The Rise of Svetlana Romanoff

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

The candle on the rough table cast a wavering light, and the dancing shadows on the logs of the izba seemed to leap and caper. Anatoly's great hands, so sure and sure-footed when he carved wood, now shook as he sat by the fire. The air was heavy, still charged with the emotional vibration of Svetlana's earlier fear.

Anatoly leaned forward, reaching for Anastasia’s hand. He didn’t just want to tell her; he needed her to understand what he had seen in their daughter’s eyes. Using the rare gift of empathy that allowed him to feel the inner light of those he loved, he opened the connection to his wife.

The transition was violent. Anastasia gasped as Svetlana’s raw scream of sheer terror tore through her mind. Although she couldn’t see what was trying to take her daughter, she knew that Anatoly wasn’t exaggerating, and Svetlana wasn’t making things up. She saw something, and it nearly scared her to death.

Anastasia wrenched her hand away, her heart hammering against her ribs as if she had taken a physical blow. Tears tracked paths through the weariness on her face. She had to take several deep breaths to erase the screams from her mind as they echoed in her ears as if they had been her own.

"What do you think it was?" she finally asked after calming down.

"What she saw? Or how she saw it?" Anatoly asked.

"Both."

"I don't know," he responded. "I was going to ask you the same thing."

Anastasia let out a small huff, her mind reeling. "I can only speculate that it was a premonition of some kind. Or perhaps, a form of astral projection," Anastasia replied, her voice barely a ragged breath.

“How is that possible? She’s only ten years old,” Anatoly replied in disbelief.

“Esphyr warned us…” Anastasia stated as she stood up and paced around the fireplace in their izba.

“Esphyr warned us that she is gaining her powers too quickly. Nothing about this,” Anatoly said as he stood up as well. He remembered the old woman’s ragged plea that they had welcomed a force, not just a child.

“Keep your voice down, Anatoly. You’ll wake Svetlana,” his wife hissed in annoyance. They both sighed silently, looking at the door that led to Svetlana’s room, where she was peacefully sleeping. Anastasia had been forced to give her a sedative because the fear she had radiated was so intense it filled the cabin.

"What do we do?" Anatoly whispered, his voice cracking.

"We watch her," Anastasia replied, her gaze fixed on the closed door. "We ensure she masters these powers before they master her. For now, we must keep her away from the mortals. If she has another episode like this, there is no telling how they would react to a Wiccan child in their midst."

Anatoly’s head snapped up, his protective instinct flaring. "We cannot simply isolate her, Anastasia. She is a child, not a prisoner. She needs friends—she needs to be among her own kind, or at the very least, among people."

"People fear what they cannot understand, Anatoly," she countered, her voice dropping to a sharp, low hiss. "And right now, I’m not sure even we understand what she is becoming."

The silence in the izba thickened, the weight of their disagreement hanging between them like the heavy smoke from the fireplace. Anatoly looked at his wife’s weary face and felt the familiar pull of their shared history, but his heart rebelled against the idea of their daughter becoming a ghost in her own life.

He understood the danger, but he couldn't reconcile it with the image of Svetlana playing alone in the woods for the rest of her childhood.

"I hear you, Anastasia," he said, his voice dropping to a low, resonant hum to keep from disturbing the quiet. "I know the risks. But fear is a poor teacher, and isolation is a heavy price for a ten-year-old girl to pay."

Anastasia opened her mouth to counter, her eyes flashing with the remnants of the night’s trauma, but Anatoly held up a hand, his calloused palm catching the firelight.

"Not tonight," he whispered, his expression softening. "Svetlana is safe for now, and we are both exhausted. Let’s table this until the sun is up. We’ll think more clearly when the shadows aren't so long."

Anastasia hesitated, her shoulders finally dropping an inch as the adrenaline disappeared. She nodded once, a sharp, tired motion.

