Elena
The cold pressed in against her, battering her slight frame. Her thin overcoat gave little protection from the wind and rain, and the snow that fell felt like ash to her blackened heart.
The small bag of supplies that was slung over her shoulder pulled her weight further into the deepening drifts of snow.
Trees were pulling at her hat and muff, threatening to rip them off. But the landscape was flat and bare to her.
Up ahead, a large rabbit hole gave her suitable cover for the night. She pushed herself in, not caring if she would ever get out again. It was better to die here than reach the shame and anger that would come with her destination.
She did not, could not, sleep. Instead, memories swamped her mind, bringing the fear she had felt when she first left her home, storming back.
She remembered the surge of anger that had caused her to push her mother over the banister and to her death. She remembered the look of pain on her father’s face, distorted by considerable amounts of ale. She remembered the shake in her hand as she forged the note that would imprison her father for the rest of his life.
Her memories transformed into nightmares; and when dawn broke, she was disappointed to find that wild bears had not eaten her in the night.
She was disappointed again when her thin body pulled easily out of the rabbit hole.
She ate a meager breakfast of bread and sausage, stolen from the pantry when her father was preoccupied with her mother’s body, and she washed it down with some of her father’s precious ale.
She walked for another day, eating the last of her bread and sausage.
When dawn broke again, her destination was in sight. The city of St Petersburg.
The spires on the church were obscured by the low lying clouds and the people hurried faster and with more purpose than the last time she had visited.
She wandered through the streets, using her memory to guide her to her grandmother’s apartment.
She looked up from the foot of the tall building, gazing at the flickering candlelight in the windows.
She knocked twice on the hardwood door. Almost immediately she changed her mind and turned to leave.
But the door behind her opened and there was her grandmother.
“Elena!”
“Grandmama,” she murmured unenthusiastically in Russian.
He grandmother hugged her but she pulled away.
“Grandmama. I’ve done something terrible.”