The Black & White - Carnivàle, its scenarios and its characters, belong to Management (alias Dan Knauf) and HBO.

Rain Bow
by Vorona

Alexei had been pondering the task set before him all day. Proud though he was to have been given it, a part of him found it deeply troubling.

He looked down at the familiar hand clasping his own and tightened his grip on it, as if fearful its owner would get caught in the wind blowing through the open carriage window and be whisked away from him. It had been blustering all day, and more than once a particularly powerful gust had threatened to knock him off his feet. But the other hand had always been there, holding him fast and keeping him grounded.

Even now, although his fears were unfounded, it reassuringly returned his squeeze.

Picnics were for lovers and children, he'd earlier overheard the man called Norman tell the lady called Rose, What could be more perfect on a Sunday afternoon?

Alexei wasn't sure what a lover was - or a picnic, for that matter; his English, though improving, was still fairly rudimentary, and he found the language far easier to listen to than to speak - but he knew that when children were spoken of, it almost always had something to do with him and Irina. Perhaps this 'lovers' word did, too.

They'd set off directly after church that morning. Such curious things, churches. Alexei had come to find, in his limited (albeit vehement) experience with religion, that houses of prayer all felt very much the same: solemn, passionate, wise. They reminded him of his sister.

Huddling closer to Irina, he wondered what it would be like to live in a church. He imagined he would enjoy it very much. The people there were interesting to watch in their varying levels of worship, some whispering hotly over quivering hands, others with their heads tilted back, quietly snoring. It was a place in which one could do anything, it seemed, as long as it was done in the name of God. The idea pleased Alexei. They could sleep in the bell tower, he thought (for Irina was always adjacent to his fantasies), and stand on their toes on the roof during the hymns, to see if they could hear the angels singing along in Heaven.

Perhaps they would hear Mama singing, too. Irina could already, Alexei knew, and of this he was slightly jealous. It was why Irina sang or hummed so often, she claimed: she was singing along with Mama's memory. It didn't seem fair. Alexei had far fewer memories of his mother than his sister did. According to his logic, if Irina got Mama's memories, he should at least be able to get her soul.

"That belongs to God now," Irina told him, but Alexei remained secretly unconvinced. Still, until he found the proper prayer to prove her wrong - surely a merciful God would heed him if he asked hard enough - whenever his sister sang, he strained his ears to hear the secondary notes of Mama's voice layered beneath Irina's own.

Alexei wished she would sing now, to distract him from the quandary he had been alternately dwelling upon and avoiding since Norman had broached the subject over breakfast ("Blini!" Alexei'd happily exclaimed; "Pancakes," Rose had corrected him with an indulgent smile).

He lifted his gaze to study his sister, whose features he knew as well as his own, maybe better. She was watching the scenery beyond the window slowly pass as the carriage trundled along the main dirt road that led into and out of Mintern. Her eyes were sharp, flitting this way and that, and her lips were pursed in a pensive pout. Every so often, her eyebrows would briefly dart together, as if warding off some unwanted whimsy from gaining entrance inside her head. Other than that, she moved only to irritatedly push back a few strands of dark hair that had come loose from her braid and fallen into her face.

He couldn't imagine her being any different, anyone other than Irina. He didn't want her to be anyone else. How could Norman have asked this of him, after both he and Rose had been so kind?

Moreover, how could Irina herself have agreed to it?

Didn't she like being who she was anymore? didn't she still like being Irina, his sister? and didn't she still want he, Alexei, as her brother?

Alexei bit down hard on his bottom lip to keep it from trembling, as he felt the backs of his eyes begin to prick with tears. He tucked his knees to his chest and swallowed hard, burrowing as much as he could into his sister's side. Switching the hand he clutched for her other one, Irina wrapped an arm around his shoulders, seeming to know, as she always did, what he needed. This time, that knowledge only made Alexei want to cry more. He couldn't bear the thought of her someday pushing him away, instead of drawing him closer.

"Is something wrong, Alexei?" Rose, who sat in the seat across from them, asked him. But although her eyes were filled with compassion - Alexei had never seen them appear otherwise - he couldn't help distrusting them. He certainly couldn't trust his own voice - to speak, or to open his mouth at all, would be to sob. And so he shook his head and tried to force his tears away. They had to be strong, Irina had told him, in a memory from which all but her voice had already begun to fade. They had to be strong together, to survive. Pray to God, but row for shore: He had spared them (from what, Alexei couldn't quite recall, but he knew it had something to do with Mama), and would continue to do so only if they were willing to help Him help themselves.

