The Midnight Land: Part Two: The Gift (The Zemnian Trilogy Book 2) Read online

  “As it is still winter, we will hold our evening prayer in the common room, sister,” she was told. “It will begin soon.” Her guide’s voice held no note of command, but she also made it clear that of course Slava would want to attend the evening prayer, and so Slava said she would be delighted to join them. Which is why she soon found herself making her cautious way back to the common room without a candle, as there were none in her room.

  The evening prayer lasted for a very long time, and seemed to consist of endless silent kneeling. Slava tried to fix her thoughts on the will of the gods, and when that failed her, on her vision of earlier in the day, but instead her mind wandered terribly. She was afraid she was going to jump up with too much alacrity when the end was finally announced, but by that time the pain in her knees made any sort of jumping, especially jumping with alacrity, entirely out of the question. She hobbled stiffly back to her room, where, despite being in a sanctuary in the heart of the prayer wood, she slept deeply and with only the most faint and ordinary sort of dreams all night.

  ***

  The next morning there was another prayer—of course—followed by breakfast, which was also started by a prayer. When Vlastomila Serafimiyevna came over to Slava after breakfast was finished, Slava braced herself for more praying, but instead, to her grateful if surprised relief, Vlastomila Serafimiyevna suggested that she go to the library.

  “You have a library here?” Slava asked.

  “A library of sacred scrolls, yes,” Vlastomila Serafimiyevna told her. “Where better to start in your search for knowledge? The thought came to me during our morning prayers. I often find my best thoughts strike me at that time—the reward of years of prayer, I suppose. I will call the sister who keeps it, and tell her to find you everything she can on unusual gifts, and unusual interventions by the gods, and…unusual things.”

  Slava was about to say that what she really wished to do was speak with the sorceresses who had taken shelter at the sanctuary, but when she thought about it, she realized that what she really wanted to do was go to the library, and so she agreed, still surprised at how easily she had decided to postpone her mission to speak with sorceresses, but sensing nonetheless that she was making the right choice.

  The library-keeper was a kind-faced woman of at least Slava’s mother’s age, who was delighted to engage in a project of this sort.

  “All most of the sisters want from the library is prayers,” she confided to Slava as they went into the library. It was a room no bigger than Slava’s bedroom, but full of shelves of scrolls. “Prayers and more prayers. Vlastomila Serafimiyevna always tells them that true prayers have to come from the heart, not dusty scrolls on a shelf, but these new priestesses never listen, do they? They have to find things out for themselves, the same as everyone else. But…Oh, here we go. This might be of interest.” The library-keeper pulled out a scroll, and blew the dust off of it before handing it to Slava. “Oh, and this one, and this one. Call me when you’ve finished, and I’ll find more for you. Oh, and take care with the lamp, won’t you? We wouldn’t want to start a fire.”

  Slava promised to be very careful with the lamp, and the chatty library-keeper bustled off. Slava heard her hail someone as soon as she stepped out into the corridor. Slava wondered how she was able to stand the life of the sanctuary, determined as most of her sister priestesses were to remain silent except when at prayer, but she certainly seemed happy enough. Slava decided to stop thinking about other women’s non-existent troubles, and turn her attention to the scrolls.

  The first two were accounts of unexpected appearances of the gods to unsuspecting peasants, and as such, were not very interesting. The third scroll was entitled, “The Story of Our Sister, Lyubov the Nobly-Born, As Told by Our Mother, Yevpraksiya Lyudmilovna.”

  Slava unrolled it without much hope, wondering why the library-keeper had given it to her, other than the fact that she, like Lyubov, was nobly born. She spent a moment speculating how long this search could take her, and whether it was even worth beginning this scroll, and then decided that it least as long as she was reading, she was not engaged in more endless prayer, and started to read:

  The story of Sister Lyubov is so strange that I felt called to write a separate account of it. Sister Lyubov came to us one night in midwinter. She was of very high birth, it was written plain on her face and everything else about her, but when asked, she wouldn’t name her family. “You are all sisters here, are you not?” she asked. “I wish to become your sister too, and leave my old life behind.” Since many sisters say that when they come, we welcomed her to our sanctuary, and asked no more questions.

