The Firebird

The piece of the old façade was maybe four feet wide, rising two storeys and painted a colour that would, in the daylight, be rich butter yellow in place of the pale green that plastered the rest of the theatre. The windows here were old and framed in oak, with metal sills that sloped to shed the rain, and all the simple mouldings had been painted white. In at least two places I could see, the architects had left a bit of brickwork bare, to show the structure underneath. And at the pavement level was a deep well, like a cellar entrance, running the full width of that old section of façade and covered by a low, protective, sloping box of Perspex set within a metal frame.

Rob stopped, and gave my hand a squeeze. ‘All right then, go to it.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘I’m letting you drive for a change. Like I said.’ Not put off by the look on my face, he went on, ‘You’ve been watching me do it for days now. Just give it a go.’

‘You are drunk. I can’t do what you do.’

‘But you’ve not truly practised, now have ye?’ His gaze touched my face in the shadows. ‘Are you not the slightest bit curious to learn the limits of what you can do?’

I looked away. ‘I know my limits.’

‘Is that a fact? Well, I’ve ten pounds says you might just surprise yourself.’

‘Rob.’

‘What?’ He let go of my hand. ‘You were willing to come on your own to St Petersburg. Willing to try to do this on your own.’

‘Yes, well. Willing and able are two different things, aren’t they?’ I said that lightly, but he wasn’t having it.

Whether because of the lager or some more inscrutable reason, he’d turned serious. ‘When you first got on that train to Dundee,’ he reminded me, ‘when you first made the decision to go help your Margaret by holding the Firebird, surely you thought, deep inside, that you could?’

‘But I didn’t. I couldn’t.’ My voice had dropped low. There was no one around us to hear, but I did it instinctively, faintly surprised at the fierceness with which I defended my actions. ‘I knew that I couldn’t. That’s why I got off that train, Rob.’ I looked at him. ‘That’s why I came to find you.’

‘Aye, I ken why you did it. But using my gift’s not the same thing as using your own, is it?’ He, too, had lowered his voice; maybe even stepped closer, I wasn’t completely sure. ‘I think,’ he said to me slowly, ‘this makes you feel safer, just being a bystander. Coasting along letting me do the work, as though we were on holiday someplace ye no ken the language.’ His mouth curved so briefly it might have itself been a shadow. ‘Like me here in Russia. I no ken the language here either,’ he said, ‘but I’ll not let it stop me from ordering meals for myself. I can learn. So can you.’

I shared none of his certainty. ‘Rob.’

‘Aye?’

I shook my head, breaking away from the steady blue hold of his gaze, because there was no way I could hope to explain.

‘Would it really be so terrible,’ he asked me, very quietly, ‘to be like me?’

I paused before I said, ‘That isn’t it.’

‘Then why are ye so feart of what you are?’

I’m no feart. The words in Anna’s voice, a memory at my shoulder, made me lift my own chin higher and reply, ‘I’m not afraid. I just … I can’t, that’s all.’ And when he would have argued, I explained, ‘I can’t just start a vision cold, like you. It’s not the way it happens, for me. I need to be touching something.’

Rob considered this, and gave a nod towards the wall. ‘So that should do. You said yourself it’s the original façade of the old Winter Palace that was here when Anna was.’

‘Well, yes, but it’s been plastered over since, and painted. I don’t think—’

‘The bricks are there.’ His tone, while quiet, held a challenge. ‘Will you try?’

I measured his resolve against my own with a long look, and sighed. ‘And if I can’t?’

‘You want to have some faith.’

The problem wasn’t faith, I thought, so much as finding some place I could stand where I could reach that section of the wall. The wide glass box, like a low greenhouse, that covered the well in the pavement in front of the wall jutted out for at least a full metre, and rose past the height of my knees at its highest point. Climbing on top of it, or even sitting, was out of the question – I wasn’t about to trust glass, even Perspex, to hold my weight. It was too deep to lean across, also, which meant that I’d have to position myself to one side of that section of wall, and reach over to touch it.

And that was a problem as well, since to one side, the theatre’s wall jutted out sharply and made it a tricky affair to reach round it. The other side wasn’t much better. It had a great drainpipe that ran from the gutters above and left only a tight space for me to squeeze into. It wasn’t a comfortable spot.

But I tried.

With my hand pressed against the cold plaster, I tried. Closed my eyes and reached out with my thoughts. Something flashed very briefly, but I couldn’t hold it. The images simply refused to take shape, floating past me and through me and into the darkness.

My arm started aching from being held out at that angle and finally I let it fall, backing away in frustration. ‘You see?’ I told Rob. ‘I can’t do it.’