4. An Affectionate Calf May Drink from Two Mothers
4
AN AFFECTIONATE CALF MAY DRINK FROM TWO MOTHERS
It had been about five years since Nik had barely escaped with his life, and only great desperation would make him seek out the man who nearly destroyed him. Years before, after watching his home burn, he had been traveling to St. Rostislav and passed through the small town of Pyrs, where he stopped for the night.
A kindly widow took him in, fed him a hot meal, and asked him to stay on for a few days during the harvest to help set her up before winter. In exchange, she would pay him in food; fit him with clothes left behind by her son, who had also joined the Guard but perished in a long-ago battle; and gift him with a heavy fur-lined pair of winter boots, made by her brother who lived nearby.
The work was easy. The town was small and sleepy. And the old widow kept his plate full of more delicious home-cooked food than he could possibly eat and his mug brimming with hot, sense-dulling, sleep-inducing drink every evening. Soon thoughts of joining the Guard became distant.
The widow was more than happy to keep him for as long as he wanted to stay. Having a son again filled her lonely home with happiness, she assured him, as she darned his socks, knitted him woolen caps, and began embroidering him a beautiful new tunic on crisp white linen should he be inclined to stay through the Christmastide season, long enough for the arrival of Grandfather Frost and his granddaughter the Snow Maiden.
Nik didn’t say as much, but he was inclined.
As the days turned to weeks and the weeks to months, Nik’s gaunt frame began to take on flesh, and he noticed the cupboards were beginning to run low on supplies, especially with the way the kindly widow stuffed him with food. After feeding the humpbacked pony and milking the goat, he offered to go to town in his newly acquired fur-lined boots and trade for some items to get them through winter.
“Spasibo but nyet, my son,” the old widow said, setting down his heaped plate of breakfast and mug of goat milk. “I shall go myself when the mood strikes me.”
“Please, let me,” Nik insisted. “Your back pains you overmuch. I don’t want you to suffer needlessly.”
“You’re a sweet boy,” she said, patting his cheek. Her rheumy eyes peered into his for a long moment, and he wondered what it was she was looking for. Perhaps it was her lost son or a lost memory. Finally, almost sadly, she said, “I can’t stop you if you want to go, but I’ll ask you not to. At least wait until tomorrow, won’t you? You’re safe here.”
Nik frowned at the last, but said, “I know I’m safe with you, babushka. Yes. I suppose I can wait until tomorrow.”
“Very good.” She cackled and gave him a gap-toothed grin. “Then let me work on your tunic today. Perhaps I’ll have it ready for you in time.”
“In time? Christmastide is a month from now. I won’t need it just yet.”
She replied with a distracted, “Yes. Must hurry, then. Must hurry.”
The old widow worked so hard on his tunic that even when it became dark, she refused to stop. Nik lit a candle, set it by her rocking chair with a plate of stew and a slice of toasted bread slathered with fresh butter, and went to bed.
When he woke the next morning, he found her still in the chair, slumped down, deep in sleep, the tunic clutched in her gnarled fingers, and a tiny bit of drool escaping from her slack mouth. Gently, he tried to wake her and coax her to her bed, attempting to take the tunic from her hands and set it aside, but when he pulled, it came away attached to her palms with sticky fibers. The old woman startled and blinked, and Nik swore for a moment that he saw not one pair of eyelids but two.
“What? What is it, dear?” she asked, sitting up and adjusting her shawl around her shoulders.
Why hadn’t he noticed the bump between her shoulders before? The poor woman needed a physician. She was likely in great pain.
“Won’t you take to your bed this morning?” he asked. “You’ve had a long night.”
“Nyet. I’ll be fine. Just let me get my feet under me. I’ll see to your breakfast.” As she lumbered over to the table, her knees and joints cracking like heavy-laden tree branches in an ice storm with every step, and set down the tunic, she asked hesitantly, “Will you be leaving this morning? I wasn’t able to finish your tunic, I’m afraid.”
Nik saw her hands tremble as she took his mug and plate from the cupboard. “No,” he answered slowly. “It looks as if bad weather is approaching. I think I’ll hold off another day.”
“Does it?” she replied, not even bothering to look out the cottage window already lit with the rosy promise of winter sunshine. “I’ll keep on, then.”
They played the game every day for a week, with her working late into the night, her eyes straining to see the thread and the needle, and him postponing heading to town due to some reason or another, until the seventh night. That evening there were no more candles left for him to light, and they’d scraped together a meager dinner using the last of the mash and a bit of goat’s milk. By the light of the fire, they sat together as she sewed. Both of them knew there was no more time to spare. He’d have to go to town for supplies in the morning.
