22
Hannah
I decide I like hanging out with Vera and Artyom.
They are delightful company because they have so many stories about their travels.
Vera tells the story of Artyom fighting off an entire pack of wolves while she clung to a tree for dear life.
She sat on a branch two stories above the mele according to her story. When Gleb suggests I was just as brave when I climbed three feet off the ground using two birch trees, I blush. He didn’t say how high I climbed…but he didn’t have to, based on the smirk our companions wear.
However, they ate all of Gleb’s supplies without a please or a thank you .
They seem certain that Gleb and I won’t be shunned for the winter.
What if we’re starving? They are nice enough to play musical reindeer , so Gleb and I can share Artyom’s giant reindeer.
He now rides Vera’s and our beastie is calm as a kitten under Vera. Will they break clan law to feed us? Seeing as the de facto leader, Sergei, is mated to Vera’s college bestie, Sydney, I doubt they will stand beside us if it’s ruled we aren’t right for the clan.
“Ohh, look Artyom, a beehive,”
Vera squeals, interrupting her own story.
“Sleeping bees are easier to smoke.
Once they’re smoked, we can steal honey,”
Gleb fills in when I recoil in horror.
“Do we have time to smoke bees and harvest honey if we are days behind our date to meet with Sergei?”
My anxiety is through the roof.
As long as Gleb is shunned, he doesn’t have a viable plan for this winter.
While Vera blabbed on and on about wolves, blizzards, and reindeer, I brainstormed how to get Gleb into my apartment.
If it isn’t crawling with authorities, I can stash him there until next spring. The problem is travel…even private planes have border crossing checkpoints.
“That’s where my Hannah can be valuable to the clan,”
Gleb says, squeezing my elbows.
“Tell them about the stars.”
“Oh, well…”
My mind goes blank.
Vera has a PhD in some scientific discipline.
Is she a believer in as trology? How much should I say? What if she laughs or worse scolds me for allowing Gleb to believe I’m better for the clan than I really am? All my old insecurities bubble to the surface, along with the jerky I scarfed at our last stop.
“Chuchunya don’t know modern careers, so you could be anything from an astronomer to someone who sews stars on flags.
Or do you review restaurants—you know, like a health inspector?”
Vera’s rapid-fire questions raise my anxiety to volcanic levels.
“Hannah navigates by the stars,”
Gleb announces proudly.
Oh shit.
Vera chews her lip like she’s trying not to laugh.
I glare at her, hoping she’s smart enough to keep her trap shut.
While I haven’t explained my business as well as I could with my laptop or charting guides handy, she better not make fun of my man.
“I’m an astrologer,”
I say after a deep breath.
There, I said it.
And Vera’s jaw is on the ground, peachy.
“I have an online business where I calculate birth charts and provide readings for people based on the stars.
I am a navigator—”
Gleb squeezes me closer when my voice skips “—but I help people navigate their problems, not their location.
Mostly, I create birth charts and their implications for people who send me the date, time, and place of their birth.
However, I do have a few clients who ask me to predict their future—”
“Seriously? Don’t they know it’s impossible to predict the future? You don’t tell people you are clairvoyant, do you? That’s fraud,”
she says around a mouthful of giggles.
“What I do is perfectly ethical.
No, I’m not some magical being who can predict the future.
However, there are mathematical relationships between planets and constellations that predict certain events.
If a client’s chart is ruled by a certain planet, they will have better days when their plant is spinning in a certain direction and a certain place in relation to the Earth. The converse is true too. My job is to document the stars and use historical data to tell clients when patterns repeat. It’s math, not magic.”
I finished my practiced speech with a cold delivery I hadn’t used since I met Gleb.
My three companions are silent.
As the fear of rejection builds in my chest, I focus on reducing my panic with strategies I learned in years of therapy.
If Gleb and I are really fated mates, as he attests, he won’t judge me now that his friends are ready to throw the book at me.
Five things I see are pine trees, giant deciduous trees, brush that shakes like a bunny disturbed it, and puffy white clouds that surround a bird of prey. I hear songbirds I can’t see—camouflage or hiding from the bird of prey. Frogs also sing loudly. I smell the pine. Wow, we changed biomes from tundra to forest. It’s beautiful here. Why don’t the Chuchunya live here year-round?
“I’d like to know my stars,”
Artyom says after a moment of silence.
My eyes are as wide as Vera’s at his admission.
He’s barely spoken in two days and his first words are putting me to work? I clear my throat to start my entrance interview, but most of the questions are irrelevant.
He was born on the Tundra…not a hospital with an address. “I’ve had too many tragedies. My joy at finding my dushevnayasvyaz wears a shadow of sadness because I can’t give her the kits she wants. How can we step out of the sad patterns? What star patterns will make us parents?”
Holy shit.
I’ve been asked to make star charts for wedding days, diagnosis days, and birthdays, but all over email.
The stress writes lines on the male’s face as he holds back his emotion from Vera’s tearful gaze.
Can I do this?
I must for Gleb.
“When is your birthdate? Do you know?”
“I am the second twin of the fifth snow.
Our birth was on the northern grounds after the first snow of the big migration.”
“Not much to go on, I know,”
Vera whispers.
“I’m an Aries if that helps.
I don’t know my whole chart, but I went through an alchemy phase where I learned my moon is Taurus.”
“The zima migration is in November, right? Artyom is a Sagittarius.
I’d bet my life on it.
He hates extra conversation and is about to bolt more often than my reindeer.
Your life is spent wandering and taking risks. You must be a Sagittarius-Aries couple. No other couple would have the energy.”
