Ekaterina couldn’t bear to go to sleep and miss the last moments of
what had been a wondrous fourteenth birthday. She sat on the window seat
in her bedroom and hugged her knees as the last minutes of the day
melted away like spring snow. In the corner of the room, her maid Agafya
snored softly.
Below them, the parlor clock began its midnight toll. Agafya startled awake with the first peal of the bell.
“Ekaterina—?” she mumbled blearily. Her eyes sharpened. “Why are you still awake? Have you taken your draught?”
“Must I? It’s my birthday,” Ekaterina protested.
The clock continued to chime. Agafya paled. “What time is it?”
“Midnight, I think.”
Agafya sprang up and flew across the room to seize the goblet waiting beside Ekaterina’s bed. “You must!”
“Oh, very well,” Ekaterina grumbled. She took the cup and raised it to
her lips. The clock finished tolling twelve as the last drops slid down
her throat.
Agafya sighed, her shoulders untensing as she took the empty cup from
Ekaterina’s hand. “Why are you still awake, child? You should be tired
after such a long day. And what a feast it was! So many guests came to
see my little bird gloriously launched into the world! Even Councillor
Nikitin said what a fine affair it was, and he has seen the splendors of
the Tsar’s court.”
“Oh, it was wonderful, Agafya! Nothing so interesting will happen to me again for years!”
Agafya sniffed. “Be patient. Ordinary joys and sorrows will seem interesting enough, I promise you.”
“I suppose.” Ekaterina’s cheeks warmed. “Nikolai Semyonevich Egorov was
very attentive. So handsome, too. And the Egorovs have lived near us
for centuries, and—”
“Do not pin your heart to an Egorov,” Agafya interrupted.
“What? Why not?”
“That story is not mine to tell. You must ask your papa later. Now, it
is well past the proper bedtime for young ladies, even young ladies of
the great and advanced age of fourteen.”
“Yes, Agafya. I’ll go to sleep soon, I promise.”
“See that you do.” Agafya yawned, retired to her cot, and was soon snoring away.
Ekaterina returned to gazing out into the night, remembering the
compliments that Nikolai had whispered to her before Agafya the
ever-vigilant had interrupted their conversation.
Perhaps Agafya was making an elephant out of a fly? Ekaterina’s papa had
invited Nikolai. Would he have done that if things were so ill between
their families? Agafya was often overprotective, shooing Ekaterina away
from boys and even interrupting visits with other young ladies if the
conversation strayed to topics she deemed not quite proper.
Ekaterina hugged her knees even tighter and glanced out at her father’s
apple orchard. She gasped as she saw fire leaping between the branches
of the frontmost apple trees.
Ekaterina jumped to her feet to shout “Fire!” Her cry died of sheer astonishment in the next second, when the fire . . . flew.
Her eyes widened. Even as a little girl, when her baba told
her stories of the Firebird, Ekaterina had never imagined that she might
someday see it herself. The good fortune brought by the touch of its
shadow could make this the most important birthday of her life. If she
hurried, she might reach the Firebird before it vanished.
She had no time to don proper attire. She seized the everyday sarafan
that Agafya had worn earlier in the day and pulled it on over her light
nightgown. Dress on, she stopped only to push her feet into the
embroidered slippers beside her bed. She eased the door open slowly so
as not to wake Agafya, and then she was off.
Downstairs, she swung her fur cloak around her shoulders, pushed the
door open, and ran lightly out over the first snow. The guard dogs
yipped inquisitively as she ran past.
Ekaterina’s parents always scolded her for running—such an unladylike
exertion—but she was an excellent runner. She could outrace all six of
her older brothers, though they teased her that it was because of her
large feet. Now she sprinted as fast as she could. The light blanket of
snow muffled the snap and crack of twigs as she ran. Melting snow soaked
her thin slippers, and the jagged ends of fallen twigs poked her feet.
Only a thin sickle moon hung in the sky, but the apple orchard was lit
as if by a golden harvest moon. Ahead of her, dancing fire flitted
through the trees, illuminating the last hanging remnants of the apple
harvest.
She chased the Firebird through her father’s orchard and across the
bordering farmland. She had to slow down, or she would have turned her
ankle as she ran over uneven fields of harvested rye, but cutting
through the fields would get her there faster than taking the curving
road.