"We'll be there soon," Rose continued cheerfully. "Norman says he's had the perfect spot picked out for weeks. Came across it on the way home from his last trip to Salinas."

The children said nothing, although Irina made an effort at smiling. It had been over a month since the Reverend Norman Balthus had found them near the road that followed the river and taken them in, but Irina's paranoia had scarcely lessened. Whenever Alexei asked her what she was looking for, she would look at him queerly, then tell him only to beware of any strange men. This puzzled Alexei. America was full of strange men - and women, too, for that matter. To his eyes, Irina was searching for a criminal in a sea of cooks with long knives.

Rose, though she had been guessing at their arrival time, turned out to be right. The carriage bumped and jarred as Norman steered the horses to the roadside, and Alexei stretched forward a little to chance a look out the window. They had stopped on the outskirts of an orchard, and at once Alexei was taken with the sight. Trees as thick as a forest lined the ground as far as his eyes could see, and seemed to have more blossoms than they did leaves. Pale pink and white blanketed their branches like spring snow, and Alexei could smell their sweetness carried on the breeze as strongly as if he held one of the flowers to his nose. Norman hadn't been lying - it really was a perfect spot, perfect enough to distract even Irina, who had gone wide-eyed for once, instead of wild-eyed.

The carriage door opened before them and Norman appeared, his face shining with pleasure and ill-concealed pride.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" he grinned. "Well, come on, unless you'd rather eat in the carriage. But I'm warning you, it would be quite a sin to waste a day like this." He held out a hand to Irina, who accepted it absently as she gently disengaged herself from her brother and made the small leap from the carriage to the grass. It was she who helped Alexei down, never once letting go of his hand, and he suspected that was just as much for her own peace of mind as for his. Her distraction had quickly worn off, and now she stared at the throng of trees as if each one might conceal a lurking predator behind it.

"Apples!" said Rose, resting one hand on her hat to keep it from blowing away in a sudden gust of wind. "Why Norman, you've found us an Eden!"

Norman, brown basket in hand, beamed proudly. "And the fruit here is just as forbidden," he whispered, a mischievous twinkle in his eye. "The owners don't know we're here."

"Norman Balthus, you wolf in sheep's clothing, I ought to"

"Don't worry, don't worry, we're far enough from the house that they won't see us, and we won't stray too far into the orchard." He looked pointedly at Irina and Alexei, and Alexei looked up at Irina. Even without Norman's warning, he doubted she would have let him wander.

Norman's perfect spot was only a little ways into the shade. When he retrieved a red-checkered blanket from the basket and spread it out on the ground, Alexei began to understand what 'picnic' meant. While he had never participated in one himself, he did distantly remember a vision of two young people in a field, whom he and Irina had stumbled upon one day when they had gone walking back in Russia. They'd watched as the youths, who couldn't have been long out of school age, feasted upon sandwiches and sweets before they'd begun playing, rolling around with one another in the long grass, first laughing and then making other sounds. Alexei wondered if Irina remembered them, too, and whether she would play such a game with him, if it was part of the picnic ritual.

Rose complained about the wind as she laid out their luncheon spread, weighting the blanket's corners with the lemonade pitcher, she and Norman's shoes, and the basket itself. Following their elders' example, Alexei and Irina removed their boots, socks and stockings, and Alexei trod in place a few steps, enjoying the feel of the soft, cool grass between his toes.

His good mood, however, was fleeting, as Norman asked the one question Alexei had hoped had been forgotten.

"So, have either of you two given any thought to this morning's proposition?"

"Smaller words, Norman," scolded Rose, "Alexei's still learning. And it's much too soon for them to have made a decision already. It's important business, something they'll have to live with for the rest of their lives; they can't just pick something out of a hat. Don't rush them."

Alexei could have hugged her for the intervention, but hooked his arm through one of Irina's instead.

"Fine, fine," Norman chuckled. "But you can't blame me for being curious."

