But then her vision clouded over, and she was scanning me, as she had in the room upstairs, as if she were reading a wall poster, a playbill for a drama at the People’s House. What was I, a little Ibsen? Or maybe Wilde?

  “It won’t live,” she said.

  The sound echoed like a gunshot in a long hall. When it faded, the only sound in the room was the roaring of the wind.

  Doors slammed, and in a gust of frigid air, the trio of boys thundered into the hall. In walked Pasha, frosted white, hat, scarf, coat, boots, gloves, his arms piled high with fragrant fir, followed by Gleb and Bogdan equally laden. The relief was palpable. All uncertainty vanished, and the disciples beamed with the proof: their prophetess was wise, Ukashin was still in control, I was an alarmist and disrupter. You see? said the Master’s sideways glance. We know what we’re doing here. The others grabbed up the boughs and began rubbing the sills and doorways.

  I lay on my pallet that night among the others, no longer marveling at our initiation into the mysteries of inflowing. Even hiding within the earth did me no good. I only heard my mother’s voice. I thought of her face, her calm. I wanted to slap her even now. Was she punishing me for insisting that there was no wolf and that she was no seer, only a madwoman? Or was she so crazy that she didn’t understand how terrible was her curse?

  But what if it was true?

  No. That I would not believe. I might never be one with anyone—fine—but I would not let her kill my baby. I rejected her spell, I spat on it, I walked on it, I pissed on it. I would not believe. To think of how I’d cared for her. She was the reason I’d broken with Genya, the reason I’d gone to Kamenny Island to sell that pin. She had not defended me against my father that October night. I turned over and over, settling the sheepskin back on top of the quilt. As long as I could have my baby, I would endure the rest.

  I had not realized how passionately I wanted this child until my mother tried to take it away from me.

  81 The Hunter

  THE STORM DID NOT abate. If anything, it worsened. Ukashin moved us into the heart of the house, the back parlor, closing off all the other rooms to conserve heat and firewood. We squashed into the workroom like kittens in a sack. After what my mother had said to me, it was agony to have to see her every day. I thought I would go mad. Everyone breathing each other’s breath and that sticky incense, the stove pushing smoke into the room as it would in a black izba. If it wasn’t for inflowing, I would have had to stop breathing altogether. Only under the earth was it still possible to inhale. Meditation was the only escape from the oppressive togetherness. I supposed my mother’s curse of eternal loneliness had not yet taken effect.

  I sometimes ventured up the frost-coated stairs to the water closet just to be free of them all. The chamber pots we’d put there had frozen fast—we couldn’t have them in the room with us. They didn’t stink, though you had to wear your coat and hat and boots to visit the convenience. You might as well be outside. White rime built up on the bare risers of the stairs, showing our footprints. Outside, snow buried the first-floor windows, cutting us off from the world, mirroring what was going on inside our minds. Only in the window on the stairway landing could you see what was going on in the yard. Sometimes I stood there for hours, it seemed, in a trance, watching the trees lashing about like souls in some white hell.

  Now that Mother had joined us, Ukashin more and more often turned his back on the others to focus entirely on his prophetess. He stopped leading the inflowing meditation, leaving it in the hands of Magda and Natalya. Instead he spent hours in communication with his priestess, meditating with her, or else painting or lying in his hammock, which he’d slung in the corner by the fire next to Mother’s chair. Through the buildup of snow, the storm’s roaring sounded more and more like the blood in my ears. The acolytes worked hard to regain their Master’s favor, as if the blizzard were somehow their fault, as if they could make things better by being perfect little disciples. Mother sat communing with the paintings they’d fetched from her lair and rearranging her little stones with the clicking sounds like waves turning pebbles on a beach. Her spirit guides watched us night and day.

  Pasha was the first to collapse. He crumpled during a meditation session. Katrina, surfacing from her trance, jumped to her feet. “Pasha?” she called out, leaning over him but afraid to touch him. “Master? Pasha’s fainted!”

  But the Master said nothing.

  “He’s all right,” Magda said. “Let him be.”