“Energy is good for making kits.
Why aren’t we parents?”
Artyom’s questions are laced with emotion.
Will he have a breakdown?
Vera’s chin snaps to her mate, but I put out my hand to stop her.
If he’s holding himself together with fur and good intentions, her intervention will make it worse.
“Your stars aren’t aligned—yet,”
I add the last word as his lips fall into a sad scowl.
My words tumble out faster than my confidence builds.
“What time of day or part of the sun cycle were you born in? If we can figure that out, we can look at the planetary alignments.
Perhaps you are best conceiving with the same planetary conditions as when you were born, or maybe planetary conditions that are the exact opposite. It depends on your trines, squares, and whatnot.”
“I can’t believe this,”
Vera says with an eye roll.
“Sorry,”
she adds when she realizes she said it aloud and we’re all gaping at her.
“It’s okay.
I’m used to my haters,”
I whisper.
“People have trouble believing something bigger than them may control their life.
If you believe in astrology, we have less freewill and a higher power must control our circumstances—”
“That’s the Chuchunya way,”
Gleb interrupts.
His enthusiasm reinflates my balloon of confidence Vera deflated.
“From the stars leading our migrations to our blessed dushevnayasvyaz , we believe the fates control us all.”
“They write our story,”
Artyom adds, nodding, “and they live in the stars.”
I don’t care if Vera is a skeptic if she’s open to my discussing it with others.
She hasn’t told Artyom to stop asking me about their future conception date.
Maybe she needs to see proof of what astrology can tell us before she believes.
I’ve dealt with tons of people who didn’t believe me at first but gave me the chance to prove myself. Because I’m confident in the truth of what I do, I don’t mind those skeptics.
“Even if you don’t believe a word I say, giving you a conception date will take some of the pressure off your lives until that date arrives.
You can’t conceive a baby when you’re freaking out about it because the body is too stressed—even a scientist can agree on that.”
“I’ll give in if you count the placebo effect as a win.
Chart Artyom and I.
I’ll have an open mind, I promise.
However, I’d keep your mystical powers under wraps when you meet Sydney. If you think I’m a hater, she hates all religions, woo-woo stuff, magic, and higher powers. She had a tough upbringing—but that’s her story to tell before you ask me—that put her off anything spiritual—”
“She must be the Virgo who organized Gleb.
He wasn’t fooling me for a minute with those labels written in English with pretty, cursive lettering.
Nobody writes that neatly when he doesn’t read.
That’s Virgo handwriting,”
I say with a chuckle.
“When’s her birthday?”
“September,”
Vera mutters before bursting out into laughter.
We giggle until the sun is high overhead and Artyom takes the lead.
It must be a vote of confidence if he leads us to Sergei’s southern home, right? If they planned to put a bag over my head and dump me on the other edge of the forest, they wouldn’t show me where their next leader lives.
I’d love to ask Gleb, but I don’t want to insult our guides.
Even with my controversial career and my dubious response to a fated mate commitment, they seem to support my joining the clan as Gleb’s mate—more like Gleb’s responsibility, but that works, too. I’ll be a liability until I prove I’m good at something practical.
Please let me be good at something besides charts and math.
Gleb steers with one hand and rubs my arm with the other.
We veer off the path of worn vegetation and through a thicket of prickly bushes.
I follow Vera’s lead and scrunch my legs into my chest.
I’m wobblier than her—with Gleb to hold me up. I guess reindeer wrangling isn’t my strong suit—yet. That’s what I love most about my trek north and my budding relationship with Gleb—the possibilities. Every sentence can be ended with yet or eventually because this is my rebirth. I’m not Jack’s quirky girlfriend or my parent’s mistake.
I’m Gleb’s mate and who knows what she’s like?
“Glad to see my pants fit somebody,”
snaps a pretty blond in the last stage of pregnancy.
Sydney is made of feet, short pigtails framing her pixie face, and a huge belly in between.
“Don’t tell her they’re too big,”
shouts Vera, so Sydney hears.
“She may blast you off your reindeer with her potato gun.”
“I said that was an accident! Scheez, you knock one Chuchunya to the ground and you get a reputation.
I didn’t mistake Serik for a moose before you perpetuate that rumor, too.
The gun misfired.”
“Sure. Right,”
Vera answers in a singsong voice .
“Get over here and hug me, you brat.
My hormones make me worry about your crazy adventures when I know you will return in one piece.”
“How would she be cut to pieces? I wouldn’t stand aside while a predator shredded her to ribbons,”
Artyom says as he lifts Vera down from her reindeer.
“It’s an expression, darling.
She didn’t mean anything,”
Vera says with her hand over his heart.
They kiss briefly before Vera scampers to Sydney.
They share an awkward hug because Vera’s arms are too short to embrace her friend.
“Sydney, this is my dushevnayasvyaz, Hannah,”
Gleb says as he dismounts our reindeer.
He sets me on my feet as if I were light as a feather.
“Hannah, this is Sydney.
She’s Sergei’s dushevnayasvyaz .”
“Since Sergei raised Gleb, I think that makes me his evil stepmother,”
she replies with a laugh.
My belly churns.
I certainly hope she’s on our side.
The fact that she carries the future of the clan in her belly is hard to ignore.
She hates astrology and all things spiritual. I already botched meeting one leader. This was my second chance to make Gleb proud and earn our acceptance. His survival depends on me—either to earn the clan’s good graces or to smuggle him out of the country, which I’m not above doing.
Part of me wants to grab him and bolt.