The setting sun glinted off the new frost-covered wooden billboard looming over University street. It went up after the recent spate of arrests in the faculty. It portrayed the Ideal Worker – the tall, broad, blond man that was on most state advertisements – bent over, so that a gentle Oma could whisper in his ear. Talking is a virtue, the billboard reminded Aneshka.
She turned the other way. She didn’t need a looming reminder of the Regime watching her as she was about to go on a risky car trip. A date, the small voice in her brain whispered. Aneshka pushed it aside.
Her breath lingered in the air, creating a cold cloud of fog around her. She tried counting breaths, she tried to count footsteps in the snow outside the dorms. Finally, she counted seconds. In the silent space between whispered numbers, her heart thudded.
But then headlights swept through the early-afternoon gloom, bursting the bubble of cold air and fear surrounding Aneshka. Lilia’s car emerged, and Aneshka couldn’t help but smile. It was wooden, and it could seat two people, and that was about all it had in common with an average car. It was completely covered in cloth-backed tape, and hiccupped dangerously as it rolled up. A beautiful, non-state created, car.
Aneshka pulled open the car door; it squeaked, but she knew that in this cold, speed was key. She tumbled in and yanked the door shut, praying quietly that no one saw her.
Lilia was tall, with wonderfully muscular arms and short yellow-blond hair that contrasted with her bright white skin. She looked like the Ideal Worker but made queer; distorted, and yet familiar. And she was grinning at Aneshka. Aneshka smiled in return, and Lilia brightened; a flame in the dark afternoon.
“Hello.” Lilia’s voice was rough, and the edge of her Mountain accent sounded like velvet: smooth and liquid.
“I planned a route for us.” That was an understatement: Aneshka had created the perfect route plan. There were four different built-in detours. There was even a decision tree, in miniature, for whether or not they needed the detours.
“Perfect!” The way she said the ‘t’ sent a frisson of excitement down the back of Aneshka’s neck. “I’ve never been to the capital for New Years! My father told me traffic would be bumper to bumper from Glagoleva to Zherdev.” Aneshka nodded; this is what her maternal grandmother had told her too. The new years party in Zherdev was the biggest event of the year, after all.
The only event all year, actually.
* * *
Once they hit the main road (the only road) to the Capital, the car settled. Lilia’s magic was steady, and it smelled like the crisp cold rustling through the winter forest.
Lilia cheered when they passed the first sign for Glagoleva. They drove through the sleepy town. They came out the other side. No traffic.
Aneshka shuffled her papers, embarrassed by the backup plan to the backup plan’s backup plan. Lilia noticed, and tried to comfort her: They were making good time! They had left the house early. It would all be fine.
Then they drove through Zhabin. Still no traffic. Beads of sweat started to gather on Aneshka’s lip. She wanted to rip up every single piece of paper. Did she have the right date?
Lilia blew her hair out of her face with a loud laughing huff, and she told Aneshka that it was her notes bringing them this good fortune.
Aneshka wasn’t so sure. The doubts rang in her head, echoing in the silence between them. Why had she thought she could do this?
“I’m glad you came to the Harvest party.” Lilia cut through the silence gently, glancing over at Aneshka, and then looked back at the road. Aneshka bit her lip; the party, which had been last month, was the first time they met.
“Thank you for talking to me,” Aneshka replied quietly. She was unable to control the thrumming energy gathering under her skin; if she looked at Lilia for too long, she might burst.
Lilia didn’t know that Aneshka had come to that Harvest party solely to comfort herself that she wasn't missing anything important. The way that Lilia's warm and welcoming presence had ripped a gaping hole in the fabric of her delusion.
Let's go to the capital for New Year's, had just tumbled out of her mouth. And Lilia had said yes.
Lilia flicked her gaze between Aneshka and the road again. She took her hand off the stick shift and turned it palm up. Traditionally, this was a request to hold someone’s hand.
But what if she misread it? What if it was just Lilia’s wrist that was stiff? What if –
“Can I hold your hand?” The question sliced through Aneshka’s worry quickly and efficiently – a mortal stab wound to a spiral.
“Yes,” Aneshka whispered. Lilia’s hand was surprisingly clammy, but the touch felt like a tiny release; the thing in Aneshka’s rib cage stopped fluttering. The bark brown of Aneshka’s hand contrasted brightly against the snow-white of Lilia’s – like the mid-winter forest surrounding them.
Lilia told Aneshka about how her family usually celebrated the New Year out in the snow. Aneshka wanted to ask about the commune, and the distance, and the cold. "Why did you move away?" she asked instead.
Lilia paused. “Every winter, home would become a landscape of bunkers.” She pulled her hand from Aneshka’s to illustrate her point, andAneshka’s hand ached with the absence. “People are separated by mere meters, but they are impenetrable meters of snow. I get so lonely.” The words were like a cup of cold water over Aneshka’s head; a sudden, shocking recognition. Lilia smiled. "I wanted people. So I came to University. I failed a couple of classes, worked at the campus bar on the side, and found out I loved Practical and Applied Physics."
