by Taki Drake
Zhanna detested him with every iota of her heart. He’d been a bully in grade school, he was a notorious bully now. He seemed to delight in the pain and embarrassment of others. Zhanna had worried when she had heard that he was leading the mercenary group that Igor had joined. But Igor had been confident that Krava would never really interact with him. They were diametrically opposed, with Igor looking for protection assignments and Krava looking to fight. The young witch had avoided Krava to the best of her ability the entire time that she had known him. Something about him made her skin crawl whenever he was close. In fact, the hair on her arms and the back of her neck were stirring uneasily, and her stomach felt tightened and painful.
“Well, aren’t you going to invite me in?” asked Krava.
“I am sorry, Krava, but my grandmother and I are grieving and really do not want to have visitors.”
“That doesn’t seem to be very hospitable considering that I am carrying your brother’s effects for you and that I have his last paycheck to turn over.”
Zhanna looked at Krava, refusing to allow him to intimidate her into setting foot inside of their home. To her knowledge, he had never been allowed inside the threshold, and she didn’t want to set a precedence now. Some part of her warned her that to invite him in once was an irrevocable act. She had learned the hard way to listen to that part of her intuition.
Krava waited for a few more seconds, and when she didn’t invite them in, he shrugged his shoulders and said, with a wry twist to his mouth, “Here are all of the things that were in his room. Also, there is an envelope in there that contains his last paycheck. Of course, the fact that he was unable to complete the contract has been deducted from his payment.”
“What do you mean? He was killed while out on contract!”
“He was stupid. Instead of doing exactly what he was supposed to, per the contract, he tried to protect everyone. He was not being paid for that, and he still extended his efforts. We had to get another to take over his contract and fulfill it, and that person needs to be paid.”
Zhanna just looked at the poorly concealed smirk on Krava’s mouth and refused to be baited. Holding her hand out toward Krava was one of the hardest things she had ever done. He seems somewhat taken aback.
“No protests? No attempt to justify his idiot behavior? I would’ve thought you, if anyone, would have tried to explain to me how he really was such a wonderful and good person that he couldn’t help himself.”
Zhanna continued to hold her silence, looking pointedly at the sack that he clutched in his one hand. She could hear her familiar’s growl of rising fury in the back of her head and willed the cat not to intrude.
“Oh well, I guess even you have to admit that he was an idiot. I would think…”
“That will be enough of that, young man!” a new voice contributed to the conversation. It was Zhanna’s grandmother, standing in a fury beside Zhanna. Neither the grieving sister or the now openly grinning bully had noticed when she’d come up. She was just there, fully dressed, sparkling in the hard diamond heat of her anger and exuding a powerful aura that surprised Zhanna and seemed to take Krava aback.
“Turn over the items that you’re going to give us, boy. Then get away from here. We grieve someone who was loved, which is something you will never understand. So get thee hence.”
“You can’t talk to me like that old witch!”
“I said get thee hence. And in case you didn’t catch it the first two times, I will say it once more. GET THEE HENCE!”
Krava shuddered, his whole body frame seeming to shake. He tossed the bag at Zhanna, who caught it clumsily against her chest. Not turning his back on them, Krava took two steps backward and reached inside of his tunic. “This came the day after his death. Apparently, he wanted a present for his little sister. Wear it in health, and I hope that you all get what you deserve.”
With that, he turned his hand to show her a box, wrapped in a beautiful gift paper and tied with a brightly cheerful silvery bow. With another of his trademark smirks, Krava tossed it so that the package fell short of her, landing in the dirt at her feet with a puff of dust.
Zhanna and her grandmother watched as Krava walked outside of their small yard. Once past the gate, he turned to look at them, raising his voice to be clearly heard. “I’m surprised how nicely you have grown up, Zhanna. I just may have to come courting one of these days.”
Before Zhanna or Bolormaa could react in the outraged manner that they both wished, Krava was striding down the street. Only the echo of his laughter remained to remind them of his poisonous intrusion on their loss.
Shaking in reaction, Zhanna bent to retrieve the last gift she would ever get from her beloved brother. The eight-inch package was a poignant reminder of the cheer and love that was forever gone from her life, and tears clouded her vision and feel like rain on the shining gift. Blindly, the young woman jammed the package into the bag of Igor’s possessions and turned to help her grandmother into the house.
