"Noooooooo!!" The master screamed.
"Wow, hey take it easy there. You know, sir, really you should watch your blood pressure. My nephew Izzie just keeled over one day, mid- mango. Stress. it's a killer sir. And he's a fruit bat, no meat, no blood even." He tried to soothe him, but the master just stared blankly at him.
"How could they let her escape?!"
"Ha wow ... Ah, you're right. It's very upsetting sir." He said distractedly picking up the reliquary. "Eh, I guess this Reliquary thing's broken." After saying that, he proceded to toss the Reliquary over his shoulder, the object flew through the air to his master's terror.
"You idiot!" Desperate the master skidded across the floor and ended up flinging his own hand ahead, fortunately his hand landed just under the Reliquary and broke its fall in time.
After securing his beloved reliquary, the master turned on him, his eyes forming the very shade of fury. Bartok truly feared feared for his life.
"Alright now sir, take it easy there. Just remember what I said to you about stress–" he backed away, but the master had other plans, he shoved his Reliquary against his nose before speaking to him very slowly, with the voice of a man who is trying very hard not to kill someone.
"I sold my soul for this. My life, my very existence depends on it, and you almost destroyed it!" The master lose his resolve of talking to him as if he were a child he did not want to kill and barked. Afraid, he tried to squirm away.
"I get it! I get it! 'you break it, you bought it." He squeezed.
"See that you remember, you miserable rodent."
"Oh, sure, blame the bat. What the heck we're easy targets always hanging ... ar..." He sulked.
"What are you muttering about?" Caught! Think of something, quickly!
"Anastasia, sir. Just wishing I could do the job for you Sir, I'd give her a Ha then a hi ya and then a woowah and I'd kick her, sir." Just to be convincing he mimed some karate chops with his wings.
"Oh, I have something else in mind ... something more enticing, something really cruel..." he said with that crooked smile that announced that nothing good would come along.
That night they camped in a clear.
It came out as a surprise for Anya, but both Dimitri and Vladimir had sleeping bags. They did not count with a tent, as it would not fit in neither of their suitcases but at least they had something to sleep on. Well, they did. She had gotten out of the orphanage with what she was wearing, which did not include a sleeping bag or anything of the like.
"So, how are we going to organize this?" Vlad started.
"Organize what?" She asked, confused as to what would they have to organize, she was tired, and frankly just wanted to pass out if that meant to have some sleep.
"We have two sleeping bags, we are three persons, and a princess can't present herself with cold-broken lips." Dimitri said.
"Actually I have no problem, I have slept out in he cold before, just with my coat I'll be fine." She said.
"Where exactly have you slept in the cold?" Vlad intervened.
"In St. Petersburg."
"It's not the same. Out here it's way colder, and out there you have at least the buildings to stop some of the wind."
"Yeah, but..." Only Pooka was listening to her.
"We could share one and give the other to her." Vlad suggested.
"I refuse." Dimitri said.
"Why would you refuse?"
"You know what happened last time."
"It was an accident!"
"But I won't have another broken rib, so that's out of question."
"Alright, alright."
"I could make a nest with my coat, truly I have no problem." Anya said again, but the look they gave her was even worse than a roll of eyes, they made it possible to say that the mere idea of sleeping in the winter-cold snowy forest with just her coat to protect her was the single stupidest thing they had ever heard, just with a look. That, is what I call economizing in words.
"That's out of question too. Maybe I could use her coat and some of my clothes to make another sleeping bag." Anya wanted to say that she could do that herself, but Vladimir said something more convino so she shut her mouth.
"It would be useless. Snow would melt under you and you would wake up soaked wet and ill."
"I have spent nights like this in the city, guys you don't need to worry!" Well it had been just two times, when she was found unconscious ten years ago, and her first night in St. Petersburg but they didn't need to know it to look at her that way again.
"She's not going to like the other option." Vladimir stated.
"Well, it's that or nothing, cuz I'm not going to pay for a doctor if she wakes up with pneumonia."
