Sarwat Chadda: Dark Goddess

“Bloody hope so.”

By the time they’d finished their meal, Billi had three decent stone-tipped arrows. She used up a tube of superglue to hold them into the shafts; they weren’t particularly well made and she would have liked to try shooting with them, to get an idea of how they flew, but time was too short; they needed to move.

The late afternoon sun hung low on the horizon, bathing the landscape with pinks and oranges. Sparse woodland gave way to overgrown and abandoned fields, dotted with crumbling old farmhouses and empty villages. The signs of humanity increased as the day wore on. They’d reached the outskirts of Chernobyl.

Chernobyl had been the site of the worst nuclear disaster in history. Back in the 1980s, a nuclear reactor had exploded and launched a huge radioactive cloud over most of south Russia and Ukraine. Tens of thousands of people had been evacuated overnight, taking only what they could carry. They’d never returned. It seemed like ancient history, but the town itself looked as though it could have been emptied yesterday. The cars, the buildings, parks, and gardens all remained. Not demolished, as they would have been in a war-just empty. Only the humans had left.

So this was the world Baba Yaga wanted.

Silent, gray tower blocks stood like titans guarding a city of the dead. A flock of crows launched themselves into a cloud of black feathers, cawing angrily at their arrival, their cries sharp and keen. Otherwise the streets were eerily empty. The snow-laden boughs of the trees lining the road sagged over them, their branches scratching the van’s roof. Roots had broken through the tarmac, and pond-sized potholes pockmarked the road, each glistening with dark ice. Cars sat abandoned, rusting. Their hoods had been thrown open, and engines, tires, and seats were all stripped out.

The van stopped. A large shadow loomed over the front windshield, and the air rumbled with a curious, threatening growl.

A huge black bear with beady brown eyes stood in the center of the road. Olga left the engine running and stepped out of the van. The bear dropped down onto all fours, and even then was still taller than the woman. It lumbered closer and raised its head to sniff her.

Olga just stood, watching it.

The bear rose onto its hind legs, towering over her. It threw back its head and bellowed.

Billi glanced at Ivan. He’d been in the back inspecting the weapons, while Vasilisa had moved up front. He raised his eyebrows.

“Well?” he whispered. He moved forward and rested the pistol barrel on the back of the seat, pointing it at the windshield. Vasilisa was squeezed next to Billi. The girl reached out and touched the glass, mouth open as she gazed in awe at the giant creature.

“Olga knows what she’s doing. I think.”

Then the bear dropped back down onto all fours and wandered off into the woods. Billi stepped out and joined Olga.

“What was that all about?” said Billi after her heartbeat had returned to normal. “He’s the king here. He just wanted to make sure we knew,” Vasilisa said from out of the car window.

Ivan hopped out of the back and waved his pistol. “We could have scared him off with this. It would have been safer.”

Olga scowled. “Just what a human would think.”

They drove on for another fifteen minutes, slowly rolling along the silent roads.

“Where are we?” asked Billi.

“One of the outlying towns.” Olga pointed ahead. “The reactor’s a few miles that way.”

Billi checked the surroundings. The town wasn’t hugely built up, and each residential block had plenty of space around it. No matter which direction the attack came from, she’d see it coming.

“Stop here,” Billi said. Olga drew up at the side of the road. Ahead stood a set of tall iron gates, beyond which was a simple amusement park.

Billi wandered around the park. The yellow carts of the Ferris wheel were filled with snow. Crystalline ivy covered the rusty steel legs of the main support, and the steel creaked in the wind. A bit farther were the bumper cars. The roof had collapsed, and long strips of plastic cloth and wood were scattered over the cars.

Opposite the park was a school building. It was about eight stories tall, and would give them a good vantage point over the surrounding land. Vasilisa joined Billi as they went in to explore. The windows and doors were gone, so they stepped over the low threshold straight into a classroom. The paint on the walls and the desks had faded and blistered. There were posters of old Soviet leaders, a large framed map of the USSR in faded red, and drawings that had been made by children, mainly of rockets and cosmonauts. Small rubber gas masks hung on the coat hooks.

They walked past the nurse’s office, still filled with first-aid posters and old cots, and found the steps that led upstairs. Billi stopped dead as a shadow marked the wall. She tugged Vasilisa behind her.

The silhouette of a small girl with pigtails had been painted on to the wall like the shadow left by an atomic explosion. She had been caught forever reaching up to the light switch.

They reached the flat roof and looked out over Chernobyl. The town was a cluster of concrete apartment blocks. Trees broke the outline as the woods had encroached from all directions. Billi saw branches poking out of the upper floors of some buildings, and thick roots rippled over abandoned cars on the roadside.

“Didn’t take long,” Billi said. Not long at all before nature stole back all that was once hers.

The chimneys of the nuclear plant stood up on the horizon. Three slim towers beside the curved shell of the reactor. The silence was deafening. The abandoned town echoed with the sighs of ghosts.

They weren’t here. The Templars hadn’t made it. If her dad had hit Kiev that morning, when she’d called, he would have been herebynow. Billi spent the next ten minutes scanning the streets and rooftops, hoping for some movement or light off armor or blade, but the snowfall made it difficult to see anything clearly. Maybe last night’s storm had cost Arthur and the others an extra day. Maybe he never got to Kiev. And now they were out of days.

“Looks like this is it, then,” said Billi.

Vasilisa stood beside her. Billi held out her hand, but she retreated. Billi put her hand down. Friendships were hard to come by in Billi’s line of work. “She’s close,” said Vasilisa. She scratched her head and frowned. The henna covered her arms up to her elbows. She turned her palms over, staring at the strange patterns, then looked at the reactor in the distance. “Look at what we’ve done. We made the Earth so sick.”

“Sounds like you agree with her,” said Billi. Their eyes met.

“She’s old and tired, Billi. She thinks she’s the only one who cares about the Earth. She hoped mankind would learn, but we haven’t. That’s why she won’t die: she thinks no one else will look after it when she’s gone. So she’s trapped in winter, and it’s always cold.” Tears ran down her cheeks.

The sky was turning red. Billi watched the sun sink lower on the horizon. For now the moon was a weak indistinct circle. But it was full and perfectly round. Her skin itched and she loosened her collar, trying to let the heat out.

“Not yet, not yet,” she promised herself.

The thin birch trees were rustling when the first howl rippled across the snowbound town. Another joined it, then another, until the distant woods erupted with the chorus of hunters’ songs. Olga waved at her from below, and Billi ran down, Vasilisa a few steps behind.

They gathered in front of the amusement park gates. Olga had stripped down to a thin T-shirt and shorts. Her bare legs and arms bristled with gray hair, and already her nails had transformed into claws.