Finally, just as he was preparing to rise for bed, about to caution her to do the same, she carefully folded and set aside the tunic, then announced, “It’s complete.”
Nik thought she’d be happy, and he was ready to lavish great praise upon the garment, but then he saw how heavy tears filled the widow’s eyes, and she rubbed them until they appeared quite swollen indeed.
“Please don’t cry, babushka,” Nikolai said, taking her sticky hand in his and patting it. “If you really don’t want me to leave, I won’t. I’ll go hunting instead. We’ll make do, somehow.”
“It’s not that. Ty khoroshiy mal’chik. You’re a good boy.” With that, she burst into a fresh set of tears. “If only you weren’t. Now my husband and I will have no Christmastide feast.”
“What? Your husband? Don’t you mean your brother? I think you’re confused.”
“No,” the old widow said, then sighed and shrugged off her shawl. “I’m afraid you’re the one confused, my dear.”
As she spoke, her voice changed. It deepened into something sinister. More like a growl than the sound of an elderly woman. Then, to his horror, her head lifted, and her jaw unhinged. Before he could scream, the bottom of it elongated, and Nik found he lost his own voice entirely as his mouth went dry. The widow’s weepy eyes widened, and two sets of lids appeared, which was fortunate, because her eyeballs grew larger and larger until they finally popped out from the woman’s head and hung like bulbous white radishes on coarse stalks.
It was then that Nik realized the orbs gazing and blinking at him as they danced on either side of her cheekbones no longer contained a single eye hanging on the end of the fibrous crimson stalks, but a cluster of jellied, winking pustules. It reminded him of a monstrous arachnid, especially when thick black bristles erupted from her neck and arms.
Gooseflesh stood out on his own arms, and he felt the cold whisper of death dampen the backs of his ears. A bad omen, indeed. Nik scrambled away from her to a far corner of the room, but she lifted a hand and thin filaments shot from her palms. As she twisted her hands in the air, murmuring an incantation, the fibers wove together into a rope that shot toward him, quickly binding his feet, hands, and torso.
“I don’t want you to leave just yet,” the creature he’d lived with for months said in her new voice, one that gurgled and rasped as if she were speaking underwater.
“What... what are you?” Nik asked as she stood, her rickety knees unlocking and bending unnaturally, the joints turning backward as the skin on her arms bubbled and erupted in red scales.
“I am called many things,” she replied as fangs swelled in her upper jaw, the sharp tips glistening with golden liquid. “Some refer to me as a sheetweaver, or a moroi. But you might know me as a kikimora.”
Nik began shaking. Kikimory were nightmarish house spirits that strangled people in their sleep, kidnapped children on the road, and didn’t his mother once tell him a story saying that those who saw a kikimora spinning or weaving would die soon afterward? Well... if that was his fate, perhaps it would be better to embrace it. In fact, he wouldn’t be surprised if it had been the ghost of his departed mother who had cursed him in such an awful way.
“So”—Nik straightened his shoulders, the fear suddenly leaving him—“you’ve finished my burial shroud, then. I suppose I deserve it. What happens first? Should I put on my new tunic? Do you put that shroud on me, then drink me dry? Will you and your—your husband, is it? Will the two of you simply deprive me of my lifeblood, or will you consume my flesh as well? Shall I confess my sins first? That is the least you could let me do before putting me out of misery, don’t you think, babushka?”
The spider woman stopped advancing when she saw Nik’s lack of fear and heard the tone of resignation in his voice. “Why do you wish to confess your sins?” the new creature asked him, sliding a foot to the side so a third and fourth leg could free themselves from the waistband of her dress and deposit themselves on either side of her body. She sighed with relief, and Nik realized she was neither as old as he once believed nor as fat.
Twisting her strange head, she waited for his reply, and added, “I did not lie when I said I believe you are a good boy. I will regret eating you. But I am hungry. If you wish to tell me of your sins, I will listen. Perhaps hearing of your sins will soothe my conscience. Or possibly it will ease your journey to the next life. Either way, I think it is a good thing.”
“You are right,” Nik said, after a moment. “I know it will change nothing. Still. If you can manage your hunger for a while, I will tell you of my sins and of the terrible monster I destroyed.”
“It must have been a terrible monster, indeed, if you have no fear of me.”
“Yes. He was. The terrifying monster was my father. And though I killed him, he still haunts me. But please, won’t you first make yourself comfortable? You don’t need to keep your human form for me. Let me get you a bit of bread and some tea to ease your hunger while I speak.”
