"WHERE ARE WE GOING tonight?" Anitchka asks, warm under the layers of her deep blue coat, its fur lining running from the collar to the end of the material. She has donned earrings, the silver of it like delicate vines twirling until it hangs in the form of a crescent moon on her collarbone. It is exquisite. But it tightens a knot in her stomach.
The coach jolts as it hurries over uneven ground, and she braces herself. "Who are we meeting?"
"Someone important, Anna," the Collector says in a clipped tone, tugging gloves onto his hands, his thin fingers concealed immediately in black leather.
She mutters under her breath. "I figured as much."
"I heard that."
"It was meant to be heard, Sir." Her gaze wanders to the night sky, lingering there with a sinking feeling. Anitchka faintly remembers watching it from her windows when she lived amidst the living and not among the dead. It is a time that is spiraling towards being forgotten, and she clutches desperately at the blurred memories. Briefly, she traces the outline of the trees and wonders whether they have aged since she left. After all, every second her eyes flutter shut, something changes in the land of living. She hears the Collector – perhaps she should call him the Count for a while since he wears those features tonight – clear his throat.
When she refuses to turn, he sighs. "I take it that you are upset." Silence greets him, so he continues, "It's understandable. I'm afraid I cannot tell you who has requested my services, but I assure you I am just as put off by this as you are."
His disappointment in reaping intrigues her, and Anitchka thinks hard. An enemy of the demon is an ally to her, so she decides to tread her chances carefully. "Very well, why are you unhappy with this certain . . . deal?" When his gaze fixates on her, narrowing suspiciously, she hurries, "I thought settling debts was important."
"It is," he agrees, "Although it's unfortunate that I cannot refuse anyone."
"Is that why you helped my mother that night?" The crooked moon of her earring shivers against her skin, rattling.
The Count looks away. Dressed in black with ringlets of gold swirling at the shoulder pads of his coat and smattering along the tip of his cap, he appears a dashing young man. Yet he is anything but that. "Yes, that is why I helped your mother that night."
Anitchka drums her fingers, holding back all the things she wants to ask. She can't tell whether he is being impartial in his honesty or letting lies slip through his teeth. "Will you ever tell me what truly happened?"
"We're here."
She balks. Once more, she has forgotten to watch the path they were taking. Once more, she's slipped before the demon. Anitchka considers seizing him by the collar and demanding the truth from his jaw, tearing it from his throat. The power that settles on her shoulders speaks to her. It urges her to wring his pleas and bury them in the snow. But she doesn't. Instead, she bites her tongue and hushes a gasp.
It's the palace, the Tsar's palace, decked in all the splendor of dusted gold under a charcoal sky. When the coach pulls towards the gates, Anitchka feels as though the shimmering light illuminates her skin through the windows. She clenches the fabric of her coat, fingers stilling when the Count's gloved hand skims hers lightly. "The Tsar can be surprising."
Anitchka holds her breath. She watches the guards, and then it dawns on her that they are unmoving, their gaze glassy. They wear death, but their hearts beat underneath. "Close your eyes, dorogoya." She does not know what to expect as their coach slides through the heavy metal gates, disappearing through the bars. Instead, she reaches for the Count's elbow, her fingers digging tighter. She had nearly expected the gates to cut through her bones and snap them clean. "It's always unnerving the first time."
She risks an upward glance. "The first time?"
"Surely you didn't believe that I have been a Collector forever," he says, tipping his head.
"What do you mean?"
The Count leans close, the grin on his face ridiculously large. His captivating irises begin to bleed of ink, rattling and rolling until they are little black beads. Jagged teeth peek pointedly. "Oh, don't you know," he whispers, closer, "You're dreaming, Anitchka." The voice of the kikimora hisses through his tongue, forking over her. And then she wakes up screaming, the pressure on her chest refusing to shift. The creature is hunched over her, cackling as the moss of its clothes droop on her arms like a curtain from the forest floor. Anitchka thrashes her arms against the sheets, kicking furiously. It is Olga that she sees first, the goblin pushing the weight of the kikimora from atop her. "Mistress, Mistress, are you alright?"
Helga holds the kikimora's needle arms, and it doubles with a screech. "I remember keeping a broom in your room to have them stay away." She scans the periphery. Anitchka cannot see through her bone mask and her own eyes are blurry as she raises her hand to her heart, heaving. "Mistress, you've put it away."
The kikimora snaps, unwinding herself free. She points a long, sharp fingernail at Anitchka, beady eyes glinting. "I showed you what you wanted to see, girl."
She breathes hard, the nightmare, the dream, whatever that figment of imagination was, still reeling within her. Her gasps are ragged, ribs burning, and her head spinning. "I–"
"You asked me!" The kikimora stomps her foot on the floor with a thud. "Now you know something you weren't supposed to. I told you what you'd asked for."
"And this is not how I expected to know." Anitchka glares at her. "I fed you, and this is how you owe me?"
Olga stands at the bedside, hands clasped. "What would the Mistress require of a kikimora that she couldn't have from us?"
