However, this did nothing to stop the wooing. I yanked back on her tail. She hurtled forward, dragging me off balance. I stumbled and took a few wobbly steps to right myself. I reached out to catch myself on the tunnel wall. Instead of frozen earth, I touched someone's hand. I couldn't help it. I screamed.
A mitten clamped over my mouth.
“Hush now, Faina. It's just me.”
I stood clinging to Liev's coat. How mortifying.
He put both hands on my shoulders to steady me. Even under the huge fur coat, he was incredibly handsome. Of course he was.
I took a step back.
“No, Faina. Now look. We must talk. The Volkovs left something with my father. You ran off and I couldn't get it to you.”
I took another step back. Why wasn't Liev at the All Night Vigil with his family? Was my capture so important that the Volkovs would pull the priest's son out of church to trick me? I knew exactly what Rasia Volkova wanted me to have. A lifetime stay in a Siberian prison.
Despite his snotty behavior as a boy, I hadn't thought that the lice issues of my youth would have driven Liev to want the same. How could he? I mean, prison was a long time and I hadn't even killed anyone. Didn't he know I wouldn't kill anyone?
He reached out and grabbed my arm. “Faina, wait.”
I flinched back but he had a good grip. I braced myself against the tunnel wall, sucked in a steadying breath, then kneed him in the stomach, hard. I turned and scrambled back down the tunnel into the depths from whence we'd come.
10
My Hallucinations Almost Make Sense
My mortification was complete. I'd lost my best and only friend. He'd grown into a tall, handsome guy whose last childhood memory of me involved baldness and a plague of lice. I then crash into him several times while running for my life, and now he was suddenly allied with the Volkovs, who wished to detain me for arrest.
This was by far the worst day of my life. That was saying something considering the long string of less-than-ideal events I had survived.
Once again, I found myself sprinting down the dark, icy tunnels. I was pretty sure the frozen warren of passages hadn't seen this much use since Volkov's father first hauled in his castle.
Getting hopelessly lost did not take long. I was becoming an expert. The running did warm me up, although the Christmas Eve fast and my jaunt into the snowstorm had left me deeply fatigued. When I jogged past the small room with the trunk, I ducked in again. The old chest was the only seat I'd seen in the maze of tunnels and I needed a rest.
I plopped myself down on top of the trunk. My heavy breaths made puffs in front of my face. The cold closed in as soon as I was still. I pulled one mitten off and raked my fingernails through my hair, trying to rid myself of all the frost that had formed as my breath froze. Even my eyebrows and lashes were caked in frost. I rattled the shiny padlock with my boot.
Locked, I think if it hadn't been locked I wouldn't have given the old trunk a second thought. But it was. Exhausted and trembling with cold, I couldn't help but recall that the trunk was not the only thing locked to me.
All I retained of my family were a few unlikely hallucinations and the knowledge that they were gone. Had my father been a trapper? Was my mother a baker or a fishmonger in the market? I would never know.
Ms. Melora changed the story every time I asked. My past was locked to me. Though I might learn to crack the padlock on the trunk with books and computer searches and a bunch of pointy tools, the most important secrets, the ones within my own head, were forever out of reach.
I sighed and slid my bare palm into the pocket of my mouse-eaten coat. My fingers touched something metal, and it stuck to the tender skin. Oh, great. The icy coating in my hair had melted on my fingertips.
Touching metal with moist skin was a big no no in Siberia. An image flashed through my mind. A fanciful drawing of a little girl with her tongue stuck to an old-fashioned water pump. Was it from a book? Another familiar hallucination zipped through my mind. Sitting on a window-seat as a girl, wrapped up in a brown-and-pink quilt and reading a book of pioneer stories to the light of a small yellow lamp.
One of the girls from the story had licked the water pump on a cold morning and gotten her tongue stuck to the frosty metal. The me from the hallucinations had certainly read a lot as a child. Odd. As far as I knew, I had never seen a window-seat in my life.
