“She promised our family!” Dmitri said vehemently. “Volkonskys keep their promises.”
Sophie struggled to get the image of the dead horses out of her mind. “And now the princess has returned!” she said. “So you must be pleased?”
Masha and Dmitri looked at each other, as if unsure what to say.
“Woman upstairs,” Dmitri said at last, his cheeks flushing, “she does not respect wolves. If you do not respect the wolf, you do not respect the forest, the wilderness!”
Masha put her arm around her brother and put her head on his shoulder. Sophie didn’t know what to say. How terrible to have waited for so long for the princess to return, and then find she was not the woman they had wanted or expected.
Masha’s mother took some logs from a pile in the corner of the room and opened a door in a large tiled cupboard. A delicious smell of warm yeast swept the room, and Sophie crinkled her nose appreciatively.
“We keep stove warm,” Masha said. “It never go out.”
Masha’s mother smiled as she reached up to rearrange a pile of washing: flowered sheets, drying on the top of the large stove. Sophie had only ever seen drawings of these Russian stoves in the books she’d had as a child. Broad and square, with a wood fire inside, they gave off heat for hours. Sophie gasped in surprise as the sheets moved of their own accord, shook themselves, and became an old woman.
“Mybabushka!” Masha laughed. “She very, very old!”
“Babushka?”said Sophie, feeling her heartbeat return to normal.
“Grandmother,” Masha translated.
Masha’s mother spoke to the old woman, telling her something with great intensity. To Sophie’s concern, the old woman started to cry. She wiped the corner of her eye with her scarf, stared at Sophie, and muttered something under her breath. Then she reached out a thin hand, like a glove of skin worn over bones, and took Sophie’s hand in hers. She smiled and spoke to Masha.
Masha nodded. “Mybabushkaglad you are here. She say a girl not come to palace since wolf princess come many years ago.”
“The last princess came here when she was a girl?” Sophie asked.
Masha nodded. “She come when parents dead. Old Prince Volkonsky her guardian.”
At these words, Sophie suddenly remembered her first night with her own guardian, Rosemary. The flat had seemed so cold and had smelled too clean. She was given a slice of toast and told to brush her teeth before bed. She knew she must “be good,” for the simple reason that if Rosemary would not look after her, there was nowhere else for her to go.
“Volchiya printsessaloved forest. She loved to be outside. She was happy here. And when her guardian’s son, young Prince Vladimir, returned from army,” Masha smiled, “they married.”
A bell rang above the door. Masha jumped in alarm. “You go now. We need work. Woman upstairs want coffee. We not be late.” She tugged gently at Sophie’s elbow. “Perhaps I wrong when I bring you …”
She opened the door. Sophie didn’t want to leave the candlelight and Dmitri and Masha, their mother andbabushka. They seemed so …together.A draft whipped into the little room, making the candle flame flicker.
“Will your hand be all right?” Sophie asked Dmitri.
He waved the bandaged hand and shrugged as if it were nothing. The old woman turned her back to them, settling herself back down on the stove. But as Masha’s mother came to say good-bye, stroking Sophie’s cheek gently with her work-worn hands, the old woman said something more. A look passed between Masha and her mother. The older woman smiled, but then checked herself and made the sign of the cross over Sophie.
Masha spoke. “My mother says she is glad you here.”
Sophie muttered, “I’m going home soon …”
The wordhomesounded wrong even as she said it. She didn’t have a homeif that meant people who really cared for her in the way Dmitri and Masha and their mother andbabushkaso obviously cared for each other. And weren’t you meant to feel safe at home, rather than in the way and an inconvenience? She only felt safe when she dreamed of her father and he linked his fingers through hers. And for a few precious seconds when Dmitri had sung to her in the chandelier. No. She could say she was going home, but the word was meaningless. Inexplicably, she felt tears well up. Something about this room, these people, felt so right to her. She wanted to stay.
But Masha had already started to run. “Perhaps yes, perhaps no …” She skidded to a halt and listened to a door opening and closing somewhere in the palace. Her eyes burned, reflecting the torchlight. “We are who we are,” she said. “However the moon may shine, it’s still not sunlight …”
The panel slid open, and Sophie saw the moonlight on the bedroom floor.
Masha squeezed her hand. “We not know why you are here, but you must be careful. Woman upstairs … she will ask you many things.” The girl glanced over her shoulder as if she might see the princess right behind her. “You say nothing. You tell nothing. It not” — she frowned — “notsafefor you to speak!”
Before Sophie could say anything, Masha pushed her through the opening, and the panel slid shut.
Delphine whispered something in her sleep. She turned over, and her fur fell to the floor. Sophie walked through the moonlight and picked it up, laying it gently over her friend.
She sat on the edge of her bed. The wind had dropped; the moon sat above the broken shutter. Her breath came out in a cloud. Shivering, she slipped under the heavy pelt, which crackled as it moved. Just the faint tick of Delphine’s small travel alarm clock, the hands illuminating the twelve and the three.
