The Copper Queen's Bride: Lesbian Russian Romance

"Yekaterina, work at your needlework!" Teacher Alina snapped. I was gazing out the window onto the bustling town of Podentsky, a mining metropolis in the thick of the Urals fifty miles from Yekaterinburg, my namesake. I watched copper-tinged snow fall. It was winter, 1910, and I was seventeen years old. The Popovas, our regents – we knew no tsar in the Copper Lands save Tsar Nikolai's despicable Bailiff – graced our mountains with mineral and vegetative bounty, but everything here was tinged green as crabapple ice. Even the emerald snow.

I giggled, braiding Azovka's black hair. It had streaks of green and cinnamon striated like veins of ore throughout. She was my dearest friend.

"What a vision you are!" I crooned, ignoring Teacher Alina. I tugged lightly at Azovka's hair and twirled it round my thumb. Azovka smiled, her malachite eyes and scaled legs shining in the oil lamplight. Teacher Alina trimmed the wick as Azovka practiced her algebra.

"Use the malachite hair tie," Azovka whispered, smiling secretly. She drew a band of copper from her purse and enchanted it to be a ribbon as fine as the tsarina's silk. You could find malachite like that – a gown – in sheets at Snake Hill. Azovka, the Mistress of Copper Mountain, liked to grow it like Japanese bonsai trees. She had whole gardens of gems, below the Urals in her Copper Mountain.

I ooohed and ahed as my classmates looked on in fear. The townsfolk treated the Popovas with awe and superstition. But Azovka was my friend – though immortal. I trusted the Copper Men in a way Prokovitch the Stonecutter did not. I confided in Azovka like our Landlord Peter swallowing dirt from Mokosh before striking a rent deal – a holy bond. The mining men, they said the Copper Women were their deaths. But to me, Azovka was life.

"Okay, Azovkalisha," I cooed, my blonde hair and ruddy fat cheeks – I was plump as a partridge, with muscles from hunting and lifting heavy stones for father – shining in contrast to Azovka's slim elegance. I tied the living stone around her hair. It was any day in Podentsky. It was all there would ever be.

We played P'yanitsa, what Americans called War, and our old playing cards had green crowned lizards on them with maiden's faces and brown braids – the Popova family crest.

"Ha!" I said, triumphing over Azovka's queen with my king of hearts. "I've stolen your heart, Azovkalisha."

"It has always belonged to you, my bosom friend." She said, then winked. "I'm hungry, Katya," Azovka whispered, fingering her freshly plaited braid. The malachite ribbon snaked like her lizards around her copper-black tresses. We bundled up in our dresses, malachite belts, kerchiefs, elk boots and white fur coats and ate lunch down by the stone works. The grain mill churned in the river'd distance, and horses and buggies rode through the crossway, carrying iron, copper, malachite, semiprecious stones, and even the rare diamond or sapphire – all guarded by vila militias. Dedushka always warned me to stay away from the vila – the storm spirits would suck you dry.

Azovka's nanny Rubenya, a crinkly Copper Woman, had made us white borscht. We ate it with some ham sandwiches Azovka had fixed. Azovka had spent all night with the dough – she really liked to bake. We dipped the rye bread in the soup from the thermos. Our mothers had both died in childbirth, and my father, Stepan Petrovich, was the captain of the Copper Guard, an ancient order of warrior miners that served the Popovas.

Alina and her father Alexei Popova needed minerals to survive – the finest Yakutian diamonds, jade from China, topaz from Brazil. The Copper Guard ran a vast network exporting the Ural Mountain's riches past the Malachite Gates and importing minerals from abroad. They let the rest of the world in past their diamond swords. My dedushka was a quiet man, a man of action – I was the only talker.

"Here, Azovkalisha – I picked this one from the river," I smiled, handing Azovka a tumbled moissanite.

Azovka's eyes brimmed with tears. "Why are you so kind to me, my Katy?" she said fondly, taking a bite with her pearly teeth. They cut the gem like butter, and the lizards that always thronged by her feet thrummed with excitement. Azovka's scales foiled. Her eyes turned black as she absorbed the mineral's essence.

"Because, Prokovitch the Stonecutter said that someday, you will be my dearest treasure – more precious than malachite to the Copper Kingdom. And I always liked pretty girls – I am ugly, dearest Azovka! I need a polished best friend to harp up my strengths when it comes time for us to wed some awful, belching husband. Ah, dedushka has his eyes on the Landlord's son: stinky, ugly Mikha. Blech!"

