21. Cup
Chors slowly makes his way across the starry sky. I sit outside, a shawl wrapped around my shoulders, as I make more pouches in the light of a lone, flickering candle. Alina’s in my bed, sleeping while her husband lies on the table, unconscious. A sturdy chain is wrapped around his leg. It goes out through my only window and connects to a thick birch tree outside.
My hands shake when I measure out herbs and tie the little pouches with string. I have to blink again and again, because my vision grows blurry from exhaustion. My eyes barely work, so when I see black, oily shadows racing up my path, I think it’s just a trick of my weary mind.
Until they wrap around my wrists and force them away from the pouch I’m making, pinning my arms to my sides.
I would scream if I were better rested, but my only response to this new licho is an uneven heartbeat drumming sickly against my ribcage. I know who this is and I am helpless against him. And so I let his shadow restrain me, waiting for him to come out.
A cloud obscures the moon. Woland peels away from the black mass of my hedge, tall and naked as always, his antlers towering high.
“Don’t waste your breath,” I whisper hoarsely. “I’m not letting you win.”
He snorts, coming closer with even, measured steps. I’m dizzy like in a trance, so I take him in without censure, looking at his black hooves, the powerful muscles playing under his gray skin, his cock swinging rhythmically with each step.
He is so unabashed about his nakedness, and for once, it doesn’t embarrass me. I am too tired to care.
“I admit I’m offended,” he says, his voice mild as he stands right in front of me, too close for comfort.
I’m sitting on a low stool, and my face is almost level with his crotch. I don’t have the energy to get ashamed or aroused, so I merely lean my head back against the wall of my cottage, not even trying to look at his face.
Woland huffs a low laugh and drops into a crouch in front of me. He’s still taller, but I see his face now. As the light of the candle slides over his features, I think he looks exasperated and a little fond.
I wonder if he’s really here or if I fell asleep. Maybe it’s a dream.
“Why are you offended?” I whisper, and the strain in my throat, the utter effort it takes me to speak, convinces me it’s not a dream. He’s here, and I’m too weak to move. I should be afraid but can’t muster even a flicker of emotion.
“Because you’d rather face a werewolf than be mine,” he says, his eyes glittering.
He doesn’t seem angry, though, merely amused. I blink, forcing my eyes to focus on his face. He’s beautiful when he’s calm like this, his golden eyes soft.
“Go away,” I say weakly, a spark of unease flaring up when I realize what I just thought.
He’s not beautiful. He’s a cruel beast and I hate him. He got Bogna killed. He threatened me with rape.
Woland raises his arm and snaps his fingers.
“I, too, can be stubborn.”
My treacherous eyes linger on the lines of his palm, his fingers graceful and strong, made longer by the claws. I stare with stupid appreciation until suddenly, something glimmers in his hold.
His hand wraps around a bejeweled silver goblet that appears out of thin air. He brings it to my lips.
I have enough strength to turn my head away so the rim of the cup presses to my cheek and not my mouth. Woland huffs with impatience.
“It’s just water. You haven’t drunk anything for hours.”
Ah, that explains why it’s so hard to speak and my head swims so badly. Somehow, in all the chaos around the werewolf’s attack, Swietko’s amputation, and my desperate drive to offer protection to the village, I forgot to sustain my body.
I wonder why Wiosna didn’t say anything, but then, she’s been quiet for hours. Which is good. I shouldn’t get used to relying on her. A whisperer should be self-sufficient, and I failed miserably at that. I know very well that if not for her instruction, I’d have botched Swietko’s surgery and treatment. He’d be dead because of my weakness.
And now, I’m painfully vulnerable because I didn’t take care of myself. Stupid, stupid.
“Let me go and I’ll get water from the well,” I say, my throat parched now that I’m aware of my thirst.
His shadows tighten around me, wrapping higher up until they press to my throat. They feel like a physical touch and yet not. There is something cool yet alive to their grip, something strong but fragile. In all their otherworldly wickedness, they feel somehow right. My muscles loosen, my chest expanding against the dark restraints.
They press into my breasts, and I sigh, relaxing. My eyelids drop. I just want to sleep.
“Don’t be an idiot,” Woland growls, his mild demeanor gone. “If I wanted to slip something in your drink, I’d put it in your cup just as you took a sip. Even then, I have no need for such a mortal subterfuge as poison. I can kill you with a look. This is just water. Drink up, poppy girl.”
I turn my head back to him, and the rim of the cup presses to my lower lip. I smell the water now, clear and cool. My tongue tingles with the need to gulp it down. And yet, I don’t trust him. Why should I?
Woland sighs in exasperation, and his breath skirts over my skin, warm and pleasant. It smells like firewood smoke in the evening air. Something cracks inside me, a shield giving way to longing. I breathe in deeply and part my lips, closing my eyes.
So be it.
“Fucking finally,” he mutters.
