13. Gone
The breath I held while expecting the pleasure to crest whooshes out of me. I blink hard, my body hovering between the states of tension and bliss, so uncomfortable, I want to crawl out of my skin. It’s sticky and agonizing.
Time stretches into a long moment of confusion and then snaps back, reality rushing to me. A woman screams in pleasure, and I have a ridiculous notion that my orgasm was ripped out of my hands and given to her. I blink again. With every second, the bliss trickles out of me, replaced by howling disappointment.
“You… you…” I can’t form words. Fury and disbelief choke me.
Woland growls in frustration and sits back, the cage of his antlers lifting from my hips. He closes his eyes and throws his head back, facing the sky as he breathes hard, his erection pulsing.
I shake my head, my stomach squirming with discomfort. Finally, a throaty moan coming from nearby jolts me out of my disappointed daze. I scramble to my feet, covering myself with my dress. Gods. What did I do?
“This could be so fucking easy, Jaga,” he says, his eyes still closed.
He sits on his heels in the grass, practically kneeling at my feet. I have a gnawing urge to kick him in the face but don’t dare come closer.
I can’t trust myself around him. I just proved it for everyone to see.
Why did I let him touch me? What’s wrong with me?
The bulk of the fury I feel is at myself, not even at him. I knew what he was from the moment I saw him. The devil is deceptive, evil, and he speaks no truth. Only fools trust his wicked whispers. And so, this is what I am.
A damned fool.
Ida’s throaty voice splits the night air and my eyes drift to her. All my desire is gone, wiped out by the potent fury, so I watch with mild interest as one man licks the mess between her legs, honey and Janek’s cum mixed together, and another fucks her mouth. Janek sits by, staring at it with hooded eyes.
When the boy fucking Ida’s mouth comes, Janek pushes him away and takes his place. He drops a kiss on Ida’s mouth and then shoves his cock down her throat, gagging her. The man eating her pussy starts to fuck her. Her body is jolted in a violent rhythm, taken from both ends.
It’s another thing that never happened at Kupala before. Normally, they always take turns, and I’ve never seen two men converging on a woman before. But Ida seems happy if the moans she releases between thrusts are any indication. Good for her.
Further down the meadow, other couples and groups fuck, tangled in heaps of naked bodies.
Something moves in the dark on the very edge of the firelight, an unsteady shape of a man. I squint, finally making out Bogna’s husband. He has a flask in his hand, drinking deeply as he watches the orgy. Bogna is a few steps behind him, looking lost and uncertain. Her eyes flick to me and I’m startled by the plea I see in them.
I look at Przemyslaw again. Yes, he’s very drunk. Too drunk for my herbs to work. And, judging by his preoccupation with the orgy, his libido is back, as well. The herbs normally suppress it, just like they do his violent temper.
He drank enough alcohol for all the effects to wear off. He’s completely himself now, or maybe worse. After all, Woland’s magic wipes out shame. Who knows how violent Przemyslaw is without it.
And I’m trapped in the circle. I can’t help my friend.
Bogna’s best bet is to run and hide somewhere he won’t find her until he sobers up. I raise my hand to beckon her closer to tell her that, but she’s not looking at me. She watches her husband, and his bloodshot eyes are on her.
“This should be interesting,” Woland says in a low, vicious voice right behind me.
A chill runs down my spine, and it’s like my body knows before my mind catches up. I take a step closer to the invisible barrier and feel it with my hands. It’s still there, as unyielding and solid as ever.
“Let me out,” I growl, not looking at him.
My eyes are glued to the swaying, dark silhouette of Przemyslaw. He looks like he’ll fall over any moment, but I know it’s deceptive. Right now, he’s at his most dangerous.
“Let’s establish the right context for everything that will play out here,” Woland says softly, coming closer.
He snakes his arm around my collarbones, pressing me to him. The towering mass of him behind my back makes me nauseous.
There he is, the cruel, powerful devil from the tales. Yet only minutes ago, he was between my legs while I shamelessly let him touch me. And now I’ll pay.
Because I never should have trusted him. I never should have forgotten what he is. A creature so dark and powerful, his very presence poisons the land.
When I try to tear free, he holds me back without any effort at all.
“Remember when I said I’d kill everyone you love?”
His voice is mild but it chills me to the bone. There is glee in there, and quiet satisfaction, and finally, I know. This is what he’s like. Every kind word and gesture, every crumb of respect I so desperately wanted to believe, is a lie. The devil reveals his true face, and it’s hideous.
I stop moving, my body breaking out in a cold sweat. Przemyslaw takes a wobbly step toward Bogna, and she shivers but doesn’t move. She’s frozen, a baby lamb watching the prowling fox. I open my mouth to scream, hoping it will jolt her into action, but Woland’s hand presses to my lips, muffling the sound.
I fight his hold. I bite, I kick, I scream into his palm, but it’s no use. He just holds me closer, his strength overwhelming. I can’t compete.
Bogna raises her hands in a placating motion. “Honey, my love, why don’t we go home and…”
“RUN!”I scream through Woland’s hand, but she doesn’t hear me. “Run away!”
“Shut up,” Przemyslaw slurs, pointing a shaky finger at her. “You always talk and talk and talk. Shut up, you bitch!”
“You’ll miss the show if you keep thrashing like this,” Woland says in a low, amused voice.
Like it’s all a performance. A fucking joke, and not my friend’s life on the line. Blinding hate sears my mind and I vow then and there to destroy him. No matter the cost. If I die while taking him down with me, I’ll be glad.
But before I get my revenge, I have to save Bogna. As long as she lives, there’s time. There’s still a chance.
I elbow Woland in the gut, putting the force of my fury into the blow. But it’s useless. His stomach feels like it’s made of stone. A sharp pain shoots up from my elbow while he doesn’t even flinch.
