Catherynne Valente - Deathless

If she had looked out the window, she might have seen a great, hoary old black owl alight on the branch of the oak tree. She might have seen the owl lean perilously forward on his green-black branch and, without taking his gaze from her window, fall hard—thump, bash!—onto the streetside. She would have seen the bird bounce up, and when he righted himself, become a handsome young man in a handsome black coat, his dark hair curly and thick, flecked with silver, his mouth half-smiling, as if anticipating a terribly sweet thing.

But Marya Morevna saw none of this. She only heard the knock at the great cherrywood door, and rushed to answer it before her mother could wake. She stood there in her factory overalls, her face turned bloodless by moonlight, and the man looked down at her, for he was quite tall. Slowly, without taking his eyes from hers, the man in the black coat knelt before her.

“I am Comrade Koschei, surnamed Bessmertny,” he said with a low, churning voice, “and I have come for the girl in the window.”

The house on Dzerzhinskaya Street leaned in and held its breath. In the corners of the chimneys, the domoviye waited to hear what she might say. Marya held hers, too. Her breast filled to bursting, but she could not let her breath go. If she did, what might happen? She wanted several things at once: to run; to cry out; to shrink and crawl away; to throw her arms around him and whisper, At last, at last, I thought you would never come; to beg him to leave her alone; to faint in a ladylike fashion and escape the whole incident. Her heart shook, beating abrupt and hot, all out of time and measure. He took her hand, and she stared down at this man getting snow on his trousers and how big his eyes seemed, how black, how unforgiving, how sly, how old. And yet he was not old. Older than she, but if he were more than twenty she would eat the curtains. He had long, smoky lashes like a girl, and his hair flew about in the wind like the fur of a wild dog. Marya did not often think men beautiful, not in the way she thought the Blodniek sisters were, or hoped that she herself might one day be.

“Invite me in, Masha,” Comrade Bessmertny said softly. The street drank up his voice, sunk it into the snow, disappeared it.

Marya shook her head. She did not know why. She wanted him to come in. But it was all wrong: He should not call her by her pet name; he should not kneel like that. She should have seen him fall from the tree; she should have been more clever, more watchful. She should have seen what he was before—this was not how it was supposed to go. It was too familiar, and a little lascivious, how close he crouched to her. She knew already he would not take her walking down Dzerzhinskaya Street or buy her a hat. She was not filled up with the sight of him, the way she had seen her sisters fill up, like silk balloons, like wineskins. Instead, he seemed to land heavily within her, like a black stone falling. She did not feel it would be at all safe to kiss him on the cheeks. Marya Morevna shook her head: No, not like this, when I have not seen you without your skin on, when I know nothing, when I am not safe. Not you, whose name all my nightmares know.

“Then get your things, and come with me,” said Koschei, unperturbed. His eyes sparkled in the cold, the way distant stars will when the night freezes. And Marya’s heart stopped—that was what they said. When they came for you, because you were not good, because you were not worthy of a red scarf. Get your things and come with me . Perhaps he was not like her sisters’ husbands at all.

But the shape of Comrade Bessmertny’s lips fascinated her and made her feel sick all at once—and that was what magic did to her. His lips shone bright and dark, soft and heart-shaped. She felt, looking at him, that she could not see him at all, but could see only the things that made him unlike a man, the lushness of his face and the slowness of his manner. Though he frightened her, though the house moved in its sleep around her, no doubt dreaming of this very creature the domoviye called Papa and feared as though he might come wielding a belt, he also seemed familiar, a thing already part of herself, like herself even in the shape of his lips and the curve of his lashes. If she had spent her hours knitting a lover instead of coats for Anna’s son, the man who knelt before her would have sprung from her needles, even down to the ghostly flecks of silver in his hair. She had not known before that she wanted all these things, that she preferred dark hair and a slightly cruel expression, that she wished for tallness, or that a man kneeling might thrill her. A whole young life’s worth of slowly collected predilections coalesced in a few moments within her, and Koschei Bessmertny, his lashes full of snow, became perfect.

Marya shivered and, without really thinking about it, she took her hand from the man in the handsome black coat and withdrew into the house. He had come for her—for good or ill, she had little choice in it. When they come for you , her mother had once warned, you have to go . It’s not about wanting or not wanting .

She pulled a suitcase—not her own, and perhaps this was the first humble sin in her ledger—from the hall closet. She had little enough to take, but in went a few dresses, work clothes, her grey cap. Marya paused, hovering precariously over the suitcase as though she might pitch herself in at any moment. Finally, she squeezed her eyes shut and placed Likho’s great black book very gently beneath the clothes. The latches made small, hushed smacking noises as they closed.

Very suddenly, Zvonok the domovaya was sitting on the lid of the suitcase. Her boots shone new and polished, and her mustache had been beautifully oiled.

“I am not coming with you,” the house imp said grimly. “You understand that. I am married to the house, not to you. Even if you went out into the fields and offered me dancing shoes and called to me, I would not come.”

Marya nodded. Speaking seemed like such tremendous work just now. But at least Zvonok knew the man; at least he was only some demon-king of the domoviye and probably more besides, and not an officer come to carry her off to oblivion.

“Will you even say good-bye to your mothers?”

Marya shook her head. What would she say? How could she explain? She couldn’t even explain to herself. Mother, I have been waiting for something to happen to me my whole life, and now that it has I am going, even though it is a tilted kind of thing, and I meant to be so much better at it than my sisters.

“What a dreadful girl I have raised! Still, if you don’t ask their permission, they can’t say no. That’s our sort of logic.” The domovaya gestured for Marya to crouch down so that they could talk face-to-face, on equal footing. “But if not your mother, who will tell you how to behave on your wedding night? Who will twine flowers in your bridal braid?”

From somewhere deep in her muscles, Marya Morevna pulled up her words. “I’m not getting married,” she whispered.

“Oh ho! Easy to say, devotchka; not so easy to keep the house standing when the wolf comes thumping his tail in the grass. Listen, Masha. Listen to old Zvonok, who knows you. The domoviye have been marrying up and out and over each other just about as long as girls and boys. Prick your finger with a needle and let the blood fall over your threshold—it will hurt less, and you will dream of daughters. Men, they feel nothing like what we must endure. You have to make room in yourself for him, and that is the same in a house as in a body. See that you keep some rooms for yourself, locked up tight. And if you don’t want to get big in the belly … Well,” Zvonok wrinkled up her wide nose, “I don’t suppose that’ll be the same trouble for you as it is for the rest of us. The deathless can’t play our little genealogical games. Just remember that the only question in a house is who is to rule. The rest is only dancing around that, trying not to look it in the eye.”