by Lana Popovic
“Even still,” I said. “Thank you. Lina said you’d already looked through it, that you found something?”
“I was right—it was in one of her songs.” Niko flicked deftly through the pages with her slim fingers. “That name you mentioned, of the woman in your dream. Marzanna. The song is Romany, but I translated it for you this morning, set it to rhyme as best I could. She only sang it for me once; I remember because I was asking her about magic, the little things she sometimes did for the changing of the seasons. I asked her why, what it was for. And she sang me this.”
She ran her finger down each line. “It’s called ‘Kill Her in Winter, So She Can Birth Spring.’”
My stomach felt like a nest of baby snakes had hatched in it all at once. I clutched a fist against it, and looked over to Lina, whose face had gone bloodless.
Niko began:
Her bones are of nightmares, her face cut from dreams,
Her eyes are twinned ice chips, cold glimmering things,
Her hair is the scent that will drive you to death,
Her lips are the kiss that will steal your last breath.
Kill her in winter, so she can birth spring.
Strip her arms bare of glitter or silver,
Choke her and flay her, force her to deliver,
Drown her in lakebeds, or quick-running streams,
Dunk her in pond scum to smother her screams,
Kill her in winter, so she can birth spring.
To chase out the winter, build her to burn her,
Make her a body, the better to spurn her,
Build her of twigs, and of scraps, and of sticks,
Then build up the fire, and sing loud as it licks,
Kill her in winter, so she can birth spring.
Niko stopped, laying her hand flat on the page as if she could blot out the words. Lina’s eyes were so wide I could see the whites all around them, and I wondered if I looked like that too, like a cornered animal.
It sounded exactly like her, like the woman in the clearing. And like Sorai, too.
“Is that it?” I whispered. “Is there anything else?”
“Mama told me a story to go with it,” Niko said. “Because it scared me so much, and also made me sorry for Marzanna. It’s a mishmash of things, a patchwork tale. A lot of these legends crossed the country borders, carried by the Romany. Mama said she was a Polish witch-goddess who ruled over winter, nightmares, and love. They say even Death was so fascinated by her that she never died.”
“So, Mara and Death, biffles, understood,” I said. “But what about all those other names?”
Malina looked up from her phone. “They’re all the same person. Deity, whatever. I just checked. They’re what they call her in different places. Polish, Lithuanian, Czech, Slovak. Everyone has a name for her, all the Slavs and Baltic people.”
“But Mara,” I said softly. “Mara is her first name. Is there anything else, Lina?”
“It says that in Poland, they kill her every spring equinox. First they make an effigy of rags and clothing, and they decorate her with ribbons and baubles before they burn her. And then whatever’s left, they dunk into every body of water along the way of the parade, drowning her in every lake, pond, and puddle. They sing witch-burning songs the entire time. The one Niko has must be a Romany version of those. Oh, and . . . wow.”
“What?”
Lina chewed thoughtfully on her lower lip. “It even mentions Our Lady of the Rocks. Apparently there’s a side story—sort of like an urban legend, I guess, but religious—that the Mortesić brothers who found that icon actually found something much older there, an ancient figurine of Marzanna. And that they intended to dedicate the island to her name, but were too afraid of being labeled heretic pagans. So they pretended they’d found the Virgin Mary icon instead.”
“But why?” I whispered, tugging at the ribbons in my own hair. “Why is she so terrible that she needs to be both burned and drowned?”
“That was the part Mama told me,” Niko said. “To make her sound less like she might eat me in the night. I wrote it down along with the song. The story goes that she was a human woman long ago, back when migrants crossed all the way from India, before they settled here and split into the Indo-European tribes who became us. And even though she’s been deathless since she befriended Death, she isn’t evil.”
“Yeah,” Lina added. “That’s what this says, too. That there has to be a sacrifice to keep things orderly. For winter to end, Mara has to die and birth Jarilo, god of spring—though really, he’s just another form of her, because she never truly dies.” She shuddered. “I don’t know. It still sounds awful to me. Maybe you just have a higher tolerance for the hideous. You did make me watch Paranormal Activity three times.”
