Echo North(9)

“What exactly do you think you’re doing?” came a sudden voice behind me.

I wheeled to see Donia, in all her menacing arctic-bear size, glowering down at me. She was wrapped in a brocade dressing gown, her hair hanging in limp curls on her shoulders. Her eyes were red like she’d been crying, and that made me more angry than anything.

“You viper,” I spat, jabbing the letter into her face. “You plunged us into debt when you could have paid for everything! Why did you keep it from us? Why did you keep it from Papa?”

She glanced at the paper impassively. “What I do with my money is not your concern.”

“If you’ve killed him—” My voice pitched unstable and high. “Donia, if you’ve killed him I will never forgive you.”

“Fortunately for me I give little thought to your forgiveness. His death is not on my hands, nor my conscience.”

I crumpled the letter and let it fall to the floor. “Why did you even marry him?”

“I wanted a comfortable life—I knew your father would provide that for me. And there are rewards in heaven, I think, for becoming stepmother to the Devil’s child.” Danger lurked behind her gaze. “Which reminds me. This came for you today.” She pulled an envelope from the pocket of her dressing gown and held it up: it was postmarked from the city, addressed to me, with the seal already broken.

Hope and horror rushed into me. I grabbed for the envelope but Donia snatched it back, crossing the room and holding it over the roaring fire.

“Give me the letter, Donia.”

She smirked. “It’s only fair that I read your mail since you took it upon yourself to read mine. Would you like to know what it says? Of course you would.” She unfolded the letter. “‘Dear Miss Alkaev, We would be happy to receive you at the university in the spring, provided you have with you upon your arrival three references from persons of note in your chosen field and the fee—in part or total—for your initial term …’”

I shrieked and lunged for the letter, which Donia thrust suddenly into the fire.

She caught my arms to keep me from scrambling after it, and I was forced to watch as the paper crackled and curled and fell away to ash.

“You didn’t think I would let you attend the university, did you?” said Donia calmly. “Even if you managed to come up with the fee, they would take one look at your monstrous face and shove you back into the gutter where you belong.”

I stared at her, breathless and numb and hot. “The only monster in this place is you.”

I turned from my stepmother without another word, stopping only to grab the lamp from the desk, my shoulder bag and furs from their hooks on the wall before stepping out into the frigid night.





CHAPTER FIVE

I TRUDGED INTO THE FOREST, the lamp banging against my knee, snow blowing thick and wet into my face. It was bitterly cold, but across the boundary of the wood the wind blew less sharp. I wandered on, fighting back anger and tears and a blinding sense of helplessness. I couldn’t stop seeing the letter from the university devoured by the fire, ashes falling white in the hearth. Donia’s words repeated endlessly through my mind: They would take one look at your monstrous face and shove you back into the gutter where you belong.

One look at your monstrous face.

One look.

But wasn’t she right? Why did I expect the university to be any different from my little village? There was no place for me there, and if my father was truly gone, there was no place for me anywhere. I refused to stay another minute with Donia, and I couldn’t burden Rodya. He needed a life of his own, unhindered by me.

I walked without purpose or destination and my thoughts ran in circles, vipers swallowing their tails—there was no end to my despair and self-loathing. The lamp burned steadily through its oil and the snow fell on and on, heavy even through the trees. All was awful and empty and brittle, biting cold.

And then my lamp winked out.

I stopped short, realizing the folly of my actions with sudden clarity. I fought off the burgeoning panic and scrabbled in my shoulder bag, where a packet of matches and a half-burnt candle were wedged beneath a couple of books. I jammed the candle down into the chimney of the lamp and lit it, the glass shielding the flame from both wind and snow. Light flared once more in the wood and I turned back the way I came, but my footprints had already vanished.

I tried to retrace my steps anyway, bending my head down against the wind, but it was snowing so heavily I could barely see past the candle flame. I didn’t really know what direction I was headed—I could be wandering in circles, or deeper into the wood.

I kept going, my whole body numb with cold, watching the candle shrink too quick before my eyes. The drifts came up to my knees. I shoved my way through them—as long as I didn’t stop moving, there was still hope.

What do you even have to live for? whispered a needling little voice in my mind.

One look at your monstrous face.

I scrubbed angry tears from my eyes and thought about my father and Rodya, about a white wolf watching me through summer trees. I wasn’t ready to give up. Not yet.

I pressed on, snow seeping under my collar, ice stinging my eyes. The candle burned down to a stub and guttered out, so I abandoned the lamp in a snowdrift, grabbing the packet of matches and lighting them one by one. I walked on in those brief flares of light, the tiny orange flames burning down to my fingers or hissing out in the wind.