THE BEHOLDER
I hailed my godmother from the top of Baba Yaga’s tower and told her all that had happened. She wept, but my eyes were dry as I looked out over the city the rebels had saved. And I had been allowed to help. To be part of a day so, so worth writing about.
I overheard Fritz and Gretel talking, too, that day. They didn’t bother with code names, and they didn’t seem to hear me, though I tried to speak to them.
Maximilian had been dispossessed, and Fritz was now the hertsoh. Leirauh went home to her sisters.
I hoped Katz Castle could come to life again, the way Fritz had dreamed of it. We saw it with every passing hour in Stupka-Zamok, the new city rising from the ashes of the tower the rebels had laid low with the powder and guns Gretel had sent them.
Bear and his knights, Aleksei, and Hermódr remained behind to continue supporting negotiations. I bid them goodbye beside the river, one after the other, embracing them each tightly as Torden and I moved down their line.
To Hermódr: “Come and see us soon.” He pushed up his glasses and returned the offer.
To Aleksei: “Spasibo.”
He grinned at me, and it was a natural smile. Whole and unsullied by cynicism. “Farewell, Zolushka.” He punched Torden gently. “We’re going to have words over how you’ve stolen my bride, brother.” Torden laughed, long and loud.
To Bear: “Safe travels home.”
Bear held out his hand. “Friends?”
“Always,” I said, pulling him into a hug. “And Potomac and England will always be, after this.”
“Always,” he agreed.
“Study hard at Oxford.” I smiled, a little jealous.
Bear nodded.
Lang stood a little apart from the others. He hadn’t been aboard yet.
I swallowed hard. “You got what you fought for.” I looked around. “All this—this is what you worked for.”
“I did,” Lang said. “I got everything I wanted.”
But his words were a lie, and his eyes told the truth.
He had lied to me, and I had undercut him. We had cared for one another, and we had competed with one another. We were lucky to be standing here, together, alive.
But the hollow sadness in his face haunted me like a story with no ending. I couldn’t give Lang what he wanted, and there was nothing either of us could do about it.
“You aren’t coming back with us,” I finally said. Not a question.
Lang didn’t deny it. “What for?”
My arms went tightest around him. I didn’t know what to say. “You promised to keep me safe,” I said. “You haven’t delivered me back yet.”
“You don’t need me anymore to keep you safe.” His dark eyes cut to Torden.
Torden wasn’t what had changed in me. But if Lang had understood that, everything would have been different between us to begin with.
“It should be Yu, staying behind,” Lang finally said, nodding at the doctor a few feet away. “He healed your cook. He got Zhōng Guó back on its feet. He’d be perfect to help get this place running again.” He paused. “I’m just a smuggler.”
I shook my head, vehement. “You’re the zŏngtŏng’s representative here, as much as Yu is.”
Lang swallowed. “We both know why I can’t go back, Selah. There was the job, and there was you. And now the job is done, and you . . .” Lang fell silent, and I lifted a hand to his shoulder.
Breath and wanting rose up in me, fierce and protective.
“Someday,” I said, swallowing hard. “Someday, we’ll find each other again. Someday when we can be friends, when all that is just an old story we tell people.” I gritted my teeth a little.
“Maybe,” Lang said dubiously.
“For sure,” I insisted. I lifted my storybook, nodded at the radio we both knew was inside. “Keep an ear out.”
I stuck out my hand, and Lang shook it.
“Here’s to the next great adventure,” he said.
And then we went our separate ways.
We climbed the gangplank of the ship, my feet keeping time with the pounding of my heart.
Home. Home. Home.
Up in the rigging, Cobie loosened the lines, and Basile and Vishnu raised the anchor, cheering as it came loose from the riverbed.
“Homeward!” Basile hollered, grin broad as the horizon.
I spun around in a circle, shouting along with them, and Anya caught my hand and twirled me around until I was dizzy.
Skop, our new captain, manned the helm as the current carried us downriver, sunset light filtering through the sails and the birches along the riverbank.
Home.
I skimmed my hands over the tops of my plants, feeling the health of their leaves, closing my eyes as I pushed into the galley. And when I opened my eyes I burst into a laugh.
Wash, whose real name had turned out to be Märyäm, was standing over the stove, trying to explain to Will how to pinch dumplings closed so they wouldn’t leak. These weren’t the pelmeni we’d made in Baba Yaga’s kitchens; she called these chebureki.
Aleksei had helped us ask her yesterday if she wanted to stay in Yotunkheym, or if we could help her go somewhere else.
