Spells of Blood and Kin

by Claire Humphrey

  All at once, it struck her that Baba had not even been gone a month, and here was Lissa chucking out her things without even asking.

  It would be another week and a half before she could speak with Baba again, and she’d have only three questions to spend. She did not want any of those questions to be about the disposal of Baba’s belongings.

  “She never said, did she?” Stella said, looking over her shoulder. “That probably means she didn’t mind, you know. She trusted that whatever you did would be right.”

  Sighing, Lissa left the jewelry case where it was and went instead to the closet.

  Stella talked her into keeping the two silk scarves and a whimsical feathered hat; the rest they hauled downstairs and set by the front door. Remaining in the bedroom were a hatbox of old photos, the framed one, the jewelry, and a little chest that seemed to contain Baba’s personal papers. And the urn containing Baba’s ashes. Lissa took it in her hands a moment, met Stella’s helpless gaze; but Stella couldn’t offer much help on that. Lissa tucked the urn behind the bedroom door, which got her a raised eyebrow, but no commentary.

  Stella helped move Lissa’s clothes into the dresser and the closet and her shoes into the shoe bag on the inside of the closet door. They dried the curtains and hung them again. They set Lissa’s comb and bracelets and necklaces and face cream before the mirror.

  After Stella left for work, Lissa took the little chest down to the kitchen, where she could go through it in the bright light of her study lamp.

  She’d been hoping for private diaries, something that would illuminate the question of what Baba had done for Maksim—or something personal and strange that might illuminate Baba herself, something to tide Lissa over these in-between days until she could speak with her grandmother again.

  What she found was her grandfather Pavel Nevsky’s passport. He’d been born in Canada, unlike Baba, whose passport must have been stashed somewhere else, if she even still had one. Pavel Nevsky had been a member of the church from birth; Father Manoilov remembered him a little and had said to Lissa once that he was a great bear of a man and had been a builder.

  Below the passport, a photo of Pavel himself, a smaller and sharper image of the one Lissa knew from Baba’s album.

  Below that, a small chaos that included a vaccination document for Lissa herself; an old address book in flaking leather, in which most of the names were inked out and in which Maksim’s did not appear; the birth certificate of Lissa’s mother; a brass button; the business cards of two carpenters, a plumber and a mason; a handful of old rubles and kopecks.

  Lissa tugged at her hair in frustration.

  Whatever Baba had done for Maksim was either something so obvious that it had not needed to be written down or something so secret that—

  Not secret; not quite. Lissa looked again at the tarnish-dark faces of the coins at the bottom of the box.

  Whatever Baba had done, it had been done at the new moon.

  Four

  MAY 16

  WAXING CRESCENT

  “Jonathan,” Nick whispered. “There’s a guy at the end of the alley.”

  “The wanker, the tweaker, or one of the crackheads?”

  “No, another guy. I’ve seen him before, in Kensington Market.” Bent low, Nick crab-walked away from the edge of the balcony and into Jonathan’s apartment, taking cover behind the couch.

  “Everyone goes to the Market. People from Scarborough go to the Market,” Jonathan said.

  “I think he’s following me.”

  Jonathan held up the bong. “See this? It has some well-known effects, compadre, and one of them starts with the letter P.”

  “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not after you,” Nick said, accepting the bong and taking a hit.

  “Right. Make yourself more paranoid. See if that helps.”

  “Sarcasm doesn’t suit you,” Nick said, crawling under the kitchenette table to pass the bong back to Jonathan.

  Jonathan, unmoved, sat at the table and contemplated the spread of cards. They were playing Dominion: Jonathan had about five different versions of it that Nick could never keep straight, but the upshot was you had to use a zillion different card combinations to buy as much land as possible before the end of the game. It reminded Nick of Monopoly, only fractally complicated. “I’m going to play this market for an extra card,” Jonathan said. “Oh, look—gold. That means I can buy a province.”

  “Shit. Was that your first province?”

  “Nope,” Jonathan said, popping the P.

  Forgetting his fear of the man outside, Nick bolted up and sat at the table again. “How’d you get all those cards, anyway?”

