Lara's Gift Read online

  The Dance

  That night I escaped to the stable and found an empty stall in the birthing room. I didn’t have energy to greet Zola and her pups, nor play with Chara. Instead, I laid a plush bear hide down on the soft, fresh straw and snuggled into it with Zar close to me. I wanted this night to end and hoped tomorrow would bring something different.

  I woke the next morning, clinging to Zar like ivy, as Papa gently rustled me awake.

  “I knew I’d find you here,” Papa said. “It’s where I used to come when I was troubled. Your mama was worried sick about you. I figured you needed this time with Zar and told her so. We’re more alike than I knew, Larochka.”

  His words brought me comfort, as if I finally walked along the same narrow trail with him through a dense forest, rather than through the thick of it all alone.

  “It’s time for Zar to make his journey,” Papa said. “It’s painful to let go of the dogs we love most. But this is what we do.”

  Papa took my hand and led me through the stable. Memories of Zar stirred inside me at every turn—his first lead, his first feed bowl, his mother, and his pups. I couldn’t imagine walking through the stable without Zar. There were still too many memories we needed to build. I looked down at him prancing alongside me, as if today were like any other day—his eyes as trusting as ever.

  Boris had the Count’s finest horses hitched and ready to go. In the back of the sledge stood the wolf cage in which Zar would travel. Tinsel hung from the top of the cage to keep him safe from the forest spirits along the journey.

  Alexander stood by the sledge and slowly walked over to me. “I’m so sorry, Lara.”

  “It was my dream, too—to breed borzoi worthy of the Tsar,” I said.

  Alexander looked like he wanted to say something more, but held his tongue.

  “The Count left early this morning for the Tsar’s palace,” Papa said. “Say your goodbyes to Zar, and then Boris must be off to join him.”

  I bent down and hugged Zar. In his ear, I whispered, “The Tsar will give you much more than I ever could. You’ll get the best training, the best meat, and the best home a dog could ever want. Be good for him, but most of all, continue to make us proud.” I wiped back tears, and nodded to Papa that I was done saying my goodbyes.

  “Have you forgotten something?” Papa pointed to the red ribbon I had tied around Zar’s neck last night.

  “I want him to have it,” I answered. “So he won’t forget me.”

  Papa’s eyes started to water.

  I led Zar to the sledge and into the wolf cage. He followed willingly and let me lock the cage. It wasn’t until I jumped down from the sledge that Zar’s feet started to dance in an effort to find a way out.

  “Stay, Zar. Be a good dog,” I said.

  Zar tilted his head from one side to the next. I fought back my tears. I didn’t want Papa or Alexander to think of me as a child. Boris clucked his tongue and the horses set off in a trot toward the gates of the estate with Zar caged up like a wolf in the back of the sledge. How Zar whined and yelped, and the way he gnawed and pawed at the wood slats of the cage to free himself made me wish it were me inside that horrible cage instead of him.

  Pushkin’s words came to me as my eyes followed Zar until he became a speck against the horizon.

  Once again there hang beclouded

  My horizons, dark with rain;

  Envious Fate, in malice shrouded,

  Lies in wait for me again.

  Be careful what you wish for, I kept thinking. I had certainly gotten what I had wished for. I just never realized how much it would hurt.

  Papa rested his hands on my shoulders. “I need to talk to you.”

  “Please, Tyatya. Not now.”

  “Yes, now,” he said. “You’ll want to hear what I should have told you long ago—when you had your first vision.”

  An understanding warmth had crept into Papa’s voice as he took my hand. Because I blamed Papa for my misery, I expected my whole body to stiffen from his touch, but it softened. In silence, I let him lead me past the kennel, past the main animal hospital, past the stable, past the racetrack and show ring, past the wooden chapel and its bell tower, past the birches, and past our home, into the snowy fields under a cold blue sky. We stopped at the river’s edge, now frozen.

  “I owe you the secret behind Golden Rule Number Eight.” Papa twisted the long, dark hairs of his beard before the next words finally came. “Only a fool makes a decision based on a vision.”