"Nos byl otorvan iz lyubopytny Varvaraya," Irina muttered under her breath, and Alexei's eyes widened in surprise. She had never spoken so harshly toward either of their new guardians. And yet somehow her words comforted him, for they gave him hope that his beloved Irina was at least a bit reluctant to make her choice. Perhaps she regretted consenting to the task in the first place. Perhaps she would change her mind, and tell Norman that she had made a mistake, that she didn't really want to do this.

Perhaps, but it wasn't very likely. Alexei knew his sister - she did not go back on her word - and he knew the nature of grown-ups as well: if a child was indecisive, an adult would make his decision for him, and not having any say in a matter at all was a far worse prospect than the one they had been given.

Luckily, neither Norman nor Rose heard Irina's unkind words (luckily, for her tone transcended language). When Rose passed Alexei a plate of ham, bread, and cheese, he accepted it, but didn't want to. His stomach was tied in a hundred knots that went all the way up into his throat; he didn't know how he would manage to swallow anything, no matter how much butter Irina smeared on his bread.

He got away with prodding at his food - constructing a sandwich, picking off its crusts, neatly tearing off the parts of the ham that hung over the edges of the bread - for as long as he could, until Irina nudged him encouragingly with her elbow. "Yest, Alexei." She had been more insistant about his eating habits ever since those few hungry days along the riverbank.

He managed to force down a few bites to satisfy her, letting his mind wander as the adults chattered amongst themselves about the ministry, their parishioners, and what nuisances young Caroll and Val Templeton were becoming. Why, just last week they had stuck two pennies together with a wad of gum for the offering tray, and the week before that had ruined the new whitewash on the church fence by scraping it with sticks as they ran by laughing. Alexei caught the slight flare of Irina's nostrils as these offenses were listed one by one. They'd seen the boys at church on Sundays, snickering and trading small blows as they deliberately mangled hymns. Alexei wasn't sure which was the sin that most annoyed his sister: their disrespect for a house of God, or for the music contained within its walls.

Euterpe, according to Norman, who enjoyed delivering lessons almost as much as he did sermons, was the Greek Muse of music. The Greeks hadn't been wrong, per se, in their worship of multiple gods; they had merely mistaken the many faces of God as being those of more than one being. A choir of inspiration, he asked, which did that more resemble: the Devil's handiwork, or a chorus of angels but falsely interpreted by man?

Rose said it depended on what their music inspired.

Euterpe. Alexei mouthed the word experimentally as he looked at Irina. The sunlight that fell through the leaves of the tree they sat beneath formed a half-halo around her hair, brightening the brown to its true auburn.

No, Alexei frowned, turning away from the sickle-shaped nimbus that crowned his sister's head. It was a silly name, too difficult to pronounce. For all its aptness, it was simply too far from Irina.

By the time they moved on to dessert (a wedge each of the rhubarb pie Rose had baked the day before), Alexei had already gone through all of the odd American women's names he could remember from what short months he had spent in the New Country: Catherine, Drusilla, Bernice, Ada, Sarah, Anthea. . .

Each one was lovely in its way, he supposed, but none struck that quiet chord inside of him, nestled in his heartstrings, upon which Irina was the bow and the fingers, thin and deft.

It took the first thunderclap for him to realize that the cloud forming over his mind was in fact forming over the orchard itself. Everyone leapt slightly in their skins at the sound; so quickly had the sun been blotted out that they had scarcely a chance to notice the thickening of the shade. Rain began to fall before they could gather their wits, let alone the instrumentations of their picnic lunch. Rose cried out as her hat grew quickly sodden, and she and Norman scuttered to repack the brown basket before what was left of the food could be ruined by the sky's heavy burden.

"Into the carriage, children, hurry now!" ordered Norman. Irina bent to pick up her own and Alexei's shoes, while Alexei himself stuck close to her side, one small fist full of the pale muslin of her dress. They had nearly reached the dry safety of their destination when a sudden gust of wind pushed them both back a couple of steps, and snatched the taffeta bow binding the ends of Irina's braid right out of her hair.

Alexei watched as the ribbon, now a black serpent winding through the air, was carried back into the orchard. Panic made him momentarily dizzy: that was Irina's favorite ribbon, the last one Mama had ever tied to her hair. The thought of it being lost forever - of Irina's face when she mourned it - was too much to bear.

He tore from her side, running as fast as he could towards the wisp of darkness taunting him from the trees, hearing her call out behind him, "Alexei!"