She told us her home—the place she’d been captured from twelve years before—was a peninsula downriver. She agreed to let us take her there.
I might not have been allowed to use the stove, but Märyäm had taken over without hesitating. She’d set Will to work rolling and chopping while she stuffed the chebureki with beef and onions and parsley and fried them in oil. The galley smelled like comfort, drenched in golden light from the lamps and Will’s happy laughter as he tried to follow Märyäm’s orders. Tears filled my eyes again.
Märyäm put her hands on her hips. “Do not cry,” she insisted.
I shook my head, swallowing. “I’m happy,” I insisted. “These are happy tears.”
Märyäm passed me a handkerchief and I wiped my eyes. “Do not cry,” she said again gently. Then she pointed at the sink, piled high with dirty flatware and plates and the rolling pin, and winked at me. “You. Wash.”
We all ate together in the galley, huddling together beneath the lamps. Will had made stew to go with Märyäm’s chebureki, and Perrault brought me a second bowl when I devoured my first in a few bites.
Torden ate three helpings of dinner and tried patiently again and again to tie the knot Vishnu demonstrated.
“No, like this,” Vishnu said, nimbly untying the rope and showing him once more.
Beneath the galley lamps, I saw red was growing back in at the roots of Torden’s hair.
I leaned against his shoulder and breathed him in, overwhelmed again that he was beside me.
He had asked Alfödr, and his father had agreed that he should go with me. Rihttá had given him her every blessing. Torden was coming to Potomac.
He would be at my back when I faced Alessandra again. When I defended my father. When I met my little brother or sister for the first time.
Cobie had told me I floated just fine on my own. But Torden was the one I wanted beside me as I soldiered forward.
No one balked when Torden took Skop’s old bunk belowdecks; he fit in among the crew so naturally. Skop had moved into Lang’s old quarters, and Anya stayed in my room. But that night, even with Anya curled up warm beside me, I couldn’t sleep.
I climbed the stairs with my book. My godmother’s voice was silent inside its binding, but I reveled in the smooth leather wrapped around words that I could drink as I pleased, that no one could take from me.
Out on deck, Basile and Jeanne were deep in conversation beneath the mainmast. Märyäm prayed softly, her head covered, her eyes turned east.
I climbed to the forecastle and met Homer at the helm. He rubbed one eye.
“Tired?”
“Eyes aren’t what they were,” he said a little gruffly.
“Want me to take over?” I asked.
Homer scowled a little, then nodded at the helm. “Go on. Ought to have taught you already, anyway.”
The night grew deep as Homer and I pored over his star charts and nautical almanacs. I steered and he gestured at the map and at the sky, illuminating the constellations I already knew and those I didn’t, teaching me how to find true north with Polaris.
“But all you have to do for now is follow the river.” Homer crossed his hands over his chest, squinting out at the night. “Can you hold course?”
The way was clear before me. I was as awake as I’d ever been.
I nodded.
“I’ll relieve you at dawn,” he said.
Homer left me to the quiet of the water washing the ship and the stars wheeling overhead. But I was only alone for moment.
I knocked on one of the barrels beside the helm and gestured for him to sit, just as Lang had done so many months before. But Torden stood behind me instead, wrapping his arms around me and fitting his chin above my head.
“You weren’t in your room,” he said. “You’re restless.”
I swallowed. “I’ve done everything I set out to do.”
Torden dipped his head, and I stole a glance sideways at him. “Selah.”
His earnest gaze told me I couldn’t hide from him. And I didn’t want to.
I had held him together, and let him lean on my shoulder, and he would do the same for me.
“I’m afraid for my father,” I said softly. “I’m afraid I’ve wasted too much time away from him. He would understand, but—”
But what if he’s gone before I return? What if he can’t speak, or doesn’t know me?
I took a long breath, and Torden held me tighter. I thumbed the tattoo inside his wrist, and he reached with his other hand to angle my engagement ring toward the light of the moon.
It sparkled on my left-hand ring finger, where he had placed it for the third and final time the day Baba Yaga’s house fell. It was exactly where it belonged.
“You took a risk,” Torden said. “You chose to help people protect themselves. I did the same.” He looked down at me. “You’re becoming everything a leader should be. I’m so proud of you, elskede. And your father will be, as well.”
Now all I had to do was follow the path of the river, like Homer had told me. The stars were so, so bright above, and the one I loved was warm and safe at my back.
I had come of my own accord. And now, of my own accord, I would go home.