Pushing himself back up against the wall, he listened closely to the sounds of men yelling and grumbling to one another along with footsteps that seemed to drift closer with the voices, unable to orient their direction.
Suddenly, he was blinded by the sudden influx of light as someone pushed open a door. He blinked rapidly and felt hands on him once again as they hauled him out of the darkness. It took him a few moments to take in the scene in front of him.
Mikhail realized he was being held in-between two men, both dressed in a royal guard uniform. They were standing in a train yard, the landscape around them nothing like the one he was used to in St. Petersburg.
He could smell the seawater even if he couldn’t see it, and there was one solitary fortress about half a mile from where they stood near the tracks. The cliffside dropped off ominously behind the building, and Mikhail had a feeling it fell to the sea.
“Where am I?” Mikhail summoned all his courage and tried to posture so that he didn’t feel as exhausted as he did. The men holding him were silent, but it was a different voice that answered.
“Welcome to the Solovetsky Monastery, Mikhail,” a serpentine voice made Mikhail’s skin crawl as the owner of it came into view. He fought the urge to spit at the priest in front of him, dressed in full robes that trailed behind him as he turned to face Mikhail.
“Where is my mother?!”
“Your mother is dead.” The priest said the words with no inflection as if he was reporting on what he had for lunch that day.
Mikhail felt his chest seize and his heart stop, the words sinking in his stomach like a stone. He was frozen in place as he stared up at the grotesque face of the holyman in front of him, whose permanently rosy cheeks and pockmarked face reeked of overconsumption.
“You lie! You are lying!” Mikhail yelled, immediately rocking back and forth and trying to dislodge the guards who were holding him.
He fought against their cutting grips — on a normal day, Mikhail could easily take on two versus one. Injured and disoriented, his attempts were feeble as his face turned red and he began crying in frustration.
“You lie, you lie,youlie!” He bellowed out the last word and dropped to his knees, his arms sagging above his head as the guards held tight. He hit the semi-frozen ground and released an earth-shattering scream, so loud and devastating that Mikhail nearly passed out from the exertion.
The guards flinched at such a desperate and unholy sound, the priest blinked twice. With a great, grunting effort that mimicked a pig, the priest got down on one knee in front of Mikhail and looked him in the eye.
“Listen here, boy,” his breath smelled like fish. He leaned in and began whispering in Mikhail’s ear as he quieted down to broken sobs, “The Grand Duchess Anastasiakilled your mother.Did you know that? She used thedevil’s magic.”
“No…,” Mikhail trailed off, swallowing his cries as he tried to move away.
“She did. Anastasiakilled your mother.”
Mikhail swallowed thickly and spit on the ground, feeling like his mouth had gone dry as cotton. His head pounded so aggressively that black spots started to dance in the corners of his vision.
How could this be possible? He wanted to weep and curse his mother for her optimism, making him promise that he would protect the Romanov magic when it would be the thing that killed her.
“Why am I here?” He choked out, turning his head to stare at the priest.
“Someone’s life must be given to God to atone for the death taken by Satan’s dark purposes,” the priest leaned in even closer and clasped a sweaty hand on Mikhail’s shoulder, giving it a libidinous squeeze.
No… no, that couldn’t be happening….
Mikhail's head snapped up as he looked past the priest and towards the fortress — no, themonastery— at the cliffside. His head began to swim again, but this time, it filled with rage as his breathing picked up, and he stared at the priest with wild eyes. The priest chuckled.
“Welcome to the priesthood, Mikhail,” he waved an arm that looked like a sausage towards the monastery. “It is time that you join your brothers in God's work.”
Mikhail turned and spit right in the priest's face, causing the man to rear back and topple over. He jumped up as quickly as his portly figure would allow, his face even redder as he huffed in indignation.
The priest nodded to one of the guards in a subtle movement and Mikhail felt a sharp box on his ears that made him lose his vision for a moment.
The priest leaned down again and got nose-to-nose with Mikhail, grinning wide and revealing a particularly yellow set of teeth.
“We have many ways to break converts,” he sneered, slapping him on the cheek a few times in a patronizing gesture.
“I’ve never met a man more in bed with the devil than the ones who wear the priest's clothes,” Mikhail whispered back. His eyes were alight with his own holy hatred as he stared down the reality that he would soon become what he despised most. The priest laughed.
“We’ll make you cry out for God,boy,” he stood up and grabbed a handful of Mikhail’s hair, forcing his head back.
The priest fumbled for a moment and from somewherebrought out a small, crystal decanter that Mikhail recognized as being used for holding communion wine. The priest yanked his head back and threw the wine into his eyes. Mikhail cried out as the vinegary substance blinded him, sending a current of sharp pain down his spine.