We skipped around her lizards, hand in hand, then fell down into the snow, laughing, and made green angels out of the cloudy powder. It cushioned our fur jackets. Azovka stuck out her tongue. "Not the pimply, doughy landlord's son. I think you'd do well with a stonecutter like old Prokovitch."

"Hey!" I smiled, pulling at her embroidered mittens. "He is 53!"

"A joke," Azovka said, her peacock eyes brimming with mirth. "Promise me you will never leave me for a boy, Yekaterina."

"I do."

We swore on Mother Mokosh, the earth goddess', skin, swallowing and spitting out some red clay, crossing our arms, and throwing her lizards into the air.

"May I have some food?" a willowy voice came. Azovka and I froze, caught in the act of sisterhood. It was a tall, gaunt boy, with a mop of dusty blonde hair – a beggar in tattered clothes. But he had soft blue eyes, and he reminded me of Ivan Tsarevich chasing a Firebird.

My heart dropped. He was the most beautiful creature, save Azovka, I had ever seen. "Sure," I said, offering the beggar the rest of my rye and borscht.

Azovka smiled. "What is your name, stranger? I am princess of this town. Someday, I will become Queen of the Copper Mountain."

The beggar hungrily tore into the bread. "That's nice I guess."

Azovka folded in on herself, blushing.

I tapped the boy gently on his elbow. "You should bow down, fool."

"I am older than you. You look like childish maidens. I'm eighteen. Girls are the foolish ones."

"You don't look old," I said.

"Whatever," Azovka sighed. She made the lizards crawl up his legs. The boy just smiled and kissed one. "Weirdo," Azovka replied.

"What's your name, beggar?" I asked. I wanted to clip this stranger's wings and keep him. Fatten him up with my blinis. Make him pierogis and borscht. Ask him to stay. Just like I had Azovka. They were both horribly broken. I wanted to fix them.

All I could do, though, was ask the wanderer's name.

"Danilo," he said. "Someday, I will be famous."

Azovka smiled. "For what? Begging? I am already famous."

"Spoiled, maybe," Danilo said obtusely. "Look at the malachite on you."

"I am the princess, I told you!"

He winked. "Titles don't churn butter." Danilo toyed with a lizard. "Things are changing beyond the Malachite Walls. Rasputin rides. I fled St. Petersburg to find a better life – rode the rails to here, last stop past Yekaterinburg. Outside the Malachite Walls, beyond the reach of the Copper Guard – no one even dares think what kind of magick lives in the Copper Kingdom, with the Copper Men. May I meet you two here for lunch tomorrow?"

Azovka and I shared a look and smiled. "Sure," we said in unison.

He smiled back, a bright wound of red.

"Ask Prokovitch on Georgin Street for a place to stay. He's in need of a shepherd. You look fit for that, beggar boy," I said with all the love a seventeen-year-old girl could tease the object of her desires with. I liked the dirt on Danilo. I liked his dreaminess and odd charm.

Azovka just stared at her lizards. I liked that about her too.

And thus began the winter of our lives.

"Dedushka, I met a boy," I said as father drank kvass, fermented rye milk that was a staple of Podentsky. I stirred my pelmeni dumplings and dolloped some sour cream – smetana - onto them, thick and tangy, that I had made this morning.

Stepan Petrovich, the Captain of the Copper Guard, was tattooed with entwined lizards on his rough arms. It was said he had once won the love of a Copper Woman, Azovka's aunt. He had been the finest miner in the Urals as a youth – but he rejected all of Azovka's Aunt Ceclilia's riches for my mother. I could not do the same to Azovka – my heart simply wouldn't allow it.

A mop of nut-brown hair decorated Stepan's face alongside a ginger beard, and he had brown eyes that sparkled like flames. Fine lines and tan skin were like lace on his face. He wore a tunic shirt that was white with red embroidery I'd hand stitched long ago, a green belt of malachite, and trousers and buckskin boots.

"Oh, my Snegurochka?" he teased, naming me after the daughter of Father Frost, on account of my butter blonde hair and overwhelming love of snow. It was true, the emerald frost dustings had made my coat wet, and I had ice skated on the pond out back in our dacha all the long afternoon.

I stuck out my tongue. "I am no Snow Maiden."

"Will this boy melt you come spring, Golden Hair?" he said, referencing yet another of his tales – this time, the daughter of the water serpent Polozi, whose hair was precious stone. I grew up on dedushka's rabbles.

