by E. P. Clark
“Go, Seva,” Dasha told him. “We will be safe here.”
Seva gave her a very doubtful look, but when Oleg nodded to him, he picked up a bucket—whose ability to hold water also looked very doubtful—by the door, and left.
“I’ll just be in the back,” Oleg said. “Call for me if you need me.”
Sister Asya nodded, and then went to bring over a bench from the table to the stove. “Come,” she said, when she had set it down. “Sit here, Tsarinovna. Now we will pray.”
At first their prayer was just like the other prayers Dasha had experienced, which was to say, they sat there in silence and nothing happened other than Oleg bringing in an armful of damp, rotting wood and trying to stoke the stove with it. Then Seva came back with half a bucket of water—the rest had leaked out—which Sister Asya used to wash Nastya’s face. Then Oleg sent him off with a handful of coin and instructions to bring back two loaves of bread and an armful of wood from the market, since the woodpile here was almost gone. Then Oleg said he would be outside, trying to fix the fence, and to call for him if they needed him.
The arrangements completed, Sister Asya took up Dasha’s hand in one hand, and Nastya’s in the other. Nastya opened her eyes and reached out her other hand, her fingers scrabbling till Dasha guessed her purpose, and took them in her own hand, forming a circle.
“Thought I were”—cough—“dreaming there,” said Nastya.
“And maybe you were, Nastya. Dream away, if it pleases you.”
“I dreamed”—cough—“of the sea. I ain’t”—cough cough—“seen the sea”—cough cough cough—“since I were a girl.”
“I remember. You told me you lived in Vostochnoye Selo as a child, and used to run and play on the seashore, and feel the waves break over your feet. A good dream to have.”
“Funny to think”—cough—“I won’t be”—cough cough—“dreaming soon. Just”—cough—“nothing.”
“Not nothing, Nastya. Not nothing. You’ll be everything. A part of everything, just as we all are, and are always meant to be.”
Nastya grimaced weakly. “That what”—cough cough—“they teach you”—cough cough cough—“at your”—cough—“sanctuary?”
“Yes. You learn through your prayers to see yourself—not just see yourself, but feel yourself as well—as more than just yourself. As something greater than yourself, something that serves a greater purpose, something that can’t be destroyed just because your body fails, no more than the sea is destroyed when a wave breaks.”
“The wave”—cough—“still breaks.”
“Only to be reborn as another wave.”
“Not the”—cough cough—“same wave.”
“No. No more than you are the same person you were when you were a little girl. Except that you are, even as you aren’t.”
“You think”—cough—“the wave”—cough cough—“feels fear”—cough cough cough—“just afore it breaks?”
“Perhaps.” Sister Asya squeezed Nastya’s hand. “Perhaps, as it is cresting, reaching its highest point, it feels fear and exultation in equal measure, before the ecstasy of rejoining its native source.”
“Don’t feel”—cough cough—“much like”—cough cough—“ecstasy”—cough cough cough—“right now.”
“No. I imagine not. Would you like to pray?”
“What”—cough—“good”—cough—“will it do”—cough—“me?”
“It will help you join your sister waves.”
Nastya made a feeble move with her head that to Dasha looked more like denial than assent, but Sister Asya squeezed both their hands and said, “Let your mind settle on the air. Not the past, not the future, but the air around you. The air that you breathe in and breathe out, taking and consuming, and yet it is still air, still nourishing, still life. The air that flows through this city, through the forest, to the trees, through whose branches it also flows, just as it does our lungs. Our lungs and their branches are the same. Over the bogs and ponds and streams, which are water, and yet their water becomes the air as rain, and falls to the earth and becomes water again. Air, water, earth—all one. You are all of those things, and you flow through them, just as they flow through you. Constantly changing, constantly renewing, constantly dying and constantly being reborn. And the air flows from the forest to the sea, where it meets the shore. Waves rise and fall, crash and break, and yet the sea remains. Storms rage, and yet the air remains. Everything breaks and falls apart, and yet remains even so. It all remains even so. It all remains even so.”
