But why now? Aizhana had been hoarding wisps of energy for so long, but nothing until this moment had been able to pull her completely free from her decomposing half slumber. What was it that had shifted the balance in her world?

Aizhana drank in the endless brown horizon around her. She reached for the sky, cracked her joints, and rattled her aching bones.

Whatever it was that had woken her, she did not know.

But whatever you are, she thought, I will find you.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

While the tsar was away on state business, Pasha slipped out of Saint Petersburg. He had read the entirety of Russian Mystics and the Tsars, twice, and he had it in his head that he’d go back to Ovchinin Island to track down the mysterious girl from the woods.

He had wanted to drag Nikolai into making the trip with him, despite his friend’s reaction to their last encounter with the girl made of lightning, but when Pasha inquired at Countess Zakrevsky’s home, a servant had informed him that Nikolai was out.

Which was how Pasha came to be on Ovchinin Island alone. If Nikolai couldn’t accompany him, he didn’t want anyone else. Perhaps it was all right this way, though. It gave Pasha more opportunity to investigate the lightning girl on his own.

But as Pasha stood on the docks of the island’s small harbor, he had no idea where to look. Caught up in the adrenaline of finding the girl, he had failed to make any concrete plans beyond sneaking out of Saint Petersburg in disguise and unseen.

I suppose the forest is a good place to start, he thought. Although where in the forest? The same spot as the bonfire? If he could find it without a lightning storm directing the way. A different place, because she might not inhabit the same spot twice? But why wouldn’t she? Russian Mystics and the Tsars did not cover the rules of rising out of magical flames. For all Pasha knew, there might be only a single location from which the lightning girl could emerge.

The other possibility was that she didn’t come from the fire at all, but rather, the fire came from her. Or the fire came at her, from the lightning. Or . . . the lightning came because of her, like she was a magnet for firestorms. Pasha took off his hat and ran his fingers through his hair. There were so many possibilities.

The captain of the ferry Pasha had taken disembarked from his boat and walked past Pasha on the dock. He was several yards away when he turned back around. “Ahoy, boy. D’you need directions somewhere?”

Pasha crammed the hat back onto his head, even though the ferry captain had shown no sign of recognizing him, likely on account of Pasha’s (temporary) mustache and sideburns. “No, sir. Well, actually, I’m looking for someone, rather than somewhere.”

The old sailor snorted and jerked his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of a poorly paved street branching away from the harbor. “Then you’ll wanna head up over thataway. Look for Cinderella Bakery. Ludmila Fanina, the baker, knows everybody as well as every piece of gossip in town. She also makes a hearty Borodinsky bread. That and a coupl’a pickled herring, and you’ll be filled up for days.”

Pasha dipped his head. “Thank you, sir. I suppose I’m off to the bakery, then.”

“Last ferry to the mainland leaves at dusk.” The captain waved and continued the other way toward a ramshackle dock building.

Pasha walked up the street the captain had pointed out, his boots kicking up the layer of dust on the road. This close to the harbor, there were few buildings, although the landscape was dotted here and there with izbas, small log houses, all very plain except for the detailed wood carvings of deer and fish around the windows and shutters. He strolled up the path, enjoying the cool morning air and the ability to walk in the open without fanfare and people bowing at his feet.

Once in town, the Cinderella Bakery was impossible to miss. For one thing, the whole of the village was only three streets long and two streets wide. For another, the bakery had no ordinary shop front, but, rather, an elaborate orange exterior shaped like a bulging pumpkin. That and the rich, tangy smell of rye and sourdough told Pasha he had arrived.

He opened the door and stepped inside, only to be greeted immediately by the curious stares of a half-dozen middle-aged women waiting in line.

He removed his hat and nodded his head. “Bonjour, mesdames.”

The most elderly of the women performed a complicated curtsy, involving lifting the hem of her skirt and crisscrossing her legs several times, then bowing back and forth several more times, rather like a broken jack-in-the-box. Pasha’s eyes widened. Was this some sort of country greeting? The other women in line tittered.

Or were they poking fun at him? Pasha frowned.

“Oh, leave the poor boy alone,” a plump woman behind the counter said in Russian. “He can’t help it if he was born with a silver spoon and a croissant in his mouth.” She laughed, a robust laugh as rich as the vatrushka pastries on the shelf, but she winked at Pasha.

Ha! Fair enough. He had greeted them in French, clearly not the right language for the countryside. Pasha smiled good-naturedly back at the baker, and at the women around him, as well. Then he tried again, this time in Russian. “Dobre dehn.” His accent was quite good; there was only a shred of French lace at the edges. (His German, Spanish, English, Finnish, and Swedish were excellent as well. Palace learning was good for something, after all.)

The woman behind the counter still had her broad smile plastered across her face. “You don’t mind if I serve him first, do you?” she asked the other customers, although it really wasn’t a question. “It’s not every day Cinderella Bakery is honored by such a handsome young man. What can I do for you?”

“Are you Ludmila Fanina?” Pasha asked.

“I am.”

“Then I need your assistance, if you please. I’m looking for a girl.”

Ludmila puffed out her generous bosom and held a long loaf of bread suggestively. Mischief sparked in her eyes. “A girl? Why, I am a girl. I can be the one you seek.”

The women burst into another fit of giggles.

Red flushed across Pasha’s face, all the way to the tips of his ears. He didn’t even have a hat on to hide it. If his Guard were here, they would seize Ludmila and send her to the stocks for her insolence. No one would ever dare make such a salacious joke to the tsesarevich; no one would ever embarrass the tsesarevich. . . .

Ah. Right. They didn’t know he was the tsesarevich. I have to act like a normal boy. Or, rather, I have to act like myself, but the version of myself I would be if I weren’t the tsesarevich. And as soon as Pasha got that through his imperial head and let go of being offended, he grinned. He could play their game.