by Jane Kindred
in his tongue and Belphagor moaned, trying to muffle the sound in the
matted hair. Vasily’s flesh was hard and hot against his hand.
Vasily slipped away from his grip and scooted down beneath the
covers, and Belphagor bit his lip to keep from crying out. As with
that first unexpected moment so long ago, he tempered the heat
of his tongue, sliding it along Belphagor’s skin like flame. It was an experience nothing and no one had ever matched.
Vasily was swallowing him gluttonously when the angel turned on
the light.
96 JANE KINDRED
Odinnadtsatoe: Tvorila Night
from the memoirs of the Grand Duchess Anazakia
Helisonovna of the House of Arkhangel’sk
I’d been careful not to wake the demons when I slipped out of bed
to get a glass of water, but they were not asleep. The glass slipped from my hand and shattered on the bathroom floor.
They were engaged in the basest of acts I could imagine, one I
only knew of from scullery maids whose bawdy jokes I loved to listen
in on. I had begun to think the demons were not so different from
my kind. I had even begun to believe Belphagor cared for me. How
desperate for home and family was I that I imagined a demon would
care for one of the Host—or that I could have feelings for a demon?
My face burned. I was obviously a grand joke to them both.
Grabbing my boots from the entryway, I went out and slammed
the door. I was not staying in this room. I was not staying with them
at all. They could forget about their meal ticket. I pulled on my boots and ran down the stairs before they had time to follow me and hurried
toward the bus station we’d passed on the way to the hotel. If there
were no buses this time of night, any passing car, Belphagor had told
me, might be a “taxi” for the right price. I had the rubles he’d given me before rushing in to fight the Seraphim.
My steps slowed as I approached the bus station. The leaded
windows on the white façade were shaped like the diamonds on
Belphagor’s playing cards. Had I already forgotten what the demons
had done for me? I sighed and sat on the curb. They were demons,
THE FALLEN QUEEN 97
after all. What had I expected? And it wasn’t as if I’d never seen lewd behavior before. I had been to Raqia, where demoness harlots were
less than discreet in conducting their business. I might have been
sheltered, but I was not a fool.
I slapped away a tear, angry at my sentimentality. Truly, what had I expected? Belphagor’s affection for the other demon had become
increasingly obvious since St. Petersburg. He hadn’t risked his life
for me at all. He had rushed headlong into the flaming wrath of the
Seraphim to save Vasily.
“U vas yest’ rubli?” A youth of the sort Belphagor called “gypsy”
stood before me with his hand held out, a falcon perched on a gauntlet on his other. Rubli. He wanted money.
I shook my head, and then thought better of it and gave him the
billfold. What did I need of it? I had nowhere to go.
“Spasibo.” He thanked me, his eyes wide, and then said distinctly,
“Welcome to Novgorod.” He had spoken in the angelic tongue.
He was off across the road before I recovered from my
astonishment.
I leapt to my feet. “Wait!”
The boy moved swiftly, and I pursued him across a footbridge
over the river. Groups of young people were still out in large numbers, drinking and carousing around the bonfires on the bank, and I soon
lost him among the revelers. I moved on past the bonfires, hoping to
catch another glimpse of him, but there was little beyond the ancient
fortress. Still, I could not let go of the idea of finding him.
I was certain he was no demon; there had been no hint of radiance.
Yet he spoke in the language of celestials. He knew me for one. What
could it mean?
The glow of candles floating downriver provided an aethereal
illumination while I followed the riverbank out of town. Wherever my
candle was, there was no chance of my wish coming true. I had wished
to wake up in my own bed in Elysium. I had wished for my family.
The wind picked up with the promise of a coming storm, stirring
the air with the smell of rain. I stopped and looked about the empty
road. There was no sign of the gypsy. As I started back, a falcon’s
screech came from the darkness. I looked up and saw the bird against
98 JANE KINDRED
the moonlight before it turned and soared away.
I began to run. Following the path of the falcon, I tumbled down
hills and slid through bracken, slipping once on an embankment into
a dark reservoir and wading to the other side in the light rain that had begun. The bird lit briefly on the fence bordering the reservoir as if to give me time to catch up, and then took flight again when I drew near.
Never once did it occur to me I might have flown after it.
I scrambled over the cut branches lashed together to form a crude
fence and found myself on a gravel road beside the river, sprayed
by rain in the whipping wind. Soaked to the skin, I hugged my chest
and stared, the falcon forgotten. Hidden among a cluster of gnarled
branches and wildflowers were the onion-domed cupolas of an ancient
monastery. Painted royal blue and emblazoned with gold, eight-
pointed stars like wizards’ hats, the cupolas perched incongruously
above peeling, whitewashed walls, rusted window sashes, and decay. I
had never seen anything so beautiful in all of Heaven or Earth.
I took a step toward the monastery and heard a sudden crack,
realizing as I collapsed onto the gravel that the crack had been against my head.