<<<>>>
There had been more grieving, more tears, when they removed the contents of the sack. All of Igor’s clothing, books, and other possessions were there. There was no body to mourn since mercenaries were seldom brought home for burial. It was just too expensive. Zhanna and Bolormaa had not thought that the mercenary group would transport Igor back. They knew from the description of the accident that there probably wasn’t much left of his body after his death. Some of the possessions were still bloodstained and stood as mute witness to Igor’s passing. The casual cruelty of that lack of care stabbed Zhanna to the heart.
She had absolutely no luck in understanding how someone could be so disdainful of the feelings of others. The numbness of the grief from Igor’s death was now being interrupted by spikes of anger. That great pall, that fog of sadness, was being stabbed and rent by growing anger over the injustice of his lonely death and the callous disregard for their family’s morning.
<
Desha replied in a purring voice in her head, <
<
<
Zhanna bowed her head at the appropriateness of that response and began to sort through her brother’s death belongings. Bolormaa had remained silent since Krava had left. Only now was that silence entering Zhanna’s awareness. Looking at her grandmother, she noticed that Bolormaa was staring at each of the items in the sack. Some she touched gently with shaking hands, some she left strictly alone. There didn’t seem to be a rhyme or reason to the ones that her grandmother touched or didn’t touch. And so Zhanna did what she has had always done, which is to observe until she understood what was going on and could contribute or act. It wasn’t time for that yet. Right now, she was just observing.
<<<>>>
The rest of the day had gone more normally for Zhanna and Bolormaa. Some of the other women of the village had come in to bring food and to share reminiscence of Igor’s life. None of them had mentioned anything about the desperate straits that now faced his surviving family. It was simply a way of life in the village. The men went out as mercenaries to earn money, while the women and children stayed home and tried to make do with little. Zhanna never realized before exactly how horrible it would be to lose your breadwinner. They had just been so happy when Igor was accepted in the mercenaries that they had not thought about the ramifications.
When the last of the villagers had gone home, Zhanna made sure the Bolormaa had eaten something and lovingly tucked her grandmother into bed. Straightening up the small kitchen had taken very few minutes. Zhanna’s mind bounced around inside of her head, flitting from thought to thought. Unable to decide on a specific action for that evening, Z
hanna decided to go to bed. Crawling onto the bed and pulling her blankets over her shoulder, Zhanna quickly fell into a deep well of exhausted slumber. As she slipped down that slippery hill into the Lord of Dreams’ arms, she thought muzzily, <
The next thing Zhanna knew was the sound of that thought echoing again and again in her head. It reverberated along her nerve pathways and seemed to bounce against her eyeballs. Her eyes felt like they were going to cry from pain like something was ripping out of her. Drawing a tortured breath, she held it and exhaled. Mentally, she closed her eyes. When she opened them again, she found herself standing on a featureless plane. There was a six-way crossroad that stretched out around her, radiating equally with her as the center.
<
When a voice answered her, Zhanna jumped and spun around.
“You are in the astral plane, and you brought yourself here,” said a male baritone voice. It was an older man, perhaps 35 years old. He was a tall and large man with the very blonde hair of a Cossack. Broad shouldered and neatly dressed, he reminded her a little bit of the pictures she had seen from her grandfather’s time. She would’ve been frightened, but at this point, she was beyond fright. Wonder was the predominant emotion that she had, and since the man did not appear to be threatening, she felt no need to react defensively.
He had waited while she stared at him and seemed to understand when she was ready to hear more words. “In this plane, you decide where you want to go and who you want to see. If they’re available and are open to communicating with you, you will find yourself talking to them.”
“Thank you, sir for the information. Are there any other words of advice you might give me?”
“Only to listen to both gods and spirits and think before you react. Even though this is the spirit plane, you can still die here.”
Zhanna nodded in acknowlegement and looked in the direction that she seemed to be drawn. When she looked back at the man, she saw that he had started to walk away. Embarrassed at her lapse of manners, Zhanna called out, “Thank you again, sir. My name is Zhanna. Do you have a name that you would like to be called?”
His laughing voice carried back to her, as if it were born on the wings of a large bird, “You can call me Ilia, girl. And give my warmest regards to your grandmother.”
Zhanna was about to ask him more information, but his form rapidly shrank in size and suddenly seemed to be a long distance away from her. She took two steps toward his retreating form when she was stopped short by a tug on her garments. Looking down, Zhanna almost jumped out of her skin. The creature that had been pulling on her skirt was the strangest thing she’d ever seen. It looked like a wizened old woman if the woman in question had four-inch fangs and claw-like nails.
