Deathless (9 page)

Suddenly, the sweetness fled and pain forked through her lip—Koschei had bitten her. She stared at him, hurt, raising her hand to her mouth. Her fingers came away bloody. Koschei’s lips were smeared with it. His eyes sparked and glowed.

“When I tell you to do a thing, you must do it. It is not about wanting or not wanting. It is about the will in your jaw, and the egg on your back.”

Marya balked; her vision swam; her lips pulsed hotly where his long, thin teeth had cut her. She felt herself tottering on a needle-tip:
If I let him do this to me, what else will I allow?

Anything, anything, anything.

Koschei the Deathless wiped the bright redness from his lips. He looked down at his finger with Marya’s blood upon it. Without taking his eyes from her, he lifted his hand to his mouth and tasted it hesitantly, as if waiting for her to stop him.

Marya Morevna held her breath, and made no sound.

PART 2

Sleep with Fists Closed and Shoot Straight

There is no such thing as death.

Everyone knows that.

It has become tasteless to repeat it.

—A
NNA
A
KHMATOVA

7

The Country of Life

Where is the country of the Tsar of Life? When the world was young the seven Tsars and Tsaritsas divided it amongst themselves. The Tsar of the Birds chose the air and the clouds and the winds. The Tsaritsa of Salt chose the cities with all their bustle and heedless hurtling. The Tsar of Water chose the seas and lakes, bays and oceans. The Tsaritsa of Night chose all the dark places and the places between, the thresholds, the shadows. The Tsaritsa of the Length of an Hour chose sorrow and misfortune as her territory, so that where anyone suffers, there is her country. This left only the Tsar of Life and the Tsar of Death to argue over what remained. For a time, they were content to quarrel over individual trees, stones, and streams, giving each other great whacks with that scythe which Death wields to cut down all that lives, and that hammer which Life wields, which builds up useful and lovely things such as fences and churches and potato distilleries. However, Life and Death are brothers, and their ambition is precisely equal.

Their rivalry soon encompassed whole towns, rivers (which rightly belonged to neither, but neutrality is no defense), provinces, and beachheads, until the struggle of it consumed the whole of the world. If a town managed a granary of fine brick and half a head of good cabbage to share between them, then Death arrived with white banners like bones, and withered the place with a single stomp. If a village were hollowed out by plague or war, its streets lit by skulls hoisted up on pikes and blood poisoning the well water, then still green shoots would grow wild in the offal-rich gutters, still the last woman standing would grow great in the belly. There could be no agreement between them.

At last, with every inch of earth divided and subdivided, the loam and clay themselves could bear no more. The mountains yielded up their iron and their copper, and the Tsaritsa of Salt slyly taught men her most secret mechanisms, for of all her brothers and sisters, the Tsaritsa of Salt best knew civilized things, things made and not born. Up rose looms and threshers and plows and engines, stoves and syringes and sanitation departments, trains and good shoes. And so the Tsar of Life triumphed, and children upon children were born.

But the Tsar of Death is wily. Soon the looms bit off the fingers of their minders, and smoke clotted breath, and the great engines spat out explosives and helmets and automated rifles as well as shoes. Soon folk of the city requisitioned the grain of the villages, and stored it up in great vaults, and argued over its distribution while it moldered, and wrote long books on the righteousness of this, and Death, iron-shod, copper-crowned, danced.

The rapt pupil will be forgiven for assuming the Tsar of Death to be wicked and the Tsar of Life to be virtuous. Let the truth be told: There is no virtue anywhere. Life is sly and unscrupulous, a blackguard, wolfish, severe. In service to itself, it will commit any offense. So, too, is Death possessed of infinite strategies and a gaunt nature—but also mercy, also grace and tenderness. In his own country, Death can be kind. But of an end to their argument, we shall have none, not ever, until the end of all.