When I opened my eyes, a star-strewn sky wavered behind a net of
shifting branches, all signs of rain gone. On the perimeter of my vision, curious faces looked down at me. A dozen women surrounded me in
a small glade ringed with a profusion of mushrooms. Crowned with
garlands of grass and wildflowers, dark wisps of hair floated about
them like leaves, their bodies barely covered by sheaths of sheer red.
One of the women spoke, though it was hard to be certain which.
“Welcome, korolyeva. We wait for you.” Her angelic was heavily accented.
“For me?” I looked about at their expectant faces as they helped
me to my feet. “I think you must have mistaken me for someone else.”
Soft laughter rippled around the circle. “Not mistake. We wait
many summers. The syla know who you are. You are korolyeva. You are queen.”
Now they were certainly mistaken. “No. I’m only… I’m only
Malchik.” Again, laughter.
“This word we know. You are no malchik. You are korolyeva. We
THE FALLEN QUEEN 99
wait. We make unseen. You come.”
Unseen. I had heard these phrases before. “You were at the
palace.”
They nodded as one. “We bring korolyeva to old new city. We wait for Tvorila night when unseen things become seen.”
“You brought me? But the car… ” From the merry smiles that met
my words, I knew these “syla” were responsible. They had meddled
with the vehicle’s mechanism to bring me here instead of Moscow and
to keep me here until this feast night had allowed them to make their
presence known. The gypsy and his falcon had done their bidding.
“But why?”
“You are korolyeva,” she said again.
Another of the syla stepped forward, a dress identical to her own
draped across her arm. She began to untuck my shirt and I protested,
but in a moment, I was naked before them, even my boots taken from
me. They dressed me as my ladies in waiting had done since I was a
child. It was only a few short weeks since I’d last worn a dress—since Belphagor had turned me into Malchik—but it seemed strange and
unfamiliar, though it fit me perfectly. The skirt swung just below my
knees.
I smoothed my palms over the fabric and ran my fingers through
my shorn hair. One of the syla stepped forward with a garland woven
in a narrow band and placed the circlet of herbs and heather on my
head. The circle of willowy women expanded, and one by one, they
kissed my hands and genuflected, remaining with their heads bowed
around me.
“Please,” I protested. “I don’t understand. I’m not a queen.”
Their spokeswoman rose, reciting, “‘The queen shall take the
flower of the fern and return with it to Heaven.’”
I wrinkled my nose. “Do ferns even have flowers?”
A soft wind of laughter flowed through the group. The other syla
rose and linked hands, swaying around me to the sounds of the forest,
branches in a summer breeze. They wove a pattern of intricate steps
as though threading a length of flowing ribbon in the air, and then
their dance began to spin inward until they closed their spiral around me. The last syla spun me with them, and they wove into a swirling,
100 JANE KINDRED
undulating shape that left the grassy clearing to sew itself between the trees.
I couldn’t break free. I didn’t want to. The freedom of running
barefoot through untamed nature evoked the carefree games I had
played with my sisters not so long ago. Laughing and whispering,
the syla pulled me on, until at last we spiraled into a tight knot and fell together among the damp of rotting leaves. I lay on my back and
looked up at the moonlight tangled in the branches above. Tufts of
pukh floated all about us. Caught by the silver light, they glittered like fireflies on a summer night in Heaven.
Beside us, at the base of an old birch tree, grew a solitary fern with a large stalk at its center. I rolled over onto my side to look at it, and the syla sat up, clearing a path around me.
“What is it?” I asked.
“What you seek,” said the one who spoke for them. “The flower of
ice and fire. When it opens, you must take.”
“I’m not seeking anything,” I insisted.
“The queen shall take the flower—”
“I’m not the queen!”
She smiled, undeterred by my protest. “Syla spin the cords of
queens, but Aeval cuts short. She hunts you now. Tsvetok paporotnika will protect.”
“Who is Aeval? What do you mean?”
The syla’s smile faded, and her twinkling eyes darkened. “She was
queen of syla. Queen of Nezrimyi Mir.” The others gathered around her. “She is not content to rule only Unseen World. She wants more.
To have power over Men. She wants flower. She who holds the tsvetok paporotnika holds power over all. But the syla hide flower, and she is angry. Tsvetok is not for her. Is for—how is?” She turned to her sisters.
“Padshaya?”
“Fallen.” The word was whispered from one to another.
She nodded and touched my garland crown. “Padshaya Korolyeva.
Fallen Queen.”
Padshaya Korolyeva. The words had a strange effect on me, like spoken magic.
“Fallen Queen lives though her cord is cut. Aeval cuts short what
THE FALLEN QUEEN 101
syla spin, to punish syla. She cuts in world of Man and queensdaughters are no more. Now she cuts in Heaven, to take what is not hers. She
uses weak men.”
Weak men. Had Kae been weak? Was it Aeval he’d met on our
mountain? His blade twisted again in my heart. The blade that had
cut the cords.
