hands. “When you feel the child growing inside of you, it will terrify you like nothing else. The knowledge that there is a living creature trapped inside your body, feeding on your flesh, beating upon your bones from the inside, and all building toward the day when he will burst forth, red and white and vile. A hideous wrinkled thing, glaring and screaming, covered in your blood, covered in your filth.”
Wren tried to pull away, but the witch held her fast.
“And then you’ll take this tiny monster in your arms, and wipe away the blood and the filth, and he will look at you. He will look into you,” Yaga said. “And after all the pain, all the misery, what do you? After all you have endured and sacrificed, all you have given to him, do you hurl him away and dash out his brains for a moment of peace? No. You give him even more. You press his mouth to your breast and you feed him the milk of your flesh.”
Wren looked away but the witched grabbed her chin and yanked her gaze back to the old woman’s face.
“And you’ll go on feeding him, day after exhausting day. Feeding him, washing him, protecting him from the world, protecting him even from himself.” Yaga released Wren’s arms and pushed the girl back against the wall. “You’ll endure the tantrums and the nightmares and all the pains and fears and failures he’ll have as he grows. And you’ll go on giving, and giving, and giving to him. All of your strength, every last shred of strength in your body and soul, all to keep him alive, to see him grow into a man. And for what?”
The tall witched smiled a hideous smile of crooked yellow teeth. “All to watch him leave. To go off into the world, to find some other woman to give him his own screaming little monsters.”
Yaga backed away but kept her eyes fixed on Wren. “That is love, girl. It isn’t pretty or kind or fair. It’s a madness all to itself. But don’t worry if you don’t understand it yet. You will. One day, you’ll hold your own screaming monster in your arms, and you’ll understand.”
Wren nodded, and for a moment her voice failed and she couldn’t speak at all. “Maybe. But right now, all I know is that there are other mothers and other sons out there tonight and they’re all trapped in their own nightmares. They’re suffering, not because the world is cruel, but because of you. And you can stop it with a word. Please stop it, now.”
The tall woman folded her arms across her chest and leaned against the wall to gaze out at the sea again. “Not tonight. Tonight, let them scream.”
“How can you say that? There are babies down there shaking in agony, and starving because their mothers can’t feed them,” Wren spoke faster and faster. “It’s the dead of winter, but no one can light their evening fire in the hearth. How many children will freeze to death tonight, Yaga? There are old grandmothers curled up in their beds, with their hearts bursting from the strain of this. And every soldier in the city will soon be lying helpless on the ground, leaving Constantia undefended. How long until the Turks realize their enemy is vulnerable? How long until they start firing their cannons, hurling their shells, and setting fire to the city? By morning all of Constantia could be rubble and ash, and countless thousands of people, innocent people, will be dead!”
“Let them die.”
Wren curled her hands into fists and felt her rinegold ring pressing against the edge of her palm.
Damn you, Gudrun, and all the rest of you. What good are the souls of the valas of Denveller if you won’t help me stop this witch? We’re supposed to save lives, not ruin them!
The faces of three shriveled crones appeared dimly before her, and Wren glared at the ghosts, but they only cackled in silence and faded back into the shadows.
“Two months ago.” Wren looked up. “You said the Turks captured Koschei two months ago, right? That’s when it happened?”
“Yes.”
“Well, from what I’ve heard, that’s the same time the dead started to rise from their graves all over Vlachia.” Wren swallowed and wrapped her arms across her belly to stop them from fidgeting and shaking. “And that can’t be a coincidence. Are you making the dead rise? Are you making their souls cling to their bodies?”
Yaga turned her head with agonizing deliberation, slowly shifting her gaze away from the sea to return to the girl’s face. The old witch’s long white hair fluttered on the dark breeze, and a murder of crows cackled and screamed as they flew past the open balcony. Wren flinched away from the black birds, but they were already gone, already winging away into the night.
“In Rus, the dead do rise from time to time,” Yaga said softly. “It’s only natural. The buried bodies freeze, and the aether in their blood freezes too. And sometimes, if the death is sudden enough, if the soul is angry enough, or crazed enough, that soul will drag its own body up out of the ground and walk the earth again.”
Wren nodded. “How often?”
Yaga shrugged. “Maybe one or two in a decade.”
The girl frowned. “That’s all?”
“And when word reaches me that there is a dead man walking about, I send my son to settle the matter. The body is broken and burned, and the soul flies free, usually to haunt the aether mists as just one more sorry little ghost.”
“But now, what’s changed? Why so many? What did you do?”
“Nothing.” Yaga’s wrinkled face hung grim and slack upon her skull. She still bore a strong echo of the beauty of her youth, but in the shadows of the tower, with her hair flying about her, with her voice rasping in the dark, all Wren could see was the dim reflection of her own mistress Gudrun, ancient and insane, cackling and drooling in the long black night.
“Nothing?”
“I did nothing. How could I do anything when my precious Koschei was gone?” Yaga bowed her head and looked back toward the sea. “I did not eat, which is nothing for our kind. I need no food to go on living, if that is my choice. But also, I did not sleep. Not since that night, the night they came to tell me that my Koschei was gone, lost to the enemy, taken away. So I didn’t sleep. And I haven’t slept since that night.”
“Two months without sleeping?” Wren furrowed her brow as she tried to remember Omar or Gudrun ever telling her about how much sleep a person needed. “And you can do that? Not sleep?”
The old witch grinned out at the dark outlines of Constantia, and in the distance the faint screams and cries of mothers and fathers and children echoed in the streets. “It is possible for me to go on living without sleep. But I suppose I have paid a price for that, too. The nightmares that taunt me at the borders of my sleep, the fears that I ran away from…” The old woman shook her head. “…they found me all the same. All of the horrors that I could ever imagine, all of the torments my tired head could conjure up, are here.” She placed her hand over her eyes for a moment.
Wren gaped. “You’re having nightmares? While you’re awake?”
Yaga nodded. As she leaned forward, her heavy bracelets clanked around her wrists.
The girl watched the woman’s unsteady hands clutching the railing of the balcony. “And your rinegold, I mean, your sun-steel bracelets, they’re always on your arms, and you, you’re always having nightmares. It is you. Your whole body is resonating with fear and sorrow, and it’s all flying out into the world through the aether.”
Yaga said nothing.
“You’re waking the dead.”
Yaga grinned.
“You have to stop.”
“I can’t stop!” Yaga snarled and held up one clawing hand as though poised to tear her own heart from her chest. “The nightmares are never-ending. I can see them now. Koschei burning on a pyre, his face reduced to melted black wax around his white, staring eyes. Koschei on the rack, his bones cracking, his breast bursting. Koschei with a nest of vipers in his bowels, wriggling out through his skin and shredding his flesh with their fangs. My boy, again and again and again, with his face white and red and black, screaming and screaming!”
Wren lurched forward and wrapped her arms around the woman. “It’s all right. It’s not real. None of it is real.”
Yaga shoved her away. “But it is real!” She pointed out across the palace grounds to the three huge ships still sitting at anchor in the channel, surrounded by the smoking remains of the Hellan destroyers. “He’s there! He’s shrieking and gasping, all alone on a rope in the dark. And tomorrow they’ll do it all over again, and I’ll see it all over again!”
“You need to sleep, Yaga,” Wren grabbed the woman’s hands and tried to make her focus. “Are you listening to me? You need to sleep, right now.”
