Chains of Ice (8 page)

Genny’s alarm went off. She grabbed it, muffled it under the covers, turned it off, lay breathing hard. She felt as if she’d been running all night.

And coming.

Across the low attic room, Avni scowled in her sleep.

Genny sat up quietly. She reached for her clothes, her camera, and her backpack.

Man, that dream: equal parts terror and sex.
That stuff Avni had told her about John Powell and his carnal prowess had worked on her subconscious and . . . well, what did Genny expect?

She crept down the stairs to the bathroom. She splashed her face with the frigid water from the yellow porcelain basin, washed away memories of her nightmare. Brushed her teeth. But it wasn’t as easy to wash away the taste of unwilling arousal.

She unzipped the thin outer pocket of her backpack and pulled out the photo of John Powell. She studied him—the way he stood, hands on hips, shoulders square, chin back as he laughed.

He didn’t look like a yeti or a lunatic or even one of the Chosen. He looked like a nice, solid guy; the kind of guy she’d like to ask her out. In profile, she couldn’t see his eyes, but someone or something had been looking at her from those bushes yesterday. Was it him?

Was he watching her with the intention of carrying her into the woods . . . ?

Okay. Enough of that.

She slid the photo back into the pocket and zipped it shut.

Night was over. The dreams were gone. Sunlight was turning the sky a thin, clear blue, and she let loose her slow rise of exultation.

Lubochka was taking her out to show her the ropes, and she would soon see a Ural lynx. In the wild!

She would seize every day of this trip—and would make such memories that when she sat in an office or a boardroom, she could pull them out, polish them off, and remember each gleaming moment.

She hurried down another flight of stairs to the taproom.

Lubochka and Mariana were already there, sitting at the end of the long table in front of Lubochka’s computer, speaking in low voices about . . . about Genny, if the way they broke off meant anything.

She pretended not to notice.

Lubochka looked her over and nodded. “Good.”

Genny felt as if she’d passed a test. Lubochka’s instructions had been to wear military-style clothes—heavy cloth khakis, camouflage patterns, and boots over the ankle.

Mariana rose. “Feeling better this morning? Ready for breakfast?”

“I’m starving.” Because she’d spent half the night fleeing John Powell with the glowing red eyes, and the other half the night having the best orgasms in the world. She smiled. And blushed.

Mariana’s eyes narrowed as if she knew, but she said nothing more than, “Have a seat.” She went into the other room and came back with a mug of black coffee and a bowl of oatmeal topped with two eggs and a thin slice of bread.

Genny pulled up the bench, looked at the food, then at Mariana. “That’s a lot more than I usually eat.”

“Eat it all,” she advised. “Every observation point is straight up the mountain and Lubochka will work you relentlessly until someone sees the first sign of the big cats.”

Lubochka grunted and typed on the keyboard in front of her. “That’s what they’re here for. To work.”

Genny dipped her spoon into the oatmeal and found it wasn’t oatmeal, but buckwheat porridge—very different, very distinctive. The eggs added a familiar flavor; the toast was rough and yeasty.

“You like it?” Mariana asked.

“It’s good.”

“Some . . . They complain because it’s not American.” Mariana indicated her opinion with a wrinkled nose.

“I’ve been waiting my whole life to eat different foods in a different place,” Genny assured her. “This looks remarkably like my favorite English pub in SoHo.”

“No. Not a pub. A
traktir,
” Lubochka corrected her.

“Right.” With the morning, the faded brocade curtains were pulled back from the long narrow windows to let in the light. The view looked out at street level, and now and then a pair of leather-laced boots tromped past.

With a well-honed knife, Mariana cut a loaf of the dark bread into hearty slabs. “In Rasputye, we are still mostly farmers. We found it was not good to depend on the state for support. We are very far from Moscow. We are not ethnic Russians. And in times of trouble, we are easy to forget.”

“Is that why . . . ?” Genny waved at the corner where Orthodox icons—traditional paintings of saints done on wood and canvas—hung on the wall over a table draped in a red cloth where white candles burned.

Genny knew the
krasnyi ugol
, the beautiful corner, held the place of honor in every Russian home. There families kept all that was holy to them, placed on a table covered with a red cloth or on walls painted with red paint. Genny’s studies had told her that the Soviets had replaced those gilded icons with newspapers and portraits of war heroes, yet in Rasputye the
krasnyi ugol
looked as it had for a millennium.

Mariana followed Genny’s gaze. “Here, we have kept to the old beliefs. No one from the government has ever had the strength to live through our winters long enough to enforce the party’s orders.”

