Dancing with Bears

by Michael Swanwick

  The wraith stalked the streets of Moscow, avid and dangerous, inchoate of thought, a creature without mercy, the void incarnate. She had no sense of purpose nor any desires that she was aware of, only a dark urge to keep moving. She had no identity-she simply was. Light and crowds she disliked and avoided. Solitude and shadow were her meat and drink. Occasionally, she came across somebody as friendless and isolate as herself, and then she played. Always she gave them a chance to live. So far, none of them had.

  I am the bone mother, she thought. I am death and contagion, and I am the muttering voice in the night that freezes the soul with terror. My flesh is corruption and my bones are ice. I have teeth in every orifice. If you stick a finger in my ear, I will bite it off.

  She came to a dark house and twisted the doorknob until the lock behind it broke. Like an errant breeze she wafted inside and up the stairs. On the landing was a little table with a vase of flowers. She paused to bite off their heads and swallow them one by one. Then she heard a gentle snoring from one of the rooms. She pushed open the door. In the moonlight that streamed through the window, she saw a man sleeping, a tasseled nightcap on his head.

  Silently, she crawled into the bed beside him.

  The sleeper’s head was turned toward her. She lightly brushed her nose against his to awaken him. He snorted but did not wake, so she did it again. His eyes fluttered open and focused vaguely upon hers.

  “Boo,” she said.

  With a scream, the man rolled away from her and crashed to the floor in a tangle of limbs and blankets. In a trice, she was crouched over him like an enormous four-legged spider. “Who am I?” she said. “What am I doing in your bedroom?”

  “What?”

  She straightened into a crouch, still straddling the man’s body. A knife appeared in her hand. She did not know where it had come from, but it felt right. Perhaps she would use it on this pot-bellied fellow. If she dug deeply enough, she might find his soul. Then she could feast.

  “That was what you were going to ask me-wasn’t it? But I don’t know the answer. So I’m asking you.” Abruptly, she sat down on the terrified little man’s chest. “I have a sting,” she said, caressing his cheek with the flat of the blade, then turning it sideways to draw the narrowest imaginable line of blood. “But I have no name. I’ve killed many a man, but I feel no shame. I take and I take but I never give.” She lifted the knife away from his face. By the way that his eyes trembled, she knew that he was not in the least reassured. “Answer my riddle and I’ll let you live.”

  “I…I don’t…”

  “I’ll give you one more chance.” Her lips moved away from her teeth, and all the darkness in the universe grinned with her. “What am I doing here?”

  “S-scaring me?” he stammered fearfully. She considered his words. They sounded true. The knife disappeared from her hand and went back to wherever it had come from.

  “And who am I?”

  She could see the little man reaching far, far back into his past, looking for the answer. Saw his thoughts pass back through the years, before adulthood, before adolescence, into the dark ocean of childhood, where all the most extreme terrors are born and then stored away, never to be forgotten. In a child’s voice, he said, “B-b-baba Yaga?”

  “Baba Yaga.” She spoke the name slowly, savoring each syllable as if they were strokes of a bell. Ba. Ba. Ya. Ga. She stood and walked to the window. Over her shoulder she said, “That’s good. Baba Yaga. Yes, good. You get to live.”

  Baba Yaga kicked out the window and left through its absence.

  Something terrible was happening. The Duke of Muscovy knew this for a fact. It could not be seen or heard or smelled or touched or tasted, but it could be felt, like a vibration in the air, a silent and unending shriek of agony rising from the stones and bones of Moscow, by anyone with the sensitivity to detect it. Over and over, the duke strove to awaken. Again and again, he failed.

  There were faint scuttling noises in the darkness to every side of the duke as his bear-guards hurried to get out of reach of his thrashing arms. Something (a support beam, perhaps?) splintered. Something else (a chair?) smashed.

  Moscow was burning! The city was in rebellion, its defenders were absent from their posts, and the State was about to fall. Every cell and neuron in the duke’s tremendous brain screamed with the need for him to cast aside sleep.