For the first time in his brief life, he did not heed her.

The earth beneath him swelled into a slippery hill, and a stinging pain at his elbow accompanied the sound of ripping fabric as he stumbled. Alexei ignored both, intent solely on his climb and the prize that awaited him at the top - Irina's ribbon had snagged on the low hanging branch of a tree at the hill's summit, and was whipping like a black banner atop a castle beckoning its master home.

His pulse throbbed as loud as the storm in his ears when he at last reached the tree. Digging his little nails into his palms, he summoned all his childish might and jumped—

"Alexei!"

Irina was running up to him. Her hair had untwisted from its braid and whipped back behind her like the ribbon in the tree, which was now clutched in Alexei's white-knuckled hand. His other braced against the trunk as a violent current of air both caused him to stagger and carried Irina, fleet-footed, up to him.

She embraced him hard as a hurricane blast, speaking so quickly in mingled Russian and English that even he had trouble following her words. Scolding him and showering kisses like raindrops all over his face, she made him promise over and over that he would never run off like that again. She laughed - in relief, he liked to think - when he presented the rescued ribbon, and grew very serious again when she caught sight of the red smear on the tree trunk. Its source was quickly found: the pain he'd felt when he'd fallen turned out to be the result of a nasty gash just below his right elbow. Blood had spilled along his arm in miniature rivers all the way down to his fingertips. Irina kissed each one in turn, and then the cut itself, before she firmly grasped his cleaner hand and led him back down the hill.

Norman met them halfway, looking at once dismayed and assuaged. He waved an arm, motioning for them to hurry, and they ran the last few yards to the carriage.

"Oh, children!" Rose cried shrilly as they piled inside. "What on earth made you run off like that? Norman and I were beside ourselves - we didn't even know you'd gone until we found you weren't in the carriage!"

"Sorry, ma'am," Irina panted, still trying to catch her breath.

"I should hope so! I know you might think yourselves used to bad weather, but it's nothing to play in. You could catch your deaths!"

Irina merely sighed and wiped at the faint sheen of sweat on her upper lip with the back of her hand. Her hair stuck fast to her neck and flushed cheeks, dripping water along her skin and down her dress, but this time she didn't bother to push it away. Alexei felt guilty, but couldn't stem a sense of pride whenever his eyes came to rest again upon the dark material wound between Irina's fingers during the ride home.

Back at the house, they received another reprimand, this time from Norman, before being told to change into some dry clothes and come downstairs for a spoonful of restorative tonic. Alexei made a face at the thought. He hated the runny, foul-tasting stuff Rose insisted on giving them whenever they got their feet wet - including after a bath, or so it seemed to Alexei.

Irina washed and dressed the cut on his arm, both children having figured out long ago that adults over-reacted enough as it was without adding blood into the mix. She helped him change into his pajamas and robe, and did not stop him when he followed her into her room and made himself comfortable on her bed to wait while she changed into her nightdress. The ribbon was draped over the back of a chair to dry.

The sound of the rain pattering softly against the roof was like a quiet chorus to Irina's humming, as she patiently combed through the tangles in her hair. Alexei lay on his stomach with his knees bent, and matched the swinging of his feet in the air to the rhythm of her tune. Warm, dry, and content, drowsiness began to overtake him. For some reason, he remembered the picnic game the rain had prevented them from playing.

"Irina?" he asked around a yawn, toying with a bit of fluff on her bedspread.

"Da, Alexei?"

"Ya tebya lyublyu."

Irina smiled, and paused in her combing to lean down and place a kiss upon his temple. "Ya tebya tozhe lyublyu."

She rebraided her hair and allowed Alexei to tie it off, this time with a simpler ribbon of plain white satin. The bow he made was clumsy and lopsided, one loop noticably larger than the other, but Irina didn't mind. After she had shrugged into her robe, they made their way downstairs.

Rose dispensed spoons and her horrid tonic with the grim authoritativeness of an unwavering general, but laughed at their shared grimaces as they dutifully swallowed the syrupy liquid.

"It's such a shame," Norman, standing by the kitchen window, lamented as he surveyed the dreary, gray expanse of the sky. "This storm just came out of nowhere. . .I hope you children enjoyed what time outside we were blessed with today all the same?"

