Across the room she started to pour liquid out of a dark brown bottle into a spoon. It smelled of musty earth and damp forests. Wary of what was going on, Sofia took a deep breath and sat up. Instantly the room and the girl cartwheeled in a blaze of colour that set Sofia’s teeth on edge. Slowly she forced everything back into place, but not before she leaned over the edge of the bed and vomited, nothing more than a dribble of saliva on to the hessian matting that covered the floor.
‘Who are you?’ she managed to ask the girl.
‘I am Zenia Ilyan.’ Her voice was low and full of a kind of heat, as if her blood flowed fast.
‘Why am I here?’
The girl came over to the bed, reached out a hand and touched the nape of Sofia’s neck. Gently the fingers started to massage it.
‘You’re here because you needed help. Now lie back.’
The girl eased Sofia’s shoulders down on to the pillow, one hand wiping the sweat from Sofia’s forehead while the other nudged a spoon against her lips.
‘No,’ Sofia whispered.
‘Yes. It will help you.’
‘No, I’m not sick.’
‘You don’t know what you are.’ Then very slowly, as if speaking to a particularly stupid child, she said, ‘You will heal faster if you sleep. When you are well, we will wake you.’
Sofia’s eyelids started to grow heavy, but she jerked them wide open when she noticed a row of candles burning on a shelf, sending shadows and the smell of tallow swirling through the air. Only then did it occur to her that the room had no windows. Like a cellar. Or a prison. The pain in her head ricocheted round her skull.
‘Sleep,’ the girl murmured.
‘Sleep,’ Sofia echoed and opened her mouth.
10
‘Run, Pyotr, run.’
Pyotr Pashin tore down the dusty track, legs pumping, arms driving him on into the lead. Hot on his tail nine other boys panted and scrabbled after him. And he felt a kick of joy in his stomach at the sight of nobody between him and the winning post. It was nothing more than a rusty stake hammered into the hard ground but right now in the bright sunshine it gleamed a burnished gold.
Suddenly he felt moist breath on his bare shoulder and turned his head just enough to catch a glimpse of its owner. One final burst and a quick dip of his chest, like a water fowl pulling weed, was all it would take to beat Yuri and to get over the line in first place. But instead Pyotr put on the brakes, not hard enough to be obvious, of course, but enough to do damage. In ten strides Yuri had outpaced him and was hurtling past the winning post. He watched the other boys crowd round Yuri, tumbling over themselves like puppies to be his best friend.
‘Well done, Pyotr.’ It was his class teacher, Elizaveta Lishnikova, who had come to stand beside him. ‘Molodyets! Congratulations.’
He looked up quickly. She was smiling, the wrinkles in her face rearranging themselves. Not often did he make her smile, so he dared to hope that he’d earn one of her red stars today. She was extremely tall with thick grey hair tied in a knot, and stiffly erect like one of the new telephone poles that were beginning to march across the landscape. Her long thin nose could sniff out a lie at a hundred paces.
‘You ran well, Pyotr,’ she said.
‘Spasibo. Thank you.’
Instantly a flying body hurtled on to his back, choking the life out of him and sending him sprawling on to the dirt in a tumble of arms and legs.
‘Yuri, get off me, durachok.’
‘You were brilliant, Pyotr. Fantastic. But I knew I could beat you, I knew it.’ Yuri thumped Pyotr on the chest, making his ribs ache, and raised his own arm in victory.
‘Shut up, Yuri.’ But he couldn’t help grinning.
There was something about Yuri Gamerov that made you want to please him. He was tall and strong with thick ginger hair and an easy way of always being the boss, something Pyotr envied. Pyotr was small and shy but around Yuri he felt more… well, more colourful. And for some reason he couldn’t quite understand, they were good friends.
‘Boys, you’ll both be cleaning school windows after the races today if you behave so improperly.’ The teacher’s voice was sharp this time, more the tone Pyotr was used to.
The grind of school term had finished for the summer and they were now into Young Pioneer Summer Camp, which Pyotr loved. But it was still held in the school yard each day and still organised by Elizaveta Lishnikova and her assistant, so standards of behaviour were not allowed to slip, despite the fact it wasn’t actually school.
‘Take yourselves off the running track immediately. I am about to start the next race.’
The boys scuttled away, naked backs above their shorts tinged by the sun, and threw themselves down on the grass. It prickled their bare legs. Anastasia came trotting over at once.
Yuri groaned, ‘Here comes the mouse.’
Yuri was right, of course, Anastasia Tushkova did look like a mouse: little pointed nose and chin; mousy hair that hung down her back in a skinny plait like a mousetail; and shorts that were much too big for her and made her legs look like pink pins. But Pyotr didn’t mind her really, though he wouldn’t admit that to Yuri.
Anastasia plopped herself down on the grass in front of them and held out a hand. It was very grubby and on it lay a biscuit.
‘It’s your prize for winning,’ she said to Yuri. ‘Teacher sent me over with it.’ She turned to Pyotr and gave him a sweet smile. She was eleven, the same age as Pyotr, but she looked younger, especially when she smiled like that. ‘You should have one too, Pyotr. You almost won.’
‘Almost is never good enough,’ Yuri grinned and took the pechenka from her. Very precisely he broke it in three equal parts and handed one to each of them.
‘No,’ Pyotr said, pushing it away. ‘You won it, you eat it.’
‘I insist,’ Yuri said. ‘Equal shares for everyone. It’s what we believe in.’
That was the trouble with Yuri. He believed in applying Communism to every corner of his life – and everyone else’s life too. Even when it came to biscuits. Anastasia had no such problem.
‘Mmm,’ she mewed. ‘Miod. Honey.’
Before Pyotr could blink, her share of the biscuit had vanished into her mouth. Something about the speed of it embarrassed him and he collapsed back on the dusty grass, feeling it press shallow grooves in the delicate skin of his back. He loved the sky, the high blue arch of it over Tivil, with the sun a ball of gold, hovering and waiting to be caught. He lifted his arm straight up to see if he could touch it but all he caught was a passing insect. He squashed it between his fingers and wiped it on his shorts. Yuri was sitting up watching the next race, but Anastasia was licking her fingers with the thoroughness of a cat licking its fur.
Through narrowed eyes Pyotr looked out at the dense jumble of greens that made up the forest as it marched up the steep ridges of the valley and over the mountains beyond. She was up there, somewhere, the woman with the moonlight hair. Living in the forest. Maybe he would sneak back to that old cabin tomorrow to see if-
‘Pyotr.’ It was Anastasia.
‘Yes?’
‘Look.’
Her little bony hand was pointing beyond the broad cedar tree that marked the start of the village to a spot in the distance, where a ball of dust was rolling its way along the unpaved road towards them, slicing through the flat fields of cabbage on either side. Traffic on the road was always light, usually no more than a few carts a day and, on rare occasions, a car or truck. One of the boys in the Octobrians, the group for younger children, had also spotted the dust trail and was giggling with excitement, fingering the badge on his shirt. It was in the shape of a red star with a picture at its centre of Lenin as a curly-haired baby, the pride and joy of every young Octobrian who wore it. Pyotr and Yuri were too old for that now. They wore instead the scarlet triangular tie and their badge of membership to the Young Pioneers.