The flickering flame vanished just before. Ekaterina stumbled to a halt
in front of the village. Inside the homes, hearth fires would be banked
for the night, as peasants huddled together under quilts to stay warm.
Outside, picketed goats clustered close to each other for heat. She
searched for any hint of light. Then the fire appeared again,
rooftop-high, as the bird dodged between houses and out the other side
of the village. Ekaterina broke back into a run.
At the edge of the village, she hesitated. Cold seeped through her fur
cloak and froze perspiration to her body. Snow soaked her slippers and
turned her feet to blocks of ice. In front of her lay Chyorniy Forest.
Children weren’t allowed to play near its edge, and even the women who
picked mushrooms in the forest kept within sight of the village and
stayed in groups.
The Firebird’s wings flickered through the forest in front of
Ekatarina. She thought of her family, gathered her bravery, and plunged
into the darkness. The thin moon’s light was too puny to illuminate the
forest, and the deeper she went, the darker it became. She slowed to a
walk, her hands in front of her to keep from running into a tree. The
flickers of fire grew farther and farther away, and the forest grew
darker and darker around her, until she knew she must be lost. She began
to shiver and think about the stories her baba had told her of what happened to little girls who wandered into Chyorniy Forest.
She needed to figure out which way her home was. She could see nothing
where she stood, so she felt around until she found a tree trunk so wide
that her arms could not span it. With such a wide trunk, it must be a
giant grandpapa of a tree.
Darkness spread itself around her. She could not tell tree branches
from the night sky. She could not even see her own hands gripping the
tree. Sometimes she thought she could see patches of lighter darkness
where her hands ought to be; other times she was convinced that any
difference was her imagination.
She climbed until the tree trunk split into branches with a girth no
wider than her own. Then she strained her eyes looking for the glimmer
of snow-covered fields in the moonlight, or the glow of a lamp in a
village window. She saw nothing.
She stared up at the slim crescent moon. “God our Father,” she prayed,
“rescue me, for I am lost and do not know my way.” Tears welled up in
her eyes and she tried to blink them away.
When she could see again, she thought at first that the moon had grown
brighter. Then the glow above her split, and the Firebird dove down
toward her. Its light showed her that she sat in a towering wild apple
tree. To her dazzled eyes, the tree branches appeared to be rimmed in
fire.
The Firebird settled onto a branch just out of her reach and cocked its
head to consider a wizened, twisted apple hanging nearby. Ekaterina
smelled smoke, but although the Firebird’s feathers were made of flame,
the tree did not burn. Heat caressed her face like the summer sun.
The Firebird’s shadow fell over the branches only a couple of feet away
from Ekaterina. She shifted her weight and slowly inched towards the
shadow and its promise of good fortune.
The Firebird’s head snapped around, and it pinned her with its
diamond-edged gaze. It fanned its wings at her. Furnace heat rolled over
her, and she shielded her face with her arm. When she dared look again,
the Firebird had retreated well away from any branches she could reach.
The Firebird swiveled its head as it studied the barren branches around
it. When she saw it hunch as if it were about to spring into the air,
Ekaterina cried, “Wait!” She plucked an apple near her and tossed it
toward the Firebird.
It speared the fruit with its beak, then pinned it with a foot and pecked at it.
“Come back with me,” Ekaterina said. “Even the worst apple left in my
family’s orchards will taste better than a wild one. We have more than
what you saw tonight! Only one of our orchards is here; the other one is
at our distillery. Our trees produce only the sweetest apples. I can
show you where all the best ones are.”
The Firebird’s faceted crystal eyes gleamed with reflected light. “But
we are in a wild forest,” it said, “and your apple trees could not
survive here. This tree is strong and right for where it is. It does not
try to be an orchard apple tree. It knows what it is—and its fruit is
more delicious for it. Have you even tasted it?”
To be polite, Ekaterina plucked a nearby apple and dubiously took a
bite. The overwhelming sourness of it puckered her mouth. She was about
to spit it out when its honey-sweet aftertaste rolled across her tongue.
She chewed, swallowed, and thought for a few moments. “I like the
apples my father makes brandy from better.”