  Sister Lyubov obeyed all the sanctuary prescripts without complaint, but she was hopeless at any task other than embroidery. We knew from this that she was a very fine lady, but she continued to say nothing of her past.

  Sister Lyubov was a very shy girl. She never looked anyone in the eye, and if someone else tried to look her in the eye, she would like as not flinch away. She cried over the slightest thing, too. It seemed as if she had been born with a much more sensitive spirit than ordinary women. One day I asked her if this was true, and she said, “Yes.” I asked her if she was gifted, and she said, “No, cursed.” I asked her what the curse was, and she said, “To be born with a more sensitive spirit than ordinary women.”

  Soon afterwards, I found out that Sister Lyubov could read minds. Two sisters got in a quarrel over a pair of scissors, and Sister Lyubov knew right away which had stolen them. Then we had a guest, and Sister Lyubov warned us she was up to no good, and that night she tried to rob us. Then Sister Lyubov said that Sister Mariya was ill, and a few hours later, Sister Mariya had a fit. Then many more things happened, which I do not have the time to list here, but Sister Lyubov could read minds, that was soon plain enough. I asked her if she had some magical gift, like a sorceress, and she said no, so I asked her how she could read minds, and she said, “Because I was born with a more sensitive spirit than ordinary women.”

  Sister Lyubov was often troubled by strange dreams where she would become the forest. The more she prayed for deliverance, the more she had the dreams. Then she took to walking out in the prayer wood, but the dreams got even worse, and she started having waking visions too, and hearing voices in her head, and soon she would scream if you even looked at her sideways. Then one day she came to me, and said that the gods had called her. She was shaking all over and crying. I asked her if she was sure, and she said she was, and I could see she was, so I let her go. We never saw her again, except sometimes maybe out of the corner of our eyes when we were walking in the prayer wood, although maybe it was an elk or a bear, we could not be sure. Then many fine women and soldiers came looking for the Tsarinovna, and it turned out Sister Lyubov was the Empress’s daughter, the great-granddaughter of Miroslava Praskovyevna. They said Miroslava Praskovyevna’s blood ran too strong in her, and she was crazy and had run away. They went out into the woods and searched for her, but they never found her, and eventually they went away.

  One day I had a dream, and the gods came and spoke to me in it. They told me that Sister Lyubov was safe in their care, but that someday she must return to the world of women, for her gift was of and for people, not gods. They knew nothing of it. Then one day I heard news that Sister Lyubov had made her way back to Krasnogorod, and her mother had died, and she was now Empress.

  “Lyubov the Kind!” cried Slava in surprise. She had heard the story, of course, many times, but never in that form. As it had been told to her, Lyubov had had a great yearning for a life of contemplation and prayer, and so, with her mother’s blessing, she had dwelt in a sanctuary in the Far North for many years, before returning to assume the Wooden Throne after she had had a vision of her mother’s death. As her name would suggest, she was famed for being kind, not something for which Slava’s foremothers were greatly renowned. It was her kindness, so it was said, that led her to end the practice of slavery in Zem’. But she had also been, Slava remembered, wise. It
was said she could always tell truth from lies, no matter how skilled the liar…Perhaps she, too, was an inheritor of Miroslava Praskovyevna’s double-edged sword…Funny to think of her, Slava, and Miroslava Praskovyevna all linked together by the same gift, if it could be called that…Funny to think…

  “Sister!” Slava called out the corridor. “Sister! Are there more scrolls on Lyubov the Kind?”

  The library-keeper came bustling back from the other end of the corridor, where she had evidently been chatting with someone trying to sweep the floors. “Lyubov the Kind, sister?” she said, puzzled. “Why would we have scrolls on an Empress? Surely Krasnogorod is the place for that.”

  “Yes, but she was here!” Slava cried. “She was a sister in this sanctuary! Look!” She shoved the scroll under the library-keeper’s nose, making her jerk her head back and give Slava a stern look.

