Once Upon A January Daylight had begun to fade in earnest at three-thirty, so by five, Tatiana could see the tiny pinpricks that represented a thousand candles and torches in the far-away windows of other houses. Volshebnaya Derevnya would, she knew, be alight until two in the morning at least; some parties went on until five, but most ended by two. In the nursery, though, the candles would all be blown out and the windows shuttered and curtained by ten.
For now, Tatiana sat up on her knees in the window seat, looking out at the bustle of activity going on around the sleigh her parents would take to the ball that Mikhael Alexandrovich, her aunt Xenia’s brother-in-law, was hosting. Someone had, it seemed, already cast the bubble charm over the top to keep the snow out, ignoring the fact that Mama and Papa and the cushions and furs that would keep them from freezing solid on the way had not yet gotten in. Derevenko was shouting at the culprit; Tatiana could almost make out what he was saying from here.
“What do you see, Tatya?” asked Katerina, standing on her toes just behind Tatiana even though this couldn’t possibly let her see a thing. Katerina was tiny like Mama and their oldest sister. “Are Mama and Papa out there yet?”
Katya loved to watch the sleighs ride off, bells ringing, Mama and Papa in all their finery waving merrily up at the windows. Tatiana had never liked it because she didn’t want to just watch, she wanted to go with them. She wasn’t old enough, though – none of them were. Anna would be old enough to be presented soon, but for now, even Anya couldn’t go to full formal balls, though Tatiana did think Anya and Sophie, home for a few weeks, were going to go to some kind of party; they had been shut up in their room for ages and would not let Tatiana or Katerina in.
“No,” said Tatiana. “They are just getting the sleigh ready.” She dropped to her behind and then slid out of the window seat. “Let’s go see what Mama is going to wear,” she said.
Dressing for a ball was, Tatiana thought, going to be the worst part about one when she was old enough, because even though the finished results were magnificent, the process looked infuriating. By the time she and Katerina entered their mother’s dressing room, though, the majority was done. Her mother was dressed in a narrow gold dress with a wide-sleeved green velvet over-dress embroidered with a broad pattern of gold vines, held to at the waist with a broach to show off her elegant figure and briefly breaking the narrow strip of the under-dress which was visible from neck to hem. Her golden hair had already been elaborately braided up onto her head and she was wearing her diamond sunburst earrings and her favorite emerald rings, the green stones centered among yet more diamonds. All that seemed left were necklaces, bracelets, and of course putting on her kokochnik, the curved velvet headdress with a veil so long it reached Mama's elbows and a body so stiff with pearls and gold thread that Tatiana had once gotten in terrible trouble for trying to bend one straight.
She smiled at Tatiana and Katerina as they came in. “What do you think, my dears?” she asked, holding up two necklaces. One was a thick band of opals and diamonds, the stones arranged to form flowers, and the other was a long strand of pearls.
“The opals,” said Tatiana. Tatiana liked her mother’s opals the best of all her jewelry – they had so many different colors in them, they were more interesting than the one-colored stones – but that wasn’t her only reason for saying so. “See, Mama? They’re like flowers. They go with the vines on your dress and the flowers on your kokochnik.”
“But the flowers on my kokochnik are made of pearls,” pointed out Mama.
“And your other jewelry is diamonds and emeralds,” pointed out Tatiana, not seeing why wearing one jewel one place should mean not wearing another in another place.
Mama made her funny little half-laugh, half-sigh, a sound she sometimes made for Grisha or Sophie but which was most often reserved for Tatiana. “What do you think, Katenka?” she asked Katerina.
“Whatever you want, Mama,” said Katya. Tatiana rolled her eyes. Katya hardly ever said what she thought or what she wanted. How did she ever expect to get what she wanted if she didn’t say so? People just gave Katya piles of gifts for Christmas and her birthday and her name-day, and Katya didn’t even seem to like most of them, but she got them because nobody knew what she did want.
