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Aleksandr stared at the name, perplexed by the letters tangled
like thorns. She’d never told him her name, and in the three
evenings they spent together, he’d never asked it. Shame boiled
under his skin. Glancing at the baby, he didn’t doubt Sinivushka’s
claim. Like her mother, the child’s lips were tinged a soft blue, but
the fuzz of hair on her head was as dark as Aleksandr’s. Her nose,
too wide and flat was also his. Her eyes were her own, however,
neither her mother’s soft blue nor her father’s dark brown. And
unlike her mother, frost did not cling to the child like a cloak, she
did not breathe the winter out with each exhalation. ‘Halfling’ the
note said. Did he need any further confirmation of Sinivushka’s
nature
He’d lied to himself, hoped she might be a girl from one of
the north villages visiting family, even with her strangeness. But
no, Sinivushka was something else, something other than human.
He had met her by the river, watched her walk barefoot next
to the frozen water. She glanced over her shoulder and smiled
at him, and nothing else in the world mattered. They had lain
together and now, so long after Sinivushka had disappeared those
months ago, he had a daughter. A beautiful, inhuman daughter,
and no idea how to care for the child.
Aleksandr cursed under his breath.
One of the dragons raised its head and snapped at him.
“I will curse if I want, you wretched beast,” Aleksandr
snarled. “And just what am I supposed to do with a pair of dragons
She said you would keep us and bring prosperity. More likely
burn the house down.”
One of the dragons uncoiled and stretched, unfurling
wings as fragile as glass. The creature was hardly bigger than a cat
and supremely unimpressive.
“Much use you shall be,” Aleksandr muttered.
All that time the baby cried—great heaving wails that
seemed impossible for such a tiny thing. The dragon beside the
basket padded to the door with clacking claws and bumped its
snout impatiently against it. Aleksandr sighed.
“I am servant to a dragon pup now.”
February 2014 47