Red Winter

1

The village cowered with doors closed and windows shuttered. The street was empty. The cold air was quiet.

Kashtan sidestepped beneath me, shaking her head and blowing hard through flared nostrils. I leaned forward and rubbed her neck. ‘You feel it too, girl?’

There should have been voices. A dog barking. Women coming in from the field. There should have been children, but I heard only the wind in the forest behind and the murmur of the river before me.

I stayed in the trees and watched the village, but nothing moved.

‘You think they’re hiding from us?’ I spoke to my brother. ‘Or do you think… ?’ I stared at the back of his head and let my words trail away. ‘I promised to get you home, Alek. Look.’ I raised my eyes once more and studied the log-built izbas across the river. ‘Home.’ But there was no light in any of the windows.

Kashtan moved again, something making her uneasy.

‘Come on.’ I nudged her forward into the water. ‘Let’s have a look.’

I knew I should have waited until dark, but I’d been travelling a long time. For days we had kept to the trees to avoid the colourful armies that had battled over our country in civil war since the revolution, and now the people from my dreams needed to be made real. I had to reassure myself that my family wasn’t an illusion; that I hadn’t imagined them just to give everything a purpose.

Somewhere a crow called into the darkening afternoon and I snatched my head up in the direction of the sound. For a moment I saw nothing; then a black shape rose from the bare fingers of the tallest tree behind the houses. It wheeled and dived, skimming the wooden roofs before it passed over me and disappeared from view. I took one hand from the reins and rested it on my thigh, close to the revolver in my pocket. The mare faltered, reluctant to enter the cold river, but I encouraged her into the shallows, where she struggled to find her footing on the stones below. I pressed her on until my boots were soaked through, but as the water swelled round my knees, leaching my warmth and carrying it away towards the lake, Kashtan tossed her head and stopped in the deepest part as if she had come to an unseen barrier. She wanted to turn, to be away from here. She had scented something that troubled her.

‘What is it?’ I said, looking at Alek, but he gave no answer. ‘Come on, girl.’ I spurred Kashtan into motion. ‘Don’t give up on me now.’

We came out onto the bank close to the windmill and passed beneath the sails, leaving a dark, wet trail in our wake. Kashtan’s hooves were hollow on the hardened dirt of the track, and her breathing was heavy, the two sounds falling into rhythm as we walked between the izbas and onto the road cutting through the village.

Once there, we stopped and waited, the cold air biting at my legs.

‘Hello?’

My voice was dead and out of place.

‘Hello? It’s us. Nikolai and…’

I waited a while longer, watching, but nothing stirred, so I swung my leg over and dismounted. The sound was abrasive in the silence, and as soon as I was down, I stopped still, listening. I scanned the houses, wondering if anyone was watching me from the hush behind the closed doors. I glanced back at the forest, the trees black against the bruised sky, and thought perhaps I had been too eager to leave its protection. I had spent many days in there and now I felt exposed. But although it had hidden me well, the forest was a forbidding place that made it easy to believe in demons.

‘Hello?’ I called again, but still there was no answer. Doors and windows remained closed. ‘It’s Nikolai and Alek Levitsky.’ My voice was flat and without echo. ‘You can come out. We won’t harm you.’

With a deepening sense of unease, I drew my revolver and led Kashtan to my home, moving slowly. I hitched the reins round the fence and put a hand to her muzzle. ‘Stay here,’ I whispered, before forcing myself to look up at Alek. ‘I’ll come back for you in a minute,’ I told him. ‘We’re home now.’

The front door was closed but unbolted. It yielded to my first push, opening in to the gloom inside.

‘Marianna?’

The click of my boot heels was obtrusive on the wooden floor. I took a deep breath, expecting the smell of home, but instead there was something else. Not explicit, but a faint smell of decay that lingered in my nostrils.

‘Marianna?’

I had imagined the pich would be alight – the clay oven was the heart of our home, the place to cook, and the source of heat in winter. There would be bread baking in its furnace. Marianna would be smiling at Pavel, who would be playing with the little wooden figures my father had carved for me when I was a boy. Our eldest son, Misha, would be carrying logs in from outside. I had hoped for the warmth of a fire on an early winter evening, the faint lilt of a garmoshka being played in one of the other izbas.

But I found none of those things. No warmth. No life. Nothing.

The house was empty.