11
White Gold, Black Gold
“You see why I need you,” said Marya Morevna, sitting down on the forest moss next to Zemlehyed, who, for his part, seemed uninterested, burrowing his attention instead in a crown of violets and plump rosehips he had braided together. He held out his thumb and squinted at it, his stony tongue sticking out of his mouth with the ferocity of his concentration. Finally, he threaded three scarlet nightshade mushrooms into the crown and squinted at it again.
“Don’t,” he said brusquely.
“Zmey Gorinich,” she repeated. “That’s a dragon. Quite a step up from shrubbery. I haven’t the first idea how to fight a dragon, let alone get his treasure to Chairman Yaga while I stay Marya Morevna, daughter of twelve mothers, and not Roasted, daughter of Scorched. She wants his white gold and his black gold—and to be honest, I want nothing. I want to sleep.”
“Snipe him,” gruffed Zemlehyed. “Rat-a-tat, between his eyes. Chew dragon-steak, be happy. Bother Naganya.” The leshy peeled a strip of birch bark from a nearby tree and twined it deftly through the violets—more deftly than Marya ever thought his thick, bark-covered hands could manage.
“Are you angry with me, Zemya?”
The leshy cracked an acorn between his granite teeth and spat the cap into the grass.
Marya tried again. “Naganya isn’t half strong enough to wrestle a dragon, and shooting him seems convenient, except that killing such a beast would hand Viy an aerial bombing platform. With three heads.”
“Strong enough. She slumbers near to you.”
Marya looked down at the moss. Ants wandered toward some distant battle or wheat-seed orgy. Leshiyi were so delicate in their etiquette. She doubted he cared who slept in her bed—leshiyi mated by cross-pollination. He cared, she guessed, because he believed that the strongest of them should guard Marya in her sleep, and Marya had chosen Naganya because she held the—clearly mistaken—belief that the vintovnik could beat him, if it came to fists and grappling. Zemlehyed pouted and tucked a sprig of bright rowan berries into the crown.
“Naganya’s mouth is strong,” Marya said carefully. “But her arm is young. Yours is old, and hard, and I choose it.” Besides, grappling was never Naganya’s style.
Zemlehyed smiled broadly. His rocky eyes prickled moisture like raindrops.
“Morevna chooses!” he beamed. “And chooses best. Zemlehyed knows where Zmey Gorinich nests. Nasha knows nothing but how to make holes. Gorinich sleeps on top of bones. On top of gold. Zemya would like such a bed, but
The leshy, his moss-hair trailing down in several green braids, held up his forest diadem. He reached down without looking and pulled up a clutch of winter onions, sticking them in so that their green stems fell like a veil from the back of the crown. Zemlehyed reached up and placed it on Marya’s head. It matched her rosy trousers, her black-violet boots.
“He will help you, if you build him a promise.”
“Anything, Zemya.”
The leshy smirked, stroking his fir-needle mustache. “A kiss, for Zemlehyed, on his lips. He won’t tell.”
Marya Morevna laughed. Even devotees of cross-pollination must occasionally be curious, she reasoned. No more harm than in kissing a tree or a rock. And besides, Koschei had kissed all those Yelenas. Or probably had. Who could tell the truth? Marya felt defiance boil up in her chest. She did not care. She would kiss whom she liked. “All right, Zem. A kiss.”
Without warning, the leshy shot up into the air, somersaulted, and came down hard on the mossy loam, digging furiously. His fists flew at the earth; his teeth gnashed and tore; his feet kicked like a diver plunging into deep water. Clumps flew; Zemlehyed disappeared into his hole. After a moment, his fingers, knuckles ringed with lacy mushrooms, popped back up.
“Morevna! Bustle! Faster than you is still too slow.”
Marya took the leshy’s rough hand and he hauled her, headfirst, underground.
Marya flipped in her descent and landed neatly on her feet in quite another forest, full of stubby scrub trees and tall lilac flowers. Golden-orange mountains rose on all sides, closing them in. Zemlehyed hung from the branches of one of the taller trees, kicking his short legs back and forth in delight. He wiggled the top of his head out of a crack in the branch and fell—thump, bash!—onto the needle-strewn ground.
But the forest imp bounced up, and when he righted himself, he was a handsome man in a dark green soldier’s uniform with red piping, his cap sparkling gold. He had a twisted, thorny black beard and muscled arms like pine trunks. Zemlehyed laid his finger aside his nose.
“You cannot tell,” he said, his voice suddenly very much changed. “They mustn’t know.”
Marya Morevna gaped. She could not make her mouth close. All that time, and her friend was … what? She could not even say. A man. And a beautiful one. “Why not? Zem! Even Lebedeva would have to admit you’re handsome!”
“Forests have secrets,” he said gently. “It’s practically what they’re for. To hide things. To separate one world from another. You might not think it, but I love Lebed, and Nasha, with all my muddy heart. But as long as they think I’m stupid I can keep stealing from their stashes and they’ll never suspect. Lebedeva would never think for a moment that I would want her night cream, or Naganya’s holster-blouse. But I have them, and they are mine, and I will not give them back, no.”
“Why
Zemlehyed shrugged. “It’s in my nature. I hoard. It’s in their nature, too, which is why Lebedeva has more night creams than nights, and Nasha collects tin cans. Zmey Gorinich, he is like this as well. But I think it is also in your nature.”
Marya blinked. “I don’t think so. What have I collected?”
Zemlehyed smiled in a lopsided way, as though he did not quite know how to use his face.
“Us.”
The leshy led her through a field of spiky yellow blossoms fuzzy with pollen, heavy with buzzing bees. Puffy white cotton plants waved around them like tiny clouds. The sun pressed its hands to their shoulders, hurrying them along. The mountains, streaked with snow, rose strange and thin around them, as though a starving man slept under the earth, his ribs poking through the stone. They followed a deep blue river that ran deliriously through the meadow, fish splashing as though no spearman could dream of happening by. In the distance, at last, just as the sun was getting red and tired, Marya saw a great furry yurt in the dry grass. Thick, curly fleeces covered its roof; long poles stood tight together, curving in a round sweep. A ram pelt hid the door.
Zemlehyed did not knock. He pushed the pelt aside and ducked into the hut, squeezing his enormous frame into the doorway. Marya followed him into the warm yurt-shadows, where a bald man with round glasses sat at his desk, dwarfed by mountains of paperwork.
“Do you have an appointment?” he roared, a flush traveling all the way from his scalp to his brows in a long red wave.
“We seek Zmey Gorinich,” said Marya, her voice firm.
“You are tiny,” the man concluded. “Zmey Gorinich does not exist for the use of the tiny. Only the big does he notice! As big as he is!”
“I am big.” Zemlehyed shrugged.
“Not very, compared to Zmey Gorinich!” bellowed the man, his head going red again.
“We did not come to compare ourselves to Zmey Gorinich,” said Marya sweetly, measuring the mood of the man in glasses. He grabbed at a sheaf of paper at the bottom of the pile and yanked expertly, pulling it free without disturbing the rest. He set to scribbling in the file. “How could we compete with three heads, a tail like a mountain range, and the breath to burn empires down?”
The man in glasses looked up exasperatedly. “Look, you criminals, I don’t have three heads. I never had three heads! This is what comes of letting writers have free rein, and not bridling them to the righteous labor of the Party the moment they learn to slap an accusative case around. I am
