Deathless

by Catherynne Valente

  “Come down,” the ballerina whispered in her frigid ear. “I will teach you to dance so perfectly as to stop a hundred hearts with every step.”

  Marya moaned beneath the shades. She tried to think, to fill her heart with living, hot things, to remember that she was alive and not sunk in the earth under the weight of all these ghosts.

  “Tea,” she whispered faintly. “Raspberry jam still in the pot, ovens, soup with dill, pickle broth.” The shades recoiled, their teeth reflecting moonlight, silver and flat. Marya struggled to lift her head. “Peppers on my plate and running in the cold and dumplings boiling in an iron pot and Lebedeva’s powders and Zemya’s curse words and gusli playing as fast as fingers can pluck!” she continued, her voice stronger, lower, almost growling. The ghosts glowered resentfully at her.

  Svetlana Tikhonovna grimaced.

  “You were always a vicious child,” she spat.

  “A firebird in my net! A rifle in my fist! Mustard plasters and birch switches and blini crisping in my pan!” she screamed, and the citizens of Viy’s country threw up their hands, wandering back into the forest.

  Marya shakily pulled herself back onto the young horse, who, to his credit, had not spooked or run, but munched on weeds buried in the snow and thought nothing of the whole business. Naganya stood on the other side of his barrel flank, squinting up at Marya.

  “Don’t be too pleased with yourself,” she said. “Imagine! You could have just listened to me in the first place—how novel that would have been! A first, in the annals of Buyan!”

  Naganya held up her dark hand. In her palm was a flower, its blazing orange petals as thick as cow tongues, covered with bristling white fur, its leaves sharp and shredded, its stem studded with wicked thorns.

  “Remember this when you are queen,” said the vintovnik solemnly. “That I went into the dark for you, and scared an old woman half to death.”

  * * *

  Chairman Yaga sat at her monumental desk in the rear of the magicians’ cafe, its wood black and glossy as enamel. She turned over the raskovnik in her hands, peering at it with a jeweler’s glass.

  “Well, it’s a runt,” she conceded.

  “You didn’t ask for a bouquet,” Marya snapped. Dark circles rimmed her eyes; her fingers had gone pale and bloodless. Every inch of her ached, worn out, run down, exhausted.

  “True, true. I’ll remember that, for the next girl.”

  Marya said nothing, staring straight ahead, but her cheeks burned.

  “What have we said about blushing, devotchka?” Baba Yaga pinched her thick nose. “Goats and gangrene, girl, I can’t stand the smell of your youth!”

  “Wait a while. It’ll go away.”

  “Oh ho! Now we’re sniping at our betters, are we? Listen, soon-to-be-soup. In marriage, the highest virtue is humility. If you’re humble, they’ll never see you coming!” Baba Yaga slapped the table to emphasize her point. As if by coincidence her fingers found a glass of vodka there, and she knocked it back in a gulp. “Whenever I get married, I always wear a caul ripped off of twin calves. Makes me young, makes me beautiful like a dollop of butter, makes me blush and tug my braids and pray in churches and bow down, humble as manure. The boys can’t resist it! They come panting with their cocks on a silk leash, their balls painted gold for my pleasure. I give them a night on my knees, just like they like, sweet and obedient and dumb as a thumbnail, confused by their mysterious bodies, oh my, so much stronger than mine! Then they wake up and—ha! There is Baba Yaga in their beds, extra warts, teeth like spikes, and the soup pot already red on the hearth. It’s a good trick. You should see their faces!”

  “I’m not like that.”

  “We’ll see. There is no such thing as a good wife or a good husband. Only ones who bide their time.”

  11

  White Gold, Black Gold

  “You see why I need you,” said Marya Morevna, sitting down on the forest moss next to Zemlehyed, who, for his part, seemed uninterested, burrowing his attention instead in a crown of violets and plump rosehips he had braided together. He held out his thumb and squinted at it, his stony tongue sticking out of his mouth with the ferocity of his concentration. Finally, he threaded three scarlet nightshade mushrooms into the crown and squinted at it again.

  “Don’t,” he said brusquely.

  “Zmey Gorinich,” she repeated. “That’s a dragon. Quite a step up from shrubbery. I haven’t the first idea how to fight a dragon, let alone get his treasure to Chairman Yaga while I stay Marya Morevna, daughter of twelve mothers, and not Roasted, daughter of Scorched. She wants his white gold and his black gold—and to be honest, I want nothing. I want to sleep.”