In truth, Alexei had been far too worried during most of the picnic to enjoy himself, but he nodded and smiled reassuringly, not wanting to disappoint the reverend any further.

"It was lovely," Irina agreed. "Perhaps we can finish it another time."

"Yes, Norman," Rose consoled her husband, one of her hands moving in light circles around his back, "there'll be other days. And anyway, had we stayed any later, I'd never have gotten dinner in the oven on time. Irina, would you like to help me dress the chicken?"

The idea of Irina cooking still amused Alexei. Until a month ago, she wouldn't have been able to tell the difference between a whisk and a spatula - not that he would have, either, but that was beside the point. Still, she had thrown herself valiantly into the task of learning how to prepare food, along with many other chores that had previously been taken care of for them. They couldn't depend on the kindness of strangers forever, she'd said; it was important that she learn how to work, and besides, it kept her mind and hands occupied.

She used to draw for that, Alexei thought to himself, and dance. Sometimes it felt as though they had arrived in this house only the day before; others, it felt like they had always been here.

Alexei, considered too small to be much help in the kitchen, shuffled after Norman into the parlor and sat down beside him on the sofa. That morning's newspaper rested on the coffee table, waiting to be read, as was Norman's Sunday afternoon ritual. Today he followed it no less diligently than a religious rite.

Tentatively, Alexei separated a page from its brothers and held it as Norman did, wide and unfolded like a menu on his lap. The Roman alphabet still confused Alexei, no matter how many times Irina wrote and rewrote translations for him to study, Russian proverbs written in English letters and vice-versa, the interpreted proverbs transcribed in Cyrillic. Two sounds somehow refused to connect to one symbol in his head. A B was a B, not a V, just as an H was not an N, nor an R a P. It would come to him in time, his three elders assured him, but he was growing impatient with only pretending to share in the stories Norman found so interesting.

Alexei looked over at the writing desk, atop which the massive old Bible of Norman's father could be seen. Once he learned, Alexei decided, that would be the first English book he read. It was too heavy for him to even lift yet, but its worn leather cover and musty-smelling pages had intrigued him from the first. He was no stranger to scripture - Mama had read some to them every night, as had Papa, Irina said, when they were younger, Before. . .

Here Irina would always trail off, so Alexei had come to know the mysterious and terrible rift between his parents only as ellipses following Before.

. . .Prayers, said Mama, were ancient words so sacred that they had to be kept in ink and caressed only by whispers, so as not to destroy their brittle but potent power. The older the words, the closer to the Son of God they had been. Alexei had never seen a Bible as old as Norman's, and figured its closeness to the time of Christ no doubt imbued it with untold strength of prayer, and the delicateness of its thin pages only seemed to further prove his theory. Some day, he promised himself, Some day.

"Well, would you listen to that?"

Norman's words startled the lengthening vines of Alexei's imagination back into their dark little pods. He listened attentively for whatever his guardian was talking about, but heard nothing.

"What is it?" he asked, the simple phrase one of his most common English recitations.

"I think. . .yes. The rain's stopped. Come, Alexei." Norman rose, and Alexei followed him out the front door and onto the porch. Wind had bent the rain nearly sideways, and much of the floor was wet. Norman lifted him easily into his arms to save his slippers from the damp. "Look there!"

Alexei's gaze aligned itself with the point of Norman's finger. Stretching in a giant arc across the sunset-and-stormclouds sky was a multicolored band of light Alexei had always called 'raduga'.

"A rainbow," said Norman. "In Greek mythology, the goddess Iris rode them back and forth between Mount Olympus and the world of men. A winged creature who separated the soul from the body after death. Do you know of any other such beings, Alexei, who carry souls to Heaven on their wings?"

Alexei knew the answer Norman was fishing for, but he didn't reply, still mulling over the new English word the man had taught him. It had halved in his head, and brought with it a flurry of images from recent memory.

Rain bow. The sickle-shaped halo of Heaven itself.

Fleet-footed Iris, carried by the wind.

Suddenly needing to check something, Alexei struggled in Norman's arms until he was put down, then raced back into the house and up the stairs to his room. On the small table next to his bed, his lessons lay scattered beneath chewed-on pencils and homemade certificates of academic achievement. Everything, save for one pencil that Alexei tucked between his teeth, was pushed to the floor until he found the papers he was searching for.

