Deathless (17 page)

Marya grimaced, crossed the room, and sat, gingerly, clenching her jaw, on Chairman Yaga’s lap. The crone cupped her face like her own grandmother.

“If you think my brother is any different, girl, then there’s no help for you. He’ll burn you down like wax if you let him. You’ll think it’s love, while he dines on your heart. And maybe it will be. But he’s so hungry, he’ll eat you all in one sitting, and you’ll be in his belly, and what will you do then? Hear me say it, because I know. I ate all of my husbands. First I ate their love, then their will, then their despair, and then I made pies out of their bodies—and those bodies were so dear to me! But marriage is war, and you do what you must to survive—because only one of you will.”

Marya swallowed hard. “I’m not like that,” she whispered.

“We’ll see. When you’re flying along in a mortar and pestle with the moon screaming in your ear, and you look so much like me no man could tell us apart, we’ll see what you’re like. Only one thing matters, almost-soup: Who is to rule.”

12

Red Compels

“No,” said Madame Lebedeva, dipping her finger into a pot of powder the color of amber. It matched both her teapot and her tea. With a deft movement she swept it over one eyelid and inspected her work in the tall, iron-rimmed mirror of her vanity. A gauzy white skirt fluttered at her ankles; a severe blouse gathered its lace around her throat, pinned by her cameo. Her snowy hair rippled in smooth finger-curls, drawn up into a cascading mass of feathers and pearls. The image on her cameo also had such curls, such feathers and pearls.

“What do you mean,
no
?” said Marya. Her friend’s denial stung—for all her haughtiness, Lebedeva refused her so little.

“I mean I don’t do that sort of thing.”

“What sort of thing?”

Lebedeva sighed and put down her pink cake-icing rouge with the loud smack of metal against enamel.

“What do you think, Masha? The sort of thing where you come to me with some kind of impossible task oddly suited to my particular talents that simply
must
be completed and
Oh, Lebed, darling, help me in my hour of need!
I don’t do that. I don’t drink the ocean so you can fetch a ring from the bottom of it, I don’t stay awake for three days to glimpse a snotty little tsarevna traipsing off to who-knows-where, and I certainly don’t mess about with a mortar that never troubled me.”

Madame Lebedeva perused her armory of lipstick and snapped one up decisively, the color of a peony seen through layers of ice.

“What’s eating you? Naganya and Zemlehyed came with me; they helped me. If I fail, Chairman Yaga will have me in her pot.”

“Naganya and Zemlehyed are your companions, Marya.”

Marya warmed a little with embarrassment. She began to feel she had behaved poorly, somehow. “And what are you?”

The pale lady turned incredulously from her mirror. “I am Inna Affanasievna Lebedeva! I am a vila and a magician and I am not your servant, Marya Morevna! What have you done for me except refuse my advances and mock my concerns because they are not your concerns, because you think cosmetics and fashion and society frivolous? What regard have you shown me but to decline my offers of badly needed instruction and allow your other friends to tread on my pride? When have I come to you saying,
Masha, help me curse this cattle, help me woo that shepherd for my amusement!
I keep to my affairs, which are not your affairs!”

And Marya Morevna
knew
she had behaved poorly, and was deathly sorry. She could not bear for a beautiful blond girl to speak harshly to her; it pained her in her throat, where a red scarf once lay. “Oh, Lebed! I did not mean to insult you!”

The vila sighed, pinching her cheeks until they got pink and bright. “That is your nature. You may not be a Yelena, but you are a kind of cousin to them. And your sort does not treat my sort well. So no, I will not help you ride the mortar. I certainly don’t wish you eaten, darling; it isn’t that. But I have my pride. Some days, Masha, when I have not made a cikavac and the cafe turns me away at the door; when shepherds shriek and show me the sign of the cross; when Naganya sleeps in your bed and my lover has left me for a bitch rusalka who is only going to drown him, and it serves him right; it’s all I have. And you laugh at me because I try to teach you about lipstick.”

“Well, you must admit, when placed alongside the threat of becoming soup, lipstick is rather silly.”

