Rasputin's Bastards

THE IDIOT

There was a great oppressive darkness all around him and everywhere. Alexei Kilodovich screamed into it.

He screamed a lot of things. He screamed his rage at Babushka — at Holden Gibson — at Vladimir. He struggled too — trying to move and tear a hole for himself in this dark place where he’d fallen There was nothing to tear, though. For a long time — days or weeks or hours or minutes — Alexei grasped at unyielding dark — at absence. Then, for a time, he could hear things: music — laughter — dance.

Dance.

Was this the thing that Orlovsky, the Koldun had promised? A dance in the village?

After everything he’d learned, Alexei wasn’t sure he wanted to go near this dance. No. He was sure, in fact, that he didn’t want to go there.

Not, at any rate, to fulfill Babushka’s plans for him.

If he were to be trapped in a void — well so be it.

So Alexei settled back. And as he did, he detected substance in the firmament beneath him — cold rock. There was a faint glow too — a pinkish glow that surrounded him, filled his vision.

Or not precisely his vision. Alexei did a thing with his eyelids, and suddenly he saw —

Rising sun.

Pink over distant mountain peaks.

Alexei blinked, and stared up at the vanishing starscape. The distant peaks.

“More memory,” he spat.

Just what he needed. Alexei got up and started walking.