Deathless (12 page)

“I’m sure it sounds fascinating, dear. What are they, some sort of conjurers?”

“No, no, they tell stories. Write them down, I mean.” Marya grabbed at her tea to buy a moment’s thought. Buyanites had an insatiable lust for information about the human world, but anything Marya told them became a daring new fashion, spreading like gossip. She had to be careful. “A playwright writes a story that other people act out. They memorize the story and pretend that they are the heroines and villains of it. A poet writes one that rhymes, like a song.” Marya grinned suddenly. She shut her eyes and recited, the words coming back to her like old friends:

There, weeping, a tsarevna lies, locked in a cell.

And Master Grey Wolf serves her very well.

There, in her mortar, sweeping beneath the skies,

the demon Baba Yaga flies.

There Tsar Koschei,

he wastes away,

poring over his pale gold.

The waiter tucked his cloth under an arm and applauded vigorously. Lebedeva clapped her hands. “Oh, superb! It’s about us! How gratifying to be so recognized.”

Encouraged, Marya hurried on. “A novelist writes a long kind of story, with … a lot of smaller stories in it, and motifs, and symbols, and sometimes things in the story really happened, and sometimes they didn’t.”

The waiter wrinkled his lovely nose. “Why would you tell a story about something that didn’t really happen? At least the poetry was straightforward, manful. Not concerned with idle fancies, just a respectable census report!”

Marya slurped at her soup thoughtfully. “I suppose because it’s boring to keep telling stories where people just get born and grow up and get married and die. So they add strange things in, to make it more interesting when a person is born, more satisfying when they get married, sadder when they die.”

Lebedeva snapped her fingers. “It’s like lying!” she exclaimed. “Well, we understand that, of course! The bigger the lie, the happier the liar.”

“Yes, a little like lying. But…” Marya leaned in close to them conspiratorially. She couldn’t help it—she enjoyed being an expert, an acknowledged authority. Watching her opinions become fact. And as she lived and ate and slept in Buyan, she learned better to explain things so that her comrades could understand them. “But you know, a wizard with black hair and a thick mustache put a curse on Moscow, and Petrograd, too, so that no one would be able to tell the truth without lying. If a novelist wrote a true story about how things really happened, no one would believe him, and he might even be punished for spreading propaganda. But if he wrote a book full of lies about things that could never really happen, with only a few true things hidden in it, well, he would be hailed as a hero of the People, given a seat at a writers’ cafe, served wine and ukha, and not have to pay for any of it. He’d get a salaried summer on the dacha, and be feted. Even given a medal by the wizard with the thick mustache.”

The waiter whistled. “That’s a good curse. I should like to shake that wizard’s hand and buy him a vodka or two.”

“Someone ought to write a novel about me,” said Lebedeva loftily. “I shouldn’t care if they lied to make it more interesting, as long as they were good lies, full of kisses and daring escapes and the occasional act of barbarism. I can’t abide a poor liar.”

“For a while,” said Marya Morevna, “I thought I might like to be a writer. I walked to school in the mornings and read poetry and wondered if I could be like the men and women in the reserved tea shops. If there was a story in me, somewhere deep, sleeping, waiting to wake up.”

“I doubt it.” Madame Lebedeva sniffed. “Your lying really needs work. Perhaps it’s because you’re so far from Petrograd. Curses haven’t much sticking power, geographically speaking. Honesty is
such
a nasty habit, dear. Like biting your nails.”

Just then, the round window of the cafe, fashioned from the lens of a whale’s eye, shook with a quiet tremor.

“It’s possible you chose an unfortunate poem to recite, my love,” said Madame Lebedeva, finally allowing herself a single, decadent slurp of her pale green soup. Her eyes slid closed in exquisite satisfaction. The waiter hurried off, suddenly quite interested in a table far across the room.