“Careful, you’ll hurt yourself,” is all he says, echoes of laughter in his voice.
I stop moving and pant in fury, watching as Przemyslaw rages, screaming at Bogna. He calls her a bitch, a whore, a rat, and a pig. Instead of running, she cowers, growing smaller and smaller with his every violent word.
But not all is lost. I take a deep, settling breath through my nose and stand still, letting Woland think I’ve surrendered. He rumbles in satisfaction, his chest vibrating at the back of my head. I swallow, watching Przemyslaw warily.
I know from what Bogna told me about his rages he’s almost there. He’ll start hitting her soon.
Closer to the fire, some couples stop fucking. They sit in the grass and watch the scene unfold, talking in hushed voices. Hope flickers in my chest, because surely, one of them will react. One of the young men will stand up and deal with Przemyslaw.
But then, I notice their expressions. Some snicker, some roll their eyes, and nobody looks concerned. I watch them in disbelief until it turns into a stone in my chest, the weight dragging me down.
No help from them. They’ve seen men raging at their wives in public before. They’ve learned it’s normal.
I sag against Woland, fighting the helplessness that threatens to engulf me. There must be something I can do. There must.
A terrified sob shakes Bogna’s frame, and Przemyslaw stops shouting, his face changing into a focused mask of hate. He takes a steady step toward her, then another. My heart stops and then launches into a terrified gallop.
It’s now or never.
I bite Woland’s palm with all my might. He curses and shakes his hand free.
“RUN!” I scream.
Przemyslaw and Bogna look at me. For a moment, we’re all suspended in an odd triangle, with me and Woland at one point and each of them at the other two. The moment stretches, and then Bogna sobs in relief and runs.
She runs toward me.
I want to tell her to turn back because she’ll be trapped in the circle. I want to scream she should run away somewhere Przemyslaw won’t find her, but Woland’s hand is over my mouth again, his chest shaking with laughter.
“This is even better,” he hisses a second before Bogna runs into me.
But no. She doesn’t. By all means, she should run right into us both, but as soon as she reaches the invisible boundary of the circle, she slams into it and bounces back, landing in the grass. Woland lets go of my mouth just in time for my anguished scream to tear free.
And yet, even as I scream out my helplessness and terror, I still hear his voice.
“You told me to do my worst, so watch.”
And then, Przemyslaw drags Bogna up by the hair, his face turned demonic with mindless rage. She screams from pain, and he throws her to the ground. Before she even moves, he’s on her, straddling her hips.
The naked youths freeze, their jaws hanging open. None of them expected the shouting match to turn violent. I’m the only one who knows what will happen now, and I’m helpless to stop it.
“No,” I whisper when a black, jagged stone flashes in Przemyslaw’s fist, bloody in the firelight.
“Yes,” Woland replies right as Przemyslaw’s hand falls.
It lands on Bogna’s head with a wet crunch. She blinks, as if dazed, and breathes out. He tears the stone out of her head and drops it again with a shout of pure rage.
I can’t breathe. My breath is frozen, my body locked, and I see with unnatural sharpness the blood and skin in Bogna’s wound mixing with pieces of shattered bone from her skull. Her eyes are open and glassy, staring up at the sky, until the stone falls again, smashing in her forehead.
I am limp and still in Woland’s hold, my mouth wide open in a soundless scream, my eyes stuck to the scene of my only friend’s ugly death. The maidens weep and the boys shout, all the naked bodies tangled in a chaos of terror and shock.
Bogna’s face turns into a massacred pulp.
That’s when the music dies. Przemyslaw freezes with his bloody fist held high over his head. The screams and sobbing stop, and for one blessed moment, the world plunges into silence.
It swells bigger and bigger, ready to burst, until finally, it does. Przemyslaw throws his head back and releases an anguished, horrible howl of grief. All around me, the world erupts into a cacophony of screams. Woland laughs quietly, right in my ear, and lets me go. I land on my hands and knees in the grass, retching.
Bogna’s body is right there, just outside the circle. All through her death, she was just two steps away from me, and yet, I couldn’t reach her. I was helpless to stop it.
I don’t know how long it takes for the chaos to be wrangled back into a semblance of order. I take everything in with a sort of numb detachment, the hole of grief and guilt in my chest so big, it swallows my heart and breath. I can’t move or speak.
All I do is stare at the red mess of Bogna’s face, the gore burning into my mind. It makes no difference whether my eyes are open or closed. I see her all the same.
Przemyslaw is tied up with ropes, but all he does is weep like a child. His bloody hands are tied together in front of his body, and he keeps them raised to his face, his tears and snot mixing with his wife’s blood. His suffering seems grotesque and out of place, but it’s so human.
After all, he’s not really the villain here. Like everyone else, he was under the devil’s spell. I don’t feel sorry for him, though. He’s evil all the same, yet his evil is so small and mundane compared to Woland’s.
Przemyslaw weeps seeing the consequences of his actions.
Woland laughed.
When Bogna is covered with a sheet, I still see her as she is underneath. I see the blood congealing, the shards of bone like white pebbles in a pool of red. Then I blink, heavy and exhausted, and she’s gone, her body carried away. And yet, her butchered face is still right there as I blink again, the image seared onto my eyelids.
She’s taken away to be prepared for her funeral in the morning, and Przemyslaw is dragged away, too, his body limp from grief. People leave the meadow one by one, men removing the benches, women cleaning up cups and food.
Soon, all that’s left from the Kupala celebrations are the dying fires, sizzling and sputtering as cold dew covers the grass.
When the first ray of the morning sun falls on the river, making it glitter gold like Woland’s eyes, I realize the circle is empty, the holy fires extinguished, gray smoke trailing over their charred remains.
The gods are gone. It’s over.