Deathless

by Catherynne M. Valente

  Ivan blanched a little. He coughed. “Well, Marya, when someone says that to you these days, it’s not so nice. Usually … usually it means ‘you’re coming to my camp.’”

  “Then you should be glad to leave your camp, if it is such an awful place.”

  “Kiss me again, Marya, and I’ll go anywhere.”

  She did. It felt like firing her rifle, and watching a firebird fall out of the sky. Who would I have been, she thought, as his mouth warmed hers, if I had never seen the birds? If I had never been sick with magic? Would I have loved a man like this, so simple and easy and young?

  * * *

  After ten years, Marya Morevna could see the markings of the Country of Death. It left a stamp, like a customs officer, on every part of the world it touched. Sometimes the stamp looked like a shadow with pinpricks of silver in it, like stars. Sometimes it looked like ripples of water reflected on the bottom of a pier. Sometimes, when she had to pass through their strongholds, it looked like an imperial seal with a three-headed bear raising six paws in rage. It was always better not to look, though, to look only at the Country of Life as it wound its slender path through Viy’s territory, the marks of Buyan, a kind of thin winter sunlight, the smells of things baking, of everything green.

  “Marya,” Ivan hissed as they walked back and back, toward her home, toward her husband. “Someone is following us.”

  “I told you not to speak. I know. They’re … they’re always following me, Ivan. Always.”

  Marya did not have to turn around. They would surely smile at her, their eyes lighting with hope like gaslights, their silvery chests blazing. A little man with a head like a stone, a girl with a rifle scope where one eye should be, and a lady with swan feathers in her hair. Always. She could smell Lebedeva’s perfume, violets and orange-water.

  “I told you. You may see people you once loved. You cannot speak to them, or they will pull you close and never let go. It would be like leaping into Death’s country with both feet. I cannot talk to them, not ever.” Marya’s head swam. She had never spoken of them, her dead friends, and how they hounded her, how they wanted her still; Koschei did not sympathize. I love you, he said. I did not die. Is that not enough? Can you not befriend some other soul in Buyan? “I cannot touch them. Military service is not meant to be easy.”

  Marya Morevna slid forward on her right foot, crossing three large, flat stones without lifting it. She picked up her left foot over the same stones and brought her legs together. Ivan mimicked her. She followed the path she knew, stepping only on every seventh patch of dirt, only every third fallen leaf. She got on her belly to squeeze under a hoary, mushroom-clotted tree trunk rather than stepping over it. She did not look behind her, or to either side. She moved like a snake moves, and carefully breathed only every second breath. But at last they came to the place Marya feared, where there was no safe path marked with shadows or ripples or seals. There was only a black patch in the mountains, utterly without light. Far in the distance, like a painting, the evening hills opened up again, violet with mist and the last spoonfuls of sunlight. Marya Morevna reached behind her. Ivan took her hand tightly in his, and she could feel his fear like sweat. His fear made her stronger; she could be brave for both of them. Together they stepped into the black field.

  Their footfalls echoed as though they walked through an invisible city street, though beneath their feet they felt only soft loam. Little bursts of sound floated by: rough tavern braying; the shattering of heavy things; pottery and wood; a fiddle, played low and fast. Marya’s eyes widened in the dark. I am safe, she told herself. I have passage. I have always had passage. They will not reach for me.

  “Ivan Nikolayevich,” a little voice called, full of joy and recognition.

  “Don’t turn your head,” Marya hissed. “Keep walking. Keep with me.”

  “Ivan Nikolayevich, it’s me!” the voice rang out again.

  “If you look, it will be your death and you will never kiss me or smoke a cigarette or taste butter again,” Marya warned through clenched teeth. Her jaw ached from clenching—every part of her closed up, bound tight.

  “Ivanushka, it’s Dorshmaii. Come and hug me at last!”

  And Marya felt him turn, pulling her with him.

  The voice belonged to a young girl with pale braids done up in the old style, like two teardrops hanging from her head. She had on a lace dress and her smile looked like a photograph: pristine, practiced, frozen. She held out her arms.

