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Chapter 19: Writhing, Dark, and Hungry
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2024-10-29 19:42:56Anya grew like a spring shoot, twelve harsh Russian winters old. The winds molded her into a birch: tall and slender, with skin pale as the white tree's bark. Her hair came to her waist, black as onyx, and Elizaveta took to braiding it with blood red ribbons. It swung so beautifully as she danced the khorovod, a circling peasant dance of song and turning seasons, with village youths. She was like a fishing lure cast into a valley of dreams: one had to watch their feet lest they step on Anya as she ran mad-dash through the world.
It was the anniversary of the dozen year truce between Tsar Vladimir the Bent and Tsar Dmitri the Bountiful – two brothers as different in disposition as night and day. Liliya and Elizaveta cooked for days on end, harvesting the finest caviar from the rivers for stuffed blini, and Morozko was in charge of the vodka freshly brewed from the potato fields behind the inn. Anya took it upon herself to decorat
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Anya flourished in school, deftly walking the realms between man and spirits. Keeping the secret of her family was like breathing. She felt like a visitor to the Earth, a cast-off ship of dreams, left to travel the world with sails the lapis blue of things forgotten.Anya often pondered forgotten things, like her beloved nechist and how they had faded from Russian memory, relegated to the realm of myths. No one in America knew of Baba Yaga, and in Moscow and St. Petersburg, where Morozko took her to parks and museums, why, there were no gods at all. Anya wondered if, when the Zoryas shone down on Russia, if their starlight was tears at being forgotten by their humans they so so loved. Dmitri never spoke of when the borders between Buyan and Earth were open, and as Anya grew, her monstrous family took her less to the human world – only Morozko.“So what are the virtues of birch venik? Of oak? Eucalyptus?”
Jack Frost's Bride Chapter 21: Rising Taiga Sun
Twelve years old, thirteen winters passed – finally fourteen and with her moon’s blood upon her. Anya now danced sky clad at Witches Sabbaths. From her bloody feet, finally, fern flowers sprang in fragrant gore red blossoms. She pressed them and made tinctures and potions out of the mashed fronds and roots. Summer turned, and she was between childhood and womanhood, of two ages, belonging not quite anywhere.Anya’s first day of high school had dawned. She wore a pleated white skirt, a blue blouse and had plaited her long black hair back in a French braid and secured it with a red velvet bow that Elizaveta had sewn.She stood in front of Liliya’s vanity in the vila’s windy room at the top of the inn’s lookout tower, perfect for planning strategic maneuvers and defending Tsar Dmitri’s kingdom. The room was all white birch bark, its walls lined with sabers and long swords, whips, and arrow
Jack Frost's Bride Chapter 22: Greyback
“I am on the cheering team now, Greyback, and now I do backflips like Wonder Woman!” Anya said as she raced on the back of the great silver vucari. The looming gray wolf with golden eyes barked with laughter. They came to a witches’ hollow where warmth never fled the land despite the harsh winter cold and fern flowers always grew fever-bright and splendid.Anya picked some and made a flower crown for the vucari. He lay beside her, and with her witch-light and pine kindling and birch branches, she started a bonfire.“As you grow, so does your magic, and as your magic grows, he grows hungrier in the darkness, waiting to catch you like a moth to a blinding light. Never go to the deathless lands, dear Anya,” Greyback growled, twitching his ear.Anya leaned against him. “You always speak of awaiting danger. Baba Yaga says that you are the woods come to life, dear Greyback. I think you are m
Jack Frost's Bride Chapter 23: In My Wooden Bones
Dmitri woke Anya in the hidden away bedroom in the banya bright and early one Saturday morning come spring.“Da? Ugh. I was out late last night cheering on the Friday night game. Please let me sleep just five more minutes.”“Anya, you are spending so much time with your friends and young men, I fear that you are forgetting your family. That is why today, I am taking you out hunting, just like old times!”“But daaaa, it is nighttime-Dmitri chuckled, a quiver of arrows over his shoulder, handmade bow in his broad blue hands. “No, my dear, it is eleven in the morning, one of the best times to catch game, when prey are lazing. Let your old man take you on a hunting trip like we used to before you grew too busy with high school and football games and homework.”Anya groaned, burying her face in her pillow. “Five more minutes?”&ldq
Jack Frost's Bride Chapter 24: Sorely Needed Peace
Winter turned to spring, spring to winter, and round again like a carousel until Anya entered her sixteenth year. She ripened like an apple, rosy-cheeked and freckled with curves that her sarafan clung to. Her hair reached her waist, a thick black rope perfect for braiding, or perhaps for hanging a man by his own liar’s throat.Baba Yaga glanced up from her simmering chicken kiev, surveyed Anya, and clucked: “Annushka, you are not so little anymore, no longer a dumpling, more like a choice cut of elk. Like a sprouting white birch, you have grown too fast. Soon cherti will come seeking your magic rich blood.”“Whatever do you mean?” Anya asked, pausing from stirring a bubbling potion of rosemary and rue. “I have never met a cherti that was not bound to you or another witch. I have yet to attract a wild one. Why would my familiar come now?”“They are the denizens of Hel
