Deathless

Keep me and obey me, the secret said to her, for I am your husband and I can destroy you.

“Remember this when you are queen,” she breathed. “I told you my secrets.”

Marya Morevna turned the knob and opened her door onto the city. She stood there in her bright red dress, and her face drained of blood. A man looked down at her, for he was quite tall. He wore a black coat, though the evening’s warm wind blew through his curly dark hair, so like a ram’s. Slowly, without taking his eyes from hers, the man in the black coat knelt before her.
“I have come for the girl in the window,” he said, and his eyes filled with tears.

Therefore, it is better to be strong and cruel than to be fair.

Marya Morevna had imagined that if hell had a smell, it smelled like mustard plasters.

Oh, I will be cruel to you, Marya Morevna. It will stop your breath, how cruel I can be. But you understand, don’t you? You are clever enough. I am a demanding creature. I am selfish and cruel and extremely unreasonable. But I am your servant. When you starve I will feed you; when you are sick I will tend you. I crawl at your feet; for before your love, your kisses, I am debased. For you alone I will be weak.

So where is the country of the Tsar of Death? Where is the nation of the Tsar of Life? They are not so easy to find, yet each day you step upon both one hundred times or more.

I will match you, wrinkle for wrinkle, grey hair for grey hair, creak for creak, tumor for tumor. You will be so beautiful when you are old.

Why should the wolf worry about the safety of the sheep?

Magic does that. It wastes you away. Once it grips you by the ear, the real world gets quieter and quieter, until you can hardly hear it at all.

I saw a bird once that turned into a man and married my sister, and the sight of it bruised my heart so that I cannot think about anything else. If you had seen it, what would you think about? Not laundry, or whether it will rain, or how your mother or father is getting on, or Lenin or Krupskaya.

“I am Comrade Koschei, surnamed Bessmertny,” he said with a low, churning voice, “and I have come for the girl in the window.”

birch branch

At least I can still see the naked world, even if it will only show me an ankle or a flash of wrist now.

“Remember this when you are queen,” said the vintovnik solemnly. “That I went into the dark for you, and scared an old woman half to death.”

“Remember this when you are queen,” he whispered hoarsely. “I moved the earth and the water for you.”