“It is always better to know than to assume.”
“I don’t know where I am,” Ekaterina tried, hopefully.
“There is much you don’t know, little apple-eater,” the Firebird told her. “But you will find out.” Its wings snapped open.
She fell back and shielded her eyes from the curtain of fire. “No,
wait!” she cried, but the Firebird leaped up from the tree branch and
took to the sky, a comet in reverse. Nearby, a wolf howled its
appreciation.
The chorus of spine-tingling wolf calls that answered made Ekaterina
grip the tree trunk tightly. One of the howls sounded as if it came from
directly below her.
Feeling around the tree branches and trying to remember what she’d seen
in the Firebird’s light, she found her way to a natural cradle formed
from three branches forking off the main trunk. She settled into that
cradle, letting her legs dangle to either side of the trunk. A slight
breeze on her bare ankles startled her, as she imagined a slavering wolf
leaping to sink his fangs into her flesh and pull her down. Had she
climbed high enough to be safe? She was certain she would not sleep a
wink.
A cascade of birdsong woke her the next morning. She expected to see the Firebird, but instead a shchegol flirted its golden feathers at her as it warbled from a branch above her head.
“Oh! Dobraye utro, little one!” she greeted it.
She looked down and quickly shut her eyes. The only wolf that could
reach that high would be a giant twice the size of Papa’s prize
stallion.
In daylight, she could see where the forest ended. The village lay
twenty minutes’ walk away, though at night it had seemed impossibly
farther. Ekaterina climbed very carefully down from the tree. Her limbs
ached from running and climbing, and she didn’t trust them to hold her
up.
She wished very much for a slice of wheaten bread and a glass of milk,
and for Agafya to plait her hair, which was tangled and wrapped around
twigs and leaves and bits of bark from her wild pursuit of the Firebird.
Sunlight filtered through the dark, crowded trees and birds sang high
above her. Soon she would be home in front of the fire with a mug of kvass. She walked faster.
A masculine voice called, “Ekaterina!” It was Nikolai. Her family must
have raised a search party. She thought again how bedraggled she must
look.
She picked leaves and twigs out of her hair and twisted it into a rough braid. Then she called, “Here! I’m here!”
Her heart swelled when her rescuer—never mind that she no longer needed
rescue—plunged out from between the trees. At the sight of Nikolai’s
handsome face and the way his eyes fixed on her, she felt stirrings
lower down. She blushed and envied how magnificent he looked in his
gray-embroidered overcoat and waistcoat. His breeches were immaculate,
and his stockings didn’t have a single snag. In comparison, she looked a
bedraggled wretch.
“Ekaterina, I’m so glad to have found you.”
She would have protested his familiarity, but he seized her and pulled
her to his chest. She pushed at him, and he loosened his embrace just
enough to kiss her.
It was—interesting. She’d often wondered what it would be like to be
kissed. His lips were firm and dry. His scratchy face rubbed against
hers, and she was fleetingly reminded of her baba, a wrinkled
apple of a woman with bristles sticking out this way and that. It ran in
the family; Ekaterina had to pluck downy hairs from her own cheeks and
upper lip every few days. Then Nikolai tightened his grip. The faint
scent of sweat and leather rose up around Ekaterina, and his strong arms
held her firmly. For a moment, she could think of nothing else.
He released her with a smug, masculine grin. “Why did you run off into
the forest?” he scolded. “You must not do such things once we are
married.”
“I was hunting the Firebird. But—married?”
“I spoke with your papa last night about the benefits to our families of joining together, and he did not tell me no.”
She lifted her chin, remembering Agafya’s warning. Nikolai was
fine-looking, she admitted, and he had paid close attention to her at
the feast, but he was no great conversationalist. He had seemed
disturbed when she tried to discuss philosophy or the history she and
her brothers had learned.
“Papa would never betroth me without my consent!” she flashed, angry at
his presumption. “He’s told me many times that I am too young to think
about marrying. I am sure he only said he’d think on it, and that
because he did not wish to spoil the evening. Only last week, he assured
me that I need not think of marrying for some time. As for benefits to
our families, I see only the ones to yours.”
His eyes darkened. “Then you will have to persuade him,” he said.
