Page 12 of Tiger's Tale
His beloved tsarevna began crying then. No. Not just crying. Her sobbing was terrible. It was repellently wet. Full of phlegm-filled heaving. But then she reached out for him and buried her streaming face in his neck, and his whole body warmed with the weight of her in his arms.At last, he thought.At last, she can see that we belong together.
Holding her close, he rocked her and murmured, “Ne plach, kukolka. Don’t cry, little one. You know, they say that tears that fall so readily often come from only the eyes and not the heart.”
Verusha gasped and wrenched herself away from him then, wiping her running nose and eyes on her shirtsleeve. “How dare you say that I don’t love my mother,” she accused.
“Your mother? When were we speaking of your mother? I assumed we were speaking of your impending nuptials.”
“No, you bolvan. Haven’t you been listening? My mother is ill. I think she’s dying. And Stacia sent out the Guard. As much as I’ve tried, I can’t come up with a course of action on my own.”
“I see. And the problem?” Nikolai asked stiffly.
“The problem?” Veru sputtered, wondering how her best friend could be so cold.
As for Nikolai, he was fixated on the fact that she’d called him a bolvan. It was what his father had called him every day of his life, every time he’d beaten him. For just a moment, he was back in that hovel, his frail, cowardly mother watching with her newest spindly babe pressed to her breast as his father backhanded her oldest son hard enough that the cords of wood he carried spilled from his arms.
* * *
“You stupid bolvan,” the man spat, already drunk, though the hour was still early. “Didn’t I ask you to muck the horse stall this morning?”
“I did,” Nik mumbled through the blossoming pain in his jaw as he crouched down to pick up the newly split logs. He heard the soft intake of breath from his mother, and the tiny sunken sets of eyes that had been peeking out from behind her skirts suddenly disappeared. Nikolai winced, realizing his mistake almost as he uttered it.
“What?” his father asked. “What did you say?”
Knowing it was coming and that it was better not to give him a weapon, Nik dropped the wood and stood. “I said, ‘I did,’” Nik repeated, louder this time.
“Is that right?”
When his father raised his hand again, Nik flinched, much as he was used to it. But instead of another blow across the cheek, the heavy hand clapped down on the back of his shirt, and he felt the thin fabric tear as he was manhandled into the ramshackle building his father had erected once upon a time that served as a barn.
The old horse stood in her stall, munching on the meager fare Nik had rustled up for her that morning. The straw beneath her hooves was still as fresh as it had been when he’d mucked it out just as dawn crept over the frigid horizon, with the exception of a very large, very new, pile of steaming dung.
Sighing, Nik said, “I’ll take care of it.”
“That’s right,” his ox of a father said. “Get yourself in there and take care of it.” With that, the man opened the stall and shoved Nik inside. “On your knees, boy.”
Nik couldn’t imagine what the man was going to do. It would be dangerous to whip him near the mare. Not that he hadn’t taken the crop to the beast enough times for her to shy and crowd herself into the corner of the stall as well, already neighing in protest to his father’s arrival. But no, his father had more terrible things than a simple whipping in mind. For a moment, he feared the man would shove him facedown into the pile of navoz, but instead, he had a worse fate in store for his boy.
“Eat it.” Nik heard him say. “Eat it while I watch.”
When Nik hesitated, uncertain at first that he’d understood correctly, his father bent down and added, “You know what I’ll do if you don’t.”
So Nik ate it.
When he vomited, his father made him eat that too. But he vomited again. As he did, his father laughed and kept laughing, lifting a bottle to his lips that he must have kept hidden in the barn.
Nik went about the business of eating navoz and retching navoz and then lifting the disgusting mass back to his lips, repeating the cycle until sweat slicked his entire body and tears blurred his vision. The protesting horse danced nervously beside him, and the thought occurred to him that he envied the beast. All she had to worry about was physical punishment and eventual death, something that sounded more and more peaceful to him as the long, agonizing moments stretched on.
As Nik was well aware, there were more terrible things in the world than death or pain. Many more terrible things. Finally, the anxious mare kicked him in the arm, dislocating his shoulder, then a second strike to the head was hard enough to put him out of his misery until nightfall.
When he awoke covered in his own vomit, horse dung, straw, and blood, the sound of a night owl hooting from the rafters, Nikolai cursed the fact he still lived. The mare’s soft lips gummed his hair, leaving a trail of saliva as she sought the rotten apple he often saved for her when he found them beneath the old tree on the edge of the property. Nik’s shoulder spasmed as he tried to sit up, and his jaw and head ached.
“You should have killed me,” he said thickly as he pushed her head away and assessed the deep cut her sharp hoof had made on his scalp. “It would have been kinder.”
Struggling, he got to his feet and used the water from the trough to clean his face and wound as best he could. It would need stitching. He could feel with gentle probing how deep it was. But to ask for help meant waking his mother, and once she was in bed with their father, there was no disturbing her. There was no other option. He’d have to stitch it as best he could himself.
Abandoning his filthy but warm winter outerwear, he made his way back to the tiny home in just his threadbare undershirt and boots, forging a path through new-fallen snow. Without a lamp to light his way, he used the light from the crescent moon to guide him to the shadowy house. Once inside, he lit the stump of a candle and located the tiny tin box where his mother kept the needles.
He was in the middle of stitching, using the inside of the tin box as a mirror and his hunting knife to cut the strings, when he saw the reflection of something in the darkness approaching behind him. He didn’t know what came over him. When the hot breath of the person behind him hit the back of his neck, and the stink of his own vomit mixed with blood and horse dung wafted over him, he clutched the knife in his fist, spun, and sunk it deep into the belly of the dark form lurking in the shadows.