  It was frightening to see Pasha lying on the carpet. It reminded me of Andrei in the snow. Bogdan, our erstwhile doctor, knelt to tend to his fallen brother. Katrina hovered. She brought a cloth as white as her face and a jug of cold water. Wiping his face revived him, and he was terribly embarrassed. I myself was teetering on the tightrope between the need to inflow to keep hunger and terror at bay and my growing anger and anxiety about Ukashin’s detachment from the world he’d built, the one he’d stolen from Andrei Ionian.

  Inflowing went on. The meals lightened to suit our more rarefied systems—thin oatmeal, cabbage, kasha, soup with floating bits of meat. The more resentful I became about the figure in the hooded cloak, the less the meat sickened me and the hungrier I became.

  It struck me one day—the meat.

  Fresh meat.

  Not salted. Not smoked. Where did it come from?

  Surely those two rabbits I’d caught the night Andrei died hadn’t lasted thirteen people this long, no matter how frugal we were. The vlivaniye was supposed to supply us with new ideas, but in fact I could see that the opposite was true. It kept us from thinking at all. As I fell out of step with the others and my dense body returned, I started to consider things more clearly. For one thing, I recalled the quiet departure of Bonya and Buyan. Ukashin never mentioned them, and no one asked, just as we’d never asked about Andrei’s sorrows. Those dogs hadn’t run off. We were consuming them, bit by bit.

  There will always be enough if we believe. If we don’t repress the bounty with our doubts.

  I wondered what else I’d missed amid so much inflowing. Harmony was lovely but I was the hunter—the fox, not the lamb. And the fox in me wondered—what really lay in the larder beneath the kitchen floor? I thought of the profligacy of the Great Feast of the Golden Egg. That green-painted door beckoned. What secrets might be hidden in the cold room where we used to keep Annoushka’s jams and the canned produce from our garden, barrels of apples and turnips in sand? That door made my palms itch. Nobody was allowed down there now but Katrina Ionian. Even entering the kitchen was a rationed act.

  I woke in the night, squirmed into my coat, my hat, and quietly left the workroom. But instead of walking upstairs to the icy water closet, I felt my way along the hall lined with Ukashin’s spiritualist paintings toward the forbidden door. One painting, two, three. As children, we often played the game of Blind Man. You pretended to be blind and found your way about the house by touch alone. I found the kitchen door, and opened it. Inside, the oven was still warm from dinner, the air soup-perfumed. I felt along the soft wood of the chest, the table. I knew the door to the larder would be to the right. The iron knob was cool, and turned. Unlocked. Cold musty air rose from under the house as I slipped inside, closed the door behind me and inched down the steep stairs, holding the wooden railing.

  Such a familiar smell enveloped me—mushrooms, cold dirt, apples, potatoes. I knew the shape of the room as I knew the shape of my lover’s hand. Shelves along three sides for preserves, starting just underneath the low ceiling and stopping around hip height. Bags and barrels tucked underneath. Boxes of sand for the root vegetables. I began examining the shelves with my fingertips, moving from left to right, top to bottom. Empty. Empty. All empty. A crock. The faint tang of pickles. Two more cold crocks—maybe more of that green wine Bogdan had made. Something brushed my face and I jumped. Strings of dried mushrooms. The dry crunchy whisper of braided onions. More empty shelves. My felt boot found a sack. I dipped my hand. Grain, cool through my fingers. Another—grain, but only half full. String after string of wizened ears—dried apples. I tore off a few, ate them as I went. Pairs of dried fish hung together, and the urge to eat one was overwhelming, but I resisted. It would be stealing—they belonged to the group. Hypocrite. I let Avdokia steal for me almost every day. But I wouldn’t do it myself.

  My worst fears had proved correct. The cellar held nothing but empty shelves, empty sacks. In the sandboxes, a few cabbages lay buried like severed heads, along with some turnips, maybe, or beets. A barrel of apples. And that was all. Thirteen people could not live off this for the rest of the winter. Maybe there was more hidden away somewhere. Perhaps they’d only brought in what was needed to last through the storm.

  But my Petrograd mind was already flying, calculating: half a pound of grain a day per person. How long could these sacks last? Two, maybe three weeks at most. Eight chickens at one chicken a day…fourteen fish, in soup…

  We weren’t going to make it.

