Deathless

The first came when Marya was only six, and her sister Olga was tall as she was fair, her golden hair clapped back like a hay-roll in autumn. It was a silvery damp day, and long, thin clouds rolled up onto their roof like neat cigarettes.

Finally, Koschei made her stand, and took up a long birch branch. Marya marveled at the catch in his breath as he brought it down against her skin, first gently, then harder, then stopping to rub her down with oil and whipping her again. At first she shrank away, but by his last blow, Marya Morevna found herself arching her back to meet the branch, as though the forest itself were commanding her bod

«Drink, Marousha,» he clucked gently, like a mother, and put a glass to her lips. «Your lungs want vodka.»

He simply murmured to her, stroked her hair, called her volchitsa, medvezhka, koshechka. Wolfling, she-bear, wild little kitten.

But oh, Marya, Marousha, I do pore over my treasures! And some of them are glistening sturgeon eggs like piles of onyxes, and some of them are vials of vodka glittering like diamonds, and some of them are beets heavy and red as garnets, and some of them are beautiful girls from Petrograd, sitting in my house, silent as gold, because I asked them to be silent, which is the sweetest silence of all. And in the dark, I do pore over my riches, my impossible bounty.

There is no better teacher of rough necessity than bad luck, and you will have great use of me, I promise.

Likho Never Sleeps

Perhaps the republic of husbands was a strange and frightening place full of not only birds, but bats too, and lizards, and bears, and worms, and other beasts waiting to fall out of a tree and into a wedding ring.

And so Anna went dutifully to the estates of Lieutenant Zhulan, and wrote properly worded letters home to her sisters, in which her verbs were distributed fairly among the nouns, and her datives asked for no more than they required.