Madame Lebedeva stared at Marya until Marya felt her cheeks burn and her black blister flare painfully.

“Do you think I am a fool, Masha? All this time, and you speak to me as though I were a flighty pinprick of a girl. I am a magician! Did you never think, even once, that I loved lipstick and rouge for more than their color alone? I am a student of their lore, and it is arcane and hermetic beyond the dreams of alchemists. Did you never wonder why I gave you so many pots, so many creams, so much perfume?” Lebedeva’s eyes shone. “Masha, listen to me. Cosmetics are an extension of the will. Why do you think all men paint themselves when they go to fight? When I paint my eyes to match my soup, it is not because I have nothing better to do than worry over trifles. It says,
I belong here, and you will not deny me
. When I streak my lips red as foxgloves, I say,
Come here, male. I am your mate, and you will not deny me
. When I pinch my cheeks and dust them with mother-of-pearl, I say,
Death, keep off, I am your enemy, and you will not deny me
. I say these things, and
the world listens,
Masha. Because my magic is as strong as an arm. I am
never
denied.”

Marya’s unpainted lips parted in surprise.

“I did not know.”

“You did not
ask
.”

“Please help me, Inna Affanasievna.” Marya took the vila’s pale, soft hands in hers. “Please.”

“Every once in a while, my darling sister, you must do something for yourself.”

Marya looked at Madame Lebedeva—her deep amber eyelids, her pale lips, her frosted cheeks. She could hardly stand the beauty of her friend. It dazzled her. She did not think she could deny Madame Lebedeva, either.

“Will you paint me then, for this task? Will you make up my face, as you have so often asked to do?”

Madame Lebedeva frowned. Her pearly lips turned downward, and she seemed a space older.

“No, Mashenka. I will not. It would only be an extension of my will, and it is yours that is at issue. But I will say to you: Blue is for cruel bargains; green is for daring what you oughtn’t; violet is for brute force. I will say to you: Coral coaxes; pink insists; red compels. I will say to you: You are dear to me as attar of roses. Please do not get eaten.”

Madame Lebedeva leaned forward on her little gold stool and kissed Marya on both cheeks, eyelashes gently fluttering against Marya’s temples. She smelled like rain falling through honeysuckles, and when she drew away, her kisses remained on Marya’s skin, little twin circles of pink, almost invisible.

“Remember this when you are queen,” she breathed. “I told you my secrets.”

*   *   *

A bashful winter’s noontime showed only its modest ankle before slipping into darkness again. Marya walked along Skorohodnaya Road, kicking clumps of ice.
Mastery,
she thought.
I know nothing of that. Who was master when Koschei fed me and silenced me? Not I.
An explosion of laughter spilled out of a tavern with eaves of black braids that hung down the corners like bellpulls. Marya stopped and stroked the building’s wall: pale, smooth skin, too hairless to be anything but a girl’s. The building shivered with the attention.
And yet, I chose to be silent, to eat what he fed me. And he shook when he touched me. I made him weak enough to shake. What does any of it mean?

Marya stopped and turned up her face to the stars, which sparkled like the points of knives. She turned up the collar of her long coat; the wound below her eye pulsed in the cold. She thought of the year that had turned since she had come to Buyan, how she had trembled when she first saw the Chernosvyat, the fountains of warm blood even now gurgling behind her, Naganya’s fearful clicking laugh. Nineteen forty-two, she thought.
At Leningrad.
It was the
at
that made her shudder. Not
in
Leningrad.
At
Leningrad.
At least I shall die at home. But did he really say I would die? He said
gross desertion
. I will be a deserter. Same as a runaway, really. And what is home? Buyan is home. Leningrad is so far; 1942 is so far. Why would I ever go back?

“Volchya-Yagoda,” she whispered, reaching into the wind for something familiar, something huge and kind.

“Yes, Marya,” said the voice of the horse, beside her in a moment as though he had always been there, breathing against her shoulder. He glowed milky in the night.

“I wondered, if I wanted you, if you would come.”

“I would not call it a rule. But I have very good ears, and I am fast.”