  At first I thought Papa was teasing me, then realized from the pained look on his face, he had dug deep within himself to reveal this to me.

  “Through the years all of the kennel stewards have had visions and learned to keep them a secret for fear of the harm they could bring upon us, as well as the bad choices we’ve made because of them.”

  Papa paused.

  “What bad choices?” I asked.

  “Long before you were born, something terrible happened,” Papa admitted. “Your great-great-great-grandfather convinced the Count at the time to take the dogs on a hunt in the heart of a blizzard because he had had a vision of the dogs bringing down more wolves than on any other hunt. Though the Count had his doubts, he was eager to build the reputation of his kennel and trusted him. Together they went out in the snowy madness. One by one they lost the dogs. They would have died themselves had it not been for the pealing of the stable bells to guide them home.”

  “That’s horrible, Tyatya.”

  “The Count in that day was so furious, he threatened to banish our family from the dogs. Because his wife was exceptionally fond of your great-great-great-grandmother, she persuaded her husband to give our family another chance on the condition that we never use our visions again.”

  “Never?” I asked.

  “Never,” Papa answered.

  “Does Alexander know about this?” This would explain why he called me his crystal ball.

  “Unlikely,” Papa said. “It’s nothing I’ve ever discussed with the Count.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me all of this sooner?”

  Papa rubbed his hand over his face. “I should have told you, but I felt a need to protect you, Larochka. People with gifts like ours come to be hated. Look at Rasputin. He won’t live a long life, of this I’m certain.”

  “Our gift could be used to bring good, too,” I said.

  “I see that now.” Papa sighed. “Your mama told me that you had wanted to warn me about the hunt. I was too thickheaded to listen and now I regret that choice. And as for Zar—you were right, it was good to let him live. These words have haunted me ever since his birth when you first said them. I knew you were right then and yet I refused to accept them. I didn’t want you to have visions. Zar deserves much more credit than I’ve given to him. I just couldn’t admit it to myself, until I faced the truth like a Cossack stallion headed for battle.”

  Just then, my head began to pound. Something in the pain I felt made me fear for Zar. I quickly squeezed my eyes shut and willed myself to see what was coming.

  There behind my eyelids I saw Zar, hanging from a hunter’s trap, swaying in the wind, above a pack of hungry wolves, jumping up at him with snarling, snapping jaws.

  And then the image faded.

  It left me with a cold, dark feeling that pressed on me until I could hardly breathe.

  “I know that look,” Papa said. “What did you see?”

  “Zar’s in danger,” I murmured, swallowing back sobs.

  “How can that be?”

  “I don’t know. He must have freed himself—”

  Papa cut me off. “That’s impossible. I made that cage myself.”

  “I know what I saw.” I folded my arms and stood a little taller. “Zar’s hanging from a tree, stuck in a hunter’s loop. If we don’t find him soon, I’m afraid the wolves will.”

  Papa stroked the long, dark hairs of his beard in pensive thought. “I know of one hunter who uses loops to trap wolves.”

 
; “We need him to show us where his traps are,” I said.

  Just then, our stable bells rang in earnest—ding-ding-ding-ding—in a call for help. Papa and I hurried to the stable and found that Boris had returned. He paced back and forth, pointing to the empty cage, as Alexander listened and watched.

  “What happened?” Papa asked Boris as we approached full out of breath.

  “One minute I looked back and Zar was inside the cage, in the next he was gone. He somehow managed to push the latch free,” Boris said. “I returned to the estate hoping to find him here.”

  “We’ve searched the kennel. We didn’t find him,” Alexander said, giving me a look that said he shared my pain.

  “Because he hasn’t yet made it home,” Papa said. He turned to me. “Go ahead, explain, Lara. I give you my blessing.”

  As afraid as I was of being hated like Rasputin, I couldn’t let anything happen to Zar. So I closed my eyes. I couldn’t bear to see how Alexander would react when he learned of my visions.

  “Zar’s hanging from a hunter’s loop, trapped above a hungry pack of wolves,” I blurted.

  Nobody spoke.