Sister Asya’s voice grew quieter and quieter, until it faded into silence. Nastya’s eyes were closed, and her breast was rising and falling with an ease that had eluded it in wakefulness. Sister Asya continued to sit there, holding her hand, holding Dasha’s hand. Warmth was spreading from her hand to Dasha’s, and Dasha could feel it flowing through her and down her other hand into Nastya’s. Not, she thought, healing strength, but the simple warmth of contact. Her own eyelids were growing heavy. Even as she was there, and could feel the bench beneath her legs and the hands holding hers, she could also feel herself expand outwards, just as Sister Asya had described, so that she was the air and the earth and the trees and the sky…the road leading West from Lesnograd, leading towards the sea…they were riding down that road…a village…flames…screaming…people running…they had to do something…but what? Anything they did would cause harm.
“It would be worth it to stop ‘em!” cried Svetochka. “One quick pain, an’ it would all be over!”
Dasha’s eyes flew open. She must have been dreaming. Or having a vision. She looked around. Nastya still appeared to be asleep, and Sister Asya still appeared to be praying. Dasha wanted to ask her what she thought of Dasha’s dream/vision, but she didn’t want to wake Nastya, now that she was finally at peace, and she didn’t want to bother Sister Asya with her concerns when Nastya had her own, much greater, concerns. The bench was really cutting into the back of her thighs. It was uneven, too, forcing her to sit slightly twisted to keep upright on it, and the twisted position was giving her a cramp in her side. She tried to shift without disturbing the others.
Sister Asya opened her eyes. She looked over at Dasha and gave a tiny nod, before gently disentangling her hand from Nastya’s. Dasha attempted the same thing. She thought she was going to wake Nastya, but she only shifted slightly in her sleep, and then fell back into stillness. Her fingers to her lips, Sister Asya stood up from her bench, motioning for Dasha to do the same, and then tiptoed to the door.
“You should go, Tsarinovna,” she said, once they were outside. “Take your guards, and have them escort you back to the kremlin. I will meet you there tomorrow when you depart. Tonight I will stay here with Nastya. I do not expect her to see the morning.”
“I can stay,” Dasha offered.
Sister Asya shook her head. “It is good of you to offer, Tsarinovna, but no. Staying with the dying is a hard office, especially for one as young as you. It was good that you came to her, and did her the honor of your presence, and helped her slip into sleep, but that is enough. She would not welcome a stranger at her last moments. Go back to the kremlin, and I will see you tomorrow.”
Dasha opened her mouth to ask about her vision, but then thought better of it, and said, “Until tomorrow, then. I should warn you: Vladislava Vasilisovna is unlikely to be kind to stragglers—or anyone else, for that matter.”
Sister Asya smiled. “I have no doubt. Luckily I have no fear of her! Until tomorrow, Tsarinovna.”
Dasha gathered up Oleg, who had fixed the gate, and Seva, who was just coming back with bread and firewood, and, moving carefully through the mud, they set off back for the kremlin.
Chapter Twenty-Six
“Does Vladya know just how poor people are here?” Dasha asked, as soon as they were away from Nastya’s hut and walking down the muddy alley.
“More or less,” said Oleg.
“What do you mean, more or less?”
“She
knows, just like you know that there are poor people in Krasnograd, but she doesn’t come out and mingle with them any more than you do.”
“I just did!”
“True enough. Well, you can tell her of it, then, and see what she does.”
“I will! She should do something about it.”
“So she should. Along with everything she should do about the foreigners coming in and attacking our villages, and the hunting of the wolves and wild animals you promised to speak to her about, and many other things besides. And she needs to find a husband and have a daughter or three before it’s too late. She should do lots of things, but only some of them are going to get done.”
“Well, I’ll speak to her about it anyway,” Dasha resolved.