Marya turned and put her arms around the horse’s long neck. He did not smell of horse, but of exhaust and metal.

“Promise me, Volchya. Promise that you will never take me back to Leningrad. If I do not go back, I cannot die there.”

“Did someone say you were going to die?”

Marya’s brow furrowed. “Well, no, not exactly. He said convicted. But convicted usually means died.”

“Perhaps it will not be so bad.”

“Volchya, you must swear it. What do horses swear on?”

“Nothing.” Volchya spoke with a strange accent, his brassy deep voice pinched and contorted. “Horses are godless. There is only the rider, and the whip. But I promise.”

“Take me home, Volchya.”

The bone-pale horse crouched down and wriggled within Marya’s embrace so that she found herself swept up onto his back before she could breathe twice. She could feel his oily blood churning hot and heavy beneath her. He turned toward the Chernosvyat, a dark blot against the dark sky. In the torchlight, the shadows of his bones moved under his thin skin.

“Why do you let me ride you? Are you more tame than Chairman Yaga’s mortar?”

Volchya-Yagoda snorted. “That thing is a dish. It has no mouth, no teeth. You cannot call something living if it has no mouth. Many things in Buyan are mixed-up and backwards—mossy rocks and guns that speak, birds that turn into men and buildings like youths—but you will notice that everything living has a mouth. Mouths bite and swallow; they talk; they taste. They kiss. A mouth is the main tool for living. The mortar is like a very vicious spaniel. It is alive in some sense, but you wouldn’t set it a place at dinner.” His hoofbeats echoed in the darkness. “As for why I let you ride me, ah, what a terrible science, riding and being ridden! Which is the servant: the one who bears his mistress, or the one who combs and brushes her mount? It is simple, Marya Morevna. You served me when first we met. You polished my skin and gave me new shoes. You slept against my flank. Service buys service. In my four hearts, service is the only possible expression of love. I serve Koschei. But if you had not run your hand along my fetlock, I would never have served you.” Volchya-Yagoda turned his gaunt head to nip at her. It hurt, but she took it as it was meant, gently, with affection. “But that will not work with the mortar, you know. It is a kitchen beast. You could not make yourself so low as to serve it, not if you crawled on your belly. And Yaga’s tests never measure the length of your humility. It wants force, Marya. It wants you to be bigger than it is. It wants a mistress, and it is accustomed to one who is ancient and strong, whose thighs can crush it between them, whose iron hips drive it home. You will never manage it.”

“Everyone is so sure I cannot do it.”

“Oh, Marya, of course you can’t! Even after a year with us you are gentle and kind yet! A little wilder, perhaps, more keen to bite and be bitten, to steal and fight, but how warm you are still. How willing to do as you are told. That is no girl to ride the mortar. You do not have it in you. Come, I will take you to the north wall. You can fetch her bauble, and no one will be wiser.”

Marya shook her head. “She needs only to ask the mortar and I will be caught.”

“I told you, it has no mouth to betray you.”

Marya frowned deeply. She wanted it to be that easy. To be helped along. So much nicer to be helped along. But Madame Lebedeva’s voice sounded in her:
Every once in a while, my darling sister, you must do something for yourself.

“The task is not the bauble, it is the mortar,” she sighed finally. “Take me to my tower, Volchya. That’s all. I must find the way myself.”

They rode in silence for a long while. Skorohodnaya Road stretched out like a black ribbon, the great pendant of the moon sliding down its center.

“Volchya-Yagoda, may I ask you a last thing?”

The great horse sighed. “You want answers like oats in a feedbag, Marya.”

“I have spoken with domoviye and leshy and Zmey Gorinich himself, and all of them call themselves loyal; they love the Party like a mother. They recite back to me the slogans of my childhood, and their eyes shine with fierceness. And yet Koschei lives in his great palace and Lebedeva hoards her night creams and her cameos and prizes her patronymic. Little folk scramble to wear badges of belonging on their breasts, to agitate and join up, but big folk live as they always have, like dragons, like Tsars. How can this be?”