  “Oh, Ivanushka, I have waited so long! How loyal you were at my grave. How sweet were the grapes you left me! Ivan, come and kiss me! I dreamed of you kissing me while all the worms were knocking at my coffin.”

  Ivan’s broad face lit like a lantern. “Dorshmaii! Oh! You are blond, after all! And kind.”

  “So kind!” the silvery girl agreed, her braids bobbing as she nodded. “Everyone here says so. I always share my ashes!”

  Ivan Nikolayevich drew back a little. Marya tried to pull him away, but he was big and stubborn and he would see this through. More fool you. Marya gave up. I warned you. “What do you mean?” he said uncertainly.

  Dorshmaii Velichko took a cigarette out of the sash of her dress and put it into her mouth. It had all been smoked. The cigarette was a long column of ash. But she breathed in happily, and the ash slowly turned white again, until it was whole. She held it out to Ivan.

  “You can have it, now. I know you like them. I saved it for you.”

  “Don’t you dare,” snapped Marya.

  Ivan did not reach for it. Dorshmaii shrugged and dropped it, grinding it into the ground with her dainty foot. “It’s no good to me now. All used up. Oh, but you are not used up, Ivan! You are so warm and bright I can hardly look at you! Thick and full of juice, that’s you! Like a green grape! Come and share my bed, like you always wanted. And I know you wanted to, even then, you wicked little thing.”

  Ivan stared at her. His hand in Marya’s went slack, and she could feel him flow towards the girl like water pouring from one glass to another.

  “Dorshmaii,” Marya said, without raising her voice. She had hoped he would be strong enough on his own, that she would not have to use her authority. She was ready to lay it down, so ready. “He is under my shield.”

  The girl in the lace dress looked from Ivan to her and back again. “I don’t think your shield extends to playthings, little Tsaritsa. Let me have him. I’ll ride him to Georgia and back before morning. He’ll bleed from my spurs. Then you can have him back.”

  Marya reached for the pale, intricately carved rifle slung over her back. She loved her rifle. There was no other like it. She had found it in Naganya’s house, so long ago. The vintovnik had whittled it out of the bones of the firebird they had killed on their hunt, the last time they were all together, meaning it to be a wedding present. Marya Morevna brought it to bear on the ghost and adjusted the sighting.

  “Don’t!” cried Ivan.

  “Oh!” Dorshmaii breathed. “It’s so beautiful! I can see the flames still! Oh, Marya Morevna, you have no right to a weapon like that! Give it to me! See, the bird opens its mouth to me; it wants to be mine!”

  Marya fired. One of the girl’s teardrop-shaped braids dropped off.

  “Oh, I hate you,” Dorshmaii spat. “I had him first. It’s not fair!”

  Blood seeped from the stem of her braid, yellowish and thick. A clump of black, dripping earth struck the ghost between the eyes, and she screeched in indignation. Ivan whirled to see who had thrown it.

  “Stop looking, Ivan! I told you to listen to me! You can’t look at them!” But Marya, unable to let him go or lose him to the dark, was looking, too, as a little man with a beard of pale, frosty moss and hands like broken stones gathered up another handful of earth and tested it in his hand. A silver splash stained his chest. He looked only once at Marya, and big tears welled up in his eyes, falling like rain.

  “Run, Ivan,” Marya whispered.

  He did. And behind them, the dark spasmed,
as if in grief.

  * * *

  When they reached the light, Marya seized him close to her, spun around three times, laid her finger on the side of her nose, and disappeared.

  17

  A Pain Where My Death Once Lay

  “We’re home,” Marya sighed. “This is home.”

  But Ivan went white and trembled in his long grey coat. He looked at the blood fountains gurgling and spraying. He looked at the braids lying along the eaves, the chapels with their skin doors and bone crosses, the gate of antler and skulls. He looked at the black domes of the Chernosvyat looming before them, all shadows.

  “This is hell,” he whispered. Marya saw his hand twitch, longing to cross himself, keeping his fingers still for her sake alone—and she liked that, that in his horror he still wished to please her.

