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.