Chapter 30
Chapter thirty
Guilt
That is the last I see of her for long weeks. Jaga avoids me openly, spending long hours working on the cure or visiting with Rada. My days are full, as well. I waste time in meetings with my allies as we try to come up with strategies to best Perun—without much success.
We fend off attacks, but none as powerful as the first. Perun sends bieses aplenty, though only a few dragons after I depleted their numbers in Slawa. The rarog makes an appearance, but not Swarog.
It feels like defeat, and it’s restless and maddening. Jutrzenka insinuates herself into situations that bring us close, either sitting next to me during war council or offering to help me with various tasks.
I try to make Jaga jealous a few times, informing her of Jutrzenka’s behavior, but she doesn’t react.
After that initial promising growth, our bond stagnates.
Rarely do I feel Jaga’s emotions coming through, and they are muted and vague.
But it’s no wonder. She stopped speaking to me and sending me magic, and the bond has atrophied from disuse.
I miss her in every sense. I miss her thoughts, her laughter, and most of all, I miss her presence.
She doesn’t come to meetings even though both me and Strzybog take great pains to invite her every time.
She claims she’ll join us when she has something significant to say.
The god of wind is bored and prone to antics, so when she refuses to come out for the dozenth time, he spends a day teasing Jaga through the locked door of her torture chamber.
She invites him in, finally losing her patience. Strzybog lasts exactly a minute before he shoots out of there, pressing a shaking hand to his mouth, his eyes watering from the stench. He stops bothering her.
Chors refuses to speak to me about Jutrzenka. I think this is the most frustrating development, even including everything Jaga has put me through. I always thought I knew everything about him, but it turns out, the closest person I’ve ever loved keeps secrets from me now.
When a month passes, and we still have no valid strategy, I lose the last dregs of hope. I could only keep my drive burning for so long, but with no new victories to celebrate, and no Jaga to spur me on, I fall into a morose stupor that no one can pull me out of.
My allies sense the change in me, and they lose their enthusiasm.
Everything is falling apart, and only a month after I’ve formed this ill-advised alliance.
The trees growing on the flat parts of Nawie turn beautiful shades of gold, red, and orange, and a cold wind blows from the sea.
Even the seasons change, but we’re stuck in a horrid, inescapable rut.
That’s when I realize Jaga no longer comes to my throne room, not even to sleep, and somehow, that little detail on top of everything else threatens to destroy me. Because where does she sleep? With whom? Is Chors so secretive because he’s got her now? Did Rod seduce her? Did Strzybog?
I pester her for hours with increasingly desperate thought messages, begging her to come out and talk to me, apologizing over and over again, promising her everything her honesty curse allows me to promise. Jaga must sense my desperation and madness, because she relents.
“What do you want?”
“Where do you sleep? Please, I need to know.”
I sense her annoyance since she pushes it toward me with incredible force. “In Rada’s cottage.”
“Thank you. I’ll leave you alone since you so badly want to avoid me,” I vow, doing my best to sound light even though I’m despondent and angry. “Cowardly entrail girl.”
“Wait. Since you’re here—why is the rot so damn hard to cure? It’s your invention, isn’t it?”
“It is. I made it to be incurable.”
There is a brief silence, and then an image pops in my head, a bleeding, coughing Igor with pus running out of his eyes and ears, Jaga’s hand holding a fistful of his hair to lift his face.
“Are you telling me I spent the last month with these useless maggots for nothing?! You told me I could find a cure! You never said it was impossible!”
I can’t help the snort of laughter that bursts out of me. I’ve missed her so much, and her fury—the most.
“Because it is possible. Every spell can be broken, one way or another. Every illness can be cured with time and resources. Or so I’ve always believed.”
She is silent, and I sigh, already regretting this brief interaction, because it makes me miss her all the more. A few minutes pass, and Jaga speaks again, sounding reluctant and grumpy.
“What’s wrong with everyone? Nyja’s been here. She screamed at me for quite a long time. Said it’s all my fault that your alliance is in shambles.”
I smile ruefully, thinking about my fearsome partner, who still burns as bright as ever. I love that she fights so hard. Maybe she’ll manage to keep Nawie going on her own once I’m gone.
“Not your fault. All mine.”
There is another long silence. I grab my dewberry wine, a perfect copy of Jaga’s, and swig it straight from the bottle. It’s laced with a few poisons that will addle my brain enough to stop me thinking for a few hours. I wish to be drunk.
