by E. P. Clark
“There will be other men, Tsarinovna,” Yuliya told her. “There always are.”
“I know,” said Dasha. “But you can’t trade one life for another. You can’t trade one future for another. We could have done something great, but we didn’t. So now we must find some other way.”
“Well, Tsarinovna,” Yuliya gave her a faint smile, “let that way be through the bathhouse. We none of us are very clean, you least of all. Let’s go see if they’ve gotten it heated yet, and if we can wash all that…grime off you.”
Dasha allowed Yuliya to pull her to her feet, and lead her—avoiding all sight of the fallen bodies—towards a large bathhouse that, it turned out, was used by the entire village, whose residents probably could have fit inside it in a pinch. It was already hot and filled with steam, with buckets of cool water in the antechamber and a pier leading out to a pond. The pond looked muddy and unpleasantly warm, so Dasha settled for sluicing herself down with the buckets. For a moment she had the heart-tearing thought that she was washing his blood off of her, and with it every last trace of him and their promised future, but, gritting her teeth, she poured another bucket over herself, and then the blood was gone, gone forever, just like the rest of him, and she went into the main chamber of the bathhouse and lay down in the steam.
She thought Yuliya or Vladya or Svetochka or Susanna might join her but, to her relief, they didn’t. Everyone must be leaving her alone on purpose, or perhaps they didn’t want to have anything to do with her. She breathed in the steam, trying to convince herself that she was breathing in healing as she did so. But she remained unconvinced. She closed her eyes, and then opened them, certain that something was watching her. She sat up, looking around for a domovaya.
“I know you’re there,” she called out. “I can sense you.”
A tiny domovaya, no bigger than a cat, came creeping out of the shadows. It was hard to tell with them, but Dasha was fairly sure she had never seen her before.
“Forgive me, Tsarinovna,” she said.
“What’s to forgive?” Dasha asked. “You’ve never done anything to me. You didn’t have anything to do with any of that back there. Unless you did?”
The domovaya shook her head. “That was all the actions of humans, Tsarinovna,” she said. “Your own pride and foolishness.”
“Well,” said Dasha. “We certainly have more than enough of that.”
The domovaya smiled at her. “But I am sorry for your sorrow, Tsarinovna,” she said. “And we are all sorry for the future you lost, the one that only you could see. We did not see it. We saw nothing but our own anger, our own desire for safety and vengeance. We should have known better, but we didn’t. In some ways we are no better than the world of women, for all our long lives and our wisdom. You were the one who saw how to turn our sorrow into something better.”
“Anyone could have seen it,” Dasha said. “It was just one possible future amongst many.”
The domovaya shook her head. “Don’t you see, Tsarinovna?” she said. “You see the futures you can make possible. You see the futures you deserve.”
“That’s not very heartening,” said Dasha. “Seeing as how often I see misery and disaster.”
“Yes, but not so much any more, do you, Tsarinovna?”
Dasha thought about that. “Not so much any more,” she agreed.
“Because you are growing in your gift, Tsarinovna, you are coming into it, learning to control it!”
“No,” said Dasha. “I don’t think anyone can control it. I’m learning to have faith in it, is all. Not that it did me much good. Not that it’s much good. If I had been given the gift of healing instead…”
“But you weren’t, Tsarinovna,” the domovaya interrupted her. “And you never will be. You were given different gifts, and you must have faith in them, just as you said. And if you do, perhaps you will effect a healing of a different kind.”
“I know,” said Dasha. “But right now I wish I had the ability to stanch the flow of blood and knit torn flesh together. If…”
“If, if, if. You were not the one at fault, and you did all you could to stop it.”
“It wasn’t enough!”
“Sometimes all you can do is not enough, but it is still all you can do, Tsarinovna. Sometimes you will fail, no matter how hard you try. Failure is a part of life, Tsarinovna, just as death is. Show me the person who has never failed, who has never suffered, who has never lost something they thought they couldn’t bear to lose, and I’ll show you a person who has never lived. The only people who are so blessed are babes who die before they draw their first breath. The rest of us are not so lucky. Now lie down and rest, and let us deal with the others.”
“What others?” Dasha asked. “What do you mean, ‘deal with’?”
“The other raiders, the ones who ran off into the woods,” said the domovaya. She spoke confidently, but her tiny body shifted this way and that. “The others are going after them,” she said, and then looked as if she wished she hadn’t said it.
“Yes, but…”
“Don’t worry about it, Tsarinovna,” the domovaya told her. “You’re safe. Lie there and rest, and let the steam cleanse you of your troubles.” She slipped away into the shadows before Dasha could stop her.
Dasha did lie back on the bench, but she couldn’t rest. What were the others doing? What had the domovaya meant, and why had she looked so uncomfortable? What did she know that Dasha didn’t? Dasha closed her eyes, hoping a vision would come to her.