Only it wasn’t that simple. When they got back to the kremlin the maids were horrified at the state of Dasha’s boots (with good reason), and she had to change out of them and send them off to be cleaned, and then Susanna cornered her and demanded to know what the weather would be like in Pristanograd and whether she should wear her lighter clothes or her heavier clothes on the road, as if Dasha had any better idea than she did, and then, when she finally was able to escape and make her way to Vladya’s chamber, where, she had been assured, Vladya could be found, she found that Vladya was surrounded by packs and trunks and piles of clothing in such a disarray that it would have done Susanna and Svetochka proud.
“I don’t know how I managed to pack for my return from Krasnograd,” Vladya said to Dasha as soon as she entered the chamber. Her expression was as close to rueful as it was ever likely to get. “I don’t remember it being this difficult at all! I just…I just can’t decide…” She sounded almost tearful, or on the edge of hysterics.
“You had the maids do it,” Dasha told her. “I remember. Besides, it was easy. You just had to pack up all your things. There was nothing to decide, unless it was whether a gown was too ragged to bother taking home or not. Come on. Have your maids pack for you this time as well. You don’t need those trunks. We’ll be on horseback, remember? Tell them you want no more than two packs, and that’s it. If it doesn’t fit, it doesn’t go. Come on: leave the maids to do the packing, since they’ll do it so much better than you or I, and let’s go talk.”
“I don’t…I can’t…I need to do it myself! What if they pack the wrong thing!”
“How would they do that?”
“I don’t…” Vladya shook her head. “I don’t know! I’m just afraid they might.”
“Then you can borrow some of my things.”
Vladya looked her up and down. A smile threatened to break through her frown.
“I see your point,” she said. “And you’re right. Mirochka! Pack my things, please. No more than two packs. If it doesn’t fit, it doesn’t go. Now come. What was it you wished to speak to me about?”
Dasha went over to the window and looked out, past the kremlin fence into the city itself. She thought she could make out Nastya’s street, off in the distance. Or maybe it was some other muddy alley. Was she awake by now? Or would she never wake up again, and Dasha had witnessed her last conscious moments? How terrible it must be to feel your life slipping away from you, to know that you were part of something greater than yourself, yes, but something that was using you for its own ends, and, now that it had used you up, was discarding you like a soiled gown that couldn’t be laundered clean. The other side of moonblood. Dasha looked on beyond the city, to where the forest started and never ended.
“I made a promise,” she said.
“Whom did you promise to save this time?” Vladya asked.
“The animals of the forest.”
“Well, that has nothing to do with me, then,” said Vladya, sounding relieved.
“No, I, ah, promised that you would make it a law not to capture them and torment them for sport, like that bear. And that wolves are not to be touched. And, ah, if too many deer or elk are killed and people—I mean wolves—were to go hungry, that would be bad.”
“You can’t save everyone!” said Vladya, exasperated. “Especially not when they’re not even people. Wolves! You want me to tell people not to hunt wolves!”
“Yes,” said Dasha. “I swore it. To the gods.”
“Without even asking me?! You swore on my behalf without even asking me?!”
“Yes.” Dasha started to make a joke about it, to excuse her actions by saying they hadn’t given her any time to come back to Lesnograd and consult with Vladya, but she stopped herself and said, “They were treating with the Tsarinovna. I swore an oath to them on behalf of all of Zem’.”
“But why?!”
Dasha almost began to tell the story of how the wolves had been harassing the sanctuary, and this was the deal she had made with them and with the gods in order to stop it, but checked herself. Vladya would not be impressed, and that wasn’t the true story, was it? That was just the excuse, the pretext for righting a wrong and making things a little bit better than they had been before.
“The gods think that we women have grown greedy,” she said. “The spirits and the creatures of the forest agree. And they are not wrong. We are greedy. I don’t know if we’re any greedier than we ever were before, but we’re too greedy now. We take from the world, from the earth, without giving. They want us to take less, and give back more. Especially me, but I can’t do it without you. So that means I need you to do this. Outlaw the capture of wild animals for sport, put limits on the number of deer and elk killed so that they do not disappear entirely, and forbid the hunting and harassment of wolves.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Then I think bad things will happen to me. And wolves will probably attack Lesnograd.”
