“Oh,” I whisper. Of course this would be the one I always return to, the one I love best of all. Paul nestles the egg in my waiting palms. His fingers brush against mine for a fraction of a second, and yet I imagine I can feel his touch long after it has ended.
For a few long moments we stand there, so very close, looking down at the delicate, priceless thing in my hands. I am aware of Paul’s silence, of the rise and fall of his breath. We are alone in a room that stretches for dozens of feet, with a ceiling that vaults twenty feet above our heads, and yet our nearness feels almost unbearably intimate. The afternoon sunlight slants through the tall window, glinting off his military decorations and the gilding on the egg I hold.
Paul says, “Your mother was very beautiful, my lady.”
He’s only judging by the portrait. In this dimension, he probably never got the chance to know Mom. I think of how much she loves him, back home, and feel a pang at the loss—this other connection that should have existed, but didn’t. “Yes, she was.”
“Very like you, my lady.”
I can’t look up at him. I can’t catch my breath.
Why does he get to me like this?
But if I’m being honest, what I’m feeling began a while ago, growing from curiosity to hope to something I can’t even name.
“Oh—” I wince as one of the prongs inside the wine-colored egg falls down into the shell. Mom’s portrait won’t hang in its place any longer. “I broke it.”
“Don’t worry, my lady. The tutor will be able to fix that, I’m certain. Professor Caine is very adept with his clockmaker’s tools.”
Of course. At home, every once in a while, Dad tinkers with old clocks, getting them to run again. His fine scientific mind, denied theoretical challenges in this world, has turned to more mechanical ones. Here he must tinker with machinery all the time.
At last I look up at Paul, and I’m beaming with such happiness that I know he’s surprised. But I can’t help it.
I just thought of another way out.
13
“PROFESSOR CAINE.” IT’S SO BIZARRE, CALLING HIM SOMETHING besides Dad.
But what about this isn’t bizarre?
Dad walks into the Easter room, escorted by Paul, who went to fetch him at my command. When he sees the wine-colored egg in my hands, Dad nods, anticipating my request. “It’s that hook, isn’t it? Really, someday soon, you should have the Fabergé jewelers reset that properly, Your Imperial Highness.” He reaches into his jacket and withdraws a small leather roll—his packet for his watchmaker’s tools. “But I can put it right for now, never fear.”
“Of course you can.” I smile at him, hoping to butter him up for a favor. Then I realize that’s sort of ridiculous. When you’re a grand duchess of the House of Romanov, you don’t ask for favors; you make commands.
But this is still my father, and more than ever, I want to treat him with respect.
“I had another project for you, if you were willing to take a look at it.” Carefully I place the broken egg on a small side table, then reach into my pocket. There, wrapped carefully in my lace handkerchief, are the pieces of the Firebird. “This locket of mine is broken.”
Dad glances from the egg over at me, smiling. “I believe you’re trying to make a jeweler of me, to avoid any future exams in French.”
“No, I promise. This is important to me, and it’s complicated—” I stop talking before I begin to sound panicky. If Dad (or Paul, standing guard at the door) realizes how worried I am about the Firebird, there might be questions I won’t be able to answer. “The locket’s meant to be more than decorative, you see. When all the pieces are put together properly, then it will function again.”
“What does it do?” Dad pushes his glasses up his nose as I unwrap the handkerchiefs a little to reveal the bronze-colored pieces within. “Play music?”
“No.” But what am I supposed to tell him? He’d hardly believe the truth. “I’m afraid I’m not sure.”
“Then I doubt I’d be able to set it right, not knowing how it should work. Of course I want to help you, Your Imperial Highness, but this might be a task best given to a professional.”
Oh, no. If Paul and I are going to have any backup plan for getting out of this dimension, I need someone like Dad to work on the Firebird. Okay, he’s gotten stuck playing tutor in this lifetime, but that doesn’t change the fact that he’s a genius. He’s my best chance, maybe the only one I have.
There’s no guarantee Colonel Azarenko won’t have thrown away or sold Paul’s Firebird locket by the time he returns from Moscow; if mine doesn’t get fixed, Paul and I will both be trapped here forever.
To still my rising panic, I take a few deep breaths and watch as my father works on the red Fabergé egg. He deftly works with a tiny pair of prongs to twist the hook back into shape, but it’s what he does next that takes my breath away.
Dad picks up the charm portrait of my mother, the one commissioned by Tsar Alexander V, who probably never looked at it again. But Dad holds the charm for a long moment, his eyes drinking in the image of her face, and within him I glimpse the deepest sadness and longing I’ve ever seen.
(“I had no idea what your father looked like, the first time he came to visit me,” Mom said once as we cooked out in the backyard on a hazy summer afternoon. “But I was already half in love with him.”