Every evening, I strayed a little into the woods, deep enough to be just out of sight of the house, but not so far I wasn’t certain of my way back. I felt drawn there, like a string had been tied to my heart. I couldn’t stop thinking about the white wolf, about the comprehension in his eyes as he stared at me, at the connection I felt between us. I thought maybe the string was tied to him.
The night before my father and Donia were scheduled to arrive home, I paced a little deeper into the woods than usual, and settled myself beneath an ancient elm that was knotted and gnarled yet still bursting with leaves. I rested my head awhile against its trunk, and when I looked back into the clearing the wolf was there, not ten paces from me. His eyes were amber, flecked with gold, and the edges of his white fur ruffled in the light wind. He came toward me, his back leg dragging a little behind. He was near enough when he stopped that I caught his scent: wild honey and deep grass and dark earth.
As before, he simply stared at me and didn’t come any closer.
“What are you?” I whispered, and his ears twitched at my voice. I wanted to reach out to him, sink my hand in his thick fur as I’d done as a child, but I stayed where I was.
Around us the forest faded to the deep silvery-blue of twilight. Somewhere I heard an owl cry, the sudden rush of wings in the growing dark.
The wolf dipped his head to me, like he was bowing to a queen, then he turned tail and slipped away into the wood, leaving me to stare numbly after him.
I stumbled home in the dark, the stars obscured by the trees and a thick layer of clouds, to find smoke coiling up from the chimney.
CHAPTER FOUR
MY FATHER AND DONIA WERE HOME earlier than expected, and hard on their heels, in a rattling wooden cart, came a piano.
“A wedding present from your father!” Donia explained, beaming at me, as two men with bulging muscles carried the thing into the house.
I was shocked. I had no idea how my father could possibly afford such an elaborate instrument. It took up half the parlor, with ornate scrollwork on the legs and stand and a brightly colored painting detailing all the angels of heaven on the underside of the lid.
Donia sat down and started playing immediately, and I had to choke back my surprised laughter—if she’d ever possessed any skill, she had clearly lost it.
My father winked at me as Donia stumbled up and down the keys, hitting so many wrong notes it was hard to imagine there were any right ones. I was glad I’d be away at the bookshop most days so I wouldn’t have to hear her practicing.
Rodya’s visits to the house dwindled down to almost nothing after my father and Donia’s return. He popped in frequently at the bookshop to ask if I’d heard back from the university, and would apologize profusely for not coming more often to the cottage. One particular afternoon, when spring was slipping headlong into summer, he hung his head and admitted sheepishly: “I can’t stand that woman.”
I laughed. “She’s not that bad.”
“Liar,” he retorted.
It was true, so I laughed even more.
I found the evenings at the cottage increasingly difficult. Donia was an excellent cook, but her taste in ingredients ran as expensive as her taste in everything else, and I was forever trying to persuade her to buy cheaper ones.
On the rare occasions I was home and Donia was not, I sat down at the piano and experimented with trying to play. I taught myself one of Donia’s pieces and made the mistake of playing it for her and my father one evening after supper.
I stumbled over a few notes, but for the most part the tune came out nicely, and I could tell my father thought I had done well. Donia, however, was livid.
“I don’t recall giving you permission to touch this delicate instrument!” She jerked up from her seat, stepped over to the piano, and slammed the key cover down, narrowly missing my fingers. I snatched them out of the way just in time.
I sat there on the piano stool, trying not to hate her. “I’m sorry, Stepmother. You like music so much I thought it would please you to hear me try.”
My father left his seat and came over to us. “Donia, my dear, there’s no harm in letting Echo learn to play a little. You could perhaps even teach her some things.”
“There is no question of that!” cried Donia. “You heard how she tripped and stuttered through the notes! She isn’t bright enough to pursue music.”
I stood from the stool and brushed by both of them, pausing in the doorway to look back. “I’ll take an axe to it then, shall I? It would be more pleasant than listening to you play.”
And then I went up to my room and read about dressing wounds until my candle burned down to a stub, refusing to unlock my door no matter how many times my father knocked, telling me to come out and apologize.
Guilt gnawed at me for a few weeks after until, at long last, I relented and asked Donia’s forgiveness. She just sniffed and said I wasn’t to touch her things without her permission ever again.
The piano mostly gathered dust after that.
A FEW WEEKS LATER, LETTERS from my father’s creditors began to arrive, most to the bookshop, some to the cottage. At first, I didn’t realize they weren’t the usual bills or notices. They all demanded immediate repayment of a staggering amount of money. One threatened fines. Another, prison. I tried to talk to my father about them but he continually put me off, saying that these city creditors were just making thunderstorms out of raindrops.
One morning, I went into the back room of the shop to shelve some books, and caught my father unearthing my mother’s jewel case from its hiding spot beneath the floorboards. It was empty except for her treasured emerald ring and a gold necklace.
He bowed his head, and the next moment he was crying silently on the floor, his shoulders shaking. I knelt beside him, wanting to comfort him as he had so often comforted me.
“We’re ruined, Echo,” he said when he’d grown calm enough to speak. “Utterly and completely.”
“Because of the furniture? Because of the piano?”
“It’s the house. I thought I could manage the payments, and perhaps I could have if business were better, but—” He sighed. “I just wanted your stepmother to be happy. I’ve borrowed much more than I can ever possibly pay back.”
“What can we do?”
He took the necklace and the ring out of the jewel box. “We’ll sell the necklace. But this—” He offered me the ring. “I always meant for you to have it.”
I bit my lip and stared down at the ring, sliding it quietly onto my finger.
He clasped my hands in his larger ones. “Rodya told me about the university. I think it’s wonderful, Echo. I’m so proud of you.”
“I haven’t heard back from them yet.”
“But you will. I know you will.”
I hugged him, kissing his cheek as I drew back. “Tell me exactly how much you owe.”
MY FATHER BROKE THE NEWS to Donia over supper.
“We’ll have to sell the piano, my love.”
Her chin quivered. “Must we?”
I clamped my teeth down on my lip to keep from reminding her that she hadn’t even touched the thing in weeks.
My father took her hand across the table. “We must,” he said firmly. “And we will have to live just a little smaller for a while. Forgive me, my darling. I ought not to have bought more than I could pay for.”
Donia sniffed noisily. “You certainly shouldn’t have.”
“He wasn’t the one who—” I began, but my father raised his hand to stop me, which was probably wise.
“The fault is entirely mine,” he went on. “But you must try and bear it. It will only be for a year or two.”
“A year or two!” Donia shrieked.
“That is nothing for so strong a love as ours,” said my father.
I hated that he loved her so much and she thought only of her own comfort.
We sold the piano and one of the couches, too. My father appeased his creditors with the money he received by mortgaging the bookshop, piece by piece. Late in the summer, the shop belonged entirely to the bank and he had to pay rent out of our earnings. At the best of times the shop had never turned an enormous profit, and with a poor harvest the previous year, the villagers hadn’t many leftover pennies to spend on books.
We couldn’t pay the rent.