Vy molites' Bog, no grebesh' dlya berega.

Alexei ignored the sentence, it didn't contain what he needed. But the ones below it—

Posle togo kak shtorm pribyvayet spravedlivaya pogoda.
Kazhdoye semya enayet yego vremya.

Yes, they had everything.

At first he confused N with I, and scratched out the mistake with hard, frustrated strokes of his pencil before beginning again. When he was certain he'd written down everything correctly, he set down his pencil and lifted the paper to read over it once more.

IRINA
IRIS

It was not too far at all.

He started again for the stairs, but his footsteps stammered in the threshold of his doorway. What if Irina didn't like it?

"Iris," he said aloud to the air, his small mouth still tainted with his mother tongue, clipping the vowels of the name into little bites of sound. It didn't strike the same chord as Irina did, but stirred an unexpected accompaniment in his heart, a sororal antiphone throbbing two beats beneath Irina's three, not obscuring - deepening. Enriching. Elating. This was the one, it had to be!

He pressed his lips together to wet them with his tongue as he scraped together his determination, then, with footsteps whose quiet echoes didn't seem to match how heavy they felt, he headed down to the kitchen.

Rose and Irina were clustered near the sink, stuffing a bald and headless chicken with breadcrumbs.

"Iris," he whispered, prayer-like, then raised his voice to repeat when they didn't turn around, "Iris."

"Alexei?" asked Rose, tilting her head in befuddlement. Irina merely stared at him.

"I - I have chose," he said carefully, and pointed at his sister. "Her name. Iris."

Rose blinked in surprise. "Oh. . .well, that's - that's wonderful. Iris is a beautiful name. Did you take it from the flower?"

But Alexei wasn't listening to her, focused solely on Irina's reaction. Her hair was already coming loose from its braid to fall in wisps around her face. Her hands were slick and covered with crumbs, and the apron she wore - one of Rose's older ones - hung crooked and low over her narrow hips.

Iris.

And then, slowly, she wiped her hands on a ragged dishtowel, and stepped forward to kneel in front of him.

"Spasiba, Alexei. Thank you." She trailed her knuckles softly along his cheek, then tapped his nose playfully with one fingertip. "It's perfect."

Unable to contain himself any longer, Alexei threw himself into her arms and hugged her tightly, an embrace she returned with every ounce of fervency he himself possessed.

When they at last pulled apart, Irina - Iris - was beaming, though she somehow managed to calm her grin enough to kiss him firmly, twice, on the lips. The choir of Alexei's spirit sang hymns. For a split-second, he thought he could pick out Mama's voice among the others, approving his decision. . .or maybe he was simply overhearing the new duality of his sister's soul.

Norman, whom Rose must have called into the room, winked at him when his choice was relayed, then looked expectantly at Iris. Her smile faltered.

"I haven't decided yet," she murmured. A blush colored her lovely face as she looked apologetically at Alexei, but he only shrugged. In his anxiety over his own choice it hadn't occured to him to spare a thought for what name she might choose for him. But now that he had time to wonder, he found he didn't much care. For now, he was perfectly happy to remain no more or less than Alexei.

"Kazhdoye semya enayet yego vremya," he shrugged again. Iris laughed.

"Da," she agreed, then smiled up at Rose and Norman, who appeared as they always did when the two siblings spoke in their native tongue, two voyeurs straining curiously to see through a window that had been fogged from the inside. "Just like the flower."

The Fine Print - My Russian is probably laughable, but it's intended purely for effect rather than technical accuracy. If Clancy and Amy can get away with bad accents in the name of the same, then I can get away with bad conjugation/grammar. (That's not to say I wouldn't be more than happy to correct it, should someone point out my mistakes. . .)

Blini - Russian pancakes
Yest - eat
Nos byl otorvan iz lyubopytny Varvaraya - curious Varvara's nose was torn off
Da - yes
Ya tebya lyublyu - I love you
Ya tebya tozhe lyublyu - I love you, too
Raduga - rainbow
Vy molites' Bog, no grebesh' dlya berega - pray to God, but row for shore
Posle togo kak shtorm pribyvayet spravedlivaya pogoda - after the storm arrives fair weather
Kazhdoye semya enayet yego vremya - each seed knows its time
Spasiba - thank you