The clusters of eyes blinked shrewdly once, then twice. There was a shudder, and then what was left of the grandmother he knew dissolved before him as her limbs grew and shifted, hardening and transforming into a nightmarish being that would disturb his dreams if he was ever lucky enough to have a dream again.
Where the old woman was slow, her body creaking and stiff, the new thing that replaced her was deadly silent other than a clicking of teeth and a scraping of bristles. It settled itself, not on the chair as it once did, but hanging from the ceiling with one long limb, its body draped across the door so there was no escape. The temperature in the room cooled, despite the crackling logs in the fireplace. Nik could feel the rime of bitter winter seeping through gaps of the poorly sealed window.
To distract himself while he boiled water for tea, he asked about her husband. “Before I begin, will you tell me—is your husband a being like you?”
“He is not,” she replied, in her rasping new voice. “I am of the swamp, and he is of the forest. My husband is a leshi.”
“Leshi?”
“Da. A wood spirit who casts no shadow as he walks. When he stands quietly, he is mistaken for a tree. Those who are lost follow his voice until he leads them to me. Then I capture and slowly drain them. It is our way. He doesn’t like trespassers, and I keep that green nest he calls a beard clean and rodent-free. Sometimes he’d let me hide beneath it, and the two of us would wait for a stranger to pass beneath his tall legs. That’s when I’d pounce and...” She licked her black lips hungrily. “Well, it’s been a while since we’ve enjoyed being together in our forest.”
“But I don’t understand,” Nik said. “If you are of the swamp and he of the forest, what are the two of you doing in Pyrs?”
The creature shifted uneasily and spat on the floor. The liquid that came from her mouth was black, and it smoked and hissed, bubbling until it ate a hole in the floor. “Bah! See what you made me do? Now I shall have to summon my husband to repair the wood before he brings me the next boy. Assuming he’ll find another one before I starve. We don’t get as many wanderers as we used to, thanks to him . He takes all the nomads to build up his ranks. You’re the first one we’ve seen in a long time.”
“Him?”
“If you can call such a thing that.”
“Who are you referring to?”
“The one who took over our forest and cast us out. We don’t know his true name. He is known to us only as the Black Bies or the Death Draughtsman.”
Nik’s hands shook as he poured the tea into two mugs. Whoever this Death Draughtsman might be, he was powerful enough to cause this terrifying creature and her husband, who were holding him prisoner, to leave their home and risk living in a town inhabited by humans. He slid the bit of bread and the mug of tea to the edge of the small table near her outstretched leg, only then noticing she no longer had fingers, but a thick, blackened stump covered with what looked like leather on one side and hairs on the other. It was far too bulbous to use the mug handle.
Opening his mouth, Nik was about to offer to hold the mug for her when she touched her hairy limb to the side of the hot mug and a sticky substance enveloped the entire thing. When she brought it close to her face, a long, writhing proboscis uncoiled from her mouth and dipped into the cup. It quivered as she sipped and changed color from pink to nearly white. Nik gulped his tea wrong and choked, sputtering and coughing, imagining that long tongue piercing and lapping at his neck.
“Right,” he said, clearing his throat. “I suppose I’ll get on with my confession, then.” When there was no response from the creature, he forged ahead, regaling her with a tale that needed no exaggeration, painting his father in all the vivid monstrous colors he recalled, while minimizing his own reprehensible acts and instead rendering himself as the hero.
“In fact,” he added, after telling her of how he rode off with the blaze of the house burning brightly behind him, “I’d like to be able to do the same thing for you.”
“What do you mean?” she asked suspiciously.
“I mean, I’ve rid the world of my monster. Perhaps I can rid your forest of yours.”
There was a dark pause and then an even darker cackle followed. When she caught her breath, the creature said, “You? You think you’ll be able to do away with an evil as great as the Death Draughtsman? Nyet, you fatuous boy. He is no simple human for you to vanquish. It is folly to even consider it.”
She denied the possibility, and yet Nikolai could hear the tiniest tinge of longing in her voice. Furrowing his brow, Nik nodded in agreement. “I’m sure you’re right. It was foolish for me to hope. It’s just that I can’t help but desire a final wish to serve my ailing grandmother in more than a temporary sustaining of body. Don’t you see? If I could defeat this villain, there would be plenty for you. I would not have to worry about you starving after I am gone.”
Nik’s earnest expression and utter sangfroid were skills he had developed at a very young age, after living with his abusive father and a mother too weak to fight back. He was almost grateful now for the skills. Almost . That he could use them to negotiate for his life with a monster was incredible. Still, he wouldn’t thank either of his parents had they been there at that moment. No. What he had was his own. It was no thanks to them.
