When Night Falls

part ii| chapter vii

CLEVER GIRLS DON'T find themselves in the midst of debts. Clever girls don't scheme against wicked, powerful demons either. But Anitchka thinks herself to be quite clever as she wanders across the mansion, the mirrors of disillusionment throwing hundreds of reflections at her. The goblins follow her like a herd of ravens, looming close enough to catch her talking, and leaning closer to reveal her secrets. "Mistress, did you like your room?"

Anitchka turns behind, tucking her hair away. "I did." It is the truth, for the warm bed and the opulence of this grand mansion is more than anything she could have dreamed of. She wonders if she should be worried that the company of ancient beasts and fantastical creatures is the closest she has felt to not being alone. 

She should have been worried.

After her apprenticeship with the Count, she had been whisked to the winding staircase of a tall tower, the stone slabs at its sides a reprieve from the enchantment of mirrors. There, the imposing wood doors had been pushed, the handle tricky for it hadn't been used in a long time. Anitchka had wondered who its last occupant was. Its arching windows faced the back of the mansion, the lands beyond it full of trees and shrubs blanketed by sleet. Her attendants, the goblins, had handed her warmer clothing, ones that were lined with fur, and she took them graciously. She wouldn't allow the cold to eat her up. 

Dmitri claws against her shoulder, prompting her to turn and twist through the halls. He leads her to the backdoor, behind a kitchen that houses creatures she has seen and unseen. Flowing white beards touch their ankles, their eyes drooping with wrinkles at the corners, not from old age, but from the curious doings of enchantment. They garble as a stove boils with broth, and snipe, and spite, and screech with laughter. "A girl from the land of the Tsar," they crackle, banging pots and pans against the walls until the noise is unbearable. 

She quickly shuts the door behind her, ears ringing. Snow falls on her like a reassuring hand, settling on the ends of her hair. Her boots, the warm, sturdy ones that Olga had given her, sink into the ground. Anitchka trudges forward. "Where are we going, Dmitri?"

"Somewhere death cannot find us," he says, flapping his wings. "Olga, Helga, hold up the lanterns once we enter the woods, will you?"

And so the odd party of two goblins, one bat, and a girl from the kingdom of the Tsar, make their way towards the foreboding forest. Anitchka shuffles towards the trunks of the thickest, most twisted of trees. She crouches when the branches overhead snap at her, and skips over the ancient roots as they reach to stumble her. 

Helga holds a lantern she had been clutching, the glow of the fire eerie on the bone of her mask. It is nearly impossible for Anitchka to tell the goblin girls apart from their bone faces, save their difference in height. "I hear them, Dmitri."

So does Anitchka. She listens to the whispers of the trees, this part of the forest so entangled with gnarled trunks and branches, that from the underside, she can't see winter. A canopy of fruit bearing trees stretch over her, their edges leaning with blossoms impossible in the cold. "I thought the forest was dead," she mutters in a daze, the sickly sweet fragrance of fruit lingering in the air, cut only by the bitter ice in the wind. "It looked dead."