  “Oh, that,” she said, once she had glanced over the scroll. “Vlastomila Serafimiyevna did you say you wanted to look at anything unusual, so I got that out, since Sister Lyubov was so strange—imagine reading other people’s minds! And they say she was a strange woman altogether. It’s just a story.”

  “Written by the mother of this sanctuary!”

  “Yes, of course, sister, I meant to say, it’s true, of course, but Sister Lyubov was just a sister, you see. Nobly born, of course.”

  “She became Empress!” Slava cried. “It says so right here!”

  “Yes, but you see, while she was here, she was just a sister, just the same as anyone else, sister,” the library-keeper explained with the thoughtless condescension of dull-witted person speaking to a small but very intelligent child. “It matters not who her mother was. And it says right here that our mother had a dream telling her that her gift—the gift of Sister Lyubov, that is—was not of the gods, anyway. So not of interest to us, you see.”

  “Yes, but of interest to me! Do you not have anything else about her?”

  “I can look, of course, sister,” said the library-keeper, with the air of someone who has decided to humor the fancies of others, no matter how unreasonable. She went back to the shelf where she had found the original scroll, and started poking around, raising clouds of dust and making both of them sneeze violently.

  “Sorry about that, sister,” said the library-keeper. “Ah, here we go. The Writings of Yevpraksiya Lyudmilovna. Scrolls 1, 2, 3, and 4. Mother Yevpraksiya liked to write a lot. It’s a shame she wasn’t a more lettered woman. These are all fair copies of her writings done by sisters who had clearer hands—and heads too, like as not. They say they tried to set her style straight in places, but when someone as untutored as Mother Yevpraksiya sets to writing, it takes more than a simple sister to clean up the mess.”

  “Maybe that’s why she liked to write so much,” said Slava, feeling suddenly defensive of Mother Yevpraksiya. “Because it was a wonderful skill to her. Perhaps she felt touched by the gods every time she set quill to paper.”

  “You’re too kind, sister,” said the library-keeper, giving Slava a pat on the hand. “And Mother Yevpraksiya was certainly touched. It’s a shame she wasn’t touched with a little more sense. Here you are. I’ll be in the kitchen if you need me, but those scrolls should keep you busy until dinner.”

  The scrolls were, in fact, very long and tightly rolled, and also very old, which meant that they cracked as Slava tried to unfurl them, much to her distress. However, they were still mostly intact and legible, and it did, in fact, take Slava until dinnertime to read them. Mother Yevpraksiya had written extensively on the daily doings of the sanctuary, the lives of all the sisters in her care, the doings of the nearby village, and, every now and then, the visions she experienced from the gods. These she recorded in the same matter-of-fact manner as she did an early snowfall or a purchase of barley. Judging from them, though, Mother Yevpraksiya was, despite the untutored nature of her writing, highly skilled in reading the will of the gods. In fact, she seemed to consider their frequent visitations to be ordinary events, something any woman could experience, should she choose to do so. She described in detail all her conversations with them, and the nature of the powers they had given her and the other chosen sisters. There was nothing there that sounded remotely like anything Slava could do.

  Towards the end of the fourth scroll, Slava read:

  Today I got a letter from Sister Lyubov, calling me to Krasnogorod. I shall set out as soon as the rivers thaw enough to sail on.

  Slava ran her eyes impatiently over musings on spring planting until she came to the words:

  I am come to the great city of Krasnogorod. Sister Lyubov received me in her private chambers with much kindness. There is little trace of the tearful girl who showed up at our sanctuary in the middle of winter all those years ago. There were even a husband and a little Tsarinovna there, who greeted me as kindly as Sister Lyubov before leaving us to speak. When I asked her about the change in her, she said, “Some gifts are harder to accept than others, mother. It took me many years to accept mine. Only when I became convinced that the gods could not help me was I able to face it on my own.” When I chided her for her lack of faith, she said she meant no disrespect to the gods, but her gift was of the world of women, not spirits. She was neither a priestess nor a sorceress, she said, even if sometimes it seemed otherwise.