So where is the country of the Tsar of Death? Where is the nation of the Tsar of Life? They are not so easy to find, yet each day you step upon both one hundred times or more. Every portion of earth is infinitely divided between them, to the smallest unit of measure, and smaller yet. Even the specks of soil war with one another. Even the atoms strangle each other in their sleep. To reach the country of the Tsar of Life, which is both impossibly near and hopelessly far, you must not wish to arrive there, but approach it stealthily, sideways. It is best to be ill, in a fever, a delirium. In the riot of sickness, when the threatened flesh rouses itself, all redness and fluid and heat, it is easiest to topple over into the country you seek.

Of course, it is just as easy, in this manner, to reach the country of the Tsar of Death. Travel is never without risk.

Zemlehyed the leshy squinted at the great black book. With one gnarled, mossy hand, he shook it by its corner. A few leaves fell on it from the canopy of birches. Sunlight spilled down through the white branches, cool and golden and crisp. The coal-colored spine of the heavy volume glittered where the waxy autumnal light struck it. Dubiously, the leshy gave the cover a good gnaw. He wrinkled his burl-nose. Zemlehyed looked more or less like what you would get if a particularly stunted and ugly oak tree had fallen passionately in love with a boulder and produced, at great cost to both, a single child. His mistletoe eyebrows waggled.

“Why she read this none-sense? It’s got no pictures. Also, boring.”

Naganya the vintovnik rolled her eye. She had only one to roll, since her left eye was less an eye than a rifle scope, jutting out from her skull, made of bone and glassy thumbnail. Nevertheless, she wore half a pair of spectacles over the other eye, for she felt naked and embarrassed without some sort of lens to look through. The imp’s walnut skin gleamed from attentive polishing, though her blackened, ironwork sinews showed through in places: her elbows, her cheek, the backs of her knees.

“Don’t you pay attention? Likho gave it to her.” Naganya sniffed ostentatiously. She produced a grey handkerchief and wiped a trickle of black oil from her nose. “Still,
I
don’t approve. Histories are instruments of oppression. Writers of histories ought to be shot on sight.”

Zemlehyed snorted. “Who’s this Tsar of Life? Never met the man.”

“Who do you think, rock-brain? He’s not called Deathless for nothing.” Naganya peered at the book for a moment, clicking her tongue against her teeth. It made a horrid mechanical noise, like a gun cocking and uncocking. “You’re right, though. It
is
boring. Overwritten. I’m surprised you can read it at all.”

“Nor good to eat! Shit! Why not tear it up and bury it? Some nice tree have a good munch, eh?” Zemlehyed spat a glob of golden sap on their picnic blanket. Naganya grimaced.

“Why the tsarevna lets you blunder after her is a mystery to me. You’re disgusting. But if you want to wreck her things, be my guest. At least the evisceration will be amusing. What
do
leshiyi look like on the inside? All mud and sticks?”

“Paws off, gun-goblin!
My
insides;
my
property!”

“Property is theft!” snapped Naganya, her cheek-pistons clicking. “Therefore, just by sitting there you’re stealing from the People, Zemya! Bandit! Ring the alarms!”

Zemlehyed spat again.

“But Zemya,” she whined, “I’m
bored
! Why don’t I interrogate you again? It’ll be fun! I’ll leave my safety on this time, I promise.”

The leshy gnashed his stone teeth with their rime of muck. “Nasha, why you only bored when I’m around? Get bored with someone else!”

Through the bramble-thicket two horses exploded, their riders flattened against their backs. The black one raced ahead, a young woman shrieking laughter in her green enamel saddle, her dark hair streaming, braided wildly with garnets and rough sea amber, her hunting cloak a red sail. She darted expertly between the pale, bony birches, ducking boughs heavy with yellow leaves and thin, brown vines sagging with ruby-colored berries. Behind her leapt a white mare and a pale lady riding sidesaddle, every bit as keen and fierce as the black rider, the swan feathers in her snowy hair flying off in pale clouds. Their stamping hooves set up whirlwinds of old orange leaves as they galloped past.

