Red Winter (4 page)

‘Who’s
he
? Can you remember? You have to tell me—’

‘Koschei,’ she said. ‘The Deathless One.’

She had lost her mind. I understood that as soon as she started whispering about Koschei the Deathless. Gaunt and cruel and brandishing his sword, Koschei was as much an embodiment of evil as Baba Yaga, the cruel witch who lived deep in the forest in a shabby house surrounded by a fence made from the bones of her victims. But Koschei was just a monster from the
skazkas
we told our children. He was no more real than the forest demons, and he couldn’t have been in our village, but something had happened here in Belev that had driven Galina Ivanovna out of her mind. Though she rambled like a lunatic and smelled like death, she was my kin of sorts and it was my responsibility to take care of her. And whatever she had survived, I needed to hear about it; I needed to know what had happened to my family. If I was to be of any use at all to my wife and children, I needed to know whatever Galina could tell me.

I calmed her and sat her in a chair at the table. A shaft of moonlight came through the side window to touch the far corner of the kitchen, dust motes dancing in its weak glow, but it was still too dark to see much. I could tell that Galina was bundled thick with clothes to keep out the weather, and when I touched her, her whole body trembled. Whether it was age or fear or just the deep cold that made her shiver, though, I couldn’t tell.

I had left the curtains open so I could see into the night, but now I pulled them across and Galina started to protest when I struck a match and put it to the fire I’d prepared in the
pich
.

‘It’s fine,’ I told her. ‘You’re safe. And this’ll make you more comfortable.’ I was prepared to risk it. The old woman, my mother’s friend, needed some warmth, and for me, it was an excuse to make the fire I had so wanted just a short while ago. Perhaps the flames would chase away some of the demons.

When the
pich
was lit, I boiled the last of the water from my canteen and poured it into two bowls, bringing them to the table. My hands shook as I placed the revolver close to me and put a match to the candle.

The light it shed was weak and orange, and it cast a strange hue across Galina’s face, but I immediately saw why she smelled so awful. Her skin was pale and lifeless, with the waxy pallor of the dead. Her grey hair would have once been groomed and tied beneath a headscarf, but now it hung damp and ragged, matted in twists and clumped with dirt. Her right eye reflected the flicker of the candle, but her left was missing. Where there should have been sight there was, instead, a moist and glistening wound.

I fought the urge to turn away.

Galina Ivanovna, once my mother’s friend, the woman who had been so smitten by my brother’s sweet smile, was dying, rotting while she still lived. She sat with me like One-Eyed Likho and I had a fleeting memory of the tale my mother used to tell me – the one Marianna had, in turn, told our children. I could see Marianna telling it now, sitting at the side of the bed while our children lay with the blankets pulled to their chin. In the heart of our home, the
pich
was burning and a fire crackled, while outside, the wind blew the snow across the field and the water froze thick on the lake.

Marianna would hush her voice and bring the candle close as she told of the two men, a tailor and a smith, on a swaggering journey to find evil. She always paused to swallow and look around before she explained how the two men stumbled upon a cabin where they found the hag known as One-Eyed Likho. Dressed in black, all skin and bone and blind in one eye, Likho made the men at home, put them at ease, and when they were relaxed, she cut open the tailor’s throat. Marianna would draw her finger across her neck when she recounted that part; both boys would giggle as she widened her eyes in mock terror and scraped her nail across her perfect skin. Pavel’s laughter, though, was never as genuine as his brother’s, and he cast glances at Misha and furrowed his brow when Marianna told how Likho cooked the tailor and picked his bones clean, just as Baba Yaga liked to do with the lost children she enticed into her shack.

When the tale was told, Marianna would brush the hair from Pavel’s brow and kiss his forehead before doing the same to our eldest, Misha, and we would sit in the outer room and drink tea if we had it and listen to them talking in whispers, sniggering at the horror of the old hags who inhabited the forest. And when their voices grew quiet and the night moved on, it was Pavel who would appear at the bedroom door, looking for reassurance that we were still there, sitting by the warmth of the fire.

I dismissed the image out of mind and forced myself to put my hand on Galina’s. ‘Tell me what happened.’

Galina shook her head and smiled, revealing broken teeth. ‘Alek, you were always a good boy. Do you remember how you used to come to me for
blinis
and
pampushki
?’

