Chapter 39
Chapter thirty-nine
Pathetic
“Let me go at once!” Jaga screams when I pull her through the shadows into my throne room. “I’m not going to let you fuck me, so don’t even…”
“That’s not it. I need them to think I don’t know what it means, though they’ll figure it out soon enough. We need to talk.”
I snap my fingers, making the fires burn brighter, and knock on the table to summon her dewberry wine. It always helps me focus, and I need it right now. Jaga watches me, suspicious.
“What are you talking about?”
“Nyja said another prophecy.”
Her breath catches, and she joins me at the table, her eyes creased with worry and excitement.
“What prophecy? Does it cancel the first? Am I free?”
I pause and look up from the bottle of wine in my hand. I haven’t considered this.
“It’s never happened before,” I say slowly. “Her prophecies always come true, but this one is odd. We’ll have to ask her once she regains consciousness, but Nyja will know as much as we. She is only the conduit for the words, and she usually doesn’t know what they mean.”
“A conduit?” Jaga frowns, accepting a cup of wine. “Then who gives her the words to speak? Is there another god, someone hidden, someone more powerful than all of you?”
I snort. “No. No one gives her the words. Her power simply acts, looking into the future and translating what she sees there into a poem. Nyja always prophesies about things related to her in one way or another. It’s a magical skill, not a message from a hidden god.”
Jaga eyes me dubiously, then takes a sip from her cup. “What was the prophecy?”
I say it in full, “A blade that was wet with the blood of a girl
In a time that was stolen for a cheated fate
Shall slaughter one brother as the other prevails.”
Jaga grows completely still, her eyes wide and terrified, her lips wet and trembling. Her reaction confirms my suspicions, but before I can say it, she stands abruptly. She conjures a tall mirror in front of her and stares at her reflection.
“Is it time yet?” she whispers under her breath, so quietly, I barely hear it.
She is dressed, as always, in black, leather trousers, a corset, and a red, leather coat, her red boots tall and high-heeled. Her hair is loose, her eyes mismatched since she doesn’t bother to hide their colors.
I don’t understand why she watches her reflection so intently. Nothing has changed. She looks like herself.
Jaga tilts her head this way and that and finally claps, banking the fires until the room is bathed in soft gloom. A fiery doorway appears behind her back, making her loose hair gleam like polished copper, and she sighs, slowly shaking her head.
“I thought I’d know what I was doing by this point,” she mutters. “I’m not ready.”
“Will you tell me what it means?” I ask softly, as if she’s a wild animal I must soothe with my voice.
She turns to me, wringing her hands uncertainly, and I’m struck by how uncommon this is. Jaga always stands tall and haughty even when she’s anxious or afraid, yet now, she can’t hide her emotions.
When the silence stretches, and she breathes shakily, moving her lips as if trying out some words, I go to her and cup her face in my palms.
“Let me tell you what I figured out on my own and then you can fill in the gaps,” I whisper, stroking her cheeks with my thumbs.
She swallows, her expression both guarded and vulnerable. “I’ve kept this secret for so long, Woland. And now—should I just say it? It’s all so pointless.”
“You were meant to die at twelve,” I begin softly, holding her face like it’s precious, because it is.
“My guess is you were persecuted for witchcraft. That’s how much I’ve gathered from what you said in your sleep last year.
Jaromir. Daga. Miroslaw. Witch. The devil. Her blood will poison the roots.”
She flinches, her eyes wide and disbelieving, and I nod. “Next: I know you’ve asked me many times for a way to visit the past. I always thought you wanted to fix something awful that happened to you. Maybe that moment when you were twelve.”
“I already did,” she says hoarsely.
“What do you mean?”
She clears her throat, then laughs a helpless little laugh, pushing my hands off her face.
“I already did, Woland. I went to the past and fixed it. I was the one who changed my fate. I saved myself. But do you know, I never once wondered about that knife. They stuck me through. It would have killed me, yet after she healed me, there was no sign of it. Now I know. She took it. And so it’s time.
If you want that knife, you’ll have to tell me how to travel to the past.”
I nod slowly. “Yes. I will. But this technique has never worked for me. I went back a few times, trying to fix horrible things, and it never worked. Nothing changed.”
Jaga shakes her head. “Don’t you understand me? I already did it. I won’t be fixing anything, just… repeating what already happened.”
