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PAV
Pav and his two sisters had laid Anton’s body to rest in the back of Ionna’s property. The burial of sorts took place in front of a large Sequoia tree, while Pav’s sixteenth birthday had come and gone. He’d known Anton wouldn’t have wanted to be buried at the family home where the memory of their parents had been. He would want to be with them, now that Pav and his sisters were going to stay at Ionna’s home permanently.
It had been two weeks since his brother’s death, and Pav only wanted to be alone. He’d shut everyone out, including Polina. However, there was one person who wouldn’t escape his thoughts—Maryska. He needed to find her.
After he’d shown Yeva the teacup, she said there was nothing they could do. Maryska was gone, and the Enforcers never cared about a dead whore, much less a dead whore who had been the son of a criminal. Yeva knew going on a blind hunt would get them nowhere. In the end, she said they must trust that someday Maryska would get what was coming to her.
Pav didn’t buy into that.
The four new walls—of his new bedroom, in his new home, with his new feathered mattress that was his and his only—felt as if they would close in on him. He should have been pleased about having a room to himself for the first time in his life, but he wasn’t. Sharing a bed with his older brother didn’t seem like such a terrible thing anymore.
He brought the bottle of wine, that he’d taken from the cellar, to his lips and took another slow sip. It was intended for him to celebrate the glorious turn of events of their family leaving their rickety cottage and arriving at a new paradise.
Leaning his head back on the foot of the bed, he clacked the glass bottle against the wood floor and ran a hand through his hair. He wanted to rip out his curls and feel more of a physical pain than an emotional one. The walls surrounding him seemed to whisper Maryska’s name over and over and over again.
“Pav, it’s time for dinner,” Yeva called from the dining room.
He didn’t feel like eating dinner—he felt like hunting down a murderess. Food used to be his favorite aspect about life. Now, he wanted to stay in his room and drink his thoughts away, until they became nothing. Until he became nothing.
When Papa had passed, he hadn’t been as destroyed as he was now. He knew he should take charge the way Anton and Yeva had when Papa died. But he wasn’t Anton, and he wasn’t Yeva. He was Pav. The person who could make people laugh. Now, it seemed even that ability was fading.
“Pavla!” Yeva’s voice grew nearer.
She swung open the door without knocking and found Pav hunched on the floor. Her eyes were red-rimmed and her hair mussed, as though she’d just been crying as well.
“I’m not hungry.” He lifted his head to look at her, and the world tipped sideways.
“Are you drinking?” Yeva marched over to him and picked up the glass bottle from the floor. “The whole thing is practically empty.”
“So?” Frowning, he brought his knees to his chest and curled his arms around them.
“So? This isn’t like you.”
“I don’t know who I am.” The wine was making him act overly dramatic.
She let out a sigh and flattened a hand against her chest. “You’re Pav. You’re my brother. And you’re Tasha’s brother.”
Moisture beaded his lashes. “I’m not Anton’s brother anymore?”
Yeva sank down to the floor beside Pav and wrapped her arm around his shoulders, tightening her grip. “You will always be Anton’s brother, but we have to keep living. Anton wouldn’t want you to sit here and wither away.”
She was right, and Pav understood that she could still accomplish things through her sadness, but he wasn’t built like her. Death changed things, especially when it took the one person in the world he was closest to.
“What about Tasha?” she asked, stroking his hair like when he was a child. “You’re the closest to her along with Anton, and you don’t want to make it seem as though she has lost two brothers. Do you?”
“No.” He loved his little sister, and he didn’t want the way he felt to rub off on her.
“She hasn’t read a book since he died.”
Pav pulled out from Yeva’s grasp to look at her. “Perhaps because Anton always read to her at night.”
“I’m not asking you to take his place.” She paused and sniffed. “But why don’t you try reading to her?”
It was the least he could do. Something he should have already been doing.
“I will.”
His little sister needed him, and he shouldn’t be selfish about that, but his thoughts were jumbled.
“How about I bring dinner in here for you this once, so you can come back to yourself? I don’t want you stumbling and falling on the way to the table.”
