What if he does, what if it does, what if I do?
Mother’s life was ruled by these questions. Annka refused to be.
On the day Verevka burned, Annka was, not surprisingly, disobeying her mother. She’d known there was war in the north, the same way you know there’s a storm on the horizon. Riders came down out of the steppelands like streamers of black cloud; leaderless bands sometimes passed through Verevka, stopping just long enough to fill their waterskins, to demand a few chickens, to steal the milk from the farms, and then move south. There were refugees too, usually one or two at a time, or sometimes a family. They were tired from the road, and dirty from their flight, as though the mud and ash of misery followed them out of whatever infernal realm they had escaped. Sometimes they did chores in exchange for a few nights' shelter, other times they slipped through Verevka without so much as raising an alarm. One broke into the church and stole the prester’s entire box of silver plate, and he had raged for weeks thereafter, crying for whips and scourges to flay those outsiders who disturbed Verevka’s peace. But all this was far off, a great ocean of woe that occasionally threw up spray upon Verevka’s shores. As Annka had never seen the sea, she never expected to witness the source of so much sorrow that was now passing through the land.
She was alone in the forest that grew thick and broad at Verevka’s edge, the one the townsfolk called the Sozka. Her mother hated that forest, it’s dark paths and shadowy glades, the ancient unworked stones that had been raised by olden hands against the empty sky, the looming mountains, and the swift-flowing brooks of green water. She whispered of trolls in the dark — Annka, do not go into the Sozka, the trolls will find you, they’ll smell you and follow you home, and eat us in our beds! But Annka had never seen a troll there, nor had anyone in the village. She’d even asked Trader Simka, who traveled alone with a pack on his back through the ice wastes in the north and down to the warm sea in the south.
“My mother says there are trolls in the Sozka. Is that so?”
Simka had twisted his mustache in thought. “It may be so, little Annka, but not in these parts. At least, I have never seen them, nor have I heard of them here. If there were trolls in the Sozka, the roads would be impassible, don’t you think? And the lords haven’t sent anyone here in ages — if there were trolls, they would send mounted heroes to kill them, I’m sure.”
So, Annka knew that her mother was wrong, and the Sozka had no trolls. She did not consider that perhaps Simka was mistaken, or that the trolls might still be lurking in the darkest places, or that even if the forest had no trolls it might be well stocked indeed with bears, with wolves, with ditches that a little girl could twist her ankle in, and streams that might drown her.
Fira shouldn’t have wasted her time worrying about the Sozka. The day Verevka burned, the Sozka was the safest place to be. This is how Fira was trapped in her home when the riders came, and how Annka was free among the fat twisty roots of the larch trees. Annka was exploring, pretending to fight those very trolls that so scared her mother. She had a firm length of larchwood in one hand she pretended was her binder’s staff. Occasionally, she whipped it around and shouted at the imagined trolls, speaking the forbidden Names and driving them off. She wanted to make her way to the shores of the secret lake that Klimko had told her of one evening while he was drinking.
The lake, Klimko said, was broad and deep, with a color like green glass from the south. “I have been there only three times, and each time it was by mistake,” he told her, his sour breath brushing its knuckles against her shoulders. “Little Annka, why don’t you come closer?” But Annka had danced away and demanded to know more. “There is an island in that lake, and you can see the bald-headed old mountains looking down,” he’d added, “and on the island there is a circle of stones. Giants put it there, I guess, or one of the servant races.”
Annka thrilled to think that she might walk where mysterious and powerful figures out of the mists of time had tread, that she might grace the same patch of ground that priests in the days of old when you could see the gods and talk to them — before they died, before they were turned to dust. She thought, maybe, that when she was there she too might be able to see the gods. Not straight on, not like you see someone in the streets of Verevka, but sideways, like a finch watching out of one eye. She knew they were gone and couldn’t return, but sometimes you could see things that were no longer there, like the impression of a face on a window or the shadow of a loved one in the silver of a mirror.
She was climbing up an embankment when she paused and realized that she smelled smoke. No, not smelled, had been smelling smoke, for who knows how long. At first it had been a pleasant haze at the back of her perception – the smell of a hearthside fire or a little encampment of forest people. Now, it was a billowing haze on the wind, thick and terrible.
