The Ice Swan полностью

Descending a short flight of stairs, she followed the scent of baking bread to the kitchen. A large, rectangular room, its brick walls were warmed by cream paint and shining copper pots hanging from an iron rack over the worn worktable. Mrs. Varjensky stood in front of the enormous hearth stirring a black pot dangling over the fire. She refused to use a proper stove, claiming the old ways were better. Purer with no modern vapors to taint the food.

“No sleep?” the old woman said without turning around.

“Nyet.”

“Sit. Sit.”

Svetlana perched on the only wooden stool next to the table. Apparently not much sitting was done in a kitchen. Bits of floured dough spotted the counter. “Midnight baking?”

“Cook woman. No let me come in day.” She made a spitting noise over her hunched shoulder to ward off the devil. “My night secret.”

There was a rivalry Svetlana had no desire to get caught in the middle of. Perhaps Mrs. Varjensky needed her own kitchen. The old gardener’s cottage would be the perfect place for her to set up housekeeping, and as far as Svetlana knew there was no stove to taint the food with evil spirits.

“What are you making?”

“Vareniki.”

A dumpling with vegetables or in this case—Svetlana sniffed at the boiling pot—fruit. “My nanny growing up used to bring them from her village where her mother made them. She would go to visit twice a year, and Marina and I were so eager for her to return with the sweets.”

“Twice year? That lucky. Most visit once every ten year. Or never.”

Svetlana’s memory had always seemed so quaint of tearing into brown paper–covered treats and devouring them without thought beyond the sweetness in her mouth. Peasant delicacies were never eaten among the rich soups and savory meats on nobles’ dining tables. Her childish eyes never noticed the puffiness of her nanny’s eyes or the sad smile holding back tears when Svetlana demanded to know why she had taken so long in returning—not to the poor woman’s village home but to the Blue Palace that was anything but her home. How selfish she’d been as a child.

Mrs. Varjensky banged her wooden spoon on the pot and came over to the table. “You help.”

“Me? I know nothing about baking.”

“Two hands, da? You learn. Listen babushka. She show.” With that, she proceeded to demonstrate how to knead the dough, dust it with flour to prevent it from sticking, and roll it flat. Using a thin, round piece of metal, they cut the dough into circles and filled them with the sugared berries stewing in the pot. Cook wasn’t going to be pleased to find half of her sugar ration depleted come morning.

Once the first batch of vareniki was placed in the oven, Mrs. Varjensky spit over the closed door to ward off the devil from the suspicious contraption and loudly complained about its inferiority to the brick ovens her people back home had used for generations. She made a quick pot of tea, squinting disapprovingly at it though thankfully avoiding spit this time, and poured a cup for each of them.

“Tell troubles.”

Standing so Mrs. Varjensky could have the lone stool, Svetlana took a sip of her tea. A bit strong, but a spoonful of the sweetened berries softened the taste. “I have no troubles.”

“Mama push away, other family dead, old suitor arrive, Reds still hunt, and husband gone. You troubled, rebyonok.”

Svetlana choked at the bluntness and put her cup down. Plain white with a chip on the rim, this teacup was not from the set served upstairs. “When you put it like that, I suppose I do have troubles. Not one of them easily solved.”

“Suitor banished. One solved.” The wrinkles in the old woman’s face burgeoned as she grinned.

When Svetlana had arrived home after the meeting at the schoolhouse, Sergey was already gone. She’d managed to avoid an explanation to Constance, Marina, and Mama so far, but they would want to know of his sudden departure soon enough.

Mama. That was a whole other tempest waiting to whip itself into a storm. Svetlana tired of weathering them. The damage proved too painful and the broken pieces irretrievable.

“My mother, well, we both know that’s an impossibility. She is who she is, and our relationship will never be more than a passing acceptance that we share the same blood and not much more.”

“Fear make walls. Only strongest flower bloom over tallest wall. No stop climbing. Look at Reds. Build wall of fear and hate. Hate never win.”

“Rumors circulated in Paris of the Bolsheviks coming after those fleeing to drag them back to Russia. I saw where they met in the back rooms. What if they find us here?”

“We kill them. My father butcher. I know use knife.”

Well, that was terrifying and not the answer Svetlana had expected from the sweet old lady she’d come to see as a grandmother.