SAKURA TAISEN/WARS and all related characters, names and indicia are TM © SEGA RED, and are used here without permission.
Author's Note: Credit for much of the information on how exiles to Siberia are handled goes to Lithuanian exile Laima Guzeviiut Udavinien, whose story gave me almost all my information.
Rating: PG-13 (for vivid descriptions of the process of exile transport)
To The Motherland
"Home Is Where The Heart Is"
The sound of the impact of Kanna's fist against the support boards of the bookshelf coincided with a broken cry that was half rage, half grief, all tinged with the power that only Kanna weilds. The moveable stair rolled back on its casters, causing Maria to grip the hand rails and brace her feet, dropping the commission parchment and envelope. The bookcase Kanna had struck creaked and toppled, falling only to a 45 degree angle, stopped by the far wall. Hundreds of books slipped through the open shelves and cascaded to the floor, settling under an eruption of dust scented of aged paper and deteriorating canvas and leather. The parchment and envelope fluttered to the ground beneath the stairs, at the edge of the avalanche of literature.
Kanna scrubbed her eyes with her open palms, calming herself again and hiding any emotion she might betray. She had already lost Sumire almost two years ago when she retired from the Hanagumi, she could not lose another. She exhaled and forced herself to drop her shoulders. "I'm sorry, Maria…" she whispered, muffled through her hands, then lowered her hands to look at her friend.
Maria was not looking at her. She was kneeling on the top platform of the moveable staircase, sitting back on her heel. Her other foot was two steps down. Her arms spread wide, braced against both rails, like a catburglar on the fire escapes of a building she'd just robbed. Except Maria's expression, thrown into a film noir relief by the gray light of the now unblocked window, was one of almost childlike horror. And she was staring at the pile of books that had fallen.
"Maria?" Kanna climbed the two remaining steps in a flash and knelt down around the Russian, taking her shoulders, but Maria's fists, white-knuckled, would not release the rails. "Maria… what happened?" Kanna tried to turn Maria's face to her gently, but Maria was as rigid as iron, as cold as ice. Kanna might as well not be there at all.
"Why?" Maria whispered, distantly, and not to Kanna.
The bookshelf creaked away from the wall where it stood in the study and fell, scattering a tide of books and papers across the woven rug. "Astarozhna, darogu!" a uniformed soldier commanded to the little girl standing in the center of the rug, too shocked to weep. She could not have been two years old. Her father knelt down and swept the small girl into his arms, carrying her into the foyer of his study as the soldiers toppled the remainder of his bookshelves and emptied his desk into lockboxes.
"Papa…!"
"Shhh, Maria… it's all right. We will find another home. All of us. As long as we are all together, everything will be all right. You will s—"
A sharp scream came from a room down the hall and Bryusov Dimitrovich rose quickly to his feet. The sound of the shatter of glass followed and a stream of reproaches in eloquent Japanese. "Suma! Maria, stay here—"
But Dimitrovich did not need to go after his wife, she cam running out into the hall. "The vase, Bryusov! My grandfather's vase!" Another glass-shatter sound made Suma shriek and cover her eyes.
He comforted his wife. She was not so trivial, he knew – despite the fact that these heirlooms were more than just objects to her, they were ancestry, they were spiritual. But even beyond that, he knew her to be too strong to weep over the destruction of these things. The shattering of her heritage was the most illustrative metaphor to Suma, the breaking of her life, the ruining of their security, their exile, and all because Dimitrovich fell in love with the enemy.
Exile is not a simple relocation. Dimitrovich had been found to be traitorous, and not just because of his 'marriage,' but his very un-noble-like disagreement with many of the Czar's recent activities – and inactivities – particularly concerning his own common people and the broadening gap between the elite and the destitute. There would be no time for preparation. A truck pulled up to the street where Dimitrovich's townhome stood in a richer section of Kiev. Several soldiers with rifles had the decency to wait for Suma's handmaiden to open the door rather than kicking it in. Czar Nicholas' official read the document aloud as the soldiers rounded up the members of the household. Maria would never forget her nurse's scream, even though she was only a year and a half old at the time.
One of the soldiers pointed at Suma. "Pack what you think your family will need for a long journey, but wait until we've finished searching the house. We will inspect what you choose. It must weigh no more than 120 kilos."
Three bedspread were laid out on the floor and filled with boots and clothing, pillows and a few books, three of which the soldiers took away. A trunk was filled with food by Suma's handmaiden – cheese, bread, potatoes, anything that would fit and not be too heavy. Much of it was bread. Glass and porcelain jugs of milk were too heavy, they would subsist on water. Maria could not even bring her doll. Her nurse hushed her the instant Maria's face seemed to tend toward tears. "You have to learn to be strong, now, dear," the old woman said. "Strong and wise and proud, to help your mother and father." And so she did not weep, her initial attempt to comply with the words she would never forget her nurse telling her.
They were leaving tonight, and being taken away from home and family and neighbours in the backs of army vehicles, never to return. This is something Maria could not possibly comprehend, but she recalled the details with a painful sharpness. She remembered the spiralled gleam of the inside of rifle barrels as they lead Bryusov and Suma down the stairs of their townhome toward the open and waiting back of a military truck. Bryusov was handcuffed, and Suma was carrying Maria. Maria remembered how cold it was.
…she hadn't seen anything yet.
The trucks stopped at the train station, crowding the still-shackled Bryusov and his family into a cattle car of the Trans-Siberian Railway, along with a surprising number of other families whose only commonality was, presumably, some offense against the Czar. Suma sat on the bundle of their clothing with Maria cradled in her arms, and Bryusov attempted some comfortable position nearby, his hands still twisted behind his back.
Colder and colder it grew as they travelled along the Trans-Siberian Railway toward the icy tundra. So cold that Maria believed she would never be warm again. And this became true.
It was more than a day before food was brought to them, warily and angrily, as if they were dangerous animals in cages who might kill or escape. Days passed, though Maria did not know how many – the windows of the cattle car were boarded up, and the hazy overcast outside made night and day almost indiscernible. A hole was cut in the floor of the wooden car to be used as a toilet. They were careful not to make it large enough even for a small child to slip through. Many became sick from the contaminated water they were given to drink. Due to weather and other delays, the trip took just under a month, Maria was later told by her parents.
One family in the car held an infant much younger than Maria, perhaps only a few months. The conditions were too severe for the child, and sadly, he died. The soldiers took the child from its grieving mother and threw his body into the woods along the tracks.
Suma was so horrified that it took all her will for Maria not to meet the same fate.
Maria grew to know no sadder, lonlier sound than the hollow, mournful wail of a steam engine's whistle.
"We gotta tellYoneda!" Kanna released Maria and turned to run down the stairs, but Maria snapped out of it and grabbed a fist full of the back of Kanna's collar with surprising strength. "Erk!"
"No!" Maria's eyes flashed with desperation. "Do not get anyone else involved."
Responses to Reviews:
Dillian: No no – no fainting ;) And don't take my word on Russian history for gospel truth… I am piece-mealing information together!
Hesquidor – Oh drat… an expert… (hides) I'm bound to make a dozen mistakes before this is through, two of them I'm planning on PURPOSELY making already, just because history does not do what I would have liked it to do to fit my plans ;) Mostly in New York, though, so perhaps you won't notice! Gomen-nasai!
Huntress – Love you too ;)