CHAPTER THIRTEEN The Frozen Lake #2
“What sort of pictures?” The princess leaned closer.
But Sophie couldn’t think how to describe the images of her father reading to her, or the meticulous way he peeled an apple, or the careless way he slammed a door.
When she didn’t say anything, the princess pressed, “What about the rest of your family? You must have other relations?”
“No.”
“Surely someone?”
“Just my guardian. But she was my mother’s friend.”
The princess nodded slowly. “How awful to be so entirely and completely alone.” But she didn’t sound that sorry.
“I try not to think about it,” Sophie mumbled.
They followed Marianne and Delphine outside to a large stone bench to put the skates on. Sheltered under the portico of the temple where the snow could not fall, Sophie saw that the legs of the seat on which her friends now sat ended in carved stone wolf paws.
The snow had begun to fall again. Sophie watched as Ivan carried the last of the crates into the hut.
“Unpack the picnic, Ivan!” the princess called out to him. “I need a glass of vintage shampanskoye from the Volkonsky cellars before I skate!”
“I think it would be better after your exertions on the lake, Princess,” Ivan said quietly.
As he turned his back, the princess stuck her tongue out at him. “Always trying to spoil my fun!” she said. “But what point is there in being a princess if you can’t have what you want?” She leaned forward to lace up her skates. “He’ll do as I ask,” she said, her chin jutting out. “He’ll have to!”
Sure enough, Ivan came out carrying a small horn beaker. He handed it to the princess. She looked inside, laughed, and drank the contents.
Ivan, taking the beaker out of her hand, knelt down in front of Delphine.
“You must lace your skates more tightly,” he said.
He took off his outer gloves and retied her laces.
When he had finished, Delphine stuck out her feet and flicked them from right to left.
“I don’t have my phone!” she said, making a mock sad face. “Now I can’t film my feet!”
“Will you skate?” Sophie asked Ivan as he knelt in front of her to check her skates. She was going to make a fool of herself, she knew, but felt that Ivan’s presence and calmness would be reassuring on the ice.
“You must not be afraid!” Ivan smiled so that his eyes crinkled at the corners. “While I am on the ice, no harm can come to you.”
Sophie felt strong hands pull tightly on the laces and then mold the leather to her ankle. “They fit you perfectly,” Ivan said, sounding surprised. “Your feet must be quite small and narrow.”
“I had some silver slippers yesterday,” Sophie said.
“They fit, too.” She became aware that the princess was watching them closely.
She looked cross. Did she think Sophie was getting above herself?
But there was no reason for her to be angry because Sophie’s feet were the same size as a Volkonsky princess’s, surely?
“What’s taking so long?” the princess snapped, then stood up and took small neat steps down to the edge of the frozen lake.
And then she launched off, with long athletic lunges, skating faster and faster.
Laughing, she turned her face upward into the light flurry of snowflakes and swooped about the ice as if she were a bird that had been too long in a cage.
Sophie took a breath of the forest air. Peppermints and diamonds, she thought, just as she glimpsed a figure through the trees, slipping slightly as the snow gave way underfoot …
But this was not the cloaked figure of her dreams, with snowflakes in her hair.
This was Dmitri, a bag slung across his chest, two dead hares hanging from wires on his back. So he was a hunter as well as a groom.
As if he had heard her thoughts, the boy turned and looked at her. He seemed at home in the forest, almost happy. But the image of the ax swinging up and cleaving the animal limb in two made Sophie shiver and look away. When she looked up again, the boy had turned his back and started to move away.
Ivan strode onto the lake in heavy black boots, ribbed soles keeping him from slipping. He planted himself a few feet away from the edge. “Marianne!” he called, clapping his hands together in large rabbit-fur gloves.
Marianne stood, uncertain and wobbling, in the snow at the edge of the lake.
“Small steps!” Ivan called. “Like a baby! Walk toward me … keep looking up! Do not be scared! You will not fall!”
All the while Sophie could hear the scoring, swishing sound of the princess as she tore around the lake, now bending forward to gain speed, then standing up as she changed direction.
“She’s so good,” Delphine whispered to Sophie. “I can skate, but nowhere near as well as her …”
Marianne took tiny steps, her body hunched.
