[Note: the translation for Sinder's name in Russian isn't accurate, as her name isn't actually Russian. It's just a name I read in a book once and asked the author could I use. I translated it as close as I could to Synder, but putting both an English and Russian language in the one sentence didn't seem right. Enjoy.]
At first, there was pure silence. Only the faint sound of the crisp winter wind rustling through cracks in wooden cabins, chilling the inhabitants within. Often a decrepit crow could be heard, his pained squawk echoing through the early morning air. But in among this eerie silence of the Russian village, came a woman's howls agony.
It was April the first, 1989, and Marilia Yuri was unable to prevent the wails and shrieks escaping her through her partially separated lips. The pain was unimaginable. This was the second time she had given birth, and thankfully, the last. Tamzet, her husband, only wanted two children. He was hopeful for two strong men. Marilia was anticipative for the same, but not for the same reason. To raise a daughter under the same roof as the monster she called her husband would be unfair. Inhumane. She promised herself many years ago that there would never be a girl raised in this house. Never. Not unless her husband was dead. Yet upon her final push, the village doctor- rather grimly, she would later recall, as if he had known this child's fate like Marilia herself did- declared the words any mother in Marilia's position would dread. "It's a girl!"
A girl.
It seemed the devil had struck again.
Tamzet was seated in his rocking chair across the room, eyes glued to the trees outside roughly fifty yards away. In his hand was a glass, sturdy and round, filled with a foul-smelling brown spirit. Whiskey, of course. He drank absolutely nothing else. As his child was born, he paid no attention. Gave no support. Did not even glance in the direction of his screaming wife. Tamzet inhaled deeply, pausing before he exhaled a puff of smoke from his cigar. Today, his daughter was born. A smirk tugged at his cracked, pale lips as he laughed softly. A daughter. April Fool's Day indeed. This was the ultimate joke. A daughter.
As Marilia released her final breathless screeches, a young boy- no more than a toddler- watched, blue eyes wide with fear and horror as his mother screamed and bellowed. At four years old, it was a forever scarring sight to watch his mother like this. But his father would not allow him to leave. Tamzet would label him a coward and beat him right in front of the doctor. No one ever stopped Tamzet. It made Vanez bitter, as the years went on. But now, watching the birth of his beautiful baby sister, he made a vow to himself. I will never, he thought, ever let anyone harm my sister. Not Tamzet, not anyone. No one would hurt her so long as I can help it. And little Vanez kept this vow up until the day his beautiful little sister left for the land of hopes and dreams.
"What should we name her?" Asked Marilia weakly, her tired hazel eyes focusing on her husband as he drank and smoked by the window. She made sure to rid the scowl from her face before he turned and looked at her.
"Золушка." Said Tamzet, looking to Marilia as a puff of smoke escaped his lips. He stood, the chair creaking slightly as he did so.
"Золушка… нет." {Cinderella... No.} She disagreed, earning her a sharp glare which quickly faded to a mild curiosity.
"Синдер Анн Эльвира Юрии." {Sinder Ann El'vira Yuri.} Marilia said, no smile or happiness.
She was too tired, too scared and angry. Not until Tamzet left would she smile and cry. And if he so much as put a finger on this new-born, Marilia would get up out of the bed and choke him with his own cigar. Her eyes showed that threat loud and clear. Tamzet saw this, and respected it. He leaned down, causing Marilia to instinctively flinch as if awaiting his harsh palm to whip across her reddened cheek. But instead, the Russian man kissed his wife's head and chuckled, turning on his heel and leaving the room.
CHAPTER ONE: My Enemy, My Only Friend
Clasping a fist-full of the dark, moist soil in her closed fist, the Russian's breathing hitched. She felt the cold winter wind whipping at her cheeks, turning them pink and numb. Her tears felt like boiling water as they etched sparkling lines of sorrow down her pale young face. Behind her, was a sound.
SLAP.
SLAP.
SLAP.
Over and over again. But this was not the all too familiar sound of hand or fist hitting flesh. This was the forever scarring noise of her brother, digging, heaps of the dirt being dumped to his left. He was digging passionately, sweat dripping from his brow as he worked tirelessly. They had been here for three hours, and he had not even stopped to take a break. Sinder, however, was only eight years old, and her body was too frail for such labour. Vanez worked hard, not even glancing over at his sister who had since released the mound of dirt in her small hand and was now, silently, praying.
They say if you really mean it when you pray to God, he will hear you and help you in his own way. But Sinder believed now that searching for God was a lost cause. No one was going to save her from the devil that was standing twenty feet away in the comfort of his home, staring out the window at the siblings; his own children, burying their mother. No God could stop this devil of a man, no one dared. Not even when he had murdered his wife. This evening was meant to be a celebratory one; Sinder's eighth birthday. Instead, she was watching her brother dig a grave to bury the corpse of their mother in.
Sinder renounced the Our Father again and again, and any other prayer she knew. They were not a religious Catholic family, but they had a bible lying around somewhere. To teach her to read, her uncle Anglov had sat her in his lap every evening and read her some fables. As she grew older he would read her the Old Testament. Anglov would always explain the meanings and the messages, and these messages would moldSinder and Vanez into the people they grew up to become. However, no great deal of praying was going to breathe new life into the body laying eerily still and silent beside her. No amount of frustrated, rage-filled tears would make God listen to the little, unimportant Russian girl on her knees in the back garden, her knees soaked from pressing into the soil, hands clasped around her mother's so tightly that her little hands were white. This was the night that Sinder Ann Yuri lost her faith in God. As for Vanez, though he claimed to have never had any to start with, Sinder knew that was a lie. He was losing his faith with every forced shovel-full of dirt he tossed aside, every cold raindrop that attacked his sweating face. He was losing his faith in God just as quickly and bitterly as his little sister.
