Mistress of the Solstice (28 page)

“Can I help?” I asked, disturbed by
an expression in his face I couldn’t quite read.

“Not this time, Marya.” He took me
in his arms and caressed my hair, running his hands down through the
smooth, thick strands. This time there was no challenge in this.
Instead, his touch engulfed me in an aura of calm. I inhaled his scent,
so familiar and comforting, the cold scent of stone washed by full moon
that symbolized the safety of the walls that enclosed me from the
turmoil and passions of the outside world. The stone of my
father’s world around me.

“Rest, my sweet Marya,” he said.
“Your father will set things
right.”

 

Ivan

B
aba Yaga pushed her empty bowl away and leaned back against the warm
stove.

“For what this beast did,” she said
to Ivan, though she watched Wolf,
“there’s no forgiveness. Yet, there
is nothing to be done. I would have killed him, but all I could do was
kill his gift of human speech. And only when I was around. To each his
own.”

Ivan waited, but there was nothing else. He longed to ask her what Wolf
had done to make her so angry, but he knew it was useless. Besides, it
seemed best not to disturb the past.

“So,” he said,
“you will not help?”

“Him—no.” Baba
Yaga slid her gaze over Wolf and turned away. “I know
he thinks he can undo the evil he has caused, but there is no going
back. And revenge, however sweet, solves nothing. I will not go along
with it.”

“What about helping
me
?”

Baba Yaga got up from the table and limped over to the
corner behind the stove. She looked older again, a grandmother
entertaining guests in her lonely hut. There was a clanking as she
rummaged in the dark depths. A furry shape darted along the wall and
disappeared into a crack under the stove. It looked bigger than a
normal mouse and Ivan could have sworn it had more than four legs.

He looked away.

After a while Baba Yaga pulled out a dusty vial. It looked darker than
the one in the Cat’s tale, but Ivan recognized it at
once. She held it up to the light and shook it.

“Empty,” she said.
“That boy, Ilia, took a lot to come back to life. The
fool managed to get his head severed, you know.”

Ivan remembered the tears in her eyes, real human
tears rolling down the parched skin of her immortal face.
She’s lonely. An old lonely
woman with ancient powers, who will never die.

She sat down and put the vial on the table. Wolf eyed it warily.

“To you mortals the Water brings
life,” she said. “But we Immortals
can never touch a single drop of it. Perhaps this is why the Stream
never reveals itself to a mortal. There should be a balance in
everything.”

Ivan picked up the vial and shook it gently. There
wasn’t anything left in it. Not even a drop.

“Will you tell me the song?” he
asked.

“Useless, boy. The Stream will never reveal itself to
you. Besides, you’ll never make it in
time.”

“I have to try,”

“But why? To her—to Marya—this
is but a fancy. She doesn’t need the Water to bring
life. She just wanted to give you, silly boy, an impossible
task.”

“This isn’t about
me,” Ivan said. “It is about
Kashchey and the power of Kupalo. If I fulfill her task, I will have a
chance to put an end to the whole Solstice tradition in this kingdom.
There will be no virgin sacrifice and Kashchey’s
subjects will see him for what he truly is. Don’t you
see? It could put an end to Kashchey’s
rule.”

“Perhaps,” Baba Yaga said.
“At one point all I wanted to do is wriggle all life
out of his miserable form. But that time is long gone. Hurting Kashchey
won’t undo the past.”

She seemed to address these words to the wolf, whose
eyes glowed out of the corner of the room like jewels. A charge passed
between them, as if, despite his muteness, they spoke to one another.

Then she stirred and looked back at Ivan.

“So, you will not help?” Ivan asked
again.

She shook her head. “The lives of these maidens mean
nothing to me, boy.”

No, because you haven’t seen
any of them
.
None of
them had a chance to touch your heart. Not like Wolf, who somehow hurt
you enough that you made him speechless; not like Ilia, who you brought
back to life only to see him leave you and go his own way.

He raised his head and met the look in her yellow eyes.

“What did Ilia’s life mean to you?
What has he done to make you travel all the way out to the ends of the
world and risk your life to gather the sacred
water?”

She stared back, unblinking. The silence rustled with the creaky fire,
squeaked with the strange creatures hiding in the thatched corners of
the chicken-legged house.

“He was perhaps even younger than
you,” she finally said. “And he
had this fire in his eyes, like he knew something no one else did, like
he was going to set things right for everybody in the world. A
promising lad, I thought. So, when I saw him, lifeless, his pretty head
cut away from his body, it seemed like such a silly waste.
I—”

She fell silent again. They sat for a while, subsumed in the quiet
sounds of the living house.

