They left the body in the care of the rusalki who acted fearful for a while, but soon giggled, reassured by Elena's whisperings, and played with it as with a gruesome oversized toy. Yakov wanted to object at first, but then decided that it made no difference, and watched the rusalki sink below the lake's surface, carrying their new amusement with them. After that, they left to find Zemun.
He regretted not wearing sturdier boots as the clay and mud of the meadow, wet from a recent flood, sucked on his shoes. The meadow, green with stolen sunlight, spread downward on a gentle slope. Small white and yellow flowers winked in the verdant grass, and among them the Celestial Cow grazed, languid. Yakov recognized her because she emitted a soft glow that lit the meadow with a wavering light that reminded him of the northern lights he had seen once, when he visited some distant cousins in Murmansk.
"What a pretty cow,” Galina whispered behind him.
"Yes,” Elena agreed. “I haven't seen much livestock back on the surface, but I like this one."
The cow lifted her head and studied them with an expression Yakov could only describe as ‘wise'.
"Hi,” Elena said. “We came for your advice. We found a dead man who came from the surface-"
"Was he dead when he arrived?” Zemun interrupted in a slow, melodious voice.
"Yes,” Yakov said. “I'm Yakov, and that's Galina. We're looking for birds who used to be people. The dead man had something in his mouth."
Zemun nodded. “I will listen to your questions, but one at a time. What did you find in the dead man's mouth?"
"This.” Elena opened her palm, and the blue egg pulsed, as if revived with her warmth.
Zemun sniffed at the gem, and even tested it gingerly with the surprisingly agile tip of her tongue.
"Do you know what it is?” Yakov asked. “Elena thinks it's magical, somehow."
"I don't really believe in magic,” Zemun said, and sniffed at the jewel again. “But this is certainly… strange."
Yakov and Galina traded a look. Yakov wasn't sure what he expected from this cow, but he hoped for something more insightful.
"Can you help us?” Galina said. “If you don't know what it is, do you know who does?"
Zemun thought for a bit. “You know,” she said. “I made the Milky Way."
"That's-nice,” Yakov said, and looked to Galina for help.
"You don't believe me.” Zemun looked mournful. “You think that stars just happen, that no one makes them."
"Not necessarily,” Galina said. “But what about the people who turned into birds?"
"Tell me about that,” Zemun said, still sulking.
Yakov did, and Galina butted in a few times, talking about her sister. Yakov wished she would stop reminding him about that-he was acutely aware that he was not doing his job and missing work to boot; his mother was probably worried sick, and there was nothing he could do to help Galina.
His thoughts drifted to the young girl, Darya, and her missing mother. He wished he could send her a message to let her know that he was looking, that he was trying, and hadn't forgotten about her. It was like the sleep paralysis he used to get as a child-a feeling of utter helplessness and despair, and it felt like it was his fault.
Zemun chewed her cud, thinking. “I can help you,” she said after a while. “I will help you find why all of this is happening."
"You mean you don't know?” Yakov tried to keep disappointment out of his voice. Nothing was ever easy, and he resented that his visit to a magical kingdom of fairytales was turning into a series of interviews. And corpse examinations. If one was a cop, this sort of thing would be unavoidable, he supposed. He just wanted a bit of a respite-and the ability to do something about it.
Zemun shook her head. “I suspect that the disturbances we're seeing originate on the surface. The surface world is changing, and so is this one."
"I don't get it,” Galina said. “The surface always changes-the wars, the revolution, all the other shit that happened. Why now?"
Zemun looked up, into the grey haze that masked the absence of the sky. “Who knows? Maybe it is time for the worlds to merge, and maybe not. But my guess is that someone from here is working with the surfacers."
"Why?” Yakov said. “And working on what?"
"I would not know,” Zemun said. “But Koschey the Deathless should be able to help you."
Yakov rolled his eyes. “Of course. Koschey the Deathless. I knew he would show up eventually. Do you want me to track down his death? I already know where it is; I watched a movie about him once."
"No,” Zemun replied. “Just ask him. He knows about dark magic."
"I thought you didn't believe in magic,” Yakov said.