"What's the other option?" She asked, even though she could imagine what they would say she wanted some confirmation, and they could always surprise her with something crazier like sleeping above of one of the trees so that she wouldn't have to deal with the snow. But of course, the answer was just what she had expected.
"We can share Vlad's bag, which is the bigger one and he can have mine."
"Okay."
"Okay?" They both looked at her, eyes wide, amazed.
"Yeah, you are not gonna allow me to sleep on my coat, and I have shared bed and floor with boys at the orphanage, I think I can survive sharing a sleeping bag with you. And right now, I'm too tired to fight about it, tomorrow I'll think of something." They turned to one another conspicuously as if she wouldn't notice them if they whispered to themselves. They were in a forest, it was dark and the cold silenced everything, how could she not hear them?
"That was pretty easy, don't you think?"
"Yeah. A little too much, do you think that she...?"
"Guys I can hear you perfectly well from here." They turned, looked at her and blushed crimson red.
The bags were kind of homemade. They were the classical euklisia rugs, but had some more leather roughly sewn on the outer part and the inside wool had a fur reinforcement.
The three of them removed their boots, and proceeded to get into their respective sleeping bags.
Anya was the first to enter their bag and Dimitri did not wait too much to get himself into it.
There wasn't much space, in fact there was no space between them. They were both stiff, arms rigidly tucked to their sides and very much awake. It was cold and they were too tired to care about how near they were from each other. And deep down, they were both gratified to have something warm to stick to.
"Did you burn something?" She said after a while of closing her eyes and being unable to conquer sleep.
"Hmm?" He did listen her question, but he was a bit too tired and words didn't came as easily.
"I asked if you had burnt something, the coal car was in flames and you kinda smell like I singed."
"My hand."he said a bit more awake.
"Is it okay?"
"It will be, eventually."
"How did you burned it?"
"Stupidly enough."
"That's not an answer."
"It is."
"It is not a complete one."
"I grabbed something, a metal something its name I cannot remember now, you know when you can picture something in your head but you can't remember its name? Well like that. It's a metallic... tube? Whatever, I just thought I could do something to try and preserve the situation, I was scared and nervous and forgot that everything was at like a hundred degrees."
"Ouch." She wasn't mocking him, and he felt himself smile at that.
"Yeah."
"Does it hurts?" Like hell, my hand's on fire and I would gladly cry if you and Vlad weren't here.
"Yeah, a bit." He said instead.
"Poor you. I wish I knew a way to make it better."
"Don't worry, I'll keep putting my hand on the snow the whole night and I'll be alright."
"Your hand's touching the snow?"
"Didn't you notice?" He chuckled.
"I didn't!" She chuckled back. "Have you done this before?"
"What?" He asked, the question bringing other kind of thoughts to his mind.
"Sleeping in the forest." She clarified. Oh, of course.
"Yeah."
"Why?"
"It's complicated, but summarizing, when you are a conman, sometimes you need to disappear."
"Oh, I understand." She said. "So, is Dimitri your real name or...?"
"Yeah, my name's Dimitri. But I have changed it lots of times, I have been Ruslan, Zakhar, Iosif, Emmanuil, and Erik, but last year when I came back to St. Petersburg after, well, I don't think it will hurt you to know, but I smuggled some jewels that came from Germany to some soviet i-dunno-what, I wasn't allowed to know what he did but I think he had some importance, the thing is I got caught, after receiving my payment and I had to disappear for some time if I didn't want to end up in a Gulag, so when I came back after a couple of months I decided to use my real name since, except Vlad, nobody in the business knew it."
"What name were you using then?"
"Iosif. It was useful, soviets tend to like you better with that sort of name."
"And your clients?"
"Uh, don't think they liked it, but it may have made them laugh, in some bitter kind of ironical way."
"I guess. Don't think Iosif suits you though."
"Yeah, don't think so too, but sometimes it's better to be practical."
"What was your favorite name?"
"I'm between Zakhar and Erik, I quite liked Erik."