  In the silence, I braved to open one of my eyes.

  Papa stood tall and self-assured.

  Alexander’s face was full of questions.

  To my surprise, Boris, bullish and brawny, took a step back, staring wide-eyed at me. He looked ready to run, like a frightened hare.

  “I know it sounds far-fetched, but I believe her,” Papa said.

  “I don’t understand,” Alexander said.

  “I have visions,” I answered in a soft voice. “I see things before they happen.”

  “How?” Alexander asked.

  “I don’t know. They come and go with no real pattern other than they’re connected to the dogs.”

  “Is that why you’re always in the right place at the right time?” Alexander asked.

  I nodded.

  “It’s starting to make sense,” Alexander said. “There had been rumors, but I pushed them aside as myth. I wish I had paid more attention to them.”

  From the pleased tone of Alexander’s voice I allowed myself to breathe again. “You don’t hate me?”

  “Not if it helps us save Zar,” he said. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “It’s my fault,” Papa said. “I made her promise not to tell anyone.”

  “It killed me not to tell you,” I said to Alexander. “There were so many times that I wanted to.”

  “Keeping your word is admirable,” Alexander said. “You’re more noble than you think.”

  “We must hurry, Alexander. Papa knows of a hunter who uses traps like the one I saw. We need him to show us where he’s set them up. In one of them, I’m certain that we’ll find Zar.”

  “Boris, we’ll need a bigger sleigh and a fresh set of horses,” Alexander requested.

  “Right away.” Boris hustled inside the stable, looking over his shoulder, eyeing me as if I were a wolf cub in a pen filled with chicks.

  Alexander, Papa, and I rode through the powdery snow some twenty versts away to a small log house in the deep, dark woods.

  The hunter was chopping wood outside. Alexander and Papa exchanged a few words with him, and then Alexander handed the hunter a bag of rubles. They shook hands and soon we were headed through the woods again with the hunter leading the way on his own sledge.

  “The first one’s up ahead,” the hunter said. It had not yet been triggered.

  We traveled to the next one, and again it was empty. So was the third trap.

  “You sure your dog might be in one of my traps?” the hunter asked. He lifted his bag of coins and jingled it. “Seems you wasted this on nothing.”

  “How many more traps do you have?” Papa asked. “We want to see all of them.”

  “The others are further away.”

  Alexander looked at me. “Lara?”

  “Yes, all of them.”

  Day was becoming night. We could not travel as quickly through the woods under the darkening sky. I pulled the small black box that Ruslan had made from my pocket and fingered Zar’s face.

  Then I kissed his face three times, just as Mama did in times of hope.

  “Up ahead,” the hunter directed Papa.

  There in the trap was something white. It lay motionless, as if already dead. My heart dropped into the pit of my stomach. “Zar?”

  As we approached the trap, my heartbeat slowed. It was a silver-white wolf.

  “Let me cut that wolf down!” the hunter shouted.

  “We don’t have time,” Papa said. “It’s urgent we find our dog.”

  Alexander turned to me. “Can you remember anything else from your vision?”

  I closed my eyes and tried to recall what I had seen. “Birch trees! I saw birch trees.”

  I called out to the hunter. “Do you have a trap set among a cluster of birch trees?”

  “Yes, I do.” The hunter gulped. “How did you know that?”

  “Bring us to it,” I said. “There we’ll find our dog.”

  “Just over that hill.” The hunter pointed. “Do you see those birches in the distance?”

  Papa cracked the knout and the horses picked up speed. I thought I could hear Zar’s barking in the distance—his cries for help. As we got closer, my heart hammered and my body started to shake. I kept telling myself to take deep breaths, but my throat tightened and I could hardly breathe.

  “That isn’t just any dog,” the hunter said. “That’s a borzoi!”

  There under the birches hung Zar, caught in a trap, trying to free himself above a pack of hungry wolves.

  “Hold on, Zar!” I called.

  Alexander pulled out his rifle and shot into the pack that hovered under Zar. One wolf dropped and some scattered.

