Free The Firebird by Susanna Kearsley

from.’
    He glanced over. ‘Someone like you?’
    ‘I just thought if I held it again, really tried, I might see something useful. I’m going to Russia next week, to St Petersburg, right where her ancestor lived. I just thought …’ I broke off, feeling suddenly foolish, and wearily rubbing my forehead I said, ‘I don’t know what I thought, to be honest.’
    ‘You wanted to help. I’d have done the same thing, in your place.’
    ‘No, if you’d been in my place,’ I told him, ‘you would have been able to pick up the Firebird and know its whole history without even trying hard. I’m not that good, Rob. You are.’
    He gave a nod as though he’d fitted a puzzle piece in place. ‘That’s why you stopped here yesterday to go see Dr Fulton-Wallace, was it? You had doubts.’
    ‘And she confirmed them.’
    We were coming off the bypass now at Glasgow Road and for a moment Rob’s attention was diverted by his need to navigate, but I had the impression there were several things he would have liked to say. All he said in the end, though, was, ‘Right. So what’s your plan with Margaret Ross?’
    ‘I’m going to give her the scarf back.’
    ‘And she’ll think you’re mad to have come all this way to deliver it.’
    ‘Probably.’
    ‘Then what?’
    ‘Then I’ll introduce you, and say you’re a colleague with specialist knowledge, someone who can maybe tell us more about the Firebird. She’ll let you hold the carving, and then afterwards you’ll tell me what you saw, and I can go and try to prove it in St Petersburg.’
    He ran that sequence through his head in silence for a moment, gave a nod and said, ‘Seems fair enough. One question.’
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘Well, not to show my ignorance,’ he said, ‘but what’s a firebird?’
    I smiled and, giving it its Russian name, explained, ‘It’s the
zhar-ptitsa,
a bird out of folklore, with bright glowing feathers like flame. One feather would light a whole room, and it’s said that whenever a firebird’s feather falls, then a new art will spring up in that place.’ I’d grown up on the old Russian fairy tales told by my mother at bedtime, but Rob clearly wasn’t aware of them. So while we drove north I told him of the Firebird who stole the golden apples from the garden of the Tsar, and made the Tsar so angry that he sent two of his sons to catch the bird and bring it back alive.
    ‘The sons were, of course, both entirely useless,’ I said, ‘but their younger brother, Tsarevitch Ivan, waited up on his own in the garden and nearly caught the Firebird’s tail. The bird, before it flew off, dropped a single feather. Ivan picked it up and took it to his father, and the Tsar was so impressed he gave Ivan permission to follow his brothers and hunt down the Firebird, too. So Ivan set out, and ran into a helpful grey wolf who devoured his horse—’
    ‘How was that helpful?’ Rob asked.
    ‘Well, all right,
that
wasn’t so helpful, but all Russian folk tales have dark parts. The grey wolf decided that Ivan was brave, so he offered to help him, and let Ivan ride on his back.’
    Rob pointed out that, if the wolf had been thinking ahead, he would never have eaten the horse to begin with. He glanced at my face and said, ‘Fine, I’ll shut up. Carry on.’
    ‘It’s a magic wolf, Rob. He runs faster than any horse ever could. Now, the grey wolf carried Ivan away to the land where the Firebird lived in a great golden cage in another Tsar’s garden. The wolf told him, “Go get the bird, but whatever you do, don’t touch the golden cage.” But Ivan didn’t listen, and he touched the cage, and he was caught. This other Tsar, the owner of the Firebird, said to Ivan he’d forgive him, even let him keep the bird, if Ivan did him one great favour. In another land,’ I said, ‘there was a rare horse with a golden mane. The Tsar said, “If you journey to that land and get that horse for me and bring it here, I’ll let you have the Firebird.” So