The Lives of Saints

by Leigh Bardugo

  SANKTA MARADI

  On a great bay on the coast of Novyi Zem, two families had fished for many generations, and had squabbled over the rights to those waters for just as long. Addis Endewe and Neda Adaba could scarcely speak a civil word to each other. As their competing fleets grew, so did their profits—and so did the enmity between them. The fishermen in their employ were known to cut each other’s nets, tear holes in their rivals’ sails, and pull their boats alongside so that the crews could better punch and kick each other.

  But then, as is the way of these things, on a market day, Addis Endewe’s son, Duli, went with his friends to buy jurda at the very same time that Neda Adaba’s daughter, Baya, had a craving for sweet oranges. There, amid the fruit stalls and shouting fishmongers, Duli and Baya fell immediately in love. Perhaps, if their families hadn’t hated one another, it would have been a passing infatuation and nothing more. Or perhaps they would have fallen in love anyway. Maybe some people are destined for one another and lucky enough to know it when they finally meet.

  Handsome Duli and beautiful Baya began meeting in secret on the property of Sankta Maradi, who lived near the shore. When people left the old woman gifts, the skies had a way of clearing and lost ships somehow found their way to harbor. She let the lovers meet on her little dock, where they mended nets together, and watched the stars, and hatched a plan to run away. They agreed they would each steal a boat from their family fleets and meet beyond the bay, where their parents’ rivalry could not touch them.

  Duli crept out after dark, secured a small skiff, and sailed off beneath a cloudy and starless sky. But Baya’s father caught her trying to escape, and in his rage, had his entire fleet smashed to splinters rather than see his daughter wed to his enemy’s son.

  Baya would not be deterred. Despite the darkness, she leapt into the sea, her limbs fighting the pull of the current as she struggled through the waves, calling out to Duli.

  Their names echoed across the bay as they tried to find their way to each other, but the sea was cold and the clouds hung heavy, blocking the light of the moon. From her lonely pier Sankta Maradi heard them calling back and forth, back and forth in the darkness. She took pity on the lovers who wished for a new world together instead of an old world divided. With a single gesture from Maradi, the clouds parted and the moon emerged, gilding the world in silver light.

  Duli and Baya found each other across the glimmering waves. Duli pulled his love up into the boat and they sailed to safety, far away from their families. They began a new life, on a new shore, and chose a new family name: Maradi, and this is where the Zemeni tradition of choosing names began.

  Every year, the Maradi family made a path of white stones, each one round as the moon, down to the water, where they said prayers of thanks for the life they’d been able to make together.

  Sankta Maradi is known as the patron saint of impossible love.

  SANKT DEMYAN OF THE RIME

  In the icy eastern reaches of Fjerda, a cemetery stood, and among its rows were both humble graves marked by nothing but wooden staves, and fine mausoleums hewn of marble, grand houses for the dead.

  A forest grew up around this cemetery, and at first the people paid the trees no mind, happy for their shade. But soon the birches grew so thick and so dense that no one could reach the cemetery to tend to the graves of their family members or pay homage to their ancestors.

  They went to Demyan, the nobleman whose land the forest had grown upon, and asked that he do something about the trees. Demyan had his servants go out to the forest with their axes and cut a smooth path to the cemetery so that all could walk comfortably through the woods.

  But when the rains came, without trees to stop the floods, water rushed straight down the path to the graveyard, uprooting markers and gravestones and casting the lids off tombs.

  Again, the townspeople came to complain. This time, Demyan designed an aqueduct and had it built around the cemetery so that the rain would not disturb the graves and the water would be diverted to irrigate the fields. But the aqueduct cast the graveyard in shade, so plants and flowers rarely grew there, and now families shivered in the cold when they went to visit their dead.

  Yet again the people brought their grievances to Demyan. But this time he was not certain what to do. He walked the path to the cemetery through the woods and looked up at the tall aqueduct and laid his hands upon the soil. He could think of no solution that would make his people happy, unless the Saints saw fit to raise the cemetery up to the sun itself.

