Enchantment (26 page)

Sergei wriggled inside his own clothes, clearly pleased to have them back.

The comedy was over. Everybody was going to be back where they belonged. Ivan had no idea what he would tell people back in America about this. Or even what he’d tell Cousin Marek. I went for a run in the woods, and I got lost for a few weeks, and here I am . . .

A few weeks? Eleven hundred years had passed while Katerina lay on that pedestal, and yet it had taken only a few months in Taina. If that proportion held true, even the weeks he had spent here could be a century or more. His family might be gone, the world might be so changed that he’d be unable to function in it . . .

Get a grip. Don’t borrow trouble. The pedestal is one thing, a magic place. The rules of time might be identical, or time might flow in unpredictable ways. There was nothing he could do about it.

Katerina took him by the hand. At once he could see the bridge to the pedestal—her bridge. She led him across. Sergei stood, watching them, mesmerized.

“How do you do it?” he said. “Walking through the air?”

“There’s a bridge,” said Ivan. “But only Katerina can see it. Katerina and whomever she holds by the hand.”

“Where will you go?” asked Sergei.

“Home,” said Ivan. “I’ll go home, and Katerina will return to you, and—”

“I’ll do no such thing,” she said.

They reached the pedestal. She did not let go of his hand.

“What do you mean?” asked Ivan.

“I’m coming with you,” she said.

“You can’t do that.”

“Why can’t I? Hold my hand and lead me across your bridge.”

“But your people need you.”

“If I stay, then I’m a bride abandoned by her husband with the marriage unconsummated. The Pretender will be down our throats in a few days. But if I go with you, then I’m a bride off on a journey with her new husband. Let the old hag wonder whether or when the marriage becomes complete.”

“I can’t hear you!” Sergei called. “Are you talking about leaving us, princess?”

“I’m traveling with my husband, to visit his parents,” said Katerina.

“What will I tell the others?”

“Tell them that. It’s no secret. Tell everyone.”

“What about this place? Can I show them this place?”

“No,” said Katerina. “Tell them it’s enchanted and you can’t find it again without me to guide you.”

“But I could find it quite easily,” he said.

“I have no doubt you could,” said Katerina. “But if you
tell
them it’s enchanted, they’ll believe you and won’t press you to say more.”

“You mean . . .
lie
?”

Katerina burst out laughing. So did Ivan. Sergei smiled shyly. They had liked his joke.

“You’ve been a good friend to me,” said Ivan.

“And you to me,” said Sergei. “But what will happen to the parchments? Where did you hide them, princess?”

“In my room. In the rag chest, where no man would touch it.”

Sergei didn’t like thinking about what women used those rags for.

“But as soon as you can,” Katerina said, “you must get them and bring them here. To this enchanted place.”

Sergei winced at the thought of actually rummaging through her intimate things. But there was a hopeful meaning to the assignment as well.

“So you will come back. Won’t you?” Sergei asked.

“Yes,” said Katerina. “If I can.”

“And you, Ivan?”

“What for?” asked Ivan. “I’m no good at living here.”

Sergei couldn’t argue with him. Neither could Katerina.

“All the same,” said Sergei. “I hope you do come back.”

“Maybe,” said Ivan. “Maybe long enough to find out where those manuscripts will be hidden. So I can discover them in my own land.”

It still made no sense to Sergei. He shook his head and watched as Ivan walked to the edge of the pedestal and seemed to step off into nothing.

Ivan disappeared. All at once, the moment he set foot on the invisible bridge, he was gone. And a moment later, as the princess followed him, she was gone, too.

Sergei stood there for a few moments, gazing at the place where they had been. This was serious magic here. Not like the spells and curses that were commonplace in the village, and which didn’t work half the time anyway. To make two people disappear in the moonlight—it made Sergei wonder. If I had magic power like this, it wouldn’t matter that I have a crippled foot. And for a moment he imagined himself standing before Baba Yaga, the two of them on a great stone between two mighty armies, facing each other, five feet apart. She would raise her hand and cast a spell at him, chanting unspeakable words, and he would laugh, wave off her pathetic powers, and utter a single word of power. No, not a word, even. He would trace the shape of a rune in the air, and she would turn into a goose and rise honking into the air, terrified, confused, filled with a sudden inexplicable longing to fly south forever . . .