I pulled my hand from my pocket, knowing what I would find. Yep, the key I'd discovered in the snow had latched itself right onto my skin. I held my fingers close to my mouth and tried to heat them with my warm breath. It took a long time to free the key. If my breath hit the frigid air it would freeze, but by cupping my palms close to my face, I could trap a little bit of heat. The key began to loosen. I gritted my teeth and shook my fingers hard. The key flew off and hit the trunk with a clink. I slipped my hands into my mittens before something else stuck to them and bent to retrieve the key. My gaze paused on the shiny new padlock.
No, it was highly improbable.
I scooped up the key in my mitten and tried it in the lock. Using a teeny-weeny key while wearing enormous furry mittens is a Herculean task. The mittens were so huge and floppy and the key was so delicate and cold. I didn't dare remove my mittens lest the key freeze to my fingers once more. Still, I couldn't help my curiosity. What if the key actually went to the trunk?
It did.
Many failed attempts later, I knelt on the cold stone floor and finally raised the leather-bound lid. The trunk did not groan on ancient hinges or release a cloud of dust motes. The interior was lined in faded velvet that had once been crimson, but it was surprisingly clean for a WWII relic. In fact, nothing inside matched my lovely antique flashlight.
Instead, they matched my hallucinations.
A shiny red purse with a brass kitten charm dangling from the zipper, a leather briefcase in a deep mahogany, a bright pink carrying case with a picture of a tall, leggy doll with over-large eyes, a flat black box bound in gold ribbon, a case for a five disc set of Christmas music classics, a plain black journal with a pen snapped to the cover with a rubber band, and a small plastic album full of Polaroid photos.
I stood and walked away from the trunk. This was impossible. I had finally gone mad, just like Ms. Melora had warned I would. Although, this would explain where she'd gotten those ridiculous Christmas CDs.
I paced the tunnel just outside the alcove.
My breath rose in clouds around my face and my hands ached with cold. I slipped them into my pockets and paced some more. I remembered the pink bag and the red purse. I remembered the leather briefcase and the small book of photos. There would be three stiff, plastic dolls with enormous hair inside the bag. Two blondes, a brunette, and a whole mess of pointy plastic heels that fit their dainty little feet. There would be orange breath mints in the purse and pictures of a little girl, Hailey Ann Barnett, and her new puppy, Barbie, in the photo album. I had seen all of these things before. No, not all of them.
I ran back to the trunk and snatched up the journal.
A dark red ribbon marked a page near the end. I removed one mitten and slid the pages open with my finger. It was written in Russian, but I had learned to read using the cookbooks Ms. Melora kept in the back of the cramped, gray kitchen.
January 6, 2007
I have added my own shame to my grandfather's legacy. All the Nazi treasures have been sold. Nothing remains to connect our family with the treasure troves of our enemies from that black time. But the store of rifles and explosives had to be dealt with.
I was loath to sell them to the angry young men my contact told me of. What were their plans? Who would bleed when these old guns fired again? What would they destroy using the fragile crates with the swastika burnt into their graying wood? No, I would care for these myself. And so I hauled every crate and rifle out to the forest to burn. I waited for darkness on Christmas Eve.
Every soul in the village would be at home feasting on fish, borsch, and cabbage stuffed with millet. No one would see the explosion. Who would guess the reality after everything was burned and gone.
I laid a fire in the center of the pile, providing plenty of wood and a barrel of used oil. It would take some time for the flames to ignite the explosives. I had time to walk away. But flames have their own kind of power and I paused in the watchtower of the castle wall to watch.
That was when I saw the plane. A small bush plane, the kind that was not supposed to fly after dark. Surely it was off course and desperate for some place to land. I had piled up my past in a small clearing in the woods. The open spot and the light of the fire would draw the pilot.
I waved my flashlight like a lunatic, but the plane did not avert its course. I rushed into the forest, although surely my presence would not stop the small craft. As the plane approached the meadow, the whole pile blew skyward.
I buried them in the forest. The mother and father and pilot. I carried the little girl and her pup to Melora myself. The animal ran into the forest when Melora took the child. The girl had hit her head badly. I poured money into the orphanage and bargained for Melora's silence. If not on behalf of our failed love, then perhaps for profit.