"He better pursue me every three years and cut my braid of gold, if that is what you mean," I simpered, devouring the pelmeni, smetana and beef niblet on my chin. I wiped it up with the cloth napkin.

Igor, our golden Labrador retriever, ate the remains off my plate – he was a big old puppy! – and I smiled radiantly at dedushka.

"What about the Landlord's boy, Mikhail? He is a strapping young man."

"He is phlegmatic," I sniffed. "Once, he sneezed on me."

"That just means he likes you. His family is wealthy, Katinka. They will keep you pretty and plump."

I stuck out my tongue. Dedushka gave a belly rip laugh. I licked the plate clean after Igor had finished. I had no fear of doggy germs. Waste not, want not in Russia.

Dedushka polished his copper spear that allowed him to do small magick, like open the Malachite Wall, tell when a mortal lied, or best the vilas themselves. It was a gift from Alexei, father's best friend - the Copper King. Alexei was my godfather and had blessed me with a casket made of malachite at my birth, filled with jewels, silks, and furs, as a dowry. Alexei had told father that one day I must carve the malachite casket in the way of Prokovitch, make the stone sing, and only then could I summon my heart's true desires.

I was not one to put much faith in magick – no, that was for the Saints, like Saint Cassian the Long Browed, or Saint Paraskeva Friday, lady of spinning and needlework – or my favorite, Saint Clementina, the first and only stone singer, who had carved the Copper Men from Mount Azov and wed their King.

I had no talent for magick, not like this Rasputin, Koschei's infamous son who had taken up with the Tsarina and White Palace ladies. I was not even godsmarked, meaning nowhere in my long ancestral line had Morena the Dark Cheeked or Yarilo the Golden Mopped ever bedded a Patinko maid.

Immortal blood or not, I liked Azovka Popova – we played cards and chess, she showed me how to race lizards, and I sewed her dresses of living copper while she cooked almost every dinner for me. Azovka had made us the pelmeni under Rubenya's supervision this morning – Rubenya a distant third cousin. Most Copper Men lived in the mountains, but they had little magickal talent – unlike the Popovas.

Tonight, Azovka and I would set off fireworks atop the Copper Mountain, her family's sacred abode.

Dedushka chewed the meat: "Prokovitch took in a beggar boy. As the peasants are trampled on in St. Petersburg and Moscow by the day, more flee here, to the Copper Kingdom. We can't keep letting them in. But old Proktya says it's fine, that this Danilo is a good lad, and will shepherd his flock in return for a place to stay and some bread."

My eyes sparkled. "That's the boy I will wed. Danilo!" I wanted to get a rise out of dedushka.

Father polished his spear with a cotton cloth. The lance was oak, gilt with emeralds and mother of pearl inlay. "Oh, so now the daughter of the Copper Guard Captain will bring a beggar boy home. Another mouth to feed?" dedushka teased.

"Yes, I exist to burden you." I winked. "Father, are you finishing your pelmeni?" I asked, eyeing Azovka's delicious cooking. It was like a love letter from her family to mine. How I treasured Azovkalisha!

Dedushka smiled, radiant, his scarred temple from a run in with an enemy leshy in Yekaterinburg last year glinting in the gaslight. Alexei Popova the Copper King and dedushka traveled the Urals each season, summoning stone to mine for towns' livelihoods, managing trade networks – it was a risky business, but now without reward.

Father continued: "No, you must grow strong to become the next Captain of the Copper Guard. Did you practice in our weight room today?"

"Yes, of course I did. It is a small weight room. It is a small dacha."

"Our ancestors were peasants, before the Copper Men were mined out of the mountains by Saint Clementina and she blessed our family with higher employment. Be proud of our dacha, dear Katya. It is from your mother's line of love."

I was.

I finished his pelmeni and gave him my solyanka meat soup. The hearty stew of bacon, beef, and cabbage would let me carry Azovka up the Copper Mountain on my bare shoulders. That way, she would not have to turn into a lizard to scale it with her fragile body. I had no idea what I would do if I had scales or could turn into a pretty green lizard. I'd probably just morph into a squawking chicken, knowing my luck, and lay a cracked brown egg.

I squeezed my father's hand. "Dedushka, it's time to go set off fireworks."

He smiled. "Don't let your old man keep you waiting."

