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!”