Deathless

“Because this is how it happens. How he dies. How he always dies. The only way he can die. Dying is a part of his marriages, no less than lovemaking. He wouldn’t know what to do if you didn’t kill him at some point.”

“I will never kill him! Even if I go, even if I leave, I wouldn’t kill him!”

“We shall see. But you will go. Because you are still somewhat young and you need the sun on your face, the high Leningrad sun, to redden your cheeks. Go, and sleep easy, and do not think about how many men will die today.”

“Koschei would stop me.” But would he? Perhaps he would simply find another girl. Perhaps it would start all over again, only without Marya Morevna, and she could steal some measure of respite.

“He’s too proud for that. Think he ever stopped the others?”

“I am not like the others.”

“Oh, but Masha, can’t you see? You are. An Ivan has come. That is like saying, Midnight has struck. It is time for bed, little one. You cannot have both. In war you must always choose sides. One or the other. Silver or black. Human or demon. If you try to be a bridge laid down between them, they will tear you in half.”

Marya spread her hands; only Lebedeva could hear her fear, the wounds she had hidden in her jaw, in the space Koschei had made when he took her will. “Lebed, how can I live in that world? I am hardly human. I was only a child—how can I find the girl I was before I knew what magic was? That world will not love me. It will kick me and slap me in the snow, and take my scarf, and leave me ashamed and bleeding.”

“You will live as you live in any world,” Madame Lebedeva said. She reached out her hand as if to grasp Marya’s, as if to press it to her cheek, then closed her fingers, as if Marya’s hand were in hers. “With difficulty, and grief.”

And slowly, with the infinite care of a woman dressing for the theatre, Madame Lebedeva stretched her long, elegant neck—so far, so far!—her breasts fluffing into feathers, her slender legs tucking up beneath her, until she was a swan, a black band across her eyes. She hopped onto the windowsill and flew away into the aching, raw night.

19

Three Sisters

And so Marya Morevna stole the human boy with gold hair, pulling him down the icy, dawn-darkened streets lined with yawning silver echoes. They kept to the left side; they did not look back. Ivan Nikolayevich rode behind her on a horse with red ears and small hooves, who was not of Volchya-Yagoda’s get, but rather his sinister-slantwise nephew, as horses count such things. The horse was possessed of no mechanical leanings whatsoever, only a horse who loved his mistress and thrilled, deep in the memories of his slantwise cells, to be used as an instrument of abduction. Marya, for her part, wondered, as her teeth took cold from the wind, if there could ever be love without this running in the night, this fleeing, this hurtling into dark lands; without the fear that someone, mother or father or husband, might reach out a sorrowful hand to pull her back. Ivan held her around the waist as their horse careened into the forest, heedless of bough or stone. He said nothing. She could think of nothing to say. She had taken him, and what can you say to a taken thing? Her bones jangled in the saddle. Her knee creaked. The old blister below her eye throbbed.

But no hand unhorsed them. No black guard flew through the yellow larches to yank her backwards by the hair. The morning sun pointed redly at them, accusing, righteous. Under its disapproving stare they rode, through the day, into the afternoon. Through the afternoon, and into the night. The stars drew a map of heaven onto the black above.

Finally, the horse with red ears wheezed, spat, and fell to his knees in the snowy shadows of a forest clearing. They had stopped at a great estate, firelight glowing and glimmering in every crystalline window with the cozy wintertime carelessness of the very rich. Stables it surely had, and hay. The horse had led them well. A great glass door stood ever so invitingly ajar. Marya’s eyes swam with the whipping of wind and snow. She peered in, afraid to enter, certain Koschei had set this up for her, to rack her with guilt, to make her remember all those soft, quiet little houses on the road to Buyan. To place himself in their bed, like tobacco appearing noiselessly on a table.

But they were alone. The horse nosed peaceably in the snow. No sound, not even owls, broke the blackness. And so Marya helped Ivan—saddle-sore and shivering in the bitter, rigid cold—across the threshold.

The foyer of the dacha flowed around them, its deep malachite floor speckled with brown jasper, its candelabras all ruby and amethyst. And in the center of the shining floor sat a great egg of blue enamel, crisscrossed with gold leafing and studded with diamonds like nail-heads. Atop the egg perched a middle-aged woman, her fair hair clapped back like a hay-roll in autumn. She peered at two silver knitti

ng needles over her glasses, where half a child’s crimson stocking hung, growing slowly, inch by inch.

Marya’s heart spun in surprise.

“Olga!” she cried out. “How is this possible? How can you have come to be here, so deep in the forest? How can I have found you in all the expanse of the world? It is your sister, Masha!” Marya might have wept, but her tears froze within her, so tired and afraid and stiff was she, so afraid that she was being tricked, that the woman would slide off the egg and bounce up something else, something awful, something accusing.

The woman looked up, and her face shone, all porcelain and pink. She filled like a wineskin with the sight of her sister, and, tucking her knitting under one thick arm, leapt down from her egg and kissed Marya all over her face before turning to Ivan and kissing him very chastely on the cheeks. “Marya! Oh, my darling sister!” she exclaimed, and she smelled so like Olga that it could not have been a trick. “So much time has passed! Look at you, grown as a bear! Ah! When did we stop being children?”

Marya longed to raise up her arms and have Olga lift her and twirl her as she used to, when they were young together in the house on Gorokhovaya Street.

“Olya, are you happy? Are you well?”

“Oh, very well! And with my sixth daughter on the way!” She patted the jeweled egg fondly. “This sort of thing is what comes of marrying a bird.” She winked. “But then, you always knew he was a bird, didn’t you? And you didn’t tell me. Wicked girl. But what about you? Are you happy? Are you well?”

“I am tired,” said Marya Morevna. “Olya, this is Ivan Nikolayevich. He is not a bird.”

Ivan bowed to Marya’s oldest sister.

Olga daintily pushed her glasses up onto her nose. “Oh, I know who he is. Think lieutenants don’t talk, do you? Gossip is like gold in these parts. Just look at my sister, run off, a scandal, and at her age! I’ll have you know I’ve been faithful to Gratch since he first took my arm, and I’ve fourteen precious little chicks to show for it!”

“So many!” Ivan whistled.

Olga narrowed her lovely eyes at him. “Haven’t you heard there’s a war on?” She scowled. “We must all do our part.”

“I’ve told Marya. We’ve a pact with Germany. War does not even dream of Russia. Your sister will be safe in Leningrad.”