I dressed in my furs and dress, then went off to the glass bottle factory, where Azovka and I liked to meet up on the far edge of town. That was where the Emerald Forest bloomed right beyond the Malachite Wall – an easy passage out of Podentsky, and into the Copper Mountain.

My mind strayed to Danilo for some reason – or maybe I knew it and won't tell you, dear reader. Danilo's azure eyes and hungry face pulled my heart in all sorts of directions.

A maiden's blush exploded on my cheeks. I giggled, hitching Igor to my sled and snow-dogging away.

"Mush, Igor!"

We rode off into the twilight. Stars began to creep out.

It was a beautiful day. It would be a beautiful night. And I'd hold Azovka in my arms, and we would laugh, and sing, and gather herbs for our cooking, and stones for her to eat, then spend the night in Copper Palace, waited on by servants of stone.

I wished winter would never end. I wished to be in Azovka's good graces always, like a star held captive by dawn, as Igor ran out of the dacha and into the bustling streets.

The glassworks were bright and empty. The workers were drinking beer and singing old songs. And Azovka smiled from atop the roof, a lizard at her throat. She held a sparkler, illuminating her coal black braid.

"Katya!" Azovka called out in glee, then stood atop the icy ceiling and waved. She tripped a bit, cried, and I scaled the fire escape quickly to catch her.

"Thank you," she said, dreamy.

"No problem, my sister."

We were as thick as thieves. We played with sparklers, talked of city boys, then set out to Copper Mountain, Igor pulling the sleigh.

"Do you think there will ever be a stone singer again?" I mused, laying on the sled with her as we gazed up at the stars.

Azovka rolled over and played with my blonde baby hairs. "Wouldn't that be strange? There is that old prophecy the daughter of Saint Clementina gave: When the Mistress of Copper Mountain turns to dust, Clementina will return and save all. We should start a Saint Clementina fan club. I do love her murals in church."

I shrugged. "I never pay much attention to prophecies – that nonsense talk is ill-befitting common folk like us."

"I am far from common," Azovka teased. "Just listen to that beggar boy Danilo – 'Oh, Princess Malachite! How spoiled you are!' The whole town hates me. Jealous of my powers and wealth. But oh, Katya, in your bosom's friendship, all I need are your affections. Screw Danilo. Screw Podentsky. When I am 18, we will run away."

My eyes laced open like beads falling from a string. "Azovka, run away? You can't be serious! All of Podentsky will depend upon your stony dominion someday – enchanting ore, summoning copper and jewels for the Ural townsfolk, smelting the iron, making money flow all the way from Yakutia to Podentsky."

She sneered. "Yes, milking my magick like a cow. Tell me, why do you think my ancestress Saint Clementina forged us out of Mount Azov in the first place?" Azovka wondered, examining her green fingernails. Azovka's skin always changed like skeins of copper – here, it was marbled like a penny, there, it shone with patina, a spot later: lily white, freckled flesh.

I shrugged. "I guess I do not know... I do not often question saints."

Azovka brooded: "Was it to make us always suffer? Use too much magick, and us Copper Men turn to stone. The statues of corrupt Copper Kings and Queens – they litter the palace. We must always leave offerings of jasmine incense and rare, pure copper emeralds, like your father won from my aunt - at their altars on the Snake Festival. Dedushka says it is almost like your father Stepan Petrovich can make stone sing. Maybe that's what Aunt Cecilia saw in him."

"I think Saint Clementina, may ore flow from her pickaxe, wanted something to love – just like your mad Aunt Cecilia did. Clementina was a mountain girl of Podentsky, and lived atop the peak of Azov." I paused, chewing my bottom lip, then blushed as I fixated on her high, small, proud breasts. I wanted to feel them under my thumb. But it was not allowed.

I spoke: "You know, Priest Trepinko says that Clementina could see her husband Vladimir, the first Copper King, trapped deep under the snow on a malachite slab on Mount Azov, in an abandoned mine. Waiting to come to life."

"Oh? How does the story go? I always doze off in church. Priest Trepinko is soooo boring."

"Remember the children's rhyme?" I tickled Azovka's nose. "Clementina sang to the block of moldavite, tapped it with her chisel, and spent all day and night carving Copper King Vladimir out of the stone. Then, they lived happily ever after. In married bliss all their days! I'd carve you out, too, Azovkalisha."

"That is a good answer." Azovka smiled, but it looked pained, like a cherub with a toothache. "Katya, who do you think I will marry?" Azovka asked quietly, her eyes green like a bottlefly. "No boys like me. I'm too strange."