“Saints. Icons. Superstitious nonsense,” Lubochka grumbled.

“It is not superstition to seek protection from those who would harm us.” Mariana’s voice was soft but firm.

“There’s nothing out there but some hungry animals and Mother Nature, and a few paintings of saints won’t save you from those,” Lubochka retorted.

“It is not nature which we fear.” As if she feared she had revealed too much, Mariana glanced uneasily at Genny.

“As I said—superstitious nonsense,” Lubochka repeated.

Genny looked between them. This sounded like an old argument with no heat behind it, yet clearly the weirdness of last night lingered.

Mariana poured Lubochka more coffee, and Genny nodded when Mariana offered her another cup.

“No!” Lubochka pulled the cup away. “Don’t drink. I want you watching for lynx, not hanging your rear end over a log.”

Genny thought about pointing out the perils of dehydration, or explaining that caffeine was her addiction and her golden door to consciousness, or that her personal habits were not Lubochka’s concern. Instead, mildly, she said, “Actually, I have the bladder of a camel.”

“I know camels drink and hold water, but do they also retain that water? I suppose they must.” Lubochka did not crack a smile.

Mariana and Genny both muffled theirs.

“Very good.” Lubochka nodded and shut down the computer. “You may take fluid with you.” She covered the monitor with a cloth, then told Mariana, “Let no one touch this except Misha.”

“I know.” Clearly Mariana had heard it before.

“Genesis, are you ready?” Lubochka asked.

Genny was not, but she took the none-too-subtle hint and polished off her porridge.

As soon as she put down her spoon, Lubochka stood. “Let’s go.”

Mariana stuffed bread and cheese and a battered canteen of tea into Genny’s backpack. “If you don’t mind, Lubochka, I’ll walk with you this morning.”

Clearly, Lubochka did mind. She frowned. “I thought you had an inn to run.”

“After last night, no one will be awake for hours.”

“These foreigners cannot hold their vodka,” Lubochka said.

Genny grinned.

“Yes, Genesis, you smile.” Lubochka stalked toward the stairs that led up to the door; impatience showed clear in every line of her big-boned figure. “You’re the smart one. You abstained. When I come back, I will kick their feeble
zhopayee
out of bed and they’ll vomit all day, and my big cats will laugh at the foolish humans.”

Rasputye was stirring. A few men stood on their doorsteps, scratching themselves and staring.

Genny stared back.

Her first impression was correct. They were tanned and blond, beautiful people with blue eyes and sturdy frames. They weren’t Komi, the native people who inhabited the area. Perhaps the Vikings had raided this part of Russia and sown some wild oats?

She nodded to one of the men.

He stared hard, and then, as if he were daring, nodded back.

His wife stepped out of the house, placed herself between her husband and Genny, shoved him into the house, and without turning her back, sidled in and shut the door.

They left the last houses behind. The road rose steeply beneath their feet.

“Wow. Friendly people you’ve got here.” But Genny remembered the noise of the party downstairs last night. They had seemed friendly enough after she’d gone upstairs. After Lubochka had threatened them, and told them she didn’t want to hear any more whispers of . . .
trouble
.

“Don’t pay any attention to them,” Mariana said.

“They’re afraid.”

“Of what? Me?” Genny tried to laugh, then choked it back. “Of
me
? Why?”

“You have a look about you that we’re all too familiar with here. You look . . . gifted.”

Genny almost wrenched her neck turning to stare at Mariana. “What do you mean,
gifted
?”

“There’s an old legend . . .” Mariana rubbed her arms as if cold had suddenly gripped her.

“You are foolish, Mariana,” Lubochka called back, and sternly. “Don’t encourage her, Genesis.”

But Genny had to know. “A legend?
The
legend? About the Abandoned Ones?”

“You know it?” Now Mariana looked surprised.

“I do. But why do
you
?”

Lubochka turned off the road. Genny and Mariana followed. The coniferous forest closed in around them.

Mariana gestured widely. “It happened here.”

“The legend happened here? No.” Perhaps Genny shouldn’t so openly scoff. But . . . “It’s a
legend
.”

“All legends contain a grain of truth. All myths have their beginnings somewhere.” Mariana stated a truth she obviously believed with all her heart. “Look around.”

Genny did. The forest was cool and smelled spicy with pine. The mossy ground sprang softly beneath their feet. The air grew warmer and, here and there, sunlight glowed like a benediction through the branches.

Peeling off her coat, she stuffed it in the outer pocket of her backpack, then kept trekking. “Yeah. So?”