  “I bought that Noble Brigand, like, five turns ago.”

  “Oh yeah. Rub it in, douche bag.”

  Jonathan let Nick ponder the table for a minute while he got up and mixed them each a rye and Coke.

  “I’m going to be blunt. You’re kind of fucked,” he said, coming back to the table.

  “That’s a bit premature. I’m going to buy a duchy right this minute—”

  “Actually,” said Jonathan, “I didn’t mean the game. Nick, honestly. You’re kind of … I don’t know.”

  “I don’t know, either. What are you trying to say?”

  “I was wondering if you might be manic-depressive.”

  “It’s called bipolar now. And I’m not.”

  “Come on, Nick—take a drink, chill out, and listen to me. You’ve been all go-go-go lately. And now with this thing of thinking people are watching you. And all the arm wrestling…”

  “I win all the arm wrestling.”

  “That actually makes it even weirder, honestly. I mean, you used to be pretty laid back, right? And now you’re bouncing off the walls every time we go out, and you want to go out all the time. I can’t keep up.” Jonathan’s hands lay flat on the table on each side of his sweating plastic tumbler. He looked at them instead of at Nick as he kept talking. “I looked up the signs. Increased sociability. Feeling invincible. Sleeping less, drinking more. Paranoid thoughts.”

  Nick took a too-large gulp of his drink and choked a little. When he recovered his voice, he said, “Wow. I thought I came over to play Dominion, not have a fucking intervention.”

  “It’s not an intervention, for Christ’s sake. I just want you to think about—”

  “Come here.” Nick got down on the floor again and beckoned to Jonathan to follow him.

  Sighing, Jonathan did.

  They crawled out to the balcony and peered through one of the cutouts in the concrete barrier.

  “See him?” Nick whispered.

  “The guy in the rugby shirt?”

  “Exactly. Rugby shirt. And he’s wearing this really strong cologne. Can’t you smell it?”

  “Nick. He’s, like, half a block away.”

  “Well, he’s wearing a lot of it.”

  “If you’re trying to convince me of your sanity here, it’s not quite working.”

  “You were the one who smoked me up, and now you’re telling me I’m not sober enough to pass your little test. Fuck off.” Nick flicked Jonathan in the forehead with his fingers and stormed back inside.

  “Ouch. Fine. We’ll talk about it later.”

  “Jesus, everyone’s so serious these days.”

  “Yeah,” Jonathan said. “Well. Got to get serious sometime, right? We’re grad students now. I have underlings and everything. I was actually thinking about asking Hannah to move in here.”

  Nick pressed his hands over his ears. “I can’t hear you. La, la, la, la, rainbows and puppies and lucky charms. Dude—you know what will happen, right?”

  “I’m pretty sure I do. I’ll have to keep the place cleaner, maybe buy some matching plates, and be nice to her mom, and in exchange—”

  “Jonathan. You’ll never be able to smoke pot in your apartment again. Never. You’ll have to come to my place.”

  “I hope to God you’ll clean up those moldy apple co
res from your windowsill before I do. What a buzzkill.”

  “Already gone, man. I couldn’t stand the smell of them anymore.”

  “Anyway, I’m not smoking that much these days,” Jonathan said.

  “What? I’m the drinker, you’re the smoker. It’s the natural order of things.”

  “Hate to break it to you, buddy, but I haven’t even bought weed in a month. I’ve just been smoking yours.” Jonathan started laughing, so that Nick couldn’t tell if he was telling the truth or just yanking Nick’s chain.

  It didn’t change his answer, anyway. “My weed is here for you, brother,” Nick said. “I am with you in your time of need.”

  Jonathan stopped laughing then and said, “Look, I’m with you too. Other stuff might change, but not that.”

  A key in the door: Nick heard it first, snapping his head around, grabbing at the game box to hide the bag of pot sitting out on the table.

  Jonathan didn’t flinch, though, just lazily kicked his chair back.

  Hannah dropped the key on a side table and her purse on the floor and sniffed the air theatrically. “Did I interrupt a moment?” she said.

