David Nickle - Rasputin's Bastards

“My Papa was a killer,” said Darya as they paused over a display case of Imperial Russian china.

“Really,” said Alexei. “A killer.”

Darya slapped him on the shoulder. “Don’t make fun! He was!”

“All right. Papa was a killer. You must be very proud. Who did he kill? How many?”

“We are not certain. He definitely killed an American. Name was Timothy Elkhorn. In Honduras. He used a shovel. And some Italians. Seven of those. That happened just after I was born. He used a machinegun and a boat. And there were the Africans…”

“He did this under orders?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

Alexei moved past the china, to a display of silver cutlery. “Tell me,” he said, “how did these wonderful objects manage to find their way to New Pokrovskoye?”

“The Koldun,” she said.

“Vasili Borovich, you mean?”

“The Koldun,” she repeated, more firmly. “He brought them with him in a dozen boats, when he came to New Pokrovskoye to rejoin Babushka.”

Alexei looked around. A case of three scimitars, their hilts forged of gold and silver, rested next to a fine chain mail hauberk draped over a dressmaker’s dummy, bosom jutting absurdly through the woven steel. Alexei counted a dozen gleaming samovars on a long oak shelf behind them. The Fabergé eggs were a little farther off, in a tall-glassed in shelf. Alexei counted a dozen of them. Other than the unlikeliness of their context — here in a barn of a museum in a little coastal fishing village in Canada — Alexei had no reason to doubt their authenticity.

“All of this?”

“Not on the same trip — but yes,” she said. “It was a gift. When we made this village, the Koldun was simply a traveller. An old friend of Babushka’s.”

“Vasili,” said Alexei, “Borovich.”

Darya nodded. “That was his name. Then. The gift allowed him to change, by grace of Babushka. To become the Koldun.”

“Well — Vasili or Koldun, by whatever name he is very generous.” Alexei stepped away from the case. He pointed to the giant egg-thing towards the far end of the room.

“That would have required a second trip all by itself, I’d think,” he said.

Darya smiled. “Oh. That one, I don’t think the Koldun brought.”

Alexei approached the thing. It sat on a platform three feet off the ground — circled with deep ochre curtain. It wasn’t truly an egg. It was more shaped like a lozenge… a fat man’s coffin. Where the stones had not been fixed, it was the colour of robin’s egg.

It reminded Alexei of something that caught in the corner of his mind.

“That was Babushka’s. It was where she slept.”

“Is she sleeping there still?” Alexei had a vision of Lenin’s Tomb — but with a desiccated old woman in the place of the perfectly preserved corpse of Vladimir Lenin.

“Really now.” Alexei circled the strange container, looking for a way in. It didn’t take long. On the opposite side, he saw a round hatch — like a submarine hatch, complete with a small iron wheel in its centre. The wheel had been painted a deep violet. It sparkled with tiny foil stars — the kind teachers used to congratulate a student for work well done.

“What an interesting — museum — you have here,” he said, and gave the wheel a spin. It turned easily, with the tick-tock sound of a clock. As it slowed, it became more like a roulette wheel. When it stopped, the hatch swung open a hair’s breadth.

Darya stood open-mouthed — genuinely alarmed.

“Wha—” she began.

Alexei looked at her.

“What is that smell?”

What smell ? thought Alexei. He was about to say it. Dismiss little Darya’s observation. But something was changed. He cocked his head — listening.

“I don’t know about the smell,” he said. “But do you hear?”

“Hear what?”

“Nothing. That’s the thing,” said Alexei. “No music. Mr. Rebroff has left us.”

The opening to the Babushka’s vessel yawned at them. Alexei tentatively leaned toward it and sniffed. He looked back at Darya, who was holding her nose now. He sniffed again. The air was cool, and stale as you might expect from a sarcophagus that had apparently been sealed up for a decade or so. But whatever odour had Darya clutching her face was undetectable to Alexei. He squinted to look inside.

“Why — why did you do that?” Darya’s voice had taken a pleading, whining tone.

“I don’t know,” said Alexei shortly. “I don’t know why I do a lot of things.” He stuck his head into the opening, tried to see around in the darkness. “Who is Babushka?” The question echoed, edging the words with iron. “She is the lady of scents, hmm? Now tell me: what was she doing with this — thing? Out with it, Darya.”

“Lena.”

“What?” The vessel was making Darya’s voice sound strange too. It sounded tinny, as though travelling through a cheap radio speaker. At least she’d stopped whining.

“Babushka is Lena.”

“I see. And who is Lena?”

“Dead.”

Alexei reached inside, ran his hand over the interior surface. It wasn’t metal in here. It felt like ceramic. It was cold as a sheet of ice. “That’s not an answer,” he said.

“It will have to do.”

Alexei frowned. The voice really didn’t sound like young Darya’s. It was, he realized, too deep. Not mannishly deep. But old. Very old.

Alexei took a breath, and looked behind him. Darya had stepped away — she was back behind the dressmaker’s dummy, arms crossed, fingers tapping on her elbows — looking anywhere but back at Alexei.

He turned back into the chamber.

“All right,” he said. “You didn’t answer my second question: What’s this thing for?”

“Butterflies.”

“Butterflies.” Alexei frowned. “Caterpillars into butterflies?” he ventured. “A cocoon? Like that?”

“It will have to do.”

Ah . That was why the voice sounded so strange. He wasn’t hearing it with his ears; it was as when Vladimir spoke to him. He heard it in his head.

“You are no fool, Alexei Kilodovich.”

I don’t know about that , thought Alexei.

“No, it is true. There is something about you, little man.”

Ha .

“Your mockery is insincere. Because you know it to be true. You know your true nature is other than it seems. What, I wonder, is it?”

I have been puzzling this for months. So don’t ask me .

“You have certainly had a difficult day. Someone tried to kill you.”

Are you watching me all the time ?

“No. No. Not yet. But do you wonder — why would anyone want to kill you? What is in you?”

I don’t know .

“I think you know. Something in you is refusing to accept, hmm?”

If you say .

“Well. Whatever it is — I am sure old Fyodor buried it there for a reason. Best not pry — hmm?”

Why would Fyodor bury anything ?

“You tell me. Or maybe — maybe Fyodor could tell me himself. Are you in there, my love?”

The Babushka’s tone was making Alexei uncomfortable. It was time to change the subject.

Why do they call you Babushka ?

“Because I am an ugly old woman. I am the elder. I am sorry — I was the elder. The one who made this place. But Babushka is gone now too. I am just I.”

The elder? Elder what ?

Alexei waited.

“The elder what?” he repeated, aloud. “What?”

“What?” Alexei turned around.

Darya was back. She looked at him strangely. “You should take your head out of there,” she said. “It’s Babushka’s.”

“My head?”

Darya laughed. “The tank,” she said. “But also your head — soon enough.”