been a search. By now the search would be over, everyone convinced that he was dead somewhere in the forest. Mother and Father must be grieving, and Ruth. Would Ruth grieve? Of course she would, what a thing to doubt!
I have to explain. Gone for weeks, and when I come back, I have a girl with me who happens to be wearing nothing but my shirt.
Don't borrow trouble, he told himself. We have no choice but to go to Cousin Marek's house, and once we're there, with clothing, food, shelter, we'll figure out what to do next.
The sun was setting red behind them when they made the last turn and Cousin Marek's farm spread out before them like a Grant Wood painting. Ivan stopped for a moment, drinking in the familiar view. It had not been twenty years, that was certain, for nothing was changed.
"Taina," whispered Katerina.
She misses her home, thought Ivan.
"What have they done to Taina?"
"Taina is another time and place," he started to explain.
Then he looked again, as if with her eyes, and realized what had never crossed his mind until now: Cousin Marek's farm was on exactly the site of the village of Taina. His house was on the same spot as King Matfei's house.
In fact, estimating the positions of the two houses, Ivan realized that he had slept in about the same place in both. How could that happen? Mere coincidence? No one in Taina could have known where he slept in Cousin Marek's house. And yet they led him to the very spot.
It could not be. Impossible. And even if it was true, it was meaningless.
Ivan looked around for the high ground where the fort had been, with the practice field where he had been trained—or was it tortured?—by Dimitri. No building stood there now; it was a stand of trees, newish growth with lots of underbrush. But amid the clutter, were the outlines of the walls still there?
"Taina is gone," she said. "We failed. My people are destroyed." She was weeping.
"No, no," he said, pulling her to him and comforting her like a child, letting her cry against his chest. "Eleven centuries have passed. Cities rise and fall, and villages come and go, but it doesn't mean that the Pretender defeated your father, I promise you. If we went back and crossed the bridges, we'd see that nothing was changed. When I went to Taina, all of this disappeared and was replaced by your village. But it was still here when I crossed the bridge. Do you understand?"
She nodded, pulled away from him. "You understand these things," she said. "But to see the land with my father's house gone, replaced by this great castle."
"It's not a castle, it's just a house. We build taller houses in our time. Warmer ones, too. Let's go inside."
"This is your house?"
"My cousin's house. But Marek and Sophia have always made me as welcome as if I had been born here."
"Where is the village?"
"A long way from here, if you're walking. But not far by gruzovik."
"The servants live there?" She pointed.
"No, they keep birds there." Chicken wasn't part of the regular diet in Taina, and Ivan had never learned the word, if they even had one. "Like geese, only they don't roam free."
"To keep them safe from the foxes?"
"Yes," said Ivan. It occurred to him that the new henhouse Marek had shown him so proudly stood exactly where the church had been until it burned down yesterday.
No, it wasn't yesterday, it was this morning. His wedding morning. All of this in a single day? No wonder he was tired and hungry.
They came to the door and Ivan knocked.
The door was flung open so immediately that Ivan was momentarily frightened. Had Marek been watching at the window?
No, it was Sophia. "Vanya's back!" she called over her shoulder. Then she turned back to face Ivan, radiant with joy at seeing him. She opened her arms and was about to embrace him when she saw Katerina.
"What's this? What are you wearing? You must be freezing! And Itzak, you foolish boy, where is your—oh, she's wearing it. What was she wearing before she was wearing your—never mind, come in, get warm, get warm, time for stories in the kitchen, are you hungry? I have a big soup, I made plenty of borscht today, as if I knew you were coming, and cold, come in, don't dawdle."