“Don’t like my rough ways?” she laughed. “Well, that suits me. BecauseIdon’t much likeyou!”
She reached into her pocket and got out a key. The wolves kept up their chorus, louder now, as she unlocked the door.
Sophie took a step back, but Anna Feodorovna, without turning around, reached out and grabbed a handful of Sophie’s hair.
“Not so fast,” she muttered. Snowflakes hurled themselves over the two of them as she opened the door an inch. “If only you had done as I asked, and not spoken to Dmitri,” she whispered into Sophie’s ear, “I might have kept you here for a couple of years. I might have let you play princess for a while before I got bored of you … and did …THIS!”
She pushed Sophie through the door and out into the snow.
Sophie hammered on the closed door as the snowflakes whisked crazily around her. “Princess!” she cried. “Please. Don’t leave me!” She rattled the large iron door handle, but heard bolts being thrown and realized it was hopeless.
She turned. She was standing at the top of steps in an enclosed courtyard in what seemed like an even older and more neglected part of the palace, filled with enormous stone animals. She looked up at the high walls. Every window was shuttered. Even if anyone was looking, no one could see her.
For a moment it was silent. The howling she had heard in the corridor had stopped.
And then she heard the sound of crying. Behind a rusting metal grille that looked like a claw gripping the courtyard wall, Marianne and Delphine crouched, wrapped in furs …
She tried to call out their names, but all that came out was a broken croak.
“Sophie!” Marianne clung to the metal bars.
Sophie put her foot down on the next step and sent a mini avalanche of snow to the bottom.
“Watch out!” Delphine screamed. “Sophie! The wolves!”
It was as if they were speaking to her through a dream. She understood the words, but not what they meant. She saw Marianne bury her head in Delphine’s shoulder and she knew this meant something bad.
“Princess!” Sophie scrabbled back up the step and hammered again at the door. “Please … let me in! I’ll do whatever you want … I promise … the wolves …” She was crying. “The wolves …”
It was quiet. She had closed her eyes, tried to squeeze as flat as she could to the flaking paint of the enormous door, but she knew it was no good. They were coming toward her.
She half turned, and the white shapes moving through the cemetery of stone animals stopped, as if they were playing statues. And even though they were still some distance away, she saw things she didn’t want to see. Eyes that glinted red in the pale rose pink of their eyelids. Lips pulled back from teeth that looked too long. Blood on white fur, as if there had been a recent kill. She took a breath and thought,How many more breaths will the wolves allow me to take?
There was a peculiar noise. She could hear it above Marianne’s panicked sobs. There was the sound of her own breathing, of course, and the pounding of her heart, but also a thin, inconsequential humming. Her humming. She wanted to laugh. Who would hum as wolves crept closer? Because theywerecreeping closer now, in their loose-shouldered way. She crouched down and made herself very small, putting her head in her hands.
I am a girl in a wolf garden, Sophie thought.I am about to be torn to pieces. Those teeth will sink into my flesh any moment now! Why am I singing?
She wanted it to be soon. She wanted it to be over. She knew without looking that they were all gathered at the foot of the steps, and this waiting was unbearable. If she had been on a roof, she would have jumped. If she were on a sinking ship, she would have hurled herself into the sea … anything to end this dreadful wait.
She sang louder. Her father’s song. Or was it Dmitri’s song? She heard his voice in the chandelier mixing with her father’s half-remembered lullaby. She heard the wolves’ rasping breath. Did she dare to open one eye?
At the front of the pack was their leader: larger, heavier-boned. The rest stood around him at the bottom of the steps, just as she had imagined, immobile as the statues. She noticed the way the snow clung to their pelts. One — a younger one, surely — had his tongue lolling out. Even in that blink of a moment, she understood clearly the structure of the pack, how the younger wolves waited for the old wolf to move.
She started to cry when she thought what was to come, and the song came out weirdly, the rhythm syncopated by sobs. She sniffed and tried to sing harder. It would make the last few minutes easier, surely?
Sophie closed her eyes again and sang even louder.
She could hear the wolves inch toward her up the steps, but when she opened her eyes once more, they were crouching on their haunches.
Sophie stopped singing.
Then the wolves put their heads back and, as one animal, the pack howled, the sound running up Sophie’s spine. Silence. She watched them, horrified but fascinated at the same time. She heard Marianne cry to Delphine, “I can’t bear to look.”
Sophie put her head back and sang. The old wolf at the front nodded his head and licked his lips. He loped up the steps, regarding her with his red, flashing eyes, and stopped just below her.
Sophie tried to draw her feet even closer under her. The wolf sniffed the air above where her feet had been. Again, she tried to tuck them underneath her, wrapping her arms around herself. But perhaps it would be better to just put out her leg and let him bite it … would it be quicker that way? She wanted it to be quick. She pushed her foot toward the edge of the step through the snow, and cried out as the wolf stretched forward his powerful neck and brought his mouth right up to her shoe.
Then she saw the rosette of dried blood on the wolf’s side where the bullet had grazed him.
