Clambering over the icy thwart, her fur coat as wet and heavy as armor, she perched on the little wooden seat in the stern. Even with her hood pulled low, the wind blew sleet and spray into her face. But at least the gusts were driving her toward the island. Her gloves were as stiff as icicles, and it was a struggle to loop the rope to the sail around one wrist, as she had seen Sergei do, and grasp the tiller with the other. The open boat cut through the waves, rising and falling, rising and falling. The fog surrounded her like a shroud, and she was so exhausted, so cold and so hungry, that she fell into a kind of stupor.
Her thoughts wandered to her garden in Tsarskoe Selo, the private enclave outside St. Petersburg, where she had grown her own roses, and to the sixteenth birthday party her parents had thrown for her there the year before. It seemed like a dream now, an impossible dream that she must have imagined out of whole cloth. She thought of her sister Olga, giving her a book of poems by Pushkin—with beautifully marbled endpapers and gilded pages—and her little brother sitting on his pony, as Nagorny, the rough sailor who had become his constant attendant, held the reins.
Her father, in his military uniform, had been standing stiffly on the veranda, holding her mother’s hand.
A wave dashed her full in the face, the frigid water running down her neck and under the collar of her coat. She shivered as the tiller threatened to slip out of her hand, and the rope attached to the sail cut into her wrist like a tourniquet. Her boots were slick with ice, and her bad foot had no feeling left in it at all.
But she also remembered, towering right behind her mother, the monk with the black eyes and the long, tangled beard. The same bejeweled cross that he wore on his cassock, she was wearing now, under her corsets and coat, but she doubted that even the cross would be enough to save her.
As the boat came closer to the shore, it bucked like a horse trying to throw its rider, and she had to brace herself firmly against the stern. The slush in the hull was several inches deep and washed back and forth over whatever was left of her frozen provisions.
If she did not reach land tonight, she would surely follow poor Sergei into the freezing sea. Gulls and ospreys circled in the pewter sky, taunting her with their cries.
She pulled in on the sail, and the boat keeled, slicing through the waters. She was close enough now that she could see a jumble of boulders littering the beach and a dense green wall of forest just beyond them. But where were the fires that Sergei had promised? With the back of her sleeve, she wiped the seawater from her eyes—she had always been nearsighted, but she had lost her glasses at the last place, the place where …
No, she could not think about that. She had to keep her thoughts from straying there … especially now, when her life once again hung in the balance.
An osprey shot across the bow of the boat, then doubled back past the creaking mast, and as her eyes followed it, she saw a flickering glow—a torch as tall as a tree—burning on the cliffs ahead.
And then, squinting hard, she saw another.
Her heart rose in her chest.
There was a scraping sound as the surf dragged the bottom of the boat across a bed of sharp rocks and shells. She loosened her grip on the rope, and the sail swung wide, flapping as loud as a gunshot. She clung to the tiller with her frozen hands as the boat bumped and spun onto the wet sand and gravel, lodging there as the tide surged back out again.
She could barely move, but she knew that if she hesitated, the next wave could come in and pull her back out to sea again. Now, before her last ounce of strength abandoned her, she had to force herself to clamber to the front of the boat and step onto the island.
She got up unsteadily—her left foot as numb as a post—and struggled over the thwarts, the boat pitching and groaning beneath her. She thought she heard a bell clanging, a deep booming sound that reverberated off the rocks and trees. Touching the place on her breast where the cross rested, she murmured a prayer of thanks to St. Peter for delivering her from evil.
And then, nearly toppling over, she stepped into the water—which quickly rose above the top of her boots—and staggered onto the beach. Her feet slipped and stumbled on the wet stones, but she crawled a few yards up the sand before allowing herself to fall to her knees, her head lowered, her breath coming in ragged gasps. All she could hear was the ice crackling in her hair. But she was alive, and that was all that mattered. She had survived the trek over the frozen tundra, the journey across the open sea … and the horrors of the house with the whitewashed windows. She had made it to a new continent, and as she peered down the beach, she could see dark shapes in the twilight, running toward her.
Yes, they were coming to rescue her. Sergei had spoken the truth.
If she’d had the strength, she’d have called out to them or waved an arm.
But her limbs had no feeling left in them, and her teeth were chattering in her skull.
The figures were coming so fast, and running so low, she could hardly believe her eyes.
And then she felt an even greater chill clutch at her heart, as she realized what the running shapes really were.
She whipped around toward the boat again, but it had already been dislodged and was disappearing into the fog.
Had she come so far … for this?