Chapter 40
FORTY
GWENNA
My eyes fly open in the dark to a sound.
Crying. No—sobbing.
I lie there a moment, frozen. Outside, the window is still a dim violet, barely dawn if it’s even daytime at all.
I don't want to move. I shouldn’t move.
But I can hear it getting louder and more desperate.
Sharp, and then immediately muffled. It’s the sound of someone trying not to be heard, and my stomach wrenches.
The sense memory is too strong. I know that sound.
I know that sound intimately. I made that sound at Renfrew, crying into my pillow, and I heard it night after night, the girls begging for someone to come who never would.
I'd see them the next morning, try to do my best to give them a smile or something, but it was never enough. It was always too late.
Another sharp cry. Something is wrong with this place, I think. The way those girls act…it isn't normal.
And if something's going on, if I'm here and I can hear them and I can do something…
I can't just lie here.
Not when I know what that feels like.
I get up—I’m still dressed under the covers—and I open the door. Quietly, I listen for the sound coming down the cold corridor. It doesn't take long to locate. A few steps down, and it's obvious which door it's coming from—it's cracked open a little, even, the lamplight flung out.
I hesitate just a moment.
"Hello?" I say softly, pushing the door open. "Are you all right?"
Inside, I see it's Katyenka, the little one, the one who speaks like two words of English.
She's balled up on the bed in a nightgown, her hair out of its long braids, loose and golden around her.
Her eyes are red-rimmed, and her lip is quivering.
When she sees me, she tenses, grabs the square scarf beside her and stuffs it into her mouth, her choking sobs filling the fabric.
"Katyenka.” I rush forward, against my better judgment.
What the fuck are they doing to you here?
, I think. "What's wrong?” I say—fruitlessly, I guess, since she doesn't know what I'm saying.
"It's all right.” Gently, I put my arm around her shoulders, and she removes the scarf, sniffling and hiccuping.
She shakes her head a little, starts saying something in a quick, teary stream of Russian that I don't understand.
"I'm sorry," I say. "I wish I knew what you were saying. I just…it's going to be okay, whatever it is."
I feel like that's a lie. It probably is a lie, but that's what I have to give her, so I do my best. I look around. There's the same water pitcher and basin by her bed that I have in my room.
“Here.” I hold up a finger to her. “Wait.” She quivers but nods. Her tears stop for a moment.
I get up to the basin and jug, but they're both empty. "Be right back," I say. I take the jug and slip out into the hall for the water closet, as they call it.
There’s a technique Jessie the Therapist taught me—the mammalian dive reflex. Plunge your face in cold water and it resets your nervous system, something evolutionary I don’t quite understand.
I’m just trying to think of how I can explain to Katyenka that she needs to put her face in the water and hold her breath for 30 seconds—maybe I can demonstrate first?—when a hand slaps across my mouth.
I yell—yell, cry, scream, but no sound. I try to wrench out of whoever's grip it is, but it's no use. Someone seizes me by both arms and takes the pitcher from me—no, two someones, holding me firmly by the biceps and the forearm, and when they step into the light I see who it is.
It’s just Dasha. Sveta.
"What are you doing?” I say. "What's going on? I was just…she's crying back there.”
I whip my head around, but Katyenka is out of her room now, properly dressed and rebraided somehow. Her eyes don't even look red anymore, but bright, shining.
"Thank you for coming," she says, in accented but clear English.
"What?" I look from Dasha to Sveta, and they're both beaming, too. "What's going on?” I say quickly, anxiously. "What's going on?"
"We are so lucky," Dasha says. "So lucky that you come here."
Sveta grins. “Now, walk.”.
“What? No,” I cry. But before I can scream again, she has a hand to my mouth. Katyenka's behind me, her red scarf ready for Dasha, who strings it over my mouth, ties it painfully tight at the back of my head.
No, no, I think. No. I’m so stupid. I’m so stupid.
They're strong, eerily strong, and pull me roughly forward, drag me down the corridor, down the stairs.
Deeper down than before, to an underground passage where the walls are slick and candles are guttering and smells like mildew and rotting death.
I gag behind the scarf. I pull back, try to resist, and I can't. I just can't. I'm too tired. I'm too weak. They're too strong.
Finally, we come to the end, a winding spiral staircase, and they force me up, step by rough step, and when we emerge, it's in a space I recognize.