Zemun measured him with her languid gaze. “What does my belief in it has to do with its existence?” she said.
"We better go,” Galina said, and pulled Yakov's sleeve. “How do we find him?"
"Try the Pub,” Zemun said. “Everyone shows up there sooner or later."
"Good idea,” Elena said. “I'll come along too."
As much as Yakov tried to avoid any political involvement in his life, he had sat through his share of a variety of meetings and lectures on Marxist theory, which were just as boring and filled with the same dull rhetoric. When he was young enough to be a member of Komsomol, whose voluntary character was a bald-faced lie, he amused himself by carving obscenities into the edge of the large wooden table around which they all sat, under the watchful and blind gaze of Lenin and Marx gypsum busts. Their white eyes followed Yakov every time he lifted the green cloth covering the meeting table and carefully cut ‘dick', ‘fuck', and ‘cunt’ into the wood, the simple incantations warding against gypsum deities. He was thrilled with a mixture of joy and fearful anticipation, and cringed when he imagined the lightning bolts they could summon to strike him down. The profanities protected him.
Even here, underground, the word ‘meeting’ did not fill him with anything but a low-key ennui, even if it was a meeting summoned by the Celestial Cow. The Pub had a billiard table covered with green fabric, and its polished raised edges beckoned Yakov; he wished he had a penknife so he could carve his simple-minded charms into the exposed wood, the better to ward off boredom.
David bustled around, moving chairs and pushing together tables so that everyone could fit, including Zemun. Sovin helped, his old back and arms stiffening with the effort. He occasionally stopped to bark a cough and spit, but did not slow down. The patrons stood in clusters, whispering; Yakov wondered at first how the rumors managed to spread so fast, until he saw the group of rusalki. They had brought the corpse with them, water dripping in slow rivulets from its dark hair. Yakov had to look away from its gaping mouth and the dislocated lower jaw sticking out at a disturbing angle. The rusalki held the body up and moved its hands like a marionette's, laughing softly.
Yakov recognized some of the people and creatures present; others were new to him, and he tried to guess who they were. There was a man in a long military coat and hat with a large splayed star, the fashion he remembered from the movies about the Civil War; another one, narrow-eyed and sallow-faced looked like a character from a historical drama about the Golden Horde, and Yakov pegged him for a Tatar-Mongol circa 13th century or thereabouts. Others were dressed in less identifiable garb-checkered shirts and dark trousers that could belong anywhere in the twentieth century. The thought made him sad, that one could become so detached and lost in the stream of time.
Among the people, strange creatures mingled-besides easily identifiable vodyanoys and leshys, there were things that seemed the stuff of nightmares, or at least the fairytales he hadn't heard of. He was especially intrigued by a short stocky gentleman, flanked by two attendants brandishing iron pitchforks, with eyelids so long they brushed the ground. A large winged dog sat next to him on the floor, but seemed unaffiliated. Sovin's rats tried not to get underfoot but kept close to their benefactor, and glared a bit at the small creatures-some anthropomorphic, some not so much-who scurried about with pails of sawdust, covering up the dark spots left by water dripping off the corpse and the aquatic creatures, and Zemun's cowpats.
David touched his shoulder. “How are you making out?"
"Fine,” Yakov said, and pointed at the long-lidded person. “Who's that fellow?"
"Viy,” David answered. “What, you haven't read Gogol?"
"Sure I have. But I thought these were mythological creatures here, not literary."
"Viy is mythological,” David said. “He's a general in Russian hell."
Galina walked up to them. “We get a special hell?"
"Not a Christian hell.” David thought a bit, absentmindedly wiping his hand on the stained apron. “A pagan hell… or underworld, if you will."
Galina nodded. “He's the only one who's supposed to be here, then."
Fyodor sauntered up, and an old man in a red coat followed him. “What's going on?” he slurred.
Yakov stepped back from the assault of alcohol on Fyodor's breath. “A meeting,” he said. “We're just waiting for Koschey the Deathless."
Fyodor laughed and stopped, once he realized Yakov was not joking. He turned to his companion. “Know anything about him, Father Frost?"
The old man fluffed his white beard. “We're not friends, if that's what you're asking. But he knows a lot."