A pitiful chuckle escaped Pav, and Yeva wrapped her arms around him again. “That sounds more like my little brother. Next time you sneak a wine bottle, don’t drink so much, all right?”
“All right.”
Yeva went out of the room and moments later returned with a plate of food—steaming turkey seasoned with garlic, lush strawberries, grapes, and buttered rolls—before leaving to eat her own meal.
Pav wasn’t completely drunk, but his head was a bit fuzzy as he popped a plump grape into his mouth. After three more pieces of fruit, his stomach released a nauseated rumble. He ran to the window, hung his head over the edge, and let his stomach empty. It wasn’t only the wine that had made him feel sick but also everything else going on.
Even though Pav wanted to finish his meal for his sister, he couldn’t, not that night. He scraped the helpings from his plate over the ledge to the grass below.
Pav set the plate on the floor beside his bed and decided to lay down on the mattress until his head grew clearer.
His eyes pressed shut, and he remained half in between sleep and consciousness, constant images of his dead brother floating through his mind. Alive Anton, dead Anton, Anton’s rotten corpse decaying beneath the ground in front of the Sequoia tree. There was even one with him pleading below the ground to dig him back out, because he wasn’t really dead. He had never been dead.
Pav’s eyes flicked open. “All right, that’s enough resting for now.” He shook the images away and sat up in bed.
A small whimpering reverberated through the wall from the room beside his—Tasha. His head wasn’t as dizzy, and he hated himself for having ignored his younger sister during their grief. He headed toward her bedroom, finding the door already cracked open.
“Tasha?” Pav asked in a low voice.
She kept silent and held back her sobs, yet a soft squeak slipped out.
“Tasha, may I come in?”
“I suppose.” Her meek voice sounded unsure.
Pav opened the door the remainder of the way and stepped into her room. “Where are Yeva and Ionna?”
The candle beside Tasha’s bed displayed her tear-streaked face. “They’re playing chess in the sitting room.”
“You didn’t want to join in or read?”
She rolled to her side, tucking a hand behind her head. “No.”
As if he was approaching a frightened animal, he slowly took a seat on the bed and lay down beside her. “I know Anton used to read you stories before bed, but what if I tell you some? Brand new and amazing tales told by yours truly—me.”
Tasha giggled and a light cluck came from the other side of the bed.
“What was that?” Pav asked and dove to the edge of the mattress, leaning his head over to find black and white feathers. Juju was nestled in a nest of hay. He turned his head to his sister. “You brought the chicken inside?”
“Only at night.” She smiled in a way that made him think she probably had the hen in there more often than that.
“Yeva is going to be mad if she goes on the floor.” He’d like to see her reaction, actually.
“I don’t know, she likes that Juju lays eggs quite often.”
“I’ll act as though Juju was never here.” He pretended to lock his lips together as he smiled and lay back down beside her, straightening the rough pillow. “Are you ready for the story?”
Quietly, she nodded and rolled to face him.
He cleared his throat—twice—before beginning his original piece. “There once was a little girl with wild curly hair the color of tree bark, with hidden gold streaks that shone underneath the sun.”
“This is about me, isn’t it?” she asked.
“Shh. You aren’t the only girl who has curly hair.” He took a dark lock, pulling the curl and watching it spring back. “Now, no interruptions.” Pav continued, “The one thing that always brightened this girl’s day was to read.”
Tasha gave him a knowing look and smiled.
“But more than anything, she wanted to live in the stars. She would reach as far as she could, never able to find her way to them. So, she climbed to the roof of her cottage and reached as high as she could, but the stars only twinkled in reply.
“Next, she went to the center of her village, deep into the woods, carrying her favorite book along the way.” He paused to glance at her and winked. “One with dragons.
“There, in the middle of the forest, stood a tree like no other that led to the clouds. The little girl traveled up each branch without looking down, for fear she would give up. When she reached the top, she still couldn’t touch the beams of lights.
“But then she remembered her book and opened it to read to them because everyone loves a story, even the stars. They answered her with a rapid twinkle, and out of the book flew a dragon with scales so blue they were almost as black as the night. A soft sheen slicked its skin that sparkled under the moonlight, as if its scales were made of the stars themselves.
