Catherynne Valente - Deathless

Marya lifted her chin. “And if I don’t want one?”

“You wanted one this morning. What’s changed? That he had a herd of girlfriends before you? Surely you didn’t think deathless meant dickless. Those are nice girls! Hoarding virginity is a criminal act, like hoarding food. Besides, don’t forget the part where I eat your bones if you fail. Better married than rendered into girl-broth and maiden-cutlets.”

“What’s it look like?” said Naganya, polishing her long walnut legs with viscous oil. She poured the golden stuff onto her skin and giggled as it tickled, trickling into the gunmetal works in the hollows of her knees. She adjusted the bony sighting over her right eye.

“How should I know? I’ve never heard of it.” Masha threw herself disconsolately onto the little velvet chair perched near her cosmetics table. The sun knocked at the windows, turning the red curtains into flames. She never used the cosmetics, though Lebedeva was forever coaxing her to learn the arcane rites of powder and rouge crème. Still, they were there, in small black pots like fell unguents, untouched, but waiting.

Naganya shrugged. “Oh, well, I’ve heard of it. Some hairy little herb that unlocks all locks, supposedly. But that’s not the fun part. The sport of it is, you find raskovnik by locking an old lady up in iron leg shackles and making her walk across a field at the dark of the moon. Wherever her chains fall off—poof! Raskovnik. Never seen the stuff, though. It’s murder to keep fresh—lilies last longer in a vase full of dust.”

“I have to bring it to Chairman Yaga by tomorrow, or she’ll have me in her soup pot. She’s already looking through her cabinets for recipes.” Chairman Yaga had made sure she could not see Koschei, kept him busy and closeted, so that she could do nothing but obey the vicious, ancient witch’s whims. “Do you think we could get Lebedeva to do it? She’s a bit old.”

The vintovnik laughed, the greased metal of her jaw clicking like a gun firing on empty rounds. “I shall tell her you said so next time she pinches my cheeks and fusses with my hair. No good, though: has to be an old human lady. Scarcity drives desire, you know. We haven’t had any proper old grandmothers here in a kingfisher’s year.”

“Then what am I to do? I don’t want to be soup.” And if I cannot get the crown, I cannot get the Yelenas free.

“And you want to marry Koschei. To be worthy.”

Marya Morevna frowned into her chest. “I should go thrash those dogs of his and toss his death off a cliff, that’s what I should do. Nasha, you didn’t see those women! He ought to be scrambling to prove he’s worthy of me !”

Nasha squirmed. Her great dark eyes creased with worry. “But I did see them. I did. When they lived in this room. When they met Chairman Yaga. And I met the other men, too.”

“What other men?”

“The Ivans. Wherever there is a Yelena or a Vasilisa, there is an Ivan. Surely Babushka told you. About the bogatyrs? They aren’t too bright, usually, but bless me if they aren’t a handsome species. They’re always the youngest of three sons. They’re always the honest type, dumb as toenails but big in the trousers. And the Yelenas, they always fall in love and run off. I remember one Ivan came with a wolf, a huge grey monster of a beast. The wolf did all the work, tricking Koschei into telling them where his death was, telling Ivan what to say so that Yelena the Bright would swoon in her seat for him, even though he was a youngest son with no inheritance and mud under his nails. The two of them rode off astride the wolf when it was all said and done. They left Koschei bleeding in the snow. When they’d safely gone, he picked himself up and washed the blood off. He stood watching the road for a long time, like he thought she might come back. But what can you do? Gone means gone. He didn’t come out of the Chernosvyat for weeks. Chairman Yaga won’t even say the name Ivan anymore, she hates them so. If she meets one on the street—snick, snick! She eats him up on the spot, and belches like a grain commissioner, so everyone will know she isn’t sorry.”

“You knew them? You slept curled up with them and you know where they are? But you don’t try to rescue them?”

Naganya scowled. “Chyerti don’t go in for rescuing. If you eat rotten fish, you’re bound to get sick. If you’re a faithless spittoon of a woman, you end up in the factory. It’s only common sense. And besides, people being miserable is natural. Just like it’s natural for an imp to enjoy them being miserable. As a system, it works terrifically well.”

Marya picked at her nails. She knew the answer before she said it. “And if I end up there, you won’t come for me, either?”

Naganya the vintovnik looked away, her oily hair falling into her face.

“Well,” said Marya softly. “If I ever meet a man named Ivan I shall eat his heart before he can wish me a good morning.”

Nasha grinned, eager to skate over such uncomfortable subjects. “That’s on account of how you’re one of us, Mashenka! Spleen and sleeping, marrow and mind. Now, there’s raskovnik to dig up, and not much time.”

“If we need a human, how can we ever get back to a city without Volchya-Yagoda and an armful of weeks to spare?”

“There’s border places. Places where the birches are thinner than paper, and you can tear through. Places where the Tsar of Life and the Tsar of Death fought so hard that their territories lie crushed right up to each other, on either side of a pebble, in the leaves and root of a turnip, on a cat’s tail and his tongue.”

“I should try to see him again, before we go. Baba Yaga can’t keep me out if he hears my voice. Surely he will wrap me up in his arms and tell me—”

“Don’t, Masha.” Naganya fidgeted. “The war is going badly.”

“The war is always going badly.”

Marya and Naganya took a young horse, green and fleet and hungry, and trotted down Skorohodnaya Road in the evening light, the vintovnik tucked in front of Marya herself, clutching the saddle horn with her wooden hands. Twilight drifted lazily, taking its time bringing down a violet-pink haze. The last rays of sun winked on their stallion’s ears.

“I make horses nervous,” Naganya fretted. The safety in her cheek cocked and uncocked sharply, echoing down the road. “Surely this one will rear and drop me! And then roll over on top of us both!”

“I chose a young one, who has not yet heard that you sometimes shoot people. It will be all right.” The horse snorted; snow bleated from his nose.

Naganya twisted in her seat as the road dwindled behind them and the wood rose up, dark and excited, icy and rustling. She grabbed her friend by the chin. “Marya, listen like your ears are bottomless! Border places are dangerous. Very disreputable things live there. You must be careful or Koschei will smelt me for losing you. If you see anyone you know, or someone with a silver star on their breast, you mustn’t talk to them, not even to curse them or ask their names. You mustn’t get off the horse. If your foot touches the ground, I won’t be able to help you. Even the enemy’s pebbles bite and are fierce. I shall find the old lady for you. I shall push her across the field.”

“Isn’t that cheating?”

“ Tfu! She expects you to cheat! Masha, whom I love: These tasks do not test your strength or your wiliness; they test your ability to cheat, which is the truest measure of a devil. They are designed to be impossible if you play fair. What should you do instead? Walk into no-man’s-land unprotected and be lost forever?”

“Is that what the others did? Did you tell the Yelenas these things?”