Juniper & Thorn(43)

I drew in a breath, feeling only bewildered and scared. Papa spoke before I could.

“My daughters don’t work for free. And they don’t leave the house. If your friend is in such dire need of Marlinchen’s help, tell him to come here himself, and with a sack of rubles in his hand.”

“But he’s too sick to come. He can’t even walk.” Strands of wheat-colored hair peeked out from under Niko’s cap, sweat plastering them to his forehead. There was a faint gray hue to his skin, a marbled look like old milk, and from the way his body was trembling I wondered if he hadn’t already caught whatever Fedir had. “Please, Mr. Vashchenko. Sir. I can give you the money that I have now, and more when your daughter gets to our flat. I don’t—Fedir is my friend. I can’t watch him die.”

Such a terrible swell of guilt came over me that I started to shake too, inhaling hot and fast. I had promised Fedir I would treat him, no matter the ailment. I had promised I would go to him. I said, “Papa, we need the money. We do.”

Papa looked between Niko and me, head snapping back and forth so hard that his cheeks flapped and the wind bristled through his beard and he looked as mean as a bloodhound, trying to decide where first to close his teeth.

I had survived this quick-jawed fury before by staying quiet until it ebbed, and somehow Niko seemed to sense, too, that only silence and stillness would save us. He curled his white-knuckled hands around the bars of the gate and both of us held our breaths until the angry flush drained from Papa’s face and at last he said, in a rough voice like black water breaking over rocks, “There better be rubles waiting for us when we get there, boy.”



In another hour I had dressed and done what I could to tame my hair and taken a sample of every herb I managed to find in Rose’s storeroom. I also swiped the compendium off her desk. Even though I was not an herbalist myself, I was still a witch and I hoped that maybe I could imbue the tonics and elixirs with a bit of my own magic to make them work.

It was only that—a hope. My magic was just for showing; it wasn’t for doing or changing or making. But I had promised to go to Fedir and I knew I would not be able to bear it if he died without me trying everything I could to save him.

I had not been out into the city with Papa since before my mother had died, when he had taken my sisters and me with him to the market, or to the specialty shops, or to see Titka Whiskers and some of the other witches and wizards in Oblya. Mostly he was judging his competition, but Titka Whiskers always gave us squares of honey cake to eat and let me pull on her huge black lashes, which were as thick as crow’s feathers, forcing her cat-eyes open and shut and open and shut, over and over again until I got tired and fell asleep curled in her lap.

My mother did not like Titka Whiskers. She said she wanted her daughters to be doctors’ wives, not witches. She wanted to train us to host picnics and luncheons, not to make poultices for ringworm or see fortunes in the bottoms of our teacups. But no respectable man in Oblya would wed a witch, even a beautiful one. My sisters and I were only their furtive nighttime fantasy; we lived inside their heads, not beside them in their marriage beds.

The idea of his daughters marrying doctors was palatable enough to my father, and when he discovered that we were witches, initially he despaired of our prospects. Then he realized that he could use our magic and then Mama died and then none of us left the house so there were no men to meet anyway.

Now Niko led us down Kanatchikov Street, in the opposite direction of the ballet theater. The storm had made everything damp and muggy; I felt like I was being squeezed by a fist of air. My hair was already curling out of its tenuous updo. In the daylight the streets were busier even than at night, with trams and carriages skittering over the cobblestones like beetles and kumys sellers pushing their carts and brokers in snug black suits pacing furiously toward the stock exchange.

I had not been down any of these streets in the daytime before, at least not in a very long time, yet there was something immensely familiar about the way that cobblestones rolled beneath my feet. As if my body remembered something that my mind did not.

As we went on, we came across the beggars and the drunkards, propped up against the sides of buildings or clumped along alleyways like growths of mold, faces ashen and sweat-slick. I saw Papa curl his lip as we passed one of them, dark bottle still held limply between the man’s finger and thumb. Magic rose from Papa like hair on a dog’s hackles, and it was only because Niko sped up then that my father didn’t loose his spell. The drunkard rolled over and pressed his cheek against the cobblestones.

In this part of Oblya, where I had never been, the buildings were like card houses half-toppled. Awnings were wind-thrashed and yellow with time. The windows were clotted with dead black flies and smudged with handprints that lingered like grease on a pie pan. Slack clotheslines crisscrossed above our heads, cutting up the gray sky into slivers. Greasy smoke chuffed from second-floor balconies and stray dogs limped down the road, nosing heaps of garbage.

And all around us were young men, the day laborers, though it shocked me more than anything how they seemed not to be doing any labor at all. They were sitting on the stoops and some of them were smoking and some had weathered sets of dominoes or half-empty vodka bottles, but most were only sitting there and staring, their teeth tobacco-black. I quickened my pace and caught up to Niko, even as Papa scowled and scowled, and asked in a whisper, “Why are they just sitting here?”