Catherynne Valente - Deathless

Zvonok patted Marya Morevna’s face with her little hand. “Ah! My heart! I warned you about reading Pushkin! I would choose another husband for you, I would, if the choosing of it were mine. I could have hoped for a different life for my Masha than his mouth on her breast like a babe, sucking her pretty voice down, her little ways, ’til she’s dry and rattling. But you like him already, I can tell. Even though we showed our teeth and were very clear about his being wicked. That’s not your fault. He makes himself pretty, so that girls will like him. But if you must insist on being clever, then be clever . Be brave. Sleep with fists closed and shoot straight.” Comrade Zvonok shrugged and sighed with a little whistling sound. “But I am selfish! I must learn to give the best of my house away.”

The domovaya hopped up to her feet and kissed Marya roughly on the tip of her nose. She did a shuffling, cock-legged little dance and laid her finger aside her own nose. “Who is to rule,” Zvonok hissed, and disappeared.

Marya blinked. Tears dropped from her eyes like tiny, hard beads. Her legs, all against her head, longed to straighten and take her to the door, to Comrade Bessmertny, still kneeling there in the cold like a knight. She ruled nothing, Marya knew. Nothing and no one.

Marya Morevna ran out onto Dzerzhinskaya Street, which had been Kommissarskaya Street, which had been Gorokhovaya Street, her black hair long and loose, her cheeks lashed red, her breath a hanging mist in the air. Snow crunched beneath her boots. Comrade Bessmertny smiled at her without showing his teeth. The birds never hurt my sisters, Marya said to her galloping heart. He is not a bird, said her heart. You weren’t careful, you didn’t see. He held open the door of a long, black car—a sleek, curving thing, the kind Marya had only glimpsed rumbling by, always followed by the grumbling of her neighbors regarding the evils of the merchant class. The car growled and snorted, a baleful red peeping through the vents. Marya dropped gratefully into the car, relieved to have done it, to finally be inside the magic instead of looking at it through a window. To never have to hear again that something black was coming for her—it was here, and it was handsome, and it wanted her. She couldn’t change her mind once the door shut— ah, and there it went, nothing to be done now . She shivered in the backseat. The car was as cold as a forest, and she had forgotten her good fur hat.

Marya jumped a little as Comrade Koschei slid in beside her. The car, driverless, roared ahead down the street with a whine and a screeching whinny. Koschei turned, gripped Marya’s chin, and kissed her—not on the cheek, not chastely or unchastely, but greedily, with his whole, hard mouth, cold, biting, knowing. He ate up her breath in the kiss. Marya felt he would swallow her whole.

The black car knew the forests like a boar knows them. It sniffed at the bone-bright birch trees and blared its low, moaning horn, as if calling out to fellow beasts within the pine-slashed shadows. Marya Morevna shuddered to hear it, but when she shuddered, Koschei held her nearer to him, twined his hand in hers.

“I will keep you,” he said softly, as sweet as black tea, “and I will keep you warm.” But his own skin had frosted over; his fingernails shone pearly blue.

“Comrade,” Marya said, “you are colder than I. I fear your flesh will freeze me.”

Koschei studied her as if she were a terribly curious creature, to crave warmth so. His dark eyes moved over her face possessively, but he did not release her. If anything, the cold of his body deepened, until Marya felt as though a pillar of ice clung to her, sending out silver tendrils to cover her, too, in the stuff of itself.

That first night, the black car wheezed, spat, and coughed triumphantly as they entered a clearing around a little house whose ruddy windows beamed through the sharp, clear night, whose eaves bowed under fresh straw, whose door stood ever so invitingly ajar. A peasant house, to be sure, nothing like her own tall, thin home, but squat and pleasant as a grandmother, a brown chimney puffing away. Koschei helped her, shivering, out of the car and slapped its fender fondly, whereupon the automobile leapt up cheerfully and scampered off into the dark.

The house had made itself ready for dinner. A thick wooden table sparkled with candles and a neat spread: bread and pickled peppers and smoked fish, dumplings and beets in vinegar and brown kasha, mushrooms and thick beef tongue, and blini topped with little black spoonfuls of caviar and cream. Cold vodka sweated in a crystal decanter. Goose stew boiled over the hearth.

Marya would have liked to have been polite, but the sight of so much food dazzled her. She fell to the bread and fish like a wild thing.

“Wait, volchitsa,” said Koschei, holding up his hand. “Little savage wolf! Please, sit at my table, brush the snow from your hair. No one will take your meal from you.”

Marya started to apologize, to explain how scarce food had been in Petrograd, how her belly had felt like a clenched fist with nothing inside.

“Comrade, I am so hungry—”

“There is no need for you to speak tonight, Marya Morevna. That time will come, and I will hang on your words like a condemned man. But for now, please, listen to me, and do as I say. I know that is difficult for you—I would not have chosen you if you found it easy to be silent and pliable! But we are going to do an extraordinary thing together. Do you know what it is we are doing? I will tell you, so that later, you cannot say I deceived you. We are taking your will out of your jaw—for that is where the will sits—and pressing it very small between our two hands, like a bit of dough. We are rolling it, and squeezing it, until it gets very small. Small enough to fit into the eye of a needle which is hidden inside an egg, which is hidden inside a hen, which is hidden inside a goose, which is hidden inside a deer. When we are finished you will give your will to me, and I will keep it safe for you. I am very good at this thing. A savant, you might say. You, however—” Koschei poured vodka for her. It trickled into her glass like music. The sides of Marya’s throat stuck together, so dry, so thirsty. “—are a novice. Less than a novice. And like a good novice, you must swallow your pride.” Koschei raised his glass. Marya raised hers more slowly, unsure. Her hand shook a little. She did not like to be ordered. She wanted to say a hundred, a thousand things. She wanted to leap upon him and demand he explain it all: Likho, the domoviye, the birds, her whole life. I have to know, I have to, or else you will just rule me until the end of everything because you know and I do not. But he only smiled at her, encouraging, benevolent, serene as an icon. “To life,” he said, and drank his vodka down in a long swallow.

“Now. Taste the caviar first, I must insist. I know that you would like to save it for last, to savor the delay because it has been so long since you tasted such a thing. But if I may teach you anything, it will be to relish everything, to devour it all—the richest things first, for they are your due. You have read your Pushkin—what is it old Aleksey says about me? There Tsar Koschei wastes away, poring over his pale gold. Tfu! That boy needed a haircut. But oh, Marya, Marousha, I do pore over my treasures! And some of them are glistening sturgeon eggs like piles of onyxes, and some of them are vials of vodka glittering like diamonds, and some of them are beets heavy and red as garnets, and some of them are beautiful girls from Petrograd, sitting in my house, silent as gold, because I asked them to be silent, which is the sweetest silence of all. And in the dark, I do pore over my riches, my impossible bounty.”