The soldiers crowded the doorway, muskets at the ready.

Zemun lowed and shook her head at them. “You don't have to do what Likho and Zlyden tell you to."

"Yes, we do,” said the Corporal. “They promised us life, they promised us that we will walk the earth again, escape this tepid hell and live again. They promised us eyes and wings of birds that fly, that see…"

As his voice trailed off and his musket lowered, its bayonet leveling at Yakov's chest, he stepped forward. The embrasure left where the door used to be let in the scant light, and Galina's gaze followed the upward sweep of the palace wall outside. The roof was too high above to see it, but she could imagine it, crusted over with the black mass of poor displaced birds. “Masha!” she screamed.

The soldiers stepped closer but stopped, unsure whether they should do anything-after all, she was not fighting them, but calling. “Masha, Masha!"

A thunderous clapping of wings and cawing answered her, the birds startled by her screams. She could picture them, circling, crying out-and then they came, pouring in a feathered stream, black as pitch, through the doorway.

The birds seemed confused as they attacked the soldiers, then turned on Galina and her friends. Zemun chased the flapping birds away with flicks of her tail, unimpressed by their sharp beaks and shiny eyes. Yakov just covered his head with his folded arms, but looked up into the cloud of birds, as did Galina, both of them searching for the impossible recognition-every jackdaw looked the same as any other, every crow was the same too. Maybe Masha was among them, maybe not. And she suspected that Yakov was hoping to see his pet crow Carl, and perhaps ask his forgiveness.

She peeked between the fingers protecting her eyes, and saw that the soldiers chased the birds away with their muskets, even knocking some out of the air with the stocks. There were feathers fluttering through the air. One of them, shiny-black, spun past her face like a miniature helicopter rotor.

"Please,” Galina whispered to the spinning feather, even as rough hands and wooden musket stocks pushed her through the doorway, “please don't let me die before finding you. Please don't let them kill me before I talk to you again.” She whispered to the feather until it hit the ground, like it was a falling star.

"Of course they're not going to kill us,” Yakov said. “Weren't you listening? Why would they kill us if they can just drain our luck? Use your brain, for once."

Galina bit her lip and didn't answer. Ever since they had been ushered into the palace, all the while fending off frenzied, screeching birds, Yakov had seemed unsettled. His usual apathetic demeanor was replaced with irritability and occasional vicious malice.

The room they currently occupied was a bona fide dun-geon-underground, with a crisscrossing of thick beams, a heavy bolted door and a stern tiny window in the door, guarded by iron bars. There was plenty of straw to sleep on and a dim light in which Yakov's face seemed haunted and angry. Perhaps it's just the beard, Galina thought, giving him that hungry, desperate countenance. But his angry words still rang in her ears, and she retreated to a corner, wishing nothing better than to bury herself in the straw and disappear.

Yakov paced the room. “I can't believe it,” he said. “This place… they plunder everything you believe, then they take your memories, and now our luck. What kind of place is this?"

"Elena said it wasn't supposed to be a utopia,” Galina said.

Yakov shook his head and continued pacing. “Where did they take Zemun and the rest?"

"I don't know,” Galina said.

"Well, think!"

She dug herself into the straw and hugged her knees to her chest. She would've killed for a bath about now, and for an opportunity to be alone just for a little while. With Yakov acting like that, she couldn't concentrate on anything. She felt irrelevant and small, just like she did when a teacher quizzed her in front of the class and she couldn't get any answers right, and the more she scrambled the more she messed up. She felt like crying. “I don't know,” she repeated. “Stop talking to me like this."

He stopped and spun around. “Like what?"

"Like this,” she repeated. “You keep acting like it's my fault."

"And it's not?"

She shook her head in disbelief. “You're the cop here."

"And I was doing my job. I was doing it well, thanks, and then you showed up and dragged me to meet your crazy friend who nevertheless was smart enough to stay out of this little adventure, and then we all are here. How do you know your sister is here? How do you know this kerfuffle has anything to do with us?"

"The birds…” she started.

"Yes, yes, I know. The birds are everywhere. And how does it help?"

"They are their eyes,” she said. “They see everything. Maybe if we could find a way to learn what the birds know…"

"And how do we do that?"

Galina sat up, straightening. “Do you have any food left?"

"No. Well, just a bit of that awful fruitcake David made.” A brief smile lit his bearded face when he thought of his grandfather, and Galina felt a pang of guilt at denying him this reunion.

"This will do,” she said. She took the sticky slice covered in lint and grime from Yakov's calloused fingers. Her father used to have hands like that, she remembered. Hard and tough as leather, and she had thought that all men had hands like that. She remembered her surprise when she shook hands with one of her mother's coworkers, and discovered that his hands were soft, feminine. In fact, she soon learned that very few people had hands like her father; that was one of the very few things she remembered about him still.

She kneeled by the grate in the door and crumbled the fruitcake on the floor, cooing gently. If she craned her neck, she could see the length of the corridor outside and at the end of it the small embrasure of a window too small for a person but large enough for a bird. “Come on,” she cooed. “Come, little birds, I have a nice cake for you."

A bird perched on the sill of the tiny window, its black feathers slicked and its head cocked, the black shining bead of an eye trained on the bits of fruitcake strewn on the floor.

"It's no use,” Yakov said. “It's not going to come."

"And how do you know that?” Galina asked without turning.

"We have no luck,” Yakov said. “Don't you get it? When Likho and Zlyden are both around, we have no chance. Any time anything can go wrong, it will."

Galina didn't answer and crouched lower. Her fingers grew numb from crumbling the cake; it crumbled and crumbled and turned to fine dust.

They used to feed pigeons, she and Masha; Masha was only little then, and for some reason she wanted nothing better than a pet pigeon. Galina smiled, remembering the wooden crate they found by the back door of the neighborhood liquor store, and how it smelled of fresh wood shavings and sour spilled beer; how they found a stick and borrowed a ball of yarn from one of the morose old ladies who liked to knit sitting on the bench by the entrance of their apartment building. Of how they propped the crate up with a stick wrapped in bright cerulean yarn and crumbled day-old bread under it. How they waited, breathless and giggly, for the pigeons to crowd under the crate, as if impatient to be caught.

Galina wished to feel like she felt that day-a bit flustered and apologetic, ready with excuses for any grownup who would question their purpose in trapping the pigeons, but happy with anticipation, happy that her little sister looked at her with such admiration, was so impressed that Galina, generally useless and awkward, was in possession of such arcana as building pigeon traps. Usually Masha, only five at a time, treated Galina with the kindness and sensitivity extended by adults to ailing children. Galina was not ungrateful-on the contrary she was convinced that Masha was the only person under the sun generous enough to love the unlovable-but she cherished the rare glimpses of memories where she was competent.