Republic of Birds , livre ebook

ABRAMS BOOKS - Miller Jessica Miller

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119 pages

English

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A young witch must save her sister from evil birds in this masterful middle-grade fantasy In the land of Tsaretsvo, civil war has divided the human kingdom from the Republic of Birds. Magic is outlawed, and young witches are sent to a mysterious boarding school, from which no one has returned. Olga and her family live a life of dull privilege in the capital until her father displeases the tyrannical tsarina. The family is sent off into exile at the Imperial Center for Avian Observation, an isolated shack near the Republic of Birds. Unlike the rest of her family, Olga doesn't particularly mind their strange new life. She never fit into aristocratic society as well as her perfect younger sister, Mira. What does worry Olga is her blossoming magical abilities. If anyone found out, they'd send her away. But then Mira is kidnapped by the birds, and Olga has no choice but to enter the forbidden Republic, a dangerous world full of iagas, talking birds, and living dreams. To navigate the Republic and save her sister, she'll need her wits, her cunning-and even her magic.

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Publié par	ABRAMS BOOKS
Date de parution	20 avril 2021
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781683355632
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	3 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0777€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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PUBLISHER S NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author s imagination or used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for and may be obtained from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-1-4197-3675-9
eISBN 978-1-6833-5563-2
Text copyright 2021 Jessica Miller
Cover illustrations copyright 2021 Karl James Mountford
Book design by Marcie Lawrence
Published in 2021 by Amulet Books, an imprint of ABRAMS. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.
Amulet Books are available at special discounts when purchased in quantity for premiums and promotions as well as fundraising or educational use. Special editions can also be created to specification. For details, contact specialsales@abramsbooks.com or the address below.
Amulet Books is a registered trademark of Harry N. Abrams, Inc.
ABRAMS The Art of Books 195 Broadway, New York, NY 10007 abramsbooks.com