“So what happened?” I ask, pulling her to my chair. I sit, and she perches in my lap, pliant and easy to command in her uncertainty.
She wrings her hands, and I enclose them in mine, waiting.
“When I was twelve, my eye changed color,” Jaga speaks at last, looking into the nearest fire. “It became purple. According to Wiosna, it might have been caused by my first fertile time as a woman. I had my first bleeding two weeks later.”
I nod to encourage her, but she lapses into silence, frowning heavily. The low fires around us crackle, and it’s quiet, the room an exquisite patchwork of shadows and reddish glow, flames glittering in the mirror she conjured.
“They blamed me for six dead pigs and a stillborn baby,” she whispers, smiling wryly. “And who knows, maybe it was my fault. Babies keep dying around me. I never intended to kill Ida’s niece, either, or… Or… The baby…”
She frowns, shaking her head. I see it clearly in my mind’s eye, Jaga holding the dead half-wila child with its shoulder bitten off by Wera, but when I stole her memories of that day, I must have taken this one before she shielded her mind. I don’t remind her. It’s a kindness to let her forget it.
“They blamed you for the pigs, and so they attacked you,” I murmur, calling her back to the tale.
She shivers. “Yes. They chased me through the woods. There was Daga, she was the youngest, and then Jaromir. He stabbed me, even though Miroslaw was supposed to do it. He wanted to be a zerca.” She chuckles bitterly. “None of them knew how to make a proper sacrifice. Oh, Weles!”
She sits up, cackling and clapping, and I shake my head, not knowing what she finds so funny.
“Do you know what defeated me? An oak! I ran into an oak and fell. Her blood will poison the roots. I thought I would die under that tree, but they dragged me away so as not to hurt it. Oh, so stupid. I called you, by the way. Named as many of the devil’s names I remembered, hoping you’d save me.”
I expect her to be resentful and hurt like that time when I did miracles, and she said I never answered any of her prayers, but Jaga laughs with glee, sitting more comfortably in my lap.
“They were so afraid! It was night already, and I didn’t fear the dark, of course, but they did. It was funny. When it was still light, they had no trouble calling me the devil’s spawn, but as soon as the sun set, the devil’s name terrified them.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t come.”
She waves her hand dismissively. “Oh, I thought it was you at first. A doorway of fire appeared in the forest. When a woman came out, I thought she must be the devil. Ha! And now look whose lap I sit in.”
She grins at me, and I grin back, calling on my shadows.
I shift, stretching bigger, my head heavy with the antlers, and now she sits in the devil’s lap, indeed.
Her smile doesn’t waver, and her eyes still glitter.
I won’t say it, but it warms my heart in such a pathetic, sickly way—to know she accepts both of me the same.
Whatever skin I wear, she knows it’s me.
It’s surprising how important this little detail has turned out to be.
But then, I knew this. She mixes my names, calling me Woland when I’m Weles. She never forgets who I am, always wary and suspicious no matter how much I try to put her at ease by wearing the skin of the man who didn’t hurt and betray her, not directly.
Jaga’s laughter subsides, and she eyes me seriously, sighing. “She killed them with one slash of her hand and turned them into dust that she blew away like dandelion fluff. She said they wouldn’t go to Nawie. That she destroyed their souls.”
I sit up, surprised. “Really? Hm, it makes sense. I tried looking for them in Nawie to get some answers after you revealed those names in your sleep, but I never found them.”
She shrugs and lays her head on my chest, stroking my side with restless fingers. “I don’t know how to destroy someone’s soul.”
“I do. I will teach you. Oh, I know. Let’s practice on those cursed by Perun, hm? We still have a few in the cells. It will be merciful to spare their souls the suffering of eternal life.”
Silence falls as she considers this, but Jaga is sleepy, biting back yawns. Fire crackles in the hearth, and I drink in the peaceful moment until she speaks.
“But Woland. The prophecy said the blade will slaughter one brother while the other prevails. It can kill Perun—or you. It doesn’t say which brother. Are you sure we should get it?”
I purr, pulling her closer as she snuggles against me. I should have been Woland more often around her. She likes Weles well enough, but she loves this better. I think I make her feel safe even if she doesn’t trust me, which is utterly laughable.
I want her never to leave me again.
“I know, love. The previous prophecy was the same, and it made me frantic every time you threatened to go to Perun. We’ll have to make sure Perun doesn’t get the knife, that’s all.”
“Hm.”