Just a dream, and a foolish one at that. Sergei was God’s servant now, with no powers of his own, only the power to obey. But for a few moments he had been part of great events. Grand adventures. None of the boys who had grown up with him, with their two equal feet, their smooth walk, their level stance, none of them had been trusted to stand here with the princess and her husband. None of them had been given the task of writing down all the old stories, so they could live on in another time and place.

The future will be full of men like Ivan. Someday, a thousand years from now, that’s what Ivan said. A world where men can live by reading and writing, by talking and thinking. A world where a man like me could be something other than a slops boy for a foreign priest.

He turned and walked away from the pit, back along the path he had taken. The night was chilly, and he was tired. When he got back there would be questions. There would be no concealing his own involvement in the escape—Ivan had been wearing his clothes, and now Sergei was returning with those same clothes on his back. But Dimitri would not lift a hand against him. There was no honor in hitting a cripple. And Sergei was not his own man. What could he do but obey? There would be no blame for him. And some would think him something of a hero, in his own small way. He was the one that Ivan and Katerina had trusted to see them fly away into another world.

Baba Yaga

She came home in a foul temper. Bear had expected it, so he knew to be away for the first few hours. When he finally figured it was safe—the howling had stopped, the birds were flying normally, and the wolves weren’t whimpering anymore—he shambled back into the castle and on into his wife’s fine warm house, which was all the warmer now, since she had broken up a considerable amount of furniture and thrown it on the fire.

“That’s very wasteful,” he said.

“Shut up.”

“You were an old woman today and started a fire, and you were a little girl and started a manhunt in the forest, and it all came to nothing.”

“She’s gone!” cried Baba Yaga. “Out of my power! What did those bitches do to my curse? They left a bridge to his world. They left a bridge behind, and she crossed over!”

“So what will you do? She’s gone. What’s stopping you now from having Taina?”

“She’s not dead, that’s what’s stopping me. She’s not dead and everyone knows she’s not dead. They’ll go off and make a baby where I can’t reach them, and come home with an heir, and then if I attack the whole Kievan league will come down on me and
you
will betray me and it’s not fair!”

Baba Yaga always said that it wasn’t fair, but to Bear it looked like things had worked out pretty evenly. Nobody had what they wanted. Baba Yaga didn’t have Taina, but neither did Katerina. Equality of suffering—what could be more fair than that?

“Well, they can’t get away from me that easily,” said Baba Yaga.

“Oh?”

“I’ll follow them. I’ll go into wherever the hell he came from, and I’ll tear it apart till I find them.”

“Be careful,” said Bear. “You don’t know what wizards might be waiting for you there.”

“If he’s a sample of what they’ve got in that world, then I have nothing to fear.”

“If you can get there.”

“If those meddling do-gooders can make a pathway to his world, so can I. It will take a little research, but I’ll find my way. Besides, I know her scent. I can follow her anywhere. Through time and space, wherever she is—I have the taste of her in my mouth. I’ll eat the little bitch for breakfast.”

Bear yawned. He had heard all this before.

“I will! Don’t think I won’t!”

“Whatever,” said Bear. “Unfortunately, I’ll no doubt be here when you get back.”

“It won’t take me long,” she muttered. “I’ll figure out where they went, I’ll find a way to get there, and I’ll have her back here in a week. Then you can feast on womanflesh! How’s that, my beautiful Bear?”

“Fish are better. But I never interfere with my wife in the kitchen.”

“Very funny,” said Baba Yaga. “As if I cooked.”

“As if I would ever trust anything you gave me to eat,” said Bear.

“Sometimes you do,” she said.

“You always poison me, though.”

“If I poisoned you, you’d never know it, because you’d be dead.”

“Just a little poison. Every damn time, it’s some new potion or powder. I never know if it’s going to be dysentery or a headache or impotence or priapism.”

“You sound as if I did nothing but abuse you.”

“What else?” said the Bear. “You think I don’t know why you haven’t killed me? Why I’m still around for you to do these things to? Making me run around that pit for a thousand years, for instance! Losing an eye, for instance!”

“
He
did that. I’ll serve
him
for your supper, too.”

“The only reason you didn’t kill me long ago is because you can’t.”

“It’s because I love you. And my enchantment of you isn’t all bad. You like having the power of speech well enough.”

“Gods don’t need to speak. They only need to desire, and they have it.”

“You wish.”

“You’ve harnessed me and you’re using my power somehow and I can’t even hate you for it, because whenever I think of how much rage I ought to feel, my whole being is suffused with warmth and passion and lust for your miserable wizened old body.”