  “Snipe him,” gruffed Zemlehyed. “Rat-a-tat, between his eyes. Chew dragon-steak, be happy. Bother Naganya.” The leshy peeled a strip of birch bark from a nearby tree and twined it deftly through the violets—more deftly than Marya ever thought his thick, bark-covered hands could manage.

  “Are you angry with me, Zemya?”

  The leshy cracked an acorn between his granite teeth and spat the cap into the grass.

  Marya tried again. “Naganya isn’t half strong enough to wrestle a dragon, and shooting him seems convenient, except that killing such a beast would hand Viy an aerial bombing platform. With three heads.”

  “Strong enough. She slumbers near to you.”

  Marya looked down at the moss. Ants wandered toward some distant battle or wheat-seed orgy. Leshiyi were so delicate in their etiquette. She doubted he cared who slept in her bed—leshiyi mated by cross-pollination. He cared, she guessed, because he believed that the strongest of them should guard Marya in her sleep, and Marya had chosen Naganya because she held the—clearly mistaken—belief that the vintovnik could beat him, if it came to fists and grappling. Zemlehyed pouted and tucked a sprig of bright rowan berries into the crown.

  “Naganya’s mouth is strong,” Marya said carefully. “But her arm is young. Yours is old, and hard, and I choose it.” Besides, grappling was never Naganya’s style.

  Zemlehyed smiled broadly. His rocky eyes prickled moisture like raindrops.

  “Morevna chooses!” he beamed. “And chooses best. Zemlehyed knows where Zmey Gorinich nests. Nasha knows nothing but how to make holes. Gorinich sleeps on top of bones. On top of gold. Zemya would like such a bed, but tfu. He makes do.”

  The leshy, his moss-hair trailing down in several green braids, held up his forest diadem. He reached down without looking and pulled up a clutch of winter onions, sticking them in so that their green stems fell like a veil from the back of the crown. Zemlehyed reached up and placed it on Marya’s head. It matched her rosy trousers, her black-violet boots.

  “He will help you, if you build him a promise.”

  “Anything, Zemya.”

  The leshy smirked, stroking his fir-needle mustache. “A kiss, for Zemlehyed, on his lips. He won’t tell.”

  Marya Morevna laughed. Even devotees of cross-pollination must occasionally be curious, she reasoned. No more harm than in kissing a tree or a rock. And besides, Koschei had kissed all those Yelenas. Or probably had. Who could tell the truth? Marya felt defiance boil up in her chest. She did not care. She would kiss whom she liked. “All right, Zem. A kiss.”

  Without warning, the leshy shot up into the air, somersaulted, and came down hard on the mossy loam, digging furiously. His fists flew at the earth; his teeth gnashed and tore; his feet kicked like a diver plunging into deep water. Clumps flew; Zemlehyed disappeared into his hole. After a moment, his fingers, knuckles ringed with lacy mushrooms, popped back up.

  “Morevna! Bustle! Faster than you is still too slow.”

  Marya took the leshy’s rough hand and he hauled her, headfirst, underground.

  * * *

  Marya flipped in her descent and landed neatly on her feet in quite another forest, full of stubby scrub trees and tall lilac flowers. Golden-orange mountains rose on all sides, closing them in. Zemlehyed hung from the branches of one of the taller trees
, kicking his short legs back and forth in delight. He wiggled the top of his head out of a crack in the branch and fell—thump, bash!—onto the needle-strewn ground.

  But the forest imp bounced up, and when he righted himself, he was a handsome man in a dark green soldier’s uniform with red piping, his cap sparkling gold. He had a twisted, thorny black beard and muscled arms like pine trunks. Zemlehyed laid his finger aside his nose.

  “You cannot tell,” he said, his voice suddenly very much changed. “They mustn’t know.”

  Marya Morevna gaped. She could not make her mouth close. All that time, and her friend was … what? She could not even say. A man. And a beautiful one. “Why not? Zem! Even Lebedeva would have to admit you’re handsome!”