  “Just taking advantage of an afternoon off,” Jonathan said, rising to give her a kiss.

  “Ugh, you taste all smoky,” Hannah said, giggling. “I bet you’ve already got pizzas on the way or something, right? Don’t let me harsh your buzz; I’m just picking up that laundry I left here yesterday.”

  “Oh my God, and you wonder why I keep calling you Mom,” Nick said.

  “Ignore him,” Jonathan said. “Stick around. Have some, if you want. I haven’t ordered pizza yet, but I will.”

  “Count me out. I’ve got to go,” Nick said, finding himself on his feet already, halfway to the door. “Remembered some stuff I have to do.”

  “You sure?” Jonathan said.

  “Sure,” Nick said, making a jerk-off gesture and sticking his tongue out.

  “Fine, fine, get out of here, asshole,” Jonathan said, flinging the baggie of weed at him. “See you tomorrow.”

  “See you tomorrow, Nick,” Hannah echoed, looking up from the pizza menu on her phone.

  Right—he’d almost forgotten the three of them had plans to get together for dinner. Nick let the apartment door swing shut behind him and jogged down the stairs, all at once eager to put some distance between himself and the next day. When he saw them again, he’d open some half-decent wine and maybe wear the shirt Hannah had given him from her trip to Switzerland.

  Nick didn’t remember having to work this hard before, having to make a plan for how to be nice to people.

  He wondered if Hannah had to work this hard to be nice to him or if it was just in her nature—and if the distinction mattered.

  Because Jonathan had said the arm wrestling was weird, Nick didn’t head toward the Palmerston tonight, but he still felt an itch under his skin, blunted a little by the pot smoking and the couple of drinks he’d had, but not gone—just made whimsical. He thought about dancing, maybe, but it was a Monday, the worst night for dancing.

  Then it came to him, and he changed direction: he had a renovation project in the works, and tonight would be a perfect time.

  MAY 17

  WAXING CRESCENT

  Maksim, as the nominal host, suggested a restaurant on Roncesvalles. He chose it because he planned to run in High Park for a few hours first, tiring himself enough to converse without either eggs or a quantity of liquor; he did not like the way Gus looked at him under either influence, assessing and overfamiliar and sad.

  Accordingly, he wore jogging shoes and shorts and a Nike T-shirt. He did not mind running in whatever he happened to have on when the mood struck him, but he did mind the looks, and nowhere in Toronto could he find a place free of other runners. He hammered over the trails, breathing deep of the tree scents and the fox musk. His knee pained him, but not enough to make him stop, and after a while, the feeling left it.

  Sometimes when he ran his mind would fray away into his surroundings, leaving nothing but smell and sight and rhythm, and he would reach a place hours later and have no words for how he got there.

  So it was today: when he finally slowed, at the edge of the park in a place he’d already passed at least once, he discovered he had only five minutes to reach the restaurant, and so he had to run again.

  Gus waited for him on a bench outside. She wore a lumberjack shirt with the sleeves torn off, jeans spattered with bleach spots, heavy boots. Her grizzled fair hair had not been brushed.

  “I hope you brought plenty of money,” she said, grinning. “I have a hunger.”

  She ordered eggs scrambled with sausage and onions, and a plate of pierogi, which arrived piled high with crumbled bacon and more onions fried crisp. Maksim, despite his run, did not have a hunger. He spooned idly at a beet soup dotted with tiny mushroom dumplings.

  Gus, elbows on the table, stuffed her mouth full of egg and said through it, “You’re freaking me out.”

  Maksim shrugged.

  “Jesus knows I didn’t have a whole lot of use for you the way you’ve been these last few years, but this is truly unnatural. Eat your fucking lunch.”

  Maksim’s nature had begun to rise up hard as the spell of the eggs wore off, and the struggle left him without an appetite, but he filled his mouth with soup and gestured for Gus to move on.

  She rolled her eyes but said, “I haven’t picked up anything. A few brawls, but the ones I saw personally were not your guy, and the other ones didn’t sound like him, either.”

  “He was in a place on the eastern edge of your neighborhood.”