“Only twice, the third time was the sequel. The good one.”
Lina rolled her eyes. “It’s always the fine print with you.”
I thought of the woman in the frozen, snowy clearing, her intensity and wildness, the bloody powders pounded from murdered things smeared all over her face. The fractaled sigils and dried flowers around her, the sharpened stones for cutting, and that glittering pile gathered up in front of her. Whoever that woman was—whatever she was, witch or god or both—the things she had done had been intentional. There was no mistaking the willfulness that blazed in her. Whatever she had done, maybe she’d earned herself this endless burning and drowning.
“But what does this have to do with us, or Mama?” Lina was saying. “Why are we dreaming about her?”
“And why do we have ribbons in our hair?” I mused. “That seems related, if it’s important enough that even a story about her would mention them.”
We all fell silent, frowning at our hands, until the tinkle of the bell above the door and Nev’s brassy voice broke our quiet.
“Riss! Lina!” She rushed at us in her gangly way, dropping a massive plastic bag beside her as she knelt and flung her arms around me. “Oh, dollface, I’m so fucking glad to see you. And you, Lina, my condolences, sweetheart. I’m so, so sorry about Jasmina. I still—I just still can’t believe it’s true. I can’t imagine how this is for you.”
She smelled so wonderfully familiar, the vanilla extract that reminded me of all the hours I’d spent working beside her in the café as she baked with Mama. I fought back tears even as I pulled away from the hug like a kitten squirming out of fond arms; it was too much to feel her sympathy. It made the strangeness of the truth feel worse somehow, a confinement Lina and I could share only with Luka and Niko.
She let me go, with a wordless look of understanding at my discomfort. “I baked some baklava for you,” she said tearfully. “I didn’t know what else to do. I thought Luka or Niko could bring it over for you, but this is much better.” She cupped my cheek for just a moment before pulling back, and I thought for the thousandth time how nice it would have been to have her as an older sister.
She dove headlong into the bag and lifted out pan after pan of the sticky, glossy dessert, liberally sprinkled with nuts, enough for a battalion. Even Niko began looking a little fazed as stacked pans teetered on top of each other on the table between us.
“Go on, have a little,” Nev said, flapping a hand in the general direction of the baklava. Her ivory sailor dress was smudged with syrup on the bodice; I wondered how long she had been toiling away at this, if this was the shape of her grief. “I made it with hazelnuts instead of walnuts, I know you both like those better.”
At her urging, we all dug into the pan with our fingers, cupping our palms beneath the sweet, flaky squares to catch falling crumbs. I’d always loved baklava, the crisp layers of phyllo as they melted in your mouth, the almost cloying sweetness of the honey, syrup, and chopped nuts cut by the acid nip of lemon. We’d made variations of it at the café so often that it tasted exactly like home to me. It made me hungry in a way I hadn’t really been in days.
“When is . . .” Nev cleared her throat. “When is the funeral? I hadn’t heard anythin
g, and I didn’t want to be a bother by asking, but I was so afraid I’d miss it.”
“We don’t know yet,” I said when Malina hesitated, shooting me a beseeching look. “Because it’s a—because it’s a murder, the police protocol is stricter. They might need to keep her for longer before they give her back to us.”
Nev looked so stricken I wanted to slap myself for the lie, but there was nothing better to tell her. “I’m so sorry to hear that. What utter bullshit. I mean, I’m sure it’s necessary and all that, but it probably doesn’t help that they’re morons and probably running all amok what with everything else that happened yesterday.” She clapped a hand over her mouth. “Shit, I’m sorry. You don’t need to hear that, either, what is the matter with me.”
The nape of my neck began to prickle. “What do you mean? Nev, what’s happened?”
“Oh, it’s nothing, really, I shouldn’t have even brought it up, it’s just that Tata hasn’t been able to shut up about it and—”
Nev’s father, Uroš Stefanović, the councilman. My pulse sped up, and I grabbed her arm, squeezing so hard her eyes widened. “Nev, what happened?”