  He reloaded and shot again at the pack. Another wolf crumpled into the snow and more wolves bolted in fear.

  Papa drove the sleigh just underneath Zar. The hunter dismounted from his sledge and lowered Zar into the sleigh and into my arms—arms I wrapped around Zar. Arms I didn’t want to let go. I stroked Zar’s head, half laughing, half crying, waiting for my heartbeat to calm, my shaking to stop. Zar licked my ears and gave them little bites of affection, grunting with pure delight. And he wouldn’t stop. He kept giving me little bites, like all his love was stored up in them. I retrieved my lucky knife and cut Zar free from the rope.

  “Zar belongs with you,” Alexander said to me. “That’s clear.”

  “For once I have to agree,” Papa said.

  I cupped Zar’s ears. “Nyet, he has to go to the Tsar. A promise is a promise.”

  It killed me to say these words aloud.

  “Are you sure, Larochka?” Papa asked.

  “Alexander’s family would lose favor with the Tsar if we don’t,” I said.

  “Not if we send His Imperial Majesty pups from Zar’s litter,” Alexander proposed. “What would be better than a troika of his progeny?”

  Alexander’s idea was tempting. I sure would prefer to keep Zar at my side. But it also went against my dream to breed borzoi worthy of the Tsar.

  “I can’t let you make that mistake, Alexander. Your family needs to send Zar. He’s your best dog and it’s the best thing to do for the Woronzova Kennel,” I said. “Also, what will your father tell His Imperial Majesty Tsar Nicholas if Zar doesn’t show up?”

  Alexander turned to my papa.

  “This is your decision,” Papa said. “Though I agree with Lara, sending Zar to the Tsar is the best choice for the kennel.”

  “We’ll still have Zar’s pups to carry his line,” I said. Then I held him tightly around his neck, giving him small bites of affection. I took a deep breath, garnered all my strength, and whispered into Zar’s ear, “You must carry on the Woronzova line and make us all proud.” Zar tilted his head and nudged my chin. “I’ll never forget you, Zar.”

  “All right, then it’s settled,” Alexander said. “Zar goes in the morning.”
/>   The hunter collected the dead wolves and loaded them onto his sledge. We thanked him and parted ways.

  Along our journey home I held Zar close in my lap. Alexander leaned into me. “It’s very brave of you to give up Zar. I know how much he means to you.”

  “It’s the right thing to do, Sasha,” I said.

  “Still, I’ll never forget what you did for my family.”

  When we were a few versts away from the estate, Papa lifted his hunting horn from his neck and handed it to me.

  It felt heavy with memories—memories from past stewards who wore the horn around their necks, too. I traced the outline of the gold borzoi running with outstretched legs, as Zar nosed it with his long snout. “This is you.”

  Zar tilted his head from side to side, and then pawed at the horn.

  “Gentle, boy.” I lifted the horn away from his long legs, over my head, and around my neck.

  “Go ahead, Lara. Let Boris, Maxim, and the rest of the kennel hands know we’re coming with good news,” Papa said.

  “Really?” I asked.

  “You’ve earned it, Lara.”

  I brought the horn to my lips, took a deep breath, and blew as hard and as long as I could.

  Alexander clapped. “Molodietz!”

  I looked to Papa and he patted my head as he would with one of the dogs. It had been a long time since he had done that—and a long time since I had felt as one with him.

  I removed the horn from my neck and handed it back to Papa.

  Papa put up his hands. “It’s yours now.”

  “Does this mean—”

  Papa raised his finger high in the air, as if he were the Tsar. “As the current Woronzova Kennel steward, and by the power vested in me by my forefathers, it’s obvious you belong with the dogs.”

  I made Papa repeat these words several times before I finally believed him. And then I asked, “What about the midwife’s nephew?”

  “I understand he’s afraid of dogs,” Papa said, winking at Alexander. “I doubt he’d be a suitable match for my daughter.”

  I turned to Alexander and hugged him for being such a loyal friend.

  “And until I do find a suitable match on whom we can both agree,” Papa added, “I’ll be expecting solid results from you with Zar’s pups.”