Deathless

The sheepdog laughed, the rumbling of her swollen chest shaking the pillars of spit. Her jowls sloughed over their edges. “She’s our babushka, Blood, you ungrateful, toadying poodle! See if she brings you New Year’s presents!” The lapdog squeaked in indignation at the sound of his name. The sheepdog looked up at Marya in frank, canine adoration. “Will you let me ride with you again this year? How I remember the wind in my cheeks!”

“Haroo, Brumal, you kiss-up! She called you a drunken hag, Grandmother. I heard her, not a week ago,” crooned the wolf confidentially.

“And I said she wouldn’t be angry! Would you, Grandmother? I was singing a dinner song in your honor! Drunken hag rhymes with hearts in a bag!”

“You and your songs!” giggled the lapdog, Blood. “Star of the Moscow stage, you are!”

Brumal leapt off her saliva-pillars and tackled Blood with a snarl.

Marya watched them fight. She could not believe her luck—all their names, cast into her lap like dolls. But if these were Koschei’s dogs, then Koschei’s death rested in that shining glass chest. Chairman Yaga clearly meant for her to steal it and return to the Chernosvyat triumphant, only to be shown up as a faithless Yelena who meant only to destroy him. And yet, if she did not return with it, Yaga would devour her, and none of her innocence would matter. Her belly churned. The dogs wrestled at her feet, blood dripping from both of their throats.

“Blood,” she whispered, holding out her hands. “Brumal, peace.”

The two dogs froze, the whites of their eyes showing. They turned to look at her, betrayal sparkling in their gaze, and fell down dead, Blood curled into rigor on Brumal’s enormous, spotted chest.

The regal wolf leapt at her, slavering.

“You are no Grandmother!” she spat.

“Bile, Bitter!” Marya shouted fearfully—and the wolf fell dead out of the air, thumping onto the cave floor with a crackle of bones. The racing hound died quietly, lying in a tight ball, minding his own business, as though he had always expected to die this way.

The chest gleamed softly, ringed in dead dogs. Marya knelt and worked its slippery clasp. The lid sprang open with a jingle of broken ice.

Inside lay an egg, wrapped up in black silk. A simple hen’s egg, brown and round, its crown spattered with freckles.

13

The Tsar of Life and the Tsar of Death

Marya Morevna wanted to run across the throne room to Koschei, to lay her head in his lap, to tell him everything that she had suffered, to hear him reassure her with some obvious explanation of the girls in the factory which did not include the word Yelena. But he sat heavily on his throne of onyx and bone, his chin thrust into his hands. He did not look at her. The same maps and papers cluttered his great table, and Koschei scowled so deeply the walls curved away from him, desperate to escape his displeasure. He did not even flinch when the tall black door banged open and Baba Yaga stomped in, her cigarillo leaving blue trails like battle flags behind her. She strode up to Koschei’s chair, her coat flaring, and kissed him wetly on the lips, her wide mouth hungrily devouring him. Koschei turned up his face and returned her kiss. Marya was too racked to gasp or cry out. Her eyes simply filled with tears, and she wanted to disappear.

“Don’t look so shocked, soup!” laughed Chairman Yaga, smacking her lips. “This one was my husband, oh, centuries back! My ninth, I think. Only fair that I rumple your mount a bit: My mortar is half in a swoon with your riding it so hard, rubbing another mistress’ musk on its pestle so that the poor beast gets all confused!”

“You said he was your brother,” Marya said numbly, her face burning. Her chest sank, kicked in by the sight of them.

“Chyerti, kid. Demons. What should we care? When you live forever, sooner or later you try everything, just to see. Didn’t work out, though, all the same.” Yaga caressed Koschei’s cheek tenderly with the back of her hand. “The only one I couldn’t eat.” Koschei smiled wanly. The crone jumped off the black dais and marched up to Marya, her breath dank and old in her face. She looked over Marya’s coat, her leather apron, her makeup. “I get to give the tests because I know what it takes to be married to a snake. I do know what I’m talking about.” She pursed her cracked lips. “I just love your coat, Marya.”

“I passed your tests, Chairman Yaga.”

“Oh? Well, then, let’s see it!”

Marya pulled the egg from where she had kept it, close to her breast, warm and safe. Koschei hissed, sucking his breath through his teeth.

“I told you, Brother. Just like the others. She’ll be the death of you.”

Chairman Yaga turned the egg over in her calloused hand, cracked it open, and slurped up the insides, her teeth shining with yellow yolk.

Marya cried out, agonized. Was that his death? It looked like an egg. “No! You can’t! I did everything you asked me!”

Baba Yaga sucked her tongue. “She’s right! Have her if you still want her, Kostya. I give my blessing with both hands. She’s a sneaking, lying, dog-murdering thief, and she looks just like me! I’ll even dower the bitch.” The old woman sat with a satisfied plop at the map-strewn desk, putting out her cigarillo on a sketch of the countryside.

Hot tears fell down Marya’s face. “I didn’t know where she’d send me. I didn’t know the dogs would be there—”

“But once you got there you killed them all and took the egg,” pointed out Baba Yaga. “Knowing exactly what you did. My poor, bereaved brother raised those dogs from pups.”

“Koschei, say something!” Marya pleaded. “Why don’t you speak to me?”

“What should I say?” Koschei said softly, his voice dark and grinding. “It should be clear that the egg was not my death, since my sister has made lunch of it. Why would I ever have told you where I hid it? Of course you would go after it. You can’t help it. Tell a girl something is a secret and nothing will stop her from ferreting it out.”