At first the only thing she saw was the bright colors of the insides of her eyelids. She could feel the wooden bench digging into her shoulderblades, and hear the wind making little waves lap against the pier leading out into the pond. The wind must be picking up…was a storm coming? It had been so bright and sunny—bizarrely, wrongly so—earlier. But now clouds were massing on the horizon, blocking out the sun that would shine all day and all night. There would be a storm soon. The raiders, the ones who had escaped or who had never gone on the raid in the first place, were fleeing as fast as they could through the woods, one eye cocked behind them and the other turned up at the sky, where they believed their gods lived and cast thunder and lightning down upon them. And now, they thought, their gods were angry with them, and were threatening to punish them with a storm. If their pursuers didn’t get them first. Both sides were tired, but the raiders were frightened, while those coming after them were burning with a righteous thirst for vengeance, a vengeance the raiders thought they might have earned…was there no place they could rest? Driven out of their own homes by foreigners, only to end up in this unwelcoming foreign land, with strange spirits and curse trees on every side…they stumbled into a hollow filled with a hidden pocket of bog and came to an unwilling halt. Desperate eyes looked around, searching for an avenue of escape, but banks that they could have sworn hadn’t been there a moment ago were high on every side, hemming them in.
A mist was coming down out of the trees—or was it rising from the bog into which they were slowly sinking? It coalesced into a figure—the figure of a girl. She stretched out her ephemeral hands to the raider nearest her, and latched onto him. He fought, first swatting at her as if she were a mosquito, then striking at her as if at an opponent, before finally sinking to the ground. When the girl let go of him, she was no longer misty and translucent, but solid and full of color, while he was white and still as death. The others stared, frozen in a horror that had held them petrified for the instant it had taken the attack to happen.
Now, now, said a voice, that seemed to come directly into their heads. Don’t kill them all, water-maiden. Leave some for the rest of us. We have plans for them.
The now-solid water-maiden tossed her now-golden hair proudly, but slipped back into the trees and disappeared, treading with inhuman silence through the fir and pine needles beneath her. Or perhaps her light footsteps were muffled by the heavy movement the raiders could hear coming at them through the trees. But from which direction? They tried to f
lee in one direction, only to be overcome with the certainty that the steps were coming from there. When they tried to flee in the other direction, they could hear something coming towards them from there as well. They found themselves standing back-to-back in the middle of the hollow, panting and covered in mud and dirty water, their feet trapped in the mucky bottom of the bog, which was oozing with inexorable slowness over their ankles and up their calves.
A crack of thunder sounded overhead. Maybe that was what made the trees shake. Or maybe it was the thing—things?—coming towards them. Something heavy was moving through the trees, huffing as it went.
“Bjorn!” screamed one of the raiders.
A moment later a huge head peered at them through the firs, followed by an even huger body. It was the bear that Dasha had rescued. But how? He was a spirit and could move more quickly than an ordinary bear, that was how. He opened his mouth and roared. The raiders huddled together, muttering “Bjorn, bjorn!” Some of them appeared to be praying. Which did not stop the bear from moving, with threatening leisure, towards them, till he suddenly jumped into the middle of the bog with them. The raiders screamed as one man. Some of them raised their weapons, only to watch them fall from nerveless fingers. More bears were gathering around the edge of the hollow. All of them had the spirit of the gods within them.
The first man to try to break away to safety was sent flying with a swipe of the bear’s paw. The others froze, watching as he lay there, then slowly rose. When he blinked his eyes open at them, they glowed gold. He lifted up his hands, and watched them transform into paws, hair running up his arms and taking over his body, until he, too, was a bear.
There was silence in the hollow. No one so much as breathed. Even the mosquitoes were too afraid to whine.
“There they are!”
It was Ratibor’s voice, followed by Ratibor’s body running up to the edge of the hollow, only to slide to a halt, clutching at a tree branch to stop himself, as he saw the bears. He opened his mouth to utter a warning, but before he could get it out, the bear nearest him cuffed him so hard with her forepaw that he went flying over the edge of the bank and into the bog, landing face-down with a splash. When he pulled himself to his knees, his eyes were glowing gold, and hair was bristling up his forearms. He opened his mouth to scream, but by the time the sound came out, it was a roar, and his mouth was a toothy snout.
“What..?!” It was the others, Oleg and Aunty Olga and Yaromir and Denisik and Vladya and Svetochka and others as well, the soldiers Vladya had brought with her. They gaped and flailed on the edge of the hollow, watching helplessly as first one raider, then another and another, was transformed into a bear. Before they could think to do anything, the hollow was filled with golden-eyed bears, who all turned as one and, leaping up the bank and out of the hollow, fled without a backwards glance.
“Well,” said Oleg after a while. “I suppose we don’t have to worry about them any more, at least.”
“They took Ratya!” shouted Yaromir.
“Some would call it justice,” Oleg told him. He grinned. “I told him he’d end up joining the Brotherhood of the Forest, one of these days. Looks like I was right.”
“We can’t let them do this!”
“Then go after them and stop them,” Oleg told him.
“I can’t…! You have to help me!”
“Fine.” Oleg huffed, sounding very bear-like himself. “I’ll help you. Go. Go, and I won’t stop you. Go!” He made shooing motions. “That’s my help. I’m letting you go. Go, and don’t come back! Go!”
