The One Who Clings

Mikhail left the annex five days later. Mounting the horse the coachman had brought from the newly built stables, he looked impeccably composed, as if nothing at all had happened.

Igor and Yury had not gone near the annex for those five days, yet watching the maids change the sheets day and night made it easy enough to guess what had taken place inside. They had half expected even a monster like Mikhail to show some trace of fatigue—yet he seemed more vigorous than ever.

“Doesn’t his color look better?”

At Igor’s words Yury nodded and tugged the reins of the horse he meant to ride.

“Seems that side of things suits him. He was so completely uninterested before that I honestly wondered if he couldn’t get it up.”

“Why don’t you say that to his face?”

“Do I look like I want my tombstone raised in Edenhurst?”

Yury grimaced, stroked the snorting, fretting horse’s head, stepped into the stirrup, and swung into the saddle.

“I’ll be back soon enough—take care of things.”

“Right.”

While Igor and Yury traded idle remarks, Mikhail had already spurred his horse and ridden out ahead.

It was the first time he had mounted a horse since arriving at Edenhurst. He touched the wound at his side. It had healed completely; only the stitch marks remained, yet a faint tingling lingered over them as well.

Thanks to Anastasia.

That tingling was the afterimage left by her lips brushing the place. Mikhail clicked his tongue, recalling the woman he had held in his arms until morning.

Anastasia was like seawater. The more he drank, the thirstier he became; the more he held her, the hungrier he felt. The voice that called his name through tears when he drove into her, the white, full body thrashing mindlessly beneath him, the lips that spilled everything she felt—

Those lips, long taught that falsehood was sin, spoke every sensation with complete honesty. Because of that, Mikhail discovered how childish a man he truly was.

When Anastasia gasped for breath, whimpering that he was too big, or clung to him while thrashing wildly and begging for more, saying it felt good—his mind felt as if it were burning completely away.

Only after everything had burned and even the flow of time had turned to pure white ash did Mikhail gently lay the limp body in his arms. Then Anastasia was as much of a ruin as his own wrecked mind.

Prrrr!

As if sensing that its rider’s thoughts had wandered, the horse brought from Sokolov shook itself. Mikhail smiled and stroked its neck.

Crazy. After holding her like that he was already thinking of holding her again. Feeling the cool wind, Mikhail swept his hair back.

Even while he remained at Edenhurst the world kept turning. Having left the annex that morning, Mikhail quickly scanned the reports that had arrived in the meantime. The Empress Dowager had taken the Emperor down to the summer palace; construction on Sokolov’s Seventh Pier was entering its final stage. The railway works across the central plains were proceeding smoothly, and in Schweik a remarkably young man had been chosen as the new prime minister. Between Ils and Flandre summer storms had wrecked or sunk several ships.

Ordinarily every one of those matters would have held his full attention. Yet even after hearing them all, Mikhail found thinking about them tiresome. He simply wanted to return to the annex…

“I’m crazy.”

Mikhail admitted the truth of his condition. The man he was now was not normal. He was no boy only just discovering desire, yet all day long he could think of nothing but that red hair scattered messily across the sheets.

He forced his concentration onto the ride. After a long stretch the edge of the Edenhurst estate came into view. Today he had to leave Edenhurst for a nearby town. There he would meet a great many people to discuss the development of the eastern mines.

I’ll have to stay the night there.

Was it because he had lingered too long at Edenhurst? The idea of sleeping elsewhere felt oddly awkward.

Should I have brought Anastasia along?

The image of her, utterly spent after he had taken her once more that morning, rose before him. She had been too exhausted even to rise for breakfast, so he had left her behind; yet if he meant to stay out overnight, perhaps it would have been better to prepare a carriage and simply bring her.

Before taking her to Sokolov, showing her the outside world once might make her happy.

Whenever Anastasia was awake and recovered even a little strength to speak, she always asked him about the world beyond Edenhurst.

She was endlessly curious. Anastasia questioned him not only about Sokolov but about the capital, and further still about Ils and other countries. When Mikhail mentioned he had once visited the ruins of Claringia, she envied him as though he had looked upon a god.

She was quite curious about the Academy as well.

One of the things Anastasia found hardest to imagine was school. There had been no school in the village of her childhood, she said. After coming to Edenhurst she had seen, a few times, how a resident tutor taught Elizabeth and Catherine in the mansion. After that, the only education she had known was what Mikhail himself gave her.

As a result she could scarcely picture many people gathered for lessons, or great buildings assembled for that purpose.

“You study flowers? And the names of trees too? Then are all the people studying there gardeners?”

