Dan Smith - Red Winter

Tanya was just a few paces away and still coming with intent. I could see her expression now and her eyes were fixed on me. The corner of her mouth curled, and her hand was reaching for her weapon. I wasn’t sure what was going to happen here, but I knew it wasn’t good. I had just a fraction of a second to read the situation before Tanya reached me.

I put a hand to my own weapon, but as soon as I did, Lyudmila clamped hers on my wrist. She wasn’t as strong as I was, but it was enough to slow me down, and before I could shake her off, Tanya had drawn her pistol and was standing in front of me, pointing it at my chest.

‘Tell me who you are.’

She was different now.

Before, in the cemetery, Tanya had been efficient, but there had been an undertone of melancholy and defeat. In the church, when she had helped me with Alek, I had seen beneath the hardened shell, but now there was a menace in her voice and anger in her eyes that made me think she meant to kill me.

‘I’m no one,’ I said. ‘Just a man who came home to his family.’

‘So what about this?’ She yanked the pistol from my pocket and held it up for me to see. ‘Where did you get this?’

‘I stole it. Where did you get yours?’

‘Don’t pretend you’re not a soldier.’

‘I won’t pretend,’ I said. ‘I am a soldier. Or I was.’

‘Only officers carry weapons like this.’ She stuffed it into her coat pocket.

‘I could say the same to you.’

Tanya raised her hand and brought the butt of her pistol down on the side of my neck. She wasn’t so fast that I didn’t see it coming, but it was as hard as I had ever been struck and I went down on one knee, pain flashing in my vision. As soon as I was down, Lyudmila knocked the hat from my head and took a fistful of my hair, yanking my head back until I was facing the sky. It was difficult to breathe with my head in that position and my throat stretched, pulling my mouth open. Tanya put the barrel of her pistol between my teeth and pressed it against my tongue.

She stared down at me, the rage clear in those cold blue eyes. I had no idea what she had been through, but if it was anything like my experiences, I could understand why the anger had risen in her. I had felt it too. Sometimes it was difficult to control, always boiling just under the surface. But now I was going to die.

I would never be able to find and protect Marianna and the boys.

‘You people are like poison. You spread death wherever you go.’ It was Lyudmila who spoke to me, and there was hate in her voice. ‘Kill him, Tanya.’

Tanya seemed to hear the contradiction in her friend’s words and she tried to push away the demon that had seized her. She withdrew the pistol, scraping the steel against my teeth. ‘Who are you?’ she asked.

‘I didn’t do this,’ I said. ‘This is my home. I promise you.’

Lyudmila tugged harder on my hair, and Tanya shifted as she tightened her grip on the pistol and pointed it at the bridge of my nose. ‘Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t just kill you now.’

‘What’s changed?’ I asked. ‘From before. What’s changed? You know I didn’t do this.’

‘Just kill him,’ Lyudmila said. ‘He’s Red – I can smell it – and they’re all the same. All of them.’

‘You’re wrong,’ I told her. ‘We’re not all the same.’

‘Is that your one good reason?’ asked Tanya.

‘You need a reason not to kill me?’

Tanya said nothing.

‘You lost someone?’ I asked. ‘To this Koschei?’

Tanya narrowed her eyes and glanced at Lyudmila.

‘I have lost everyone ,’ I said. ‘Two sons. Misha is fourteen. And Pavel… Pavel is just twelve years old.’

Tanya brought her left hand up to steady the pistol and she touched it to my forehead.

‘And my wife,’ I said, looking her in the eye. ‘She’s missing too. Her name is Marianna.’

Tanya glanced away to the lake and then back at me again.

‘So I have three good reasons,’ I said. ‘Not just one. Is that enough for you?’

Tanya took a step back and lowered the pistol a fraction.

‘I want to find them,’ I told her. ‘Just like you want to find whoever it is you’re looking for. That’s why you’re here, right? You’re looking for someone?’

She let her arm drop to her side, the pistol pointing at the ground, and she wiped her other sleeve across her mouth and nose, sniffing hard. ‘Let him go.’

Lyudmila gripped harder, squeezing my hair in her fist and tugging as if she wanted to rip it out of my scalp. ‘But he’s a—’

‘Let him go, Lyuda.’

She hesitated a moment longer, then pushed my head away, throwing it forward.

I rubbed the back of my neck and stayed as I was. ‘Maybe we can help each other.’

‘We don’t need your help,’ Tanya said.

‘Perhaps I need yours.’

‘Then you’ll have to manage without it.’

‘At least help me find the others,’ I said. I had been alone in the forest for many days already, and had grown accustomed to being without company, but there was something about the prospect of heading deeper into the trees alone today that I didn’t want to face. I was afraid of what I might find there.

Tanya looked at the ground and pursed her lips as if she were thinking about it.

‘We don’t know anything about him,’ Lyudmila said. ‘Maybe he even did this.’

Tanya shook her head. ‘He didn’t. We know that.’

‘People like him, then. Or maybe he’s one of them.’

‘One of who? Are you talking about Koschei?’

‘What do you know about him?’ Tanya turned her attention on me, the fire relighting in her eyes. ‘Where is he? You know his real name?’

‘No,’ I said, getting to my feet. ‘I don’t… Galina told me about him. She said he—’

‘Who’s Galina?’ Tanya asked. ‘Where is she now?’

I picked up my hat. ‘There was an old woman here last night, one of the villagers. I knew her. She was a friend of my mother. Galina. She said someone called Koschei did this and I thought… I thought she was confused. I thought…’ I looked across at the old man’s body. ‘This was her husband, Sasha. Now I have to look for the others –’ I swallowed hard ‘– and I’m afraid of what I’ll find.’

‘Where is this old woman? I want to talk to her.’

‘Galina?’ I ran a hand through my hair and pulled on my hat, staring out at the lake. ‘She went into the water. Drowned herself.’

‘Drowned herself ?’ Lyudmila asked.

‘Yes.’ When I looked at them, I saw the way the women watched me, something like suspicion in their eyes. ‘It’s the truth,’ I said. ‘Her husband dead, the others gone… I tried to stop her, but it’s what she wanted. I knew her. She was my mother’s friend.’

‘But you let her go?’

‘It’s what she wanted. To be with the others.’

‘With the others?’ Tanya said, and she and Lyudmila glanced at one another, then they both looked out at the water. For a while neither of them said anything. All three of us were alone in that moment; each of us retreated into our own thoughts.

‘He likes to drown the women,’ Tanya said in a quiet voice. ‘Koschei. I’m sorry.’

It took a moment for her words to register. As she spoke them, they were just sounds without meaning, but as they unravelled in my mind, they brought a numbness, a crushing white weight bearing down on me.

He likes to drown the women .

The words repeated like an echo of themselves and I saw Galina entering the lake, breaking the thin ice, disrobing, sinking and disappearing. Before she went under, though, she turned and looked at me and I saw that it wasn’t Galina. It was Marianna’s face that looked back at me from the water. Then she was gone, sinking, falling among the reeds and the dark unknown at the bottom of the lake.