His clawed hand slithers onto my nape, gently tipping my head back. A liquid pours into my mouth, the clearest, sweetest water I’ve ever had. I drink greedily, not caring that his shadows slide over me in a caress, teasing my nipples. His tail wraps around my leg, hiking my dress up. This water tastes like nectar of the gods. It soothes my parched throat, pouring strength into my weary body while Woland’s intimate touch wakes me up, each pass of his shadows and tail chasing my numbness away.
Too soon, it’s over. The cup is taken from my lips, his hand gone from my nape, shadows slithering away. When I open my eyes, he stands on the path, watching me as his tail swings behind his legs.
His cock is hard, jutting away from his body. His shadows wrap around his face and I can’t discern his expression.
I smack my lips. My vision is suddenly clear, my mind sharp. Revulsion squeezes my gut, the realization of what I just did, how I let him touch me, crushing through the hum of wellbeing in my bones.
“Why?” I snap, shooting to my feet.
I don’t even wobble. Gods. That wasn’t normal water. He gave me something… Something healing. I don’t understand it.
“Because you’re delicious to play with,” he says with a dark laugh, turning on his hoof.
I blink. He’s gone, and I’m left standing alone in front of my cottage, livid and humiliated. I shouldn’t have let him in, shouldn’t have taken anything from his hand. I hate myself for being too weak to shove him away.
But there is still so much to do, and no one’s ever accomplished anything by loathing themselves. So I get down to work.
By the time the first rooster crows, I’ve put Woland firmly out of my mind. A pile of pouches sits on a sheet spread on the ground, all my herb and bone supplies put into those little linen bags. I wipe sweat off my brow and look at the sun rising beyond the woods in the east.
The clouds burst into flame of color, pink, red, and golden, the dome of the sky turning blue. Chors is gone, off to sleep in his father’s cavernous realm, Nawie. It’s Dzadzbog’s time to rule.
Birds praise his rise with sweet, lilting song, and I close my eyes, savoring the cool air, digging my bare toes into the dew-wet grass. I am bone-tired in my mind, but strong and rested in my body. Whatever the devil gave me, it’s still holding well.
I try to guess his reason for helping me out but abandon it pretty quickly. There are too many possibilities. Maybe he wants to watch me die a horrible, gruesome death, and it’s no fun if I get myself killed with negligence. Or maybe he just wanted to use my moment of weakness to humiliate me—make me give in.
But with Woland, there seems to be no rhyme or logic. He might have simply done it for the reason he told me. To play.
A grunt of pain comes from my cottage. I sigh and get up to tend to my patient. But even though my head is heavy from the lack of sleep, I still manage to smile to myself. I shall enjoy tending Swietko’s wounds, because I know he will hate every minute of it.
I end up disappointed as the day passes in a blur of mental exhaustion. Swietko is unconscious most of the time, my potent herbal brews and vodka keeping him under until the worst of the pain is over. When he is lucid, he just moans in pain, and there’s no enjoyment in that.
I still can’t say for certain he won’t develop an infection, but his chances look astoundingly good.
Alina stays by his side, only leaving to fetch bread and cheese, which she shares with me. I bring my own food and we are about to have a veritable feast. Alina chatters about some fresh gossip, her voice carefree. She’s convinced the worst has passed and her husband will live.
Now that last night’s ordeal is over, she brims with positive energy and hope. It’s strange to watch her smile while her husband lies on my table, dirty with blood and mutilated, his face twisting in pain through fretful sleep. I feel like most wives in this situation would despair, but not Alina.
As we lay out our food on a small table outside, she jokes his most important parts are still attached to him and hopefully functional. I choke on a sip of nettle brew. That woman really wants children badly.
When we eat and I try to refuse her bread, she pushes it in my hand.
“Please, Jaga. It’s the least I can do,” she says, her eyes bright with joy. “Later, when I have time, I’ll bring you furs. We have so many. Swietko was such a good hunter.”
She looks away with a small smile, and I nod without commenting on her word choice—was. But then, she’s right. He won’t hunt again with one arm missing. I wonder if that’s what she is so happy about. Maybe she hated it when he disappeared into the woods for long hours every day.
I know better than to ask.
In the afternoon, I leave Alina to mind her sleeping husband and go to see Darobor. He sits with Waclaw by the barn at the back of his house. They drink weak, diluted mead in the shade of a pear tree, tall sunflowers swaying in the gentle breeze nearby.
It would look so peaceful but for their haggard faces and bloodshot eyes. There is a circle of small stones on the weather-worn wooden table between them. One big, jagged rock is in the middle while smaller ones surround it.
Looks like I walked in on a strategy meeting.
“Is that the werewolf?” I ask, pointing at the rock in the middle. “Because the resemblance is uncanny. It’s even got two pointy ears.”
Waclaw blinks at me like he doesn’t understand what I’m saying while Darobor frowns.
“This isn’t a matter for jokes,” he admonishes me, echoed by a quiet harrumph carrying on the wind. Wiosna. She’s back.