"There he is.” David left the group and headed toward the entrance, to shake hands with a very tall and thin man dressed in a black suit.
"I expected him to be scarier,” Galina whispered to Yakov.
He agreed inwardly; the villain of so many fairytales he read as a child, of so many movies that fascinated him on Saturday mornings, was always portrayed as not quite human, a deformed creature possessed of an unhealthy fascination with young women, and who invariably ended up defeated by those who could find his cleverly hidden-away death. He did not seem particularly malignant now, just stern.
"Order!” Zemun called, and shook her head from side to side; little stars swimming around her neck jangled like bells, and quiet followed on their wake.
Everyone settled at the giant table, set in the middle of the star-shaped pub, and for a few moments there was nothing but muffled coughs and shifting and scrabbling of the chair legs on the floor. House spirits started on a song somewhere in the walls, but stopped as soon as Zemun cleared her throat. Everyone remained silent except for the albino jackdaws, perched on the ceiling beams, who would not stop squawking.
The rusalki brought the corpse with them, arranging it carefully across several laps as they sat side by side. Yakov found a place between Fyodor and Elena, who rolled the blue gem from one palm to the other, the blue flashes of light playing across her high cheekbones. Koschey the Deathless, seated to her right, watched the stone too, and Yakov noticed how deep-set his eyes were. They twinkled with reflected light, somewhere deep in the dark eye sockets.
"Order!” Zemun bellowed again, and the shifting and the coughing stopped. At her signal, the rusalki rose to present the corpse.
"This,” Zemun said, “has surfaced today in the Rusalki's Lake. It was just the day after these three newcomers arrived, following the birds from the surface who appear to pass freely between the surface and the underground. Moreover, there's reason to believe that these birds are people who recently underwent transformation. We are thus forced to conclude that there's magic on the surface, and the dead bodies are able to cross here."
Yakov smiled to himself, at the cow's ability to dispense with lengthy introductions and avoid any dialectics altogether. Based on his limited experience, he expected to hear about dialectics at every meeting. A buzz of excited conversation filled the room, and Viy's attendants used their pitchforks to lift his eyelids so he could view the dead body.
"Don't worry,” Elena whispered to Yakov and Fyodor. “His gaze won't turn you into stone. It's just a rumor."
"Thanks,” Fyodor whispered back. “I was worried about that."
"Does anyone know where this body came from?” Zemun said.
"No.” Koschey's voice crackled like a dry twig. “But I can find out."
The collective groan swirled around the table.
"Not you, with your raising of the dead again,” said a blue-skinned dripping vodyanoy, his large frog-like eyes bulging out of his scaly face.
"Why not?” Koschey replied. “At least now I have a dead body to raise. That'll shut your mouth… and aren't fish supposed to be silent anyway?"
Vodyanoy huffed, but offered no further argument.
"Has anyone else any objections?” Koschey stared at Zemun. “Maybe you, beefsteak?"
"Drop dead,” Zemun murmured.
The rest of the demigods and spirits remained quiet, and Koschey turned to the people. “Any of you fleshbags have anything to say? In the old days, I swear, I would use your skins for upholstery instead of asking for your opinion, but I guess we have pluralism now."
"Do what you must,” Elena said. “And don't get too excited-you might get apoplexy."
The rest of the humans tittered, and Yakov surmised that the death of Koschey the Deathless was a favorite joke for many.
Koschey stood, especially tall and skeletally thin in the Zemun's aurora borealis lights and the blue glittering of the gem. He commanded attention, and Yakov wondered if Koschey indeed was capable of raising the dead man.
"Give me that, sweetheart,” Koschey said to Elena and stretched out his hand, palm up.
She put the gem into it. “Do you know what it is?"
"It's a rather well-polished glass sphere,” Koschey said. “What's more important is what's inside of it."
"And that would be?” Yakov said.
Koschey looked at him for the first time, and Yakov felt as if insects were crawling under the collar of his shirt. “And that, my succulent friend, would be this man's soul. You see, I know quite a bit about hiding away souls."
"I thought it was your death that was hidden away,” Galina said.
