Deathless

“Tea,” she whispered faintly. “Raspberry jam still in the pot, ovens, soup with dill, pickle broth.” The shades recoiled, their teeth reflecting moonlight, silver and flat. Marya struggled to lift her head. “Peppers on my plate and running in the cold and dumplings boiling in an iron pot and Lebedeva’s powders and Zemya’s curse words and gusli playing as fast as fingers can pluck!” she continued, her voice stronger, lower, almost growling. The ghosts glowered resentfully at her.

Svetlana Tikhonovna grimaced.

“You were always a vicious child,” she spat.

“A firebird in my net! A rifle in my fist! Mustard plasters and birch switches and blini crisping in my pan!” she screamed, and the citizens of Viy’s country threw up their hands, wandering back into the forest.

Marya shakily pulled herself back onto the young horse, who, to his credit, had not spooked or run, but munched on weeds buried in the snow and thought nothing of the whole business. Naganya stood on the other side of his barrel flank, squinting up at Marya.

“Don’t be too pleased with yourself,” she said. “Imagine! You could have just listened to me in the first place—how novel that would have been! A first, in the annals of Buyan!”

Naganya held up her dark hand. In her palm was a flower, its blazing orange petals as thick as cow tongues, covered with bristling white fur, its leaves sharp and shredded, its stem studded with wicked thorns.

“Remember this when you are queen,” said the vintovnik solemnly. “That I went into the dark for you, and scared an old woman half to death.”

* * *

Chairman Yaga sat at her monumental desk in the rear of the magicians’ cafe, its wood black and glossy as enamel. She turned over the raskovnik in her hands, peering at it with a jeweler’s glass.

“Well, it’s a runt,” she conceded.

“You didn’t ask for a bouquet,” Marya snapped. Dark circles rimmed her eyes; her fingers had gone pale and bloodless. Every inch of her ached, worn out, run down, exhausted.

“True, true. I’ll remember that, for the next girl.”

Marya said nothing, staring straight ahead, but her cheeks burned.

“What have we said about blushing, devotchka?” Baba Yaga pinched her thick nose. “Goats and gangrene, girl, I can’t stand the smell of your youth!”

“Wait a while. It’ll go away.”

“Oh ho! Now we’re sniping at our betters, are we? Listen, soon-to-be-soup. In marriage, the highest virtue is humility. If you’re humble, they’ll never see you coming!” Baba Yaga slapped the table to emphasize her point. As if by coincidence her fingers found a glass of vodka there, and she knocked it back in a gulp. “Whenever I get married, I always wear a caul ripped off of twin calves. Makes me young, makes me beautiful like a dollop of butter, makes me blush and tug my braids and pray in churches and bow down, humble as manure. The boys can’t resist it! They come panting with their cocks on a silk leash, their balls painted gold for my pleasure. I give them a night on my knees, just like they like, sweet and obedient and dumb as a thumbnail, confused by their mysterious bodies, oh my, so much stronger than mine! Then they wake up and—ha! There is Baba Yaga in their beds, extra warts, teeth like spikes, and the soup pot already red on the hearth. It’s a good trick. You should see their faces!”

“I’m not like that.”

“We’ll see. There is no such thing as a good wife or a good husband. Only ones who bide their time.”

11

White Gold, Black Gold

“You see why I need you,” said Marya Morevna, sitting down on the forest moss next to Zemlehyed, who, for his part, seemed uninterested, burrowing his attention instead in a crown of violets and plump rosehips he had braided together. He held out his thumb and squinted at it, his stony tongue sticking out of his mouth with the ferocity of his concentration. Finally, he threaded three scarlet nightshade mushrooms into the crown and squinted at it again.

“Don’t,” he said brusquely.

“Zmey Gorinich,” she repeated. “That’s a dragon. Quite a step up from shrubbery. I haven’t the first idea how to fight a dragon, let alone get his treasure to Chairman Yaga while I stay Marya Morevna, daughter of twelve mothers, and not Roasted, daughter of Scorched. She wants his white gold and his black gold—and to be honest, I want nothing. I want to sleep.”

“Snipe him,” gruffed Zemlehyed. “Rat-a-tat, between his eyes. Chew dragon-steak, be happy. Bother Naganya.” The leshy peeled a strip of birch bark from a nearby tree and twined it deftly through the violets—more deftly than Marya ever thought his thick, bark-covered hands could manage.

“Are you angry with me, Zemya?”

The leshy cracked an acorn between his granite teeth and spat the cap into the grass.

Marya tried again. “Naganya isn’t half strong enough to wrestle a dragon, and shooting him seems convenient, except that killing such a beast would hand Viy an aerial bombing platform. With three heads.”

“Strong enough. She slumbers near to you.”

Marya looked down at the moss. Ants wandered toward some distant battle or wheat-seed orgy. Leshiyi were so delicate in their etiquette. She doubted he cared who slept in her bed—leshiyi mated by cross-pollination. He cared, she guessed, because he believed that the strongest of them should guard Marya in her sleep, and Marya had chosen Naganya because she held the—clearly mistaken—belief that the vintovnik could beat him, if it came to fists and grappling. Zemlehyed pouted and tucked a sprig of bright rowan berries into the crown.