morning. You still have to live.” The crone lifted her hand from Marya’s breast. In it was no bullet, not hot nor heavy, but a red scarf, bunched and knotted together. She tucked it into the flap of Marya’s uniform, next to her skin. She pulled her pinched, wrinkled, sullen face back on carefully, her practiced, amiable gaze.
Marya Morevna let her breath go. She made her face blank and unreadable. She looked up at her babushka as though she were a stranger—interesting, perhaps: such a face—but no relation of hers. After all, Marya was so good at games. She stood and walked out of the canteen, down a long, thin road toward the wreckage of some shattered black palace turned to rubble by endless shelling. The dust beneath her feet spangled in the evening light. She did not waver in her path, toward a place underground, down, down into the merciful dark, in a basement where a man with black curls flecked with starry silver would say her name like a confession; and in the place where their hands would touch, Marya Morevna could already see diamonds and black enamel swelling huge and gravid, yolk seeping from their skin like light.
Acknowledgments
There is no way to begin an accounting of those who contributed to this book except to say that my husband, Dmitri, and his family have included me in their lives for five years, engaging in the dangerous activity of telling a writer their stories and histories, and for that I am grateful beyond any mortal measure. It has been one of the most extraordinary things in my life, listening to their tales and jokes and being welcomed into their world. This book sprang from that very fertile ground, and from Dmitri especially, who in addition to acting as a human English-Russian dictionary and font of priceless details, first read me the story of Marya Morevna and Koschei the Deathless, leading to that immortal question: “Wait, what? Why is he chained up in her basement?”
Thank you also to the women of the Siege of Leningrad Museum in St. Petersburg, who humble everyone with the strength of their memory, and who were kind enough to speak with a young American; and posthumously to Anna Ahkmatova, the patron of Leningrad, whose work pierces and commands my soul; and Harrison Salisbury, whose seminal work
Thank you to all those who have provided succor, advice, and encouragement to an admittedly grumpy writer without a paid cafe card, especially Tiffin Staib, Michael Broughton, Ferrett Steinmetz, Gini Judd, Amal El-Mohtar, Lee Harrington, and Claire Cooney, who kindly read an early draft.
Thank you to my agent, Howard Morhaim, and my editor, Liz Gorinsky, as well as my assistant, Deb Castellano, and the tireless Evelyn Kriete.
Thank you as ever to S. J. Tucker, my sister-tsarevna, who makes my world so bright, teaches me so much about authenticity and magic, and makes my books into such astonishing sorceries, and to her partner, Kevin Wiley, logistical god and dear friend.
And finally, to Rose Fox,
