Under a Blood Red Sky by Kate Furnivall Page A

needles, the path worn into deep ruts by the daily tramp of hundreds of feet as they marched to and from the Work Zone. Only occasionally did the women catch a glimpse of a lone wolf among the shadows or hear the blood-chilling calls of a hunting pack like ghosts in the forest. That was when the guards’ rifles suddenly became a source of comfort rather than a threat.
    It was during the hours that Anna spent walking – or shuffling, if she was being honest – that her mind would skid out of control. It slid from her grasp like a dog slips its collar and runs wild. Without Sofia to laugh at her stories, she no longer had the strength to keep her thoughts together and they raced around in places she didn’t always want to follow them to, colliding with each other.
    At first, just separate moments started to skip into her mind, warm and vivid, like riding Papa’s high-stepping black horse whose coat shone like polished metal, and crowing with delight as her childish hands wrapped tight in the coarse black mane. Or her governess, Maria, standing in her second-best silk dress, the one that was the colour of red wine, and telling Papa that Anna couldn’t go out riding on his rounds with him today – he was a doctor – because of a sore throat. Papa’s face had fallen and he’d tickled her under her chin, telling her to get well quickly and calling her his sweet angel. He’d kissed her goodbye, his whiskers all prickly and smelling of fat cigars. Anna had once stolen one from the humidor in his study and shredded it to pieces in secret up in the attic to see if she could find whatever it was that made it smell so wonderful, but all she ended up with was a lap full of crinkly brown dust.
    ‘You’re smiling,’ Nina muttered beside her, pleased.
    ‘Tell me, Nina, do you ever think about your past?’
    ‘Not if I can help it.’
    ‘So what do you think about?’
    Nina’s heavy features spread into a grin. ‘I think about sex. And when I’m too exhausted for that, I think about winning at cards.’
    ‘Last night I won that grimy piece of mirror off Tasha.’
    ‘Why on earth do you want a mirror? We all look awful.’
    Anna nodded a time or two and watched a bright orange lizard, a yasheritsa , dart out of the path of their marching feet and flash up a tree with an angry flick of its tail.
    ‘I’m thinking of using it to burn the camp down one sunny day,’ she said.
    Nina laughed so hard that a guard came over and stuck his rifle in her face.
     
    But the images and memories crowded in on top of each other as Anna concentrated on pushing each foot forward, leaving her with no strength for defences against them. She forgot the dim forest trail and instead, inside the unpredictable labyrinth of her head, she was riding in the back of a luxurious black car.
     
***
     
    It was a Daimler and it belonged to the Dyuzheyevs, bigger and shinier than Papa’s Oakland and with a glass partition, which didn’t squeak, between them and the chauffeur. Svetlana and Grigori Dyuzheyev were Papa’s dearest friends, wealthy aristocrats who lived in a magnificent villa in Petrograd.
    ‘Your pearls are beautiful.’
    Svetlana Dyuzheyeva, a stylish and elegant woman, was delighted by the compliment. She ran a finger along the triple strand of matched pearls at her creamy throat.
    ‘Thank you, Anna. They used to belong to my mother and to her mother before that. Here,’ she lifted one of Anna’s fingers, ‘touch them.’
    The pearls felt like silk, warm and alive, and smoother than her own skin. She couldn’t imagine how such beauty could come out of something as ugly as an oyster.
    ‘They’re wonderful,’ she murmured. ‘And one day Vasily will own them.’ She was thinking aloud, already afraid that he’d be stupid and use them to feed his fellow demonstrators. She couldn’t bear the idea of it.
    Svetlana grinned mischievously, raised one eyebrow and leaned close to Anna’s ear. ‘Vasily… or his wife,’ she