Ekaterina was suddenly very conscious that they were still too deep in
Chyorniy Forest for anyone to hear her if she screamed. She longed for
Agafya, who had been there from her earliest childhood to ensure her
virtue remained uncompromised.
Nikolai stepped forward.
She stepped back.
He lunged for her.
She turned to run, but her exhausted legs betrayed her. She stumbled and fell. He was on her in an instant.
“My father and brothers will kill you!” she spat.
“And who would have you then? No, a marriage will be in everyone’s best interest.”
She wriggled under him as he held her down and began to push her skirts
up her legs. Desperate, she craned her neck—and saw a branch as thick
as her arm that had fallen almost within reach. She scrabbled through
the forest loam to grab it. As soon as she had the branch firmly in
hand, she brought it whistling up at him, in a blow that would have
split his skull if he hadn’t recoiled and jumped off her in the very
same instant.
“What witchcraft is this?” he demanded, staring at her bare legs and backing away. “You are a leshy,
trying to trick me.” He looked around wildly, as if he expected other
spirits to coalesce from the forest’s shadows and attack.
Ekaterina hurt. Tomorrow, she would have deep purple-black bruises
where he’d gripped her. The remembered joy of flirting on her birthday
died like a rabbit crushed between a wolf’s jaws.
She braced the branch against the ground and pushed herself to her
feet, swaying. Tightening her grasp on the branch, she took a step
forward. Her throat was tight and her eyes stung, but a hot fire rose in
her.
Nikolai turned and ran.
She threw the branch at him. It struck the back of his knees and
knocked him down. Tree bark scraped his face as he fell. Blood seeped
through his fingers where he pressed his hand to his cheek, but he
picked himself up and fled.
Ekaterina circled around the village, keeping off the paths and
sticking to the fields and trees. At the moment, wolves seemed safer
than men.
When she saw her home, she ran toward it, despite her aching legs. She
stumbled as she ran, but she could not stop herself. The guard dogs
heard her first and bounded out, barking their welcome. Ekaterina
collapsed to her knees and wrapped her arms around their necks, burying
her face in Zaychik’s ruff while Belka stood guard.
Her mama and her brothers Vasily and Oleg tumbled out of the house.
When Ekaterina’s mama saw her, she let out an inarticulate cry, hiked up
her skirts, and ran to her. She pulled Ekaterina into a tight embrace
as Vasily and Oleg stood awkwardly nearby.
Ekaterina had barely managed to choke out her story about the Firebird
and becoming lost in Chyorniy Forest before she glanced over her mama’s
shoulder and saw Misha, the brother just a year and a half older than
she, running up from the village.
As soon as he was within earshot, he began talking. “Nikolai
Semyonevich Egorov just stumbled into the village babbling of demons in
the forest. He’s not the kind to be frightened into thinking the tree
branches are reaching for him, but he said—” Misha stumbled to a halt
and stopped speaking when Vasily and Oleg drew apart to reveal Ekaterina
behind them.
Voice trembling, Ekaterina asked, “What did he say?”
The very air seemed to hold its breath.
“He said—he said that witchcraft had turned you into a man.”
“What? That, that peasant! He assaulted my honor.” Her mama
went very still. “He found me in the forest and said we would be
married. When I said no, he—he sought to press his attentions.”
“That worthless swine!” bellowed Vasily. “Come, brothers, let us go punish him for his temerity!”
Their mama put her palm flat against Vasily’s chest. “Wait. Ekaterina,
before anything else is said or done, there is something your papa must
tell you.” She paused. “And your older brothers, too. Oleg, run and find
your papa and brothers.”
Ekaterina’s mama and papa gathered them all into the parlor: Oleg, Vasily, Aleksandr, Evgeny, Luka, Misha, and Ekaterina.
“Daughter—” her papa began, then stopped. “Ekat—” He cleared his
throat. “Child. This whole mess began in the time of your
great-great-grandpapa Leonti, during the reign of Mikhail I Fyodorovich
Romanov. Our family was not so wealthy when he was born, but he was the
seventh son of a seventh son, and that has always meant something
special for us. In such times, the orchards flourish, and what we
distill has a unique fire that makes each bottle sought-after. Our
family prospers.
