Had music always been there?
Vika knew that the answer had to be yes. Only she hadn’t noticed, because she’d been too busy trying to kill Nikolai during the Game, or at least not be killed herself, and she’d only seen what his power could do on the surface. She’d never listened, never delved deeper.
What else is there, Nikolai?
With her eyes still firmly shut, Vika walked past the pink and red flowers she’d planted along the gravel path and turned onto the main promenade. The oaks rustled above, and the birds warbled a folk tune, but these were all Vika’s creations, so she ignored them. She held fast to that single wisp of silk, though, with its melancholy oboe, and as soon as she moved near the first Dream Bench, she was hit by the fragrance of sun-drenched grass mixed with mandarin and . . . was that thyme?
“Nikolai.” It was not as if he smelled of all those things, or any of them, for that matter. Not when Vika had been in his physical presence. And yet, the combination was the steppe and Saint Petersburg, French and Russian, all at once. It was the perfumed footprint of his magic, another dimension Vika had never noticed before. How had she missed so much of him? And was it lost completely now, to the darkness that consumed him? Vika worried her bottom lip.
The fragrance and the music led her past the Moscow bench, past the ones for Kostroma, Kizhi Island, and Yekaterinburg, until she arrived at the bench for Lake Baikal in Siberia.
She lowered herself onto the bench, slowly enveloped by the pale purple mist that surrounded it. She inhaled, and then she dozed off.
Vika woke on the other side of the bench in the dreamworld of Lake Baikal. Before her spread a sapphire pool of fathomless blue, pure glacial water in a crater created by a volcano. Violet-gray mountains surrounded the lake on all sides, and a cool breeze blew across the water, even though it was summer here.
Vika gasped as she stood and looked around.
But she’d hiked these mountains before, in the dream, and they had been just as beautiful. What was it that was drawing her here now? What was special about this place?
“Nikolai,” she said aloud, “I’m here. I’m looking for you. Where are you?”
A trail appeared before her, as if the mountains had opened and created a new ridge for her to follow, although when she inspected it more closely, the mountains hadn’t moved at all. But wasn’t that the beauty of Nikolai? He could be so contradictory. He could appear to be one thing and be something else entirely, brooding and ambitious yet joyful and self-sacrificing. Of course his magic could be opposites at once as well.
Vika hiked along the path that was and wasn’t there, leading her between two of the violet mountains. The sky here was so blue, it seemed counterfeit. But of course it is, Vika thought. This is Nikolai’s creation. He can make the sky any color he pleases.
On distant peaks, animals moved, perhaps deer hopping from ledge to ledge, or wolves out for a hunt. Vika’s trail was quiet save for her boots crunching on the rock, the path behind her disappearing as she walked, the way before her unfurling with each step forward.
As she pushed onward, the music grew louder, almost audible to a normal ear now. What a strange sensation to be hiking alone though the mountains of Siberia with an oboe accompanying her. At one point, she looked back over her shoulder, and Lake Baikal was nowhere to be seen. It was impossible to judge the distance she’d traversed. For all she knew, Nikolai could be leading her to the Arctic Circle now. But she continued walking, not only because there was no trail back, but also because the tugging in her chest grew stronger. This was a path solely for her, and no one else. She had to follow it to its end.
And then the season changed abruptly. Vika’s eyelashes froze at the tips, and she shivered, even though she wore her coat from the real Saint Petersburg winter. A gust of snow blasted at her and nearly knocked her off the path, which had now become a tightrope of sorts, a thin line of pebbles floating over a vast abyss, with nothing but sharp crags and the gaping mouth of a valley below.
I can’t die in a dream, I can’t die in a dream, Vika told herself, but she couldn’t stop her heart from pounding when it seemed as if she really could slip and fall to her death at any moment. Why had the terrain suddenly changed? It was as if Nikolai had wanted her to find him, but now that she had come, he had changed his mind. Was she supposed to turn back? But how? Even the tightrope disappeared behind her, leaving the tiny stepping-stones ahead of her as her only option.
Or perhaps it was a test of her own will, and whether she really wanted to find him or not.
The magic of Nikolai’s dream swirled around her, the silkiness and the perfume sliding against her skin, the oboe crescendoing. He’s not just a shadow boy with darkness in his veins. The thought came to Vika like a recollection. Like she’d forgotten he was an actual person and only now remembered—truly remembered—that Nikolai was complex and real. She had made a similar error earlier with Pasha, forgetting he was more than the black-and-white caricature she’d painted of him in her head. She would not make the same mistake with Nikolai.
I do want to find you, she thought, as if he could hear her.
The sky turned dark, like midnight, and the tightrope vanished. Vika shrieked at the sudden changes and grasped at the air, as if she could hold on to the nothingness to break her fall. She began to plummet like Icarus from the sky.
A golden eagle, larger than any in real life, soared down from the moon. It dove straight at her, but then caught Vika on its back.
“Oh, thank heavens.” She nestled into its warm brown feathers and lay herself flat across its back, not wanting to ride it like a horse and be blown off by the wind, for the eagle careened through the sky at near-reckless speed. Her ears popped as the eagle darted in and out of the clouds, and Vika’s hair trailed behind her like a flame, so bright that if anyone were watching, she and the eagle would appear to be a shooting star, streaking across the night.
Vika’s heart skittered like a frightened rabbit, but against her ear, she could hear the eagle’s pulse beating steady and strong. She tried to calm her own heartbeat.
Then it occurred to her that this was the type of magic she would have thrilled at before the Game. Before Nikolai tried to kill Pasha. Before she was suspicious of everything Nikolai did.