  “I realized that when I took up my duties, my husband, my child,” she said. “When I came to you, I was lacking in courage. What I had to find was courage. You and the gods gave me that. The rest had to come from me. All my life I was being torn apart. I had to learn how to keep myself together before I could go back into the world. Other women are born with skin and bones already formed, but I had to grow them on my own. And once I had grown them, I was able, however painfully, to take up the life of ordinary women.” When I asked her what she meant, she said exactly that. I questioned her no more, but wished her happiness and success in her reign. She thanked me and saw me with great politeness to the door of her chambers. When I said my farewells it seemed to me that she truly was more fragile than other women, although I cannot say why. It was as if a great light was shining out of her. I pray for her every day. They say she has become famed all over our great land for her kindness. We spoke of her desire to end slavery. She wanted to know my will, and the will of the gods. I approve, and so do they, and so I told her. Buying and selling our own kindred hardens the heart and closes the ears to the will of the gods. And kindness is certainly what we lack the most, and have the greatest need for. I pray that she will have enough, for I fear we take more than she can give.

  The scroll ended there, just as the library-keeper returned to summon Slava to dinner. She joined the others with her head in a whirl. The interminable pre-dinner prayer passed before she could begin to feel bored, as images of her many-times great-grandmother swirled through her head. She ate without noticing what was being served, and Vlastomila Serafimiyevna had to call on her several times before she realized she was being asked a question.

  “Did you find anything of interest, sister?” Vlastomila Serafimiyevna asked, once she had gained Slava’s attention.

  “Oh yes,” said Slava.

  “And what will you do now, sister?” Vlastomila Serafimiyevna asked.

  “I think I must…I think I must go out…” Slava had an intense desire to tell someone of all she had discovered, but when she looked at Vlastomila Serafimiyevna and the other sisters, she saw that her story would have no meaning to them.

  “Oleg Svetoslavovich,” she said suddenly. “Can I go see Oleg Svetoslavovich? I have a great desire to go out in the fresh air, after my day in the library, and I must confide—I must consult…”

  “Of course, sister, if he is willing to be disturbed,” said Vlastomila Serafimiyevna. “Do you wish to go tonight?”

  “Is it so late already?” asked Slava, crestfallen at the thought of putting off her outing until tomorrow. After spending so many hours with the scrolls, she was tired but also restless, and the thought of returning
to her room for the night was unwelcome.

  “No, not so late at all, sister,” said Vlastomila Serafimiyevna. “We eat dinner at sunset, but sunset is still early this time of year. The path to the cabin is not hard to follow, even in the dark, and we will send a sister to guide you.”

  “Thank you,” said Slava, relieved. “When can we set out?”

  “Immediately, if you wish, sister.”

  “If it’s not too much trouble…”

  “Of course not, sister,” said Vlastomila Serafimiyevna. “Sister Alyona! Are you ready to guide our sister to the cabin? She must consult with our guest.”

  The same woman who had driven them silently the day before nodded speechlessly and rose, evidently prepared to leave at once. Slava jumped up too.

  “Sister Alyona will escort you there and then come back,” Vlastomila Serafimiyevna told her. “Oleg Svetoslavovich can escort you back, whenever you are ready to return.” She gave Slava a calm look that nonetheless seemed to contain some meaning Slava was embarrassed to read into it.

  An icy snow was falling as Slava and Sister Alyona set off, making sleety, silvery sounds through the fir needles on its way to the ground.

  “Spring snow,” said Sister Alyona, and then returned to her habitual silence for the rest of the walk.

  Warm candlelanterns were glowing from inside the cabin when they arrived, and smoke was coming from the chimney, but no one answered when they climbed up onto the tiny porch and knocked at the door. Slava called for Oleg Svetoslavovich, but her voice disappeared into the snowy woods.

  “Do you want to go back, sister?” asked Sister Alyona.

  “No…No, I think I’ll stay here,” Slava decided. “He must be back soon, if the candles are burning.”

  “Just don’t go out into the woods, sister,” said Sister Alyona. “Stay in the cabin.”

  “Why?” asked Slava. “What dangers are out in the woods?”