“The girl they will sacrifice this
year,” Ivan said, “is called
Alyona. She is sixteen, the youngest daughter in a family of six. She
has four elder sisters and a younger brother. When she dies, her soul
will merge with Kashchey’s to keep him young for
another year. He will devour her, as he has many others before her, and
every time it happens, he grows in power, so that he can control more
lands and conjure more troops to invade other kingdoms. Soon, his power
will grow so great that no one in the world will be able to resist
him.”

“And you propose to stop all this?”
There was amusement in Baba Yaga’s voice.

“I have to try. Every year he becomes more powerful
than before. This year it may still be possible. Next year, it may be
too late.”

“You speak nobly, but I have lived too long in this
world to believe noble words. You are much like Ilia, but he was
foolish and you, I know, are no fool. What is it that really drives
you, boy?”

He met her gaze.
There is
no reason to deny it,
he told himself.
No reason at all.

“Last year,” he said,
“our kingdom received a messenger from Kashchey. We
are to submit to his rule and pay tribute to his kingdom. If we refuse,
he will destroy our crops and lay our lands to
waste.”

She laughed. “Don’t
tell me that you
care
.
Your kingdom cast you out. Your brothers sent killers after you and
nearly succeeded. You owe them nothing.”

“Not them,” Ivan said.
“I owe it to my people. No matter what my father
thinks of me, I am still a tzar’s son and I am
responsible for my kingdom’s
well-being.”

She shook her head. “Noble words. But empty. No one
puts others before himself, boy. No one. If you think you do, you are
merely fooling yourself. Don’t tell me I was wrong
about you and you’re a fool after
all.”

“You are right about me.” He
smiled. “I am not a fool. I am thinking only of
myself. In all my travels, the only thought that keeps me strong is the
thought that my home always lies behind, just the way I left it. I
cannot bear to lose that. And if I have to risk my life to keep this
feeling, I will gladly do it. For if my homeland goes to waste, there
will be truly nothing left for me in the world.”

She looked at him for a long time. Flickers from the fire danced in her
yellow eyes.

“You’re even crazier than Ilia
was,” she said thoughtfully. “I
always told Kashchey that one day his hunger for power will bring about
his doom. He can easily control normal people, true. But sooner or
later one of you crazy ones will run across his path and leave him with
no escape.”

Wolf stirred in his corner. His eyes caught the firelight and glowed
like two coals. He bared his teeth.

“What is it?” Baba Yaga asked.

The beast got up and walked over to Ivan. Silently he grabbed the corner
of Ivan’s collar and pulled. The thin linen tore.

“Hey!” Ivan exclaimed, jumping to
his feet. “That was my best shirt! Why have
you—”

Baba Yaga stared. She wasn’t looking at
Ivan’s face. Her eyes were fixed on his left shoulder.
Just above the heart.

Even the hut stopped its squeaking and rustling as if the house, too,
had a pair of eyes fixed on Ivan.

“I see,” Baba Yaga said slowly.

“What?” Ivan asked. Nikifor the
Healer had looked at him in the same way, when the man had first seen
the gaping wound in Ivan’s chest. The power of that
look had caught him up on death’s doorstep. And now,
this look made him shiver.

“Why didn’t you two tell
me?” Baba Yaga asked Wolf.

Wolf gave her a look.

“Sorry,” she waved her hand.
“Never mind that.”

She got up and started rummaging around the hut. From a dark corner she
produced an old beaten broom.

“You stay here, boy,” she said.
“I won’t be
long.”

She grabbed the empty vial off the table and stuck in into her apron
pocket.

“Where are you going?”

“To get you the Water, of
course,” she snapped.
“Don’t be a fool, boy. Fools waste
their time with silly questions, and time is too precious to waste. You
only have three days before the Solstice, am I
right?”

“Yes,” Ivan said, dazed.
“But why—why did you change your
mind?”

“You were eloquent enough to
convince me. And this is all you will hear from me. If you want to know
more, ask your four-legged friend here. Although, if he
hasn’t told you already, he probably
won’t tell you now. I’ll be back before
dawn. Don’t even think of sleeping on my
lezhanka
. You can make a
bed for yourself over there on the floor. Don’t mind
the furry ones—they don’t bite. Normally, at
least.”

She leaned out of the doorway and whistled through her
teeth. The wave of sound flattened the grass on the glade and rippled
the water in the brook. Ivan’s ears went numb. Dazed,
he watched a giant wooden mortar stumble into the glade and come to a
standstill in front of the hut’s open door.