“You should be a poet, the way you bandy words of love.”

“I just thought you’d be interested to know that I’ve figured it all out.”

“It took you long enough, but you
are
a bear, after all.”

“I think I’ve figured it out before, and then you give me something to make me forget.”

“Memory is so fickle,” said Baba Yaga. “Just keep loving me, my pet.”

“Oh, I do,” said Bear. “With all my bitter heart, I love you.”

“And you promise that you’ll miss me when I’m gone to that place where Ivan and Katerina are hiding from me?”

“I’ll smell your scent on the bedclothes and go mad from missing you.”

“Give me a kiss then. And come to bed with me. You notice I didn’t burn the bed. So you see I do love you.”

Bear shook his great head back and forth. “Bed’s not burnt, no.”

“Then let’s burn it now. A bonfire of passion. Many a woman has had her triumphs under the bedclothes, but I . . . I have tamed a bear! I have slept with Winter and I have made him warm!”

Bear growled a little, but he did as he was bidden.

10

Old Gods

There is always a symmetry in magical things, a balance, so Katerina well knew what to expect when she stepped off the invisible bridge into the land of Ivan’s birth. Nothing could be carried across the bridge; only what you already had would be restored to you. So yes, of course, the fire-holed priestly robe disappeared from Ivan’s body and was replaced by the clothing he had been wearing on that fateful day when he fought his way to the place of her enchantment and kissed her awake. And yes, she felt the cool breeze of evening all over her body, for her own clothing had vanished, to be replaced by nothing, for she had never been in this place and had no vestment here.

The shame of it made her breathless for a moment. True, Ivan was her husband; but since he did not love her and would never come to her as husband now, she felt no stirring of anticipation to soften the shock of being exposed before a man. A woman’s nakedness was a precious thing, to be protected until it was given as a gift to her husband. Or, in this case, to her people, for was it not for their sake that she had done all these things? Made a vow to this stranger, and crossed this bridge, and now exposed herself to any eye?

Ivan laughed.

In that moment she hated him, that he would laugh at her.

“Oh, you’re angry?” he said.

She did not like the taunting tone of his voice, and turned her back on him.

“I wasn’t laughing at you,” said Ivan, “I was laughing at fate. The—” He searched for a word. “—malice of fate.”

No, she was not going to hide from him, as if
she
had cause for shame. She turned to face him, though she could not stop herself from covering her breasts with her arms. “I’m naked and you’re laughing,” she said.

“I’m not laughing now,” he said. “But it’s childish of you to be angry at me. You laughed at
my
nakedness.”

“I did not,” she said. Though the moment she said it, she could not remember if she had or not. But why shouldn’t she? “You’re a man. Men are naked whenever they want.”

“Not in my world,” said Ivan. “In my world, it’s women who are more often naked. But I’m sorry that I laughed.”

He began unfastening his shirt. What, did he think she’d feel better if he joined her in nakedness? Or did he think this was a good moment to consummate their marriage vows?

Neither. He shrugged the shirt off his shoulders, pulled the sleeves over his wrists, and then offered the thing to her.

“And what would I do with this?”

“Wear it,” he said.

Was he insane? Had he learned nothing? “I’m a Christian woman,” she said. “What you suggest is too wicked to imagine.”

He rolled his eyes, as if she were an annoying child. “In your world, you were right, and I was wrong to wear women’s clothing. It was better to be naked.”

“Then why are you offering me this?”

“Because this isn’t your world. And here, it’s no sin for a woman to wear men’s clothing. In fact, it’s done all the time, and it means nothing. Christian women do it and no one thinks ill of them. A woman puts on her husband’s shirt and we think it’s charming. That it shows love and intimacy between them.”

She was horrified to think that Christianity had come to such a pass. “And does the husband put on his wife’s dress?”

He looked embarrassed. “Well, actually, no. I mean, some do, but we think of that as . . . strange.”

“The world may be insane, but I am not,” she said. She turned her back on him again. “Wherever we’re going, let’s go. The day is late, and I’ll be cold if I spend the night in the forest.”

“Katerina,” he said. His tone of voice was one she hadn’t heard from him before. Angry. No, masterful.

“What?” she said.

“Look at me,” he said.

She turned to face him, letting her own anger show. “What is this? Are you claiming the right of a husband? Or do you forget that even as your wife, I’m the princess of Taina?”