  “Forests have secrets,” he said gently. “It’s practically what they’re for. To hide things. To separate one world from another. You might not think it, but I love Lebed, and Nasha, with all my muddy heart. But as long as they think I’m stupid I can keep stealing from their stashes and they’ll never suspect. Lebedeva would never think for a moment that I would want her night cream, or Naganya’s holster-blouse. But I have them, and they are mine, and I will not give them back, no.”

  “Why would you want them?”

  Zemlehyed shrugged. “It’s in my nature. I hoard. It’s in their nature, too, which is why Lebedeva has more night creams than nights, and Nasha collects tin cans. Zmey Gorinich, he is like this as well. But I think it is also in your nature.”

  Marya blinked. “I don’t think so. What have I collected?”

  Zemlehyed smiled in a lopsided way, as though he did not quite know how to use his face.

  “Us.”

  * * *

  The leshy led her through a field of spiky yellow blossoms fuzzy with pollen, heavy with buzzing bees. Puffy white cotton plants waved around them like tiny clouds. The sun pressed its hands to their shoulders, hurrying them along. The mountains, streaked with snow, rose strange and thin around them, as though a starving man slept under the earth, his ribs poking through the stone. They followed a deep blue river that ran deliriously through the meadow, fish splashing as though no spearman could dream of happening by. In the distance, at last, just as the sun was getting red and tired, Marya saw a great furry yurt in the dry grass. Thick, curly fleeces covered its roof; long poles stood tight together, curving in a round sweep. A ram pelt hid the door.

  Zemlehyed did not knock. He pushed the pelt aside and ducked into the hut, squeezing his enormous frame into the doorway. Marya followed him into the warm yurt-shadows, where a bald man with round glasses sat at his desk, dwarfed by mountains of paperwork.

  “Do you have an appointment?” he roared, a flush traveling all the way from his scalp to his brows in a long red wave.

  “We seek Zmey Gorinich,” said Marya, her voice firm.

  “You are tiny,” the man concluded. “Zmey Gorinich does not exist for the use of the tiny. Only the big does he notice! As big as he is!”

  “I am big.” Zemlehyed shrugged.

  “Not very, compared to Zmey Gorinich!” bellowed the man, his head going red again.

  “We did not come to compare ourselves to Zmey Gorinich,” said Marya sweetly, measuring the mood of the man in glasses. He grabbed at a sheaf of paper at the bottom of the pile and yanked expertly, pulling it free without disturbing the rest. He set to scribbling in the file. “How could we compete with three heads, a tail like a mountain range, and the breath to burn empires down?”

  The man in glasses looked up exasperatedly. “Look, you criminals, I don’t have three heads. I never had three heads! This is what comes of letting writers have free rein, and not bridling them to the righteous labor of the Party the moment they learn to slap an accusative case around. I am Comrade Gorinich, and I have one head.”

  “I am not a criminal,” said Marya Morevna. Zemlehyed did not protest for his own honest status, being a goblin and in spirit a criminal, even if no warrants bore his name.

  “Of course you are,” snapped Comrade Gorinich. “Everyone is a criminal! We are beset on all sides by antirevolutionary forces. Naturally, then, humans fall into three categories: the criminal, the not-yet-criminal, and the not-yet-caught.” Comrade Gorinich gestured at them with an enormous fountain pen. “Even the man who is all his life vigilant, who keeps his mind and body so clean that he never has a single antirevolutionary thought—even that man is a criminal! He should have been effortlessly pure! If he had to fight so hard to hew to Comrade Stalin’s vision, then obviously, he was a criminal all along!”

  “I thought you were a dragon,” sighed Marya, sitting down in a small chair. She still longed for the best heights of magic, to see dragons and mermaids, to see the naked world. Not this, which made her think only of home, and how her own warrant might at least read runaway. Zemlehyed stood calmly behind her, at attention.

  Comrade Gorinich pounded his files with both fists. “I am a dragon! Look around! What do you see, eh? This is my bed of bones! Look how I crunch them!”

  Marya quirked her eyebrow, which seemed to enrage him even further. Soon she thought his head would fly right off. She shrugged. “I don’t see any bones.”