I do my best to grow serious, but truth is, I am lightheaded and drunk on exhaustion. It’s the oddest feeling and an impossible contradiction. My mind practically shuts down from not sleeping a wink in over two days, while my body feels strong and vital.
Maybe Woland’s goal is to drive me insane. Because if he got to know me even a bit, he knows I’ll put off sleep for as long as I can. Especially now that I’m needed. Without my body forcing me to rest, I’ll power through until my mind snaps.
“You’re right. I apologize,” I tell the men, showing them the supply of pouches I made. “I thought you might have a use for these. They seemed to work well enough last night.”
And they did. At no point did the werewolf try to get into any of the houses by the road, even though there were people watching everything through open doors. Granted, the beast might have been too busy with the men trying to attack it, but I don’t think it could cross over the protective lines created by my pouches.
That’s why I made so many more. Not to sell them but to aid Darobor in his strategizing.
“They only work if you bury them within the boundaries of a lot, and there has to be a house. A house where people live,” I explain. “So it’s not like you can quickly bury them on the road and cut off its way, but… After seeing where you faced the werewolf yesterday, I thought you might have a use for more of my pouches. I’ll leave distributing them to your judgment.”
Waclaw gives me a faint smile and a nod. He doesn’t speak much, but in that gesture, he conveys a lot. It seems I have a friend in him, and why shouldn’t I? After all, I helped his family when Czeslawa refused.
Darobor doesn’t smile when he looks up. Instead, his face is stern, thick brows furrowed. I bristle, bracing for him to tell me he has no use for my whispering, or that he doesn’t trust me after last night, or that I should leave and never come back, or…
“Promise me you’ll stay in your cottage tonight,” he says, standing up. “You shouldn’t have been out last night. It was dangerous, and I can’t have you running around again. Stay home.”
I open and close my mouth, completely taken aback.
“What? Why?” I finally manage to say.
Darobor gives me an incredulous look, his blue eyes flashing with irritation. “What do you mean why? So you don’t get torn to shreds! For Perun’s sake, Jaga. What even got into your head to go out last night?”
“I… I don’t…”
Gods, this is mortifying. Suddenly, I’m six years old again and Mother tells me off for trying to pet a rabid fox that came into the village one day. The poor beast was foaming at the mouth and growling, too sick to be scared of humans. All the children ran from it while I thought it looked so sad and forlorn as it limped down the road. Tolimir’s father shot it with an arrow as soon as my mother snatched me away. I still remember the scolding I got.
That very same day, Wiosna praised me for being unafraid of danger.
“A whisperer must be fearless,” she said. “You will face far worse. Though do keep away from rabid animals. My rabies treatment only works half the time.”
Wiosna was bold like that, taking me into the woods at night as soon as I became her apprentice, bringing me to assist with labors and minor surgeries when I turned seven.
But now, I remember she told me to run last night. Even Wiosna was scared of the werewolf. And I was, too, except…
Except, I’m used to fear. It’s so familiar, I sometimes forget to act on it.
And it’s easy, too. Being out in the open, facing danger with a raised chin and bared teeth is second nature, because it’s the only way I know. I never felt like I deserved to be protected. The very village where I spent my whole life was always hostile, the people suspicious, no one coming to my defense when other kids bullied me.
And who was there to protect me? My mother didn’t, too afraid of being cast out, just as I am now. Wiosna looked sad and angry when I told her about kids throwing stones or calling me names, but she never did anything, either.
She told me to bide my time and wait, because nothing could be done. Sometimes, she promised that when I became the whisperer after her, as she intended, my fate would turn around and those who persecuted me would be forced to bow and kiss my shoes.
In the meantime, I was expected to endure it.
So is it really surprising that Darobor’s honest worry about my safety is shocking to me? I suppose it’s such a normal thing, too. He’s a father of five, two girls and three boys, and it must come naturally to him—the worrying, the protectiveness.
“Thank you,” I say, gathering my wits. “I… Yes, I will stay home tonight. I have to watch over Swietko, anyway.”
“Yes, yes,” he nods, tugging on his mustache. “How is he?”
“Better. Resting. Alina is with him now, but I really should go back.”
Waclaw stands up, too, a respectful goodbye, and I nod at them both. I’m about to walk away when something occurs to me.
“Darobor,” I address him directly, knowing he is the one in charge. “Will you please send for me if someone gets hurt?”
He frowns, his head tilting as if I said something strange. When he speaks, he sounds surprised I even asked. “Of course. You’ll be the first one we get.”
I nod in thanks, biting back a smile. The lightness fizzing in my head makes me feel giddy at this small triumph. Because not only will I be called to treat the wounded like a real whisperer—they’ll call for me first. Hopefully, I will get to see Czeslawa’s face when she realizes.
My fate is on the brink of changing for the better, I just know. And the only thing that stands between me and a better future is the werewolf.
And Woland, of course, but I’ll worry about him later.