And he sets on her like the sun, and all her teeth show when she smiles. Each day she looks at the iron keys hanging by their door, and tries to think: Where have I seen those before? When have I had a thing I needed to lock? And each day, unless it is Sunday and the mist is down and all of Yaichka staying in, she shakes her head to gather it and strides out onto the long, thin road. Each morning, Marya Morevna thinks that she has never been so full, and each evening she is fuller still. Her black curls shine as if seen underwater.
On Wednesdays, Ushanka visits, her friend whom those old grandmothers most likely forgot to name, since she is the kind of girl who shows only half of her face at a time. No one knows her surname, but that’s all right. Surnames go politely unmentioned in Yaichka. Marya Morevna always makes sure she has a leg of rabbit and fresh bread with a little bowl of honey set out, and Wednesday is her day with the silver samovar that makes the rounds of all the houses, just like a horse.
“And how is your husband?” says Ushanka, a beautiful blue ribbon fluttering from the scalloped edge of her lace hat. Ushanka makes lace like a spider, and gives her shawls freely to the women of Yaichka. Just yesterday, gentle Galka pulled one up around her shoulders, feeling a draft.
“He feels sure the new calf will be a heifer, and so go to Aleksandr Fyodorovich. I’ve discussed the prospect of juniper-cheese with Natasha.”
“How lovely for all of us. And you, Masha? Are you well? Do the ladies visit when I am not about? Do the men let you drink with them when you’re thirsty?”
Marya Morevna puts her chin in her hands. “I believe I have never been so well, Ushanochka. I am so well that my glass fills before I think to be thirsty. To be certain, I am sad when the moon is thin. I remember friends long gone, and how one of them painted her eyes to match her soup, and how one slept curled next to me, and another kissed me, just once, by a river. I remember one with wet hair, and her baby. I wish they could drink from full glasses, too. I wish they could see the new lamb when it comes. But the moon waxes, and my sadness dries up. Life is like that, of course.”
“Of course.” And Ushanka puts her hand on Marya’s, for they have shared tea more often than tears. Her skin is like cloth. “The sweetness of it all is sharpest when placed alongside sorrow, close as knife and fork. But it is my job to interrogate your happiness, to prod its corners, to make sure it holds. When a sadness chews at the bottom of your heart, it’s as though you walk all day with your dress on backwards, the buttons facing the forest, the collar facing the village. To everyone else, all may seem normal, but my eyes are so keen.”
Marya Morevna poured tea, coppery and steaming. “I have sometimes wished for a child,” she confessed. “But when I ask Koschei about it, even while he tells me he loves me with a bear’s love, he says, ‘Can we not wait a little longer? Just a little longer.’ Isn’t that strange?”
Ushanka shows only half of her face, and that half grows very thoughtful, but says nothing.
“I saw the bird again while hunting this rabbit,” says Marya brightly, picking at the gleaming bone. “So terribly bright it could have been on fire! I think it’s a male. His feathers shine golden, and bronze, and scarlet, and blue—such flames!—and the air around him bends into oily waves. His song echoes like Georgy’s playing. A firebird, just like in the old stories. I shall catch it, Ushanka, if I have to ride all the way through the forest and come out the other side.”
“What other side?” says Ushanka, showing the other half of her face. “You’ve been listening to Josef’s silly insinuations. There is only Yaichka, and you, and I, and Sasha’s juniper-cheese, and rabbit with bread on Wednesdays.”
* * *
That afternoon, Marya Morevna goes to the well after Yaichka has shaken off the dust of the day and sees someone working the fields. The someone wears a bright hat of many colors, and cuts grain with an enormous pair of shears.
“Who is that?” she asks of her husband, just returning, his hands all bloody with the afterbirth of the new calf.
“Do not look at him, volchitsa,” says the handsome Koschei. “Let him take his share.”
* * *
Aleksandra Fedorovna—who ought to know, having five of her own—once told Marya that a woman knows it when the night passes and leaves her with a child.
“They tap you, Masha. Like a root.”
“Oh, I don’t believe you, Sasha! How can you feel such a tiny thing?”
The beautiful Aleksandra shrugged. “When you are cut, you feel it, even if the cut is tiny. Such a thing is a child, a wound within.”
When the perverse moon pries through their windows, spying round the curtains, Marya does not feel it, but her handsome husband does. Koschei Bessmertny winds his red limbs in hers, as young as young, and shatters inside her, the shards of him floating free in her body, until one, sharp-edged and cruel, lodges in her and will not be moved, stubborn thing. In the guttering stove-light he lays his head on her belly.
“And death shall have no dominion over her,” he whisp
ers, and kisses her navel.
“What a thing to say!” Marya moves her fingers in his shaggy hair. “Someone else said that to me, once, so long ago I cannot remember. Sometimes you seem to me to be two men: my Kostya and another I cannot quite recall, all squeezed into one body.”
Koschei looks up at her. The whites of his eyes show. “Nothing wants to die,” he says faintly, and Marya Morevna does not understand, because she has seen so few dark things.
“What will we call her?” Koschei says, and smiles the best smile he has learned, so golden and hot that Marya thinks of the bird in the forest, the one that eludes her still, and turns the air to oil.
“Who?”
“Our daughter, who already knows your name.”
Koschei Bessmertny will not sleep for nine months. He gives all his sleep to his daughter. It is her due.
* * *