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?”
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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
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
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
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
He cursed the day he was born in the snowy wastes of Ded Moroz’s kingdom, quite uncomfortable, and appraised her.Morozko wanted to tell her that the dress made her look deadly. She was a witch, he realized, enchanting and terribly beautiful, so far from the girl he knew. He had the strangest attraction and repulsion at the exact same time and felt quite ill, like a vicious hangover from a night spent flirting at a bar.Morozko was, in a word, lost.“Well, Kolya?” Anya looked at her feet, embarrassed.“This boy will lose his heart to you,” Morozko finally said. “And you will swallow him whole.”Anya laughed uneasily. “I will take that as a compliment, I suppose.” She looked at herself in the mirror and smiled hesitantly. “I think I am quite in love with this beautiful dress – I have never owned anything so fine, save my firebird necklace,&rdq
Anya's birthday dawned with much celebration, the entire kingdom coming out into the streets. Dmitri threw a festival in her honor, replete with the finest caviar and buttery champagne and parades through the streets. The only one who seemed to not enjoy it was Morozko, who insisted he was sick and skipped out on the festivities. Anya was quite irritated that her guardian had skipped out on the grand festivities.Their family gathered that morning in the rose garden outside the ramshackle library’s bay window to bless Anya. They passed around a horn of vodka and poured it onto the ground, praising the gods one by one and asking for their gifts to be bestowed upon Dmitri’s precious Anya. The carved hollow ram horn came to Anya at last.She looked to the rising sun, held the horn high, and said a prayer.“Mother Mokosh, Father Perun, Uncle Veles, let my dreams know fruition. Let my wanderings be true. Let
Anya's alarm sounded bright and early. She awoke, groggy, and yawned, wiping away the sleep-sand that had accumulated in her eyes.“Wha?” she said, feeling a body against her. She looked down to see Morozko asleep beside her, his arms wrapped round her waist. “Huh? What in thrice nine kingdoms?”Morozko stirred. “Go back to sleep.” He grunted.“Why are you in my bed?”Morozko looked at her with cut-glass eyes. “Don’t you remember last night?” he said.“Of course I do. We argued over the dance and... oh. Right.” Anya blushed. “You kissed me?”“Absolutely.” Morozko grinned like the Devil. “And I will do it again, to remind you that you liked it.”“No! Do not even lay a finger on me. Kolya, please, just give me a min
Morozko nodded. “So you are paying the First Throne a visit, eh?” Baba Yaga clucked. She took a jar of poison dart frog legs swirling in preservative and plopped them into her stew. The hag sampled the concoction and smiled in approval. “That is the idea, yes.” Morozko helped himself to the refrigerator, pulling out a bottle of vodka. He popped the cork off with his fangs and poured himself a glass. “Can we go to Sparrow Hills?” Anya referenced the steep hill above the Moskava River immortalized by so many Russian poets. “Of course, mooncalf.” Morozko tossed back a shot. The vodka warmed his belly as the liquid found its way to the furnace of his stomach. “Well then, get a move on.” Baba Yaga chuckled, making a dismissive gesture. “Do not keep my witch daughter waiting, soap brains.” She ushered them out onto the porch. “Little hut, little hut, turn your back to Buyan and your f
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
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
“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
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.”
Morozko and Ivan did not encounter any other ghosts. Morozko suspected Maria Morevna held her spectral sisters at bay, already having claimed Ivan as her own. He wondered if Ivan’s deaths each night at Maria’s hands was the tithe they were paying to enter the deathless lands, for everything here had a price. Food was scarce, game nearly nonexistent, and they often went hungry.The morning of the summer solstice came, and they arrived at a steep rim of mountains that ringed the deathless lands. A great lair of a cave lay atop the tallest mountains: the domain of Zmei Gorynych.Greyback made quick work of the scree with Ivan on his back, and Morozko rose as a winter storm to the mountain’s peak. Still, the summit was tall, and it took them half a day to scale it. In the interim, the sun sang her solstice song, luring Zmei out of his cave. The dragon took wing and courted his celestial love with a radiant d
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
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
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
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