‘I’m Kolya,’ I said. ‘Alek’s little brother.’

‘Of course,’ she nodded. ‘Little Kolya.’ She looked about, growing more confused. ‘Where’s Alek? I thought I saw him. I have to show him something.’

I glanced across at where Alek lay propped against the wall. ‘Alek is dead,’ I told her.

‘Oh.’ She closed her eye and thought about that for a long time. She pursed her lips and raised her eyebrows, and when she opened her eye again, she looked at me. ‘Sasha is in the forest, Alek.’

‘Your husband Sasha?’ I started to stand up. ‘Can you take me to . . . ?’ I paused as the weight of realisation settled over me. ‘Is he all right?’

‘I tried to wake him. I tried to put him back together, but . . .’ She put a bony knuckle to her lips and closed her eye once more.

I eased back into the chair as the numbness worked through me. ‘What about the others?’

Galina shook her head.

‘I want you to show me.’

‘Now?’

‘Yes, now,’ I said.

‘But the forest is so dark. And Koschei is always watching.’

‘There is no Koschei,’ I said. ‘He’s just a story. I need to see
now
. Take me to see Sasha.’

‘He took all the children, you know. Into the forest.’

Another stab at my heart. ‘Why don’t you show me?’ My mouth was dry, and my stomach burned. I hadn’t eaten properly for days and now bile rose in my throat.

Galina put a hand to her face and rubbed her good eye before looking at me. For a moment a sparkle of lucidity came to her and there was recognition in her expression as she sat up straighter. ‘Kolya,’ she said. ‘Nikolai Levitsky.’

‘Yes, it’s me.’ I leaned closer, seeing a chance to learn something from her.

‘How long is it since I last saw you? You look older. The war has been . . .’ she started to say before her expression changed. ‘You have to help them,’ she said. ‘I think he took them away.’

‘Took them where? Do you know?’

She shook her head. ‘They called him Koschei, but he . . .’

‘He what?’

‘He took them all,’ she said, grief beginning to overwhelm her. She put a hand to her mouth as if she were reliving it again, remembering it as if it were new to her. ‘Oh. Yes.’ She tapped her forehead with her bony knuckle, as she had done before. ‘I was watching from the woods. Yes, that’s right. I was watching from the woods and I saw . . .’ She stopped tapping and put her hand over her mouth, muffling her words. ‘I saw what he did to Sasha. And then they saw me. I tried to stop them and they saw me and . . .’ She paused.

‘And what, Galina Ivanovna? What happened then?’

She looked up at me and the light went from her eye and I knew I had lost her once more. ‘Koschei,’ she whispered.

‘Can you show me now?’ I asked. ‘Take me to Sasha.’

‘But it’s dark.’

‘The moon is half full. We’ll see well enough.’

‘And there are things in the woods . . .’ She looked at the door. ‘Such things . . .’

‘You’ll be safe with me.’

The old woman took my hand and muttered to herself as we crossed the road and followed the riverbank. She hadn’t wanted to leave the
izba
, but now we were outside, she was eager to show me her secret.

‘The lake,’ she said. ‘The lake.’

She was unsteady and we moved slowly past the place where I had come across the water that afternoon, heading to the far end of the village, where a small footbridge spanned the river. It was a simple wooden construction that leaned to one side as if it were about to collapse into the water. Many of the crosspieces were long gone, leaving gaps in the bridge, and the ones that were still in place were now coated with the oncoming frost. Like a forgotten jewel-encrusted bridge from one world into another, it spanned the murmuring river from the hardening mud on this side to the dark forest beyond. The wind had died away and an ethereal mist had settled along the banks, flooding the trees and shrubs, drifting in the breeze, and I felt the same apprehension I had felt as I entered the silent village.

Galina hesitated and glanced at me.

‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘I’m here.’ But a chill settled over me as we went on, Galina still grasping my hand, and I looked ahead, afraid to find what was waiting for me.