“I’m forgetting nothing. I’m claiming nothing.” But his tone did not become meek again. “You’re the one forgetting something. This is not your world. There is no Taina here, and no princesses. Only a naked woman and a man with clothing on. And in
this
world, people will suspect only two possible explanations. One is that he has raped her. The other is that she’s a whore.”

The insult was unbearable. Without even thinking, she slapped him.

“Oh, good,” he said, not even seeming to register the sting of the slap, though his cheek turned red. “So you’ve decided to make them think I’ve raped you. What will happen, of course, is that I’ll be taken to . . . I’ll be taken away and punished. And since you don’t speak the language here, and can’t prove who you are, and if they do understand you you’ll have these wild stories about being an enchanted princess, I can bet you’ll be put in a . . . pen for crazy people. And that’s the end of the story.”

She had no idea what he was talking about. A pen for crazy people? A man taken away for rape? Either he married the woman or was killed for it by the woman’s family.

She hadn’t really thought of it before—though she should have, she saw that now. His bizarre behavior when he arrived in Taina wasn’t a private madness of his own. He came from a mad world, and by crossing the bridge, she had entered into madness. The rules were different here; that’s why he came to Taina with strange expectations.

But how much did a Christian woman have to compromise just because she was in a strange place? Her first instinct was: Compromise nothing. God’s law is not changed, just because a woman travels from one place to another. It is still a shame for a woman to be naked, still a worse shame for her to put a man’s clothing upon her.

And yet . . . if he told the truth, what then? She was not a whore; should she behave in a way that made people think that she was? That was a kind of lying, wasn’t it? And he had not raped her—indeed, he
could
not rape her, for the vows had been said, and it was his right to use her body as he saw fit. So he was the opposite of a rapist, he was a kind husband who had not forced his reluctant wife, and he even now respected her decency by not eyeing her naked body even though it was on plain display for him. Instead, he was offering her a way to cover herself.

“Adam and Eve covered themselves with leaves,” said Ivan.

“That would keep us warm for a night,” she said. “But we couldn’t walk far.”

“They covered themselves to hide their nakedness,” said Ivan. “They covered themselves with whatever they had available. Here is a piece of cloth with sleeves for your arms and a way to fasten it closed across your body. It may once have been used as clothing by another person, but that person renounces it. It is not his clothing. It is not clothing at all. Here . . . it’s garbage.” He dropped the shirt on the ground. “Look!” he said. “A piece of cloth! I wonder what it could be? Look, Katerina, maybe you could use it as a kind of gown.”

Was he mocking her with this childish pretense? “Do you think I’m so stupid as to be deceived?”

His face flashed again with anger, but he controlled it, kept his voice calm and measured. “Listen, Katerina. To me, the idea of walking naked into your village was the most shameful, humiliating thing I could imagine. You could not have found a better way of debasing me, in my own eyes. But you told me that this is how it
had
to be done, in your world, and I obeyed, no matter how hard it was for me. I trusted you.”

“This is how the devil talks,” she said coldly. “I didn’t tell you that you couldn’t wear my hoose ‘in my world,’ I said a decent man wouldn’t even try to wear a hoose at all!”

“In
your world
,” he said again, insisting, his voice angrier. “In
my
world, a decent man would not let his wife—no,
any
woman that he respected—stand naked before others. It would be the most shameful thing you could do to me—again.
Again,
because you’re always right and nobody else knows anything,
again
you are determined to shame me.”

The vehemence of his tone shook her. “Do you, as my husband, command me to defile myself by wearing this shirt?”

He seemed to despair at this. “In my world a man doesn’t command his wife, he persuades her. If he can.”

“Then why are you raising your voice to me, if not to command?”

“I obeyed
you
, when you told me what to do in your world,” he said. His voice was soft now, but no less intense.

“Of course you did. I’m the princess of Taina.”

“In my world, princesses can stamp their pretty little feet and issue commands to their heart’s content, but the only people who obey them are their paid servants. Common people like me pay no attention at all.”

These words frightened her even more than his immoral claims about women wearing men’s clothing. “Is the world turned upside down, then?”

“At least in our world we don’t have witches threatening to take over a kingdom unless the princess marries a complete stranger who fights a bear and jumps a moat and kisses her awake.”