“Oh. You are a sweet boy,” the creature said.
He might have been mistaken, but Nik thought in that moment that tears were leaking from her bulbous eyes.
“Let me summon my husband and see what he thinks of the idea.” This was followed by an otherworldly screech that sounded something like the hoot of an owl crossed with that of a giant bat. Nik wanted to cover his ears, but he didn’t think that would go over well. It wasn’t a few moments later that a resounding thump landed on the door, so thunderous that the walls shook. The spider woman shifted away from the entry, and it slammed open.
At first all Nik could see were long legs covered by enormous boots. Then the man, who bent over nearly halfway to enter the house, came inside and sat on the floor. His body was large, but not fat. He was thick, solid, built like a tree. The brown skin was wrinkled deeply on his face and arms, almost like tree bark, and his beard, which narrowed to a point at his waist, looked like moss.
“What is this, Escovina? Do you not find this one to your liking?”
“Nyet, Larix. Nyet. He was a good find.”
“Then why have you not consumed him? You are hungry. The winter will be long. You cannot sustain yourself from the ground as I can. I’ve already lost too much. I will not lose you as well. If you cannot bring yourself to kill him, I will do it for you.”
The large tree spirit lifted his long arm, ready to backhand Nik, but the other creature shot a web out and captured his hand so it couldn’t move. “Wait,” she said, almost gently for a being so monstrous. “He wishes to help us.”
“Help us?” he replied with a stoic incredulity befitting a tree. “He is deceiving you in an attempt to save his own life.”
“I do not believe so,” she retorted softly. “I wish to let him try. Will you help him on his journey?”
“Even should he be sincere, he won’t survive the endeavor. Then what will happen to you?”
“If he succeeds, then there will be plenty.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
There was a pause. Then the spider creature sighed and said, “If he doesn’t, then there wasn’t much hope for me anyway.”
The green tree man pounded a fist through the floor, making a hole. Immediately, he placed a hand over it and the wood came alive, regrowing itself, filling the gap. “We’ve talked about this. You can take a townsperson.”
“No. I won’t cause unnecessary pain to a family. It’s not our way.”
Nik raised an eyebrow. This was an interesting turn of events. He found he now genuinely wanted to help the two strange creatures. Finally speaking up, he said, “If you’ll point me in the right direction and give me a few tips, I promise to do my best to defeat the Death Draughtsman and thereby return you to the forest.”
The tree man looked Nik over for what seemed like a very long time indeed, then gave a slight nod. “Escovina, I will agree to this, though I do not have high hopes for the outcome.”
“Spasibo,” Nik and the spider creature said at the same time.
“Do not thank me just yet, little man child,” Larix said. “You’re still likely to die, in a much less pleasant fashion, and this time it will only be temporary.”
“Temporary? What does that mean?”
“You’ll see. Now grab a satchel and put the last of the bread and the salt inside. Hurry.”
“Yes, da, Nikolai. You must follow each of Larix’s instructions exactly. Promise me you will.”
“I promise, babushka. Dedushka,” he added, nodding to the tree man, hoping to gain his favor.
“Yes, yes,” he said, waving a wrinkled hand impatiently. “Now take off your clothes and put them back on inside out. He’ll need all your magic, Escovina.”
“Yours too, Larix?”
“Yes. He’ll need all the magic he can muster.”
“Very well,” she said.
Nik watched in fascination as his “babushka” began twirling and spinning, but this time it wasn’t with thread but with light. The tunic she’d created began to glow.
As she worked, her husband explained, “She created a death shroud for each boy. It’s a wrapping, essentially. It preserves their body as she drains it of life over time. That way it can sustain her as long as possible.”
Gulping, Nik asked, “You... you mean they’re still alive?”
“The shroud suspends them in a sleeplike state.”
“They are happy and dreaming. I make sure of it,” she said as she continued working.
“Still, they don’t last long,” Larix said. “Then, after they die, she buries them in the shroud.”
“How... lovely,” Nik managed, now wondering what they meant for him to do. “Is the tunic going to make me dream?”
“Not now,” Escovina said. “I’ve imbued it with light magic. Now it’s a gift. Larix has a gift for you as well. Here, I’m done. You can put it on now.”
He hesitated only a moment but then lifted the glowing tunic over his head and slid it over his chest. It crackled with energy.
When he turned about, gaining a nod of approval from his two strange and deadly adopted grandparents, Larix said, “Perfect. Now we need to visit the goat and the horse.”
“Why?” Nik asked, following the large tree man out the door.
“Because we need the goat to kick you and the horse to butt you.”