The creature was small, ugly, and somewhat frightening but it was not attacking her, and instead, it’s body language was friendly. Zhanna wasn’t sure whether to pet it, run from it, or just talk. The decision was settled for her when a surprisingly melodious voice addressed her. “Gold man says to protect. Petra will protect the witchy girl. See sometimes, no see sometimes.”
She was still parsing the sentence when the creature disappeared. What on earth was this place that she had wandered into? Did she belong here?
<
<
The answer was vague and evasive, <
<
It was a good thing that Dasha had told her not to scream. As it was, Zhanna had a terrible time preventing irrational and primal sounds of fear from clawing their way out of her throat. Where she had expected to see her small beautiful cat, she instead saw a feline of a totally different order.
Standing in magnificent splendor in front of her was the largest cat she’d ever seen. Its head was as high as her shoulder. She could see some echo of Dascha’s coloring in the animal because it was primarily a bluish gray dappled with stripes of black. The subtle variation was the same sort of camouflage that Dasha had for her skulking around, but on an animal this large, Zhanna was aware of every nuance, every small variation in the striping patterns. Increased to this size, it was almost as if the cat was covered with writing. Lines of text, or lines of color, Zhanna didn’t know. Her astonishment did not stop with the size that Dasha had on this plane. Not only was the cat tall, but it was massive. Measuring at least 12 feet from head to the tip of the tail, Dasha was well muscled and extremely dangerous looking. Protruding, elongated fangs showed that this was a predator, not a scavenger. The sharp, large claws were another validation of the deadly nature of the form that her familiar had been hiding.
When Zhanna didn’t continue speaking, Dasha helpfully filled in some information.
<
“Of course.”
Chapter 4
With a little help from Dascha the night before, Zhanna had learned how to return to her body from the astral plane. She still was surprised and amazed at the fact that she had managed to get there at all. The young witch wondered what had kicked off that ability and resolved to ask her grandmother about it at a later time. Right now, she had something she decided to do.
Trying to analyze their situation, Zhanna thought perhaps that her best option would be for her to train for and possibly join a mercenary unit to provide money for her grandmother. The first problem was that none of the women in their village belonged to the mercenary groups. Zhanna had a faint memory of someone mentioning that her great-grandmother used to be part of a mercenary group and so she thought that it might not just be usual, but it might be possible for her to gain some training and be able to earn some money.
While Igor was alive, she could be the one who stayed home to take care of their aging grandmother while he went out and earned. His insistence on only doing work that he thought was right had meant that Igor did not have steady employment with the mercenaries. Instead, he picked and chose which assignments he would accept or not, much to the disgust of the other mercenaries. Alienated from the people that he worked with, Igor had been very much of a standalone operator.
Now she needed to be the breadwinner. It was the time that she learned to use the magic that she could feel. After all, only mages got familiars, and she had Dascha.
Buoyed by her decision to finally do something, Zhanna took off to the village ready to find a trainer. Her first thought had been to talk to the older Merc that had brought them the news of Igor’s death. He was someone that had been friendly to her family for a very long time, and she thought that he would be helpful. After some searching, she found him by one of the half destroyed bridges, a fishing pole in the water and his back against the sun-warmed brick.
“Stefan! Just the person that I wanted to find.”
The fishermen turned to regard her with caution. Stefan had not expected anyone to come find him because he was between assignments. He was enjoying one of his few days off and felt a flush of resentment that it was being interrupted.
“Zhanna, what is it that you need?”
“Stefan, I have decided that I’m going to need to train as a mercenary. Will you teach me? Or is there someone else I need to approach?”
The older man laughed so hard that he dropped his fishing pole into the water. He was still laughing as he dragged the now sodden rod and reel out and laid them on the ground next to him. Wiping the back of his hand across his eyes to mop up tears, he looked at Zhanna and said, “What a strange and funny idea you have taken into your head. Women don’t have the necessary strength or power to make good mercen
aries. You don’t have the will, the sheer magical power that is necessary.”
“Stefan, you know that’s not true. I’m the only witch in our village that has a familiar, and that’s an indication of power.”
“Everyone knows that familiars are attracted to witches of power, but that doesn’t mean that all witches with familiars are powerful. You have had effectively no training except in things that relate to your grandmother’s skills. You’re not making a living at this, period. And who knows what familiars and female witches mean. After all, you are women!”
“That is ridiculous, Stefan. Many of the volkhvy were female, and they were all very powerful. How can you say that women are weaker?”
“We’ll maybe if there were fewer women and more men, the deaths would not have been so many.”