"What a strange thing to find out you love," Aneshka said, because she could never make heads nor tails of math or magic. Lilia grinned and reached for her hand again.
"It turned out that the universe was not unknowable, and that everything moved according to rules,” Lilia explained with a small shrug. “It was just...I had to find the rules. Magic is a system and suddenly, I was allowed to begin to calculate it. There is a system, and it works well, but it’s not opaque."
Aneshka examined Lilia carefully. That was an old Thorn talking point, but not an obscure one: good governments work like science, with knowable rules. The absence of those rules was part of what the Thorns claimed the Regime was doing wrong. The Regime maintained that magic was spiritual, wild, and unpredictable. But the Thorns disagreed. Was Lilia trying to say something about the government, about The Regime, without saying something? It was the safest way to do it – between the rests of the anthem, quietly, a bare hint.
But she didn’t know how to ask.
* * *
Finally, finally, finally they hit traffic. They crossed the final pass; before them, the foothills of the Krupnov mountains stretched in front of them, navy blue hills rolling ahead of them in the dark winter night. And through the hills snaked a river of red tail-lights – thousands of other cars, gathering at the foot of the hill, pushing against the Capital.
Lilia whooped, and Aneshka laughed, her voice a little off-key. The car echoed their relief; it huffed quietly as they picked up speed, rolling downhill. The clatter quieted, and the car went back to smelling like cold fields, sharp and crisp and comforting.
They joined the crowd of cars, and Aneshka settled back into her seat. She shifted against the fabric, and then asked the question that had been growing inside her, pushing up against her diaphragm, demanding space. "Would you want to go somewhere else if you could?" It was the question. She watched Lilia’s hand, afraid to read the wrong answer in her face.
"No."
Disappointment hit Aneshka’s body like a slap of icy wind, and she turned away, staring at the road next to the car, but not seeing it.
“You have faith in our Regime?” she asked, trying to keep the acid from her voice, and failing. Lilia snorted.
“No, not at all.” Never had traitorous words sounded so sweet. “I don't think anything will change in our lifetime,” she admitted, nodding towards the Zykin bridge – the large, looming monument to the Regime’s imprisoned workers slave labour – and the capitol that spread out behind it. “So--” she paused, wavering, and Aneshka saw her decide on safer words. “I don't think there's any point in dreaming.” Aneshka opened her mouth; she wanted to argue. To beg Lilia to trust her with that first unsaid sentence.
The bright lights from the New Years’ decorations wrapped around the bridge’s stocky columns were harsh and yellow in the night; the cold haloed each individual bulb, and it cut through Aneshka’s night vision painfully. She looked away, but she was surrounded by cars, by people in their own spaces, watching her in the dark.
Why had she thought this was a good idea? She and Lilia didn’t know each other. Either Lilia was a spy, or she was naive; these last few minutes had given Aneshka enough ammunition to report her – report her for doubting, for treasonous thoughts, for Lack of Loyalty.
Even worse: these last fifteen minutes had given Lilia enough ammunition to report Aneshka. She was laying herself bare, showing too much. She should stop now.
"Would you leave?" Lilia asked, after the silence had stretched on just a beat too long, a taut line between them, too dangerous for comfort. Aneshka opened her mouth. She tried to say it but she couldn’t. She nodded.
"Why?"
What a big and terrible question. Aneshka had too many answers, all of them too dangerous. Because they keep children in cages here if they’re born with the wrong parents; because they invaded Laftka, and claimed the people welcomed the massacre; because every day I wake up, and worry that while I slept, I became an Enemy.
Instead, she looked out at the capitol. They were always listening. She couldn’t say any of those things. Didn’t Lilia want to stay? Did that mean she didn’t mind? Aneshka glanced at her, and then looked away. She looked back at the city, the sprawling expanse underneath the large and brutalist capitol, and decided that she would be brave. “Four years ago,” she said quietly, “my maternal aunt and her wife got a letter.”
“Oh.” Lilia’s small sigh said it all. She knew. But paradoxically, that sympathetic “oh” encouraged Aneshka; steely anger blossomed inside her, and she realised she wanted to tell the story. For Katerina.
“They had been married for fourteen years. They had a house, and two dogs, and a beautiful garden, overflowing with bright berries. But then they got a letter. The letter informed them that their marriage was dissolved – it was no longer legal – and that the government now owned their house, their dogs, and their garden. They had 24 hours to leave.” The stark words printed on paper, Nadya’s quiet sobs, Katerina’s steely-eyed glare. Mother begging them to go. “They refused to leave, and were arrested.” Lilia winced, a reflexive response. Aneshka remembered. She remembered her aunt’s face, swollen and bloody. Katerina lost four teeth, and Nadya nearly died when one of her broken ribs pierced her lung. The waiting room, bright with the smell of healing magic -- smoke and wood-shavings. Katerina, holding Mother’s hand, staring at the wall.
The memory of Katerina and Nadya, beaten and bloody, but not broken, seared her. Aneshka disentangled her hand from Lilia’s.
No; she wouldn’t be able to survive this.
