Kate Furnivall - Under a Blood Red Sky

‘Don’t worry, I’ll deliver your package safely.’

His expression was hidden from her in the darkness but he grunted, blew out through his nostrils like a horse at water and swung away from her, so that her arm fell to her side. He set off at speed and the package had to scurry to keep up.

‘You’re not in bed.’

‘No, Zenia. I’ve made you tea,’ Sofia said. She tried a smile but it got her nowhere.

The gypsy girl had just emerged from the tiny closet that was her bedroom and yawned loudly, her body still soft with sleep. She stretched, arching her supple spine, hitched her nightdress up to her knees and stepped on to one of the chairs at the table.

‘I like juniper in my tea,’ Zenia said ungraciously.

She pulled down a hank of dried berries from one of the hooks on the rafters and crouched on the chair, knees up under her chin. One by one she dropped half a dozen of the shrivelled berries into the cup of tea Sofia had pushed in front of her.

‘Smells good,’ Sofia said. She was treading carefully. The girl clearly did not want her here.

‘Yes,’ Zenia muttered, shutting her eyes and inhaling the steam.

Sofia sat opposite, silently studying the girl’s neatly trimmed nails, and waited for her to open her eyes. Minutes passed.

Finally the black lashes lifted. ‘What’s the matter?’ the girl asked. ‘Couldn’t you sleep? It’s barely light yet.’

‘Here, have some kasha.’

‘Where’s Rafik?’

‘He left a couple of hours ago. To see to a horse that’s foaling.’

‘Oh yes, he mentioned one of the mares was close to term.’

‘Is that what he does?’ Sofia asked. ‘Care for the horses here?’

Zenia took a mouthful of the semolina porridge Sofia had made for her. ‘Yes, my father is half horse himself. This whole kolkhoz would be on its knees if they didn’t have him, though I don’t think even Comrade Fomenko, our revered Chairman of the Red Arrow , realises it.’ She flicked her tongue along her lips, scooping up a stray speck of kasha.

‘Tell me, Zenia, what is your boss at the factory like? Mikhail Pashin, I mean.’ Just saying his name aloud made Sofia’s chest tighten.

‘Why?’

‘I want him to give me a job.’

‘Without identity papers? You’re crazy. You can’t do anything without them, you must know that.’ The black eyes grew worried. ‘You do know that, don’t you?’

‘Of course.’

‘Sofia, let me eat in peace, will you?’ She sank her spoon into the bowl once more.

‘Of course. I’m sorry.’

Sofia stood up. She didn’t want to crowd the girl, so she opened the front door and leaned against the doorpost, breathing in the apple-scented tang of woodsmoke.

‘You can get chucked into one of the Gulag labour camps for stealing, you know.’ Zenia’s voice behind her was casual.

Sofia slowly turned. Was it intended as a threat?

‘It’s anti-Soviet behaviour,’ Zenia added, but she didn’t meet Sofia’s gaze.

‘I know.’

‘So why take the risk?’

‘In a Soviet State surely everything belongs to the proletariat. Well, I’m one of the proletariat.’

Zenia laughed, a startlingly lovely sound, and wagged a finger in Sofia’s direction. ‘I must tell that one to Boris Zakarov,’ she said. ‘He’s the Party spy round these parts.’

‘I’d rather you didn’t.’

‘I bet you would.’

Zenia put her cup down on the table rather harder than was necessary, swept her hair into a black coil on top of her head and walked out of the room. Sofia’s head was pounding. A risk? Of course it was. Everything was a damn risk. She took a small step on to the colourless road outside. She could see movement in the village, figures silhouetted against the thin band of gold on the eastern horizon, lights flickering on in houses. A goat bleated plaintively somewhere close, a cockerel crowed as if he owned the world.

Today. Today would be the beginning.

Rafik stood in the privacy of his own room and held the stone in the palm of his hand. No larger than a duck egg and white as a swan’s throat. He’d brought out the white pebble from its bed of scarlet because he could sense danger gathering, sabres rattling, like troops lining up for battle.

It grieved him deep in his heart to know his beloved Tivil was under threat once more tonight, and each time he closed his eyes he could see the blonde-haired one, Sofia, tall and slender. She appeared to him like a blade, glinting and well honed. He could see the fine edge of her slicing through the dark dense mass that was the danger. Behind his eyes a pinpoint of pain began to throb. With a sudden urgent need, he rested his thumb on the smooth white pebble and felt its coolness against his skin. It brought to mind the ancient strength of his ancestors and cleared his mind. Now the Sight came to him more readily.

The stone had been passed down through his gypsy line for generations, father to son, and was said to have come originally from the stone that was rolled aside from the tomb of Jesus Christ in the Holy Land. Each time it lay in the centre of his palm he was acutely aware that each person who owned it imparted a sliver of their strength to its tightly packed crystals. He could sense the vibration of white life inside them.

A flame burned on the shelf. It rose out of a bowl of fragrant oil, a slender cord of smoke twisting up from the tip of the flame to the ceiling, where it settled and gathered around the large black eye painted there. Solidified like a shield. His thumb lingered over the pebble. Caressed its smooth carapace, traced a circle around it, a circle of protection. Once more round the stone.

Rafik stared at it intently.

A third time round the circle, his thumb anointing the pebble with oil this time and he could almost hear it breathing. He circled again. Again. Again.

Then he uttered a long, intricate curse in a language so strange and brittle that it rattled against the shield of smoke above his head. From the table he lifted a knife, its ivory handle carved in the shape of a serpent, and laid the tip of the blade on the inside skin of his own forearm. He drew a fine line until a trickle of red ran down to his wrist where it formed a shallow pool. He let it gather. Then tipped it.

Three drips on the stone.

‘Zenia.’

His daughter came into the room at once. Her body was sheathed in a flowing red dress tied with a wide gypsy waistband, and fresh tendrils of forest greenery wove a plait around her neck. He thought how beautiful she looked, how like her dear dead mother. She gazed at the stone in his hand with alert eyes, bright and black and curious. Yet for her it possessed no resonance. Whenever she handled it and turned it over and over on her palm, it was nothing but a white pebble with a faint web of silvery veins threaded through it, an ordinary stone. He knew it frustrated her that she could not sense her ancestors within it, and though he would never breathe a word of it aloud to her, his own disappointment was even greater than hers.

‘Go with her tonight, my Zenia. But don’t let her know you are my sight.’

‘Yes, Rafik.’ She paused. ‘Is she in danger so soon?’

‘It comes from two directions. Make sure you guard her well.’

‘And you?’

Rafik closed his fist over the stone and swept it briefly through the candle flame. ‘Darkness is coming to Tivil tonight. Fire and darkness. The fire will burn the one she loves and the darkness will quench the furnace in her.’

‘You are prepared?’ Zenia asked, her voice unsteady.

He lifted the stone and laid it against his temple, held it there, listening to something inside his head. His brow furrowed and a pulse beat strongly in his neck.