Eric Lustbader - Last Snow

She stopped, curled her fingers around the back of the chair. “You understand, don’t you, that this is all theater. There’s nothing real about it, except as it exists in their minds.”

“You hold no malice toward them.”

“Quite the opposite, I . . .” Milla Tamirova broke off and, relinquishing her position, walked to where Alli still stood in front of the chair. “What happened to you, child?”

Without taking her eyes from the chair, Alli clamped her lips together.

The older woman took Alli’s hand in hers, but as she began to move it toward the chair, Alli jerked it away. Milla Tamirova then reached out and put her own hand on the chair arm.

“Can you do that?”

Alli shook her head.

Milla Tamirova sat in the chair, her hands lying along the arms. “Touch my hand, child. Just my hand.”

Alli hesitated.

“Please.”

Taking a deep breath, Alli placed her hand over Milla Tamirova’s. She began to have trouble breathing.

“I’m going to take my hand away,” the older woman said. “Do you understand?”

Alli, her eyes wide with terror, nodded.

Slowly and gently Milla Tamirova slid her hand out from under Alli’s. For a moment, Alli’s hand remained hovering above the gleaming wood and leather. Then, closing her eyes, shuddering with fear, she let her hand drop. With the touch of the cool wood came a terrifying vision of Morgan Herr’s repulsively handsome face, the evil words whispered in her ear.

“Open your eyes. Now look at me.” Milla Tamirova smiled. “It’s all right, yes? You’re here with me. Everything is fine, isn’t it?”

Alli barely found the strength to nod.

“Now—” Milla Tamirova rose. “Why don’t you sit where I was sitting?”

Alli felt her gorge rising, she was gripped by a kind of panic that throbbed behind her eyes, that threatened to take over her entire being.

“It’s important for you to sit in the chair.”

“I . . . I can’t.”

Milla Tamirova engaged Alli’s eyes. “As of this moment, you’re ruled by your fear. Unless you face it, unless you conquer it, you’ll live in fear the rest of your life.”

Alli felt paralyzed, completely powerless. It was as if she had once again been stripped of conscious volition.

“And then,” the older woman continued, “whoever did this to you, whoever abused you will have won.” She smiled. “We can’t have that, child, can we?”

“It’s too much,” Alli said, breathless. “I can’t.”

“Can’t, or won’t?” Milla Tamirova surveyed Alli’s pale, sweating face. “In here, you’re in full control. You’re the one who decides whether or not to sit in the chair.”

“I want to leave.”

Milla Tamirova lifted an arm. “Leave, then.” Her smile was rueful. “No one can make you do what you don’t want to do.” Alli was in the doorway when she added,“Without knowing it, you’ve made the memory sacred, you must understand that.”

Alli looked at her without seeing, her eyes watching something that had already happened, someone who was dead now. “The memory is profane.”

“And that is precisely where religion fails us.” Milla Tamirova’s hand seemed to caress the thick arm of the vile chair. “Memory cannot distinguish between the sacred and the profane, because it annihilates time. What was profane in the past memory makes sacred in the present.” The fingers—long, stark, bloodred at their ends—seemed, like memory itself, to have a life of their own. “This is the only possible explanation for why you hold on to your fear, why you cannot let it go.”

“Control,” Alli whispered. “That’s what I want.”

“It’s what we all want, child.” She paused for a moment, then walked toward Alli.

At that precise moment, as if they were two cars heading toward one another, Alli passed by her so closely she could smell Milla Tamirova’s pleasant, earthy scent.

Alli lowered herself into the chair, her arms placed where the older woman’s had been moments before. Her heart beat so hard it was almost painful, and she felt as if she were on fire, as if at any moment she would spontaneously combust. But gradually she became aware that what she felt was a seething energy that coincided or perhaps was the aftermath of the cresting of her terror. She felt the chair beneath her buttocks and thighs, her elbows and wrists. She looked at the restraints and they were just pieces of leather and metal, they weren’t talismans of voodoo or black magic that forced her back into that week of despair and fear. At least for the time being, that memory became manageable instead of overwhelming. Still, she couldn’t look at it for long without feeling blinded or perhaps plunged into a darkness beyond all comprehension.

She got up from the chair because she wanted to, because she could. She still felt her flesh tingling where it had made contact with the wood through her clothes.

“Would you like some tea?” Milla Tamirova asked. Her face held an expression that might have been tenderness or even solace, that Alli couldn’t quite digest. “Or perhaps something stronger to celebrate your small victory.”

“Where’s my father?” Alli said.

“You said you need his protection. From what—or should I say, from whom?”

“Nothing,” Alli said. “I lied because I was afraid you wouldn’t see me otherwise.”

Milla Tamirova frowned. “You were probably right. Not that it matters, I don’t think it would be a good idea for you—”

“I want to see him.”

“I understand.” Milla Tamirova shook her head. “But your father is a very dangerous man, there’s no telling how he’ll react to the news that he has an illegitimate daughter. Better for you to stay away.”

“Okay, you’ve done your duty, consider me warned.”

Milla Tamirova closed the door to the dungeon behind them as they walked out into the hallway. “You just took a first step, that’s all it was. Don’t mistake it for a silver bullet. You have a long, dark journey ahead of you.”

Alli would not meet her penetrating gaze. She wished she understood; she’d rather bite her tongue than admit she didn’t.

“I wish you’d take my advice, even though you don’t like me.”

“That’s not true,” Alli said, “or, at least, it isn’t now.”

“I appreciate your candor.” Once again, the rueful smile played across Milla Tamirova’s lips. “You still won’t take my advice, will you?”

Alli shook her head. “Where is he holed up?”

“Excellent choice of words.” Milla Tamirova swept them both across the living room to the front door. “That would be his brand-new dacha, just outside the city. Here’s the address.” She pulled the door open. “Go to him, then. Perhaps you’ll be in time for the christening.”

NINE

WHY DOES memory persist, Jack asked himself, long after the details of an event or a person become frayed or indistinct? The core of memory remains like a dream or a stain on a photo that is rapidly growing blank.

Karl Rochev’s dacha, deep in the thick woodlands past the far boundaries of Kiev’s eastern suburbs, blighted with hideous Soviet-era apartment complexes marching to nowhere like the undead, bore the dimensions and hallmarks of an old farmhouse. The wooden frame had been augmented and, in some places, replaced by massive fieldstones, lending it at once a more stolid and more militaristic aspect.

Jack, sitting with Annika and Alli in the car he had rented, could easily imagine the structure the dacha must once have been, because it was eerily similar to his own house. He felt a shiver run through him as the image in memory overlaid the image he stared at now.

The dacha sat at the end of a winding driveway, newly planted with evergreens yet to reach a height sufficient to completely screen the house from the road. It was ablaze with light, every window emitting a cheery butter yellow that held at bay the gloom of the failing afternoon. A cool wind ruffled the feathery tops of the pines, creating a dreamy sound not unlike the surf. Otherwise, the stillness was absolute. Clouds had rolled in with the twilight, obliterating both shadow and birdsong.