He roared with laughter and rubbed a great hand across his neat little beard, then ambled off to his izba. Elizaveta took her time heading into the forge, she didn’t want him to think she was anything other than calm and indifferent to his gibes. But once inside, she poured herself a stiff glass of vodka and knocked it back in one.
Only then did she permit herself a smile and dare to imagine the heroic Odysseus with a chest like that.
The noise of a bell came first, sweet and silvery. Five pure notes in the darkness that wasn’t darkness. It was more an absence of being, and Sofia even wondered if she were dead. Was this her own death knell she was hearing? But the ringing of the bell changed. It expanded and grew and surged and swelled until it was a rich, rounded sound that reverberated all around her, making the air quiver and dance.
Yet the tolling of the bell seemed to arise from inside Sofia’s head, not from outside, and she could not only hear it, she could feel it. The great brass clapper rapping against the delicate inside of her skull, clanging out each bass note in a crescendo of sound that she feared would crack her bones, the way glass will shatter when the right note is hit. And through it all came a voice in her ear, soft as love itself, yet so clear she could hear every word.
‘Fly, my angel, fly.’
She looked down for the first time and discovered that she was high up in the air at the topmost pinnacle of a tall spire. It was attached to no building, just a towering needle of gold that pierced the sky. Like the Admiralty spire in St Petersburg that used to glint like a blade of fire in the sunlight when she was a child.
‘Fly, my angel, fly.’
In one smooth movement she spread out her arms and found they were wings. She stared with astonishment at the fluttering of the feathers, long pearl-white gossamer feathers that smelled as salty as the sea and rustled as she breathed. She moved her wings gently up and down, flexing them, testing them, but they weighed nothing at all. Far below her stretched a wide flat plain full of silver-haired women, their faces turned up to her, thousands of pale ovals, each one with arms raised above her head. All whispered, ‘Fly, my angel, fly.’
Sofia felt the breath of it under her wings and launched herself…
She opened her eyes. She had no idea where she was or how she’d arrived there, just that she was standing upright in the dark, arms outstretched to each side. White figures circled her, four of them. Flickering lights in their hands, candle flames and the scent of cedarwood. Rising from the floor, a mist wove around her. She inhaled, a short sharp breath, and tasted the tang of burning pine needles. It made her look down.
At her feet on the blood red cloth from Rafik’s wooden chest stood a small iron brazier. In it were things she could only guess at but which were alight, all of them crackled and spat and writhed. Her feet were bare. Outside the circle of light all was darkness but she could sense instantly that she was indoors, somewhere cool, somewhere damp, somewhere deep inside the black womb of Mother Russia. The four figures stood silent and unmoving around her, one at each point of the compass, a loose white gown covering each of their bodies.
‘Rafik,’ she murmured to the one directly in front of her.
As she did so she became aware that her own body was draped in a white gown, which rustled when she lowered her arms.
‘Sofia.’
Rafik’s single word was like a cool touch on her forehead.
‘Don’t be afraid, Sofia, you are one of us.’
‘I’m not afraid, Rafik.’
‘Do you know why we have brought you here tonight?’
‘Yes.’
She didn’t know how she knew but she did. Her mind struggled to clear itself but it was as if her thoughts were no longer her own.
‘Speak it,’ Rafik said. ‘Why are you here tonight?’
‘For Mikhail.’
‘Yes.’
There was a prolonged silence while words pushed against her tongue, words that didn’t seem to rise from her own mind.
‘And for the village, Rafik,’ she said clearly. ‘It is for the village of Tivil that I am here, to make it live a life instead of die a death. I am here because I need to be and I am here because I am meant to be.’
She barely recognised her own voice. It was low and resonant and each word vibrated in the cool air. She shivered beneath her gown, but not with fear. She gazed round at the four figures, their eyes steady on hers, their lips murmuring silent words that drifted into the mist, thickening it, stirring it, causing it to linger as it brushed Sofia’s cheek.
‘Pokrovsky,’ she said, turning her eyes on the broad bear of a man, whose wide shoulders stretched the white robe to the edge of its seams. ‘Blacksmith of Tivil, tell me who you are.’
‘I am the hands of this village. I labour for the working man.’
‘Spasibo, Hands of Tivil.’
She lowered her eyes from the blacksmith to the slight figure with the full lips and bold gaze. ‘Zenia, who are you?’
‘I am a child of this village.’ The girl’s voice rang clear and strong out past the flames and into the darkness beyond. ‘The children are the future and I am one of their number.’
‘Spasibo, Child of Tivil.’ Sofia swung round further to face the figure in place to the east of her. ‘Elizaveta Lishnikova, schoolteacher of Tivil, tell me who you are.’
The tall grey woman, with the nose like a bird’s beak, stood very straight. ‘I am the mind of this village. I teach the children who are its future and bring knowledge and understanding to them the way the dawn in the east brings each new day to our village.’
‘Spasibo, Mind of Tivil.’
Finally Sofia stepped round to look, once more, deep into the intense black eyes that burned with their ancient knowledge.
‘Rafik,’ she asked, softly this time, ‘who are you?’
Ten heartbeats passed before he spoke. His voice was a deep, echoing sound that made the flames shimmer and sway to a different pulse. ‘I am the soul of this village, Sofia. I guard and guide and protect this small patch of earth. All over Russia villages are destroyed and trampled by the brutish boot of a blood-addicted dictator who has murdered five million of his own people, yet still claims he is building a Workers’ Paradise. Sofia,’ he spread his arms wide to include all the white robes, ‘the four of us have combined our strengths to safeguard Tivil, but you have seen the soldiers come. Seen the food stolen from our tables and the prayers clubbed to death before they are born.’
‘I have seen this.’
‘Now you have come to Tivil and the Pentangle is complete.’
Sofia observed no signal, but the four white-clad figures stepped forward out of the shadows as one, until they were so close around her that when they each raised their left arm it rested easily on the shoulder of the person to their left. Sofia’s heart was racing as she felt herself enclosed inside the circle. Rafik scattered something into the brazier at her feet so that it flared into life and the mist thickened into a dense fog. She could feel it crawling far down into her lungs every time she breathed. She swayed, her head growing too unwieldy for her neck. A pulse at her temple throbbed in time with her heartbeat.
‘Sofia.’ It was Rafik. ‘Open your eyes.’
She hadn’t realised they had closed. Their lids were heavy and slow to respond to her commands. What was happening to her?
‘Sofia, take the stone into your hand.’
He was holding out the white pebble to her and without hesitation she took it. She expected something from it, some spark or sign or even a pain shooting up her arm, but there was nothing. Just an ordinary warm round pebble lying in the palm of her hand.
At a murmur from Rafik the circle sealed itself tighter and a slow rhythmic chanting began. Soft at first, like a mother crooning to her infant, a sound that loosened Sofia’s limbs and stole her sense of self. But the chanting rose, the language unknown to her, until it was a rushing wind that tore at her mind, ripped out her conscious thoughts and swept them away until only a great echoing chamber remained inside her head. Only one word leapt out of it.