Deathless

He kissed her again, deeper, and the taste of him in her mouth was bright, brighter than blood.

“What do we carry between us, then, Masha?”

“Nothing,” she breathed. What he dared, to call her Masha so soon! “Yet.”

Marya Morevna gripped his shoulders in her hands and pushed him down beneath her. She clamped his narrow hips between her lion-thighs and kissed him with all the biting and possessing she had learned, with everything she had to give to a kiss. Her hair swept over his face, a black curtain, hiding all light, plunging him inescapably into her.

Ivan clapped his hand to the back of her neck, moving under her, arching his back to press closer. He moaned under her, his coin-colored lashes so long, like a girl’s.

“Come with me, back to Leningrad,” he whispered. “Come back.” There. There, he has asked. And I must choose. War before me, and behind, a woman I do not know, the woman I could have been, a human woman, whole and hot.

And in the depths of herself, Marya felt her old house on Gorokhovaya Street, on Kommissarskaya Street, on Dzerzhinskaya Street, unfold and creak and beckon, and the sounds of the Neva gurgle greenly. Things she had not allowed herself to remember came pouring out of Ivan’s kisses, out of his skin, out of his seed. She smelled the sea. But 1942 is not so far off now, she thought desperately, his warmth suffusing her whipped belly. Not so far.

And the heart of Ivan Nikolayevich broke inside the body of Marya Morevna, and the pieces of him lodged deep in her bones, and through the window, the stars watched.

* * *

Later, after they had shared water and a few slices of ruby meat, Marya saw the red scarf Ivan Nikolayevich had had knotted around his arm peeking out from beneath his jacket. She bent and touched its tip, which protruded like a tongue.

Ivan smiled a little. “It’s my Young Pioneers scarf. I don’t know why I still carry it. I just like it. It made me feel safe when I was young. Made me feel good, as though I could not be harmed, because I was so good, because I belonged.”

He looked at her for a long moment, his warm tea-colored eyes darkened by candlelight until they were almost black, like Koschei’s. But Ivan’s gaze held her in a circle of heat and quiet night truths. Marya said nothing; held her breath. And then he did it, and she thought her body would shake itself apart. Ivan Nikolayevich untied the scarf from his coat and hung it around Marya Morevna’s naked neck, lifting her long hair over its cloth, so that the tails hung down over her breasts, covering them in scarlet like bloody tears.

* * *

Marya woke in the bottomless well before dawn, her eyes snapping open in the dark. She sat up straight, Ivan a pleasant warm heap beside her, insensate. A silvery white woman sat at her vanity, her long, pale fingers touching the pots, one by one. Her white hair hung loose to her waist. She wore a cameo, a perfect carving of a woman with long pale hair and a silver star on her breast.

“Mashenka, my darling,” Madame Lebedeva sighed. “How I miss you. How I wish you would talk to me.”

The vila turned, and the silver star on her chest cast sinuous shadows on the ceiling. Her eyelids were painted a lighter color than Marya had ever seen.

“I won’t hurt you,” the ghost said softly. “I won’t. All these years, and you still don’t know I would never drag you after me, not ever. It is the terrible hour when anything may be said. I have waited for this hour. Speak one word to me, Masha. Acknowledge me. I love you. Once you are dead, shame sloughs off like an old shirt. It costs nothing to be plain about such things. I love you. Do you not love me?”

Marya’s eyelids slid heavily closed again—but she forced them open. And she did look, intently, at her old friend. She could hardly bear her face. She wanted to run to her and be held, but no, no, never again. Never. She would not mean to drag Marya off, but it would happen anyway, like gra

vity, like falling a long way. She did not want to speak. But the weight of those years spent not looking behind her, not noticing the silver footsteps at her back, oh, that weight sat heavy in her lap.

“I love you, Lebed,” Marya Morevna said finally, and wept, slowly, without sound, without tears. She had dried up, utterly.

“It’s not so bad, my darling. Being dead. It’s like being alive, only colder. Things taste less. They feel less. You forget, little by little, who you were. There isn’t much love, but there is a lot of vodka, and reminiscing. It’s rather like a university reunion, but the cakes and tarts are made of dust. And there is always a war on. But there was always a war on before, too, wasn’t there? And the sight of warm things just makes you furious, angrier than I ever thought I could be. I have no warm things of my own, you see. I want them so. And I cannot remember things so well. As though I am getting old—but I cannot ever get any older. Still, I am glad you spoke to me before I forgot you.”

“I thought if I didn’t look at you, any of you, you would go away, and I wouldn’t have to remember.”

“Someday, we will go away. Or maybe we’ll forget who you are but still cling to you because of habit, and all we will know is that we have always clung to this girl with black hair, whoever she is.” Madame Lebedeva touched the mirror, looking at herself as though she were a very beautiful stranger. A wet, silver stain spread out from her fingertip over the glass like frost forming.

“Did it hurt?” Marya whispered. “When you died?”

“I don’t remember. I was bringing your veil—really, how could you get married without a veil, Masha? It’s shameful. I was bringing it and someone shot me. I thought I had tripped over something for a moment, and then the assassin took me in his arms—oh, how silver they gleamed!—and put his mouth to my wound. He suckled like a babe, and I thought, I will never suckle anyone, not ever—and then I died. It was like pulling on a rope as hard as you can and then suddenly it jerks free and you fall, because you were straining so hard that you couldn’t help going over the edge. I put flowers on my body. I was so fond of it. And, you know, during the struggle for the Chernosvyat, a phosphor-shell hit the old magicians’ cafe. Now it’s in our country, and I can eat there whenever I like. Dust soup, dust dumplings. Little tartlets of ash.” Lebedeva pointed at Marya suddenly; her voice sharpened. “You ought to go with Ivan, Masha. Listen to your friend. She is still a magician. She still knows things.”

“It will break Koschei’s heart.” She had decided to stay. She had decided to go. In her sleep she had decided a thousand times. Her dreams were split in half.

“Eh. It’s been broken before. And it isn’t a heart. You have to look out for yourself. Soon enough my lord will decide he has had enough of your rifle and come to feast on you, treaty or no treaty. Why should you not have some peace before then? Leningrad in 1940—such a quiet place. You could be happy.”

“I hardly know this boy.” Marya drank in the sight of her friend, and a dull ache began between her breasts. She must stop speaking to Lebedeva; she must stop—but she could not.

“You hardly knew Koschei. Abduction is a marvelous icebreaker.”

Marya Morevna passed her hand over her eyes. “Lebed, why? Why would I ever leave Buyan? This is my home.”