Echo North(3)

CHAPTER TWO

A FEW MONTHS BEFORE MY SIXTEENTH birthday, my world inverted itself again.

It was full winter, snow clinging to the shop window and the stones in the street. My toes had grown numb, even in my felted boots, and I closed the shop a little early and went upstairs to our apartments, an anatomy book tucked under each arm. Anatomy was my latest passion—I spent hours every day pouring over medical notes and diagrams.

I bustled about the living space, closing the shutters, lighting the lamps, coaxing the fire into a nice red roar. I cooked beef and noodles and cabbage, then lit the samovar and started boiling water. Between tasks, I read one of my books, an anatomical study of the heart, careful not to spill anything on the pages.

I expected my father and Rodya at any moment. Rodya had apprenticed himself to the clockmaker in the village six months back, but he still came most nights for supper. My father had been gone on a mysterious errand since the morning. I hoped the snow wasn’t delaying them overmuch, and I strained my ears to catch the sound of their footsteps on the stairs.

It was Rodya who came first, stamping through the door in his thick boots, shaking snow from his hair and shrugging out of his coat. I waved him to his customary chair by the fire as I poured concentrated tea into a cup and added water from the samovar to dilute it, then did the same for myself. I settled down adjacent to him on our threadbare couch. We would wait until our father came home to eat our beef and noodles.

Rodya yawned and sipped his tea. “Don’t think Papa is coming tonight,” he said conversationally, eyeing me over his cup.

“Coming from where? Do you know where he’s been today?”

“At Donia’s.” My brother’s lips quirked.

I stared at him blankly. Donia was the baker’s widow, and had taken over the business when he passed, but I had no idea what that had to do with my father.

“Lord, sister! Don’t you listen to the gossip?”

I met Rodya’s dark eyes and frowned. None of the bookshop customers talked to me long enough to pass on rumors. “Rodya, just tell me.”

“Papa is sweet on her.”

“What?”

I dropped my teacup, yelping as the hot liquid splashed over my bare toes.

Rodya laughed as he laid his own cup down and knelt on the floor to help me clean up the mess. “Mother’s been gone a long time, dearheart. Papa deserves to be happy again. I won’t be here forever, and neither will you. Won’t you feel better knowing there’s someone to take care of Papa when we’ve gone?”

I scooped the shards of the teacup into my apron and bustled from the room to avoid my brother’s question. When I’d emptied the pieces into the dustbin, I turned to find him watching me from his place in front of the fire.

“You won’t be stuck here always,” he said, reading my mind.

My throat tightened. “I haven’t any options, Rodya. I never have.”

“Echo—”

“I’ll get our supper,” I interrupted. “Since Papa’s not coming.”

We ate together in silence, and I stared into the fire and hated myself. The noodles had cooked too long and the beef was dry and the cabbage sour. But Rodya ate every bite.

He picked up one of my books from the end table when he’d finished, the one about the heart. I was nearly three-quarters of the way through it. “You could go away to the university,” he said. “You’re smart enough. Way smarter than me—maybe even smarter than Papa.”

“They don’t take girls at the university,” I snapped.

“They’re starting to,” he objected. “And they’d take you. Why don’t you write to them?”

Anger and hope warred in my mind, but it was the anger that spilled out. “And what then, Rodya? A whole city full of people to curse me as I walk by? To mock me and—and pelt me with stones?”

“No,” he said fiercely. “A whole city full of people who will admire your intellect, who will see you for yourself.”

I didn’t have a chance to reply, because at that moment my father walked in, his beard dusted with flour and smelling of cinnamon, with the news he was to be married come spring.



“I’VE BOUGHT A HOUSE,” MY father announced the next afternoon, beaming at me over his tea while I wrapped up a stack of books to ship off to a customer in the city.

“A house?” I was surprised.

“For Donia,” he explained. “She spent so many years in the cramped rooms above the bakery, she isn’t keen on trading them for our upstairs apartments. I was hoping you would help me fix it up, to surprise her.”

We closed the shop early, bundled into our furs, and trudged four miles north from the village through the previous day’s snow. Nestled into the very edge of the forest was the house, a wooden cottage with a stone chimney that had intricate woodwork around the roof and patterned shutters. The windows were broken, the paint chipped, the shutters sagging.

My father glanced over at me. “You have to see its heart, love. Look past the flaws.” He fished a key out of his pocket and unlocked the door.

We stepped in, onto creaky wooden floors overstrewn with dirt and leaves that had blown in through the broken windows. The wallpaper was torn and faded, the carpet in front of the dead hearth threadbare. But even so, my father was right—it had a good heart.