Juniper & Thorn(41)

There was a glass of something as black as pitch on the cloven-footed table. “What is that? I thought we didn’t have anything to eat.”

“I found it in the cellar. You must have made it. Don’t you remember?”

I had made a great many things over the years, including kvass, which kept forever. I did not remember this one in particular, though I thought I would have: it was so dark and thick-looking. Yet I was hungry enough that my knees were trembling and my vision had gone blurry around the edges, so I simply nodded.

I perched beside Papa on the very edge of the chaise longue, our arms touching. He gave me a kiss on the top of my head and put the cup in my hand.

It was cold and smelled like nothing, but perhaps that was my own mind, my own fear and exhaustion rippling out into a spell that made everything seem ashen and empty. Perhaps my body knew that I would not be able to throw it up later, and it was doing me a kindness by making it appear sylphlike and void, nothing that would sit in my belly with too much unbearable weight.

I now counted out my hours like varenyky on a plate, each one wrapped neatly in dough. From seven to eight I had listened to Papa’s yelling. From eight to nine I had roused my sisters from their beds. From nine to ten I had tidied the house in preparation for the visitors. From ten to eleven I had spoken to a skupshchik. From eleven to twelve I had spoken to another. From twelve to one I had spoken to no one and watched my sisters and tried not to weep. From one to two I had sold all of Undine’s old china dolls. From two to three I had sold Mama’s charm bracelet. From three to four I had killed and butchered the monster.

Outside the sky was black and close with storm clouds, the red gash of sunset bleeding thinly through. The gate groaned in the wind, metal latch opening with a clink. The juniper tree looked as stolid as a grave marker, unruffled. Under the dirt was the compact and inside the compact was the black sand and in every grain of that sand was Sevas, my first secret, my first lie, safe as death. I brought the glass to my mouth and drank.





Chapter Seven




I woke to the sound of rainwater dripping from the eaves. The storm had come and gone as I slept, and it had uprooted our saplings like needles drawn from a pincushion and blown ferns across my window. I rubbed at the marbled condensation on the glass and peered through, eyes scanning the ravaged garden until I found the juniper tree. It stood as straight and tall as a ship’s mast, unperturbed, black berries gleaming as if there were a thousand-eyed animal ensconced in its scrubby foliage.

I exhaled my relief, fogging up the glass again. That was when I realized there was a water stain on my pillow. I touched the back of my neck. It felt oddly damp, my hair sodden. Perhaps something had leaked through the roof; I did not know how else I might have gotten wet. I stood up on my bed, unsteadily, and checked the ceiling for cracks. No hairline fracture, nothing.

I climbed down again, feeling both foolish and perturbed. I wanted to ask my sisters if they had woken up damp, too, but Undine was still angry at me and still mourning the loss of Mama’s pearls, and I knew Rose would just sigh and chide me for my fear and strangeness.

Sitting on my bed, another odd memory inhabited me. It was wispy and vague this time, like the vestiges of a dream. In the dream I was drenched in water; above me, the black sky was forked with lightning, and there were hard cobblestones under my feet. Perhaps my dream-self had carried me out of my bed and into Oblya’s streets again. Yet how could my dreaming desires leave any mark upon my waking-self?

As I watched out the window again, the door of the garden shed flapped open and Indrik came staggering out, the goblin at his heels. He looked almost as despondent as the morning he’d first come to us; for days afterward the sky rumbled with artificial thunder. I felt sorry for him as he picked burrs from his coat, and sorrier for the goblin as it wiped its big eye on a loose rhubarb leaf.

I heard Papa lurching from his bed, so I put on my housecoat and hurried downstairs.

It had been a long time since I had seen the icebox so full, stuffed nearly to bursting with paper packages of hard, white fatback; jars of sour cream that tumbled over each other when I opened the lid; whole carp with their heads and eyes still intact. There was the chicken he’d promised, though it was already plucked and pimpled, and red, round apples with no bruises. I dug through the packets of butcher paper and the loose fruit until I found, strangely, a glass container with filling for varenyky I could not remember making.

I was pleased, though, that I could make Papa a proper breakfast at last. Surely he could not be angry at me or my sisters when there was a heaping plate in front of him and he was sitting on a whole heavy bag of rubles. I made the dough and rolled it thin, then fried up that filling with onions and oil. I put his varenyky on the plate with great care, dropping a spoonful of that fresh sour cream beside them, and another spoonful of pickled purple cabbage with it. I would serve it to him and he would smile and thank me and kiss my cheeks, and then we would print up the flyers and more clients would come and nothing else of Mama’s would need to be sold.

I could not find the blackberry kvass Papa and I had drunk last night, so I poured him a glass of water instead. While I was arranging everything on the tray I saw a mangle of fur and skin and dried blood on the butcher block, what was left of the monster I’d killed.

A sick feeling jostled my belly, like someone prodding an overripe fruit on a sagging branch.

In the safe aftermath of the storm and in the quiet, gutted carcass of our house, I allowed myself to think of Sevas again. He would play Ivan tonight, feather-clad and gold-daubed, following the same steps over and over, trying to make every smile look new and every stumble seem dire.