Choking on a sudden flood of grief and anger, I knelt before the
fern. Unbidden tears splattered the stalk, and through their glassy
surface, it seemed to uncurl. A trick of the light. I brushed the tears away and looked again. The stalk straightened and turned over, and
in the center, a dazzling fire burned brighter than the radiance of the Seraphim.
“Pluck the flower!” the syla cried.
I grasped the stem, closing my hand around the delicate blossom
to shutter the brightness while I pulled it away, but the bloom opened within my fist. We had to turn our heads. Though it was no bigger than a wingcasting die, there was no shuttering its light.
“Put in your crown,” urged the syla. “Flower hides what is unseen.
What is hidden is not lost. Fire and ice will protect and bring lost angel home.”
I would be blinded like Vasily if I did not get the flower out of my
line of sight, and so I did as they suggested and tucked the blossom
deeply into the garland. When I looked up, the forest glowed with an
unnatural brightness around me, but I could see without pain. The syla were gone.
“Wait!” I jumped to my feet.
Padshaya Korolyeva. It might have been the rush of wind in my ear. I thought I saw movement out of the corner of my eye, but when I
turned, it was only leaves from the forest floor spinning up in a funnel of wind.
The Fallen Queen shall take the flower of the fern, whispered the leaves. They danced around me, but they were no longer solid, no
longer long-limbed women in sheaths of red with garlands in their
hair. She will return with it to Heaven. I reached to touch them, but met only air.
The wind rose once more, and rain began to patter softly on the
102 JANE KINDRED
leaves in the tree branches overhead. I settled against the trunk of the birch to wait out the rain and rested my eyes for just a moment. When
I opened them, everything had changed.
In the dim glow of candlelight, in air close with incense, Vasily
stared down at me. The trees were gone, sky and stars were gone,
replaced with a painted dome, its muted tones of red, gold, and
midnight blue depicting a pageantry of earthly saints. The cognitive
dissonance was so complete that for a moment, I could not remember
my own name, much less who Vasily was or how I’d come to be here.
He compounded my disorientation by kneeling beside me and
speaking rapidly in the language of Men. “Gde byl?”— Where have you been?—was the only phrase I caught. When I tried to sit up, my head reeled. I winced and pressed my hand to the knot at the back of
my head. A scarf covered my hair.
“Just go with it,” Vasily whispered in my ear.
Behind him, a bearded cleric in a dark cassock spoke in a soothing
voice. “Eto byla vetka dereva srublennogo molniyei.”
“Felled by lightning?” Inside a pair of aged wooden doors,
Belphagor stood in the chapel entry. Leaded panes spanning the arch
over his head let in the early morning light like strokes of watercolor.
When the cleric gave him a peculiar look, Belphagor quickly amended
his words in the language of Men.
Vasily helped me to my feet. He wrapped me in the blanket that
had covered me and nodded to the cleric. “Bol’shoe spasibo, Otets.
”
An elderly woman with cloudy eyes, her dour head covering
the only thing distinguishing her garments from the cleric’s, stood
frowning by the entrance. She opened the wooden doors without a
word and let us pass.
Belphagor pressed a few rubles into her hand, and the demons
led me through the outer iron doors into the courtyard and under the
arcade of a towering belfry.
On the path outside the cloister, a charred branch had been swept
to the side. I glanced back in surprise. This was the monastery I’d come upon before I’d been struck on the head—and then found myself
among the syla. I stared up at the gleaming golden cupola on the bell
tower, reflecting the cloud-covered dawn. How had I ended up here?
THE FALLEN QUEEN 103
“I told the priest you were my feebleminded sister,” said Vasily
beside me.
I shook my head. “You what?”
“So they wouldn’t try to speak to you.”
Belphagor paused on the way to the road. “We’ve been very
worried about you.”
A prickling heat crept into my face when I recalled what had
driven me from the protection of my demon companions. Perhaps it
was only the tinted light of dawn, but the demon’s cheeks also seemed
to have a distinct hint of pink.
“I was in the woods.” I paused, uncertain. I was dressed in the
clothes I’d had on when I left the hotel.
“The woods?” said Vasily. “What woods?”
“You’ve had a blow to the head,” said Belphagor. “A falling branch
hit you. Perhaps you’re not remembering correctly.”
I stared back at him, my embarrassment dissolving into indignation.
“I remember perfectly well. Down to the last detail.” I squared my
shoulders and strode past him to the road.
“Malchik—”
“Let me handle this,” Vasily interrupted. “You’re the one who’s
hurt her.”
“I—” Belphagor sighed. “Fine. You talk to her.”
Vasily hurried to catch up with me, though I didn’t acknowledge
his presence. “Don’t be angry with him,” he said, drawing up beside
me. “What happened at the hotel was my fault.”
A loud bark of laughter escaped me, despite myself. “It’s hardly
my business. Why would I be angry?”
“Well, you are angry. The why of it is irrelevant. But I’m trying to