The Romanov Cross
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“Sergei, do not die,” the girl said, turning around in the open boat. “I forbid you to die.” She had hoped, in vain, that her voice would not falter.
When she tried to reach out to him, he pulled away, still holding on to the tiller with dead-white fingers.
“No, no,” he said, drawing back in horror. “Don’t touch me.” His eyes were wild, the stubble on his pale young cheeks flecked with blood and foam. “You have to sail there,” he said, as he pointed with one trembling finger over the prow of the boat. “There!” he said, demanding that Ana — a willful teenager, who had never been responsible for anything more than picking a frock — turn, and do what he, a farm boy no more than a few years her senior, was ordering.
Reluctantly she looked back, the ragged sail crackling above her head, and saw in the distance, beyond a cloud of fog, the indistinct outline of an island, dark and forbidding, rising from the sea. From the boat, it looked like a clenched fist, encircled by a misty-gray bracelet. Ana had never seen a more unwelcoming sight.