“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.