The Museum of Abandoned Secrets

carol.
    “She’s right,” Levko said quietly.
    Three kings came from an East-ern la-and, put pre-cious gifts into the Vir-gin’s ha-ands...
    She was right, Stodólya had come for her. Stodólya also knew he, Adrian, loved her, and counted on it—that he wouldn’t let her die. She was right; she knew him best. She was right, that was the only way—to come out together; to perish together.
    I didn’t want this, thought Adrian Ortynsky as he collapsed with inaudible din, shattered into pieces, into myriad slivers of his own life, all visible at once and up close like lit windows at night through a field glasses, like a snowstorm splintered into myriad snowflakes—he didn’t want this. But his will was no longer there—
Not what I will but what you will. Get up, let us go. See, my betrayer is at hand.
The choir of angels reverberated, the ringing in his ears grew—somewhere far ahead, on the other side of the impossibly dark wall they were to scale, rang St. Sophia’s bells, the bells of Heavenly Ukraine for which they were setting out.
Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.
Yes, he thought. Yes. She was right.
    He nodded. Very slowly—everything around him instantly became very slow so that no trifle escaped his attention, not one snowflake that swirled before his eyes—he could see them all; he could hold everything at once somehow: the ribbed ebonyhandle of Raven’s SMG, the convex gleam of buttons on their jackets, the crimson remnants of the fire like an ashen bruise over a wound, and the rounded snouts of grenades, sitting dark, alive in their hands. Six grenades between the four of them. Not bad at all.
    “Agreed,” he said.
    And then he felt it stir in the bunker—the breeze of tension that always comes before battle.
    Geltsia made the sign of the cross over him, and he also saw the gesture distinctly, like a snowflake under a magnifying glass: his mother made the cross over him like that, when he left home for the last time. He wanted to smile to his bride in death—this was, in a way, their wedding, and the chorus of tiny voices that made the invisible glass sphere of his life crack with a slow ringing sang the wedding hymn for them—but he could no longer smile. Instead, with a senseless, bear-like lurch he suddenly pulled them all by the shoulders together as though he were about to dance the arkán with them here in this tomb—the ancient dance, the warriors’ dance in which a single, many-headed body spins in a locked circle, and feet stomp the ground with a single force, faster and faster, and the chain gathers speed, arms on shoulders, shoulder to shoulder, the eternal male dance of their people that’s been holding the circle together on this land with an inhuman effort, ever since the days of the Horde, holds the circle that others keep breaking with blood and torment, and it takes more torment and blood to renew it, to find the strength and stomp your ground. It’s mine! I won’t give it!—here’s our circle, we are together at last, my girl, this is it, this is our wedding dance; it was once interrupted, but everything’s now set right. We are together again; we’ve found our music; we’ve only the finale to play—play it cleanly, without a single fault, because it can’t ever be played again...
    The last twitch of the hand counting seconds—and the clock stopped.
    “We surrender!” Kyi called out from underground. “You win!”
    He still heard the noise of movement above—when they skittered, ran up there, barking orders—but he was already thinking with his body alone, wrapping his grenade with the wedding shirt:
She
will walk two steps ahead; I will pull the safety pin out of the grenade. Those above shouted for them to come out with arms in the air, and he pictured their fear—gray, as if a pack of excited rats swirled around the bunker, not entirely sure of its prey, and the rats had to be soothed, so he spoke—or rather someone else spoke from him while he listened—“There’s a woman here who requires medical assistance...”—and these words were as right, mindless, and singularly precise as his movements, and were received by the others as a command. Because he, Kyi, had taken command over them in this moment. He roused them onto their feet, already happier, already weaker; their minds’ focus shifted from the imminent order “Fire!” to a new hole in their shoulder-straps:
Ha, we win, the pussy talked