"You? You'll marry Prokovitch. He knows how to please stone. He will make you feel things you could never know with that golden chisel of his! Just imagine his beard, parting your thighs – 'Oh, Azovka, I see spelt and gold ore! Let me but take my pickaxe and try my luck on your maidenhead!'"

"Eww! By Veles' blue beard, please no!" Azovka laughed uproariously, happy again.

It was my turn to tease my best friend. Azovka was making the mood so dour! Anything to cheer her up.

She finally smiled. "There are worse fates, you know, than an old man as a husband," she breathed. "I... could turn to stone."

I snorted. "That's a legend the townsfolk tell of Copper Men. Do you actually know any men or women in your family who have? The statues in Copper Mountain are from centuries ago – how do we know they are not just that, statues of old dead men!"

"Deduhska says the statues in our throne room were once garish, corrupted kings whose hearts became rock out of hatred. I hate to believe it. But the whole town says so, whenever the Serpent Festival ball is held on Copper Mountain, and we feast in the long hall – it is like their eyes are alive – the statues, I mean. I think it could happen to me!"

I pinched Azovka's cheek. She smiled half-heartedly.

"What do you believe, Katinka?"

"Your father is scaring you into being good. No Copper Man has turned to stone in centuries! There's no evidence they ever do. Copper Men and Women are born, they live, they die - just like the rest of us miserable lot. You are simply good with stone."

Azovka sighed, twiddling her elegant thumbs. "But my aunt Cecilia, the old Mistress of Copper Mountain, went missing after your father's wedding. What if she turned to stone? Somewhere far, far away... when Aunt Cecilia was visiting Yakutia to harvest ten carat diamonds in order to win your dedushka back?"

There were tears in Azovka's eyes as we rode past birch and fir. Igor barked and chased a sparrowhawk out hunting a rabbit. The sled lurched, and I kissed the tears in Azovka's eyes away. She blushed.

"Azovkalisha, I hate to see my best friend cry!" I said, desperate to please her. The tears tasted like the American pennies mama had left me in her coin collection that I used to chew on when I missed her as a babe.

Azovka sniffled. "You do not think I will turn to stone?"

I took Azovka's mittens in mine and held my Malachite Maid's hands fast in a vow. "Azovka, as your Copper Guardian, I promise that you have the heart of a fern flower, a rare and beautiful thing, and that I'd lay down my life to find you again, even if the entire Ural Mountains swallowed you up!"

Azovka's eyes blackened as if she was absorbing minerals from one of the pretty rocks I often gave her. She hugged me, and Igor set off again, past the Malachite Wall. Dedushka's guard let us - feared royalty and the town vanguard's daughter - right on through, past the merchant line, whose vila gave us dirty looks. The green snow was muddied with dirt.

"You are rarer than diamonds, Katinka," Azovka said and smiled. "I'll make chicken kiev for our midnight snack tonight. Dedushka got me more copper pans from England."

I smiled, holding her close. "And you are more precious to me than Koschei's firebird, and I'd do a little dance to get you, a fool like Ivan Tsarevich!"

We giggled, the stars shone, and a brisk wind dusted jade ice off the trees.

Alone, the world was wild, for two seventeen-year-old girls. It beckoned like a Russian dirge.

I felt a part of me would die someday, in Azovka's arms. Only I didn't know how.

And still, as I held her, I couldn't help but think of holding hands with Danilo.

Life was strange, wasn't it? I drank down some medovukah – a honeyed alcohol, like Swedish mead – that I had stolen from dedushka's cabinet. I fell asleep in Azovka's arms. Igor pulled the sleigh. It was an hour's ride to the Copper Palace, but the leshys kept the forest peaceful and tamed wolves and bears in return for the Copper King's protection. We drank from the flask to keep us warm.

When I dreamed, I was carving my malachite casket, writing indecipherable lines.

I tried to read them, but then the dark room I was in filled with copper snow and filings of iron, drowning my lungs in sorrow, and Azovka was a statue that snapped off at the waist.

I cried out and awoke. We were there.

The Copper Mountain.

We ate with Alexei Popova, a fine dark-browed Copper Man who was Master of the Copper Mountain. He had taken up his elder sister Cecilia's mantle after she disappeared. Alexei's wife had been a human – Elisa, my mother's best friend. Both women had died in childbirth, leaving our fathers to mourn and take solace in their friendship. They found a safe haven in the bonds of work and brotherly love. Alexei thought of me as his own headstrong daughter. He looked just like Azovka.