“It looks like someone’s stealing relics from our churches, and it’s—Iris, that fucking hurts, let go!” She rubbed her arm, eyes wide. “First it was Our Lady of the Rocks, but that was just a votive gift. Then it was the monastery of Ostrog, and Tata’s being very tight-lipped, but it sounds like someone’s tampered with Saint Basil’s remains. Everyone’s clutching their prayer beads over it, pun totally intended.”
“Do they know who it was?” Malina broke in.
“No, but apparently it was a woman. Which is driving everyone nuts, all hail the misogyny, as if women can’t be good at stealing and sacrilege—”
“But we have to go,” I interrupted. “We have to go to Ostrog.”
Nev stared at me as if I’d lost my mind. “Why in the shit would you need to go there? And you can’t anyway, the monastery is on lockdown to visitors. They’re not letting anyone in.”
“Can you ask your father? Please? It’s—” I geared up for another heinous lie. “We promised Mama we would go, when we found her. It was the last thing she said to us before she passed. Malina, tell her.”
“Right,” Malina said, warming to the story. “She could barely talk, you know? But she managed that. It’s something she always wanted, and you know she wasn’t even very religious, Nev. But it was like—like her deathbed wish that we go there in her place. And since we don’t even know when we can bury her properly . . . please, could you just ask for us?”
Nev looked narrowly between the two of us, as if she sniffed something off, but the desperation must have been scrawled over our faces. “Jesus, what a thing. All right, then. I’ll see what I can do for you.”
EIGHTEEN
NEV REFUSED TO TELL US THE BRIBERY AND STRING-PULLING that had been necessary to grant us permission for an Ostrog pilgrimage; I got the sense that whatever sacrifice she’d made had been big enough that even if it was for Jasmina’s sake, she still resented us a little for it. But three hours later we had it—two of us would be allowed to go, but only two.
Luka wouldn’t hear of Lina and me striking out on our own; protecting us trumped everything, like it always did with him.
“Missy, Ostrog is a cliff monastery, and those roads are hell even for seasoned drivers. I’m not trying to be some ‘girls can’t drive’ asshole, don’t give me that look, Niko. I’m just saying they haven’t had much of a chance to practice. And if this woman is still out there, and is the one who attacked Jasmina, she could be waiting for you in those mountains. If only two can go, it should be me and one of you.”
“Iris,” Niko jumped in. “Take Iris.”
“Hey!” Lina bridled. “I don’t even get a say in this?”
“You couldn’t even climb that runt tree in the schoolyard without wanting to pass out, pie,” Niko pointed out. “You couldn’t handle the jungle gym. Do you really want to be trapped in a moving metal prison thousands of feet up, nothing between you and the plummet, just all that empty air and—”
“Okay, would you please stop?” The skin beneath Lina’s eyes had turned green, translucent like dragonfly wings. “You’re right. That doesn’t sound . . . ideal for me.”
“Exactly.” Niko crossed her slim arms over her chest, satisfied. “You can stay with me, and we’ll see if there’s anything else helpful in Mama’s book. There’s so much in there, and I haven’t had a chance to fully delve into it. Maybe we’ll find something more.”
Lina nodded, chewing on her lip, her eyes clouded with uncertainty. She reached for me, and I pulled her into a quick, fierce hug. “Don’t worry, bunny,” I whispered into her ear. “Let me handle this one. Luka will keep me safe, promise. And about last night, I’m . . .”
“It’s okay,” she murmured back. “You don’t have to say it, I know you are. Just come back to me soon, please?”
“GODDAMN IT, LUKA, how do I get this off?” I demanded, twisting around in the front seat as the seat belt threatened to throttle me.
He shrugged, eyes on the road. “You don’t. Not safe to ride with your feet all tucked up under you like that. Very fetching, but not safe.”
Huffing with frustration, I levered my chair back and jackknifed my knees up to my chest in protest, resting my heels on the dashboard with my soles pressed against the glass.
“Wow, princess,” Luka commented with a sidelong glance. “By all means, smear my windshield with your improbably tiny feet. I wouldn’t want you to feel like you’re not traveling first class.”
“My feet are not tiny.”
“They are so, look at them. I don’t understand how you walk around with those. Probably you could be in a circus, they’re so small. It’s very cute.”
