Page 45 of Spring's Arcana
“I am a fool who believed too much.” He finished smoking, again, and crushed the cigarette out. “The car is no good,” he added, through the haze. “I can use the bus to visit your mother.”
“I think I’ve got a ride.” She left her hand there, as if it was just a leftover piece of some project she had to finish for school. “Leo—”
“Here.” He touched the wooden box with a nicotine-stained fingertip, pushing it towards her. “You’re old enough, after all. Every day I kept thinking,this will be the last one,but there was one more, and one more.” His throat worked, and he coughed again, a flush rising to his stubbled cheeks. “Each was a gift. Do you hear me, little Natchenka? Agift.”
Nat’s fingers ached. Was he not going to hold her hand because Candy’s “special iodine” was all over it?
Maybe he just didn’t want to. It was a free country, after all. They were both adults now, and Mama wasn’t upstairs in her bedroom or at the stove, in the living room dusting or the mudroom softly hissing imprecations at the amount of laundry three people in a tiny house made. They were absolutely alone in a brightly lit kitchen at the end of an impossible night.
And he couldn’t say it. Because there was dirt in his mouth, or because he was ashamed of her too. Which one was more likely?
“I know you love Mom,” she managed around the lump in her dry throat. “That’s a good thing.”
He stared at her like she was speaking a foreign language, not the one she could pick out phrases in, not the one he and Mama erupted into whenever he thought one of Nat’s punishments was too severe. Then he pushed away from the table with surprising strength, rising to his full but still slightly stooped height, and leaned down a little to shove the wooden box across the tacked-on plastic protecting the floral tablecloth. Were those the only cigarettes he’d smoked? The ends lay, lonely and crumpled, in the tumbler.
Mama would have a fit. But she wasn’t here.
Nat’s hand lay empty. Leo turned and shuffled away. “Good night,” he said in the doorway, a pair of harsh, strangled syllables.
Nat reached for the bottle. He didn’t want to hold hands since she wasn’t a little girl anymore. That was fine. It was just another change, like puberty or industrialization. A natural progression.
She didn’t want to open the box, but dawn was almost here. It was beautiful work, the lid matching the sides with barely a demarcating line.
He was magic with wood, old Uncle Leo.
Inside, on a bed of worn-down black velvet salvaged from something else, was a straight, double-bladed knife. The hilt was plain and functional, and despite the blade’s dark matte finish—like Dmitri’s gun, she thought, and almost shuddered—the edges looked very, very sharp indeed.
It wasn’t metal. It was grainy stone so dark gray it was almost black, knapped to a razor edge.
So. It had been here all along. Did Leo believe in the future? He had to, as long as he was alive, right?
Until the knife came out.
Nat slammed the lid back on, listening to Leo climb the stairs, one at a time. He went into his room and shut the door. There was no immediate burst of television noise, or even the staticky unsound of an appliance turned on and muted.
Deathly quiet returned to the little yellow house, broken only by small mouselike sobs tiptoeing past the painted fingers Nat jammed against her mouth.
The sun, indifferent, continued to rise. The snow was coming down hard.
FREEZE THE DEAD
All things had their time, and a thief judged them by instinct and the tingling in fingertips. In some it was a physical ache; they could tell by the intensity if luck was with them, or if it was a whispered warning from their protector instead. Very simple—all Dima had to do was think about the little yellow house and the precious dark-eyed thing he wanted to subtract from its demesne, and the tingle would saynot yet, not yet.
Until about noon, that was, when the snow paused for a moment and the sky over the city darkened to a depthless iron sheet. From his vantage point atop a row of brownstones, snow clinging to his shoulders and making a tiny pyramidal drift on his hair, he saw the front door of the little yellow house twitch, a mouse whisker testing the air outside its hole.
Shadows around the house were sharp-edged even though snowlight was soft. Others had noticed the little Drozdova gathering strength.
Hungryothers. Maschka’s weaving of camouflage and misdirection was gone. The outer rings ofnot here, not therewoven by passing cats were still strong, but wouldn’t hold against a determined assault. Where did the feline loyalty lie, Dima wondered—with the dying divinity, or the new incarnation?
The sensation in his fingers wasn’t incipient frostbite or the desperation of hunger driving many of his followers into calling upon their loving uncle. It was the painful pricking of an amputated limb married to the ache of unconsummated desire, and he snarled ashe shook snow away in one supple, violent motion, rising from his perch. Leaning forward, his boots tapping the roof’s edge, then he plummeted and as usual it reminded him of the violent wrenching when he had made his fool’s bargain.
Who was the true fool, though? If Maschka had stopped to consider just what her plan of buying off Baba entailed… still, even divinities who sneered at mortals weren’t immune to fearing dissolution. Fear was unavoidable, like the sea-tide or the cyclic subsuming of old gods into newer, more vigorous forms.
He hit the icy sidewalk hard, not quite caring if any mortal saw. They would forget as soon as the amazement faded; anything truly supernal was to be avoided, propitiated, or chased from waking consciousness as soon as it occurred. Of course, anyone living on this street had probably seen their share of strange things, between the ailing Drozdova’s house set between two much higher buildings and the daughter tripping blithely along breathing small miracles into the air.
Maria Drozdova’s illness was accelerating; now that her daughter had been presented at Jay’s and found other divinities the process would gather strength and speed like a train pointed downhill. It was the most dangerous time for a certain honey-haired girl.
If Mama Dearest died and the daughter was taken by the starving ones, a certain heart-gem might never be found.
