After preparing our few remaining possessions, Elena and I wait patiently through the still predawn hours. Our bare room is as cold and austere as a crypt. There is no fire in the fireplace. No need for one, without any flesh to warm.
As gray light rises, I help the little girl step into her coffin-like chest. She wears her spare dress, hair combed and ribboned. Lying down on a reindeer hide, she looks like the corpse of a child ready to be laid to rest.
“Thank you, Peter,” Elena says. Her voice echoes flatly from walls made of raw timber, still weeping sap. “You have been good to me. True to your Word.”
“Why do you speak this way?” I ask, one hand resting on the lid of her trunk, preparing to close it.
“If someone discovers us during the voyage,” she says, “there will be too many to fight. And if our ship were to sink…how long would we live under the water? Would we drown forever, trapped in a box at the bottom of the sea—”
“Ssh,” I interrupt. “Do not think those thoughts. You are precious to me, Elena. By my honor, I will never allow harm to come to you.”
She takes my fingers in both of her small, cold hands and presses my knuckles against the carved ridges of her lips.
“I am glad you are my brother, Peter,” she says, and the words feel like a warm cape settling over my shoulders.
Elena lies down on the thick fur of the bandit’s sleeping hide, surrounded by the last of our valuables and weapons.
“I will see you on the other side,” I respond, closing the lid. “I promise.”
If we go under, the water would eventually weaken the walls of our trunks. I would be able to smash my way out, in time. If we do sink to the bottom of the ocean, there will be a chance to save her. I will find her in the cold blackness and drag her into the light, no matter what.
Lying down and pulling my trunk shut—hearing it lock itself—I tell myself this again and again, until I begin to believe it.
As the sun rises over lapping waves, a pair of heavy chests are collected from our room above the tavern. It takes two cursing, grunting men to bring down the one in which I rest. Carried deep into the wooden bowels of a ship, our containers are lashed to the walls of the storage hold along with all the other luggage.
I do not find the gloom of the chest to be claustrophobic. It is comforting to me, actually, reminiscent of Favorini’s workshop. The darkness is alleviated somewhat by a keyhole that allows in whatever dim light filters into the ship’s hold. And once the ship is under way, the world around me opens up with the sound and motion of the voyage. Each moment rocks past with the constant leaning of the ship, the creaking and groaning of the cargo, and the lap of water against the nearby hull.
My trunk is a womb, and the only hardship is being separated from Elena. It is too dangerous to speak, though our containers are separated by only a few handspans. During this precarious time, we can take no chances with our lives.
Despite our caution, danger arrives anyway.
Days into the journey, the hypnotic swaying of the ship is interrupted by thumping steps. Through the keyhole, I surmise it is the steward, fat and prowling, eyes twinkling with avarice over his wiry muttonchops. Carrying a guttering lamp, he creeps into the cargo hold. Facing Elena’s small trunk, he carefully sets the lamp down.
“Let’s see what we’ve got,” he mutters, scraping his fleshy palms over the surface of the chest. Producing a metal pry bar, he forces the lock, grunting and wheezing with the effort. I hear no sounds coming from the girl.
The steward laboriously cracks the lock and collapses his panting bulk onto the trunk, breathing hard like a man who has just finished copulating. Then, with relish, he curls his fingers around the lid and tugs. It peels open on groaning hinges, already rusting in the damp hold. In profile, I watch as his face twitches with candle shadows.
“What the devil?” he mutters. “A bloody doll.”
Reaching inside, the steward brushes Elena’s hair away from her face. My sister lies still, an inanimate object for the moment. Her body is surrounded by the last of our treasure. The blades and flintlock of the bandit leader. A few remaining coins from the tsardom. Elena’s pair of stilettos. Stifling a laugh, the steward’s fingers fall upon Elena’s cheek, prying at her face.
When the mask doesn’t budge, the man grunts unhappily. He shoves her head to one side, her ghostly face lost in long curly hair. Patting down her body, he searches for jewelry and valuables. Finally, he picks her up by the armpits and shakes her, sending her head bouncing back and forth.
A shudder of anger courses through my limbs. Fists clenching, knuckles creaking, I try to resist interfering.
“Come on, you trollop,” mutters the fat man, holding Elena’s small body by a fistful of hair and pawing at her dress with his other hand. “Give it up now.”
Thump. I punch the inside of my case.
Startled, the steward drops Elena haphazardly back into her trunk. Eyes shining with fear, straining to see, he takes a step toward my crate.
“Hello?” he asks in a whisper. “What’s that? Who’s in here?”
He lays a pudgy hand on my trunk, notices the keyhole. Holding his breath, he leans in. His fearful eye looms large, breath reeking of alcohol.
Our eyes meet.
The steward squeals and falls backward.
“Someone—” he sputters to himself, wheeling around in a spastic, panicked dance. “There’s someone…help! Help! Stowaway!”
Behind the fat man, the shadowed body of Elena rises. Silent as a wraith, she stands in the coffin-like trunk, her small hands reaching for the steward. He spins around in time to see her as she clamps doll fingers to the roll of flesh around his neck, choking off his cries. Eyes bulging in fear, the steward stumbles toward my crate. His face contorts through disbelief to sheer terror at the sight of the inanimate coming impossibly to life.
The steward tries to scream, tongue swollen and red, face slick with sweat. Elena clings to him with a terrible strength. He paws at her face with one hand, pinning her small body against a crate, his fingers catching under the porcelain mask.
Elena’s face cracks and splinters as he pries it loose.
With another thump, I punch the inside of my trunk again, trying to force it open. I was supposed to protect my sister and instead I watched in dumb paralyzed surprise as this whole catastrophe unfolded.
My promise, I am thinking. What is my promise worth?
The concussion attracts the steward’s attention. Eyes wide, hands wrapped around Elena’s writhing body, he cranes his neck to look up at my trunk.
Thump. I punch again, wood splintering over my knuckles. The world outside pulses with each blow against oak planks.
While he is distracted Elena twists out of his grip and climbs up his chest, latching her cruel fingers tighter around his throat. The steward grunts, trying to suck another breath, pawing and scraping at Elena’s billowing dress as the last of his air runs out. His plum-colored face is twisted in horror at the doll in his hands, not alive, and yet alive.
Thump.