Catherynne Valente - Deathless

Marya shut her eyes. She thought of a hut in a dark wood; a heavy table. “Why are you telling me this?”

Ivan Nikolayevich leaned his head against her hair. “What I am saying is, in this graveyard, I would like to feed you, so that you will not have holes in you like bullets. Sit at my table, Marya Morevna. Let me be a mother to you. Be fat. Be alive.”

And Marya turned. She saw a young man, but not so young, with a broad, sun-reddened face and dark gold hair, like a coin that has often changed hands. His eyes were tea-colored and crinkled at the edges, and this made them look kind. She clenched her jaw to show him that she was not kind, would never be.

Around his arm he wore a red band, an old scarf, knotted like a ludicrous sort of knight’s favor. Marya touched it with her fingertips gently. She thought for a moment it might go up in flames. That it might vanish rather than allow her touch. A person, but not of the People. But it stayed soft and bright in her hand.

“You are so hard, Marya Morevna. You could cut me. Why are you so hard?”

“Because I joined the army and all my friends died.”

And then she burst into tears, her first tears since that awful night-wedding. She rested, just for a moment, her burning forehead against the chest of Ivan Nikolayevich.

During the Great War, the Tsar of Death came closest to victory. His great strength has always been in numbers, and in patience. Death can always afford to wait.

It was in those lightless years that the Tsaritsa of Salt was killed.

In the Land of Death, Viy grew rich. The treasuries of death filled up with burnt grain and apples, with starved cattle and blighted potatoes. The cafes of the dead filled up with patrons drinking spilled coffee and reading banned books. Souls were relieved to come to Viy’s country, for they were not shot at there, nor did they get dysentery, nor did any of their friends suffer. Viy made his country as like the living world as he could, even to building film houses where silvery images of the war showed, so that the dead might be grateful and not wish to return to life. For this is the constant sorrow of the dead, that though they drink and eat and dream much as they did before, they know they are dead, and yearn desperately to live again, to feel blood inside them once more, to remember who they were. For the memory of the dead is short, and thought by thought they lose all sense of their former lives until they drift from place to place as shades, their eyes hollow. After a time, they believe they are alive again.

So it was that Viy sent his chief boyars among his people to announce that if any among them would serve in his army, he would send them home when their terms of service ended. Home, to Life, to hearth and blood and labor. He lied, and they knew he lied, but the dead can live for a long while on such a diet. No longer would the Tsar of Death be content to wither corn on the stalk or slowly rot men with infections. He would attack the source of all he hated, the Tsar of Life. After all, why should he dine on the ashes of living feasts? Why should he be held in less esteem than his brother? Why shouldn’t the Empire of Death surpass any earthly power?

And they tore the streets of Buyan piece from piece. The territory of Death advanced one inch each day; the territory of Life retreated. But the next day the territory of Life would advance, and Death retreat. While Viy’s ranks filled up with human dead from the French front and the German lowlands, he would not lie still. To walk down Skorohodnaya Road was a heedless hurtling through patches of dark and light. That cobblestone might belong to the enemy, and to touch it with one toe called their dogs. Soon Buyan became a country of dancers, leaping and turning and crawling to remain in their own country and not slip, putting just a fingernail, just a strand of hair, into Viy’s territory.

In those days the Tsaritsa of Salt called herself neutral. She would not take part. She worried and wept over the cities of the human world, where she made her home and took in morality plays and entertained pigeons in her pale parlor. But even there the Country of Death showed through in patches: Men and women would fall dead in the streets, having sunk their foot, all unknowing, into that invisible and depthless world. The Tsaritsa of Salt defended the cities as best she could, laying the endless salt of her body over the snowy holes where Death bled through. Each time she saw an old grandmother tottering, her eyes rolling back in her head, the Tsaritsa of Salt threw herself toward the babushka to catch her, give her salted bread, and set her aright. Soon the Tsar of Death hated her more even than the Tsar of Life and sent his chief boyars, all of who had mouths like crocodiles and wings hung with jangling knives, to cut her to pieces and scatter the pieces throughout Russia, so that she would never repair.

It is not easy to kill a Tsaritsa. But Viy was bold, and his boyars hewed her arm from leg from neck, and threw down her salt-crystal kokoshnik from a great height, so that it shattered. Without her, the cities began to starve and joined Viy in great sheaves, not only souls but opera houses shelled to dust, and apartments exploded one unit from the next, and factories obliterated by gasoline.

It is said that Viy married the left arm of the Tsaritsa of Salt to finally silence her completely, and that it rests, fingers rigid with grief and rage, on a throne of knucklebones in the heart of the Country of Death.

“Do you understand?” Marya looked up from Likho’s black book and stared intently at Ivan, searching for signs of disbelief. If he didn’t believe her, then she would not love him. Crazy girl. You’re a crazy girl. Why would you say things like that? Silently, she willed him not to believe her, to make this easier.

“Koschei is the Tsar of Life and you are married to him. And that’s why you lead his armies.”

“Yes, but it’s the part about the sinkholes you ought to listen to. If I’m going to take you home you must listen to me, and do exactly as I say.”

Ivan kissed her instead. Oh, thought Marya, I will not survive this. Why do men come knocking at my door? Why do they take their hats off and look at me with big deer eyes and bare their necks? If they stayed home and gave their kitchen tables such stares, I might have a little peace.

“We have to travel through Viy’s country to get back to Buyan. It is not far, but you must step just as I step, and breathe just as I breathe, and speak only as I speak. Everything is contested ground now. If you picked up a single leaf in this forest, it would have a dead side and a living side. You may see people you once loved, once knew. You cannot speak to them, or they will pull you close and never let go. You cannot even look at them. If they wear a splash of silver on their chests, you must turn your face away.”

“What about my camp? They will worry about me. I will be classified as missing, or dead.”

Marya gave him a withering look. She could not care about his little camp. Leningrad was far enough away. The war would not have reached there yet. It would be beautiful there; the lime trees would be just flowering. Violinists would play something sweet and nostalgic in a cafe Marya would just barely remember. She could stop. Just stop. And sleep. Get me away from this war, human. Why are you being so slow about it? “You know, when I was in your position, Koschei said ‘get your things and come with me.’ And I didn’t make such a fuss about it.”

Ivan blanched a little. He coughed. “Well, Marya, when someone says that to you these days, it’s not so nice. Usually … usually it means ‘you’re coming to my camp.’”