The plane had touched down in a long clearing in the taiga. The pilot was standing by the cockpit with a toolbox, cursing, and Nina stared at him, mesmerized. He looked as tall as a god in his overalls and flying cap. She didn’t dare come closer, just sank to her heels in a stand of brush and watched him work on the engine. She couldn’t stop looking at the plane, its long lines, its proud wings.
It took her a long time to work up the courage to approach. But she moved out from the brush, slowly came forward. The pilot turned and found Nina under his nose.
He jumped back, boots slipping in icy mud. “Fuck your mother, you scared me.” His Russian was clipped, strangely accented. “Who are you?”
“Nina Borisovna,” she said, dry mouthed. She raised a hand in greeting, and saw his eyes dance over the dried rabbit blood showing under her nails. “I live here.”
“Who lives in a mud splat like this?” The pilot looked at her a little longer. “A real little savage, aren’t you?” he said, turning back to his toolbox.
Nina shrugged.
“This isn’t even Listvyanka, is it?”
“No.” Even Listvyanka was bigger than her village.
The pilot swore some more. “Hours off course from Irkutsk …”
“Planes don’t land here,” Nina managed to say. “Where are you from?”
“Moscow,” he grunted, slinging tools. “I fly the mail route, Moscow to Irkutsk. Longest route in the Motherland,” he added, unbending. “Detoured past Irkutsk in the fog, had some engine trouble. Nothing serious. I could fly this girl home on one wing if I had to.”
“What kind of—I mean—” Nina wished she could stop blushing and stammering. She could have eaten the local boys for breakfast, but here she was tripping over her words like a lovesick girl. Only she wasn’t in love with a man, but a machine. “What kind of plane is this?”
“A Pe-5.”
“She’s beautiful,” Nina whispered.
“She’s a brick,” the pilot said dismissively. “But a good Soviet brick. Eh, get back, little girl!” he barked as Nina reached toward the wing.
“I’m not a little girl,” she flashed. “I’m nineteen.”
He chuckled, went on working. Nina wished she understood what he was doing. She could have opened up a rabbit or a seal or a deer and known every organ and bone, but the Pe-5’s innards were strange to her. Masses of wires and gears, the smell of oil. She breathed it in as though it were wildflowers. “Where did you learn to fly?”
“Air club.”
“Where are there air clubs?”
“Everywhere from Moscow to Irkutsk, coucoushka! Everybody wants to fly. Even little girls.” He winked. “Ever heard of Marina Raskova?”
“No.”
“An aviatrix who just set the distance record. Moscow to … Well, somewhere. Comrade Stalin himself sent congratulations.” Another wink. “Probably because she’s pretty, Raskova is.”
Nina nodded. Her heart had stopped its pitter-pat, settled to a purposeful rhythm. “Take me with you,” she said when he finally shut up his toolbox and rose. She wasn’t surprised when he guffawed. “Just an idea. I’m a good screw,” she lied. She hadn’t screwed a man before—most of the ones she knew were nervous around her, and anyway she was too wary of getting pregnant—but she’d do it right here in this clearing if it got her into that plane.
“A good screw?” The pilot looked at the blood under her fingernails. “Do you pick your teeth with a man’s bones afterward?” He shook his head, stowing his tools. “Good luck, coucoushka. You’ll need it, stuck out here on the edge of the world.”
“I won’t be stuck here much longer,” Nina said, but he was swinging up into the cockpit and didn’t hear. Before he could start up the engines, she darted close and laid her hand against the wing. It seemed warm to her, pulsing under her palm like a living thing. Hello, it seemed to say.
“Hello,” Nina breathed back, and she darted away before the pilot could shout at her. She raced to the edge of the clearing as the deafening sound of the engines filled the air and sent birds spiraling up from the trees. Then she watched, delighted, as the plane slowly turned toward the long treeless edge, straightened, began to gather speed. Her breath caught when it lifted into the air, rising into the pool of blue that was the sky—aiming west. She stood there long after it had disappeared, crying a little, because at last she had answers.
What is the opposite of a lake?
The sky.
What is the opposite of drowning?
Flying. Because if you were soaring free in the air, water could never close over your head. You might fall, you might die, but you would never drown.
What lies all the way west?
An air club. Maybe it wasn’t all the way west, but just a few hours west lay everything Nina had not known she needed.
She ran all the way home, feet already so light she could feel herself straining to take wing, and packed everything she owned—a few clothes, her identity cards, the razor—into a satchel. Without hesitation, she emptied every kopeck out of the jar her father kept as a money tin. “I’ve been making all the money anyway,” she told her father, snoring on his filthy bed. “Besides, you tried to drown me in the lake.”
She turned away to pick up her satchel. When she looked back, she saw one wolflike eye open a slit, regarding her silently.
“Where you going?” he slurred.
“Home,” she heard herself say.
“The lake?”
Nina sighed. “I’m not a rusalka, Papa.”
“Then where are you going?”
“The sky.” I never knew I could have the sky, Nina thought. But now I know.
His snores started again. Nina almost leaned down and brushed her lips over his forehead, but instead, she took the half-empty jug of vodka from the kitchen table and set it by the bed. Then she flung her satchel over her shoulder, hiked to the station in Listvyanka, and slept on the platform waiting for the next train. The ride was cold and malodorous, dumping her into Irkutsk the following twilight. At any other time she might have gasped at the sheer grubby expanse that was a city and not a ramshackle village—there were more people visible here in the blink of an eye than she was used to seeing in the course of an entire week. But she was honed sharp and straight as her razor on only one thing. It took all night, but after being laughed at or shrugged off by half the people in Irkutsk, she found it: an ugly block building off the Angara River.
At dawn, the director of the Irkutsk air club came to work yawning and found someone had beaten him there. Bundled in her coat, blue eyes barely visible between rabbit-fur cap and scarf, Nina Markova sat curled in a ball on the top step. “Good morning,” she said. “Is this where I learn to fly?”
May