“This forest was old when the Egyptians built the pyramids,” Mariana said.

Genny remembered her feeling yesterday—that the forest was ancient, a living, breathing entity. And it seemed to watch insignificant humans come and go while it waited for a time when the trees would once more cover the earth . . .

“Men come to harvest the trees. They bring their machines. They go into the woods . . . and they don’t come back. Or if they do, they’ve got the wind singing in the empty spaces of their heads.” Mariana tapped her forehead.

They’re not the only ones.
This woman was one taco short of a combo plate.

Mariana continued so solemnly, she should be making sense. “Gods walk in these woods, and devils. Good and bad, all manner of creatures came into the world through this portal.”

“Portal?”

“The crossroads is here.”

Lubochka marched farther and farther ahead, fallen branches cracking beneath her hiking boots, leaving Genny alone with Mariana and a bunch of trees that listened and nodded.

Genny sped up. “I don’t know what any of this has got to do with me.”

Mariana’s long strides easily kept up the pace. “You had dreams last night, didn’t you? Nightmares.”

Mariana’s certainty set Genny’s teeth on edge. “Nothing special, just the usual. Going to the new high school and taking a test I didn’t know about. Going to a law conference, getting up to speak and realizing I forgot my speech. Seeing my mother on the street and . . .” She reined herself in.
Seeing my mother on the street and knowing that she would, once again, look right through me as if she didn’t know me.

She didn’t mention the nightmare with the eyes that watched her from the depths of the dark forest, or the fantasy—so erotic that again she blushed and hoped that Mariana attributed the color to the exercise in the cool air.

“In the legend,” Mariana said, “the mother abandoned the girl baby because she had marks in her palms . . .”

“They looked like eyes.” That part of the story always sent a shiver up Genny’s spine.

“Yes. Eyes. And when the girl grew up, she looked witchy.”

“Witchy. Are you saying I look like the girl? That I look witchy?” Genny was feeling exasperated. Frazzled.

“She was beautiful—”

“Men manage to resist me pretty easily.”

“—with an oval face and a dimple just there—” Mariana pointed.

Genny put her finger to the cleft in her chin.

“Exactly.” Mariana nodded. “She had an abundance of dark brown curly hair, like yours, and eyes that looked brown. And when she grew angry or excited, gleamed like gold. Beautiful skin. Strong body. And a malevolence that went right to the bone.”

Genny stopped walking. “I am not malevolent.” She pulled her hands from her pockets and showed Mariana her palms. “I am not marked. I’m certainly not gifted.”

“Yes, I see.” Mariana stopped, too, and observed her. “Your parents are alive.”

“Very much so.”

“But I wonder . . . if your mother properly cherished you.”

Genny’s throat didn’t close. Not quite. But she coughed slightly before she could speak, then waved her hand around at the cool, dimly lit trees. “She didn’t take me into the woods and throw me into a stream.”

No. Instead, when Genny was in college, she worked up her nerve and went to visit her mother. Mother had remarried a wealthy man, of course, but she was still remote, still beautiful; and when her new husband came in, she told him, “Genny’s applying for a job as my social secretary.” Then to Genny, “I’ll let you know my decision in about a week.”

No, her mother hadn’t tried to kill her. She didn’t care enough to bother.

“Look.” Genny’s voice rose. “Is this some kind of initiation ritual? Because I’m not buying it. Somehow you found out who my father is, right? You made up all this stuff about the legend and now you’re . . . you’re trying to scare the newbie for some weird reason.”

The bushes crackled as Lubochka came stomping back, scowling heavily.

Genny turned on her. “Maybe you’re in on the joke. Maybe this is how you get rid of unwanted, untrained assistants. But it’s too late for that. The fee has been paid, and I promised my
soul
for a chance to observe the lynx in the wild. So I don’t want to hear anything else about this legend and the forest and the . . . the crossroads”—she turned back to Mariana—“whatever you mean by that.”

Lubochka dismissed Genny’s tantrum with a characteristic snort. “Girl, if I wanted you gone, you would go with my teeth snapping at your heels.”

Genny almost collapsed in relief. She should have known. Lubochka was too straightforward for such a ruse.

Lubochka fixed her attention on Mariana. “Why are you doing this? Trying to frighten the girl? Was the winter too long? Have you lost your mind?”

“I am fine, thank you.” Mariana looked earnest and normal. “I’m trying to warn her.”

“Warn her of
what
?”

“We have a long memory here.” Mariana looked between Genny and Lubochka. “We know she’s . . . bait.”