Dancing With Bears - Michael Swanwick [48]
From the thorny gloom, high-pitched voices chattered:
“It looks like an invitation!”
“It is an invitation.”
“He doesn’t look like anyone we know.”
“He has an invitation.”
“From the baronessa?”
“Who else invites anyone here?”
“Sometimes the baron does.”
“Only when the baronessa tells him to.”
“That’s true.”
“But what shall we do about this one?”
“He has an invitation.”
“We don’t recognize him.”
“But we do recognize the invitation.”
“He has an invitation?”
“Here it is.”
“Pass!”
The driver clucked his tongue, and the carriage jolted forward.
Sunlight washed into the cabin and the carriage proceeded down a long, curving road. Arkady could not help but gawk. The Lukoil-Gazprom estate was sublime. Here a stream emerged from a grove of beeches, emptying into a pond whose mirror-smooth surface reflected a rustic mill. There, what looked to be a fairy village of clustered acorns with doors and windows cut into them was actually cottage-gourds grown to house the servants. Beyond, a pillared manor house topped a rise. A verse leapt to Arkady’s mind from the dissolute youth he was working hard to put behind him:
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
Then he arrived at the manor house, and the baronessa came out to greet him with a chaste peck on the cheek. With her was a ginger-haired and cinnamon-freckled young man his own age, whom she did not bother to introduce.“Darling Yevgeny,” she said, her attention already focused on the next carriage trundling its way toward her, “do show Arkady about, while I stay here to greet the latecomers.”
“Let me take you around back,” Yevgeny said cheerily. “The fellows are enjoying a touch of sport at the pond.”
At their destination, Arkady saw immediately that he was dressed subtly wrong for the occasion. His clothes—gray moiré cloth with green brocade vest and bright yellow ostrich-skin boots and gloves—would have been flawless for a city gathering, but here in the country they were a touch too formal. The other men wore wider collars and softer cravats than his. Their trousers were cut looser, presumably to provide more ease of movement for the strenuous entertainments of the countryside. Arkady’s trousers, by contrast, were very tight indeed. He blushed to reflect on how much more revealing they were.
Luckily, the others were clustered at the tiled edge of the pond cheering and cursing, and paid him no more than a quick glance-and-a-nod as he was introduced around. Several of the men had canvas water-bags at their feet. Now one untied the top of his and poured something into the pond. Bright ribbons of red and orange and yellow and green energetically looped and swirled beneath the surface.
Arkady leaned over the pond to get a closer look.
“Look out!” Yevgeny shouted as a needle-toothed goblin’s head burst from the water, viciously snapping at his face. Had not Yevgeny wrapped his arms about Arkady’s chest and hauled him back, he might well have lost his nose.
“What in heaven’s name was that?” Arkady gasped.
“Her name is Lulu,” one of the men said. He reached a canvas-gloved hand into the water and pulled out a red-and-orange eel which wrapped itself briefly about his arm before being stuffed back in its bucket. A blue eel with yellow stripes floated dead and ripped open on the surface of the water. Turning to his comrade, he said, “And I believe you owe me some money, Borya.”
“Do you eel, Arkady?” Yevgeny asked.
“No.”
“What a pity. Tell you what, let me know as soon as you’ve found an appropriate eeling pond, and I’ll send over my trainer with a bucket of elvers.” There was a sudden thrashing in the water and