Outside, a black car approached. Its long nose sloped and curved like a merciless beak; its fenders hunched up as round as eggs. Like clever eyes, the windows narrowed. It was both like and unlike Volchya-Yagoda, the car who had borne Marya to Buyan. This one seemed wholly larger, more careful, more luxurious, more serious.

Below it, four yellow chicken legs loped gracefully on the road where wheels ought to have been, their black claws scrabbling at the hard snow.

Setting her silver spoon aside, Madame Lebedeva extinguished her cigarette on her plate, then retrieved it with a flourish, whole and unsmoked, tucking it into her hat.

“Much as you know I adore you, devotchka, there is about to be far too much excitement in here for my poor little heart. I believe I shall adjourn myself to the cigar room and snuffle out their oldest yaks blood. To settle my stomach.”

Lebedeva left in a flurry of feathers and pale, swinging hair—she did everything in a flurry. Marya Morevna blinked twice and glanced nervously at the car again, its chicken legs shuffling back and forth on the icy cobbles. Her own stomach quavered—her body had learned to feel it deep in the guts when something strange was about to happen. This was useful, but uncomfortable. Marya kept her hands steady.

The cafe fell abruptly silent—a complete, profound silence, with no tinkle of plate or dropped cup to blemish it. The skin of the walls prickled in gooseflesh as a broad-breasted woman with a nose like an axe blade strode into the place, her throat swallowed up in a black fur coat, her white hair strangled back into a savagely tight chignon. She looked to her left, then her right; then her eyes fell on Marya Morevna like an old, fat crow settling on a branch. She seated herself with the confidence of a landlord; three waiters hurried to bring her tea, vodka, golden kvass in a fresh jar. A fourth appeared, a rusalka, his hair dripping wet, bearing a whole goose on a golden tray. The woman tore off a leg and bit into it, licking the juice from her slightly fuzzy chin. The waiter was obliged to stand, a piece of furniture hoisting the goose for her further enjoyment.

“So you’re her,” growled the old woman, grinning with her mouth full. She had all her teeth, and they were sharp, leonine, yellow.

“I’m not sure what you mean,” said Marya Morevna softly. The old woman crackled with potency; Marya’s stomach felt it like a blow. The crone tapped the table with the goose’s leg bone.

“Kid, let’s skip this pantomime where you pretend you’re not rutting with my brother up in that gauche tower of his—come off it! Does everything have to be black? He’s an affected old bull, I’ll tell you that for free. Anyway, I have no patience for innocent girls, unless they have apples in their mouths and are on speaking terms with my soup pot.”

Marya tried to smile politely, as though they were having a pleasant conversation about the weather. But she gripped her teacup so tight the handle left red moon-shapes in her palms. Her face flushed and the old woman rolled her jaundiced eyes.

“Oh, quit that, Yelena! Blushing is for virgins and Christians!”

“My name is not Yelena.”

The old woman paused and crooked one eyebrow, whose scraggly hairs had grown so long she’d braided them neatly along her brow bone. Her voice changed timbre, rising to an interested tenor. “Forgive me. I just assumed. My brother has a”—she stirred her tea with the fatty end of the goose bone—“
fetish
for girls named Yelena, you see. Almost a monomania. Occasionally, a Vasilisa will sneak in there, just to keep things spiced. So it’s an easy mistake. What is your name, my child?”

“Marya Morevna. And there aren’t any others. There have never been.”

The crone tossed her goose bone over one shoulder. The waiter, still silent and dutiful behind her, caught it with a deft hand. She leaned over the table, her fur coat sloshing into the vodka, and plunked her face down in her hands.

“Well, isn’t that just
fascinating,
” she breathed. “The devil take lunch! Let your old baba take you on an … expedition. It’ll be good for you! Morally fortifying, like having a good stare at a graveyard. A body needs a good
memento mori
to flush out the humors.”

The crone seized Marya Morevna by the arm and shoved her out of the restaurant. She paid for nothing.