“What about if I take one and put it in your face?” I suggested. “How cute would that be?”
“If you’re looking to drive us into a ravine, you should try it out.”
We’d only been driving for forty-five minutes, but aside from the coast, most of Montenegro was at least three thousand feet above sea level—a whole kingdom of untamed mountains with gentler, fertile plateaus and valleys dipping between them. I thought of Čiča Jovan as the road wound us up the mountainside, through the fir, spruce, and towering black pines that had given Montenegro its name, their gangly trunks bare of branch and needle until they burst into life high above the rest of the trees. When I’d told Jovan once that I’d like to see skyscraper buildings in person, he’d laughed his hoarse smoker’s laugh and said, “Trust me, sweetheart, people in cities have no idea what truly scrapes the sky.”
I could see now what he meant. Even as we gained altitude, the mountains loomed above us like monoliths, so thickly forested in places that they rolled with greenery as if furred with moss, in others stark and scraped down to the limestone beneath. Some of the exposed stone was creamy as a layered dessert, swirled with butterscotch and russet—I couldn’t look at those too long without the striations beginning to waver, trembling in my vision as the gleam threatened to seize and multiply them into whorling fractals.
Lina would have hated it. Even with my general indifference to heights, I still couldn’t glance past the low guardrail without my stomach pinching a little at the drop.
“How do you think the hajduci ever lived in these mountains?” I asked Luka. The hajduci had been outlaws in the seventeenth century, fighting the Ottoman Empire as guerrilla warriors. “Look at how steep it is out there.”
“Ah, those were rugged highland folk,” he drawled, lengthening our already slow vowels until I smiled despite myself, watching his knuckles shift beneath tanned skin as he rearranged his grip on the wheel. “Montenegrin manhood at its finest. Finer, even, than your chauffeur, if you can conceive of a thing like that.”
“Forsooth, I cannot.”
“I know, the mind boggles. Plus, they were busy hiding from the Ottomans and also chopping them up whenever the opportunity prese
nted itself. So I assume that was pretty motivational. Lots of adrenaline.”
As we wound up and up, I could see a linked series of glacier lakes in the distance, gleaming beneath the morning sun like pools of sky and gold. The more distant sets of mountains looked like they were rising from an ancient sea, bucking out of the water like the coils of some leviathan.
“It’s magnificent, isn’t it?” Luka said softly, taking his eyes off the road to glance at the lakes through my window. “Almost primordial.”
“It does make all this a little easier to accept somehow, doesn’t it? A world that looks like this, I mean. Speaking of which, how are you taking all this so well?” I’d told him about what Niko had found for us as he drove, Marzanna’s story and its echo in our dreams. “Being friends with a pair of witches, whose mother happens to be not only undead but also kidnapped. Magic suddenly real. A white-haired woman running all over creation, stealing from us and from churches. I’d have thought the epic shifting of your paradigm would be triggering countrywide earthquakes.”
“I don’t really know, Riss. This does all seem too surreal, way too out of hand, but . . .” He trailed off. “I don’t know exactly how to formulate this, and could you try to not be offended?”
“Oh, definitely I won’t, since you started it that way.”
He hissed out a sigh. “What I mean to say is, as completely bizarre as this all is—as far out of any normal, real-world depths that I can navigate—it doesn’t feel nearly as strange as it should. And that’s because of the three of you, I think.”
I stiffened until my back felt like a staff against the pleather seat. “What do you mean by that?”
“Have you ever heard of the uncanny valley hypothesis?”
“Do you think I’ve heard of the uncanny valley hypothesis, Luka?”
“Nobody likes your attitude.”
He licked the corner of his mouth with the tip of his tongue, the way he always did when he was focusing. Or nervous. Despite everything, the glisten of his tongue sent my belly into a shower of sparks, and for the first time, I felt faintly disgusted with myself. If I wouldn’t even let Luka close enough to me for a proper dance, I could imagine how he would feel knowing what I’d been doing the night before with someone I’d known for all of four days. Not even the sex so much as the talking. And the telling and the showing, all the things behind the curtain that I never drew back for him.