Alexei's eyes shone like patinated coins, and a dark beard sprouted from his cheeks and chin like a storm cloud, with grains of copper and green.

"How are your studies, dear Azovkalisha?" Alexei bellowed, malachite armor fused on his body as the weight of the years had glued them firm and hard. The green armor left room for his supple joints, and his pale skin gave a hearty blush from the heat of the chicken kiev Rubenya and Azovka had prepared.

"We met a boy today," Azovka said idly, twirling stroganoff noodles on her fork. "I did not care for him."

Alexei laughed, slapping the table. "My little Katinka, did you scare the miscreant off? One day, Katya, you will become Captain of the Copper Guard, and Azovka's Copper Guardian, just like Stepan is mine. It's best to start frightening off Azovka's suitors at a young age." Alexei winked.

I winked back at her father as Azovka chewed on her copper braid, her nerves fire. I knew that worried look. Her father would speak of marriage, and Azovka still was not ready. I had accepted my fate of fat Misha the Landlord's son long ago. I was rather fat myself. Podentsky men liked their ladies plump, just like me and Rubenya.

I ate the potatoes in the creamy chicken mush, then slurped some stroganoff and red borscht. Rubenya smiled as she put our dishes away. "No mortal boy is good enough for a Copper Woman," Rubenya clucked. "Not even a Romanov."

"What about Rasputin?" I joked.

Alexei howled with mirth. "Eh, Koschei's godsmarked son? You are a spitfire girl, Katinka! I am working on Azovka's marriage arrangements. Soliciting immortal royalty on my trips. I even asked Prokovitch to put in a good word with the Carnegies when Prokovitch visited America to carve them a marble toilet – some of their men are vampirs. Sucking the poor dry, eh?" Alexei bellowed with laughter. I followed suit.

"Hah, an American vampir!" I howled. "Imagine that, Azovka – on your nuptials night, he'd want your green blood, and use it to print Carnegie money!"

"Oh," Azovka greened, her face peeling like iron filings. "I would not like an American. They are just not complex. Who would understand the lamentations of Tolstoy? What American could appreciate the humor and sorrows of Gogol? Not a whit, I think." She gazed dourly at the salad, then smacked her fork down. "I feel sick just thinking of a husband. I will never marry a man."

Alexei cleared his throat, sweating nervously the obvious discomfort of his daughter. "So, uh, my Azovkalisha, you will set off bottle rockets tonight? Trying to summon Chernobog from the Bald Mountain?"

Azovka rolled her eyes, picking green malachite threads from her sleeve. "It doesn't matter, dedushka. Nothing matters but my marriage. We're busy now, dedushka – you can go." Classic teenage rebellion. Her mouth gleamed, cherry red, and she smiled defiantly, whisking me away to her room.

Later, at 1 AM, we hiked for an hour to the top of Copper Mountain – a flat grassy slope atop a sharp peak, where fabled stone leaves grew. Prokovitch said the Malachite Maids had trapped ages of stonecutters below in Copper Mountain, carving immortal stone flowers. Said Queen Cecilia wanted to do the same to dedushka: trapped in her courts, ever her slave, denied an earthly wife. Stepan Patinko refused: Cecilia went mad.

It was just a rumor. I didn't like to dwell on that. I knifed back to the present. Azovka crowed like a cockerel, dancing as she set blue, green, and purple bottles we had harvested earlier at the glassworks alight with matches. They blew ka-chew, ka-boom!

"Drown, Lord Nelson! Die, my Carnegie husband!" Azovka decreed, attacking a bird with a giant bottle rocket. "Katya, artillery!"

"Yes, Captain Malachite!" I barked, saluting her. I provided tinder and matches. All Azovka had to do was snap her fingers, and then the movement lit the match and tinder from the friction between her stony forefinger and thumb.

Done, we watched stars on a blanket in the snow, drinking medovukah. The sweet alcohol was something sacred from Kievan Rus' that had fallen out of favor decades ago in Moscow. It was still going strong in Podentsky. The honey tasted like a promise. Home.

I looked deeply at Azovka's lips, and heat flared in my belly. What would they be like, to nibble on? Why would I even do that? I wanted to eat Azovka up. There was hunger in her brow. We were breathing heavy, and we traced each other's faces – my soft, sturdy jaw, Azovka's as sharp as glass. We embraced, and I pressed her to my chest, breathing hard.

