The Four Winds of Heaven Read Online Free

excited. She had more reason to be. Anna, named after her Papa’s mother, possessed so much verve and inner resourcefulness that she might even have been happy as an only child, and Ossip, who bore the name of his illustrious great-grandfather, had been confined to a special crib for nearly three years, so that now, frail and unable to participate in any physical game, he was barely capable of enjoying his boyhood. Both older children had been struck with illness at an early age, Anna as a baby with convulsions that had caused the left side of her face to sag, and Ossip with Pott’s disease, which attacked the vertebrae and had kept him supine for almost half his life. But Sonia had been healthy, and she was tired of being the baby of the family.
    She knew that babies, when the time came, were left in the fields to be picked like berries or wildflowers by their mothers. But, unlike the brilliant poppies that openly vied with sunny buttercups for the attention of their collectors, babies came one at a time, and the mother was forced to take home whatever child was left for her. Mama, of course, being a great lady, would be permitted to send another woman, a servant perhaps, into the fields in her stead. Still, when Sonia’s birthday came in June, Papa asked her which she would prefer, a new sister or a brother. One Anna was sufficient, replete as this one was with wild schemes and projects, whereas Ossip was gentle and passive. Therefore, Sonia had said, “A brother, please.”
    That summer, Anna’s imagination was more highly developed than ever. Sonia felt a fierce love for her sister, comprised of admiration, compassion, but also lack of understanding. She thought that no one was more daring than Anna, that every part of Anna was filled with a fiery spirit. She herself, diminutive and shy, was pushed to her heights of bravery only in order to please or placate her sister. She was angry that some people smirked behind Anna’s back, or said unkind things about her “ugliness”— for how could they ignore the gleam of her flame-red hair, so like Papa’s, and of her intelligent brown eyes? True, Anna’s hair resisted the curling irons just as Anna herself resisted direction. But Sonia was baffled by Anna’s wayward tastes: Anna much preferred the company of servants and peasants to that of Mama’s friends, and she did not try, as Sonia did, to emulate Mama in each of her feminine perfections. She said, quite simply, that she did not plan to ever be a lady.
    Anna was particularly fond of Eusebe, the water carrier, a young man whose principal duty on the estate was to drive the cart upon which lay the enormous barrel in which water was brought to the various parts of Mohilna. She would rest her elbows on the windowsill of the bedroom, prop her chin upon the palms of her hands and stare out toward the vast courtyard and beyond it, to the woods that seemed to stretch forever toward the sugar factories. “There he goes,” she would murmur, and then one morning she had added, her eyes ablaze, “I’m going to ask him to take me along!”
    But later, when Sonia found her sister in the pantry, her bare feet tucked beneath her skirts as she sat on the floor, she realized that Eusebe had foiled Anna’s plan. Anna, shaking her ornery red curls in anger, was saying, “But Eusebe, you aren’t on Count Tuminsky’s estate! Papa never whips his servants! You are being a ridiculous fool, and I thought otherwise of you. Why, I think you have the most important job I have ever heard of: so many people depend on you, for who can work and bathe and cook without water? In fact—” and her brown eyes glinted slyly—“if you were truly a brave man, I would choose your profession for myself. For I wish to perform great deeds, to help many people. But if you are a weakling, I shall not wish to imitate you at all.” And her lower lip began to