  “Your criminal nature blinds you! Look!” He snatched up a file in his hand. “Comrade Yevgeny Leonidovich Kryukov! Convicted of anti-Stalinist organization on Tuesday the twenty-fourth! I had him shot on my lunch break! Bones! Comrade Nadezhda Alexandrovna Roginskaya! Convicted of concealing her fugitive, criminal cousins from me! Arrested on Thursday, shot on Friday before dinner! Bones!” He held an enormous file up above his head. “The village of Bandura, in Ukraine! Refused to collectivize! Too bad—either way they starve to death! Bones!” The bald man leaned over his desk, caressing the papers. “Three hundred and sixty-seven separate anti-Bolshevik spies convicted of the murder of Sergei Mironovich Kirov! Or will be, as soon as we can manage to have Kirov shot in Leningrad! Bones! Bones! Bones!” Gorinich clutched the papers in his fists, quite beside himself. “I sleep with my orders of execution stuffed into my mattress. It is good for my back!”

  Marya watched him, horror searing through her, sour and cold. “Why do you do this, Comrade Gorinich?” she said softly.

  “It is the least I can do! Here, in the hinterlands, the Party does not have it so easy. People are so attached to their yaks and their children. But I, I understand the east. I have been here longer than the dirt! My mother was a great dragon. She lived in Lake Baikal, snorting storms, spitting floods, diving down to the bottom of the lake to bite the floorboards of the world. My father—you will not believe it, I know!—my father was Genghis Khan, and so great a heart had he that alone of all creatures in heaven and earth he was strong enough to force himself on my gargantuan mother, laughing all the while. My egg rode with the Golden Horde. I nursed at the villages they burned, the bodies full of arrows! I am full of easterners! So I know them, toe and pate. And they know me. They know if they go against the Party, they go against Comrade Gorinich, and Gorinich has always been their comrade, their bedmate, their dinner guest, their funeral master.” He adjusted his glasses and mopped his brow with a red kerchief. “I am a conduit. Moscow, she sends me meat and bones, and I send her rich, soft cotton, rich, soft petroleum. Tribute. It’s an old, honorable system.”

  “What do you care if the Party has interests in the east?” Marya said, remaining as calm as she could, for calmness seemed to upset him, and the upset beast is careless. “I am only curious. It seems to me, in the old days, Gorinich did not work for the Tsars.”

  “Pah! Why should I? I am a Khan by birthright! The Tsars could offer me nothing I did not have. Dilettantes, the whole painted lot of them. But now! The Party deals in bulk, in industrial quantities. They are like me. Gluttons. They hoard. The Party lines my bed with luxurious femurs, sternums, ribs! Without the Party to tell folk it’s all for their own good, I wouldn’t sleep half so well.”

  Comrade Gorinich suddenly clapped one hand over his eye and stretched his neck toward them l
ike a turtle.

  “What did you say your name was, criminal girl?” he said sharply.

  “Marya Morevna.” Runaway, she thought. That’s all he can say against me. And occasionally rough with her friends, but only because they let her.

  Gorinich riffled through his papers, lifting files, his tongue flicking in and out of his mouth. “What have we here?” he cried triumphantly. “I knew it, I did! What do I forget? Nothing and no one! Comrade Marya Morevna! Convicted of gross desertion at Leningrad in 1942! Bones! Bones! And that makes you my bones, and that makes you my tribute. What say I shoot you now and get it over with? Why wait? Time is communal, Marya Morevna, the most purely communal of all commodities. It belongs to us all equally. So why hoard it?”

  Marya squared her shoulders and laid one ankle over her knee. She could not, could never show a dragon, even one in glasses, that he had frightened her. If it spooks a horse, it will spook a snake. A Khan respects only strength. Even so, she wanted to be back in her red room, warm, with supper ready.

  She leveled a stare at him. “If it belongs to us all equally, then I will take and enjoy my share, thank you.”

  “Feh.” Gorinich snorted, dropping the black file back onto his desk. He scribbled in it. “Then you eat up my day and shit out only more paperwork. Now I must note that you were here, that you declined to be shot, that you breathed a cup of air, that you disturbed a tablespoon of dust. You left skin flakes and three strands of hair in exchange. I’m really very busy.”

  “If you will give us what we’ve come for, we will happily go,” said Zemlehyed simply.

  “And what is that?”

  “Your gold,” said Marya. “I don’t think I need much. A coin. One white, one black.”

  Comrade Gorinich leaned back in his chair, folding huge, meaty red hands behind his bald head. “You, my young criminal, are an idiot.”