Deathless

17

A Pain Where My Death Once Lay

“We’re home,” Marya sighed. “This is home.”

But Ivan went white and trembled in his long grey coat. He looked at the blood fountains gurgling and spraying. He looked at the braids lying along the eaves, the chapels with their skin doors and bone crosses, the gate of antler and skulls. He looked at the black domes of the Chernosvyat looming before them, all shadows.

“This is hell,” he whispered. Marya saw his hand twitch, longing to cross himself, keeping his fingers still for her sake alone—and she liked that, that in his horror he still wished to please her.

“No, no, it’s not like that. It’s the Country of Life. It’s all living, see? The blood and the skin and the bone and the fur. It’s all alive. Nothing is dead here, nothing. It’s beautiful.”

But Ivan was shaking his golden head. “At least in Leningrad we build over the bones.”

Marya Morevna laughed. She wanted to brush his hair from his eyes. “Of course you are from Leningrad,” she said. It would not be temptation if he came from Moscow, or Minsk, or Irkutsk. Only a boy from her home could come bearing an old red scarf and scratch at her core. He had been built for her, like a perfect machine.

“I don’t want to stay here!” he cried. “This is the devil’s country!”

“Of course it is,” said a deep voice, familiar to Marya as her own bed. “And you should go home immediately.”

Koschei the Deathless swept Marya into his arms. She smiled—a frank, open smile, unguarded and bright as winter. She kissed him, and where their mouths joined, drops of their blood spontaneously welled and mingled, so deeply did their bodies interlock.

“Have you brought a toy?” Koschei said curiously, setting his wife down, his long black cassock whipping in the heavy Buyan wind. “Is he for me as well?”

Marya watched his face carefully. If she played it right, if she managed it, no one would be hurt. “He found me, at Irkutsk, after the battle. He is from Leningrad.”

Koschei the Deathless grinned enormously, his black hair lifting a little, blowing in the wind. “Oh, my Marya has grown up and started stealing humans for herself! I am proud.”

“It isn’t like that.” But wasn’t it? Hadn’t she appeared to him like a bird-husband, out of nowhere, and dragged him out of the world?

Koschei turned to the young officer. “Oh? What do you think, young man? Is it like that?”

Ivan was somewhat beside himself. He could not stop staring at the fountain of blood, how the sun turned it half-black.

“Is he mute? Does he have a name?”

Marya faltered and cast down her eyes. She could not say it, could not begin to bring herself to say the name Ivan in the presence of her husband. But he guessed it. He saw it caught in her mouth like a fish hook. They had been married a long time. Koschei’s black eyes flared fury; his jaw clenched, just like hers. What mirrors we are, set to face each other, reflecting desire.

“You would not do that to me, would you, Masha? Tell me he is Dmitri Grigorovich. Tell me he is Leonid Belyayev. Tell me his name is Priapus and you could not resist him. But my wife would not bring an Ivan into my house; she would not stab me so, through the neck.”

“I thought there were no rules between us,” Marya answered softly, somewhat embarrassed to discuss it in front of Ivan himself, who was no part of their marriage, and should not hear its private arrangements.

Koschei blinked twice and straightened his back, crow-hunched with resentment.

“Of course you are right, wife. I have forgotten myself. What is a name? Nothing and no one. I am a silly old man.” His smile froze on his perfect face, the youthful curve of his jaw, his eyes not even a little wrinkled with age. He remained utterly the man who had appeared on Marya’s doorstep with stars in his hair. “You must bring your friend to dinner, and we will discuss our options, with regard to the war.”

The Tsar of Life turned on one shining black heel and strode toward his palace. Over his shoulder he called, “Oh, have a care not to walk on the right side of the road. We lost it while you were gone.”

Marya brought her hand to her mouth. She had not seen it. How could she have missed it? A long black strip ran down Skorohodnaya Road. In the darkness, silver pricked like stars.

* * *

Koschei served them himself: pheasant on a black platter; diamond goblets of colorless wine; two loaves of bread, one dark and one pale; pears poached in a fragrant sauce Marya did not recognize. A mound of shining butter rested in front of Ivan’s seat with a small golden knife sunk into it. Marya wore a long black dress, its silk bodice scooping well below her neckline, its gems winking. Koschei loved it specially, and she wished to make peace. You look like a winter night, he had told her when he had given it to her. I could sleep inside the cold of you. She tried not to look at either of the men.

“Eat,” Koschei said tonelessly. “You will need strength for the road.”

Ivan folded his hands in his lap. “I … I don’t think I ought to eat your food, Comrade,” he said shakily.

Koschei sneered at him. “Why not? You have already supped at my table, tasted my wife. I can smell it on both of you, like perfume so sweet it sickens.”