“Your great-great-grandpapa had a rival, Rostislav Fyodorovich Egorov.”
At Ekaterina’s gasp of surprise, he nodded. “Yes, Nikolai Semyonevich
Egorov is his great-great-grandson. The Egorovs have held a grudge
against us for a very long time.”
“Then why did you invite Nikolai to my birthday feast?” Ekaterina burst out.
“Making a wolf pup believe it is a dog is one way to keep its fangs from your throat. At least for a while.”
Ekaterina frowned at that, but let her papa continue his story.
“As I was saying, they have always held a grudge against us. Vodka and
brandy alike, people seek ours over theirs. In your
great-great-grandpapa’s time, Rostislav went to a ved’ma living in Chyorniy Forest and paid her to put a curse on our family.
“Now, it happened that your great-great-grandpapa Leonti was a kind
man, which is fortunate for all of us. One day, he was hunting in the
forest with his dogs when he saw an old woman gathering firewood. ‘Wait,
old mother,’ he said. ‘Let me do that for you.’ As you have no doubt
guessed by now, the old woman was one and the same as the witch who
cursed our family. Because he had helped her, she warned him of the
curse, though she could not lift it.”
“What was it?” burst out Evgeny, Ekaterina’s second-youngest brother. “We are not cursed.”
“Not until now.”
The room fell into a silence sharp as winter’s first bite.
“This is what the ved’ma told your great-great-grandpapa: ‘In
your family,’ she said, ‘the seventh son of a seventh son has always
distilled an exceptional vintage. The curse that Rostislav had me put on
you changed that. The next time there is a seventh son of a seventh
son, what your family produces will be exceptionally awful. Instead of
smooth fire, your vodka will be so terrible that not even the lowest
beggar will drink it, and your family fortunes will be ruined.’”
“Over the generations, our family switched from making vodka to brandy.
We prospered. When your grandpapa warned me of the curse, I laughed.
Surely such a thing could never affect us in these modern times.”
Ekaterina’s papa looked at her. “I was at the distillery when you were
born. When the next taste of brandy I had was rank and bitter, I knew
the family story was not just a story.”
“I don’t understand,” Ekaterina said, though a numb, floating feeling
was beginning to spread through her limbs. “There is no seventh son.”
Her papa and mama exchanged looks.
“We were going to name you Ivan,” her mama said softly.
“Oh!” Ekaterina staggered backward and placed her hand over the sudden
pain in her stomach. Her back hit the wall and she sagged against it.
Her brothers stared at her with stunned-ox expressions. What they saw on
her face, she could not imagine. She slid down the wall and sat in a
crumpled heap on the floor.
“So we named you Ekaterina,” her mama continued. “Instead of a seventh
son, we raised a daughter. And all these years, with the help of your
maid Agafya, we have kept the secret.”
“I knew I’d have to tell you one day.” Her papa sighed. “I thought it
would be when you asked why we had not arranged your marriage. But now
our secret has been revealed.”
After a blizzard of silence, Aleksandr asked, “If Ekaterina is—not our
sister anymore, does that mean the curse will fall on us?”
Hearing “not our sister” opened a dull ache in Ekaterina’s heart. She let the numbness spread as she waited for an answer.
“If so, we will know soon enough. One can plan, but God puts everything in its place,” her papa said.
“Nikolai said that Ekaterina was a witch, or had been replaced by a forest spirit.” Misha looked at her with worried eyes.
Her mama put a hand to her heart. “Who was he talking to? Will they come here and demand to see Ekaterina?”
“Egorovs.” Her papa spat on the ground. “Always trouble for our family.”
Ekaterina shakily pushed herself up. “Let me go to the distillery while
this is figured out. It is far enough away that trouble should not
follow me.”
“Yes.” Her papa eyed her. “Pretending to be a girl will do no good now.
You can be as you were meant to be, though we will need to introduce
you as a cousin. The distillery is perfect—you can practice being a boy
there.”
Ekaterina felt as if a pit had opened under her feet.
When Ekaterina set out with her papa, Vasily gruffly told her to lower
her voice to sound more masculine. Oleg said that being a growing boy,
she should eat all she wanted. Aleksandr loaned her half his wardrobe.