"Oh, but Ruslan is such a good name!"
"Noticed how you left Emmanuil out."
"Don't like that name, the son of comrade Phlegmenkof, the woman who owned the orphanage in which I grew up was called like that. He was suuch a git, man, he messed with my food. You don't mess with a hungry kid's food."
"Yeah, I remember passing hunger after the revolution. I used to work in the kitchens at the old palace. I was never hungry there, you know? I always got a taste when something was being cooked. Good old times."
"Did you know me?"
"Kind off, servant kids weren't supposed to mingle with royal ones." He said, his voice gone. 'Princesses don't marry kitchen boys.'
"Oh."
"You were cute. Everyone liked you, but everyone liked the royal kids in general, specially the maids, since you all made your beds and rooms, it was a touching gesture for them."
"Really? I thought Princesses weren't supposed to do that kind of thing."
"But you were a better kind of princesses. You bathed with cold water as everyone, your sisters used to be nurses in the Red Cross for the soldiers in the Great War, I remember you once went to play cards with some soldiers that were waiting to come back to the front, I was fooling around the palace, you see when I came back from gathering some spices from the kitchen garden I didn't saw the cook, so I took my opportunity, left the things on the kitchen board and escaped the kitchens. No one was really looking, and I was pacing through the servants corridor when I heard you talking to one of your sisters. You were indignant with one soldier that had let you win."
"Sounds like me." She giggled.
And, after that, silence tied their tongues, no word could be so bold as to brake through it. But, nevertheless the situation was not uncomfortable. It was the silence of two tired souls who had made peace without noticing it and were now able to rest.
Slowly but surely Morpheus claimed them, firstly Dimitri closed his eyes, placed his head on her shoulder, exhaled an exhausted breath and soon he was asleep. Anya, not wanting to remain alone in the plane of the awake followed after him.
The next morning, Dimitri awoke with one hand buried in snow and the other around Anya's waist. He almost couldn't feel his hand and it wasn't without fear that he deeped his hand into the warmth of the sleeping bag and waited, he couldn't know how much time passed, with his heart pounding soundly in his chest until he recovered the motion in his hand. It started to sting, of course, but he wasn't about to risk his hand to gangrene again.
The next affair to settle was almost solved after that nervous brake down. But it was still there. The affair below his waist, was still there, still pleasantly near to poor innocent asleep Anya. It wouldn't do for her to wake up and notice that.
Embarrassed, he decided he would have to get out of the bag and walk until it was settled.
Maybe he could try to hunt something.
It wasn't an easy decision to follow, though. It was so warm inside the bag, and so cold out of it, he spend quite some time before he found the nerve to get out.
He wished he didn't have to get up, he wished he could throw both his arms around the warm body pressed against him, he wished he could stay like that the rest of his life. But he couldn't, he had to hunt something so they could avoid starving.
It was so cold. So very cold!
Two days later, they found a little village, where they discovered they were in Poland, free of soviet domain. There they used the 'money' they had brought to buy some food, wash their clothes and spend the night in a family's house.
"What don't you have in that suitcases?" Anya asked, watching all the packed things things they had brought from St. Petersburg to Poland: the sleeping bags, the knifes, the two pistols she wished she hadn't seen, four different wigs, the fake marks, francs and słoties, and the bigger suitcase was full of suits.
"A train."
"A tent."
"A horse."
"A–"
"Got it, got it."
The next morning, they started traveling again, for doing so, they rented three horses and parted to Germany.
The horses were not trained to run fast, and they were four hundred miles away from the port from which they would part to Paris. This horses, couldn't run more than thirty-something miles per day and doing stops every now and then.
Sometimes nights found them in the route, where they would have to camp, some others found them in a village or town. It took them a week to be near the border with Germany, there, they sold the rented horses for a bit more money than they were worth, two went to an eloped couple and the other to a middle aged woman with brown silvering hair and a black eye.
After selling them, they spent the night in another kind-hearted family, and parted walking the following morning.
