The building was on fire. Vanya was screaming.
Pietro grabbed his wrist and tried to pull him toward the door, but Vanya was too afraid to move.
"Vanya, come on!" Yelling cost him. Smoke burned his throat, and he began to cough.
Vanya shook his head. He was sobbing and coughing.
Peitro tugged harder. "Please!" If they didn't move, they would be trapped in the building. They would die.
Vanya kept screaming wordlessly and crying.
Pietro began to yell. "Help! Help!"
No one would come, not for them, only to stop the fire from spreading. They were going to die.
Pietro gathered Vanya into his arms to protect him from the heat, from falling debris.
A pair of yellow eyes appeared in the smoke. Pietro recoiled sharply. A dog. The city dogs had come for them. They would be torn to shreds instead of burned. Pietro could no longer scream.
The yellow eyes belonged to a woman, a woman with black curly hair and dressed like a Romani out of a fairytale books. But she spoke Russian.
"Come with me!"
Pietro began, "My brother --"
Vanya had passed out.
The woman picked him up as if he weighed nothing. "Come!"
Pietro slipped his hand into hers and ran with her through the burning orphanage. She knew where to go, where to step and when to pause, and they made it into fresh air. The firemen, with all their flashing lights and sirens, had barely arrived when they made it out into the cold night air.
The woman set Vanya down, shrugged off her shawl, and wrapped it around him. Then she knelt so she was looking Pietro in the eye.
"Look after your elder brother well," she said.
Pietro nodded, entranced by her lovely golden eyes. She slipped a necklace over her head, one decorated with an ancient-looking coin.
"Sell this for food," she said.
Pietro nodded again.
The woman darted a glance over her shoulder, then rose to her feet. "Be safe." She ruffled his hair gently and vanished into the shadows.
Moments later, the firemen heard Vanya come awake coughing as he tried to scream.
When the firemen had both boys bundled into an ambulance, Vanya turned to Pietro and smiled.
"You saved me."
Pietro shook his head. "No, I --"
"Thank you." And Vanya fell asleep.
"Vanya," Peter said.
"It's John." He ran a comb through his hair, checked his reflection in the mirror.
Peter leaned against the door frame and watched his brother primp. "We're alone. It hardly ruins our 'image' if I call you by your real name."
"We're in America, and my name is John, no Ivan." He stood up and scooped up his guitar. "Where are Jimmy and Luke?"
"Jimmy's running the last mic check. Luke's probably trying to pick up on fangirls." Peter twirled one of his drum sticks absently. "Are you pretty enough for the girls now?"
John shoved at his shoulder. "If I'm pretty, you are too."
"Ah, but you're prettier than me by ten minutes." Peter straightened up. "Now come on - the ladies scream for you."
It had been sheer luck, Peter and John running into Jimmy and Luke, but a rock band made up of two sets of twins managed to be a fairly good selling point with the fans.
The Rolling Stone staff writers ate it up, Peter and John living beneath a bridge in Central Park, playing music to survive, schooling themselves via the Public Library and Museum of Natural History. The fairy tale twist of fate was Jimmy and Luke skipping out on a day of private school to slum it in the park and meeting a pair of fellow musicians, from which music was born.
For Peter, the fairy tale was that Pietro and Vanya had survived a fire, the streets of Moscow, stowing away to America, and then the streets of New York. For John, the fairy tale was that a woman had rescued them from the fire.
Peter reached up and toyed with the pendant at his throat, an ancient coin he'd never sold. He'd sold a lot of things to help him and his brother survive, but never that coin.
A thump on his back jerked him out of his musings. He spun around and brought up his fists, but it was Luke.
"Hey, whoa! It's just me. Ready to rock this joint?" He smiled tentatively.
Peter forced himself to unclench his fists. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm always ready to rock."
Luke smiled sheepishly. "I didn't mean to sneak up on you, man. Sorry."
"Don't sweat it." Peter headed over to where their manager hovered anxiously. Time to be a rock star.
It was in the middle of their latest single that Peter saw her. From behind the drums he hardly saw the audience at all, but the strobe lights flashed across the crowd and he saw her. Saw her eyes. Golden and bright. He caught a glimpse of long dark curls and a bare shoulder, a gypsy blouse, but then she was gone.
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