"It's all the same, dear,” Koschey answered. “Every soul contains the seed of its own destruction. Now, if I may proceed…"
Yakov could not shake the impression that he was watching a magic show, even as Koschey pressed the blue marble under the dead man's tongue and unwound the electrical tape around the corpse's wrists. He fixed his jaw, closing the stagnant mouth bristling with chipped and broken teeth, hiding the blackened tongue that sprang like a pistil of that obscene flower.
Koschey whispered some words into the corpse's ear, and patted his pockets. Looking annoyed, he left his ministering. “Does anyone have two coins?” he said. “I didn't quite expect to perform a resurrection."
"Over here,” Fyodor said. Everyone held their breath as he offered Koschey a faceless coin on a thin golden chain.
Koschey grasped the coin, and Fyodor pulled it out. He then once again passed the coin through the bony fist of Koschey.
Yakov watched the manipulation in confusion, until Koschey unclenched his fist and showed two glittering coins. He placed the coins onto the corpse's eyes, closing them. The bruised shadows spread under them, and Koschey resumed whispering incantations.
Yakov got bored and looked around the room. A part of him still expected to wake up in his room, with his mom hollering from the kitchen to come and get his breakfast; he felt guilty for thinking of her so little. He imagined her, like she always was, tight-lipped and slightly worried, always uneasy about something, when a loud jingling snapped him back to his present, in his grandfather's pub, at the table surrounded by people who should've been dead ages ago and things that shouldn't have existed at all. He looked at the table, uncomprehending at first, at the two polished coins spinning and dancing on its rough surface. Then he looked at the corpse, who opened its filmy milky eyes, rubbed his wrists, and shivered in his wet clothes. Then, he began to speak.
Sergey never thought that he would become a thug when he grew up-when he was growing up, thugs were not a viable career choice, and boys his age rarely dreamt beyond becoming cosmonauts or firemen; at least, once they realized that the positions of revolutionary heroes were filled long ago, and were no longer offered.
He had an obsessive love of cavalry, of Chapaev and Budyonny, and he read every book in the library dealing with the Civil War and the heroism of the Red Army. He was disappointed when he learned that cavalry was a thing of the past, and if he joined the army he would be more likely to see the golden, undulating grass of the steppes through the narrow slit of a tank than from horseback, the wind whistling by, the air saturated with the smell of dry grass and horse sweat. His love of war and horses left him alternately thinking of becoming a soldier and a veterinarian; when he graduated from high school, he applied to a veterinary institute. He failed the entrance exams, and was drafted into the army.
The army changed him-after a year of being hazed and another one doing the hazing, he decided that veterinary medicine was a passing fancy, and the life of a rural vet-a childish and embarrassing dream. He stayed in the army for the third year, not required by the draft, and started applying to military academies.
And then Things Changed, in a big way. Military spending was cut and he was sent home from his post guarding a nuclear silo. The rumor was that the nukes in there were earmarked for non-confrontational destruction, but Sergey did not really care. After privatization of everything started and co-op stores sprang overnight like shaky corrugated toadstools, something became obvious to Sergey: privilege that during his youth was reserved for the party members, that used to be won in battle before that, was now free for the taking for those with brains, business sense, and non-demanding scruples.
He knew that he had neither brains nor business sense; he only had a permissive conscience and good physical training. The co-op stores needed protection, only some didn't know it yet, and Sergey joined a group of sympathetic individuals who took it upon themselves to persuade business owners to pay for their protection from rival racketeers.
He never rose in the ranks, and he didn't concern himself with the whys or hows of it; he considered himself a simple businessman. When those who owed money did not pay, he experienced a sense of vague hurt and betrayal, and he felt righteous punishing the people who for some reason didn't think it was necessary to pay their debts. Some went so far as to deny the very need for protection-or a roof, as it was called. “You need a roof,” Sergey would try to explain. “If you don't have protection, other gangs would do what they please to you, your company, and your money. What are you going to do then, huh? Go to the police?"
The subject then understood his folly and hung his head, and forked over whatever cash was required. Only the most obstreperous cases needed persuasive punishment.
