Kate Furnivall - Under a Blood Red Sky

‘Speak it,’ Rafik said. ‘Why are you here tonight?’

‘For Mikhail.’

‘Yes.’

There was a prolonged silence while words pushed against her tongue, words that didn’t seem to rise from her own mind.

‘And for the village, Rafik,’ she said clearly. ‘It is for the village of Tivil that I am here, to make it live a life instead of die a death. I am here because I need to be and I am here because I am meant to be.’

She barely recognised her own voice. It was low and resonant and each word vibrated in the cool air. She shivered beneath her gown, but not with fear. She gazed round at the four figures, their eyes steady on hers, their lips murmuring silent words that drifted into the mist, thickening it, stirring it, causing it to linger as it brushed Sofia’s cheek.

‘Pokrovsky,’ she said, turning her eyes on the broad bear of a man, whose wide shoulders stretched the white robe to the edge of its seams. ‘Blacksmith of Tivil, tell me who you are.’

‘I am the hands of this village. I labour for the working man.’

‘ Spasibo , Hands of Tivil.’

She lowered her eyes from the blacksmith to the slight figure with the full lips and bold gaze. ‘Zenia, who are you?’

‘I am a child of this village.’ The girl’s voice rang clear and strong out past the flames and into the darkness beyond. ‘The children are the future and I am one of their number.’

‘ Spasibo , Child of Tivil.’ Sofia swung round further to face the figure in place to the east of her. ‘Elizaveta Lishnikova, schoolteacher of Tivil, tell me who you are.’

The tall grey woman, with the nose like a bird’s beak, stood very straight. ‘I am the mind of this village. I teach the children who are its future and bring knowledge and understanding to them the way the dawn in the east brings each new day to our village.’

‘ Spasibo , Mind of Tivil.’

Finally Sofia stepped round to look, once more, deep into the intense black eyes that burned with their ancient knowledge.

‘Rafik,’ she asked, softly this time, ‘who are you?’

Ten heartbeats passed before he spoke. His voice was a deep, echoing sound that made the flames shimmer and sway to a different pulse. ‘I am the soul of this village, Sofia. I guard and guide and protect this small patch of earth. All over Russia villages are destroyed and trampled by the brutish boot of a blood-addicted dictator who has murdered five million of his own people, yet still claims he is building a Workers’ Paradise. Sofia,’ he spread his arms wide to include all the white robes, ‘the four of us have combined our strengths to safeguard Tivil, but you have seen the soldiers come. Seen the food stolen from our tables and the prayers clubbed to death before they are born.’

‘I have seen this.’

‘Now you have come to Tivil and the Pentangle is complete.’

Sofia observed no signal, but the four white-clad figures stepped forward out of the shadows as one, until they were so close around her that when they each raised their left arm it rested easily on the shoulder of the person to their left. Sofia’s heart was racing as she felt herself enclosed inside the circle. Rafik scattered something into the brazier at her feet so that it flared into life and the mist thickened into a dense fog. She could feel it crawling far down into her lungs every time she breathed. She swayed, her head growing too unwieldy for her neck. A pulse at her temple throbbed in time with her heartbeat.

‘Sofia.’ It was Rafik. ‘Open your eyes.’

She hadn’t realised they had closed. Their lids were heavy and slow to respond to her commands. What was happening to her?

‘Sofia, take the stone into your hand.’

He was holding out the white pebble to her and without hesitation she took it. She expected something from it, some spark or sign or even a pain shooting up her arm, but there was nothing. Just an ordinary warm round pebble lying in the palm of her hand.

At a murmur from Rafik the circle sealed itself tighter and a slow rhythmic chanting began. Soft at first, like a mother crooning to her infant, a sound that loosened Sofia’s limbs and stole her sense of self. But the chanting rose, the language unknown to her, until it was a rushing wind that tore at her mind, ripped out her conscious thoughts and swept them away until only a great echoing chamber remained inside her head. Only one word leapt out of it.

‘Mikhail!’ she cried out. ‘Mikhail! ’

Hands touched her head and she started to see things and hear things that she knew were not there.

A small room. A small desk. A small man with a small mind. Long rabbity teeth and pale cheeks that looked as though they’d never seen the sun. His elbows on the desk, his thoughts on the prisoner in front of him.

The prisoner angered him, though he kept all sign of it from his face. He shifted the lamp on his desk to angle the beam more into the prisoner’s eyes and had the satisfaction of seeing him wince. One of the prisoner’s eyes was swollen and half shut, his jaw bruised, his lip as split and purple as an over-ripe plum, yet still the prisoner clung to the wrong attitude. Hadn’t he learned that it didn’t matter whether he was guilty or not guilty of the crimes he was charged with?

Wrong attitude.

That was his real crime, that he still believed he could pick and choose which bits of the Communist creed he would adopt and which ones he would reject.

Wrong fucking attitude.

The prisoner’s mind was a danger to the State. Time to change what was in it or discover that the State could break the strongest of wills and the strongest of minds. The State was expert at it and he, the interrogator, was an instrument of the Soviet State.

There would be only one fucking winner.

‘Mikhail,’ she breathed.

‘Mikhail,’ the circle echoed.

The white stone in Sofia’s hand seemed to grow chill. Or was that just her own skin? She wrapped her fingers tighter around it, dug her nails into its cold hard surface as though they could gouge out the eyes of the man with rabbits’ teeth.

‘A curse on you, Interrogator,’ she hissed.

The flames in the brazier surged as if they fed on her hatred.

‘Mikhail,’ she intoned into the shadows. ‘Come to me.’

‘Why me?’ Sofia asked.

The clouds were low and there was no moon. The night felt heavy and cloying despite the breeze that rustled up from the river, fretting under the eaves of the izbas and stealing Sofia’s words from her lips.

‘Why me?’ she repeated.

‘Don’t you know?’ Rafik asked in a low voice. He was pacing with a smooth unbroken stride over the uneven tangles of roots and soil, skirting round the fringes of Tivil. ‘Don’t you know now who you are?’

‘Tell me, Rafik, who I am.’

‘Feel for it, Sofia, stretch your mind back to the beginning and to before the beginning. Reach deep into yourself.’

A bat flitted out of the night sky, circling jerkily above their heads. It was followed quickly by another, and the shadow of their wings seemed to press on Sofia’s mind. Something stirred inside her, something unfamiliar. She experienced again that sense of being high up on a golden pinnacle with the silver-haired figures below her, sending their breath to lift her wings. She shook her head but still the image wouldn’t go away. It lodged there.

Rafik did not push her, but he gave her time. Together they were pacing out the circle that the gypsy trod nightly around Tivil. Through the fields, past the pond and round the back of each izba , weaving what he called a protective thread . When he led her out of the ritual chamber she was not surprised to discover the mysterious ceremony had taken place inside the church, not in the main hall but in the old storeroom at the back of the church, where the lock still bore the marks of her knife.