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Anya settled under the covers that night in her small makeshift bed at the foot of Morozko's. She stared at the ceiling, her firebird feather hung from the rafters to light the room as if by slow-burning moonlight. Morozko's breathing was measured, the bannik asleep.“Kolya?” Anya said.“Mmm?” he stirred.“Kolya.”“What is it?” he said, groggy.“How do you know if you really like someone?”Morozko rolled over under wolfskin blankets and yawned. “I do not know. I suppose there is a certain ache in your chest. A feeling of moths in the stomach: night things roused in your gut. It is a simple thing, really.”“I do not think it is as easy as you make it out to be.” Anya sighed. She fluffed her pillow, seeking a comfortable position. “Have you ever liked anybody?”Morozko exhaled heavi
Jack Frost's Bride Chapter 26: Wide Open
Anya's haphazard family ate lunch late that Saturday, the inn beyond the world bustling in preparation for Dmitri's annual noblemen council. Leshys of all types, stout and slender, with ram's horns and boar tusks, bear teeth and wolf skins, laughed heartily over vodka and a roaring fire. Their attendants talked rowdily. The harvest was drawing close, and it was a time for celebration.Anya's nerves were on edge: her shopping excursion with Morozko was in an hour. It could either go uneventfully or horribly, terribly wrong. She hoped for the former but anticipated the latter.Morozko gave her a hard look across the oak-hewn dining room table but said nothing. The others finished eating, the table cleared, and it was just the two of them left. Morozko picked at the remnants of his fish while Anya slowly sipped her water.She cleared her throat: “So. Ahem. Well… I guess we can go n
Jack Frost's Bride Chapter 27: Sidekick Business
She rose from the bed, pulling Morozko hastily after her.Morozko looked at her skeptically. “Have you not any care for caution? For consequences? There are monsters out there, cherti familiars and vucari and nechist waiting to devour you. Do not romanticize travel. It is a dangerous undertaking – getting lost, having your horse broken, your money stolen – everything about it, why, it is treacherous.” Morozko changed out of his kaftan into red jeans and a white cashmere sweater with embroidery of horse-backed Perun and Veles, flanking Mother Mokosh. He turned from Anya to give them privacy.Anya laced her combat boots over her leggings. “Oh please. You said you had a restless heart. Well, your fern flower juice infected me with wanderlust.” Anya zipped her leather jacket. “If you are really so worried, you can be my sidekick. I will promote you to sec
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The problem with gods is that often, they like to stay hidden. And the most sacred place in all Buyan, the World Tree, where Perun nested in the branches and Veles snaked round the roots, was not really a tree, but a woman.Mother Mokosh, whose name Russian peasants centuries ago would swear on by taking dirt into their mouths – Mokosh’s body - and spitting it out, like the Greeks making an oath on the River Styx, echoed a tradition that may as well have been Neolithic.To swear on Mother Mokosh was to swear on the vitality of the land, summoning the very magic that bound Buyan together. But that magic was failing, reckless, with vines choking forests, greenery growing like mad beyond even the leshys’ control. Dmitri’s forest was nearly unnavigable, and the tsar went out each day, pruning and plucking, trying to put a stopper on the wilderness.Anya and Morozko stowed what little they had in the oversized bac
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They backpacked Europe, hostel by hostel. It was Anya’s insistence that they travel simply, no planes, all train, bus and foot. Morozko mastered the art of smoking when you were a walking refrigerator. Anya learned to pack light. Both needed time to heal – one had lost his body, the other had lost her soul.Despite the marvels of the Old Word – the museums, the culture, the castles and cathedrals - Anya could not sleep. When she shut her eyes, she saw the deathless girls, each whispering silently, tears on their cheeks like pearls. Alina was always at the forefront, swirling into dust.It had been a year since they set out on their journey, though Anya’s body had stopped aging. Physically, she would always remain eighteen, perpetually frozen in time. She turned, restless, in Morozko’s arms, glamoured like him, for now light poured from her throat. It made sleeping even more diffic
Jack Frost's Bride Chapter 46: Falcon Wild
“I missed you too. You do not, um, mind that I look like this now, do you? I thought, in order to save you, that I had to become something else. Someone I am not.”Anya avoided stepping on a mushroom. “Well, your skin is cold, but you are still you. You put on Ded Moroz’s crown for me. If you can accept me as I am now, as a – as Bilobog, or whatever, then I can still love you.”Morozko stopped, taking both of her hands into his. “Anya, I would not care if you became a hag. I would still adore you. Remember? I am your sidekick. All I want is your happiness.”Anya leaned into him. “Thanks, Kolya. You mean the world to me, too.”Their lips met.Aym coughed up a hairball. It landed square on Morozko’s cheek, interrupting their kiss. Aym purred with laughter as Morozko wiped the matted fur from his f
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Morozko could barely see through the fury of the storm. Lightning split an amethyst birch in two, setting the jewel tree aflame. From behind the fallen tree slunk an orange tabby. “It is about time that you arrived,” purred Aym. Morozko stopped in his tracks. “Pus in boots? How the hell did you get here?” Aym laughed. “I have my ways. You look rather blue – sadness at my mistress’s disappearance must have taken a toll on you. I would say that you are practically frozen in sorrow.” Ivan rounded a corner on Greyback. His eyes gaped wide. “Something has changed,” he breathed. “I can feel it in my soul, now bound to another master. Actually, no – mistress? A – a goddess? But how?” Aym wove in between Greyback’s legs, purring. “You wouldn’t happen to have any cream, would you, bud? The deathless lands have lackluster food, and that’s an understatement.”