  The earth began to shake and the ground rose high, higher, a mountain where there had been no mountain before. When the rumbling stopped, the cemetery perched at its top, where it would never be troubled by floods or crowded by trees.

  The people followed Demyan up to the cemetery and found that no grave had been disturbed or soul displaced. Only one tomb was cracked: Demyan’s family crypt.

  Maybe they were shaken by the wonders they had seen. Maybe they did not know how to be satisfied. Whatever the reason, the people Demyan had sought so hard to please threw up their hands in woe. They claimed that he had disrespected his family name. They cried that he had cursed them all by using dark magic. Someone picked up a piece of marble from the broken tomb and hurled it at Demyan. Driven mad by getting what they wanted, the others followed, hurling stones at the nobleman until he lay crumpled beneath the ruins of his own family crypt.

  It is said that the tallest mountain in the Elbjen is the one upon which Demyan died. He is known as the patron saint of the newly dead.

  SANKTA MARYA OF THE ROCK

  In the summers, a gathering of Suli often traveled south to Ravka’s border. They would work until the weather began to turn cold, then they would pack up and travel over the Sikurzoi and into the warmer territories of Shu Han. In some places they were turned away by townspeople who refused them any spot to camp. In others, people hostile to the Suli would descend upon their settlements at night with torches and hounds.

  But there were some places where the Suli were welcome. Where Suli knowledge was respected, they were offered bread and wine, and pasture for their animals. Where amusement was wanted, the Suli were free to erect their tents and perform their entertainments to happy applause. And where there was work to be done—grimy work, dangerous work that no one else wanted or dared to take on—the Suli were welcomed in those places as well.

  The horse races at Caryeva usually lasted late into the fall, and so the Suli often spent the season there. But one year, winter came early, closing down the track and leaving them without work or audiences to play for. A local offered the men jobs in his copper mine, and though the prospect was risky and the Suli knew many had died in the mine’s dark tunnels, they agreed.

  However, the night before the men were meant to enter the pits, one of the Suli true seers looked into the leavings of her coffee and warned them not to go into the tunnels. She was known for the clarity of her vision, and none of them took her words lightly.

  “What can we do to save ourselves?” they asked.

  The old woman placed the jackal mask of the Suli seers over her face and sat for a long time as the others talked quietly by the fire. When the moon had set and the fire had burned down to nothing but ash, she lifted one gnarled hand and pointed to a little girl. “Marya must go with you.”

  No one liked this idea, not the girl’s parents, and least of all Marya herself, who still feared the dark. But the next day, when the men set out for the mines, she summoned her courage, took her rag doll in her arms, and clambered onto her father’s shoulders. Into the pits they went, the rock walls close around them, the air moist, the smell of copper in the earth like spilled blood.

  The morning passed without incident, then the afternoon, and then the day was done. The workers heaved a sigh of relief and turned to make their way out of the tunnel, back to sunlight and the living world.

  That was when the earth began to rumble. The tunnel ahead of them collapsed, blocking out all daylig
ht. But just as the ceiling was about to give way above their heads, Marya, still clutching her rag doll, lifted her little hands. The ceiling held.

  The rock walls of the mine shifted like silt in a pan. They shuddered and slid, making an opening so that the Suli might pass. Through the mountain they went, led by Marya on her father’s shoulders, the rock giving way to form a path before them.

  They emerged on the other side and there, at the base of the Sikurzoi, the Suli have always been able to find shelter in the caves that Marya left behind.

  She is known as the patron saint of those who are far from home.

  SANKT EMERENS

  The village of Girecht in southern Kerch had long been known for the purity and flavor of its grain, as well as the perfection of the beer made from its barley and hops. Each year when the leaves began to turn, the townspeople set long tables in the main square, hung the trees with lanterns, and welcomed guests from all over Kerch to fill their bellies with the town’s beer and fill Girecht’s coffers with their coin.