“Wear them both, Mama,” said Tatiana. “Then you’ll have the most of anyone.”
Mama let her and Katya help fasten the bracelets she had picked out, a narrow band of pearls and two bracelets of linked circles, each circle set with tiny accent diamonds so it sparkled like a circle of stars when the light touched it. She did not let them help with her headdress, though – Tatiana supposed she never was going to live down that one attempt to bend one straight. Once it was secured in place, leaving only a little of her glorious hair showing, Katya clapped her hands.
“You’re beautiful, Mama,” she exclaimed.
“You are, Mama,” agreed Tatiana.
Mama smiled at them and kissed them both – carefully, considering her attire. She was wearing lilac perfume, her favorite; Papa sent away to France for it four times a year. When they were old enough, Tatiana and her sisters would be able to pick perfumes, too; they were supposed to smell many samples in just a few days to help Anya pick hers so it could be ready for her when she came home in the summer. Tatiana did not think she would like lilac for herself, but she loved to smell it on Mama.
She and Katya said good night to both of their parents in the foyer since they would surely be asleep before Mama and Papa returned, then rushed back up to the nursery to watch them get in their sleigh and ride away. Tatiana helped Katerina climb up on the window seat for a view. They were so bundled up that Tatiana could only just make out the pale little diamond of her mother’s face beneath her kokochnik. One slim hand rose out of the wrappings, though, to wave to them, and they both waved frantically as their parents drove away and kept on until the last chiming of the sleigh bells was gone.
Katya climbed down after that to play dolls, but Tatiana refused an invitation to join in and stayed in the window, looking down at the swirling snow. She wanted a book to read but didn’t want to get up to get it. She was just thinking about whether or not she could get Katya to bring her one even though Katya was upset with her for refusing to play when the door opened and their nurse, Nadezhda, came in.
“It’s not bedtime yet,” protested Tatiana.
Nadezhda ignored her. Visually, her nurse was nothing remarkable – a sturdy witch of medium height, not very luminous yellow-brown hair, an unfortunate pug nose that kept her pretty blue eyes from quite redeeming her from plainness, and, of course, no very nice jewels or dresses, since she was only a nurse – but Tatiana still found her interesting for one reason: Nadezhda had been born in neither Volshebnaya Derevnya nor Russia. Instead, she had told Tatiana, she had been born in a place called New York. No-one in her family, at least that she had ever met, had ever been to Russia; her pradeduska had moved to America after his wife died and he had died before Nadezhda was old enough to know him. She told Tatiana and Katerina both stories about New York, and even though Tatiana did not believe them – millions of people in one city? Tatiana did not know how to imagine a million people at all - she loved to hear them.
“Tatiana Andreyevna,” she said, in a very formal tone of voice, “an invitation has arrived for you.”
Surprised, Tatiana sat all the way up. “An invitation?” she asked wonderingly. Nadezhda curtsied – curtsied! – and proffered an envelope. Tatiana recognized Sophie’s fancy stationery; she had begged Papa for her own special paper last year, and he had given it to her for her name-day.
Katya put down her doll and came to look. “Is it a letter from Sophie?” she asked.
“Of course not, st – no,” said Tatiana, cutting herself off before she called Katya stupid and Nadezhda took away her dessert as punishment. “Sophie’s at home.”
“What is it, then?” asked Katya, undeterred for once.
Tatiana opened it and pulled out a stiff card. “Anna Andreyevna Vorontsova,” she read aloud, “and Sofiya Andreyevna Vorontsova request the pleasure of your company at dancing and supper in honor of their sisters Tatiana and Katerina on 3 January – “ Tatiana began to laugh. “Why, that’s today!”
Katya frowned. “Anya and Sophie are having a party?” she asked.
