The sequel to Vasilisa is coming next fall! Elena the Brave picks up the story with Vasilisa and Ivan’s daughter, Elena, who is destined for more adventure. Spoiler — if you like dragons, this book is for you! This is a first draft of chapter one, but I like it, so it’s chances of survival are good 🙂

Chapter 1

Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. It was a French saying, not Russian, though the old wives might well have muttered its like down the ages as Prince became Tsar, and Tsar became Commissar, and all the while the Russian heart beat in a peasant’s breast. That was the way of worlds both old and new, and the crossing of oceans to make a new start did nothing to alter it.

Elena’s mother had been born on a steamship on the high Atlantic seas, and so it was that Elena called Edenfall home, not St. Petersburg — Edenfall, Pennsylvania, where steel was king and the tsar was just a character in an old tale. By now, the old wives who remembered Mother Rus had mostly passed on — all but her grandmother, dear Babka, who was too stubborn to die — and the old wives’ children had all but forgotten the steppes and forests, the snow-banked villages and onion domed churches of what seemed a fabled land. There was too much change afoot right there in Edenfall to dwell on distant shores.

It was 1942, and the world was at war.

Glenn Miller was on the radio, bombers plied the airspace over Hamburg and Rostock, and the newsreels bore witness to Hitler’s march, even across the Russian wastes where it seemed only winter could defeat his ranks.

Yes, even on Edenfall’s familiar, hillside streets, Elena Ivanova Volonsky could feel change in her bones like the distant rumble of a B-17. It was a Saturday afternoon in late April, and Elena was down in the First Ward beside the Brandywine River, skirting the barricades of the demolition zone where piles of rubble marked what once had been tired but tidy factory houses, clapboard tenements and courtyard complexes — all razed, not by bombers, but by wrecking balls. 

The Edenfall Steelworks was growing.

The expansion was funded by the government, for this war would be won with steel, or so the headlines shouted, and Edenfall had never been busier. Gone were the breadlines and soup kitchens Elena could recall from her earliest years as she straggled behind her mother, tending the poor, the needy, the homeless or jobless whose numbers only grew. The stock market had crashed when Elena was two, and as the destitute reeled from year to year, those who were more fortunate had come to their aid, opening doors, pocketbooks and larders – especially Elena’s mother, who had saved more than one soul from the bottle or the bridge.

But now, the Works blazed with light day and night, the hiss and clang and roar of its furnaces never ceasing so that only silence was strange. Shifts on the smelting floor were doubled, paychecks were padded, and more than a thousand residents of the First Ward were told to sell out or lose out as plans were drawn up for a new complex, five blocks long and wide. It was exciting, in its way, but sad too, for Elena knew the families who called this tattered ward home, not slum, who had tended gardens even here in the shadow of the mill. Streets that once rang with the cries of children playing in the dusk would now know only fire and steam and molten slag.  

But Elena was not one to dwell on losses. The future, that was where hope lay. In all her fifteen years, she had known only waiting and wishing and wanting — and occasionally scheming, for there was nothing to vex one like the word no. But now, change was in the air, right alongside the B-17s that swelled her heart and fueled her dreams, and even Mama did not have time to keep track of her comings and goings. Had the old wives’ warnings on the nature of change reached her ears, she would never have believed them, less still the observation that history repeats itself, again and again, until lessons are learned, and evils mastered. To the young, change is always the herald — never the crone, trailing portends like shadows and warning that what has gone before will come again. And even if she had believed them, what of it? What had life in Edenfall ever been except boring and predictable, just like her mother, Vasilisa Petrovna Volonsky, who lived for others and had never had a day of fun in her whole life?

But then, she knew nothing of her mother’s secrets.

*****

“There you are,” Vasilisa said with little fuss as she hurried up Front Street in a pale green blouse and pleated skirt that somehow managed to look elegant. Her auburn hair was swept up in the simple twist she always wore. “You forgot, didn’t you.” She stopped before her daughter, a glint of mischief in her eyes. “I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt here — don’t make me regret it.”

Drat her. It would be so much easier if she would only nag Elena, like a normal mother.

“The Purdy twins!” Elena cried, slapping her forehead. “Poor little urchins. How do they get on with no one to wipe their snotty little noses?”