"This is all too much," I admitted. We never spoke of it: this burning, mutual desire. It was forbidden. But I was a careless girl.

"I know," Azovka wept. I rocked her atop me, her scales brushing the blonde hairs on my legs. "Katya, what do you want most in this world?" Azovka asked, sniffling, her jade green eyes aglow as her body crawled with sweet lizards. They wended their ways over our limbs. She looked like she knew something secret.

I smiled with regret. "For us to be friends forever."

"Will you carve that on your malachite casket? A bond between you and I?" Azovka practically begged.

I tickled her nose as she made moony eyes at me. "That is for my husband, Azovka. Don't tease me. You know we could never – I could never – we can't have what we want. We are not Sappho on Lesbos. We must be proper wives. We are almost eighteen."

She cried in futility, laughing in misery and tearing up. "I do not want to marry anyone. How can you stand it, Katya, being set up with Misha, the Landlord's Son?"

I sighed, deflating like an empty wineskin. "It is my lot in life. I am not a rich lady. I am a Copper Guard's daughter, and a Copper Captain I will become. I need a wealthy husband to ensure that the Copper Guard's coffers are lined, and Landlord Peter has always loyally supported dedushka and the Popovas. It is better than the tsar's Bailiff Flogger. He is harsh and cruel and keeps raising dedushka's quit-rent. He's trying to tax the Copper Guard out of existence. We – we will always be friends, my Azovkalisha..."

I traced her waist. It bowed like the Stradivarius I had once seen Alexei play. It was his most treasured possession. Soft, supple, dark hair, smelling of the dark woods of the Emerald Forest.

The green-tinged snow wet her brow, dampened the furs at my back. We rolled over and over, tickling each other, weeping. I wanted – I wanted to kiss her, so bad. But she broke away, and my desires, as always, were fruitless.

"What about Danilo? Would you marry him? You liked him," Azovka finally asked as we forced ourselves to break apart, breaths heavy. "I will not give you away to just any man. He needs to be of some value. I think Danilo might be easy to train."

A sheep suddenly wobbled over by a patch of frosted red cabbage atop Copper Mountain and chewed on our blanket.

"Ew!" I said, aghast.

"Yes, an ewe," came a familiar voice.

"Danilo? How did you get up here!" I exclaimed, appalled. Who would dare bring Prokovitch's flock to the royal palace?

"So, you're marrying me? Did I consent, odd girl? Prokovitch sent me on his wagon with the flock to trim Lord Alexei's lawn. It has taken all evening."

"Oh..." Azovka blushed, a ball in her throat, her skin pale under the moon.

"No, eww! I'll marry a man from Marie Corelli's novels, that's what I'll do! A Byronic hero. Not you. Not Prokovitch. Not Mikhail. Not even Rasputin!" I frothed at the mouth, flustered. I threw a rock over Danilo's scrawny shoulder – Prokovitch had dressed him lovingly, in his own fine robes, rich from Stonecutter wealth – and Danilo cocked his head, amused.

"Girls are dumb."

"Boys are stupid," Azovka retorted, smoothing her skirt. "We were having a private conversation."

The ewe grazed. I pet her and fed her some bog berries. "Beggars can't be choosers," I instructed Danilo, my fondness at his oddly angled limbs and soft face growing. He looked like a bright, crusted wound that I wanted to pick at: it would lead to pain, but in the moment, feel oh so good.

And so, I picked on Danilo all night, and Azovka and I warmed up to the oddly beggar boy. The next day, Danilo ate lunch with us, and he attended reduced hours at school as Prokovitch sent him to shepherd.

Before we knew it, a month had gone by, and we were thick as thieves. November had come. We were at Prokovitch's cottage, carved with the Zoryas, and Prokovitch had made us brie and ciabatta sandwiches – a rare delicacy, but Prokovitch was the richest man in town save Alexei. That was the virtue of a Stonecutter who had carved the tsarina's malachite walls, with ore from the Copper Mountain.

Prokovitch watched us as Danilo, Azovka and I played chess, Danilo and I against Azovka – I never had a mind for strategy games, but Copper Men's minds churned like machines. Azovka was sharp as a razor. My mind was soil, and Danilo was clay.

