“It starts a long time ago, at least two thousand years.” The boardwalk was nearing its end, wooden planks eroding into black sand. “Almost all stories begin with a happy couple: a rich man and his beautiful, pious wife. If they have daughters, it is generally a sign that something will go wrong. Daughters usually have a bad time in stories, especially if there are three or more. I think this is my favorite story because everything goes right, when it’s all said and done. And it’s not such a bad thing to be a bird, if you can find someone to kiss you back into a girl. My mother’s problem was that all the bogatyrs are gone.”
I was breathless by the end of my telling, and it occurred to me that I could not remember the last time I had spoken so much, the last time anyone had allowed me to speak so much. A flush crept over my face. I had revealed so much of myself, toeing the abyss of my darkest and deepest wants.
“Not true,” Sevas protested, a smile dimpling only his left cheek. “I play a bogatyr every night, rude intruder that I am.”
“With a wooden sword. And a Dragon-Tsar who breathes paper flames.” Smog-wreathed, the moon now looked like one of my mother’s lace doilies, stained with old spills of tea. “I fed her from my hand for so many years, after my sisters forgot she was still there in her cage and no one ventured up to the third floor of our house but me.” I looked out again, past the black sand to the sea, and after a moment something seized my chest.
“Sevas, what time is it?”
“I don’t know.” He frowned. I wasn’t sure what I expected him to say; he wasn’t the type to fastidiously carry a pocket watch. We both turned, several paces from where the boardwalk ended, and began walking up the other way. Sevas paused before the nearest couple, a tall, thin man with an enormous mustache and his ruddy-haired companion, and asked, “Sir, do you have the time?”
The man opened the flap of his jacket and removed the watch, dangling from its gold chain like the pendulum of our grandfather clock. “A quarter to three, sir. Aren’t you—”
I didn’t wait to hear if it was me he recognized, or Sevas. Already I was sprinting down the boardwalk, wind catching its fingers in my hair. I scarcely noticed the glass of kumys slipping out of my grasp and shattering, a cosmos of cold milk streaking over the wooden slats.
I hadn’t gone very far at all when I realized that I’d utterly forgotten Rose’s juniper berries, forgotten to leave a trail that would help me find my way back home. But then again, I’d forgotten so much these last few hours, hadn’t I? My hand went to the sachet tied at my wrist, full and useless, leaking black juice onto the pleats of my dress.
In the distance, the carousel whirled and whirled, and the gas lamps were so bright that they cooked my eyes like eggs. Through the damp fretwork of lashes, I saw couples pass by, giving me a wide berth; I was panting and bent at the waist, bile rising in my throat.
I wished Undine were there to strike me across the face. I wished Rose were there to smooth the curls from my forehead and tell me that I would be safe, that all would be well, and that she would forgive me. The lemon balm smell had leaked out from her tincture, and now I could only taste the spearmint, like swallowing a fistful of nettles. I shut my eyes.
When I opened them again, Sevas’s face was rippling in front of me. “Marlinchen, what’s wrong?”
“I have to go home,” I managed, the words squeezing out of me like air through chimney bellows. “I told my sister I would be back by the clock’s strike of three, before the dawn lifts Papa’s eyelids. I was supposed to leave a trail, but I didn’t, and now I can’t find my way—”
I held up my stained fingers, as if they were proof of anything. Sevastyan’s lips pressed into a pale line, and he said, “I’ll bring you back. Don’t worry. Don’t be afraid. It isn’t as far as you think.”
The tip of my nose was burning. “I don’t know any of the street names.”
“I do,” he said. “I’ve walked them all, four times as drunk as I am now. Everything will be fine. Come with me.”
There was something in my throat the size of a millstone, but I drew my arms around myself and followed Sevas down the boardwalk. The street that threaded alongside it was mostly empty, lined with black-windowed beer shops and inns that advertised a bed for two rubles. In one of the doorways a woman stood only half-dressed, baring one of her breasts to the cold starlight. I looked away, stomach roiling.