Page 7 of Spring's Arcana
“How suspicious you are, Dima.” She gave the statue a final pat on its verdigris-veined cheek, then turned widdershins for the next one. A garden required work even in winter; sometimes pruning was best done when the world slept under an icy blanket. “Why on earth would an old woman do that?”
“For the same reason I’ll get it out of the setting and repay the one who tried to keep it from me.” Dmitri leered, sharp teeth whiter than the fresh snow. “I will fill my mouth with her blood.”
“Is that a vow?” Her interest piqued, the old woman continued the counterclockwise turn and faced him instead, her expression bright, interested—and predatory. Now that she no longer needed the shell of seeming, her nose was a blade and the lines deeply graven on either side of her mouth were a caution. The coals of her eyes remained the same, full of hot, sharp good humor, but underneath it was the gaze of one who had seen the whole world’s rotation more than once and found barely anything edifying or satisfactory about the spectacle.
“It could be,” Dima allowed. “Of course, it would end badly for you.”
One of her wildly curling eyebrows twitched, but did not fully lift. “Really?” The snow cringed from her vicinity, sensing a much deeper cold. “What brings you to that conclusion?”
“Your little Maschenka wouldn’t have gotten her hands on it if you hadn’t let her, Grandmother.” Dmitri gave her a lazy salute, two fingers to his forehead, and carried the bottle with him into the darkness between shivering lamps. He blended with the night and was gone before he reached the edge of the paved area, snow collapsing inward around a suddenly vacated space.
He must be disturbed, to enter his thiefways so visibly. Or he was making a point—even lacking what he did, Dima Konets was still a divinity.
“Oh, little boy,” the old woman said to the blowing, shuddering snow. “You have so much to learn.” She turned against the sun once more, and a desperate quivering through the next statue on her internal list turned her smile sour. “And so do you. Ai, little thieves and big thieves, all jostling each other.”
She patted cold copper, and the cricket-sound of screaming was whisked away on a rush of cold wind. When the curtain of falling flakes cleared half an hour later, Pessel Park was empty.
Except for the doomed, standing still as cold white continued to coat them.
FAMILY AGAIN
All things considered, Nat thought she was handling the entire day pretty well. She took the red-throated elevator, crossed the foyer at a dead run, plunged out of the Morrer-Pessel building without being grabbed by security, almost hit warp speed to catch the bus—the vehicle bore strap-on reindeer horns, half the people-movers in the city were all dressed up for the season—at the far end of the square, and overall managed to look like a girl in a hurry instead of one having a complete nervous breakdown.
At least, until she got home, sat at the plastic-covered kitchen table, and burst into tears.
Her shoes were a mess, her toes were numb, her shoulders ached. Her coat dripped, snowmelt spattering clean bright yellow linoleum faithfully mopped with yarrow water every Saturday.
Mom said yarrow brought good luck and made everything fresh, but Nat thought bleach would do just as well. All Mom’s plants—crowding every window, or perched under bright lamps—were doing just fine without the rituals of daily songs and misting with different color-coded spray bottles. The laundry was still loyally addressed every Saturday though; the parlor was dusted “for company” too, every knickknack separately rubbed with a soft cloth, all the wood polished, all the upholstery cleaned.
Nat wasn’t quite brave enough to halt that particular set of chores. The house looked like a stage set, a place where no actual living was done. Like de Winter’s penthouse office, immaculate and dust-free, with a wooden chair for a penitent little girl to sit in.
Hypnotism. Maybe it was some kind of reality show bullshit.Whoever “de Winter” was, she was damn good at it. What kind of an acronym was Y.A.G.A., anyway?
Dmitri will pick you up tomorrow evening,vnuchka. Be ready for a party.
Her mother’s kitchen was bright and cheery, the sunflower towels hung perfectly even across the bar on the white enamel oven door. All the cookware was scrubbed; the cabinets, hand-painted with geometric patterns, were dusted. The little yellow house felt a lot bigger inside than it looked from without; the brownstones up and down the street frowned at this gaily colored intruder in their midst all year round.
Most days, it didn’t bother Nat. Today she’d fled their judgmental stares as well as the tinsel and blinking multicolored lights, slipping and scrambling through snow and the slick paths of rock salt or deicer in front of a few porches. She ran as if the neighborhood boys were chasing her home from middle school again; serve her right if she slipped and cracked her head open, but she was home, whole, and safe from…
From whateverthatwas. Maybe drugs? The Mob, of whatever stripe, was big into intoxicants. All the news stories said so.
You fucking know what it was, Nat.
Nat Drozdova buried her face in her cold, chapped hands and tried to muffle the sobbing as if her mother was home. Mom would take one look at her daughter and flick a little cold water from her fingertips as she attended to something in the sink, rolling her big blue eyes.
Oh, stop your blubbering, Natchenka. It could always be worse. Why, in the old country—
“Fuckthe old country,” Nat moaned into her hot, slick palms, and a laugh hiccupped through the wrenching jolts. Didn’t this just take the cake? The cake and the whole fucking bakery too?
To make it worse, she couldn’t quite figure out what she’d agreed to. Just that the man with the silver boot-toes would pick her up tomorrow evening at seven sharp; de Winter wanted Nat to fetch something, and when the lady had it, she’d help Mom.
You will call meBaba. We are family, after all.
The whole thing was ridiculous. If it was a practical joke, it was a long, involved, complex one even for Maria Drozdova. It was even bigger than the No Easter Candy Debacle when Nat was eight years old.
The sobs quieted, but not by much. She had time before her uncle returned from—
“You’re home early,” Leo said from the arched doorway to the dining room, wiping his hands with a thin red shop rag. She’d forgotten today was Garage Day instead of Pretend to Play Chess Day at the coffee shop up on Larkins Street or, in good weather, outside at Princo Park like every other old man in this slice of Brooklyn. He hurried to the wide double sink, salt-and-pepper head bobbing almost birdlike because of his limp. “How was my Natchenka’s day? I found problem in engine; it will be all right soon.”