Yaromir looked like he wanted to protest or argue, but then he shut his mouth and fled, although in the opposite direction from the one the bears had taken.
“Well,” said Oleg. “That’s him out of our hair, at least. And the others, as well. A good day’s work, if you ask me. Come on. Let’s go back.”
He turned and took a step back the way he had come. Thunder suddenly split the sky, so loud everyone staggered, and a cold wind gusted, knocking him back against a tree.
Not so fast, Oleg Svetoslavovich, it said.
Oleg stopped and looked around. “Has it come to this, then?” he demanded of the air. “Have you come to take me back, as you said you would? Or send me away for good? Couldn’t you…” He faltered. “Couldn’t you wait just a little while longer? Long enough for me to get them to safety?”
It is not you we come for, Oleg Svetoslavovich, said the cold wind.
“Your servants have already taken care of our enemies.”
Not all of them.
“There are more of them out there, yes, but…”
Not those enemies. The ones you harbor within you.
Oleg looked around. “There aren’t any…”
The one who caused so much harm. The one who subverted our chance. The one who struck a knife in the back of our chosen daughter.
“But…”
That one, said the cold wind, and swirled around Svetochka.
***
Dasha sat up with a gasp, cracking her head against the bathhouse wall. The steam was almost gone.
“Where are you?!” she shouted. “Domovaya! Where are you?! I know you’re there! I know you’re there! Come out and show yourself!”
The tiny domovaya came edging out of the shadows.
“Take me,” Dasha commanded her, pulling on her dirty clothes. “Take me to them immediately. I know you can do it! Take me to them immediately, and all will be quits between us!”
“You do not want this, Tsarinovna,” the domovaya said quietly. “You do not want what it will bring. Better to stand back and let things take their course. Better to let things work out as they must.”
“I don’t care! Bring me to them now!”
“As you will, Tsarinovna,” said the domovaya, her tiny face resigned, like a dog about to be punished for something she hadn’t done. She put her tiny hand in Dasha’s. A heartbeat later, they had slipped into the shadows and disappeared.
Chapter Thirty-Four
They came out in the shadow of a huge spruce tree, a dozen paces behind where the others now stood. As soon as they stepped out of the tree’s shelter, the chill wind struck Dasha, raising a headache like one from a winter’s blast.
“Dasha!” cried Svetochka, catching sight of her out of the corner of her eye. “How did you get here? What are you doing here?”
“I came for you,” Dasha told her. “Whatever you’re going to do,” she told the cold wind, “don’t do it.”
It is not for you to command us, little girl, said the cold wind. We will take what is ours. It whirled and gusted, and then went still. But only for an instant, and then, seemingly out of nowhere, it hit Svetochka with such force that she was lifted off her feet, coming down onto her back with a resounding thump.
“What?!” shouted Oleg. “What? Why? Why her?”
Why do you think, Oleg Svetoslavovich?
“She’s never done anything!”
No? Tell him, little Tsarinovna. Tell him what she did to you, to your future, to all our futures.
“She…you don’t mean to say you care about that…”
But of course we care, little Tsarinovna. Your future is our future too. Your future is Zem’’s future. Our land. Our lives. The great Life that is our business and our concern. What you saw, little Tsarinovna, that future that she ended with one thrust of her—your—sword, that could have preserved so many things, saved so many things.
“Or not!” Dasha cried out. “I see it now! Such success, such good fortune, could have made us more greedy, more selfish, set us even farther apart from our sisters of the land and skies and waters. The Westerners could have made us more like them, instead of becoming more like us. All those gains would have been balanced against losses, losses that perhaps we wouldn’t be able to bear.”
Or not, little Tsarinovna. It would have been good to be able to find out. But now you never will. And all because of her.
“Even so! She is your creature, yo
ur creation, just like I am! You made her—you had her made—for a reason, just as you did me! Maybe this is what she was made for, even if you, her makers, can’t see it yourselves. And she doesn’t deserve to be punished for this! She’s had enough troubles already!”
You don’t give people what they deserve, said the cold wind. You give them what they need.
“And what does she need, according to you?” Dasha demanded.
To be our servant. As she was fated to be. She was born to be a servant, to serve the purposes of others, little Tsarinovna, and now she will fulfill that fate. She will retire from the world of women and join us in the deep woods, serving those tasks we see fit to give her.
“That’s not right!” cried Dasha.
It seems right to us, said the cold wind. It would be…what do you humans call it? Justice. It would be justice. Is that not what you wanted, little human? Justice. One life for another. It would even be merciful, as she would not die, unlike the person whose life she took. And it would be prudent as well. Do you think she will be satisfied with this one little taste of killing? There is a great rage inside of her, as you know all too well. She would kill many others if she could, and perhaps will, if we do not deal with her now.
“But…” said Dasha, and then could find no more words. She could see that what the cold wind said was true, that it would be justice, as close to justice as one could get. The part of her that was still hurting and would be for a long time yet even agreed with what they were saying. And yet…and yet…and yet it was unjust. Wrong. Or maybe justice was wrong and could never be right.