I stared into his dark eyes. “You know what I mean.”
“Yeah,” Sergei said. He didn’t meet my gaze. “I touch that boar’s tusk before every important soccer game.” He looked around. “Well, now that we’ve seen it, can we go?”
“Just give me a minute,” I said. As I plopped down next to the boulder, I heard a kerplunk, kerplunk.
“Did you see that, Katya? The rock made it all the way across the stream,” Sergei called.
Glad that Sergei had found a game to keep him busy, I crouched low and reached my hand into the hollow underneath the boulder. My fingers bumped into the softness of my green blanket. Eagerly, I pulled it out and unwrapped it. Never a neat child, it had been my habit to simply stuff it into the cavity. But today the blanket formed a small neatly folded bundle. I knew that my hands had never created these tight folds. The last time I had seen this same blanket, it had been draped around the boy’s shoulders.
He had returned the blanket. And that wasn’t all! I felt a small bulge at the folded edge.
As I unwrapped it, a feeling of warmth flooded my body. My matryoshka’s baby rolled into my hand, her blue eyes gazing trustingly up at me.
Vasyl. Vasyl must have hidden these things here. There was no other explanation. That strange boy did exist.
I had called Vasyl a thief, but he had put everything back. And I had called him a liar, but what had he really said?
I had dwelt mainly on the terrible part of Vasyl’s words, Our world will be destroyed. He was right. But now I realized he meant more than just my cottage.
And I remembered what else he told me. “You’ll come back,” Vasyl said. “You need to.”
And here I was.
My heart started pounding with the magic of those days. I thrust the blanket aside and slipped the little matryoshka into my pocket before quickly continuing my search for other treasures.
Sergei laughed and called from the stream, “You look like you’re hugging that rock.”
Stretching my hand back into the farthest recesses of the cave, my fingers closed around something soft. I pulled out a rumpled, dirty motorcycle magazine. It was turned to page 55. I stared at an advertisement for a Yava before holding it up.
“See, Sergei. I put this magazine underneath here because I wanted a motorcycle. My dad bought us a Moped a few months ago.”
Sergei laughed. “So the boulder granted your wish.”
I stretched my arm and crouched even lower until my fingers scraped against the back wall. On its way out, my hand grazed some objects. Eagerly, I pulled out my old fishing line along with a few muddy eating utensils.
Looking through the remains of the props for my fairy feasts, I discovered Sergei’s note stuffed into a coffee cup. I had hidden it there, of course. But not until my fingers closed around the torn and dirty piece of paper had I realized I wanted to find it. I reread the childish script. “Katya, let’s go out together.” Then I looked over at Sergei. He was still skipping rocks across the stream.
Standing in the sunshine, Sergei’s hair was golden blond. His shoulders were so broad. He caught me gazing at him. “What else did you find?”
I fingered the note, wondering if I should tell him. “Nothing,” I said as I slipped the note into my pocket.
These things from my past were radioactive, but they were good, too. Somehow I felt I needed them to know how to go forward.
One last time, I swept my hand through the boulder’s hiding place. My secret space was now empty.
Sergei threw a rock at the boulder, and it pinged off its side. “Too bad. If that old rock were really magic, I’d have a wish.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“I’d want to move back home,” Sergei said.
Chapter Thirty-Two
ON OUR RETURN, WE SPOTTED A GUARD standing at the window. I don’t know if Granny Vera was watching over us or if the guard had had too much horilka at lunch, but his eyes were half-closed.
Both of us were able to slip underneath the candy-striped bar without waking him from his doze.
I looked at my watch. We’d been gone almost forty minutes. Instinctively, we both picked up our pace. By the time we reached Lenin Street, we were out of breath and panting.
“Sergei, I don’t think we have time to ride the Ferris wheel.”
“You’re probably right,” he said.
“I’m sorry,” I apologized. How could I ever explain the blanket to him?
Finding that old, dirty green blanket and the little doll changed everything.
I was now convinced that Vasyl was my domovyk. For some reason that I didn’t understand, my house elf had chosen to appear to me in the woods instead of my cottage.
In the last five years, more unimaginable things had happened to me than anyone who wasn’t from Chernobyl could even dream. When I was a child, I had believed my Granny’s outlandish tales of beings from the spirit world, and I had pretended to believe in spirits and magic long after I realized that her stories were folklore. Then, the more I learned about the Chernobyl explosion from Uncle Victor, the more I had grown to realize that the truth can be fantastic.
Now, in a sudden shift, I understood the other side: the fantastic can be the truth as well.
As we hurried along, I did these mental gymnastics trying to make sense of everything, yet understanding that I never would know all the answers. Then I saw it: the yellow Ferris wheel against the blue sky.
It was hard to believe that something so fun and joyful had never once turned.
Maybe Sergei’s note emboldened me, or maybe it was the little baby safe in my pocket, but I reached for Sergei’s hand. When I was much younger, Boris had led me on walks in the woods. Sergei’s hand wasn’t callused, like Boris’s, but soft and young.
He threaded his fingers between mine. Both of us were looking at the Ferris wheel. Without a word, we started toward it.
When we reached the amusement park, I surveyed the merry-go-round, bumper cars and Ferris wheel. “Why would anyone guard an amusement park?” I muttered my thought out loud.
“I don’t see anyone,” Sergei agreed.
We ran past the small merry-go-round and bumper car ride toward the Ferris wheel. One booth rested on the ground. Another swung about five feet above it. An emergency repair ladder led all the way to the top. Eagerly, Sergei scrambled into the booth nearest the ground. I climbed in after him. We kicked our feet, but the booth barely swung. “This is no fun,” Sergei said. “We’re too low to the ground.”
Without waiting for a response from me, Sergei climbed onto the top of the booth. I steadied it while he strained every muscle to pull himself onto the next higher one. Despite my best efforts, the seat swung wildly.
“It’s just too far—even for me,” Sergei said.
The sadness in his voice made me ache for the ride that we had never taken together. All the laughs I had missed. The divan I had never slept on. The Barbie I had never played with.
I looked up at the crisscrossed metal tower. That’s when I noticed the ladder. It appeared so rusted as to be dangerous, but I realized I had to take some risks if I ever wanted anything wonderful to happen to me. I would not leave here with another disappointment. “Look, Sergei.” I pointed at the ladder.
“Yes!” he said. He jumped off the rocking booth.
With no more thought, I began climbing ahead of him. The rust scraped my hands, but I didn’t care. I wanted to laugh at the wonder of Katya Dubko scaling the Ferris wheel with Sergei Rudko.