I hid a few things away, the little girl's dolls, the woman's Christmas gift from her husband, the man's business things. I left the music with the child, though; perhaps the familiar songs will ease her grief.
Now I, too, have a stash of secrets. I rushed to destroy secrets left from a time of war and have found a skeleton of my own to hide away. Innocent casualties in a time of peace. It has come full circle then. I am my Grandfather's shame, all over and again.
I sat alone in the silence for a long, long time.
This explained why the older Volkov had dug the tunnels. He'd actually owned a real dragon's horde, Nazi treasure, something he absolutely had to hide.
Chobo trotted up and sat at my feet. I noticed how my hand trembled as I reached out to stroke her head. “Barbie?” I whispered.
Chobo barked and lunged to slurp my face.
I stared at her, not moving to defend myself. My name was Hailey. Hailey Barnett. Faina Smith had always sounded made up, because it was.
No wonder Chobo was so much fatter and fluffier and goofier than the Siberian huskies in town. She was a malamute, the local dog of the native tribes in American Alaska.
I bent and retrieved the small photo album from the trunk. I opened the warped plastic cover to a picture of a little blonde girl and her furry pup.
Chobo was my dogâ¦and Kirill Volkov had killed my parents.
11
Chobo Forgets All She Knew About Playing Fetch
Like rusted metal gears clicking into place and grinding forward with a lurch, everything that was wrong about me suddenly made perfect sense. That first terrible year of struggling to understand Russian.
Ms. Melora had said I hit my head in the accident that killed my parents and was therefore too stupid to comprehend the simplest comment.
No wonder I hadn't understood Russian, I wasn't Russian at all. They had even given me an American name, well half of an American name. Smith, Faina Smith.
Chobo/Barbie gave a rumbly howl and lumbered off down the tunnel.
I pressed the palms of my mittens against my forehead as each terrible little piece of the puzzle snapped into place. My dreams, all those awful dreams about the storm and the blast and smoke choking my lungs and the blood, dark on the snow.
Kirill Volkov must have carried me to the orphanage still dazed from the crash. He'd lost my puppy in the storm and left me with Ms. Melora.
No wonder Liev's dog had always given me her loudest, most pitiable howl when he'd come to visit. She had launched herself upon me and covered me with dog slobber the only time Ms. Melora allowed her inside. Chobo knew, but I'd believed my mind was broken and unreliable.
Had Kirill Volkov truly thought that saving me from the wreck made everything OK? He'd stuffed me away in that terrible place, all to guard his secret, his mistake. The wealthy old hermit had killed my parents. It was an accident, a stupid and senseless error, but he had killed them all the same. And now he was dead.
I stumbled forward and rifled through the trunk. I yanked the ID out of my mother's purse and tore through my father's briefcase looking for anything with his name lettered across the top. No one could ever find these things. I had to hide them, destroy them. For now, the man who had killed my parents was dead, and if anyone guessed at what he had done, they would convict me of murder for sure.
I couldn't carry everything. But the Barbies and most of the paperwork didn't point specifically at me. They could have belonged to any American girl and her hardworking Dad. Without my mother's ID, the purse wouldn't be a danger either.
I tucked a few of the papers, my mom's ID, the small photo book, and Kirill Volkov's diary under my arm and let the lid on the trunk thump shut. I dropped my armload of evidence and hoisted the lid open again. I tossed the key inside and snapped the padlock shut.
An ache settled under my ribs as I gathered up the papers and ID, but I turned my back on those few precious mementoes and hurried down the frozen corridor.
I could hear Chobo wooing at someone far down the tunnel. The indistinct sound of a male voice answered her. She must have found Liev.
I forced my legs into a run. The evidence had to be destroyed. I could not let Liev find me and my armload of secrets.
I jogged around a corner in the tunnel and heard the slap of something hitting the icy floor. I glanced back. A furry blur charged down the tunnel from behind.
“Go home, Chobo.”
The furry rocket just kept coming. She barreled into my chest, leapt up to slurp my face, and whirred around to thunder back the way she had come. Just before she rounded the corner, Chobo skidded to a stop and trotted back. She sniffed at something that lay on the tunnel floor.