She didn’t understand how a world could even exist where people had no respect for authority, where women wore men’s clothing and husbands did not command their wives. And she was cold. The sun was behind the trees now, and in the shade the breeze began to have teeth to it.

She bent over and picked up the shirt. She tried not to weep, but could not contain the tears of shame that came to her eyes. She put it on like a hoose. The sleeves hung longer than her arms. She did not know how to fasten the big heavy buttons, and couldn’t keep the sleeves from falling over her fingers as she tried.

He came to her then and buttoned the shirt, his hands awkward between her breasts, at her belly; but he was gentle, and he seemed genuinely sorry for her tears. He tried once to wipe them away with his hand, but by reflex she shied away from him. He withdrew his hand at once, as if she had slapped him again.

“It’s all right,” she said. “You can touch me. It’s your right.”

“It’s my right,” he said, “to touch a woman who loves me and trusts me and gives herself to me freely, and not just because of some ancient witch’s curse or her duty to her country.”

She could not help thinking: This is not the way Dimitri would have acted, if he were my husband. She honored Ivan for the difference.

He fastened the last button, his hands brushing against her groin, but only incidentally, without any intimate intent; but that very detachment on his part, that lack of interest, made his touch all the more disturbing. She shuddered.

“Sorry,” he murmured. “I’ve never dressed a woman before.”

When he stood up, he was blushing. Now she saw that it wasn’t weakness in him, to be so sensitive to shame. It was kindness. He cared about her, about how she was feeling. Just as he had cared for Lybed. Just as he had tried his best to do his duty and become a soldier for her sake. Katerina tried to imagine a druzhinnik blushing for any reason. The only time their faces turned red was when they were full of drink, or when they had worked themselves into a sweat on the practice field.

Ivan began to roll up her sleeves. He did this more deftly than he had done the buttoning. Soon her hands were free.

“If you had done this first,” she said, “I could have—”

“I know,” he said. “But I didn’t think of it till after. Let’s just add it to the long list of stupid mistakes I’ve made.”

The job done, he stepped away from her. He looked at her face for a moment, but what he saw there must have displeased him, for he turned his back and walked to the edge of the pit and looked down.

What had he seen in her face? All she felt was fear, uncertainty. She was wearing a shameful thing and trying not to act ashamed. Was that what made him turn away?

She could see that Ivan was trying to be a good man. He was not a devil, nor a servant of Satan. She had seen his actions long enough to know that he was almost priestlike in his gentleness. He had never used a sword. He was peaceable as a lamb. Wasn’t that more Christian than to be a druzhinnik, spending his days preparing to kill other men?

How could she, a Christian, have failed to see such Christlike attributes in this stranger? Jesus said to judge not, lest ye be judged. How unjustly have I judged him, again and again?

“Ivan,” she said softly.

He did not turn to face her. “What,” he said, his voice dispirited.

She had to know if he really was the man of peace she had just imagined him to be. “When you fought the bear—had you ever fought an enemy before?”

He did not answer.

She asked again. “Was it the first time you ever used a weapon, when you flung that stone and put out the bear’s eye?”

He turned on her, and to her shock there were tears on his cheeks. He made no effort to brush them away, and he sounded, not sad, but angry when he answered her. “You’re right,” he said, “I’m a contemptible weakling, I’m not strong and brave like the men in your father’s druzhina, you’re right to despise me.”

She would have interrupted him, told him that her question had not implied criticism of him; but he gave her no chance to speak.

“I never fought an enemy,” he said. “I never held a weapon in my hands, and I never intended to, and I
still
never intend to, now that I’m not in Taina anymore. And if, for some reason, I ever did have to take up a weapon and use it against an enemy, there is one thing I can promise: I would
not
be doing it to impress you with how manly I am, because I don’t give a rat’s ass what you think of me.”

She had never heard anyone curse by referring to the anus of a rat before. It was a loathsome thought, and her face showed her disgust.

“Whatever you may think of
me
,” he said, “and however you may hate wearing that shirt, I know where there’s a warm house and a clean bed, and plenty of food and water, so I’d suggest you follow me.
Princess.
”

And to think that for a moment there, I was actually imagining him to be a little bit like Jesus.

But he knew the way to the house and the fire, to the food and the drink. And he was her husband, and she knew her duty. He had dressed her in rags of shame, and now she would come and bear her shame among his people. She stepped toward him. He turned his back on her and strode off into the woods. She followed him. Only now and then did he glance back to make sure she was with him. She always was.