Blood Red, Snow White by Marcus Sedgwick Read Free Book Online Page B

especially holy madmen was gone. In its place came a world of war and revolution, of tanks and telephones, of murder and assassination.
    The bear had already become what it had been waiting to be, and the men who set it on its journey changed, too. Lev became Trotsky, Vladimir took the name Lenin, and they stepped into a bright and furious modern world—blood red, and snow white.

 
    BEFORE
    TWELVE HUNDRED FEET ABOVE the Baltic Sea it is dark and cold. The sun is eclipsed by a huge bank of snow clouds that are about to birth themselves over the Russian coastline. The snow falls, but slowly, flickering its way from the heavens down toward the ground, and the city.
    Petrograd. 1917.
    Three years ago, on the outbreak of war with the Kaiser, the noble city of St. Petersburg changed its name to something less German sounding. Now with a good Slavic name, the city is changing again, but this time something more important than a name is at stake. It’s a city struggling to break free of the past; like the snow clouds, it’s about to give birth to something new, a new version of itself, modern and clever. But, like a calf stuck in knee-deep mud, the going is difficult.
    It is only late afternoon, but already it’s dusk. Shadows spread, along the wide, wide streets, and narrow alleys alike. People, gray people, flit like sewer rats, gone as soon as they’re seen, each with some dreadful history of their own to take part in. There’s a man who strangled his neighbor for a piece of moldy bread; there’s a woman who left her crying baby in a bundle by the river because she could not feed it.
    A few fires smolder at street corners, other figures hunched around them, silent and blind. The city seems deserted, but it’s not. There is life; there are people, but they’re out of sight, in once beautiful halls, talking about the life and death of a nation.
    Having left one of these meetings, a young Englishman called Arthur makes his way home across the breadth of the city, from the Tauride Palace in the East, to his flat in Glinka Street in the West. Though he is English he is no stranger to the city and knows it well, from the gaudy domes of the Church of our Saviour on Spilled Blood, to the brooding mass of the Peter and Paul Fortress in the river, from the newly built Astoria Hotel to the Summer Garden.
    His way takes him down some of the most impressive streets in Petrograd, but now even these broad avenues are dwarfed by the painful emptiness of a square so big he can barely see the far side. The Champ de Mars.
    It’s here the snowflakes hit first, joining their dead relations already lying in the square, where, with no sun to shine and make it sparkle, the snow forms a dull white blanket across the city. It’s here, too, that one flake lands by an extraordinary chance on the barrel of a revolver. The revolver is held in the hand of a cavalryman, riding his horse hard across the square.
    Arthur is caught by the sight of the solitary horseman and stops in his tracks. He watches the rider for a few more seconds, when it occurs to him that man and beast are heading in his direction.
    “No,” he says aloud, “no one’s interested in me,” though there’s not a soul to hear. But talking helps to keep him warm, or keep his mind off the cold, at least. He sets off again, and as he moves, he sees the horseman change direction, steering toward him. There is no mistake.
    The horse covers the last few yards in a flurry of hoof and flying snow, and comes skidding to a halt.
    Arthur opens his mouth, but before he can speak, finds himself staring at the mouth of a gun.
    He freezes, and does precisely nothing, during which time he sees beyond the barrel of the gun the sharply trimmed mustache on the cavalryman’s face. He notices the fine braid on his regimental greatcoat, the snow unmelted on his fur hat, and likewise the snow unmelted on the barrel of the revolver.
    The rider waves the gun a fraction, staring at Arthur as if he has