  Again, the Duke of Muscovy groaned. He knew what to do-he knew! Were he to awaken, stand, and assume his rightful control over the State, he would be dead in half an hour, his mighty heart crushed by stresses no human organ could withstand. But half an hour was more than he would need. He could save his city and nation in half that time.

  But he could not awaken. He could not act.

  …17…

  There were fires on the horizon to the west and north and a geyser of flames had just erupted from the roof of a house not three blocks away from Yevgeny’s crew, sending sparks and ashes showering into the night. Yet no fire bells rang and no firefighters appeared to check the fire’s spread. Which was madness. It made no sense at all.

  Yevgeny was in an agony of indecision. Was this what he was supposed to be looking for? But if so, why would General Zvyozdny-Gorodoka and Baron Lukoil-Gazprom have been so coy about the nature of the threat? Was he expected to put out the fire or was he supposed to stay at his post and let it burn? If there were three unrelated fires within eyeshot at the same time, surely that meant there were more elsewhere in the city. That wasn’t natural. But neither did it look like any kind of deliberate enemy action he had ever heard of. Nothing in his military training had covered anything remotely like the situation he now found himself in. Then he heard noise in the distance.

  At first he thought it was music, because there was a regular throb to it. But as it grew louder and closer, he realized that it was anything but musical. People were chanting and beating on drums and blowing horns to several different beats and as many different tunes at once. Down with something, they chanted. Down with something, Down with something. But Yevgeny was damned if he could make out what that something was.

  Yevgeny mounted his horse and raced down Teatralny proezd to Tverskaya ulitsa. At the intersection looking north, he saw a shadowy deluge of humanity churning and rumbling down the street toward him with banners flying and fists flung into the air. This was surely what the baron had said he would know when he saw it. But knowing it and knowing what to do about it were two separate things.

  The sergeant appeared at his elbow. “Shall we bring up the gun and open fire, sir?”

  “On our own citizens?” Yevgeny said, horrified.

  “It’s been known to happen, sir.”

  The mob was coming closer and coming into focus as well. Yevgeny could make out individual faces now. There were three white horses pulling a troika at the front. Behind it, bodies filled the street from wall to wall. Most of them seemed to be wearing red kerchiefs. But the team pulling the troika… Didn’t it look familiar? Surely that was-he squinted-the same cloned triplet of a stallion his cousin Avdotya owned? The one whose uniqueness she had ensured by buying the genome’s patent and then refusing to license it?

  “Do you want me to bring around the cannon, sir, and have it aimed up the street? Just as a precaution, I mean.”

  “Yes, yes, why do you bother me with questions, just do it,” Yevgeny muttered distractedly. He stared with all his might, trying to will the distant figures into clarity, cursing the dimness of the moonlight, praying he was wrong. Slowly they came closer until finally, yes, that was without question the Baronessa Lukoil-Gazproma driving. Sitting behind her were Irina, the dog-headed Byzantine ambassador the baronessa had invited to her soiree, and…Tsar Lenin?

  Yevgeny’s head swam with the impossibility of it all.

  But then the words swam into lucidity. Down with the duke! the mob was chanting. Down with the duke! Down with the duke!

  It was treason. Beyond all doubt this was what the general’s gnomic warning had been
about. Yet now that the need for action was upon him, Yevgeny found that he could not bring himself to act.

  “If we’re going to fire, now’s the time to do it, sir. While there’s still time enough to get off another shot or two if the first one don’t turn ’em away.”

  “I…”

  Yevgeny knew what he should do. He knew what General Zvyozdny-Gorodoka would demand of him, were she here. But he could not fire upon his cousin. They had played together as children. As adolescents they had competed for the same lovers. He had been the witness at her marriage to that overbearing oaf of a husband of hers.

  Yet he had to. It was his duty.

  Yevgeny drew out his snuffbox and flicked it open, feigning a confidence he did not feel. “Is everything ready, Sergeant?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Very well, then.” Yevgeny took a dip of snuff, marveling at how steady his voice was. His stomach was a lump of ice. He face felt numb. He did not know how he would survive this decision. “In that case, you may…” “Sir?” “Yevgeny’s mouth moved, but nothing came out. “Sir, are you ordering me to fire?” “I-”

  “Stop! Cease! Do not fire!”