  “No, no, it’s not like that. It’s the Country of Life. It’s all living, see? The blood and the skin and the bone and the fur. It’s all alive. Nothing is dead here, nothing. It’s beautiful.”

  But Ivan was shaking his golden head. “At least in Leningrad we build over the bones.”

  Marya Morevna laughed. She wanted to brush his hair from his eyes. “Of course you are from Leningrad,” she said. It would not be temptation if he came from Moscow, or Minsk, or Irkutsk. Only a boy from her home could come bearing an old red scarf and scratch at her core. He had been built for her, like a perfect machine.

  “I don’t want to stay here!” he cried. “This is the devil’s country!”

  “Of course it is,” said a deep voice, familiar to Marya as her own bed. “And you should go home immediately.”

  Koschei the Deathless swept Marya into his arms. She smiled—a frank, open smile, unguarded and bright as winter. She kissed him, and where their mouths joined, drops of their blood spontaneously welled and mingled, so deeply did their bodies interlock.

  “Have you brought a toy?” Koschei said curiously, setting his wife down, his long black cassock whipping in the heavy Buyan wind. “Is he for me as well?”

  Marya watched his face carefully. If she played it right, if she managed it, no one would be hurt. “He found me, at Irkutsk, after the battle. He is from Leningrad.”

  Koschei the Deathless grinned enormously, his black hair lifting a little, blowing in the wind. “Oh, my Marya has grown up and started stealing humans for herself! I am proud.”

  “It isn’t like that.” But wasn’t it? Hadn’t she appeared to him like a bird-husband, out of nowhere, and dragged him out of the world?

  Koschei turned to the young officer. “Oh? What do you think, young man? Is it like that?”

  Ivan was somewhat beside himself. He could not stop staring at the fountain of blood, how the sun turned it half-black.

  “Is he mute? Does he have a name?”

  Marya faltered and cast down her eyes. She could not say it, could not begin to bring herself to say the name Ivan in the presence of her husband. But he guessed it. He saw it caught in her mouth like a fish hook. They had been married a long time. Koschei’s black eyes flared fury; his jaw clenched, just like hers. What mirrors we are, set to face each other, reflecting desire.

  “You would not do that to me, would you, Masha? Tell me he is Dmitri Grigorovich. Tell me he is Leonid Belyayev. Tell me his name is Priapus and you could not resist him. But my wife would not bring an Ivan into my house; she would not stab me so, through the neck.”

  “I thought there were no rules between us,” Marya answered softly, somewhat embarrassed to discuss it in front of Ivan himself, who was no part of their marriage, and should not hear its private arrangements.

  Koschei blinked twice and straightened his back, crow-hunched with resentment.

  “Of course you are right, wife. I have forgotten myself. What is a name? Nothing and no one. I am a silly old man.” His smile froze on his perfect face, the youthful curve of his jaw, his eyes not even a little wrinkled with age. He remained utterly the man who had appeared on Marya’s doorstep with stars in his hair. “You must bring your friend to dinner, and we will discuss our options, with regard to the war.”

  The Tsar of Life turned on one shining black heel and strode toward his palace. Over his shoulder he called, “Oh, have a care not to walk on the right side of the road. We lost it while you were gone.”

  Marya brought her hand to her mouth. She had not seen it. How could she have missed it? A long black strip ran down Skorohodnaya Road. In the darkness, silver pricked like stars.

  * * *

  Koschei served them himself: pheasant on a black platter; diamond goblets of colorless wine; two loaves of bread, one dark and one pale; pears poached in a fragrant sauce Marya did not recognize. A mound of shining butter rested in front of Ivan’s seat with a small golden knife sunk into it. Marya wore a long black dress, its silk bodice scooping well below her neckline, its gems winking. Koschei loved it specially, and she wished to make peace. You look like a winter night, he had told her when he had given it to her. I could sleep inside the cold of you. She tried not to look at either of the men.

  “Eat,” Koschei said tonelessly. “You will need strength for the road.”

  Ivan folded his hands in his lap. “I … I don’t think I ought to eat your food, Comrade,” he said shakily.