  No wonder he’d introduced inflowing. No wonder.

  I was halfway up the stairs when I saw the flicker of a candle under the door. I flew back down and wedged myself behind the sandboxes and barrels, lay down on the cold earthen floor at full length, my head under the lowest stair. The smell of earth and apples. Childhood. The creak of the stairs under a soft-shod foot. “Marina, I know you’re down there.”

  Magda Ionian. Did she know or was she just guessing? Had she seen me get up? Had she counted the sleeping bodies? I could hear her breathing. I inflowed through the earth, my breath just a wisp. She was examining the stores, rattling the crocks, counting the fish. I could hear their dried skins rasping together. I wasn’t here, I told myself. I was within the earth, with just a siphon to the surface. I wasn’t breathing; the earth was breathing me. She held the candle aloft, as if I might be clinging to the rafters. “If you’re stealing, he’ll put you out, Mother or no. She can only protect you for so long.”

  Then her shuffle on the earthen floor grew near. The candle threw its light over the sandboxes. Theotokos, protect me. Would she see where I’d left my handprints in the sand? She looked, but she didn’t see. I could hear her sighs of frustration. Yes, doubt, Magda. You’re cross, you’re tired, you’re hearing things. It’s so cold down here. Your pallet by the stove misses you.

  What was she waiting for? Did she think I would pop up like a rabbit in an amusement-park arcade?

  She sneezed. Her candle’s light was weak and unsteady, the dust and cobwebs thick under the stairs. At last the light moved off, and the old steps creaked. She closed the door behind her.

  In the morning, she never took her eyes off me. I did nothing that would give myself away. I stretched, practiced inflowing, ate breakfast as innocently as a lamb. I am the hunter. She would not catch me asleep. “You’ve got cobwebs in your hair,” she whispered, passing behind me.

  “But not in my eyes,” I said.

  Avdokia caught our exchange. Her eyes shot a warning: Don’t bite the tiger’s tail! But my teeth craved it. My dense matter. My fury building as I watched Ukashin meditating with Mother, their backs to us. It won’t live, she’d said. Not if I trusted that larder. We must have eaten half our stores the one night of the Great Feast of the Golden Egg. Without such an elaborate gesture, we might have made it. What were you thinking, Taras Ukashin? No matter what his failings, I’d always considered him a practical man, but Andrei was right. The well-being of Ionia had never been foremost in his mind. It was fascination he sought, adulation, keeping us under his sway. I didn’t know what he was planning or if indeed he had a plan at all. Maybe my mother told him the sky would open up and rain down pirozhky with meat or, better yet, roast beef. Maybe he really did believe in inflowing. Or had finally realized the enormity of what he’d done and was too guilty to face us. But I was past wanting his answers. Whatever he’d planned or hadn’t planned, his future wouldn’t include me or my child. Because this baby needed to live. It had to.

  On each trip to the chamber pot now, I hid something on top of the wardrobe in the cold women’s dormitory. All the things I’d brought with me—my Vikzhel papers, my clothes, my gun. The letter opener from Ukashin’s campaign desk for good measure. I watched for the end of the storm. The wind still gusted, and snow flew, but I could feel the blizzard tiring, like a man continuing an argument long after his initial passion has faded. Now it was only habit. The gypsy caught me up there once. “What were you doing in here?”

  I forced myself to peer through the windows and not look in the direction of the wardrobe. “Seeing if the storm’s over yet. I’m sick of breathing everyone’s farts. I need to get back to my traps. Soup’s getting thin, don’t you think?”

  “The devis will provide,” she told me.

  “Believe what you want,” I replied, pushing past her. “I prefer rabbit to dog meat.”

  “Doubt’s a contagion,” she called after me. “He should put you out now.”

  It was hard. I could no longer lose myself for hours inflowing. I felt every bit of my hunger, the need to leave while I could still walk. Now I saw them as they were. Natalya, becoming ghostly, paper thin. Ilya’s hands shaking. They couldn’t see they were fading away. Inflowing worked, but only because the trance lifted you out of your body. We were starving, though our spirits felt bright. It was a lie. They should kill off those chickens now and conserve the grain. But still the chickens clucked on in their overturned baskets. Pasha passed out again during dinner, Lilya during inflowing. Ukashin didn’t even deign to turn around and see what had happened.