Sergey worked with some real artists in his life-given an electric iron, a set of pliers, and a roll of electrical tape, they reduced the most cocky businessmen to sniveling, simpering piles of refuse. These crude instruments went out of favor, though, once thugs discovered hexes.
They were old wives’ tales, Sergey thought initially. Potions, talismans, kabbalic symbols-they were all the same, incantations of curses and blessings; sacrifices to the unknown and too-ancient-for-names gods-silliness, he said. There were no mysterious energies, no obligingly aligned stars that would facilitate the outcome of a territorial dispute; no bunch of dried herbs would help his prehistoric car, a Volga, the sad legacy of some ex-communist functionary, start in the morning. Except they did.
He attributed it to coincidences at first, and while he didn't quite believe it, he didn't disbelieve it either. The watershed moment came when his associates conceived of the glass business.
One of them, Slava, a tall lanky guy who used to be in the same class as Sergey and who fixed him up with his current employment, took Sergey to a remote and largely unsupervised railroad branch-a single track picking its way through the few remaining apple orchards and patchy forests of Biryolevo, the wood of the railroad ties exhaling the smell of pitch and creosote in the summer heat, rare grass stems littering the stony ground in between them. The track was used to cart glass granules-small spheres of green, blue and clear glass, two centimeters in diameter-to a nearby glass factory. The granules were transported in open cars, moving with the speed of a vigorous jog, and wouldn't be difficult to get to.
"What do we need these granules for?” Sergey asked. “They're not worth shit."
"But not what you can do with them,” said Slava. “Chechens will shit themselves when they hear that we have this… power. Did you know that glass can trap souls?” Slava was quickly becoming an expert in the occult.
"No,” Sergey said. “Where the fuck do you find this info?"
"I have my sources,” Slava said with a sly smile. “Are you in or not? Once they hear that we can not only kill them but have their souls for eternity, no one will ever mess with us. Ever.” Slava spoke with relish, kicking the rail that sang in a low, resonant voice, and Sergey imagined that the sound of Slava's Adidas running shoe traveled far, to lands unknown, perhaps as far as Europe. “Chechens, they're afraid for their souls, they're Christians."
"Muslims,” Sergey corrected. “Armenians and Georgians are Christians."
"Same difference,” Slava said. “Whatever the fuck it is they believe, as long as they believe in heaven. We can deny it to them. How cool is that?"
A slow train rambled past, and Slava waited until it almost passed, then sprinted along and caught up to one of the open cars. He leapt and grabbed onto the edge. He didn't pull himself up but just reached inside and let go, landing in a squat on the tracks. He returned and showed Sergey a handful of green spheres. “This is cool.” He offered one to Sergey, and held another one close to his eye, squinting up at the sun.
Sergey did the same. The small pockmarks and imperfections on the glass sphere's surface became enlarged, and he felt as if he were looking at the lunar surface, mysterious and luminously green, distorted by the slight curvature of the glass, smoldering with craters. He discovered that if he rotated the sphere in his fingers, the green world rotated with it, showing him its hidden mountains and deep fissures.
"Not a bad place for a soul to be, don't you think?” Slava said to him. “You game?"
And thus Sergey found himself in what they euphemistically called the glass business, and he accumulated a nice collection of souls as Slava and the rest expanded their territory. That is, until he found himself on the wrong end of the glass granule.
He grew increasingly curious about Slava's sources of arcane knowledge, and he asked questions. When the questions proved fruitless, he started to snoop. By then he could afford to ditch the Volga, rusted and heavy with class implications, and bought a Jeep-secondhand, but in better condition than anything he had owned to date. Slava, however, changed his Mercedes for a new one as soon as the ashtrays filled up, and Sergey suspected that his sources of income included other things besides racketeering and soul-trapping. He decided to track Slava's secret dealings.
He took a post at the entrance to Slava's apartment building, a well-appointed old house on Tverskaya; for that expedition, he borrowed an unassuming Zaporozhets (the make that in the city folklore was often compared to a pregnant ninth-grader, since both equaled family disgrace) from a friend, and kept vigil among the equally homely cars parked in the courtyard, with a good view of Slava's maroon Merc. He waited until well after midnight, when Slava emerged from his building, alone; Sergey's heart picked up its beat-the absence of the two meaty bodyguards that followed him everywhere lately indicated that Slava was about to do something secret.