Evgeny joked that Ekaterina was the best-looking of all the brothers,
and understood women besides, so the girls had better look out. Luka
said he’d keep watch for the Firebird and send word immediately should
he spot it. Misha just hugged her goodbye.
At the distillery, Ekaterina’s papa said, “This is our cousin Ivan, who
is interested in learning brandy making. Treat him as you would one of
my sons.”
The workers bowed. Ekaterina bowed in return. That, at least, was the
same for a man or woman. Wearing only breeches and waistcoat left her
feeling naked under the men’s gaze, and the startling lightness of her
short-cropped hair left her dizzy—and, when she was outside, cold.
The curse had not fallen yet; the brandy being made was neither
extraordinarily good nor extraordinarily awful. “Perhaps the curse is
still confused,” her papa said. “Nikolai is raising questions about your
absence. We must wait.”
She waited. She missed home. She missed her brothers. Though men’s garb
didn’t require assistance to put on, she missed the ritual of preparing
for the day with Agafya by her side. She missed sitting in the kitchen
and gossiping with Cook while learning her recipes. She missed evenings
spent sitting beside the fire and spinning, or embroidering an ornate
shawl for feast days.
The men expected her to join them in drinking brandy or vodka in the
evening “to keep the wolves away.” She half-wished that she had let the
wolves eat her instead.
Then she would not have to stride around half-naked and wholly not
herself, being introduced to people under a fake name. She would not
have to pretend she knew the ways of someone who had grown up a man. Her
papa kept saying it was what she was meant to be, but it did not feel
that way. It didn’t seem like it would get easier any time soon.
It all came to a boil one evening when her papa had a guest over for dinner.
“It is soon to think of, perhaps,” her papa’s friend said to her, “but I
have an unbetrothed daughter of about your age, young and strong and
loyal. She is skilled at spinning and embroidery, well-versed in
household management, and even knows something of distilling spirits.
She is a Godly girl, virtuous and happy in the place decreed for her in
this world.”
Disorientation swirled through Ekaterina. Bile rose in her throat and
she blindly stumbled to the door. She pushed it open and sucked in a
deep breath of cold air.
“Ivan!” her papa called from the table. “Are you well?”
Ekaterina couldn’t take it anymore. She could not go back, where the
overseer would greet her as ‘Ivan’ and clap her on the back, where her
papa’s friend and others like him would speak of her being husband to
his daughter as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world.
Her feet fell one in front of the other, her breath rasped in and out
of her lungs, the wind whipped her cheeks, and she realized that she was
running. Ekaterina was very good at running.
She ran past the distillery. She ran over the frozen creek and into the
distillery’s apple orchard. Panting, she stopped in the middle of the
trees, unsure where to go next. She collapsed on the ground, pulled her
knees up, and rested her chin on them. She wished for a skirt to bury
her face in.
Past the tree trunks, she saw gray stone and the swirling blue and gold
onion domes of the church. People streamed out the doors as they left
the evening service. Now that vechernya was done, she’d have the church to herself. She pushed herself up and stumbled through the orchard and down to the road.
Inside the church, she paused for a moment to cross herself and let her
eyes adjust to the dimness. Banks of candles flickered. Gold-painted
icons watched her with wise and mournful eyes. She venerated the icons
and then lit a candle, sending up a prayer that she might know who and
what she was meant to be. In the turmoil of her heart, she prayed for a
long time, as the sky darkened.
When she was all prayed out, she stared numbly at the candles. Their
flickering flame mesmerized her. The curve of them reminded her of the
Firebird’s plumage. “It knows what it is—and its fruit is more delicious
for it,” she heard the Firebird say.
She knew what she was not. She was not Ivan. Being a boy felt all
wrong. She doubted she’d feel differently even if she’d been raised as a
male.
She lit a candle in gratitude and left the church. Once she was among
the apple trees, she flung her arms wide, tilted her head back, and
shouted, “I am Ekaterina Davidovna Barteneva!”
The stars above flared brightly. One grew larger and shot down toward
her. For a heartbeat, she feared she’d misunderstood God’s sign to her,
and he was going to strike her down for her impudence. Then the star
dipped and curved, and she saw it was the Firebird. Over the orchard the
Firebird flew, dazzlingly bright, casting its shadow over the trees and
onto Ekaterina, who stood openmouthed below.