Mama’s lips were set in a small smile, but behind her eyes lurked a glimpse of real despair. Elena could hardly bear it.

“But Mama, it’s Saturday.”

Vasilisa sighed. “Elena, they’ve lost their mother. And old Mrs. Purdy is no match for them, especially with her cataracts. Why, she can hardly see the twins, let alone manage their pranks.” She eyed her daughter a moment longer. “It’s only for the afternoon. They’ll be going to their uncle’s house for the rest of the week.”

Elena cast a glance back at the glorious destruction that was underway not fifty yards off as the wrecking ball smashed into the Walker’s backyard henhouse. Those Purdy twins were more than a handful, even for someone like Elena who not only knew every trick but had written the book, for pity’s sake. She turned back to her mother with a look of pious resignation, placing her hands before her in mock prayer.

“I live to serve.”

Vasilisa laughed. Double drat! It was so hard to hate her, even when she plied her dastardly whip!

“Perfect. I’ll have biscuits waiting for you when you get home.”

Elena’s painted smile melted with affection.

“With marmalade?”

“Would you expect anything less, Saint Elena?” her mother quipped, pivoting with a wave. “Don’t be home past six!”

            Elena returned the wave, then slumped theatrically for the benefit of her non-existent audience. Perhaps she would take the scenic route to the Purdy’s wretched little hovel on Green Street. If she went down Main, she could cut up the hill just before the old Moravian cemetery and at least take a peek at what was playing at the Regency.

      It was a good plan, and it lightened her mood. She headed down Front as far as the old Works, then climbed the steep grade one block to Main Street where storefronts bustled with weekend shoppers. Saturday was always a lark, what with shiny new Buicks honking their horns at creaky Model T’s or the occasional old-timer who had saddled up his horse, even if it meant a ticket from Officer Crupp. You had to give it to those codgers, they had spunk, especially old Mr. McCurdy who had never been quite right in the head since they took his funeral cart away.

Speaking of which, there he was, clomping up the roadside on his old nag, Rosie, with the cars swerving around him and honking for all they were worth.

“What ho, Mr. C,” she said, adopting the aristocratic accent that was their private joke. She grabbed Rosie by the bit and guided her up onto the curb — earning glares from a coven of tight-lipped biddies in hats and heels. “Making a statement again, are we?” she said over her shoulder as she led Rosie up the sidewalk.

Mr. McCurdy gave something between a snort and a chuckle — a snortle, maybe, or a chuckort, Elena thought, grinning widely as he drifted sideways in his saddle.

“Watch it there, Mr. C, or you’ll be carting yourself off to Happy Havens next.”

This small morsel of blasphemy had the desired effect, and Mr. McCurdy righted himself with a different kind of snort, one of utter disdain.

“I’d nah be buried there if t’were the last patch of grass on God’s green earth!” he shouted, garnering a few more looks from passersby to Elena’s satisfaction. There was nothing worse than a stodgy housewife. “If the Moravians won’t have me, just plunk me in the back yard next to my Rosie!”

Elena brought the mare to a halt, stroking her neck as she gazed up fondly into Mr. McCurdy’s ancient face. Once an undertaker, always an undertaker — though he’d hung up his hand pump long ago. Victorian embalming techniques hadn’t fared well in the era of modern refrigeration.

“You must be an honorary Moravian by now, considering how many of them you’ve buried,” Elena said reasonably. This was the kind of straight talk the old man favored.

He gave a brisk nod. “’Tis so, ‘tis only right, I say. Why, in my day I could fix ‘em up on the kitchen table and have it cleaned up by suppertime.” He leaned forward. “Fancy another gander at the tool kit, missy?”

Mr. McCurdy’s gruesome kit was something else, full to bursting with hooks and screws, scalpels and syringes, and something called a trocar for poking holes.

“I wish I could, but I’ve got to watch the Purdy twins.” She glanced at the wristwatch Papa had given her last Christmas. The twins would be breaking into their rubber fly stash right about now, floating them atop their poor grandma’s warm milk. Grief had done nothing to curb their genius. “Promise me you’ll stay out of the road?”

