The bird hesitated, and Galina lunged. She hit her head on the metal bars of the door-she had forgotten they were there, and the impact made her cringe with pain. Her hand grasped at the bird and brushed against the wing just as the startled bird took flight, avoiding capture without much effort. It disappeared through the embrasure of the window at the end of the hallway, and still Galina grasped at empty air, her overextended arm aching in its socket, creaking at the elbow. She felt a hand on her shoulder.
"It's gone, Yakov said. Don't feel bad-you almost got it."
"Almost is never good enough, she whispered. That's what her mother used to say anyway.
"What would you have done with that bird? Yakov said. Think about it-if Likho can talk to the birds, it doesn't mean you can do the same."
"We have to try, she said. What, you want to rot here?"
Yakov opened his mouth to answer but a flapping of wings interrupted them. A fat white rook squeezed through the window and half-fell, half-fluttered to the floor. In short hops it approached the cell.
"Finally, it said. It took me forever to find you."
"Sergey! Galina picked the bird up and cradled it, resisting the urge to give it a kiss. How'd you find us? Why did they let you go?"
"I played dumb, the rook said, and even its high-pitched bird voice couldn't hide its self-satisfaction. They didn't think I was important enough to chase-they were talking to Zemun and Koschey."
"What about Timur-Bey? Galina asked.
"Him? I don't know. He's human, so they probably put him somewhere to get to his luck, if he has any left after all these years underground. Sergey chuckled, pleased with his wit. So I went to look for you, but you'll never believe what else I found."
Sergey couldn't fly, since his clipped wings were useful enough to buffer a fall but too short and ragged to support real flight. He hopped and fluttered his way out of the barn and into the first-story window of the palace; there, he traveled from one room to the next. He found many birds and a few more soldiers, some of them French. All of them paid him no mind and he soon discovered why-albino birds perched on windowsills, mingling with black-feathered newcomers, and pecked at the fruit in the tree branches outside. Sergey still found it strange to think of himself as a bird, but he had to admit that in this case it was handy, a perfect disguise. He hopped across the hardwood floors and hand-woven runners striped in red, yellow and blue; he flitted awkwardly up onto the sills and out to the balconies, hopped up the winding staircases, lost direction in the endless corridors and galleries of empty rooms inhabited only by dust bunnies. He stopped caring after a while if he came into the same room as before, and wasn't particularly sure if he was moving up or down.
He didn't remember how he arrived at the entrance of one of the seven towers; he only knew that he had to crane his neck to see the next turn of the wide staircase that swept up and to the left, its steps stacked at a slight angle so that it took them a whole floor to turn all the way around. He hopped upwards, thinking that only a really tall tower would have a staircase with such slow turns. He spiraled upwards, occasionally zoning out and thinking that he was still guarding a silo, still in his human form, and that his corporal had sent him to fetch something from the storage facility. Then he came to and saw that the sun was setting, and then it rose again-funny things happened to time on that staircase.
It was then that he heard the singing. The voice sounded small and ragged, and stopped often to gulp air in large noisy swallows, and resumed again, trembling, weak and uncertain. At first, he imagined a child, a sick child perhaps, a little boy with asthma who passed the time in his sickbed by pretending to be in a church choir. Then another voice joined the first, and a feeble duet echoed in the stairwell. The third attempted to sing but coughed, wailed and dissolved into sobs before falling quiet again.
Sergey hurried up the stairs. The voices didn't sound like Likho or its soldiers, and he decided that there were prisoners. They didn't sound like Zemun or Koschey, or even Galina for that matter, but he hurried, hoping to find out who it was that sang so piteously.
At the top of the staircase there was a single door with a narrow slot at the bottom. Sergey squeezed through the opening with some effort; his biggest worry was to encounter a cat or to be forcibly ejected by the inhabitants, but he did not expect to feel such fierce pity and anger.
At first, he thought that he was looking at three naked women chained to the wall; whatever small sordid joy might've stirred in his heart at the sight of female bondage had evaporated as soon as he saw the long bloodied bruises on the wrists of narrow fingerless hands, the drooping narrow breasts and the bird's feet so swollen that puckered flesh half-concealed the manacles. The faces that reminded him of Byzantine saints and angels-with large dark eyes that took up half of these narrow faces, the fine-boned Eastern cheeks that tapered into small sharp chins, and small but perfect lips half-opened in suffering.
Then he noticed that their naked bodies were shapeless sacks, reminiscent of plucked chickens, and he realized with a start that they were the bodies of birds-picked clean of feathers, with just a few downy tufts and jutting feather shafts remaining in place.
"Who are you? he whispered to the bird-women.
One by one they lifted their faces, their eyes half-hidden under heavy dark eyelids, and whispered in turn, Alkonost, Sirin, Gamayun."
17: Alkonost, Sirin, Gamayun
Yakov interrupted. What happened next?"
Sergey ruffled his feathers. I would've told you already if you hadn't interrupted me. So just listen, yeah?"
Yakov nodded and kept quiet.
Sergey continued with the tale-how he froze to the floor by the door, unable to turn away or rush forward to help, paralyzed by a mix of terror, revulsion, and pity. How he also grew acutely aware of his own small and fat bird body, and imagined what his wings would look like naked-handless sticks covered in blue puckering skin-how he shuddered.
The dark Byzantine eyes watched him from the wall, drawing him in, and he was unable to look away at the rest of the room, just their eyes and bloody manacles holding the unspeakable, unimaginable abominations.
"Why are you here? he croaked finally. What are they doing to you? Why He wanted to ask why they were naked, but thought better of it. What happened to your feathers?"
"They took them, Sirin said in a halting but sweet voice, and her lips trembled. They took them to make into charms, to give to evil men."
"They grow back, Alkonost added, but they take them again."
"You will die twice, Gamayun hissed, her eyes burning with insuppressible madness.
"Can I do anything to help? Sergey whispered. Sadness filled him as no feeling had ever done; he thought that it was the first time in his life that he truly felt something. He wanted nothing more than to help them.
"Take my last feather. Alkonost shifted awkwardly, turning to expose her flank, naked but for a single small white feather. It's a charm."
"What does it do?"
"I don't know. Alkonost bit her lip and almost cried. There was nothing majestic about her now.
"Take mine too, Sirin said, and twisted, moving her heavy body to the side, exposing the dusty-gray feather in the hollow under her wing. It's a spell."
"Take them all! Gamayun struggled against her bonds wildly, drawing blood from her ankles and wrists. Take my curse, take my hate, take everything we got, but stop this degradation. When she ceased struggling and hung helpless and exhausted against her manacles, her head on her chest, Sergey saw the black smudge of a feather in the nape of her neck.