Marya was no fool. She could add two and two and two and come up with six—which is to say, add
old grandmother
and
chicken legs
and
terrified waitstaff
and come up with Baba Yaga. No magician outranked Baba Yaga. Her seat at the magicians’ cafe was sacrosanct, to say the least.

Outside, snow floated down a lacy path, so thick it obscured even the Chernosvyat, hunched dark and impregnable on the hill. Baba Yaga gave a bleating cry and leapt up into the air, her skinny legs scissoring beneath her. She landed hard on Marya’s shoulders, digging her heels into the girl’s armpits.

“Mush, girl! Mush!” she yelped. “A wife must be a good mount, eh?”

Marya’s knees trembled, but when she felt the snap of a goat-hide whip on her back, she stumbled ahead, running through the snow. Baba Yaga’s car snorted to life and hopped along behind her, nipping at her heels with its front bumper.

“That way, not-Yelena!” Baba Yaga hollered into the storm. Marya groaned like an old nag, and ran.

*   *   *

Marya’s mouth dripped saliva like an overworked horse. She rounded the snow-swept corner into a half-sheltered alley, her breathing shallow, rough, and fast. Baba Yaga hauled on her hair to stop her at the threshold of the door and vaulted off. Marya gasped with relief, the hot weight finally vanished from her back. She bent over, her heart wheezing, sweat pouring off of her, crawling in her scalp. A horse-bone door cut into the side of a blood-brown boar-skin building. Rubbish and smashed glass carpeted the thin street. The car honked happily, shuffling its chicken legs.

“In you go, and in I go,” chuffed Baba Yaga, her breath fogging. “And stay close—I want to see if you cry.”

They shouldered through the horse-femur door together. It towered over them both. Within, a yawning factory floor opened up below an iron balcony. They peered over the railing, the screws and bolts groaning with the leaden weight of Baba Yaga. Below, dozens upon dozens of girls worked away at looms the size of army trucks, their fingers flashing in and out of strands of linen, their shuttles racing their hands. Most of the women were blond, their hair braided in a tidy crown around their heads. Only a few dark ones, like Marya, dotted the sea of pale gold. They wore identical blackberry-colored uniforms. The old woman beamed like a holiday morning.

“Every one of those pretty little things is named Yelena. Oh—I’m sorry.
That
one is Vasilisa. And that one. And that plump one in the corner … and the tall one with her dolly still in her pocket. How sweet.”

Marya wiped her sodden brow. Her calves burned thickly. “What are they doing?” she panted.

“Oh, this is a wartime facility. Didn’t you know? Doesn’t your lover tell you just
everything
? They’re weaving armies. Noon and midnight, and no days off for good behavior. See? There, one is coming off the line just now.”

Directly below them, one of the looms and one of the Yelenas were finishing off the helmet on a soldier. He was as flat as paper, but perfect, his uniform crisp, his eyes serenely shut, his rifle at the ready. The shuttle scooted back and forth, weaving in the last of his helmet’s spike. When it was done, the Yelena opened up the leg of his trousers and blew hard into it, first the right, then the left. The soldier inflated, his nose popping into shape, muscles plumping in his thighs. He sat up stiffly and, with much creaking of new stitches, marched to the rear of the room, where the blocking baths awaited.

“They’re not alive, see,” explained Baba Yaga. “Well, not
properly
alive. Not alive like a frog or my car. It’s all so Viy can’t pull his old trick of killing our folk like he’s getting paid per pint, then turning around and lining them up in his own formations. When you stab one of these poor bastards, they just unravel. Good trick, yes? Can’t say my brother’s not clever.”

“Comrade Yaga—”

Baba Yaga whirled on her, the tails of her fur coat whipping around. “Don’t you call me
comrade,
little girl. We aren’t equals and we aren’t friends.
Chairman
Yaga. That comrade nonsense is just a hook by which the low pull down the high. And then what do you get? Everyone rolling around in the same shit, like pigs.”

Marya fought to keep her voice strong and deep. She would not show fear in front of this wolf of a woman. “Chairman Yaga. Why did you bring me here?”