The argument wasn't settled—it was merely sleeping, much like their daughter. As they moved to put out the final candle, the only sound left in the cabin was the soft popping of the dying embers in the fireplace.

The next morning, Anatoly woke not to the echoing screams of a vision, but to the bright, silver bell of Svetlana’s laughter.

He reached out instinctively, but Anastasia’s side of the bed was already cold. Pushing himself up, he rubbed the sleep from his eyes as the giggles drifted through the cabin again, sounding impossibly light compared to the darkness of the night before.

He stood and padded toward the doorway. In their small, rustic kitchen, the morning sun streamed through the window, illuminating a cloud of flour hanging in the air. Anastasia and Svetlana were huddled over the wooden counter, and his daughter’s face was almost entirely white with dust.

"Chto proiskhodit?" (What’s going on?) Anatoly asked, a slow smile spreading across his face.

"Dobroye utro, papochka!" (Good morning, Daddy!) Svetlana squealed, her eyes dancing with mischief.

"Dobroye utro, dochen'ka," (Good morning, Daughter) he replied, leaning against the doorframe. He gestured to her messy cheeks. "And what, may I ask, is all that on your face?"

"I’m making bread with Mama!" she answered gleefully, dusting her hands together and creating a fresh puff of white.

Anatoly let out a low chuckle, glancing at Anastasia. Her eyes met his over their daughter's head—the worry was still there, tucked away in the corners of her smile, but for now, she was letting the light win.

"Is that so?" Anatoly teased. "Because from where I’m standing, it looks more like the bread is making you."

Anatoly pushed off the doorframe and crossed the kitchen, the floorboards creaking under his weight. He pressed a kiss to Anastasia’s cheek before reaching out to thumb a smudge of flour from Svetlana’s nose.

"Why are we laboring over dough," he teased, his voice low and warm, "when we could just... create it?"

"Ask her," Anastasia replied, her eyes never leaving their daughter as she leaned against the counter.

Anatoly turned his attention to the girl, who was currently wrestling with a stubborn lump of dough. "Svetlana, why are we making the bread the long way?"

"One of my friends said she does this every morning with her mother," Svetlana answered without looking up, her small hands pushing into the floury mass with focused intensity. "It sounded like fun. So I asked Mamochka to find a book to show us how."

Anatoly’s brow furrowed. He shot a look at his wife, a silent question about which "friend" Svetlana was referring to, but Anastasia only offered a small, noncommittal shrug.

She wasn't ready to voice the shadows of her mind, not with Svetlana right there. For now, she was allowing herself to revel in the miracle of the morning: that despite the raw terror of the night before, her daughter seemed entirely whole, her light untarnished by whatever had tried to claim her.

Leaving the two of them to their floury battle, Anatoly stepped out into the biting freshness of the morning. The forest was his domain, and the familiar weight of the axe felt grounding after the metaphysical chaos of the night. It was a simple, grounding routine; within minutes, he had gathered a fresh armful of split logs, the scent of pine and sap clinging to his wool tunic.

When he returned, the kitchen was quieter. The dough had been shaped into a rustic, somewhat lopsided loaf, ready to be set over the dancing flames of the hearth.

As Svetlana stood mesmerized, her eyes fixed on the fireplace as if she could coax the bread to rise with her mind alone, Anatoly leaned into his wife’s space.

"How do we know this is actually going to work?" he whispered, his voice barely audible over the crackle of the wood.

"We don't," Anastasia murmured back, her gaze never wavering from their daughter. "I’ve never made bread in my life."

Anatoly felt a flicker of genuine concern. "And if it’s... inedible? What then?"

Anastasia turned her head just enough to give him a look that could wither a stone. "Then we eat it anyway," she hissed, her voice a sharp, affectionate warning. "This is the first thing your daughter has ever created with her own two hands, Anatoly. You will sit, you will be silent, and you will finish every crumb. If it poisons us, I have a healing potion in the cupboard. Now, hush."