Kate Furnivall - Under a Blood Red Sky

Sofia would have ignored him if she could, but Aleksei Fomenko and his lean-limbed hound had stepped right into her path before she was aware of them. Her mind was churning with fears about what Pokrovsky would say to his rouble-paymasters, and all she wanted was to reach Mikhail’s izba as quickly as possible. Now this rebuke. She couldn’t bring herself to look at the Chairman, so she stared at the gentle brown eyes of his dog.

‘Did you tell them?’ she demanded.

‘Tell who?’

‘Tell the interrogators to release Comrade Pashin.’

He laughed, a harsh bark that could almost have come from the dog. ‘Don’t be absurd, comrade. I don’t have that kind of power.’

She looked up at him for the first time. His jaw was set in a stern line but today his eyes were as gentle as his dog’s. She’d learned not to trust gentle eyes.

‘Don’t you?’ she asked.

‘No.’

‘I see.’

She did see. She saw that Rafik’s binding together of Tivil’s strengths last night did produce some kind of force. Unless Fomenko was lying to her and he was the one who organised Mikhail’s release. But why would he do that?

His gaze fixed on her and the strong sunlight bleached the creases from his skin, so that for a moment his face looked as smooth as a boy’s. Sofia could picture him, rifle in his hand, the boy who shot Anna’s father.

‘Don’t miss your shift in the fields,’ he reminded her.

She shook her head and walked on.

She slipped into the bedroom where Mikhail was sleeping. One arm was thrown out in a wide gesture of abandon as if letting go in his sleep of what he couldn’t release when awake. Sofia moved silently to the bed. There were signs of his having been up and about, an empty cup by the bed and his shirt hanging on the rack of hooks in the corner, instead of thrown on the floor when she slid it from his shoulders last night.

She stood there quietly and studied him, watched him breathe, the slow even rhythm, the soft tiny movements of his lips. She absorbed every detail of him, not just into her mind but into her body, deep into her blood and her bones. The fineness of him, the line of his cheekbone, the thick fan of his dark lashes, even the black and swollen bruise around his eye. His chin was dark with stubble that she longed to kiss. She imagined him laughing in the snow, building a sleigh of ice. Skating on the lake and smiling with contentment as he roasted potatoes on the fire. All these things she knew he’d done, and many more when he was Vasily. But then he stuck a knife in the throat of his father’s killer and Vasily died. Mikhail was born. It made no difference to her.

Vasily.

Mikhail.

She loved them both. Her body ached with loving him, but it was nothing compared with the desperate ache at the knowledge that she was about to lose him. So softly that he didn’t break the rhythm of his dreams, Sofia dropped her clothes to the floor and slid in beside him between the sheets. His naked body smelled warm and musky. Her lips touched his skin. She curled her body around his and lay like that for an hour, maybe two. When eventually his hand found her in his sleep, she smiled. Slowly, without opening his eyes, he started to caress her breasts till a moan crept from between her lips and she heard his breath quicken.

‘Ssh,’ she whispered, ‘you need sleep.’

‘No, I need you.’

He opened his eyes and grinned at her on the pillow. Gently she kissed his split lip and drew it into her own mouth where her tongue soothed it. His groan vibrated through her own lungs and together they started to explore each other’s bodies once more. It was leisurely this time as their hands moved or lingered and teased desire to breaking point – until he was inside her.

As he thrust deep within her, his lips hard on hers, she kept her eyes open, fixed on his, so close they were almost a part of her. His gaze never wavered from hers. And suddenly the terrible ache and the fear left Sofia. The ache of loving. The fear of losing. There was just this, just him, just her. Together.

‘I’ve been waiting for you.’

Rafik was seated at the table in his izba , his hands flat on its rough planks. He was wearing the white band round his head, stark against his thick black hair, and a soft white shirt with loose sleeves and, on its front, a strange geometric design picked out in intricate white embroidery. He indicated the two chairs opposite him.

Sofia and Mikhail sat down. Sofia’s eyes focused immediately on the white stone that lay on the surface of the table.

‘Sofia,’ Rafik said and smiled at her. ‘It is time for you to know more. But first,’ his gaze shifted to Mikhail, ‘what is it you want of me, Comrade Pashin?’

Mikhail gave the stone no more than a cursory glance, but he draped a protective arm along the back of Sofia’s chair. ‘Rafik,’ he said, ‘yesterday I was incarcerated in a filthy cell looking at a future in a labour camp – at best. Today I am here in Tivil, a free man.’ He leaned forward, searching the gypsy’s face. ‘It’s a miracle, and I don’t believe in miracles.’

‘No, it’s not a miracle. You were saved by Sofia.’

Mikhail thumped a hand on the table, making the stone leap from its place. Rafik flinched but didn’t touch it.

‘Rafik, you say Sofia saved me but she claims that you did. I need to know what is going on here. People have always whispered that you have strange mystic powers but I dismissed it as village tittle-tattle, the fantasies of idle minds, but now…’ He drew a deep breath and Sofia could see a pulse beating below his ear.

‘Mikhail,’ Rafik said in a soothing tone, ‘I’m going to tell you a history.’ With his words the thoughts in Sofia’s head seemed to grow heavy. ‘For centuries,’ he continued, ‘generations of my family were advisers and astrologers to the Kings of Persia. Their knowledge and intimacy with the Spirits made them a force that guided one of the greatest Empires in history through times of war and times of peace. But nothing…’ he brushed a finger over the stone and eased it back into its position, ‘nothing lasts for ever – not even Communism.’

He frowned, drawing his heavy black brows together. ‘My ancestors were driven from their Land of Honey and fled throughout the known world, some escaping to Europe, others to India and further into the Orient, as the Empire crumbled.’

Sofia closed her eyes for a moment. ‘I feel it,’ she murmured.

Mikhail’s solemn gaze scrutinised her face, then he passed a hand in a gentle caress over her forehead and through the silky threads of her white-blonde hair.

‘What does she mean?’

Rafik took Sofia’s hands between his own, palms together as in prayer.

‘She is like me,’ he said.

‘She’s not a gypsy.’

‘No. I am the seventh son of a seventh son, going back through generations of seventh sons all the way to Persia. That’s where my power comes from, passed on in a mystic connection of blood. Sofia is the same.’

‘What do you mean? Is she the daughter of a seventh son?’

‘No. She is the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter, going back through generations. Because her mother died when Sofia was so young, she never learned from her mother what she should have been told about the power that is centred in her, drawn from the strength and the knowledge of others before her.’ He pressed Sofia’s hands tight together. ‘My will is strong, and so is hers. But together,’ Rafik continued, his black eyes searching hers, ‘we are stronger.’

‘But my father was a priest of the Russian Orthodox church,’ she pointed out. ‘Surely his faith would have clashed with my mother’s… if what you say is true.’