Prokovitch had carved the pieces of onyx and quartz, black and white, and hand-painted the board in the designs of Kievan Rus'. Zmei Gorynych the three-headed dragon blew fire around the board's border. Danilo moved his horse and trapped Azovka's queen. But Azovka moved a pawn strategically, then trapped Danilo's king, freeing her queen up and ending the game in one blow.

"You are as bad as a leshy gambling away his woods on squirrels," I sighed to Azovka, clearing the board. It happened all the time – leshys liked bets, and then every hedgehog, crow, and bug had to carry up to move to a new fiefdom – all for another pet squirrel. We nibbled on our sandwiches as old Prokovitch chiseled and sanded malachite brooches by the fire. The marbled grain of the stone from a deposit at Snake Hill was like three birds taking flight over a farm.

"You three children are a delight." Prokovitch smiled, elegantly caressing a piece of purple amethyst he was carving into a heart after he set aside the brooches. They would sell for a pretty penny. Prokovitch was a harsh, stern man, but Danilo had softened him. He was even carving hearts!

I fixated on the pretty amethyst. Azovka whispered to a lizard. Danilo went to tend the herds.

"Prokya, is it hard to carve stone?" I asked in curiousity, after I had cleaned up the chess and dishes in the one room cottage. Danilo slept in the hayloft out back, with the sheep and goats.

"Think of Michelangelo, dear Katya."

"Yes, I have seen his stonework in Teacher Alina's textbooks, like the paintings in Priest Trepinko's church" I said. "Like David – how do you do that?"

"Find the stone's melody. Make it sing." Prokovitch gave me a small oval of serpentine and a knife. "Carve the song within."

I gazed at the fire, then at Azovka. Azovka was enchanting some malachite into a living snake. It crawled over the cherrywood table.

I smiled, then spent hours carving a sleeping, coiled serpent. I cut myself a few times, and Azovka read Anna Karenina for the hundredth time.

Soon, we were all asleep, and Danilo came in and found us piled in puddles of bearskin by the brick chimney, upon which old Prokovitch slept.

"You girls are quiet as lamblings," Danilo whispered sweetly.

"I have something for you," I said. I handed him the carved asp.

"What, a snake? You made this?" Danilo asked, impressed. "Is this an insult? A compliment? What is it for? Why me?"

I giggled. "Because you, Danilo, are as bent as Satan, and wicked as a snake – boys are tempters, right?"

He winked. "Will we be friends forever, Katya? You are our group leader, after all."

"As long as you do as I say."

"Okay, Katyushka, I promise. I would follow you to Hell."

"But would you live in Hell for me?"

"What a morbid thought."

"It is just a bylina."

"A skaz."

"I am a funny girl."

He peered at me through imaginary binoculars. "Yes, the lens confirms – you are the oddest girl I know. Yes, Katyushka. I'd live in Hell for you, save you from Hell, and I am going to make something of myself. I will carve better than Prokovitch. Look at what I've been working on."

Danilo took me outside, then revealed a stone fern flower made of moldavite as big as a jug, half-hewn. "I am learning to make stone thrum with life. But something is not right." Danilo fretted, shifting his hair. He traced a pattern, erased it, and frowned.

"It is not alive." I agreed. "Only Copper Men can sing stone."

Danilo crooked his brow. "I do not believe that. I will master stone if it kills me. Then, I'll ask for your hand, my Katinka. I love Azovka, but she needs a Rockefeller, or a European prince. We are of the same stock, you and I, and you'd make a good wife." He took his hands in mine, then pressed a pearl from his pocket into my palm. It hung on a silver string.

I gaped. "You – you want to marry me?"

"I am a simple man, Katya. I will not serve in a war. And I like pretty things. And you are the prettiest girl I have ever seen. I'm too afraid to kiss you – I am not that brave. But someday, we will have six sons and one daughter, and you will be the next Copper Guard, and I will be the next Stonecutter. The Romanovs will prevail, and life behind the Malachite Wall will be good like it always has. Bailiff Flogger will stop putting me to the whipping post for losing Proktya's lambs, and they'll free us from the gentry forever. That's what the Copper Kingdom is famous for in Russia – work that doesn't break peasant's backs at the plow. There is violence beyond these walls."

"And what shall we both do?"

"Tuck Azovka safely away."

I did not know it then, but as we sat in his hay bale, holding hands, and carving spare stone, Azovka heard and wept.

She did not want to be alone.

I never wanted to leave her.

But sometimes, the things we desire are beggars on the wind.