Catherynne Valente - Deathless

“So you’re her,” growled the old woman, grinning with her mouth full. She had all her teeth, and they were sharp, leonine, yellow.

“I’m not sure what you mean,” said Marya Morevna softly. The old woman crackled with potency; Marya’s stomach felt it like a blow. The crone tapped the table with the goose’s leg bone.

“Kid, let’s skip this pantomime where you pretend you’re not rutting with my brother up in that gauche tower of his—come off it! Does everything have to be black? He’s an affected old bull, I’ll tell you that for free. Anyway, I have no patience for innocent girls, unless they have apples in their mouths and are on speaking terms with my soup pot.”

Marya tried to smile politely, as though they were having a pleasant conversation about the weather. But she gripped her teacup so tight the handle left red moon-shapes in her palms. Her face flushed and the old woman rolled her jaundiced eyes.

“Oh, quit that, Yelena! Blushing is for virgins and Christians!”

“My name is not Yelena.”

The old woman paused and crooked one eyebrow, whose scraggly hairs had grown so long she’d braided them neatly along her brow bone. Her voice changed timbre, rising to an interested tenor. “Forgive me. I just assumed. My brother has a”—she stirred her tea with the fatty end of the goose bone—“ fetish for girls named Yelena, you see. Almost a monomania. Occasionally, a Vasilisa will sneak in there, just to keep things spiced. So it’s an easy mistake. What is your name, my child?”

“Marya Morevna. And there aren’t any others. There have never been.”

The crone tossed her goose bone over one shoulder. The waiter, still silent and dutiful behind her, caught it with a deft hand. She leaned over the table, her fur coat sloshing into the vodka, and plunked her face down in her hands.

“Well, isn’t that just fascinating, ” she breathed. “The devil take lunch! Let your old baba take you on an … expedition. It’ll be good for you! Morally fortifying, like having a good stare at a graveyard. A body needs a good memento mori to flush out the humors.”

The crone seized Marya Morevna by the arm and shoved her out of the restaurant. She paid for nothing.

Marya was no fool. She could add two and two and two and come up with six—which is to say, add old grandmother and chicken legs and terrified waitstaff and come up with Baba Yaga. No magician outranked Baba Yaga. Her seat at the magicians’ cafe was sacrosanct, to say the least.

Outside, snow floated down a lacy path, so thick it obscured even the Chernosvyat, hunched dark and impregnable on the hill. Baba Yaga gave a bleating cry and leapt up into the air, her skinny legs scissoring beneath her. She landed hard on Marya’s shoulders, digging her heels into the girl’s armpits.

“Mush, girl! Mush!” she yelped. “A wife must be a good mount, eh?”

Marya’s knees trembled, but when she felt the snap of a goat-hide whip on her back, she stumbled ahead, running through the snow. Baba Yaga’s car snorted to life and hopped along behind her, nipping at her heels with its front bumper.

“That way, not-Yelena!” Baba Yaga hollered into the storm. Marya groaned like an old nag, and ran.

Marya’s mouth dripped saliva like an overworked horse. She rounded the snow-swept corner into a half-sheltered alley, her breathing shallow, rough, and fast. Baba Yaga hauled on her hair to stop her at the threshold of the door and vaulted off. Marya gasped with relief, the hot weight finally vanished from her back. She bent over, her heart wheezing, sweat pouring off of her, crawling in her scalp. A horse-bone door cut into the side of a blood-brown boar-skin building. Rubbish and smashed glass carpeted the thin street. The car honked happily, shuffling its chicken legs.

“In you go, and in I go,” chuffed Baba Yaga, her breath fogging. “And stay close—I want to see if you cry.”

They shouldered through the horse-femur door together. It towered over them both. Within, a yawning factory floor opened up below an iron balcony. They peered over the railing, the screws and bolts groaning with the leaden weight of Baba Yaga. Below, dozens upon dozens of girls worked away at looms the size of army trucks, their fingers flashing in and out of strands of linen, their shuttles racing their hands. Most of the women were blond, their hair braided in a tidy crown around their heads. Only a few dark ones, like Marya, dotted the sea of pale gold. They wore identical blackberry-colored uniforms. The old woman beamed like a holiday morning.

