Deathless

“Do you think I am a fool, Masha? All this time, and you speak to me as though I were a flighty pinprick of a girl. I am a magician! Did you never think, even once, that I loved lipstick and rouge for more than their color alone? I am a student of their lore, and it is arcane and hermetic beyond the dreams of alchemists. Did you never wonder why I gave you so many pots, so many creams, so much perfume?” Lebedeva’s eyes shone. “Masha, listen to me. Cosmetics are an extension of the will. Why do you think all men paint themselves when they go to fight? When I paint my eyes to match my soup, it is not because I have nothing better to do than worry over trifles. It says, I belong here, and you will not deny me. When I streak my lips

red as foxgloves, I say, Come here, male. I am your mate, and you will not deny me. When I pinch my cheeks and dust them with mother-of-pearl, I say, Death, keep off, I am your enemy, and you will not deny me. I say these things, and the world listens, Masha. Because my magic is as strong as an arm. I am never denied.”

Marya’s unpainted lips parted in surprise.

“I did not know.”

“You did not ask.”

“Please help me, Inna Affanasievna.” Marya took the vila’s pale, soft hands in hers. “Please.”

“Every once in a while, my darling sister, you must do something for yourself.”

Marya looked at Madame Lebedeva—her deep amber eyelids, her pale lips, her frosted cheeks. She could hardly stand the beauty of her friend. It dazzled her. She did not think she could deny Madame Lebedeva, either.

“Will you paint me then, for this task? Will you make up my face, as you have so often asked to do?”

Madame Lebedeva frowned. Her pearly lips turned downward, and she seemed a space older.

“No, Mashenka. I will not. It would only be an extension of my will, and it is yours that is at issue. But I will say to you: Blue is for cruel bargains; green is for daring what you oughtn’t; violet is for brute force. I will say to you: Coral coaxes; pink insists; red compels. I will say to you: You are dear to me as attar of roses. Please do not get eaten.”

Madame Lebedeva leaned forward on her little gold stool and kissed Marya on both cheeks, eyelashes gently fluttering against Marya’s temples. She smelled like rain falling through honeysuckles, and when she drew away, her kisses remained on Marya’s skin, little twin circles of pink, almost invisible.

“Remember this when you are queen,” she breathed. “I told you my secrets.”

* * *

A bashful winter’s noontime showed only its modest ankle before slipping into darkness again. Marya walked along Skorohodnaya Road, kicking clumps of ice. Mastery, she thought. I know nothing of that. Who was master when Koschei fed me and silenced me? Not I. An explosion of laughter spilled out of a tavern with eaves of black braids that hung down the corners like bellpulls. Marya stopped and stroked the building’s wall: pale, smooth skin, too hairless to be anything but a girl’s. The building shivered with the attention. And yet, I chose to be silent, to eat what he fed me. And he shook when he touched me. I made him weak enough to shake. What does any of it mean?

Marya stopped and turned up her face to the stars, which sparkled like the points of knives. She turned up the collar of her long coat; the wound below her eye pulsed in the cold. She thought of the year that had turned since she had come to Buyan, how she had trembled when she first saw the Chernosvyat, the fountains of warm blood even now gurgling behind her, Naganya’s fearful clicking laugh. Nineteen forty-two, she thought. At Leningrad. It was the at that made her shudder. Not in Leningrad. At Leningrad. At least I shall die at home. But did he really say I would die? He said gross desertion. I will be a deserter. Same as a runaway, really. And what is home? Buyan is home. Leningrad is so far; 1942 is so far. Why would I ever go back?

“Volchya-Yagoda,” she whispered, reaching into the wind for something familiar, something huge and kind.

“Yes, Marya,” said the voice of the horse, beside her in a moment as though he had always been there, breathing against her shoulder. He glowed milky in the night.

“I wondered, if I wanted you, if you would come.”

“I would not call it a rule. But I have very good ears, and I am fast.”

Marya turned and put her arms around the horse’s long neck. He did not smell of horse, but of exhaust and metal.

“Promise me, Volchya. Promise that you will never take me back to Leningrad. If I do not go back, I cannot die there.”

“Did someone say you were going to die?”

Marya’s brow furrowed. “Well, no, not exactly. He said convicted. But convicted usually means died.”

“Perhaps it will not be so bad.”

“Volchya, you must swear it. What do horses swear on?”

“Nothing.” Volchya spoke with a strange accent, his brassy deep voice pinched and contorted. “Horses are godless. There is only the rider, and the whip. But I promise.”

“Take me home, Volchya.”

The bone-pale horse crouched down and wriggled within Marya’s embrace so that she found herself swept up onto his back before she could breathe twice. She could feel his oily blood churning hot and heavy beneath her. He turned toward the Chernosvyat, a dark blot against the dark sky. In the torchlight, the shadows of his bones moved under his thin skin.

“Why do you let me ride you? Are you more tame than Chairman Yaga’s mortar?”