  One morning I pleaded illness, refusing to get up off my pallet for the Practice. Natalya came to me, gazing down with great green eyes filled with anxiety. “You have to inflow, Marina. We’re almost there.” Her poor worried face, that I’d cut myself off from the invisible manna. Should the emperor wear a vest or a waistcoat?

  “I will,” I said. “I’m just going to sleep a little now.”

  She went back with the others. I could see their light, their bliss. I wanted to shriek, “You’re dying!” but not one of them would hear me. Don’t say “die.”

  Avdokia, who’d seen Natalya come for me, padded over, asked, “Marinoushka, are you all right?”

  I pulled her down to me. She lowered herself, stiff as a person born without joints, and stroked my hair, my cheeks, felt my temperature with the back of her soft hand. I winked. She stopped when she realized my illness was purely theatrical, then resumed her ministrations, glancing quickly around us. “How do you feel? You have a little fever,” she said in a stage whisper.

  “My snowshoes,” I murmured in her ear. “Put them on top of the wardrobe in the dormitory.” Magda watching my every twitch and cough. I didn’t dare get anywhere near the kitchen. I could end up tied, wrist and ankle, in a cold room.

  Avdokia nodded her old head. She was a master of conspiracy. “I’m going to get you some tea now,” she announced. “Your lips are all dry. See if you can sleep a little.”

  After a while, she brought the tea back. I could feel the cold on her, the smell of unheated rooms. She propped me up, held the glass, just as she had when I was small. If only I could stay here forever, just like this, in her arms. But I had to get out. I had a baby to think about. She kissed me as I drank. “I made it just the way you wanted,” she said.

  My tears would betray me, so I closed my eyes, nestled at her breast. How could I leave her behind? How could I have this baby without her? “Come with me,” I whispered between sips. “It’s not that far. You could do it.”

  Her expression could have melted a heart of stone. “Forgive me,” she whispered. “My strong, brave girl.”

  She would still sacrifice her life for my mother, her first love. I could take care of myself, yes, but who would take care of Avdokia? Maybe I should put this off another day or two. But no. I would never forget Arkady’s lesson, taught to me with a shard of glass—I still bore the scar. You waited. That was stupid. Only amateurs wait.

  My nanny snugged my scarf around my neck. “I only wish I could hold that baby,” she said. “Yours and Kolya’s—heaven help us.” I rested against her, her arms around me as she tipped the last of the barley tea into my mouth.

  “How can I leave you?” I said.

  She smoothed my hair. “Go, while I can still stand it,” she breathed in my ear.

  My old love, my nanny, with her ancient gnarled hands. She helped me on with my sheepskin and felt boots for the trip to the icy loo. If I only could carry her—my Vasilisa doll—with me in my pocket, I would feed her crumbs, and she would teach me how to throw a comb that would become a forest, a towel that would become a river, and I would outwit all the sorcerers and stepmothers and Baba Yagas from here to Tikhvin. But I would have to do my best on my own.

  From the windows in the dormitory, I could not see as far as the henhouse for the fog. The wild horse of the storm had finally run itself out, and the softness of the powdered air hid the damage. Below me, snowdrifts covered the roof of the kitchen porch. I opened the window and sat on the sill, strapped hard into my snowshoes, my game bag snug across my chest, my scarf wrapped around my face. In my pocket, I touched Andrei’s glasses for memory, if not for luck. Without him, I might still be down there inflowing with the rest. I said a prayer and dropped into the unbroken white.

  82 Wonderworker

  I SMELLED THE village before I saw it. After the long fast, I was weak as any invalid. I struggled the last half mile, stopping every other minute to corral my last reserves of strength. The snow had hardened a bit with the wind, but was still incredibly deep, and often I’d had to strike out cross-country across fields where fallen trees barred the road. Finally I smelled chimney smoke—welcome as a brass band. People cooking, bread baking. Salvation. A dog barked. Peasants called to one another in the fog, exchanging thoughts about the storm as they dug out narrow walkways between snowbound izbas and the lane.