  Yevgeny spun about and saw, speeding up Okhotny Ryad ulitsa, the least likely Angel of Mercy imaginable-none other than Chortenko himself-leaning from the window of his notorious blue-and-white carriage. The servile coachman drove its horses up so mercilessly that the carriage rattled and leaped and threatened to shake itself apart. “Do not fire!” Chortenko shouted again.

  The servile pulled back on the reins and the carriage clattered to a stop alongside the artillery piece.

  Without descending, Chortenko said, “I am ordering you to withdraw. The city is in danger of conflagration. You must use your cannon to knock down the buildings that are afire before the disaster spreads.”

  “Sir. Yes, sir,” Yevgeny said, vastly relieved. But then something perverse within him caused him to add, “But what of the mob, sir? Their treasonous slogans?”

  “This is no time for you to be engaging in political activities.” Chortenko whipped off his glasses, revealing his buggish eyes. “You have your orders. Will you obey them?”

  “I am a soldier in the service of Muscovy, sir,” Yevgeny said, feeling almost as offended as he did relieved.

  “Answer the question! Yes or no?”

  Yevgeny could not trust himself to speak. So, instead, he clenched his teeth and nodded.

  “Then get to work.” Chortenko looked up at the servile. “Take me to the Alexander Garden and then, after you have dropped me off, return to the coach house and rub down the horses.”

  The carriage left. Yevgeny stared after it in astonishment. Then he turned back to his crew. “Well? Get a move on. We’ve got a fire to fight.”

  They did.

  Arkady was trudging down a narrow and lightless street, hoping against hope that it would soon open into a road that would take him to the Kremlin, when he realized he was not alone. There were footsteps matching his, stride for stride.

  He broke into a trot. So did the second set of footsteps. He started to run. So did they. And then-disaster! The doorless and windowless wall of a brick building loomed up before him. He had come to the blind end of a cul-de-sac.

  As Arkady stumbled to a stop, the other footsteps did the same. An echo? He almost laughed. Of course. It could be nothing else. Arkady’s heart was pounding so hard he feared it would rip free of his chest. He found himself gasping for air. In the darkness, somebody matched him wheeze for wheeze.

  “It’s just an echo,” he said aloud to reassure himself. “Nothing more.”

  “… just an echo. Nothing more.” The voice came from directly behind him. “Or is it?”

  He shrieked, and was seized from behind. Arms and legs wrapped themselves about his arms and chest, rendering him helpless. Arkady’s knees almost buckled under the weight of a human body. “Sssssso!” a witchy voice whispered into his ear. “You’re not afraid of the dark, are you? Not afraid of the ancient thing from the graveyard, don’t believe in the night hag, think you can’t be ridden, eh?” Crisp teeth nipped his earlobe. It stung so sharply that Arkady knew the bite had drawn blood. “You know for a fact that your flesh is too bitter for my taste? You find it hard to believe that I’d like to break open your skull and eat your brains?” The hag’s limbs tightened about Arkady like the coils of an anaconda. “You’re absolutely sure I wouldn’t crush you dead if you disobeyed my orders?”

  He couldn’t breathe! Arkady found himself panicking. Then the hag loosened her grip. “Breathe in, boy. Savor the air. That’s Baba Yaga’s gift to you. Now thank me for it, as politely as you know how.”

  Arkady gulped in the air, genuinely grateful, absolutely terrified. “Thank you, Baba Yaga. For letting me breathe.”

  But wasn’t Baba Yaga a fairy-tale creature? A figure out of myth? Of course she was. So what was this thing on his back?

  “Tonight you are my steed,” Baba Yaga said. “Don’t try to escape me.” (As if he could!) “If you turn around to look at my face, I’ll gouge out your eyes and suck their juices.” (As if he wanted to see her!) “Now run. Run like the wind, and if we don’t get where we’re going fast enough…well, the horse that can’t run can always be rendered down for glue.”

  Bony heels dug into his flanks.

  Arkady couldn’t actually run, but he did manage to achieve a trot, which seemed to satisfy the madwoman on his back for the nonce. “Where are we going?” he asked fearfully.