  “It’s a big neighborhood. And people come to it from all over.”

  “What for?” Maksim muttered.

  “Vintage clothes, crack, Trinidadian food, you name it,” said Gus, and she laughed. “Don’t be discouraged. I remember what it was like to be newly made kin. He hasn’t gone off the rails yet, Maks. When he does—”

  “I would very much like to find him before that.”

  “Yeah, well. Society takes care of stuff like that now. When he causes a big enough problem, someone will step in.”

  “They will not know what to do with him.”

  “Of course not. But if he makes waves, it’ll be easier for us to find him, if he’s still worth finding. And if not, if he goes too far, at least he’ll be locked up where he won’t hurt anyone for a while.”

  Maksim pushed his fists together under the table and breathed through his nose. All his fault. He felt as an addict feels, tumbling off the wagon after years of sobriety to discover the high is as wonderful as it ever was and that he’s only been half-alive without it; and, at the same time, he’s now going to have to tear down again the new life he’s built and devote himself only to the old, single, terrible thing.

  He felt, in short, very much in need of a friend; but the friend he had was going to be no help at all.

  “Welcome back,” Gus said.

  He looked across the table at her. Bright eyes in a face just beginning to weather, a smile showing faintly yellowed teeth, and a scar at the corner of her lip. She was not as old as Maksim was himself, but still the years had left marks. And the time did not give much in return: neither riches nor wisdom, if he and Gus were anything to go by.

  Still, she was smiling, and he almost hated her for it, even as he knew exactly what she meant.

  He sighed. “Would you like to drink some whiskey?”

  “After you eat your soup, damn it.”

  “I have never known you to be a mother hen before, Augusta.”

  “Don’t call me that. And I’m only compensating for kicking your ass the other day.”

  “I hope you enjoyed it, for it is unlikely to reoccur.” Maksim raised a brow and curled the corner of his lip at her.

  Gus made a rude noise. “You wish. Have you seen yourself lately?”

  Maksim let the sneer fall away and trailed his spoon through his soup.

  “Whatever it was,” Gus sa
id. “Whatever’s eating you. It was years ago. Decades, Maks. Things change—even you and me.”

  “For the worse,” Maksim said.

  Gus leaned close to look at his face. “Always?”

  “Yes,” Maksim said, a bare whisper from the depth of his chest.

  “But—”

  He shook his head and pushed the soup bowl away. A flaw in the glaze scraped the surface of the table, and the sound made Gus twitch and shiver, pale hairs rising on her forearms.

  She met Maksim’s eyes again. When he would have looked away, she caught his chin roughly.

  She said finally, “Okay. I told you I’d help, and I will.”

  WESTERN RUSSIA: 1952

  The borders of nations were drawn and redrawn. Maksim returned to his homeland now and again, but the familiar landmarks aged and the people wandered, and though he stood on the soil of his birth, he no longer recognized it.

  Home became a collection of remembered scents and weather and accents and angles of light, which found him unexpectedly in places very far from the banks of the Don.

  It was the smell of thunder that drew him this time. He knew what it meant. He’d come across it first in the hut of the koldun near his home; the storm smell mixed there with dried blood and old leather and dusty herbs and the thousand other things the koldun hung from his ceiling.

  He had come across other kolduny now and again. One healed his ataman of an infected wound; one lived in Rostov and sent evil wishes upon people for the price of a cockerel. He had come to understand that their scent was the scent of their power.

  When he smelled it in the rail yard, then, he found it curious.

  The rail yard was somewhere in western Russia, and he was crossing it after midnight on his way to someplace warm. As he passed between the shadows of cattle cars, he smelled people: a number of them, some of them ill, all of them afraid and unwashed, and one of them a koldun.

  The Second World War was over. It had been over for several years. Maksim had spent the last two of them working in various ports on the Black Sea, and he had not been keeping up with politics. His nature craved simple, head-on violence, one person to another. These last few wars, he had been struggling to keep pace with things he did not understand. Camps designed to contain and eliminate civilians. Weapons effective over great distances. Wars fought for abstract political reasons between nations many thousands of miles removed from each other.