Vladya made a half-sighing, half-growling noise. “We can’t deal with wolves right now! We have enough problems already!”
“I know. Which like as not is why they are asking now.”
Vladya made another half-growl. “Very well. I will tell my mother to deal with it while I am gone.”
“The law must come from you, Vladya. Everyone knows that you are the ruler of Lesnograd and Severnolesnoye. Leave it to her to administer it in your absence, if you will, but the law must come from you.”
“Very well! I will make it clear that it comes from me. What else did you want? What other promises did you make on my behalf?”
“That was the only promise. But…did you know how many miserable people there are here? So miserably poor they’re only a day or two away from starving?”
“There are more in Krasnograd!”
“Perhaps. But the ones here in Lesnograd are yours.”
“And what do you want me to do about it?”
“I don’t know. What can you do about it?”
“Nothing! I can do nothing!”
“That can’t be true. You must be able to do something. What good is it to be fighting, or planning to fight, these raiders sacking our land, when our people are sick and starving all on their own, with no help from foreign invaders?”
“You think I don’t care?! I care! I care more than you! These are my people!”
“Then don’t turn your back on them,” said Dasha.
Vladya’s mouth worked as if she was about to burst out with something really cutting, probably something about how Dasha had been turning her back on all of Zem’ her entire life, but then she said, her voice dull and dispirited, “There’s only so much I can do. No matter what I do, many will suffer, and some will die.”
“That doesn’t mean that all of them have to.”
“But…” Vladya wrung her hands, looking, for a moment, like the very picture of her mother. “How to choose which ones to save? There’s no way I can make it fair! I’ve thought of scheme after scheme, and every single one leaves some to fall by the wayside, and through no fault of their own! Just their bad luck and my poor planning. I keep telling myself that one day the perfect plan will come to me, one that will turn Lesnograd into the envy of Zem’. You think I don’t know w
hat others think of our city? You think I don’t know what it is? I know we’re poor, and barbaric, and everything in this city is mud and wood and shit and worse things, and we wear wool instead of silk, and half the kremlin is in danger of falling down around our ears. By all the gods, I can’t even keep our own Great Hall clean! I saw how you looked at it when you first came in, you and your new Southern friend, a foreigner, and yet she looks down her nose at us and can think of nothing but how things are better in the South, where it’s warm and sunny, as if our weather is our fault; I saw how you all looked at our Great Hall and I knew you were thinking how dirty it was, how in Krasnograd the Hall of Judgment, which is different from the Hall of Council and the Hall of Celebration, is clean and bright and freshly whitewashed, but here in Lesnograd—no, Lesnogorod—all we have is one dirty chamber, so dark you can scarce see your hand in front of your face all winter long! And our winter is very long! I know! I’m not blind! I see all the same things you do, and better, because I’ve been here longer! And you know why our Great Hall is so dark and dirty? Because we don’t have the servants to clean it! And that’s just how it is! Every time I think about making it better, even doing something as simple as cleaning my own hall, all I can think of, all I can see, is how it’s not going to work! It’s going to fail! I’m never going to be able to make things right, make them the way I want them to be, because all I have to work with is, is shit! The whole city, and the kremlin, and my family—it’s all shit! And I’m a part of it! I’m no better than the rest of them, or at least, I can’t escape their fate! Whatever I do, it’s all going to turn to shit, so why even try? Why even try!”
Vladya stopped, her chest heaving. Tears were threatening to spill out of her eyes, and bright red blotches stained her milk-pale skin. Out of the corner of her eye, Dasha could see that Mirochka had frozen, a half-folded shirt hanging from her hands, and was staring open-mouthed.
“I am sorry that we hurt you,” Dasha said. “We didn’t mean to.”
“I know! But you did it anyway! You’ve been doing it your whole life, and you’ll never be able to stop!”
