Deathless

by Catherynne M. Valente

Did everything that had magic have teeth? She had liked the world better when it served up sweet-looking birds and sweet-looking men.

She was not filled up with the sight of him, the way she had seen her sisters fill up, like silk balloons, like wineskins. Instead, he seemed to land heavily within her, like a black stone falling.

“I will tell you why. Because you are a demon, like me. And you do not care very much if other girls have suffered, because you want only what you want. You will kill dogs, and hound old women in the forest, and betray any soul if it means having what you desire, and that makes you wicked, and that makes you a sinner, and that makes you my wife.”

Be selfish and cruel and think nothing of them. I am selfish. I am cruel. My mate cannot be less than I. I will have you in my hoard, Marya Morevna, my black mirror.”

It was a wolf, tenacious. It had swallowed up Ivan Nikolayevich. She could not remember, now, ever having felt happy or sad. Only hungry. Only empty, and greedy, and insatiable.

It was late spring when Marya Morevna slid her brass key into the lock of the house on Dzerzhinskaya Street, feeling it slide, too, between her own ribs, and open her like a reliquary full of old, nameless bones.

No one could get out. Nothing could get in. Winter’s bitch dogs got hold of the ration cards, and shook them until they broke in half, and then in half again.

But no one was left to bury anyone else, so people just left the sleds in a pile by the cemetery gate. That’s where we left Sofiya, with Kseniya lying over her like a flower, with snow piling up on her hair. I said them a domovoi’s mass, but no one heard me because grief is louder than praying.

You will live as you live anywhere. With difficulty, and grief.