I wish to sleep but I can’t if she’s not by my side.
“Have you given up? Are we going to lose?” Jaga asks, and there is no accusation in her thought-voice. She sounds resigned and heavy, exactly the way I feel.
“I don’t know. It’s hard to fight when we can’t figure out what to do.”
“Tell me the secret of going back in time. I know you know it.”
I sit up straight, putting the wine away with a thud. “What? Why now?”
“There’s something I have to do if we’re going to lose.”
My heart hammers, and I grip the edges of my seat, thinking frantically. My thoughts are fickle and dazed, evading my grasp. I’ve drunk enough wine to poison a bear, and my mind is muddied.
The only clear thought I have is born of habit and reinforcement, and not knowing what else to do, I repeat my past mistakes.
“Let me have your soul and I’ll teach you how to go into the past. Please.”
Jaga falls silent, and I drain the bottle, laughing and raving like a madman as I wreck my throne room.
I pull gems out of the walls and shatter them into dust, destroy furniture with relish, and finally set fire to the bedroom, which is long overdue.
Nothing cures my abject disappointment. When I’m sober enough to understand the pointlessness of my behavior, I set out looking for Jaga, ready to hammer out a trade she might be more willing to accept.
But she’s not in the torture chamber. I go to Rada, not too worried yet, and she receives me with wide eyes, a bit fearful, a bit compassionate.
“I haven’t seen her since yesterday,” she says in a soft, sweet voice, while little Dar jumps onto a pile of wood behind her, settling on top of it with his golden dragon paws in front of him like a cat.
“He’s a proper little beast,” I comment while my heart performs anxious somersaults in my chest. “I have a dragon serving in my army. Maybe you’d like to talk to him?”
She nods gratefully. “Oh, yes! I have all sorts of questions. Usually, I can keep up with him well enough, but sometimes…”
“Consider it done,” I interrupt. “Now excuse me. I must find Jaga.”
Have I fucked up? I wonder. Has my cowardly surrender finally driven her away? I shudder at the thought of her going to Perun now that she’s certain I’m done fighting. I send my shadows racing through Nawie to find her, already knowing she’s gone.
What if Mokosz gets her first and buries her somewhere again? Oh, fuck, I should have pretended better. No, she’s not here, and it’s all my fault like always, and I…
Poppies and lovage. I exhale, not yet certain, but hopeful. I send all my shadows that way, into a small village some souls have chosen for their dwelling. There is a row of cottages, a village green, and a wide river flowing nearby…
I realize with a jolt what this place is. As I stalked Jaga in the mortal world, I often came back frustrated and angry. My magic brimmed, my fury burned, and I spent sleepless nights thinking about her and the best ways to win her over.
All that energy wanted out, and since I usually create when I’m overwrought, I took it upon myself to build a new level in Nawie. It’s always expanding into new realms, and so I took a blank one and started building.
When I realized what I was doing, I’d already made a village, one eerily similar to Jaga’s. But how did she know? Did Nyja tell her? I didn’t realize she knew. Or maybe Wiosna has found this place and told her?
I let my shadows creep closer, and yes, there she is, my poppy girl wearing leather and high-heeled boots, her hair like a flame cascading down her back. She steps from foot to foot uncertainly, facing…
Oh. I see.
“I’m sorry for disturbing you,” Jaga says in a stiff, sharp voice that I know is caused by her uncertainty and fear. “I just wanted… I will go if you hate me.”
Bogna, Jaga’s friend whom I got killed, wraps her arms around Jaga, laughing with joy.
“You’re here! Oh, Jaga, how come? Did you die? What happened! Oh, I’m so happy to see you!”
Jaga returns her embrace with much hesitation, and they both cry, Bogna with half-translucent, ghostly tears that don’t truly hurt, and Jaga with her whole being.
“I got you killed!” she sobs, her body wracked with guilt and grief as she holds on to her friend. “You’re dead because of me, because I couldn’t help you, I couldn’t, and I’m sorry! So sorry!”
Bogna laughs without comprehension. Once upon a time, I told Jaga the truth. She is happy. So much happier than she was alive.
“But what are you talking about? Jaga, look! My babies are here! All my babies!”
She points at the doorway of her cottage, where three children aged three to five stand, dressed in pretty, clean clothes, their eyes bright. They sport dark and blond hair, and the youngest has lovely pudgy cheeks that Nyja would squeeze and kiss with love if she were hers.