Before the War in the Skies, before the map of Tsaretsvo was sliced in two and divided into the human Tsardom and the Republic of Birds, birds and humans lived in peace. In Stolitsa, the Cloud Palace floated over the Stone Palace with cumulus turrets and battlements of nimbus. In the Cloud Palace lived the Avian Counsel. In the Stone Palace lived the tsars and tsarinas. The palaces ruled Tsaretsvo together, and birds and humans lived alongside each other. Birds large and small nested in the trees in the Mikhailovsky Garden and splashed in its fountains in summer. Songbirds sang with the orchestra at the Mariinsky Theatre. Peacocks adorned the city walls.
Birds and humans shared the earth and the sky. And if it hadn t been for the Great Mapping, things might have continued in this way. But in 1817, Tsarina Pyotrovna decreed that every corner in the land must be mapped to show the broad expanse of her Tsardom.
The Great Cartographers journeyed forth, and, with the exception of the Unmappable Blank, they charted every corner of the land. Krylnikov mapped the Arkhipelag Archipelago. Belugov traced the shores of the Frozen Sea. Karelin found the source of the River Dezhdy high in the Stikhlo Mountains.
In 1822, Golovnin set out for the Infinite Steppe, where it was rumored firebirds still nested amid the tussocks and streaked through the skies. And in 1824, he returned to the Stone Palace, carrying a firebird s egg in his pocket . . .
- Glorious Victory: An Impartial Account of the War in the Skies by I. P. Pavlova, chapter one: The Firebird s Egg.
CHAPTER ONE INTO EXILE
The train starts down the tracks. Through the window, the station slides away. We are leaving Stolitsa-our home-behind us.
We might not be back for a long time.
We might not be back at all.
Father sits beside me. He holds the memo from the Stone Palace in his hand. I crane my neck to read it:
Attn: Aleksei Oblomov
In recognition of your exemplary service as head architect for the Sky Metro, Tsarina Yekaterina has appointed you Minister for Avian Intelligence, effective immediately. Her Imperial Highness has afforded you and your family the honor of a military escort to the Imperial Center for Avian Observation. You are to depart at your earliest convenience. I congratulate you on this promotion on behalf of the tsarina.
-Ivan Dementievsky, Imperial Undersecretary
This promotion, says the memo. But even I know Father isn t being promoted. It was all over yesterday s papers. Grand Opening for the Sky Metro Delayed! reported the Stolitsa Zhournal . Head Architect Oblomov accepts responsibility for mismeasurements. Tsarina Yekaterina has expressed her disappointment.
And now, Father is being sent-politely, painlessly-into exile. And we are being exiled with him.
The snowy outline of the city slips past. I see the domed roofs of the Stone Palace, the bare winter trees in the Mikhailovsky Garden, the gates of the Instructionary Institute for Girls. I wonder whether I ll ever walk through those gates again.
Above the roofline, I see the military balloons and zeppelins, some drifting and some moored. I see the Floating Birch Forest Tea Room and the rails of the Sky Metro, still unfinished.
The train rushes onward, and the city grows smaller. For a while, I can still make out the sign for the Floating Birch Forest Tea Room, a neon-pink samovar blinking high up in the air, but the clouds thicken and then even that is gone.
Father clears his throat and smooths his moustache. A speech is coming. I have spent nearly thirteen years trying to avoid Father s speeches. I know the signs.
Our lives, he announces, will be very different now.
At this statement, Anastasia bursts into jangling tears. She has been bursting into tears at regular intervals ever since the two soldiers who make up our military escort appeared in the front parlor this morning. And she is jangling because she spent fourteen of the fifteen minutes we were given to gather our belongings piling every piece of jewelry she owns onto her person. Her fingers are stacked with rings, and her neck has disappeared under strings of diamonds and pearls that clink and clank together as she cries.
Father pats her hand, and Mira rushes across the carriage to throw her slender arms around Anastasia.
Don t cry, says Mira. At least we ll all be together.
Mira is always nice to Anastasia. Mira is always nice to everyone. Everyone loves Mira.
She strokes Anastasia s arm and says, Don t cry, Mother.
Calling her Mother is taking nice too far, if you ask me. Anastasia is our stepmother.
After a while, Anastasia stops sobbing and starts whimpering picturesquely instead. She wobbles her lip and flutters her lashes and makes her eyes into two wells of deep, brave sorrow, just as she did in the final scene of Bride of the Wolves , when her husband, the noble Wolf King, is shot by hunters. Picturesque whimpering, according to Stolitsa s cinema critics, is Anastasia s greatest dramatic talent.
Father smooths his moustache some more and goes on with his speech.
Our lives, he repeats, are going to be very different. Drastically different, says Anastasia. No shops. No theaters. No zeppelin rides. Hardly any fresh caviar, either, I shouldn t expect.
No ballet lessons, adds Mira in a sad voice. Mira loves dancing exactly as much as I hate dancing, which is to say that Mira loves dancing with her whole heart.
No ballet lessons, says Father. No caviar. And besides all that . . . well, there are certain creatures-unsavory creatures-who have been unwelcome in Tsaretsvo ever since the War in the Skies. He smooths his moustache again. If he smooths it any more, he s going to smooth it right off his face. We might expect to see . . . creatures that we re not accustomed to seeing in the city.
Creatures? I ask. Do you mean yagas?
Yes, Olga, he sighs. We might expect to see -his lip curls as if the word has an evil taste- yagas.
I have read all about yagas in my school history book, Glorious Victory: An Impartial Account of the War in the Skies . Yagas are magical, but more than this they are cunning and dangerous. It was their wicked deceit that started the War in the Skies. For centuries, the tsars and tsarinas relied on the magical advice of their Imperial Coven, a group of the most powerful yagas in the land. But Tsarina Pyotrovna s Coven was tempted by the firebird s egg. They stole it for themselves, then vanished. And as punishment for the Coven s trickery, every yaga in Tsaretsvo was driven out. There have been no yagas, and no magic, in Tsaretsvo since. But it is rumored that yagas can still be found at the fringes of the Tsardom, in the Borderlands. From what Father is saying, it seems the rumors are true.
Yagas! wails Anastasia. This is the last straw, Aleksei! Are we to live surrounded by those nasty, unnatural hags? It makes me ill to think of them in their dirty, chicken-legged huts, with their long yellow fingernails and their-
Hush, snaps Father, and he jerks his head toward Mira, who has pulled her curly hair loose from her plait. She twists a strand of it around her little finger. Mira twists her hair like this when she is anxious.
I reach over and untwist it, and when Mira leans into me, I shift along the seat to make room for her. With a wobble in her voice, she says, I ve heard yagas eat the meat off children s bones. I ve heard they use the bones for toothpicks when they re done.
You mustn t believe everything you hear, says Father gently. But yes. Yagas can be dangerous. We will need to be careful.
I am not as anxious as Mira. I know yagas are dangerous and mean and sly and that they have long yellow fingernails, just like Anastasia says, but all the same, it would be a terrific thrill to see one.
Father smooths his moustache for a long time. When he has finished, he says, And of course, there are the birds.
The birds.
I have never seen a bird. But one afternoon years ago in the library of the Instructionary Institute for Girls, I opened an old book of Tsarish history. The birds had been carefully removed from all the books from before the War in the Skies. Sentences were blacked out, sometimes whole paragraphs. Engraved illustrations had been cut, leaving holes that, I guessed, were bird-shaped in patches of sky and branches of trees.
But in this book, I came across a picture the librarian s scissors had missed.
A flock of birds against a cloud in the night sky.
I leaned in to see their stretched wings, their seed eyes, their delicately tensed claws. I wondered what their feathers felt like to touch and what sounds they made as they flew through the sky.
I hunched over the book and coughed loudly