- best-of
The summer admission price was nearly thirty dollars per person. A smaller sign beside the entrance listed the winter rate: three dollars.
Dani pointed at it as I leaned closer.
We bought our tickets and entered the Kremlin.
The palace filled much of the grounds. Its walls stepped in and out, hiding doorways and sections of the building behind each turn. We followed the passages until we found the museum entrance.
The first rooms held dusty mannequins dressed in old clothing. Furniture and displays lined the walls. We passed into an empty ballroom. Doorways stood at regular intervals around the room, but most were closed or blocked by guards.
We followed the one open passage.
It ran inside the palace wall and ended in a circular turret. A wooden trellis filled the room, its curved frame spanning almost from one wall to the other. Ropes surrounded it. We squeezed along the narrow strip of floor between the trellis and the wall, looking up.
“Can you see anything?” I asked.
Dani leaned back against the wall and craned her neck.
“Not really.”
We tried from the other side. The trellis’s legs filled our view.
We returned through the corridor and crossed the ballroom. At the far end, Dani stopped.
“Wait. There’s another door.”
She turned toward a doorway we had passed without noticing. We went through.
The next rooms held paintings. Rows of religious portraits covered the walls. We moved slowly along them, looking at the faces and reading the names beneath.
I stopped in front of two portraits.
“Boris and Gleb.”
Dani came over.
I looked at the names again. They were on our itinerary.
“It’s only three miles. Think we can walk it?”
~
We reached Boris and Gleb just as the sun touched the horizon.
The church was nearly nine hundred years old. A single room. One display. Interiors already growing dark in the falling light.
We spent less than ten minutes there.
The attendant had already put on her coat and gloves by the time we were ready to leave.
I glanced at the wooden door, then back toward the ticket counter.
“Bus to Suzdal?”
She shook her head.
Outside, I held my hand against the horizon.
One palm-width to the sun.
Sixty minutes.
We were in Kideksha.
The first lights of Suzdal were four kilometers away.
We started walking.
~
The road stretched west across open fields toward a line of distant trees. The sunlight reflected off the snow banks and turned them orange.
A dog appeared from somewhere among the houses and fell into step beside us.
He kept his distance at first, then gained confidence.
Every few minutes he trotted ahead, then stopped and waited for us to catch up.
I expected him to peel away at the next gate or driveway.
Instead, he followed us out of Kideksha.
By then the sun had settled onto the horizon.
~
One kilometer down, three to go.
I checked the sun again and tried not to do the math.
*Twenty minutes… maybe. *
We walked faster.
The sidewalks disappeared at the edge of town.
Winter had pushed the snow banks three feet high in places.
Now, every passing car threw more snow onto the shoulder until both lanes had narrowed toward the center of the road.
We joined them there.
Cars came every few minutes. We could hear them long before we saw them.
The sound carried across the empty fields, a low growl that slowly became a roar.
Then headlights appeared over the horizon.
A black sedan rounded the bend.
It held the center of the road.
Another car approached from the opposite direction.
Neither car slowed. Neither car swayed.
At the last moment both drivers jerked sideways, their tires cutting into the snow banks before snapping back onto the pavement.
I grabbed Dani’s arm and pulled her farther from the road.
Here, walking in the powder was safer, but it reached past my ankles and cut our pace in half.
We didn’t have time for safer.
When the sound of engines faded, we returned to the tire tracks and hurried on.
The air temperature dropped.
I reached the gloves in my pockets—I only found one.
Dani saw my face.
“I’ll keep walking. You should go and look,” she said.
Then I turned and ran. It should have been easy.
In ordinary shoes I could run for miles.
In insulated boots, winter layers, and carrying a camera that swung like a brick against my chest, every stride felt awkward and exhausting.
I found the glove beside the road near where I’d last seen the dog.
It was lying in a frozen puddle.
I picked it up.
It smelled like pee.
There wasn’t time to care.
By the time I caught Dani again, I was breathing hard.
In the shadows, the dog was following her.
~
Three kilometers down, one to go.
The trees ahead never seemed to get closer.
Every few minutes I spotted a patch of color in the distance and convinced myself it was another traveler making the pilgrimage.
Surely someone else would be out here.
We gained on them slowly.
The red jacket became a road sign.
The blue coat became a mailbox.
The yellow hat became a marker at the edge of town.
My recovered glove was still damp. My camera hammered against my chest.
Dani dragged her boots through the snow.
Nobody was walking towards us.
The road remained empty, but the dog stayed, always a hundred paces behind.
~
Four kilometers down.
The distant trees stopped looking distant. Then they became houses. A few windows glowed yellow.
Ahead, streetlights flickered on one by one—their lights bouncing with every stride.
I looked back.
The fields behind us had already disappeared into the dark.
The dog stopped at the first house on the edge of town and watched us continue into Suzdal.