Chapter 29
Chapter twenty-nine
Jutrzenka
“Is that Chors?” Jaga asks when we go low enough to see the long, silvery form of my son floating on the water far away from the shore, a few seagulls flanking him. He’s naked, his skin glittering in the light, and he seems to be asleep.
“Yes,” I sigh. “He shouldn’t be out here alone like this.”
I turn toward him, but before we get close enough to speak, Chors disappears under water with a gentle splash. I stop and pivot to Jaga, and we hover five feet over the sea, the tips of the biggest waves almost grazing the soles of our shoes.
“What’s going on with him?” she asks, her joy giving way to worry.
I shake my head, frustrated. “Tomorrow is a new moon, but that’s not the only reason. It’s something to do with Jutrzenka. Whatever it is, it’s serious. I can’t believe he’s never told me.”
“Do they have history together?” Jaga asks after a moment, and her voice grows carefully neutral, her face almost bored. I resist the urge to listen in on her thoughts and feelings to get under her obvious pretense.
“Not that I know of, but I was away for a few centuries. The worst thing that happened to Chors, Dadzbog’s curse, happened then.
He tried to keep it a secret after I came back, but it was impossible to hide since he died every new moon.
If anything happened with Jutrzenka, it must have been when I was chained in Wyraj. ”
Jaga pulls me toward the shore, and we race with the waves, scattering seagulls. They float sedately, carried by the rhythms of the sea, but jump into flight with outraged squawks at our approach. Jaga chuckles darkly, pulling me faster and faster, right at the face of the cliff.
“You don’t have enough control to pull this off,” I say through gritted teeth, not stopping her, even though my bones already hurt at the prospect of smashing into the wall. “Slow down! We’ll crash!”
“No, we won’t.”
She pulls us sharply up at the last moment, and we shoot higher, our bodies inches away from the face of the cliff. She whoops again, cackling with glee, and I join her, more in relief than in joy.
When we reach the top of the cliff, Jaga jumps a few times, hovering in the air for a second, then two, then flies circles around me, twisting and turning like a rusalka in water. I watch her with an indulgent smile, enchanted.
She was so old just now, and now she’s young again.
When she lands in front of me, her eyes are bright and bold, her mouth flat.
“And what’s your history with her?” she asks, neither bashful nor combative. It’s as neutral a question as she can make it, and I still want to laugh from triumph, because she asked it at all.
“She saved me,” I reply, just as blandly. “From the chains. She was the one who set me free.”
Jaga’s lips part on a soft sigh, and she frowns. This is not what she expected to hear, and I grit my teeth and pull her down to sit in the grass. She watches me but doesn’t hurry me along, and I’m grateful.
“This is humiliating,” I say after a while.
“It was every time I told it in the past. Well, there’s nothing for it.
You see, when Perun chained me to the roots of the Great Oak, he made a sort of burrow for me.
There was a narrow hole in the ground, just big enough for everyone who wanted to look in and see me suffer. ”
Or pour hot oil or piss on me. I don’t say it.
“I was imprisoned in a sort of chamber made of packed earth, the roots I was chained to sturdy and black. There was just enough space for one person to join me, and Perun often did. But not only him.”
Jaga leans her chin on her fist, sitting cross-legged in front of me. I want to look away in shame, but she watches me with such keen interest, I decide to make the most of it. It will be shameful whether I look into her eyes or not.
“I was weak. So weak, Jaga. You have no idea. He came often to make me bleed. Mokosz came, too, from time to time, ripping off my clothes and taunting me. I was their toy. My magic was constantly sucked out by his tree, and the humiliation of that must have been the greatest of all: knowing I had no hopes of ever regaining my power, because he took it all for himself. He gorged himself on it, and then used it to flail me or rip out my tongue and gouge out my eyes. I healed so very slowly. It hurt.”
She swallows audibly, the skin around her eyes tightening with tension even as she struggles to keep her face neutral. I laugh, bitter and cold with self-loathing.
“Do you pity me yet?”
“Maybe a little. Go on.”
“Jutrzenka visited me very rarely at first. Usually, she just looked in through the hole above, letting in a few rays of morning light that warmed my skin. I ignored her at the start. The first two hundred years… I was so very proud, Jaga. So certain I could do it somehow. I struggled against the chains, I fought the tree, I desperately tried to hoard my magic and not let it be stolen. Two hundred years. That was a long time, I think, before I gave up and accepted my fate.”
“Very long,” she murmurs, her face a mask of neutrality even though there’s a tiny catch in her voice.
I give her a wry smile, pulling at my goatee before I realize what I’m doing and clench my hand into a fist.
“She liked to watch me cry. I did a lot after I broke down. It just… The sheer thought of spending an eternity like that, with no hope of being free, with no power… I’m not proud of myself, but I couldn’t handle it. I still… Ah.
“So yes, I was very much broken, and wept a lot. Jutrzenka watched. Then one day, I looked up and saw her crouching by my hole, and I thought to myself—well, what if I can do something? Maybe I will never be free, maybe I’ll be shackled for all of eternity, but who says I can’t look for moments of entertainment among the misery?
I spoke to her. She ran away the first time, and came back three days later. She brought me an apple.”
I smile grimly, because I still remember the taste of that apple she fed me centuries ago. It was the first thing I had in my mouth after over two hundred years.