“See? I have my arms out to you!” Ivan called.
Marianne, still looking extremely cautious, took two more tiny steps.
The princess had been observing the scene and laughing.
Now she began to race toward the girl. Marianne was unaware of the woman coming toward her, so intense was her concentration.
Her gaze was fixed on Ivan’s open, encouraging face.
Just as she was about to reach out to Ivan’s hands, the princess whooshed between them.
Marianne shrieked in alarm and almost fell backward, but was grabbed by Ivan, who pulled her back up. He put his arm around Marianne. “Princess! Enough!” he roared.
The princess laughed and turned a defiant pirouette. “You can’t stop me!” she called from the other side of the lake. “And admit it! You don’t want to!”
Delphine had now stepped onto the ice and was gliding toward Ivan and Marianne.
“Excellent, Delphine,” Ivan said, smiling his approval.
Sophie saw her friend look toward the princess to make sure she had seen how easy it was for her, and was rewarded with applause. Delphine adjusted her scarf and skated confidently around the lake.
And now it was Sophie’s turn. They were all looking at her. Ivan, still with one arm around Marianne, held out his other to her. Sophie knew she lacked Delphine’s ability and the dogged determination of Marianne. She was going to be the worst.
“I’ll just watch,” she called to Ivan.
The princess swooped across. Her skates grated on the ice as she came to a graceful halt in front of Sophie.
“Walk toward me!” She put out both her arms. “Don’t be scared!”
Her face, with its deep gray eyes and flushed cheeks, banished any feeling of shyness or shame. All Sophie knew was that she couldn’t skate, but that she wanted to do whatever this woman asked of her.
“Keep looking at me!” the princess said, skating closer. And then, whispering, “Trust me.”
Sophie took another breath of the dream-laden forest air. It felt as if she had very little choice. She must either try to skate, or risk looking foolish. Last night the princess had trusted Sophie. Now she must do the same.
She stood up and felt her legs tense as she tried to balance on the narrow blades.
But she could stand, just, if she took tiny steps.
The trick was to keep moving, like when riding a bicycle.
The princess was paying attention only to Sophie, and she sensed a furious concentration in the woman’s whole body.
I’ll just take two more steps, Sophie thought, then one more … She knew she must fall, surely, the next step, or the next? She had been walking across the snow, her ankles wobbling, for far too long. She seemed no closer to the princess.
Delphine and Marianne were giggling, but she daren’t look at them. She had to keep her eyes fixed on the princess’s face.
“Bigger steps, Sophie,” urged the princess. “See? You have nearly caught me …”
Then, in one delicious second, Sophie understood what she was meant to do.
She pushed rather harder with her right leg and transferred her weight, and felt the skate glide on the ice.
Then she transferred her weight and pushed with the left.
She had a sensation of feeling free and weightless, of flying and spiraling, of not knowing where she ended and the snow and the forest and the frozen lake began.
“I’m a snowflake!” she laughed, putting back her head and opening her mouth to taste the snow on her tongue.
And then she fell. Flat on her back.
But it was so funny. It was all so funny, with Ivan’s face above, smiling broadly, his eyes crinkled with mirth, and the princess, her white fur turban above her arched eyebrows, laughing with genuine amusement.
She saw the daytime stars above their heads, the branches of the birch trees that seemed to pin them there, and felt she could have burst with happiness.
A light mist rolled along the base of the trees. Except mist didn’t move like that. Mist wasn’t as dense as that. It didn’t assume the shape of … the shape of …
Appalled, Sophie knew she must shout out. She was no longer in the palace, looking down from the safety of the nursery.
The white wolf crept forward, quiet as snowfall, edging closer to the princess, who continued to smile down at Sophie, oblivious to the danger behind her.
“Sophie?” The princess offered her gloved hand.
The wolf stopped, sniffed the air. His eyes looked red against the white of the snow.
Sophie could see now that there were patches of pale gray on his pelage.
Oh, gray wolf … But this was a real white wolf, not the old gray wolf of the fairy tale.
And there was no comfort to be had from her father’s voice.
With a wave of panic, Sophie realized that this animal was wild and would not be hemmed in by a mere story. He was entirely his own master.