Page 76 of Spring's Arcana
“She left.” Now Leo enunciated clearly. Standing in the window, watching the girl follow the dark man—oh, Leo knew whohewas.
He knew far more than Maria realized.
“Did she take the car?” His darling Maschenka bared her yellowing teeth. “You were supposed to fix it, or get a new one. I told you how.”
“Oh,da, da.” Leo nodded. “You told me, yes.”
Maria stiffened. Normally, when she was this angry ozone would crackle in the air and the smell of evil black mud would rise from her in waves. Her golden hair would lift on its own personal breeze, and though she was always lovely, she was also terrifying in those moments. “You silly old man,” she hissed. “I told you to get her another car. It should have been easy.”
“Why, Marischka.” He finished folding the scarf, laid it aside. “Cars are so expensive. She had a friend to ride with, and your precious money is safely where it should be.”
A dangerous silence expanded like a soap bubble. Sleet rattled against the window with a tiny hollow chuckle, the storm’s precursor. There were few warm places in New York, even with heaters turned up and blankets piled on.
A secret glow had left the warren of concrete canyons, the subway’s thumping and screeching, the jammed-together storefronts and leaning houses. Even the rats were hiding deep in whatever hole they could find, pressed against each other to find some manner of warmth.
“I. Told. You.” Maria’s rage pushed her upright a few inches, her back leaving thin, stacked pillows she had probably bullied a mortal nurse into bringing. “Itoldyou what to do.”
“You always do.” Leo’s hands twitched. If he were his old self he might wrap them around her scrawny throat and squeeze. He had worked on the Léon Bollée for months, but for every problem he fixed, he created two more. It was the kind of job a craftyzekwould recognize. Keeping the car from suckling at the new force in the house had cost him much of his waning strength, but each day he had shuffled into the clean kitchen and smiled as he washed his hands. “Our Natchenka is out in the world, Maria.” He drew in a deep breath, staring at her mad, burning eyes. “And I hope she stays gone.”
He had done all he could, hoping his little Natischka wouldn’t visit the old lady. Finding reasons for her not to go, not yet, spending days alone wandering in the little yellow house while the honey-haired girl was at work, wringing his hands and waiting for her key in the lock and the softLeo, are you home?Keeping the old car decrepit despite its urge to wholeness, cooking dinner, pouring the vodka with a silent prayer that she would stay just a little longer, just a short while, since Maria was now, after her collapse, too weak to pounce.
That very morning the old black car had sagged on flattened tires, rust racing through its once-shiny sides in hungry rivers. It had made a sound like a disintegrating parachute when he touched the hood, and the fender clanged to the garage’s floor with a sound far too light and chiming for such a big piece of metal.
It had broken into three pieces, too.
The houseplants were withering, and each one’s tiny dirtbound death pleased him because it meant Maria’s daughter was safely away from her voracious mother. The dinginess in the walls, mildew spreading and paint peeling, was a blessing. He didn’t mind the cold; some of Maria’s favorite furniture burned very well indeed.
Maria choked. Her blue eyes bugged. She fell against the pillows, making noises mortals might mistake for distress. Leo rose slowly—after all, he was an old man—and shuffled for the door to call help.
She hated the nurses poking and prodding, the doctors’ cheery bluster and refusal to treat her with due deference, the orderlies’ sneaklike thieving. Her hatred brushed against his back, a dying breeze instead of a hailstorm, and Leo sighed.
No, he could not strangle her. He was as he’d been created, that first sharp birth from a swiftly flying pen all but forgotten in the crowd of impressions afterward. Besides, her end meant his own.
He had no illusions about that.
“Excuse me,” he quavered in English at a passing nurse, a young white-sheathed woman with dark eyes very much like his little Natchenka’s. “My wife… my wife is having trouble, you see? With the breathing.”
A man with dirt in his mouth could not speak very loudly, after all.
He lingered in a corner, forgotten while medical professionals clustered Maria, who choked and raved in the old country’s language, swearing she would cut his throat with the flint knife.
But that knife was in her daughter’s hands, and both he and Maria would be past saving soon enough. He felt the approaching event as he’d once sensed a divinity’s warm interest, looking up to see a pair of bright blue eyes across a crowded hall in Saint Petersburg, a man caught as surely and swiftly as a rabbit in a country girl’s trap.
Soon Nat Drozdova would have her mother’s treasures, all of them. And Leo Mishkin, once a prince who had given his heart to springtime, hoped he had delayed his daughter long enough.
I love you. The words beat behind his breastbone as they had for over two mortal decades.I love you, my little one. I love you, I love you, and I hope I am dead before you return.
For that would mean Maria Drozdova was too.
THE CUP
FINDING HARDESTY
Even in winter, South Dakota is beautiful.
Sere snow-swept prairie rolled by, changing only gradually as rivers came from the north to cut under the freeway, pavement bridging their icy foaming. The roads were mostly ruler-straight, mostly joined at right angles, and the endless vaulted sky might have been terrifying for a girl raised in close, confining concrete canyons.
But when the land stretched away in every direction, blurring to an infinite horizon, Nat’s lungs loosened and she took deep breaths for what felt like the first time in her entire life, staring at the immensity. Every once in a while—just often enough the space wouldn’t drive you mad—trees both evergreen and deciduous-naked softened the stony shores of a river or rose above some other secret water-vein. Sometimes the clouds broke and scudded over a sky full of thin, aching winter blue.