  Koschei sneered at him. “Why not? You have already supped at my table, tasted my wife. I can smell it on both of you, like perfume so sweet it sickens.”

  Marya put down her fork. “Why are you doing this, Koschei? I have had lovers before. You have, too. Remember Marina? The rusalka? She and I swam together every morning. We raced the salmon. You called us your little sharks.”

  The Tsar of Life held his knife so tightly Marya could see his knucklebones bulging. “Were any of them called Ivan? Were any of them human boys all sticky with their own innocence? I know you. I know you because you are like me, as much like me as two spoons nested in each other.” Her husband leaned close to her, the candlelight sparking in his dark, shaggy hair. “When you steal them, they mean so much more, Marousha. Trust me. I know. What did I do wrong? Was I boring? Did I ignore you? Did I not give you enough pretty dresses? Enough emeralds? I’m sure I have more, somewhere.”

  Marya lifted her hand and laid it on her husband’s cheek. With a blinking quickness, she drove her nails deep into his face. “Don’t you dare speak to me like that. I have worn nothing but blood and death for years. I have fought all your battles for you, just as you asked me. I have learned all the tricks you said I must learn. I have learned not to cry when I strangle a man. I have learned to lay my finger aside my nose and disappear. I have learned to watch everything die. I am not a little girl anymore, dazzled by your magic. It is my magic, now, too. And if I have watched all my soldiers die in front of me, if I have only been saved by my rifle and my own hands, if I have drunk more blood than water for weeks, then I take the human boy who stumbled into my tent and hold him between my legs until I stop screaming, you will not punish me for it. Are we not chyerti? Are we not devils? I will not even hear your punishment, old man.”

  Koschei grabbed her hand, dragging her by her wrist from her chair and into his lap. The dishes clattered and spilled pears onto the floor. Blood streaked her palm where his nails scratched her, and he kissed it, kissed her thumb, her ring finger, until his chin was smeared red. “How I adore you, Marya. How well I chose. Scold me; deny me. Tell me you want what you want and damn me forever. But don’t leave me.”

  Marya studied him, searching his face, so dear, unchanging, unchangeable. Ivan reached for her hand under the table, but she had forgotten him. She felt his fingers no more than a napkin folded across her skin. Koschei loomed so great in her vision, all shadows. He filled her up, her whole world, a moon obliterating the light of any other star. She thatched her fingers into his hair like a ram’s wool. “Take my death away,” she said. “Cut it away. Cut it up, lock it in a duck’s eye. Behind four dogs. Make me like you, as if we are two spoons. Then I will never leave you.” Koschei gently
took her hand from his head and laid it in her lap. “Would it not be better for your war-mistress to be as deathless as you? I am not safe because of a treaty. Viy’s fear of you is no shield, not really. I am naked and far from you most of the year. Open my bones and scoop out my death. Bury it at the center of the earth. I deserve so much. You know what I deserve.”

  “You have asked me this before. I cannot.”

  “You took my will.”

  “So all seductions go. One will presented to another, wrapped in a bow. The question is always who is to take and who is to give. I took first, that’s all. You will take last. I am better at such games than you, but students wax in their talents, always, always. Your death you cannot give me by opening your pretty mouth and tasting roe. And I will not take it.”

  “Yet you demand my loyalty, my whole heart, my marrow.”

  “Those things are mine. You don’t understand, Masha. You have never understood. You are my treasure, my pale gold, the heart of my heart. You lie at the bottom of my being and gnaw upon my roots. But you are not one of us. No matter how like us you become. You were not with us when the world was so young, so easily misled. When there was only one star in the sky. You cannot know what we know. You are not built as we are built. You’ve learned so much, you have, and I am so proud of you. But you…” Koschei laid his hand on the black silk of her sternum. “You are still made of meat, and gristle, and bone.”

  She searched his eyes, without depth, without end. How she loved him, still, forever. He was the source of that hot, sickening, gorgeous magic, and he poured it into her like wine. “What are you made of?” she asked, her bitter anger softening. Perhaps I can stand this war for you a little longer. If I can keep you by me, and Ivan, too. No rules, not ever.