Free Deathless by Catherynne Valente Page A

differently. Perhaps you would have commanded me to be silent. It was a risk I took. I confess it excited me, the possibility of being caught out. But no, I got to keep my secrets after all. A chance passed is a chance passed. 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.”
    On her bed by the stove, Marya lay down, her naked back red as a ruby in the firelight. Like a magic trick, Koschei pulled an egg from behind his ear—but not a hen’s egg. A black egg, embossed in silver, studded with cold diamonds. Marya smiled, for her father had done this once when she could not sleep, had rolled an egg along her body to soak up all the nightmares into the yolk and away from her heart.
    “You do not understand this yet. Not yet, not yet. You are not ready. You would be rough with my gift. But it is our last night, and I shall soak up all your fears and nightmares and proletariat city-girl terrors. You must have room to fear new things. I shall make you all new, my own revolution, neither red nor white, but black.”
    Koschei the Deathless rolled his egg over Marya’s skin. She felt the crackling of the delicate shell against her bones, the jewels scraping her skin.
    When he had finished, he pulled her up roughly and crushed her to him, kissing her again. His mouth was cold, and there was no passing of pear jelly or cherries between them. But all the same, Marya Morevna tasted sweetness in his empty kiss.
    Suddenly, the sweetness fled and pain forked through her lip—Koschei had bitten her. She stared at him, hurt, raising her hand to her mouth. Her fingers came away bloody. Koschei’s lips were smeared with it. His eyes sparked and glowed.
    “When I tell you to do a thing, you must do it. It is not about wanting or not wanting. It is about the will in your jaw, and the egg on your back.”
    Marya balked; her vision swam; her lips pulsed hotly where his long, thin teeth had cut her. She felt herself tottering on a needle-tip: If I let him do this to me, what else will I allow?
    Anything, anything, anything.
    Koschei the Deathless wiped the bright redness from his lips. He looked down at his finger with Marya’s blood upon it. Without taking his eyes from her, he lifted his hand to his mouth and tasted it hesitantly, as if waiting for her to stop him.
    Marya Morevna held her breath, and made no sound.

PART 2
    Sleep with Fists Closed and Shoot Straight
     
There is no such thing as death.
Everyone knows that.
It has become tasteless to repeat it.
    —A NNA A KHMATOVA

7
    The Country of Life
     
Where is the country of the Tsar of Life? When the world was young the seven Tsars and Tsaritsas divided it amongst themselves. The Tsar of the Birds chose the air and the clouds and the winds. The Tsaritsa of Salt chose the cities with all their bustle and heedless hurtling. The Tsar of Water chose the seas and lakes, bays and oceans. The Tsaritsa of Night chose all the dark places and the places between, the thresholds, the shadows. The Tsaritsa of the Length of an Hour chose sorrow and misfortune as her territory, so that where anyone suffers, there is her country. This left only the Tsar of Life and the Tsar of Death to argue over what remained. For a time, they were content to quarrel over individual trees, stones, and streams, giving each other great whacks with that scythe which Death wields to cut down all that lives, and that hammer which Life wields, which builds up useful and lovely things such as fences and churches and potato distilleries. However, Life and Death are brothers, and their ambition is precisely equal.
Their rivalry soon encompassed whole towns,