Fire was the eternal enemy of everyone, not just in Verevka but in the nearby market-town of Trakajin and even the far market-center of Dumor. Fire, when it escaped its confines of the hearth, could rage out of control and burn down whole districts, whole cities. Annka knew the smell was a warning, a trumpet call of danger, for it was too strong to be merely some trapper’s cookfire.
She realized the source was the village, all in conflagration, long before she saw it. The flames threw a light that was at once both deep and horrible across the landscape. The bare branches of the Sozka shone crimson, as though some foul painter had taken a bucket reserved for the depiction of blood and splashed it drunkenly across the world. Then, Annka felt her heart leap up to choke her. She told herself it was not so, could not be so. How would such a fire start? Verevka was small, but spacious, and the houses were well apart. In her mind’s eye she saw the embers wafted on the wind, across the muddy lane, to land in the sodden thatch of a neighbor’s roof. But it could not be so! Even should two or three of those little tofts burn, it could not spread to all! For Verevka was not a forest of timbered houses as Trakajin was. It is only one or two houses, she told herself. It is not mine.
Her fears were realized when she saw Klimko struggling through the trees. The woodcutter was blackened with soot and smeared with blood, which ran liberally from a wound across his scalp. His funny beard, which she had so often mocked, was sodden with it, and he had lost a few more teeth since she saw him before setting out from the village that morning. He cradled his ax in his arm; his hair was stringy and wild, where it wasn’t soaked through with the blood of his wound. His eyes were glued open, wide with shock. She knew then that the village was burning from cot to byre. Why, she could not yet say.
Klimko staggered toward her. At first, it seemed as though he didn’t see her, or saw something else that was not her. She shrank back when he raised his ax in his huge calloused hands to strike, as though she were a Szokan troll. She raised her stick, knowing it would not stop the heavy blade. That was an ax made for wood, for the chopping of branches and whole trunks, the splitting of logs. Her heart hammered. “Klimko, no!” she shouted, loud as she could, the words drawn out of some secret place within her, exploding like a cannon-shell.
The woodsman’s fingers fell from his ax. His eyes seemed unglued, and he blinked hard a few times to clear his vision. The ax remained in the cradle of his arms but Annka’s heart was still beating like a blacksmith’s anvil. “Child,” said he, his voice husky and low, “we must run. There is no time. Run now, run!”
“Klimko, what’s happening?” Annka asked. She did not mean to ask it. She wanted to do what he told her, to run and never stop running until her lungs were raw and the mountain air seared her throat, but her stupid mouth and her cursed legs disobeyed. She remained stuck, as though she herself had sprung roots.
Klimko growled and swept toward her. He worked his free arm wide, as though to scoop her up and hurry her on. “Soldiers!” he said, “and horses. Quick, or they’ll ride us down for sport.”
Again, Annka wanted to listen, to do the smart thing and run. Instead, her body carried her forward, almost into Klimko’s outstretched arm, and she shouted, “But my mama!”
“She’s dead or running too, Annushka!” Klimko shouted back. Now he did wrap his arm around her, pushing her back into the depths of the forest. “If she lives, we’ll find her. To have a hope, we must survive!”
Finally, she was able to do what she had been asked, and she ran with Klimko. Her eyes leaked tears unbidden as she went. She was able to get a little more from him about what had happened, though his telling was confused and stilted, told between brief rests for air or in snatches as they ran. She learned that the men wore black and silver coats and carried swords, whips, and pistols. Klimko said he thought they belonged to Lord Ravalkan, which meant little to Annka. She knew Ravalkan and Lord Trenitsyn, to whom both Verevka and Trakajin owed tribute, were on opposite sides of the great war that was tearing the land apart. Neither she nor Klimko could answer why; the matter did not concern them, it seemed – it was some dispute over land or honors or titles, between the Erzyid kings and their subjects, the lords.
That night, she slept huddled in Klimko’s shadow, pressed against his back for warmth. Her muscles ached. Her tears flowed more freely. She cried for wounded Klimko, who she had mocked so often, for Verevka, for mama, and for herself.
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