“For us!” exclaimed Tatiana. She jumped up. “Oh, Nadezhda, you have to help us dress – “
Tatiana wanted to wear her best dress; Nadezhda flatly refused to permit this. Finally they compromised on the yellow one and the matching hat and allowing Tatiana to wear all three of her necklaces: the pearl choker she had received for her last name-day, which would be gradually extended until she had a full necklace when she was ready to make her debut, the princess-length amber beads she wore most days, and the fine gold chain with the opal and sapphire pendant which Mama had given her at Pascha, which was still too long and so fell down the front of her dress. Katya just wore her coral beads and a pale pink dress, completely ignoring Tatiana’s insistence that she would look prettier in the light blue and even Tatiana’s offer to let her borrow the pearls, but she did let Tatiana tie a bow in her long, shining pale gold hair. Thus armed with these dresses and jewels and their best shoes, they went hand in hand to the drawing room, where their sisters and Grisha were waiting.
Anya approached to greet them, smiling. She was wearing lavender again, of course, and her amethyst pendant; a pretty clip with imitation pearls held her chestnut hair back from her face on one side, but the other still dipped forward as she curtsied before Tatiana and Katerina.
“We are honored by your attendance,” said Anya, followed by Sophie, who laughed as she, too, dipped down.
“Ever so honored,” she echoed, grinning at them. Tatiana fought to keep her own face straight as she and Katya bobbed up and down, too, Tatiana more steadily than Katya.
“We are honored to be invited,” said Tatiana.
Nadezhda slipped unobtrusively into the corner and put on a record. Grisha approached Katya and bowed. “If I might have this dance?” he asked. Katya giggled.
There were not enough of them to all dance at once and Anya volunteered to sit out. Anya had never much liked dancing. This left Tatiana with Sophie for a partner; they took turns being the lady and pretending to be a boy. Tatiana was better at leading, she thought, but Sophie was enough taller than her that it was easier that way. They stepped on each other’s feet a lot, and she saw Katya’s leave the floor at one point, but Tatiana didn’t think Katya cared any more about that than she did about Sophie stepping on her toes.
Anya was Tatiana’s next partner, and they were a better match, since Tatiana was still growing and Anya was very short. Sophie danced with Katya while Grisha took a turn out, then Tatiana danced with Katya, badly, before taking her turn with Grisha while Anya danced with Katya.
“I think you have become a better dancer since this summer, Tatya,” said Grisha, and Tatiana laughed.
“Maybe you’ve become worse!” she said.
Anya snapped open her fan as the song ended. “I think it’s time for supper,” she said, a little breathlessly. “Enough dancing.”
Tatiana disagreed that there could ever be enough dancing, but she did want supper, so she followed her siblings to the table someone had set up for them, where she was delighted to find real china – usually she and her siblings ate off glazed earthenware; this was not the good china, never mind the best china, but it was still china – and the food was not the usual plain fare at all. Nadezhda watered down the tea so much that Tatiana hardly needed to keep a piece of sugar in her mouth as she sipped it from her glass, but the soup was chestnut bisque with small beef-filled pastries, and, a salad with grapes and cheese and a wonderful sauce, and ice cream with anise and fruits. Tatiana felt almost sick by the time the ice cream came out, but she ate it determinedly anyway, as she loved ice cream and they did not get it every day.
“How did you manage all this?” she asked Sophie finally, sipping more tea without sugar in the hopes of settling her stomach and for one moment giving up pretending that this was all normal.
Sophie grinned. Tatiana was sure she had stolen some of Mama’s lipstick, or else some of Marta at school’s, so she filed this away for use in any spat they might have before Sophie went back to Durmstrang. “We convinced Mama and Papa it would do Anya good,” she said. “For when she gets married.” Tatiana laughed, covering her mouth with her hand. Sophie leaned conspiratorially close. “Come. I’m going to tell Anya and Nadezhda I’m taking you to bed because you’ve made yourself sick, and we’ll go try on Mama’s jewelry.”
OOC: “Volshebnaya Derevnya” – “the Magic Village.” If they ever publish an index of people who are not so good at coming up with place names, I should not be surprised if my photograph was on the cover.