I used my free hand to hold the bridge rail, but as soon as we reached the shadowy mouth of the path through the forest, I let it fall to rest against the revolver in my coat pocket. The trees were naked, withdrawn from life while they endured the onset of winter. Their damp bark was black in places, but in others it was dusted with frost, glistening in the moonlight that broke through twisted and crooked branches. When I glanced down at Galina’s fingers closed round my own, I saw a similarity in the way her swollen, arthritic knuckles bulged beneath old skin and once again I remembered One-Eyed Likho and how the smith had fled from her through the forest to avoid the tailor’s fate, eventually cutting away his own arm to escape her.

We shuffled along the narrowing path, besieged on all sides by the oak and sycamore and hornbeam. Roots rose and fell from the frozen ground; rotting autumn-flamed leaves shifted across the forest floor as the wind crawled and swirled among the trunks. Somewhere close by came the cawing of many crows. Stark, agitated calls to the night.

When I heard those black birds, I thought I knew what was lying in wait in the darkness. The civil war had cut through the country like the Reaper himself had swept across it, and everywhere he cast his glance he left the dead lying in the fields and villages and forests. And wherever the dead fell so the crows came, obscuring the grass, turning everything black.

My steps faltered and I felt Galina grip my hand harder so that now it was she who was leading me. I shook myself, trying to lose the sickening feeling that swelled in my chest, and told myself I had to go on. I had to see. In the back of my mind, though, a voice told me that I
didn’t
need to see. Knowing was enough.
I didn’t need to see
.

When we broke from the forest into the clearing before the lake, the stars looked down with indifference and the trees stood silent.

The crows rose into the sky as one when Galina stepped forward, shooing them away. Their raucous complaints shattered the quiet of the forest like screams in the night and I knew what must have brought them here in such numbers. While their presence in fields far from here indicated sights against which I had hardened my heart, the massing of carrion birds so close to home filled me with dread.

Moonlight fell across the clearing, reflecting from the paper-thin ice on the surface of the lake, washing the area in a silvery glow, but even in daylight I would not have been able to make out the features of the man who lay in the frozen grass.

‘Sasha,’ Galina said, falling to her knees beside him. ‘My Sasha.’ She put her hand on her husband’s face as if she didn’t notice what the crows had done to him. ‘I tried to make him whole again.’

The body was dressed in black trousers and a shirt that had once been white but was decorated now with a dark stain across the chest. The skin was marked from the attention of the crows, and there was a dark sore in the centre of his forehead. As I came closer, I saw that when she stroked her husband’s damaged cheek, his head rolled in an unnatural way, falling to face us and revealing the place where it had been separated from his neck.

I took an involuntary step back and reached a hand inside my pocket to find the reassurance of the revolver’s handle. I scanned the clearing, watching the dark shadows on the periphery, searching for any sign of who might have done this. I had seen bodies before, but not often like this, and I knew this man.

A coldness froze my stomach as unwanted images of the possible fate of my family invaded my thoughts.

‘What . . . what about the others?’ I asked. ‘Where’s everybody else?’

I knew she’d been alone too long, that this must have happened some time ago, judging by the marks the crows had left on him, but it was almost impossible to know how long unless she told me. There was no smell, meaning the body had decomposed almost not at all, so it could have been quite fresh, but the weather was cold and I had to allow that as a factor. This execution could have taken place two days or two weeks ago.

‘Are they dead too?’ I asked, looking for other shapes in the clearing before turning my attention to Galina once more.

She cut a sorry figure in the gentle mist that diffused the moonlight. Shabby and pitiful. Her clothes upon clothes were dirty and ragged, making her bigger than she really was. Her lank hair, muddied and unkempt, writhed about her head like a witch’s. And in her madness, she sat at her husband’s side believing his head could be returned to his shoulders and that he would get up and walk.

‘Someone saw them coming.’ As before, there was a sudden clarity in her voice, as if she might have stepped from her madness into a moment of sanity. ‘A week ago, perhaps a little more. It was early and I was in the forest looking for mushrooms, just coming back as they were sending the children across the river to hide in the woods. That’s what we always did when they came, to stop them from taking the boys and . . . and using the girls. But they knew. They must have seen. I waited in the woods and watched them order everyone out of their houses and across the bridge.’ She brushed a hand over her husband’s clotted hair. Her fingers trembled. ‘They lined up the men and made them kneel, and then he drew his sword and said he would kill them, one at a time, until the children came out.’