Chapter 12 Kalina
KALINA
Another week passed at the cabin out of the city.
From morning to night, everything stayed the same. The consistency of being here, away from the prison of a world I was once stuck in, allowed me to feel more comfortable than I ever had, more able to try to relax than I had tried to in too many years to count.
Alexsei didn’t approach me, staying in the background to prepare the food or read on his phone. He napped, too.
Misha read to me every day, proving how much of a bookworm he was.
And I sat there, staring at the wide view outside the window for so long that I had branded the details of the snowy landscape into my mind.
Misha didn’t pressure me. Not once. He was just there, including me in what he wanted to do. Whether it was reading or doing jigsaw puzzles at the big table, then on to board games and playing cards.
After the one night when he let me come into his bed, which was softer than mine, a significant layer of my defenses had melted away.
He was only a boy, not a man. Therefore, not a threat to be in the position to order me around.
He was shorter and smaller than me, not bigger and stronger. Therefore, unable to harm me.
He was safe.
Lying in bed with him was a bigger step forward in my personal journey of believing I could be safe. With him, at least. Being near someone was the ultimate level of vulnerability. Misha showed me that I could be unharmed and unbothered in my most uncontrollable status of unconsciousness.
Nothing had happened to me. I only slept.
Since that revelation, I tried better to open up to him. To speak and practice my voice after so long of not using it at all.
When he asked me questions, I replied. When he prompted me to choose my action during my turn for a board game or games, I spoke up with the fewest words necessary.
Speaking up shouldn’t have been such a challenge.
It was the monumental hurdle of trusting that I wouldn’t be punished for speaking up, for daring to share my mind when it had been drilled into me that I wasn’t allowed to have a mind of my own.
A change from how I had been forbidden to have opinions that could contrast with the wishes of my brother or Yusef.
With the excuse of playing simple games, I practiced my voice. But when it came time to eat, I wasn’t as strong to move past those hangups too.
I wasn’t confident to take what I wanted. I was too scared to eat too fast. Erik and Yusef used food as a means to taunt me, bribe me, tease me, and further keep me under their rule.
Misha came to the rescue again, urging me to eat more, offering competitions to see who’d finish one thing or another.
And it worked. If he could be free to choose what to eat and how to finish his meal, then I could do the same, right? Modeling myself on what he was allowed seemed like a weird start, but it worked in this stilted shift from imprisonment to being a member of the real world.
At night, when they were both in their rooms, I dared to sneak into the kitchen and eat more of what I was too nervous to have when I sat at the table with them.
Every night, I tried to be braver and explore a little more of the cabin, even if it was just pacing through all the rooms or looking out other windows.
Exploring on my own like this felt right. It wasn’t too big of a space to be daunting, and it wasn’t so small that I felt trapped.
Whenever I looked outside, though, I flirted with this strange excitement of someday being out there again. To stretch my arms wide and feel the fresh air on my face.
I was too nervous to go out there, though. Until Misha suggested it.
“You could go outside and make a snowman with me,” he said.
I could?
I glanced at him, pulled from staring at the trees topped with snow in the distance.
I could.
Twisting my perspective like that required a lot of effort.
Yet, it seemed like too big of a risk.
“Is it…” I hesitated, still scared to ask anything. “Safe?” That seemed like the easiest conclusion of my worries.
“Safe?” Misha furrowed his brow. “You mean is it too cold to safely be outside?”
I shook my head.
“Or safe like bears could get us?”
I hadn’t thought about wildlife bothering us. I was more worried about another predator—like men.
“Cuz it’s fine. We wouldn’t get lost or anything either.” He’d already pulled his coat on, eager to play in the snow. After he opened the door, leaving it ajar, he darted out and sought the closest guard. I’d noticed them in the distance, always there, patrolling and nearby.
Misha took huge, leaping steps through the snow to reach one. Then he lifted his arm to get the man a high-five. Grinning widely as they did some small talk, he added a thumbs-up.
He ran back to me. “See? The guards are all around to watch, too. They’re not bad guys. They’re here to help Dad keep us safe.”
I took his words as a truth he was convinced of. Questions still built in my mind.
To keep us safe from what, though?
“You go ahead,” I told him, sticking with the warmth inside.
“Okay.” He shrugged, happy to dash off in the snow. While I resumed my spot on the loveseat at the bay window, I watched him and almost wanted to give in to a smile. He looked so innocent. So happy. So normal. Waving at me as he played, he didn’t seem bothered about playing by himself.
It took a couple of minutes of watching Misha outside for me to realize that I was alone in the cabin with Alexsei all this time. The tall, strong man. The one who could truly be a threat to me.
I wasn’t too worried about loosening up around Misha, but his father was another issue altogether. He could be a threat while his son wasn’t.
As I glanced back, watching him dry his hands on a towel as he stepped out of the kitchen, done cleaning up after making lunch, I wished I could convince myself that he was nothing more than a gentle giant in the background.
“He loves the snow,” he admitted in a casual tone, coming closer to see his son out the window. He didn’t approach the one I was at, choosing to stand at the other side of the front door, peering out from that side of the house.
To give me space.
I acknowledged it and wanted to believe he wasn’t trying to make me lower my guard.
“Ever since he was a baby, he loved the snow.”
Baby.
In a flash, a spike of panic cut through me.
Raisa was expecting a baby.
Misha mentioned other young children in the family.
Was Misha bred by your wife?
The absence of a mother in Misha’s life filled me with dread now. Surely, she had been bred to give Alexsei this son he seemed to treasure. With all that had been taught to me for years, I couldn’t yet make sure of how fond Alexsei seemed to be of Misha.
“Where is his mother?”
I held my breath after asking it. Proud that I didn’t wince and close my eyes for speaking up and asking a man a question, I endured the quiet that followed.
“Elena,” he replied. “My wife was killed when Misha was still a baby.”
Blinking quickly in shock that he’d answered me at all, I turned to face him with my chin dipped. Fully confronting him seemed too risky. Yet, the glimpse I got of this tall man was sobering.
Alexsei didn’t only sound sad to share that detail. He looked it, too. As if it pained him to speak of this woman in his past.
Once more, questions flooded in.
Killed how? When? Why? By whom? You?
He hung his head and turned to go back into the kitchen, giving me no other details than that.
Perhaps it wasn’t something he wished to speak about. Or maybe he was conflicted in having a conversation with me at all about anything. Even worse, he could be annoyed that I’d done the bold thing to ask him a question of any kind.
As I returned my gaze to the window, watching Misha throw up handfuls of snow and laugh at it scattering, I wondered if it was all just another trick. Another test.
Alexsei’s first wife was a mystery thus far, but I was too traumatized to dismiss the chance that what he told me was part of a manipulative control over me.
No matter how comfortable and at ease I could try to be here at this cabin, I would always be trapped in this shell, stuck in the memories of my traumas and punishments.
Never free to just be.