  The next day, they would go to church to give thanks to Ghezen and their Saints. But one year, the townspeople had grown too merry in their celebrations, and the morning after the festival, they lay abed with headaches instead of going to pray. All but one child, a young boy named Emerens.

  Now this child had been pious since his birth. He never cried on Saints’ days—except when the townspeople were late to services. Then he would bawl and howl, his shrill wail carrying over the rooftops and through every window, and nothing might soothe him until his parents and their neighbors went to church. On the morning after that very merry festival, Emerens knocked on every door, trying to rouse the citizens of Girecht, but all refused to answer.

  Who can say if what came to pass next was merely bad luck or the hand of providence? Either way, a blight struck Girecht’s fields the following year, leaving the grain spotted and dying.

  The villagers managed to cull enough untainted grain to fill four silos, enough for two years’ worth of festivals. They hung lanterns in the main square and set out long tables for feasting. But the next morning, they found that the western silo was a quarter empty. A search revealed ragged holes in the silo’s sides, where some of the grain had spilled out. One of the farmers climbed to the top of the silo, opened the hatch, and shrieked his horror, for the structure was full of rats, their hairy bodies and pink tails thrashing about as they gorged themselves.

  The next day the eastern silo was found to have been infested, and the townspeople knew that the northern and southern silos would follow.

  “What can we do?” they cried. “If we poison the rats, we’ll poison the grain and we will have no way to make beer for our festival.”

  Young Emerens had the answer. “Lower me into the eastern silo and I will chase the rats away.”

  The townspeople were disgusted by such a notion, but since they did not have to go swimming about with vermin themselves, they were willing to try it. They tied a rope around Emerens’ waist and lowered him into the grain like a bucket being dropped down a well.

  Sure enough, as soon as Emerens sank into the grain, the rats sensed his holiness and chewed their way clear, eager to be away from such goodness. It took many hours of Emerens being lifted and dunked into the grain, but soon all the rats were gone and the grain was pure again.

  The citizens of Girecht pronounced Emerens the savior of the village, hefted him up on their shoulders, and carried him around the town square, cheering his good name.

  The next day, when the festival was to begin, the townspeople saw that, just as they had predicted, the rats had infested the southern silo. In went Emerens and the rats began to flee.

  It was a long process, and as the evening wore on, the villagers minding Emerens’ rope heard music coming from the town square, heard the thump of people dancing, and smelled the syrups and sweet cakes and sausages they knew were being piled high onto platters just a short distance away. Surely, they thought, we can race down to the square, have a dance and a drink, and be back before we need to pull up the boy.

  The next time Emerens sank into the silo, they raced down to the square. But after the first sip of beer, they couldn’t help but take a second. One dance became two and then three as the fiddles swelled around them, and soon they forgot that they’d ever been meant to do anything that night but enjoy themselves.

  In the darkness of the silo, Emerens tugged on the rope in vain, waiting to be drawn up to the surface. There he died, floating in the grain, his mouth and eyes and nose full of barley. The next day, the townspeople slept soundly in their beds, long after the bells for morning services had rung. Only late in the afternoon, when they stumbled to their kitchen tables and threw their shutters open to the sunlight, did anyone wonder why Emerens had not come to call them to prayer.

  Emerens was buried in the barley fields, but since his death, beer or bread made from Girecht grain has forever tasted of misery, and leaves anyone who consumes it with a sour stomach and melancholy thoughts.

  Girecht and its bitter fields are long forgotten, but Emerens, patron saint of brewers, is paid homage in late summer when the harvest begins.

  SANKT VLADIMIR THE FOOLISH

  If you are lucky, you may have stood on the quay in the great city of Os Kervo and gazed in awe at its famous lighthouse and the massive seawall that protects it. Neither would have ever come to be without the work of a brave boy named Vladimir.