Mr. McCurdy’s eyes tried to slip away but she narrowed her gaze and held firm.

“Dagnabbit!” he said, snatching his old straw hat off his head to give Rosie a swat. But the twinkle in his eyes was worth a million bucks. “Have it your way, missy. Ye come by soon, now. And don’t take any wooden nickels!”

Elena hurried on, aware now that she was treading the line between truancy and outright desertion. But a few more minutes couldn’t hurt, and there was sure to be something new on the marquee at the Regency. She picked up her pace, craning her head around a slow-poke wearing high-waisted trousers and an ivy cap that looked to be straight out of Dickens. Every time she moved to pass him, he’d meander back in front, just as though he had eyes in the back of his head. At last, she whisked by, grateful for the long legs that were her one good feature, if schoolyard gossip were to be credited. Personally, Elena couldn’t care less about her feminine attributes — or lack thereof. Skinny and tall, she couldn’t fill out the bodice of latest V-cut tea dress, and her shoulder-cropped black hair was as thick and straight as a horse’s tail, but she liked it that way. She could run the 440 yard dash in a minute flat, and with so few suitors to slow her down, had gotten halfway through her sophomore year at East Edenfall High with time to spare.

Time better spent looking up at the sky. 

Today, high clouds masked the sun, casting a glare. Not her favorite kind of sky, but not every day could dawn pillowed in rose-lit cumulous clouds. Elena was an aficionado and had mentally catalogued at least three dozen types of skies over the years, from cozy, socked-in drizzlers to dramatic cloud-bursters, to your run-of-the mill picnic under the noonday sunners.

Halfway up the block on the north side of Main, a row of bulbs glowed dimly in the glare— the Regency, with its marvelous limestone facade, framed by great, curved pillars like shrugging shoulders. It had opened at the height of the Depression, perhaps because that’s when people needed it most, even if they’d had barely a quarter to spare for the ticket. Elena crossed the street, dodging a bulbous-nosed Oldsmobile, then hopped up on the curb, shading her eyes to peer up at the bright red letters splashed across the marquee.

Captains of the Clouds!

The over-sized poster in the display window featured James Cagney in the cockpit of his bush plane, raising a hand in salute. Elena’s heartbeat quickened. James Cagney and planes? It was too good to be true!

“Hey, Elena. What’s buzzin’, cousin?”

“Hi Eddie.” Eddie Morgan always had the latest slang on the tip of his tongue. Elena came up to the ticket window where he was slumped on his stool in a ratty cardigan. “Is today the debut?”

“Nah.” Eddie dislodged something from between his two front teeth with a flick of his toothpick. “Been playin’ all week now. Where you been?”

Elena’s mind flashed on the long hours after school spent strategically outwitting two criminal masterminds who were barely out of diapers.

“Here and there.” She pushed the thought of the Purdy twins away. It must be past four o’clock by now. They’d have moved on to the old lady’s unmentionables drawer and before long would be putting on an impromptu fashion show. “Have you seen it yet?”

Eddie shrugged, which was as enthusiastic as he got. “It’s about some Canadian fellers. Pilots and stuff.”

“And the newsreel?” This was like pulling teeth.

“Something about… em… the Flying Lions. No… em… the Flying Tigers, that’s it.”

The Flying Tigers! Only President Roosevelt’s elite squadron pledged with defending the Republic of China from Japanese aggression! Not that she knew that much about it.

She looked at her watch again. Four twenty-five.

“Starts at 4:30,” Eddie said, misunderstanding her gesture. He gave a yank with his head. “Go on, ‘fore the boss comes around.”

Elena peered behind the ticket booth to where a glimpse of red crushed velvet beckoned through the plate glass doors.

“Just for the newsreel.” She flashed Eddie a grin that seemed to snap him out of his slouch, at least for a second. “Thanks, Eddie. I owe you one.”

He experimented with a smile. “Em… you got it, Elena. Maybe I’ll see you around.”

But Elena was already gone, flashing through the double doors and into that gilded lobby with the stealth of a panther. She’d stand at the back, where the ushers would walk right by in their pillbox hats, none the wiser.

Just fifteen minutes, she promised herself. How much damage could the twins do?