Sergey waited for him to exit the yard and turned on his lights. He followed him through the slow crawling traffic, quite certain that the Zaporozhets was well below Slava's detection threshold. The traffic was dense, and Sergey worried a few times that he would lose his quarry. Once they merged onto the Sadovoe Koltso, the following became easier. Sergey headed south-east, toward Kolomenskoe.
The park was closed, but Slava easily scaled the iron fence.
Sergey parked his car well away from Slava's, and followed over the fence. He followed the winding paths, stumbling in the dark and cursing under his breath, but never losing the sight of Slava's flashlight up ahead, between the trees.
The moon came out, and it was light enough to see some of the commemorative plaques. Sergey surmised that they were going to Peter the Great's shack-a tiny wooden house, transported plank by plank to Kolomenskoe, where it could be properly immortalized. And now, it seemed, it was the scene of some shady dealings.
Slava's flashlight disappeared inside the Peter the Great's shack, and Sergey tiptoed closer. There were voices inside-at first, Slava spoke, and a strange voice answered. Sergey felt cold sweat trickling down his spine, and the weight of silence around him. A small breeze stirred the leaves over his head and he was embarrassingly grateful for this sign that he was still in the park, in the human world, for the voice he had just heard certainly did not belong here.
He could not discern the words and was too spooked to look inside. He backed from the house silently, even more terrified to make a sound. He knew well what Slava was capable of, but the creature he conferred with seemed even more dangerous, unfathomable and otherworldly.
He made his escape and no longer followed Slava on his night expeditions. The change in his demeanor was noticed, and it was his turn to be questioned. He feigned personal preoccupations and even invented a knocked-up girlfriend who wouldn't get an abortion.
"All right,” Slava told him, his eyes still dark with unease. “Just don't let it make you sloppy."
Sergey swore that it wouldn't; he felt relieved at not being found out.
The end came when Slava called him on his cell. “I need you to do something for me,” he said. “Very hush-hush. There's a new hex in town, and I need you to find me a test subject. I don't care what or who it is, just get me a body. Just make sure it is alive."
Sergey drove through the streets of his neighborhood, to an open-air market where sloe-eyed Caucasian nationals sold roses and melons, tomatoes the size of a baby's head and bootlegged American thrillers. It was dusk, and the customers dispersed. Relations with the Caucasian gangs were strained as it was, so he decided to target one of the leaving customers. A middle-aged woman, her hands happily occupied by bulging plastic bags of southern produce, turned down a narrow side street, and Sergey followed. He pressed a gun against her ribs and persuaded her to follow him to the vehicle. He didn't worry about her being able to identify the Jeep-the subjects of Slava's experiments rarely got an opportunity to talk about their experiences afterward.
He called Slava back. “Got one,” he said.
"Meet me at the central entrance,” Slava said.
"I'll be there in half an hour."
He drove to Kolomenskoe, and parked next to the idling Merc. Slava waited inside, a cigarette smoldering in his narrow lips. “Good job,” he told Sergey once he presented the woman, mute with fear and tear-stained. “Come along-I want you to see this."
Sergey and his captive followed. The tourists and the relaxing citizens had cleared out of the park by then, and the paths crossed by long shadows were especially mysterious. Slava kept quiet, and Sergey grew uneasy.
"What's that new thing for?” Sergey asked.
"Turning people into birds,” Slava said. “Only it's not for us. It's a favor I'm doing."
"For those who gave all this magic to you?” Sergey asked.
Slava stopped and turned, his hands in the pockets of his maroon jacket. “Yes,” he said. He took one hand out of the pocket and showed Sergey a blue glass sphere. “And this one is for you."
Several goons with tape and pliers stepped from behind the trees crowding the dark path.
Sergey struggled in their hands. “What did I do?” he asked Slava.
"I hate spies."
"I'm not a spy,” Sergey said. “Why do you say that?"
"I never told you the central gates of what,” Slava answered. “Stupid bitch."