  “To our destination.”

  “And where’s that?”

  Baba Yaga laughed wildly. Then she seized a mouthful of Arkady’s hair with her teeth and ripped it out by the roots.

  He screamed and ran.

  The crowds exploded into sheer noise when the troika entered the Alexander Garden before the west wall of the Kremlin. Hats flew into the air like flocks of birds. Louder the cheering grew and louder, until it merged into one astonishing roar so overwhelming as to move beyond mere sound to become a constant and deafening pain. All faces were turned toward the carriage. Every hand stretched out reaching for it. Everywhere, torches, flags, and kerchiefs were in constant motion, a blur of color, as if all the world were on fire. Being in the driver’s seat was like sitting at the center of a flaming whirlwind.

  It was easily the most amazing moment in Baronessa Avdotya’s life.

  Intellectually, she understood that none of this was her own due. But it felt like it was, and that was the important thing. It filled her with a sense of destiny and purpose. She could not help turning from side to side, nodding and smiling luminously.

  She craned around to look behind her and saw Tsar Lenin standing upon the seat. His balance was preternaturally perfect as, hand in air, he acknowledged the applause with a dignified hint of a bow, the tiniest twitch of his wrist.

  Now those closest to the tsar unharnessed the horses and led them away. Others seized the carriage by its rods and pulled it by hand through the adoring throngs.

  A speaking platform had been set up at the foot of the causeway leading up to the Trinity Tower gate. Bleachers stretched the length of the Alexander Garden’s back wall. In between, all the park was already filled with marchers from the three invasions which had by prearrangement arrived earlier than Tsar Lenin’s group. More people than Avdotya had ever in her life seen in a single space struggled to catch a glimpse of the great man, and screamed in ecstasy when they did.

  Lenin stood straight and proud on the carriage seat, accepting their adulation.

  Then, as lightly as he had climbed up, the new tsar leapt down and walked without hurry or effort through a riotous ocean of humanity which parted before him like the Red Sea before Moses, and closed solidly behind him like the gates of history clanging shut. Baronessa Lukoil-Gazproma ran quickly after Lenin, leaving Irina behind (indeed, forgetting her completely), and slid her arm through his.

  Tsar Lenin did not object.

  The Royal Guard appeared out
of nowhere to close ranks behind and to either side of them, a bodyguard that Lenin surely did not need, but which did much to emphasize the legitimacy of the once and future ruler, freshly returned from the graveyard of the past to claim his land once more.

  Together they ascended the stairs to the platform.

  Upon the departure of the terrifying entity impersonating Lenin, Surplus had quietly slipped down from the troika. Irina had tried to climb over the heads and shoulders of the crowd to join the baronessa and been absorbed in their number, another anonymous drop of water in a sea of hysteria. Alone in all Moscow, it seemed, Surplus was immune to the contagions of emotion that lofted the crowd’s mood higher and higher. Indeed, it would not be an exaggeration to say that those emotions terrified him. So much so that he immediately determined to get as far away from their epicenter as possible.

  Not without effort, Surplus made his way to the fringes of the crowd. Behind him, the troika was being dismantled and then broken into pieces for souvenirs and relics.

  When finally Surplus found himself free of the immense assembly’s gravitational pull, he paused to gather his thoughts.

  He had been in mobs before, though none so great as this. The prickling sensation of danger, of incipient violence, was not new to him. He knew how easy it would be to surrender to the madness that permeated the air and let himself be swallowed up by it. It was therefore of primary importance for him to keep his head. Systematically, then, Surplus reasoned carefully that:

  Imprimis: The Duke of Muscovy was about to be overthrown.

  Secundus: This meant that the plan he and Darger had devised to separate the duke from a generous share of his nation’s surplus wealth was defunct. There was no point in mourning this fact. One simply had to move on.

  Tertius: It would therefore be wisest to take advantage of the night’s confusion in order to obtain some lesser share of Muscovy’s treasures. Since he and Darger had invested a great deal of time and effort in the original project without the least recompense, this would not be theft but only simple justice.