The Firebird

He’d stood back through all of this, giving me room, but I saw him take stock of the wall now, his chin tilting up as he followed the course of the drainpipe before moving in himself. Turning, he leant back and settled his shoulders so one rested firmly against the long wall where the newer part met the façade of the old Winter Palace. The drainpipe pushed him outward at an angle, yet he looked at ease, relaxed against it with the air of someone who could stay like that all night.

‘Come here,’ he said.

I eyed his outstretched arms warily. ‘Why?’

‘Just come here.’

I might have been crossing a chasm, I went so reluctantly; but of the things that I might have forgotten, I hadn’t forgotten the feel of his long body pressed against mine when he held me – the solidly sheltering warmth of his chest and the weight of his arms round my waist. Loosely linking his hands in the small of my back, he said, ‘You need support, that’s all.’ Shifting again so his thighs were braced strongly round mine, his boots firm on the pavement, he told me, ‘I’ll not let ye fall. It’ll be like that time that you telt me about, when your brother was talking you down from that tree.’

This didn’t feel anything like that, I wanted to tell him, but I went for humour instead. ‘What, you’ll boss me around, will you? Tell me where to put my hands and feet?’

Rob gathered me closer, and I felt the quick laugh that lifted his chest. ‘Well, your hands, anyway.’ He nudged my left arm. ‘Put your arm,’ he said, ‘over my shoulder.’

His shoulders were muscled and hard like his chest, but his jacket provided a padding that cushioned my wrist as the back of my hand came to rest on the wall just behind him. The wall of the old Winter Palace, that I had been trying to touch in the first place.

He said, ‘There. How’s that, then?’

‘It’s good,’ I admitted. My arm and my hand were supported and comfortable, and with Rob holding me there was no way I could fall. In fact, if I just leant in a little …

‘Relax,’ he said. ‘Put your head down on my shoulder, and concentrate.’

Easy for him to say, I thought. But strangely, it did make it easier, having him hold me. I rested my cheek on the weave of his jacket and let his strong heartbeat compete with the echoing sounds of the night and the quiet canal as my eyes closed.

The noises began to recede, and his heartbeat grew muted, and out of the blackness the filmstrip of images flickered and grew and began to run backwards. I watched the blur, waiting as I always did, until Rob’s voice within my mind gently advised me, You’ve gone too far back. Stop, and make it run forward.

I can’t do that. You need to—

Concentrate, was all the help he would give me. Just will it to stop.

It resisted my will with astonishing ease for the first several seconds, but finally, when I applied all of my effort, the images started to slow.

Rob? Is that me or you?

It’s all you. Good, he said when it stopped. Now, you want to come forwards, but slowly. One frame at a time, almost.

That was no easier. It took a few tries before I could manage it, and even then I whizzed past where I should have been and had to roll the frames back with an effort. My attempts were as unlike Rob’s smooth way of scrolling through time as an elephant’s moves were unlike a ballet dancer’s, but he was patient.

You’re close, now, he told me.

But how will I know … ?

You’ll ken the right place, when you’ve found it.

I slowed the frames further, not wanting to pass it again, drawing strength from this new-found control over what I was seeing. Then one of the images, black as the night, seemed to pulsate a little, the smallest vibration. It drew my attention, my focus, and started expanding until it had grown to the size of a cinema screen. I saw Anna, and somebody walking beside her, approaching what must be this very canal, looking more dark and lonely than it did tonight, even.

Why are you keeping back? Rob asked.

I’m not. This is just how I see. From the outside, the way I saw everything. From a safe distance. No more than a … what had he called me? A bystander.

Go closer.

Rob.

He was deep in my mind now, and nudging me forwards. I felt it as surely as though he were pushing me. Wanting to show him I wasn’t the same, I deliberately tried to move nearer the image. It broadened. I tried again. And then again, till I stood at the brink of it, hesitant.

Not ready yet to believe.

Go. He nudged me again, and I gathered my focus and pushed through the image itself, and then I was inside it, incredibly, soaring above what I saw, rising wildly and spinning with little control, till I suddenly felt him right there with me, catching me, holding me steady, and bringing me down to the ground again, safely, as Anna passed by.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Dmitri was grumbling. He usually grumbled, and being called out of the warmth of the kitchen to walk in the dark and the cold to the palace had blackened his mood even more. He was a Siberian, one of the great brigade of peasant labourers who had been forced by decree to come help build St Petersburg, spending his days hauling timber and stones for the houses and churches and wharves that had risen by sheer force of will from the marshes. The men who’d been dragged here from all over Russia had been given freedom to leave once their term of hard labour was done, but Dmitri, with no means to make his way back to Siberia, had, like so many, stayed on as a servant, his old life for ever discarded.