“The Regime changed the rules,” she murmured, twisting her fingers together, and looking down at them. “They keep changing the rules. I want to survive, and to be a good citizen, and to help my fellow people, but how can I do that when I don’t know what will happen tomorrow?”
Lilia nodded. “I know,” she murmured. Aneshka wondered if her fathers had the same experience. Perhaps not: They were in a collective, after all. A haven for rebels.
“How can you want to stay?” she asked. It was a loud, treasonous question. A question that could get her arrested. It expanded into the small nooks and crannies; in the space under her seat, the space between their separated hands, the space between them.
“I never considered leaving,” Lilia offered with a small sad smile. Aneshka knew she was lying. Everyone considered it. Even out in the countryside, they must have some contraband literature. People were constantly trading new and different ways to download things from the net -- new pirate sites that were up one second and gone the next. "I wanted to be a Thorn," Lilia added quietly; Aneshka had to strain to hear her. That sentence was a gift. Lilia was showing Aneshka that she, too, was angry. Aneshka didn’t react, and Lilia continued, ever so quietly.
“I never wanted to leave, because I couldn’t leave people behind. When you live in a commune, you see what the Regime was supposed to be. Way back when, when we built a country on the ideals of humanity and kinship, we had the right idea. It’s been perverted and poisoned, and I want to help save it. It’s why I wanted to study Scian – I wanted to be a better spy. But, it turns out, I’m a terrible spy. I spend four seconds talking to people and they know I’m a lesbian from a commune outside of Obnizov. So now I just do the loud stuff, so other people can be quiet. I organize parties and protests, and then I let the experts work.”
Aneshka clutched her own hands, twisting them. She didn’t know how to say you’re so brave without sounding like she didn’t understand. But she did, didn’t she? She had spent her whole university tenure avoiding gatherings, people and spaces -- avoiding places of bravery -- because she didn’t know how to do it. She saw her Katerina, she saw Nadya, and she knew. She couldn’t. She was too cowardly.
Aneshka opened her mouth, and then closed it, catching herself before the words came out. She couldn't ask this girl to leave the country with her on the first date -- that wasn't how things work. Escape with me; escape this regime so that I can lean over and kiss you without being incredibly aware how people are looking at us. No. She wouldn't do this.
* * *
They passed the stadium--they were officially in the city now. Aneshka wanted to push against the oppressive blanket that settled over them, and she flushed, anger bubbling at the surface of her skin.
"Did I ever tell you why we come to the city for the New Year?” She asked. Lilia shook her head. “My family love coming here because we love to spend the first day of the new year screaming at the government." The words were winding her, and she needed to take a moment to ground herself. She couldn’t look up. These words could get her whole family arrested.
She pushed on.
"My grandmother started this tradition. We come to the city, and we go stand in the middle of the crowd, and when everyone cheers for the new year, we start screaming. People cheer around us, and we get to just scream right at the government buildings, our wordless rage pouring out from us. We scream them into the crowd, and into the world, and they never really know." Aneshka looked up, and Lilia was grinning at her, her face split open in joy.
"It felt like it was time again." Aneshka couldn't explain the building of anger behind the dam of civility. It gurgled, ready to sweep her away. And this was the only way she could contain it. Keep that anger banked—it would only get her beaten.
Lilia pulled over to park the car on the corner of the street. She took her hands off the wheel; the magic retracted, and the car turned off. She turned towards Aneshka, and looked at her for a beat. “Thank you for telling me that,” she murmured. Aneshka knew that Lilia now understood her original invitation – how when she’d said “come to the capital for New Year's” she’d meant to say “come rebel with me”.
"I like you, Aneshka,” Lilia continued; “I just...I just want you to know that I'm really grateful that you asked me to come with you. There is nothing I would rather be doing."
Aneshka looked up. Lilia was staring at her, and then glanced down at Aneshka’s lips. Lilia leaned forward, and Aneshka didn’t know what to do, panicked, and gave Lilia a tiny peck, pulling back quickly.
“I’ve never kissed anyone,” Aneshka whispered. Lilia’s eyes widened in shock.
“Oh no!” She murmured.
“No! That was good! I just...can you teach me?” she blushed a deep red. Lilia grinned, and leaned forward, and kissed her. Aneshka relaxed into it, comfortable, and even a little bit hungry.
* * *
It was only later that they saw the news. Someone had plastered the words on the billboard: The Honorable President of Lytkin resigned on live television this afternoon. It was a direct quote from one of the Almish newscloths. New Year's party in Capital cancelled as citizens take to the streets.
Aneshka stared at Lilia. “We’re free,” she whispered, her lips a little bit swollen from kissing.
"Now you can leave whenever you want," Lilia replied. The sentence was a quiet moment of despair.
"Now I don't have to," she said instead. And then they joined the riot to dismantle the honorable president’s palace, rock by rock.
Elisabeth R. Moore (she/her) is a German short fiction writer. She and her wife currently live in the Pacific Northwest, where Moore is inspired by the stunning scenery, and often incorporates it into her work. She tweets at @willowcabins. Learn more at spacelesbian.zone