“The dragon circled the top of the tree and hovered in front of the girl, flapping its wings, waiting for her to hop aboard its back. She was not afraid of the flying creature as she climbed onto its back without hesitation. The dragon then flew her all the way up to the shimmering stars. And you know what she did next?”
“What?” Tasha asked, her eyelids starting to drift closed.
“She wrote Tasha in the stars.” He grinned, swiping his hand across the pretend sky.
Smiling in return, his sister closed her eyes, then. “Thank you, Pav. That’s the best story you’ve ever told me.”
“It’s the only story I’ve ever told you,” he whispered and kissed the top of her curls.
“Goodnight.”
“Goodnight, baby bean.” To call her by her nickname reminded him of Anton, and perhaps that wasn’t such a terrible thing.
When Tasha had been born, she’d been so small. Anton had said she reminded him of a tiny bean because he could hold her with one hand.
He shut Tasha’s door behind him and padded into the sitting room. Yeva lay wrapped in Ionna’s arms while they rested in front of the hearth, watching as the flames crackled. Ionna kissed Yeva’s cheek, and the moment seemed a little too intimate for Pav.
By softening his footsteps, he attempted to sneak past them toward the front door. Yeva must have heard him anyway.
“Pav? Where are you going?”
“I’m going to visit Polina before I go to bed. It won’t take long for me to walk there and back.” Polina’s home was only down the hill from Ionna’s.
“Pav...” Judgment tinged her voice.
“It’s not that kind of visit, Yeva. I only want to apologize to her for my behavior.”
She nodded in understanding. “All right, but be careful.”
“Take a lantern with you,” Ionna called.
He did as she said, taking one from the doorway as he stumbled out of the house. Outside, the dark sky hugged the village, and the light guided him, all the way to Polina’s cottage.
The air was stagnant, but the smell of citrus fruit invaded his nostrils. Pav angled his head to his old cottage, his chest tightening at the sight. It felt unusual that Anton wouldn’t be there if he walked through the door. Shaking the thoughts away before they led to an endless path of depressing images, he made his way to the back of Polina’s cottage.
Lowering the lantern toward the dirt, he lifted several small gray pebbles into his palm. He tossed one at Polina’s window, and a soft clinking answered back. No other response came. He threw another one a little harder.
The curtains drew to the side. A candle with a bright flickering flame highlighted the window, along with the silhouette of a person.
Polina opened the window, her red hair knitted with heaps of shredded white cloth.
“What’s in your hair?” he asked, taking a step closer to her.
“Is that the first question you ask when you haven’t spoken to me in two weeks?” Polina’s full lips were pursed into a thin line, her gaze settling on his hand. “And why are you throwing pebbles at my window when you could have easily tapped it with your finger?”
“Can I not be a romantic? Prove to you the error of my ways, my beauty.” He reached out and touched one of the strips of fabric in her hair.
She rolled her eyes and huffed. “Not everyone can have natural curls like you, Pav.” She stuck out a hand and pulled on one of his strawberry blond locks.
“Ow, you wound me.” He moved her hand from his hair and slipped his palm into hers, intertwining their fingers.
“I did not pull hard.” She tried to hide a smile.
“Does that mean you forgive me?”
“Of course, I forgive you,” Polina said, watching him with a sad expression. “You know you can talk to me anytime, and if you need to be alone, all you have to do is say so.”
“Now I can ease myself into slumber.” He gently squeezed her fingers. “Otherwise, I would have been thinking about you all night.”
“Goodnight, Pav.” She laughed, pulling her hand out of his grasp to close the window.
“A kiss?” His body hit the wall of the cottage.
She didn’t hesitate as she pressed her lips against his.
After leaving Polina’s house, the citrus odor in the air seemed to follow Pav, reminding him of the mixture of oranges and something else he’d inhaled at Maryska’s. An idea struck him as the thirst to find her grew once more. He may not be able to find her on his own, but what if he could find someone who could lead him to her? What if there was a way to question Anton, even though he was dead?