“We started talking. Jutrzenka, well, she had no reason to trust or even like me. We stole her once, me and Chors. It was in the old days, before Perun started tinkering with mortal beliefs. One day, when she came out to open the gates of dawn and see off Dadzbog, we grabbed her and took her to Nawie. It was nothing more than a joke, but Perun and Dadzbog were very offended. Oh, and Mokosz—because we chose another woman to capture. She was so angry.”
I snicker as I remember it, Mokosz jumping up and down in place while telling me off because I dared to take a woman who was not her. We were done at that point, my infatuation well and truly over, and I simply found her hilarious.
“They attacked us with enormous forces, and we fought. Nyja’s nawkas died in droves. We gave Jutrzenka back after a week, because a prank wasn’t worth all that bloodshed. That’s when we called the mountain Mogila. Its slopes drank so much blood back then.”
“How come she ended up setting you free?” Jaga asks, leaning closer. Her eyes are rapt with curiosity, and I think she forgot to keep her expression in check.
“I made her love me,” I say with a disgusted curl of my lip.
“It wasn’t hard. She kept coming back, and I told her stories and asked her for small favors.
A sip of water to wet my lips. A cloth to wipe my forehead.
There came a point when she would spend hours curled up by my side, talking or listening. ”
Jaga’s eyes grow distant and cool, but there is no loathing on her face. I shake my head.
“I never promised her anything. It wasn’t like that.
I didn’t even honestly believe she was brave enough to act against Dadzbog, who was a stern father to her.
I think while I was quietly plotting to pull her to my side, she was scheming to make me fall in love.
She confessed to me one time that I intrigued her ever since I kidnapped her.
It was her first time outside Wyraj, you know.
She didn’t know many men since her father kept her on a tight leash. ”
“And you never promised her eternal love in exchange for setting you free?” Jaga asks with mocking disbelief.
I see. She must see parallels between my seduction of Jutrzenka and the way I manipulated Jaga, but I was way smarter with the goddess of dawn. Because I didn’t care for her like I care for my poppy girl.
I look pointedly at the pendant hanging between her breasts to remind her I can’t lie.
“Never. But not because it was honorable—I would lie and promise her the throne of Nawie if she freed me at that point. No, I sensed deeply that once Jutrzenka got my love or the promise of it, she would be content keeping me chained in that hole forever. So I subtly led her on, dangling that love like a treat and never giving her enough to be satisfied. I manipulated her to do more and more for me, giving her only paltry rewards for her services.”
“Did you kiss or have sex?” Jaga asks, and her voice is so frosty, I can’t help but laugh.
“Oh, she tried. But no. She was too inexperienced to rape me like Mokosz, and when I refused, she scarcely knew what to do. No, I didn’t.
Again, not because I was honorable or good but simply because I couldn’t think of her that way.
There were many days when she behaved like a little girl from sunrise till sunset, and it spoiled any charms she might have had. ”
Jaga’s mouth works and she looks away, frowning. She tears out clumps of grass, seemingly angry, and I make an inquiring sound. She clears her throat without looking up.
“So Mokosz… Did that to you.”
“Oh.” I huff with bitter amusement, shaking my head. “It’s been a long time ago. And honestly, I enjoyed it most of the time. It broke the tedium and also played into my proclivities that she knew well. It was rape, because I couldn’t get away, but I paid her back as Woland after.”
“And yet, when I touched you as her, you hated it,” Jaga says, watching me with scrutiny that’s impossible to escape.
“Because you are the only woman I want to touch me.”
“Only because of that?”
“Y… Fuck. No. Can we move on?”
She nods with reluctance, sighing as her frown deepens.
For a moment, she stares at me with vicious intensity, like she wants to penetrate every layer of me right into my deepest truth.
I return her gaze with a sad smile. She’s the first person I told about my ordeal in so much detail, including even Chors. What else does she want?
“What happened after she set you free?”
“Nothing. I went back to Nawie and did my best to rebuild my strength. Perun was livid after he found me gone, but I don’t think he ever found out it was because of her.
She crossed over Struzina a few weeks later, seeking me.
I told her I was grateful and would be her friend, but could love her only as a sister.
Dadzbog came soon after and took her back.
She tried to see me again a few times, and they always came after her, either Dadzbog or Swarog. Finally, she gave up.”
Jaga slowly shakes her head. “And you invited her here as your ally. Do you… trust her? Weles, a woman scorned is a dangerous creature. I should know.”
I can’t hold back a smile. “Yes, you do. But Jaga, Jutrzenka is not you. She is stuck in that strange place of being an innocent girl who is as old as creation. The only time she rebelled was when she freed me. This is her chance to gain freedom from the chains she has been stuck in since she was born, and I honestly believe this will overcome any grudges she has against me.”
Jaga doesn’t look convinced, and she shakes her head. Her eyes flash with loathing. “Or you’ll end up kissing her to appease her, just like you did Mokosz.”
“I kissed Mokosz to hurt you,” I admit with a shrug. “Which I think you know. Everything I said after that kiss was a lie meant to hurt you, too. When I said I didn’t love you, it was a lie. Because I did. I do now. I love you.”
Jaga curses under her breath and gets up, wobbling a little. A fiery doorway leading to the torture chamber appears in front of her, and she faces it with an angry scowl. Before stepping through, she looks over her shoulder, pinning me with her glare.
“Never say that again. I will leave if you do.”
She steps through before I have time to stop her.