As if the very profession of botanist were unbelievable, Anastasia would ask again and again. She pressed him with questions about the Academy, yet Mikhail had little to offer. He had visited only a few times and knew almost nothing of how the place truly ran.

Somehow, though, he disliked admitting ignorance, so he steered the conversation elsewhere.

When we go to Sokolov we should visit the Academy together once.

While Mikhail rode on, wondering whether he might ask the Academy dean for a tour, a young man in a hat appeared on horseback from the opposite direction. The youth inclined his head slightly in courtesy to a fellow traveler, and Mikhail returned the greeting with a slight bow of his own. Both mounted, they passed each other in a moment.

Still riding, Mikhail turned his head. Already the young man was distant; only a small figure of his back remained.

Likely someone bound for the village on the Edenhurst estate. Yet somehow the receding man unsettled him.

His features themselves seemed kindly enough—an easygoing, diligent nature, with a certain stubbornness that would press forward once he believed a thing was right. Mikhail knew instinctively that the man who had just passed possessed the personality least compatible with his own.

So what?

Why should a stranger merely crossing the road rankle him so? Mikhail faced forward again and rode on.

After Mikhail left that morning, Anastasia wished him a safe journey from the bed and promptly fell asleep again. When she next opened her eyes after a deep, dreamless sleep, noon had long since passed. Blinking as she rose, she stroked the empty place beside her where someone heavier than herself had lain.

The warmth that had filled it for five full days left not a trace.

After tracing the wrinkled sheets again and again, Anastasia laboriously edged her body out of bed. The moment she tried to stand, her legs betrayed her and she crumpled to the floor. Fortunately Natasha, waiting outside, heard the sound of her rising and hurried in to help; without that aid she might have crawled about the floor for quite some time.

With Natasha’s assistance she soaked a long while in warm water, then ate; only then did her mind begin to clear.

Fully dressed, Anastasia felt a strange unfamiliarity looking at her reflection. In the glass stood a woman whose color was good despite her fatigue, wearing a faint smile—a woman who seemed to have lived always in joy, knowing nothing of cold, hunger, or the insects of the cellar.

She took up one of the books Mikhail had left in her room—one she had never opened—and went outside.

“Hah!”

Descending the garden steps, Anastasia involuntarily caught her breath and let out a small moan. The instant her foot left the first stone stair a sharp pain shot up through her lower back. Biting her lip, she descended one careful step at a time.

Fortunately the pain did not return, yet her legs still trembled like a newborn foal’s. Of course it was all Mikhail’s doing.

Good thing I left Natasha behind.

When she said she meant to walk in the woods, Natasha had wanted to accompany her, but Anastasia refused firmly. She was fond of Natasha, yet not enough to take her to the chapel. Somehow she wished to leave that place as theirs alone—hers and Mikhail’s.

Anastasia hurried toward the chapel. Pushing through the grass that had grown thick in the meantime, she arrived and flushed as she looked at the stained glass remaining on the wall.

Because she remembered herself beneath the light of God, held by him again and again. No—herself holding him again and again.

Climbing over the rubble into the chapel, she sat on the stone seat.

“……”

The sunlight and the wind were unchanged, so why did this place look as strange as her own face in the mirror? Suddenly she realized that even having come here she had not prayed.

Anastasia looked at the leaves and cloth carelessly shoved beneath the stone seat. The memories of the times she and Mikhail had been here before—shamelessly together on that very place—rose vivid and clear.

She was embarrassed. Yet she felt no regret.

She looked down at her feet and saw the shoes he had given her. Once she had been too thrifty to wear them; now she hated the thought of wearing any others.

I should take them off.

As before, while she was here she could go barefoot. No one else would come, after all.

Anastasia removed the shoes, set them on the softest cushion of leaves, and stepped onto the cold floor. Then she moved to the place where the light of the stained glass shimmered, sat, and knelt. Clasping her hands as she once had, she closed her eyes and lifted her face.

Through her closed lids multicolored light brushed past. Trying to form a prayer, Anastasia moved her lips a long while before finally speaking not the words of any prayer but something else entirely.

“…Please let Mikhail return soon.”

It was a prayer she did not believe God would hear. Ruined though it was, this was still a chapel. Would God look kindly upon those who had desecrated the sanctuary?

Knowing the answer, Anastasia prayed a long while longer.

It was then.

Rustle.

The sound of leaves underfoot—Anastasia opened her eyes at once and turned her head. A stranger stood there.

And suddenly she realized: somehow the present moment was exactly the same as the first time she had met Mikhail.