Deathless by Catherynne Valente Read Free Book Online Page A

began to cough up dust, awful, racking sounds in the night. And like a fever, Marya’s fear broke.
    *   *   *
     
    “I’m here !” screamed Marya Morevna into Widow Likho’s curiously empty house. No other families greeted her or told her to shut up, for heaven’s sake. “Do you hear me? I’m here! I brought your book! Leave my mother alone!”
    Likho stepped quietly into the hall and turned her head to the side to face Marya without moving the rest of her long black body.
    “I haven’t done a thing to your mother, child. She’s such a nice lady, bringing an old woman tea and sweets in the evening! What a shame her daughter has no manners.”
    “Bad Luck, I know you! It’s your fault she broke her foot, and your fault she’s coughing, and it will be your fault when she loses her job at the factory!” Marya shook—she felt like she might throw up again, but she savagely bit the inside of her lip, willing her body to obey her.
    Likho spread her long white hands. “I am what I am, Marya Morevna. You cannot be angry with a stove for heating the house. That is what it was built for.”
    “Well, I’m here now. Leave her alone.”
    “It’s dear of you to visit your old baba, little one, but there’s no need. It’s too late; the time has passed.”
    “Too late for what? What’s going on? Why do the domoviye know my name? Please tell me!”
    Likho laughed harshly. Her laugh bounced off of the parlor lamp; the bulb shattered.
    “When the world was young, it knew only seven things. And one of these was the length of an hour. Such a pity little Marya doesn’t know it. You had an hour to learn at my knee, and an hour, if I wish it, can be as long as all of spring. But the hour has chimed. He is coming; I am leaving. We try to stay out of each other’s way. Family occasions can be so awkward.”
    Marya’s mind surged ahead of itself. Her cheeks burned. The black book was warm in her arms.
    “You’re the Tsaritsa of the Length of an Hour.”
    “Bad luck relies absolutely on perfect timing.” Likho grinned.
    “Who is coming?” pleaded Marya Morevna. The Tsar from the poem? But that was only a story—but so were domoviye, and yet. She could not put it all together. She was missing vital information, and she hated it. When she knew and others didn’t, that was better. “Tell me!” Marya tried to command the Widow; she tried to bellow and grow taller in her shoes.
    But Likho only shuddered, and folded up her body like a suitcase, and the black of her dress became the black pelt of a tall racing hound, its ribs tucked up into its dark belly. It barked once, so loud Marya clapped her hands over her ears, and then disappeared with a crackling, crushing sound.

5
    Who Is to Rule
     
    In a city by the sea, there stood a long, thin house on a long, thin street, and by a long, thin window, Marya Morevna sat and wept in her work clothes, and did not look out into the leafy trees. The winter moon looked in at her, stroking her hair with a silver hand. She was sixteen years of age, with seventeen’s shadow hanging heavy on her every tear. Old enough to work after school, old enough to be tired in her joints and her heels, old enough to know that something irretrievable had passed her by.
    If she had looked out the window, she might have seen a great, hoary old black owl alight on the branch of the oak tree. She might have seen the owl lean perilously forward on his green-black branch and, without taking his gaze from her window, fall hard—thump, bash!—onto the streetside. She would have seen the bird bounce up, and when he righted himself, become a handsome young man in a handsome black coat, his dark hair curly and thick, flecked with silver, his mouth half-smiling, as if anticipating a terribly sweet thing.
    But Marya Morevna saw none of this. She only heard the knock at the great cherrywood door, and rushed to answer it before her mother could wake. She stood there in her factory overalls, her face