“Every one of those pretty little things is named Yelena. Oh—I’m sorry. That one is Vasilisa. And that one. And that plump one in the corner … and the tall one with her dolly still in her pocket. How sweet.”

Marya wiped her sodden brow. Her calves burned thickly. “What are they doing?” she panted.

“Oh, this is a wartime facility. Didn’t you know? Doesn’t your lover tell you just everything ? They’re weaving armies. Noon and midnight, and no days off for good behavior. See? There, one is coming off the line just now.”

Directly below them, one of the looms and one of the Yelenas were finishing off the helmet on a soldier. He was as flat as paper, but perfect, his uniform crisp, his eyes serenely shut, his rifle at the ready. The shuttle scooted back and forth, weaving in the last of his helmet’s spike. When it was done, the Yelena opened up the leg of his trousers and blew hard into it, first the right, then the left. The soldier inflated, his nose popping into shape, muscles plumping in his thighs. He sat up stiffly and, with much creaking of new stitches, marched to the rear of the room, where the blocking baths awaited.

“They’re not alive, see,” explained Baba Yaga. “Well, not properly alive. Not alive like a frog or my car. It’s all so Viy can’t pull his old trick of killing our folk like he’s getting paid per pint, then turning around and lining them up in his own formations. When you stab one of these poor bastards, they just unravel. Good trick, yes? Can’t say my brother’s not clever.”

“Comrade Yaga—”

Baba Yaga whirled on her, the tails of her fur coat whipping around. “Don’t you call me comrade, little girl. We aren’t equals and we aren’t friends. Chairman Yaga. That comrade nonsense is just a hook by which the low pull down the high. And then what do you get? Everyone rolling around in the same shit, like pigs.”

Marya fought to keep her voice strong and deep. She would not show fear in front of this wolf of a woman. “Chairman Yaga. Why did you bring me here?”

Baba Yaga grinned, showing all her teeth. Her black fur coat had heads on it, Marya suddenly noticed, three of them—slit-eyed minks, their muzzles frozen in a triplicate of snarling. “To show you your future, Comrade Morevna! Koschei, my insatiable brother, abducted all those girls—from Moscow, from Petrograd, from Novgorod, from Minsk. Spirited them from their cozy little homes, barreled them through the snow, telling them what to eat, how to kiss, when to speak, bathing them when they fell sick, just so they’d love him and need him—oh, my brother does yearn to be needed! He needs so much himself, you see. And then, well, what always happens with husbands? A few of them he got bored of; some of them betrayed him, stealing his death or running off with preverbal bogatyrs with necks like hams. And then they steal his death. Oh, the vixens! They were shameless. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. My brother always ends up dead in the end. Oh, the funerals I’ve had to attend! And flowers and gifts for each of them! I’m half-bankrupt with his theatrics. It never takes, though. That’s what deathless means. It’s only his death that dies. Koschei goes on and on. None of those milk-assed girls down there understood it, even though he practically wears a letter of intent on his chest. They snatch up his death and break it open and stomp on it like the curs they are, but what can you do? A dog is a dog. She only knows how to bite and eat. But most of them, Marya—my, what a black, soft name! I could lie in it all day—most of them couldn’t get by me to begin with. Family is a thorny, vicious business, and Koschei can’t marry without my say-so. Those stupid ox-wives weren’t fit to sweep my floor! They couldn’t even fire an arrow through the eye of a needle! What good is a wife who can’t, I ask you? I’ve done him a thousand favors.” Baba Yaga reached into her coat and pulled out a cigarillo. She chomped on its end and spat, rolling it over between her lips. “So there they sit. They don’t get any older—the elderly make terrible workers, I ought to know. Never like to do half a day’s work when I can do none, myself. And they don’t die. That Yelena there—with the mole on her neck!—she’s been here, oh, since the days of Knyaz Oleg. Lenochka!” Chairman Yaga called down, and blew the seamstress a smoky kiss. The girl did not look up from the rifle she wove. “I’m sure we’ve got room in here for you somewhere, Marya! After all, what kind of babushka would I be if I left even one of my babies out in the cold?”