Marina is atop the tank, pointing at the attic.
The gun elevates.
Andrew says “Get down!” to Michael, who appears to be stargazing.
Michael keeps looking up, his mouth moving.
What the fuck is he doing?
Hurry, owl.
Andrew drops to the floor, covers his head, puts his eyesight in the owl.
Now he sees the yard, the tank.
The bird flies toward it, slowly, struggling to carry the vase.
The tank is going to fire.
I could look at the attic, watch myself die.
No, fly faster, fucking owl.
FASTER!
Then he sees it.
With his owl eyes.
It comes from the constellation of Cassiopeia. It tumbles slowly at first, seems to turn, then hurtles at great speed, fiery, smoking, almost too fast to see.
Throwing mad shadows.
It’s big, big enough to make it through the atmosphere.
Because it’s real, many see it.
It gets wished on by no less than four thousand people.
Let my mother’s surgery go well.
Let me get into Yale.
Keep my love safe in Kabul.
Please please please let Stargate listen to my demo.
Make him ask me to marry him.
Please don’t let this be malignant.
I wish for Stephanie Daley to kiss me back with tongue.
OH PLEASE CRUSH THE FUCK OUT OF THAT TANK!
(that one’s Andrew)
The witch atop the tank turns, sees the meteor coming, spreads a hand at it. Manages to split it so it falls not in one television-sized hunk, but in several the size of footballs and baseballs. Manages to slow them so they don’t vaporize the tank.
She’s awfully strong.
But she can’t stop it.
Them.
One piece hits the turret, stuns the dead gunner, the Soviet driver made from a plastic model-man.
Knocks the witch off.
Another piece knocks the left track and two roller wheels off the T-34.
One misses, fells a small tree.
The noise is ungodly.
The meteor doesn’t destroy the tank, but it does beat the holy hell out of it.
It does buy some time.
For the owl.
The huge horned owl wings toward the tank, clutching the vase in its talons. It barely makes it there; the vase is heavy and its talons aren’t made for carrying such things. It drops the vase whole, hears it pop, turns so Andrew can use its eyes to see the yellow glass stones the vase held glittering all over the hull.
Up in the attic, Andrew shouts the word.
“Bhastrika!”
WHUMP!
A fireball the size of a pasha’s tent mushrooms up over the tank, lighting parts of the woods on fire, lighting the owl on fire, illuminating the snow that has begun to collect in the yard.
Andrew comes back to himself, shakes the arm he thought was a wing on fire, collects himself, looks out the window with Michael.
The fire’s glow on the snow makes him think of Christmas lights, and then the thought goes as quickly as it came.
This is one fucked-up Christmas.
A blackened skeleton is crawling out of a burning tank in his front yard.
A blackened skeleton on fire.
Coming toward the house.
The remaining three Soviet soldiers forming up behind it.
Rushing the house!
Michael, still stunned from calling the meteor, braces himself against the wall, points down the attic ladder.
Andrew goes down to meet the attack.
112
Marina Yaganishna’s ears are ringing and her general’s cap lies in the snow. The tank is burning, illuminating the maple trunks and the light dusting of snow, vomiting gouts of oily black smoke skyward. A flash of misplaced nostalgia strikes her, but she shakes this off along with the snow on her back and shoulders.
Shooting now at the front of the house.
Pop pop-pop.
“Moroz,” she says.
He appears. Not a lovely, bearded boy anymore, but a man with snow-white hair and the bluish skin of the dead by freezing.
He has found a pair of red polyester track pants.
His bare feet are missing toes.
The Pac-Man shirt persists.
She looks into his white eyes, eyes that look cataracted but are not.
“He will kill the soldiers,” she says. “And then Misha will kill him. Or not. Either way, get into the house while he’s doing it.”
Moroz nods, turns to go.
“Wait. Is there a well?”
Moroz tilts his head like a dog.
“A well?”
Moroz considers.
Yes. Shall I freeze it?
“No! Show me where it is.”
Moroz points.
She turns and walks that way, saying, without looking back.
“Make it colder.”
113
Andrew comes down the stairs with his shillelagh pointed before him.
“Buckler,” he says, and now a concave circle of slightly blurred and bluish air moves before him, the size of a large shield.
They’re shooting through the door.
He crouches as he comes down, fitting himself behind the shield.
The shield sparks and hisses where bullets strike it, but this is different from the bullet-turning charm. He has to wield this. It has advantages, though. It stops more than bullets. Which is a good thing because one of them has thrown a grenade—the door blows in, spraying him with high-velocity oak splinters and just a few hooks of metal shrapnel. One of these clips his leg, which had been sticking out.
The buckler stops so much matter that it hisses like water in hot oil, smoke blurring his vision for an instant.
He takes three pennies from the pouch around his neck.
His hands trembling.
He wills them to stop.
One soldier shoots around the door while the burning, black skeleton and two other men charge through.
His shield lights up where bullets skid against it.
He squeezes himself as small as he can behind it.
Dragomirov!
Do you like jazz?
He throws the pennies.
Now all the trapped trumpet-sound comes out at once, blowing the skeleton apart and out the door, concussing one man up against the wall so hard he bites through his tongue, his back snaps, and he turns into a little burlap doll.
Andrew runs into the kitchen, pointing the walking stick behind him.
He shuts the door.
Follow, follow!
Ducks behind the island.
Looks back, making sure the side door behind him is locked and sound.
A boot kicks the other door down.
He pops up, projecting the unsolid shield half over the island, flicks a penny.
Sound erupts from it.
Not enough to kill, but it knocks the two men down and deafens the first, cracks the door frame, blows a still life of pears and a copper bowl off the wall.
(He liked that painting)
He swears.
A Russian swears.
The deafened man goes to his knees.
The other man stands, shoots, ineffectively.
Charges Andrew with bayonet.
A barrel-chested, hairy miner from the Caucasus, he stabs the shield and wrenches it aside.
This breaks the spell.