A few shriveled apples remained in the distillery’s orchard, the ones
so bird-pecked, worm-riddled, and difficult to reach that they had been
left as not worth the effort in a prosperous harvest year. Now they
glowed. The snow melted off them. Their wrinkles plumped out, their
scars filled in, and their dark red skins shifted to tawny gold. The
aroma of ripe apples filled the air and lingered even after the Firebird
was gone.
Ekaterina plucked one of the apples and hefted it in her hand. Its
flesh was firm, and its skin gleamed golden in the moonlight. She
brought it to her nose. It smelled of apples and honey and long summer
days. She hesitated and then took a huge bite out of it. The apple
crunched under her teeth, and its flavor rolled over her tongue.
She was transported. Sweet and strong and complex, the flavor was
beyond anything she’d ever experienced. She closed her eyes as the apple
fell from her hand. The taste was all that she could think of. She did
not know where she was, or even who she was. Then she swallowed, and the
flavor faded slowly from her mouth, like memories of a heaven glimpsed.
Once she was herself again, Ekaterina ran through the out-of-season
orchard and into the house. Their guest was long gone, and her papa sat
on the bench beside the dining room table, his head in his hands. His
dinner had cooled on the table.
“Papa, it’s me, Ekaterina,” she said, not bothering to deepen her voice.
He sat straight. “Ivan,” he corrected.
“No. Ekaterina. And,” she broke into a radiant smile, “the Firebird
came again! He flew above me. The shadow from his wing fell over me and
the orchard.” She sank to her knee beside him and took his hand. “All
will be well. The curse has been broken.”
She pulled her papa out of the house, across the snow-covered ground,
to the brandy distillery. He heaved the bar from the door, rushed
through, and seized the tasting cup. His fingers trembled. He filled it
under the spigot of the collection chamber, brought it to his lips, and
swallowed. A beatific smile spread across his face.
He held the cup to Ekaterina. “Taste.”
The sip of apple brandy burned down her throat like fire from heaven.
It had a primal edge that aging would smooth out, but it still tasted
finer than anything her family had made in generations.
“Let’s go home, Papa. We have wonderful news.”
“Yes, but in a couple of days,” he said. “Our guest told me that
Nikolai is deeply in debt, far beyond what he can recover from. He has
been borrowing on his expectations and promising his creditors that you
two were all but betrothed and that your dowry would be handsome. A word
in the ears of his creditors, and he will soon flee far enough away
that he won’t be able to cause any more mischief.”
When Ekaterina and her papa eventually returned home, Ekaterina’s
absence and short hair was explained away by saying that she had been
secluded because of a feverish sickness. To any who asked, Ekaterina
said she was grateful that the fever had passed and her mind was clear
again.
In the fullness of time, Ekaterina married a slim and beardless young
man whose hair was the same golden-red as the apples in her orchards.
The gossips who said Ekaterina was an “unnatural” woman grumbled their
way to silence. Her husband was often away on business, but he always
returned when the apples were ripe and golden. He seemed content to let
his wife run her ancestral distillery along with her brothers.
During Ekaterina’s lifetime, all agreed that the brandy her family made
was the best in all of Russia, fit to serve to the Tsar himself. And
long after the reign of the tsars ended, the extraordinary virtue of
Ekaterina’s apples endured.
“Ekaterina and the Firebird” copyright © 2013 by Abra Staffin-Wiebe
Art copyright © 2013 by Anna & Elena Balbusso
Born the son of a fire chief, Sean naturally developed a love of playing with fire. His family and friends quickly found other outlets for his destructive creativity. Writing is his latest endeavor.
Always a fan of the macabre, mythical, and magical, Sean found a love of urban fantasy and horror. After writing several novels in this genre, he found, fell in love with, and immersed himself in steampunk. He has always wanted to rewrite history and steampunk gave him that opportunity.Sean currently lives in Florida as a fiber-optic engineer as well as an author. He was blessed with the two most amazing children he could ever hope for, has met the absolute love of his life, who coincidentally is his partner in everything. His hobbies include grand designs on world domination as well as a starring role in his own television sitcom.
You last saw him performing his take on 