That’s not a story I’ve ever heard. Lifting my head, I peer around, surprised to find lights clicking on, one after the other, rather than darkness.
A half-natural, half-chiseled cave comes into the light around us. The ceiling soars at least fifteen feet overhead. Stalactites extend toward the ground, a few of the longer ones broken off and lying haphazardly on the dirt.
Along the walls, a few stalagmites grow from the surface, distorting where the cave starts and stops.
The floor has a mix of rock, sand, and small pockets of dirt where plants try to break through, proof this cache hasn’t been opened in many years. A network of runnels shows where boots wore the rock smooth over decades, maybe centuries.
How old is this place? Older thandedushkafor sure. Maybe it really has been a cache for as long as Dimitri claims.
Curiosity piquing despite my exhaustion, I push upright, twisting around slowly.
Old wooden shelves line the walls, filled with frames, boxes, rolls of moth-eaten cloths, and cases of empty bottles. A few shelves lie split on the floor, collapsed beneath their own weight.
Just left of the door, a Cyrillic phrase is written at waist height on the wall.
???? ?????´?.
Five lines come up from that, connecting to new words. Paths and text spread up and across the stone wall. I track them as Dimitri and his men scour the cave behind me. On and on it goes until I find words I recognize.
Lada. Boris. Vesna. Ratibor.
Names.
This is a family tree, growing wider and taller with every generation, the names eventually changing to Latin.
Pivoting, I follow each branch, searching for names I know.
Then I find them.
Peter, branching to Mikhail and Roman. Roman joins Lilia, branching to Anika.
Anika Kozlov. Daughter of Roman. Granddaughter of Peter. Descendant of???? ?????´?. My history carved in stone.
I look at the other names level with my branch of the family tree. Mikhail Junior. Alexei.
It ends there, but I know Mikhail Senior had two more children with his second wife. Cousins I’ve never met.
But with the loss of the key, no one has been able to get in here to update the names. To mark their place in our lineage. A line of people loving, supporting, and protecting each other, ensuring the next generation’s place in the world.
Until that night when the two keys were separated. The story missed a generation of Pakhan, because I didn’t trust Roman. I turned my back on him and all these people I never even knew.
A memory flickers through my mind.
I blow out the candles at my birthday party. Dad stands next to a man he called brother. Mikhail. Two young men with curly brown hair and bright blue eyes stand watching, clapping, handing me presents wrapped in bright paper with ribbons and bows. One calls memishka, only to have the other one laugh and call himmishkaas well.
Mishka, a pet name for Mikhail, and sometimes for any small children in the family.
I’d looked that up as a kid while trying to make sense of my memories. Dimitri insisted these were the fantasies of an abused and abandoned child who grew up in a loveless home.
But the names of my cousins are carved in stone next to mine.
Proof of our shared history.
I close my eyes and breathe in the musty cave air. My chest expands, full of cold longing and regret.
Oh, Dad, what have I done?
“What the hell is this shit?” Dimitri throws an object against the wall.