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Jack Frost's Bride Chapter 43: Even Gods Can Be Killed
Ivan Tsarevich and Morozko trekked farther each day. Ivan told Morozko of the legions of cherti that guarded the deathless lands, of the women who had crumbled to dust upon trying to leave Kashchei’s kingdom. Their spirits haunted the thick black forests bordering the area. So many maidens that had been spirited away over the centuries now lingered there. Bodiless, they roamed the wilderness, leading travelers astray to try and suck the life out of them. There were packs of vucari, Greyback’s people, who would as likely help a traveler as eat them. Finally, there was Zmei Gorynych, the fearsome three-headed dragon who guarded the portal to the deathless lands.“Zmei leaves his cave once a year, on the summer solstice,” Ivan said as he turned hares over a spit for their dinner. “A being of fire, Zmei cannot resist the call of the sun. He flies as close as he can to her, fancying the star his lover, a
Jack Frost's Bride Chapter 42: Ivan Tsarevich
Morozko was on the shadow-side of Saint Petersburg, in Buyan’s reflection of the metropolis. He rode the train aimlessly, smoking cigarette after cigarette. All of his searching had turned up ash. Dirt. Nothing. There was no sign of where Kosti had disappeared to, and the fear of what had happened to Anya was a bird freezing in its cage in his snowy ribs, where his heart would have been, if Anya was in his arms. Instead, she had flown away, because he had been foolish enough to make his wish on a firebird girl.Morozko caught his reflection in the dark window. There were his lips, a dark blue, and his cheeks sunken in like a junkie’s. His hair was hardened with ice. He could barely smoke cigarettes now: the cold of his mouth put them out. He cursed his new form under his breath.Morozko touched the window’s glass and traced Anya’s face in the oily smudge. Just her eyes, really, a
Jack Frost's Bride Chapter 41: Lion in a Cage
Anya sank onto the bed, head in her hands. “No,” she whispered. “That is not right. You disgusting liar.”“Would I lie to the daughter of a goddess?”“The gods are gone. They abandoned Buyan eons ago. You are delusional, you bastard.”“Which is perhaps why Baba Yaga found you on Earth, little demigod.” Kashchei sat beside Anya and put his arm around her. She was too panicked to resist.“No.” Anya looked out the open window, at the treacherous beauty of the land of the deathless. Anya clutched the firebird pendant at her throat and inhaled sharply.“And here Baba Yaga has raised you all this time, keeping you in the dark about your heritage so you could be her perfect little pawn.” Kashchei tapped his shoeless feet on the ground. “Cruel, really. Keeping your true family from you.”&l
Jack Frost's Bride Chapter 40: Glazed
Ded Moroz's eyes seemed to pick the meat clean from Morozko's bones. Father Frost stroked his hoary beard, glacial icicle spiked crown resting atop his brow. His courtiers thronged round his throne, whispering at the scandal of his scion, the bannik bastard born out of wedlock to Snegurochka.“So,” Ded Moroz boomed. “You wish to be reinstated to the family legacy and become my heir? A responsibility you have shirked since your birth, all to save some orphan witch?”Morozko sweated, the furnace in his belly roaring. “Yes,” he said, temple throbbing under the scrutiny of his forefather, a man he had never wanted please.A thin smile graced Ded Moroz's lips. “I cannot say that I am glad that it has taken so long for you to accept your heritage. But for the love of a woman, you are willing. So be it. I will give you your crown, my grandson.”Morozko let out t