"Tut, tut, tut, little girl of deceit and lies, whatever will the Master of this mansion think," come the taunts, and she grits her teeth, imagining herself pushing the creature from the window. Perhaps she should demand obedience from the kikimora just as she had from the demons in the woods. The Count was right. These creatures, wicked and haunting, are not be trusted with their means. Trickery runs through their veins.
Anitchka mulls over what the kikimora said in her sleep, and a shiver snakes through her spine. Pulling herself from the bed, she opens the embossed wood doors of her wardrobe. The softest of silks and satins, and the most delicate of laces brushes her skin. She feels the kikimora slide beside her, making noises of disapproval. "You understand don't you, Anitchka?"
She doesn't answer, so the creature bristles instead. "I'm helping you only because I want you out of our lands, out of our kingdom. This is no place for the living."
"I believe you made that clear when you used your magic and terrified me tonight," Anitchka says, deciding on a dress of heavy midnight with dark lace trimmings. She waves her hand, the one which misses a finger, and smiles maliciously. "The demons have done me much worse. I thought I was escaping the fate of lying dead in the snow, hungry and alone. But I suppose, dead girls are meant for this kingdom, and the starved ones push through the living until they meet the same end." She disappears behind the dressing screen in the room, discarding her night gown in favour of the dress. When she emerges, her back to the windows, dark clouds are gathering in foreboding. They cluster, sending a shock of thunder through them. Lightning flashes, momentarily ripping a ghostly vision of white behind Anitchka.
She sweeps past her goblin attendants, and though she cannot decipher their expressions, she feels their discomfort. "How old is the world now?"
"Your country exists no more, Mistress."
"Was it ever there?" Anitchka pores through her jewellery boxes, stopping short abruptly. She raises a pair of earrings, beautiful as though cut from the moon itself. The soft light catches the silver of its crescent, and she lets her fingertips run streaks of gold through it. From the corner of her eye, she sees the kikimora grin, and the lines between what is real and unreal begin to blur. It's always unnerving the first time. "Why?"
Olga steps forward. "Should we accompany you?"
She shakes her head. "No. Where – where is he?"
"In the room where you made your first deal with him."
It's different running through the hallway of mirrors in the dead of the night. Firelight flickers at the corners, a mixture of the hollow reflections of a thousand Anitchkas, all the same, all as troubled, all as unsure. She rushes through the glittering images, clothed in aristocracy yet reeking of nothingness. The Count is not expecting her when she pushes past the doors, striding in to face him.
His gaze is trained outside at the rising storm, the snow a layered mass of pristine. Anitchka catches the shake of his shoulders, so unrefined in contrast to the front he has upheld for long. "Have a seat, Anna," he says smoothly, and a plush chair slides across the floor to reach her. "Don't stand on my account." The fireplace swirls, the hues illuminated across the tapestries on the walls, its shadows falling and rising in wicked shapes. But it is the Count who bathes in the darkness, stitched from the deepest part of the shadows. He turns, taking three brief steps forward, and she finds herself searching his features. "What is it," he asks, leaning to level their eyes, "that brings you here?"
It's always unnerving the first time.
"Whenever," Anitchka begins, staring behind him at the darkened skies, "I've asked you about what happened the night my mother died, you've avoided the question." He attempts to say something, but she holds a hand to silence him. "I thought it was because you didn't want me to know."
The Count retreats, nearing the fireplace, his hands clasped at his back. "There certainly are things you shouldn't know, yes."
"Of course. You gave me a kingdom of ice for a home," she mutters, eyes empty and hollow, "And built me a prison from it." Anitchka walks towards him, and he finally looks at her, caught in the tussle between the blues of the storm and the yellows of the fire.
His voice breaks, so faint, yet she catches it. "It seems to me that you loathe it as much as I do."
She hesitates for a brief moment. Anitchka leans her forehead against his shoulder, catching his sudden intake of breath. "Was that not the deal, Count? Steal a girl from the snow and cage her in your insufferable debt."
It is then that she feels him move, his head turning towards her, lips whispering in her hair like the faintest brush of winter. "There is always a price for magic, whether we want it or not, Anitchka."
Her eyes flutter shut. "You're saying this isn't what you wanted all along?"
"No," the demon's voice is heavy with regret, the quietness weighing it down as the snow rages a tempestuous storm outside, "I've told you of greed and what becomes of wanting too much, didn't I, Anna?"
She lifts her head from his shoulder, watching the light from the fireplace drench him in a cherry glow. It casts those long shadows on him, the kind that rakes in all the darkness in the room, flickering softly in this endless cold. "It wasn't you when my mother was dying, was it?"
The Collector freezes. "What do you mean?"
It's always unnerving the first time.
"You're not the first Collector, there have been many before you," Anitchka speaks, as close to him as one can be to a demon steeped in ice, "And you're carrying a deal that was made, but it's not yours."
a/n: i jammed to south-indian songs while writing this even though i'd made a whole playlist to go with the story's theme. on a side note, grad school is no joke and i'm mostly working my way through assignments.