“Did it come this way?” cried Marya Morevna, her eyes blazing, reining her dark horse in and circling impatiently.

“Who?” barked the leshy.

“My firebird! Got moss in your ears again, Zemya?”

“You’re too slow,” sighed Naganya. “It blew through here over an hour ago. Singed my hair, which naturally incinerated most of our lunch.” Naganya’s hair glistened, wet and dark with gun-oil, reeking of gasoline.

“Well, then,” said Madame Lebedeva, leaping lightly from her horse and adjusting her elegant white hat, which still had several of its swan plumes attached. At her throat, a pearly cameo gleamed, showing a perfect profile of herself. “I, for one, shall have a cup of tea and a rest. Firebirds are such frustrating quarry. One minute it’s all fiery tail feathers and red talons and the next, nothing but ash and a sore seat.” She knotted her mare to a larch tree and settled down on the slightly sappy picnic blanket, brushing invisible dust from her white jodhpurs and blazer.

Marya leaned her hunting rifle up against a fire-colored maple and fell in a heap onto the blanket. She hugged Zemya vigorously—which is the only way to do anything involving a leshy—and planted a kiss on his oak-bark cheek. The hunt had gotten her blood and her hungers up—she vibrated with excitement.

“What have we to eat?” Marya asked cheerfully, her jewel-strewn hair falling over one shoulder. She wore a smart black suit, half uniform, half hunting dress.

“Burnt toast, burnt pirozhki, onions both pickled
and
burnt. I believe even the tea has a distinct smoky flavor,” sighed the vintovnik.

“We can’t leave you alone for a second.” Madame Lebedeva scowled.

“Three hours, vila!” groused Zemlehyed, scratching his knees. “And she were interrogating me again. Look!” He displayed his hands, each of which had a neat bullet hole through the leafy palm. “The price of cronyism, she says!”

“Well, now, you have to admit, you do hew fairly close to the heels of the Tsar’s favorite.” Madame Lebedeva smiled.

“And you don’t? Where’s
your
price, eh?”

“I am very careful not to be alone with the zealous Nasha.” The vila sniffed. “This is the best way to avoid interrogations, I find.”

“Peace!” Marya Morevna laughed, holding up her hands. On each finger gleamed silver rings studded with rough, uncut malachites and rubies. “If you don’t behave, all of you, I shall not tell you any more stories about Petrograd!”

Naganya’s limpid eye filled with greasy black tears. “Oh, Masha, that’s not fair! How shall I further the Party’s interests in the hinterlands if you will not teach me about Marx and Papa Lenin?”

Zemya scowled, his mouth little more than a gap in the rock of his chin. “Who is Papa Lenin?
Tfu!
Zemlehyed has
one
Papa: Papa
Koschei
. He needs no nasty bald Papa Lenin!”

Marya Morevna’s face brightened and darkened all at once. She twisted the rings on her fingers. When she thought of Koschei, her blood boiled and froze all together. “Well, I’m sure that puts an end to the debate, Zem. Nasha?”

Naganya sighed dramatically. “I ought to go to Petrograd myself!” she wailed. “What use has a rifle imp out here where the best diversion for my sort is common hunting? How I long for real utility, to hunt out enemies of the People and put holes in them!”

Madame Lebedeva yawned and stretched her long arms. Her beauty was impossibly delicate and pointed, birdlike and nearly colorless, save for her dark, depthless eyes. “When is he going to marry you, Mashenka? How tiresome for you, to wait like this!”

“I don’t know, Lebed, my love. He is so occupied with the war, you know. All day and night in the Chernosvyat, poring over papers and troop allotments. Hardly a good time for a wedding.” In truth, Marya was tired of waiting. She squinted in the frosty sunlight, wishing to be Tsaritsa, to be safe here, to know she would not have to go home, back where she did not have a horse or firebirds to hunt, where she did not have such friends.

“Maybe he doesn’t love you anymore.” Naganya shrugged, her mouth half-full of pirozhki.