Dmitri wiped his forehead again. “Complicated is an understatement,” he said. “I’m ready to move again. Please, let’s continue.”
I hoped he’d remember I’d given him a way out but that he’d chosen not to take it.
“This way to the lion’s den,” I said.
Chapter Five
AS WE APPROACHED the schoolroom, I could hear Miles’s laughter, which quickly turned into a bout of coughing. I counted the seconds until he stopped. Only six. Not too concerning. If it went past fifteen seconds, it was a bad sign.
When I opened the door, warm air flowed out, because Hap was good at keeping the stove going. He knew it helped Miles feel better. Hap and Miles were standing in front of their worktable as we came in, but our entrance startled them so much that Miles stumbled backward and Hap spun around. I got a good look at the table.
What appeared to be Stepan’s head was sitting on top of it. Dmitri made an odd sound in his throat, like he was trying to suppress a scream.
In my younger days, I would have played along with the boys and pretended to be horror-struck, maybe even screamed myself to see how Dmitri responded. But since I was supposed to be the responsible one, I refrained.
“Hi, Lottie!” Stepan’s head called. “Look! I don’t have a body anymore.”
“Excellent new magic trick,” I said as I went over to figure out how they’d done it.
It was actually a simple mirror trick. The rectangular mirror was under the table, facing the intended audience at a diagonal running from a back leg on one side to a front leg on the other, and Stepan’s body was hidden behind it. The mirror reflected the table’s front legs, giving the audience the illusion that they were seeing all four legs, through to the back.
Stepan ducked out of his spot, revealing the hole that had been cut in the center of the table. “How did you manage the hole?” I asked. Most of the tools the boys used to build their magic-trick contraptions were in the country.
“Yermak did it for us,” Hap said. “We thought Archer was going to catch us, but Stepan provided a distraction.” He punched at Stepan, who ducked and grinned. Stepan loved it when the older boys let him be part of their plans.
I heard Dmitri clearing his throat. When I glanced back at him, I thought his eyes were showing a bit more white than they had before, and he was a little paler.
“This is Dmitri Antonovich Sokolov, your new tutor,” I said.
I turned to Dmitri. “I forgot to mention that my brothers like magic tricks.”
Looks of suppressed glee passed among the three boys. I knew exactly what they were thinking. A new victim.
I introduced them one by one. “This is Miles,” I said. I didn’t want to point out that it was easy to tell Miles and Hap apart because Miles was so much smaller, even though he was older. I think his illnesses over the years had affected his appetite even before he’d been diagnosed with tuberculosis, and so he’d never grown very tall. “Miles is a wielder of a vicious pen if he doesn’t like you. His limericks can be quite rude, and he’s always running his hands through his hair, which is why it’s a mess all the time.”
“Very eloquent description,” Miles said, messing up his hair even more. “Do I get to describe you, too? No, never mind. I have a good limerick in mind.” He grinned, and I realized I shouldn’t have added in the bit about the limericks. I held up my hand to stop him. It didn’t work.
“I don’t have the rhythm of the last line right, but I’m working on it,” he said. He cleared his throat like he was about to give a speech.
Our Charlotte is prone to shriek and to yell
We’re surprised the house hasn’t yet fell
Every day is a new rant
It’s always, “You can’t, can’t, can’t.”
We hope one day her voice will say farewell.
If Dmitri hadn’t been there, I would have thrown something at Miles. Of course I shrieked and yelled when I had a good reason to, and with the boys I had a good reason nearly every day.
I forced myself to smile. I’d pay Miles back later. “You’re right. The last line needs work. Let’s move on to Hap.” At least Hap wouldn’t have a limerick on hand to torment me. “Hap was really a happy little baby, hence the nickname. And still mostly happy as long as he has something to draw with and on.”
The nickname fit his face, too. Even when he wasn’t smiling, he looked content. The corners of his mouth turned up ever so slightly, and that, combined with the broadness of his face, made his looks a sharp contrast to Miles, whose features had sharpened and become more drawn with each bout of illness.
“Last but not least is Stepan, the serious one who knows many, many facts about animals. He’d be glad to answer any questions about them.”
Stepan moved forward and held out his hand, standing very straight. “How do you do? I am Stepan Feodorovich Cherkassky.”
Dmitri shook his hand. “How do you do,” he said, matching Stepan’s serious tone. He glanced between me and Miles and Hap. “I didn’t know Americans had such red hair. I thought it was more a Scottish trait. Interesting.”
“Our father had red hair because my grandmother is Scottish, though our grandfather was American,” I explained. “She had the same red hair when she was young.”
“It’s very distinctive,” Dmitri said. “I like it.” He sounded as if he meant it, which surprised me. Some people acted as if our hair color were a burden we had to bear, or worse, that redheads were so out of control with their fiery tempers, they’d bring disaster to any family. My red hair had been an additional mark against me with Pavel’s mother.
I watched Dmitri examine the room, which I realized was in quite a state. At least the rabbit cage was clean and didn’t smell; the rabbits dozed in one corner next to each other. The rest of the room looked like no one had straightened it up in weeks. Miles’s manuscripts were piled everywhere, some of the stacks of paper topped with Stepan’s tin soldiers. Stepan claimed he couldn’t remember history unless he could use his soldiers to set up the battles, though for some reason the soldiers were always accompanied by his collection of Dymkovo toys, the colorful little clay ducks he loved. Sometimes both sides would be made up of ducks, and they’d end up intermingling, grouped in little circles, a nicer thought than actual men throwing themselves into hell.
“I hear your former tutor left quite suddenly,” Dmitri said as he hobbled all around, examining some of the books on the shelves and Hap’s drawings stuck on the walls. The latest ones were mostly of kikimoras, the strange spirits from Russian folktales that some described as little old women with large chicken feet. Hap’s versions of them were rather scary.
“And I heard the reason the poor fellow left was because he thought the house was cursed.” Dmitri moved over to the globe and put his fingers on it to make it spin. I noticed again how long his fingers were. His hands were those of a pianist. An image flashed into my head of him sitting next to me on a piano bench, leaning in to turn the pages, his eyes fixed on me. The image was so clear, it was like a memory, though of course it had never happened.
My face felt hot and I put my hands on my cheeks to cool it down. What was wrong with me?