Deathless

“Naganya’s mouth is strong,” Marya said carefully. “But her arm is young. Yours is old, and hard, and I choose it.” Besides, grappling was never Naganya’s style.

Zemlehyed smiled broadly. His rocky eyes prickled moisture like raindrops.

“Morevna chooses!” he beamed. “And chooses best. Zemlehyed knows where Zmey Gorinich nests. Nasha knows nothing but how to make holes. Gorinich sleeps on top of bones. On top of gold. Zemya would like such a bed, but tfu. He makes do.”

The leshy, his moss-hair trailing down in several green braids, held up his forest diadem. He reached down without looking and pulled up a clutch of winter onions, sticking them in so that their green stems fell like a veil from the back of the crown. Zemlehyed reached up and placed it on Marya’s head. It matched her rosy trousers, her black-violet boots.

“He will help you, if you build him a promise.”

“Anything, Zemya.”

The leshy smirked, stroking his fir-needle mustache. “A kiss, for Zemlehyed, on his lips. He won’t tell.”

Marya Morevna laughed. Even devotees of cross-pollination must occasionally be curious, she reasoned. No more harm than in kissing a tree or a rock. And besides, Koschei had kissed all those Yelenas. Or probably had. Who could tell the truth? Marya felt defiance boil up in her chest. She did not care. She would kiss whom she liked. “All right, Zem. A kiss.”

Without warning, the leshy shot up into the air, somersaulted, and came down hard on the mossy loam, digging furiously. His fists flew at the earth; his teeth gnashed and tore; his feet kicked like a diver plunging into deep water. Clumps flew; Zemlehyed disappeared into his h

ole. After a moment, his fingers, knuckles ringed with lacy mushrooms, popped back up.

“Morevna! Bustle! Faster than you is still too slow.”

Marya took the leshy’s rough hand and he hauled her, headfirst, underground.

* * *

Marya flipped in her descent and landed neatly on her feet in quite another forest, full of stubby scrub trees and tall lilac flowers. Golden-orange mountains rose on all sides, closing them in. Zemlehyed hung from the branches of one of the taller trees, kicking his short legs back and forth in delight. He wiggled the top of his head out of a crack in the branch and fell—thump, bash!—onto the needle-strewn ground.

But the forest imp bounced up, and when he righted himself, he was a handsome man in a dark green soldier’s uniform with red piping, his cap sparkling gold. He had a twisted, thorny black beard and muscled arms like pine trunks. Zemlehyed laid his finger aside his nose.

“You cannot tell,” he said, his voice suddenly very much changed. “They mustn’t know.”

Marya Morevna gaped. She could not make her mouth close. All that time, and her friend was … what? She could not even say. A man. And a beautiful one. “Why not? Zem! Even Lebedeva would have to admit you’re handsome!”

“Forests have secrets,” he said gently. “It’s practically what they’re for. To hide things. To separate one world from another. You might not think it, but I love Lebed, and Nasha, with all my muddy heart. But as long as they think I’m stupid I can keep stealing from their stashes and they’ll never suspect. Lebedeva would never think for a moment that I would want her night cream, or Naganya’s holster-blouse. But I have them, and they are mine, and I will not give them back, no.”

“Why would you want them?”

Zemlehyed shrugged. “It’s in my nature. I hoard. It’s in their nature, too, which is why Lebedeva has more night creams than nights, and Nasha collects tin cans. Zmey Gorinich, he is like this as well. But I think it is also in your nature.”

Marya blinked. “I don’t think so. What have I collected?”

Zemlehyed smiled in a lopsided way, as though he did not quite know how to use his face.

“Us.”

* * *

The leshy led her through a field of spiky yellow blossoms fuzzy with pollen, heavy with buzzing bees. Puffy white cotton plants waved around them like tiny clouds. The sun pressed its hands to their shoulders, hurrying them along. The mountains, streaked with snow, rose strange and thin around them, as though a starving man slept under the earth, his ribs poking through the stone. They followed a deep blue river that ran deliriously through the meadow, fish splashing as though no spearman could dream of happening by. In the distance, at last, just as the sun was getting red and tired, Marya saw a great furry yurt in the dry grass. Thick, curly fleeces covered its roof; long poles stood tight together, curving in a round sweep. A ram pelt hid the door.

Zemlehyed did not knock. He pushed the pelt aside and ducked into the hut, squeezing his enormous frame into the doorway. Marya followed him into the warm yurt-shadows, where a bald man with round glasses sat at his desk, dwarfed by mountains of paperwork.

“Do you have an appointment?” he roared, a flush traveling all the way from his scalp to his brows in a long red wave.

“We seek Zmey Gorinich,” said Marya, her voice firm.

“You are tiny,” the man concluded. “Zmey Gorinich does not exist for the use of the tiny. Only the big does he notice! As big as he is!”

“I am big.” Zemlehyed shrugged.