The cathedral. Behind the iconostasis. Yet as we emerge, I see the space is filled with…flowers.
Every surface decked in clusters of pale, dried blossoms—from where I have no idea. Hanging from the rafters, tucked between every icon.
My body goes stiff all over again.
"Come," Dasha says. "Come, come."
She's practically skipping as she pulls me along in her iron grip. To the center of the church, to the throne, I realize. The same one as I recognized from Camlann House.
"No," I say, but the word comes out as garbled nothing. I shake my head violently. No, no, no. I don't want this. I don't want this. I don't want whatever this is.
Again I try to fight, but now there are more of them—the women from before, crease-faced and smiling under their headscarves from the sides of the church, bearing baskets overflowing with red fabric, their deep-set eyes sparkling.
Terror surges in me, and I choke, gag on my tongue, until at last Sveta undoes the scarf.
I gasp for air. "Let me go," I cry. "Let me go!”
I feel like a five-year-old, like a petulant child, swinging my head back and forth.
But it's like the girls can't hear me. They're humming—singing, I realize, some soft song in a strange harmony I don't recognize.
As they hold me in place, one of the old women steps up to me.
Peers into my face, strokes my finger with a gnarled finger, mutters something I can't hear.
Then she grabs the waist of my skirt and yanks it down.
"No," I cry. "Stop."
She doesn't listen. Tights, underwear, then my sweater, shirt, Dasha and Sveta working swiftly as Katyenka approaches with something from the basket, flowing red, bright with needlepoint flowers.
"Stop!" Naked, I thrash wildly, like an animal, every fiber in my body fighting, but I’m pinned.
The two girls yank it over my head, over my body.
Someone holds me by the neck as they clamp it tight and cinch the waistband behind me.
It's heavy and scratchy and hot, and the sickly scent of the dried flowers mingling with the incense is starting to choke me.
"Please," I say, pathetic now. “Please stop."
Dasha and Sveta and Katyenka just sing louder, winding little melodies, broad smiles on their faces, as they comb my hair, pull it back and tie it, and set something on my head, a hat or a headdress I can’t see, heavy, clinking, weighing my head down.
"Please," I say. "Please. Why are you doing this?"
Maybe if I can make sense of it, I can stop it somehow, I think.
But they say nothing. Just laugh and giggle and say teasing things to each other like they're bridesmaids getting me ready for my wedding.
Above me, the dull brown eyes of the icons stare down, Christ and the Virgin and a thousand saints I've never heard of, as they push me to the seat.
The throne.
I brace myself. Tense every muscle in my body. Wait for whatever it is to happen—pain, sudden death, immolation.
But nothing.
Somehow, that’s more terrifying.
I feel someone breathing in front of me. I open my eyes and one of the old women has taken over my frame of vision. Yanking me down by the chin. She brandishes something at me, a brush dipped in white, something powdery or paint that she smears on my face, down my neck.
"Stop! I stop," I say, my voice breaking, "please."
Where are they? I think. Where are they, where are they? Have they noticed I'm gone? How would they even know? What will happen when they...
The old woman steps back, muttering with satisfaction to her compatriots. They glance at me, evaluating, frowning, drawing little circles in the air, and speak to Dasha. She stops her singing, answers quickly. And I catch one word I recognize.
Aloysha.
That’s his nickname. Moroslav.
My whole body runs cold, because then Dasha's eyes light up, and she claps, pointing at the iconostasis.
Terrified, I follow her gaze and watch as Alexei Moroslav emerges, slow and stately, like a priest from the Holy of Holies.
He's dressed in something ceremonial, robes, orthodox vestments, layered with symbols I don't recognize, Cyrillic and gold.
And the look on his face—ecstatic, overwhelmed, like that day I had seen him in the reception room.
My head starts shaking back and forth of its own accord.
He sees me, and the smile only broadens. “The queen on her throne,” he says in English. “She is perfect."
"Alexei," I say, "please, don't do this. Don't do whatever it is you're going to do."
I sound so stupid. I've been so stupid. He walks up to me, takes my bound hands in his.
"Do you understand what you are? What you represent?”
"I—" I choke. I don't even know what the answer is, not really, let alone what I should even tell him. Would it be better to lie? I swallow, tears threatening at the back of my throat, wishing I knew what I could do.
I'm going to die here, I think, in a crumbling inner voice. That’s what’s happening. I’m going to die.