Soon the slaps of wet soil stopped and Vanez turned to his sister.
"Bring her here." He said, loud enough to be heard over the sound of the cackling thunder and the howling wind. Their tears and sweat were being rinsed away by the rain as he walked to the body. Oh, god. Her eyes were still open. Marilia's eyes had once been like warm honey; they melted the hearts of every person in this village, but as the years had passed leading up to this night, it seemed the warmth had faded. She had given up on her children, on herself. Sinder hadn't had a mother for about two years now, if she thought about it. Her mother's soul had left this plane long before her breathing stopped and her heart ceased to thump in her chest.
Sinder walked to her mother's feet, and looked to her brother, unsure. He didn't seem even slightly phased by the fact his mother was lying lifeless at his feet. She watched cautiously as he gripped her arms and then looked to Sinder. The young girl chewed her lip and shook her head, tears spilling outwards onto her face in choked sobs. Her body trembled with resistance. She wanted to run. Run and never, ever look back.
"Please," she whimpered, "please Vanez, d-don't make me do this." Sinder's eyes pleaded with his, but he only grew frustrated.
"We have to do it, Sinder!" He bellowed at her. As if agreeing and amplifying the ferocity of his voice, thunder boomed and rumbled as lightning erupted quickly after. It illuminated the garden the three were in, so Sinder could properly see her mother's cold face.
"Vanez I can't! I can't…" Her voice trailed off as she stepped away, earning an angry growl.
"What do you think he'll do if we don't do this, sister?! He'll have you butchered! Lift her god-damn legs. Lift!" His eyes were no longer patient as they usually were. It was the most terrifying sight she had ever seen; her brother looked the image of her father for just a moment.
"Vanez!" She cried, still refusing despite the imminent threat. He growled loudly, nudging her out of the way as he grabbed her feet and began to drag the body towards the hole.
"Why do I have to do all the work?!" He asked in frustration. This made Sinder pause and look… Well, rather guilty. She'd let him dig the grave, and now he was dragging the body too. It was unfair.
Sinder lowered her eyes as he grunted, tugging the body by its feet as they neared the edge of the hole.
"Wait… Let me help." She said softly, unable to be heard over the sound of bellowing wind. Vanez froze for just a millisecond, almost surprised by this sudden change of heart. But he nodded and allowed her a moment to regroup before she helped him, gripping the hand of her mother and pulling down toward the feet as she stood beside her brother. Once at the edge of the grave, they both stopped.
"We can't just dump her." He said, strangely calm and quiet. Not even out of breath. "We need to place her… Sinder, you drive her in, I'll climb in to the grave. I want to position her neatly." So he did have feelings after all. He wasn't as ice-cold as she had been beginning to suspect. Vanez had a glimmer of humanity after all. That was a rather settling thought, and for some reason, her mind didn't even begin a moral protest. Sinder watched as her twelve year old brother jumped down into the grave, which was approximately four feet deep and six feet wide. He had dug the majority of this alone, but originally Marilia had been digging this to plant flowers. Funny, how she'd ended up digging the beginnings of her own grave in the back garden of her own home. A sad, ironic thing it was.
Sinder blinked rapidly, her eyes focusing once more on the now lukewarm tea in her cup. Strange, how she always got lost in thought while standing in the rain. She had a strained relationship with rain from time to time. It had been influential in both the downs and the ups of her twenty-five year long life so far. As time passed and the Russian grew older, she had come to believe that God was in the rain. Always near, everywhere at once, and when you truly needed cleansing it would rain down in a cataclysmic torrent. But it hadn't rained on Sinder Yuri in a very long time; no matter how much she wished it would. The weight of her conscience gathered on her slim shoulders, and as the pressure increased, it would soon begin to crush her frame.
There was no defined purpose for the brunette Russian standing there. Sinder had nowhere to be, no one to meet. She'd just gone to get a cup of tea, and was sipping it carefully every moment or two. People were running for cover, bumping into one another as they did so. Funny, how sometimes the people who claim to believe in God would run from the cleansing. She would always watch them with an expression of utter befuddlement. These people had no idea what they were running from. They were running from the thing they craved; peace. Calm. It made her laugh to herself. The pure irony. They were running from the thing they tried to find in Churches and flimsy holidays, yet they ran from it when it poured down on them so often. New York's people were totally lost in their sense of reality.
Business, money, sex and stress. No one ever looked upwards to see that God was weeping their oh-so-craved peace upon them. She had once believed in God as a being who performed miracles. But now, Sinder Yuri believed wholeheartedly that God was a being that simply cleared the soul and brought hope to the hopeless. Sometimes, he brought sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, riches to the poor. Not always, but sometimes. With her… Well, Sinder had done that all herself. She had no divine intervention. Instead, the Russian had forced herself off of that wet soil all those years ago, and forced herself to be brave.
Look where it got her. Standing outside a New York cafe, watching people run from the rain. She was but a mere bystander. No one noticed her. No one ever had. No one came to her rescue. No one saved her from the thoughts circling behind her eyes and making her want to erupt in a fit of sobs. But no one ever saved her.