Echo North(5)

Rodya tugged me firmly outside.

We paced around the back of the house and sat on the stoop. I stared at the patch of earth where I’d spent a whole afternoon pulling out brambles, planning to grow vegetables when the weather got a little warmer—if Donia allowed it, that is.

Rodya bumped my shoulder with his. “Don’t mind her, Echo. She’s just jealous of Papa’s affection for you.”

I chewed on my lip and stared into the woods, straining for glimpses of green on the bare, black branches. I thought I saw a flash of white between the trees, the sudden gleam of an amber eye. But then I blinked and there was nothing there. “She hates me because of my face.”

“That isn’t true.”

“Of course it is.” I tugged my kerchief off my hair, closing my eyes and leaning into the wind. The scars still hurt sometimes, a twinge of pain when the weather was turning.

“You have to stop disparaging yourself. No one gives a damn about your scars.”

“I give a damn,” I said fiercely.

“Then stop. There isn’t a single thing you can do about them, and you’re too brilliant a person to waste your life bowing and scraping to dimwits in the bookshop. No matter how much you might deny it, Echo Alkaev, you are extraordinary. You have been since the moment you were born.”

I reached up to touch my scars, but Rodya caught my hand and laid it in my lap again. “Write to the university. Please.”

I refocused on Rodya, tracing every line of his dear face, and hope sparked inside me. “I’ll write them,” I promised.





CHAPTER THREE

THE DAY MY FATHER MARRIED Donia, spring bloomed in earnest across the countryside, verdant leaves bursting bright, birds trilling jubilant choruses from the treetops. It was also my sixteenth birthday, which my father had momentarily forgotten when fixing upon the date—Donia hadn’t let him change it when he did remember.

I rose early, creaking open my tiny window to let in the fresh air, brushing my hair and braiding it. I had a brand-new sarafan that my father had refused to tell me the price of: it was a soft orange brocade embroidered with gold thread down the front and around the hem. I slipped it on over my white blouse, which lay cool and delicate against my skin, and buttoned all twenty-five buttons. I slid into my felt boots and stepped out into the hallway to peer in the circle mirror hanging on the wall. I avoided mirrors as a general rule—I didn’t have one in my room—but that day I stood studying my reflection for quite a long time.

My eyes stared back at me, the deep blue echo of my mother’s. My hair was dark. My scars were white, pulling up the skin of my face so I almost looked like I was sneering.

For the first time since the bandage had come off, I lifted one hand to cover the scarred side of my face, looking at the smooth side, the perfect side. I wondered what my life would have been like if the scars had never existed. If I concentrated hard enough I could see myself: unscarred, untouched.

And then I moved my hand to cover the right half of my face, and forced myself to stare at those ugly white lines. That was what I was. All I ever would be.

“You look lovely, Echo.”

I jumped and turned to see my brother watching me from his room. He looked tall and handsome in his new shirt, embroidered in red, his dark hair combed neatly and the beginnings of his beard shaved clean.

I dropped my hand, ashamed of myself.

We walked together to the brand-new wooden chapel on the outskirts of town, and I couldn’t help but think of the crumbling stone chapel on the hill where my parents had been wed, barely a penny between them. Somehow that seemed more romantic than newly hewn wood, the paint hardly dry.

The ceremony was simple. Donia looked exquisite in her glittering gown and impossibly elaborate veil. I focused on my father’s face, on the joy shining out of his eyes when he saw her.

The celebration that followed filled nearly the whole village. There was food and music and dancing, and the afternoon spooled quickly away. Rodya offered to dance with me, but I didn’t want to monopolize him, and retreated to the outskirts of the festivities. I sat in the grass under a huge old oak, nibbling shortbread and watching Rodya flirt with the village girls and dance with the ones he particularly fancied.

The dancers whirled past me in shimmering skirts, their quick-stepping feet keeping time to old man Tinker’s violin. I wished I was among them, but none of the boys asked me to dance—and why would they? I was little more than the cloud on the horizon no one wanted to see.

I slipped away without wishing my father and Donia well on their honeymoon. I told myself it was just weariness, that I longed for solitude. But really the villagers overwhelmed me, with their whispered words and lingering glances. My loneliness and shame threatened to swallow me.

The afternoon was beginning to turn toward evening by the time I arrived at the cottage. I went to sit on the back stoop, hugging my knees to my chest and trying not to feel forgotten.

The wind teased through my hair, and it smelled of earth and wood and springtime. Ahead of me the forest teemed with life, and away to the west the sun began to slide down the rim of the sky. I was staring into the woods, my eyelids growing heavy, when I caught a flash of movement between the trees. All at once I saw a huge, white wolf staring at me from the border of the forest, and I swear to God in heaven that his eyes met mine, that his eyes knew mine. I had the sudden wild thought that it was the same wolf I had rescued all those years ago from the trap, and I rose involuntarily to my feet.