  The bay at Os Kervo was once an untamed place where the sea savaged the shore and tossed ships against the land like bits of driftwood. For long years the people who had settled there tried to make the bay a working port. But all their efforts to build piers and protections were nothing against the fury of the ocean.

  It seemed a hopeless cause, so when it was announced that the king would seek to land a fleet of ships on their shores, the people did not know what to do. This was their chance at prosperity, to be recognized by the king, whose attention might forever change their fortunes. Yet if the king could not land, it would all be for nothing and some other, gentler harbor would gain their ruler’s favor.

  Vladimir was a young man without talents. He was not strong enough to be of help with building or farming or heavy work; neither was he particularly clever or interesting. He could not sing well and he was not pleasing to look at. Vladimir knew all this and the knowledge made him halting and shy, which only seemed to bother people more. They would call him “fool” or shoo him from their door, and Vladimir found that he was loneliest around other people. He was happier wandering down to the edge of the water to whisper to the waves.

  Still, Vladimir listened closely to the conversations that eddied around him. He heard his neighbors worry and argue over the arrival of the king’s fleet, and he thought he might know a solution. But when he opened his mouth to speak, his words washed away and he was left to endure blank stares and exasperated sighs. The easiest thing would be to do what he must alone.

  Vladimir waded into the water up to his knees, and then up to his hips, and then up to his chest. At first the people jeered and shouted. Until they saw that the water was going with him, the tide receding as he walked farther and farther from the land. The waves trailed him, the ocean pulling away from shore like a woman gathering her skirts. The people of the bay saw the extraordinary chance he’d given them and took up their hammers and chisels.

  For thirty days and thirty nights, Vladimir stood in the water and held back the sea, whispering his prayers as the sun rose and fell, and crabs nibbled at his toes, until the great seawall and the base of the lighthouse were built.

  At last, the foreman signaled to Vladimir that the work was done and he could finally rest. But Vladimir was too tired to make the walk back to land. He lowered his hands, his prayers fell silent, and the wild sea rushed in.

  Vladimir’s body drifted to shore on the tide, and the people of Os Kervo gathered him up and placed him upon a bier covered in lilies. For another thirty days and thirty nights
, they came to pay their respects, and to the astonishment of all, Vladimir’s corpse did not rot. On the thirty-first day, his body dissolved into sea-foam, leaving behind nothing but a small heap of sea salt among the lilies.

  He is known as the patron saint of the drowned and of unlikely achievement.

  SANKT GRIGORI OF THE WOOD

  A nobleman’s son fell ill with a disease that none of his father’s wise friends and advisers had ever seen before.

  “He must be bled,” decreed the local physician who had served the nobleman’s household for many years. “It is the only thing for such cases.” So the young man’s veins were opened and leeches were applied, but he only grew paler and weaker in his bed.

  “He must be made warm,” declared the mayor, who dined at the nobleman’s house every week. “Such diseases must be sweated out.” So they swaddled the young man in thick blankets and kept a fire blazing in the hearth all day and night. Sure enough, he sweated through all his many layers of bedclothes, but he grew no stronger.

  “He must be left to rest in the dark like a root,” said the nobleman’s rich neighbor, who was known for his prize vegetables. “A long sleep will restore him.” Heavy black curtains were drawn over the windows, and the young man’s head was wrapped in thick cotton batting so no sound could get through. When the door to his room was opened three days later, he did look white and lifeless as a turnip, but he was no better.

  At last, the nobleman’s wife took charge and sent for Grigori, a healer and teacher who lived in the mountains nearby. It took many days for the nobleman’s emissaries to find the healer’s cave, but when at last they did, he agreed to follow them down the mountain.

  Grigori was distressed when he saw the state of the nobleman’s home. He opened the windows and let in the fresh air. He banked the fire and tossed the leeches onto the coals. What else he did is not known, but only a few days later, the young man sat up in bed and declared that he was hungry. The next day he rose and walked with his mother around the garden. And the day after that, he asked that his horse be brought to him so that he might go for a ride.