Moscow but Dreaming

I was a mad woman then, torn by grief and remorse, furious with my failure to ward off misfortune. I looked for Anya in every crowd, on every subway station, in the windows of every building I passed. I looked for her on the granite riverbanks, but the river was already encased in sickly green ice.

I looked for her in the ghostly-pale faces of rusalki, souls of drowned girls, their mouths gaping like underwater caves, their long, loose hair streaming and floating around their faces as if lifted by slow current. I found them under the bridge the night of the winter solstice. They did not shiver in their thin garments, and their eyes were remote and starless. They held hands and danced in a circle, their bare feet insensitive to the cold of the stone bank and of ice that encrusted it.

“Have you seen her?” I begged. “Did she drown?” Their ethereal faces turned one pale cheek, then the other in a slow underwater no. “Not our sister,” came their quiet, gurgling voices. “We’ve seen no girl falling through the ice; we’ve seen no girl struggling for air; we’ve seen no girl dragged into black, silent water. We’ve seen no new sister, and we dance without her.”

I was somewhat comforted by their words. “Can you ask others?”

“Drowned puppies and alley cats haven’t seen her either.”

“Can you ask the leshy?”

They shook their heads in unison, their hair undulating like seaweeds. “Ask him yourself. You’re an in-between one, a neitherhere-nor-there—” Their voices trailed off, and they returned to their slow dance. They held hands and spun, sometimes on stone, sometimes on ice.

I stood and watched them, deaf and dumb from cold, darkness, and despair. They were long gone, and my feet grew numb, and the stars spilled over the sky like breadcrumbs on a table, when I regained my voice. I howled at the dark river, at the city nestled like an infant in the crook of its frozen elbow. I screamed for the leshy to come out, come out, wherever he was, and to give my Anya back. I knew that the bastard twisted her around, made her lose her way in the dark and the cold, to make me come for her.

No answer came, and I wandered away from the river, toward the boulevards that circled the heart of the city, studded with oversized jewels of frozen ponds, towards Alexandrovsky Garden. The streets were sleek with black ice that reflected the streetlights, as if there were another city hidden in frozen puddles. A façade of a three-story old mansion reflected there too, and its closed doors seemed open in its reflection. After a moment of hesitation, I closed my eyes and stepped into the upside-down maw of the reflected doorway.

For a moment, my foot touched the slippery solid surface of ice, and then broke through, into a faintly fluorescent, moldy air of an underground forest. Long beards of Icelandic moss hung from the rimed branches of dead spruces, and no footsteps resonated on a soft carpet of their fallen needles.

“Leshy,” I called. “Give my girl back to me.”

The wind rose and moaned and bent the treetops almost to the ground. The frozen whip of my hair lashed my face, and the hoarfrost in the air stung my eyes, narrowing them to rheumy slits.

“Come out, you bastard!”

I had no idea of where I was going in the underground dead forest, screaming into the wind. I never questioned it, but let my guts lead me as long as my legs would carry me. Soon, buckled over by the wind, I sank to my knees in deep moss by a slender birch. It creaked and moaned under the assault of the wind. Yet, its bare branches bent over and around me, forming a protective cocoon, stroking my shoulders.

“Help me,” I whispered.

The branches hugged me closer, and I felt rejuvenated and strong, as the dying tree poured the last of its life into me.

“I’m looking for a girl, as fair as your bark, as gentle as your touch. Have you seen her?”

The birch shuddered and stretched its branches against the howling storm, pointing deeper into the forest. I cringed as I heard a sharp crack of snapping wood. I thanked the birch and was on my way, plunging headlong into the solid wall of the wind.

I had no sense of direction, but the leshy was too eager to divert me: as much as he tried to confuse me, to make me lose my way, I kept turning into the wind, until I crossed a clearing and stood on the shore of a lake, its water calm despite the storm. Cattails fringed its shores, their leaves green and erect, their brown heads nodding to me as if in greeting. Yellow water lilies stood still over its mirror-clean surface; I realized how thirsty I was.

I drank on my knees, like an animal, the cool water soothing my cracked, burning lips, its water washing away the sting of the cold. I looked at the surface, waiting for it to calm down. I was expecting to see my face, but instead I saw Anya. The water caressed my fingers, and I recognized her despite her change.

A quiet fell over the world, and I could hear my labored breathing. And then, someone else’s.

I turned around.

“So you’ve found her,” the leshy said.

I nodded, and touched my fingers to the lake Anya’s surface in reassurance. “I came to take her back.”

The leshy smiled, and I noticed how much he’d aged since our last meeting. The bark of his skin seemed diseased, mottled with fungi, and the deep green of his hair was turning lichen-grey. “Take her back, eh? How are you going to accomplish that?”

I scrambled for an answer. If she were dead or unconscious, I would’ve gathered her into my arms and walked away. Were she turned to stone, I would’ve broken my back but carried her out. But she was liquid that poured over my fingers, streamed down my face, wetted my lips. “Turn her back to her human form,” I said.

He smiled still. “I wish I could do that.”

I raised my fist, furious with his smirk. “Don’t play with me, or I’ll smash your face in; I’ll burn your forest, I’ll salt the ground—”

He raised his palm. “Quiet, girl. I cannot do what you ask, threaten all you want . . . I am not strong enough.” He seemed embarrassed as he uttered the last words.

“Why not?”

“My forest is dying without water. I need you to bring it to the trees.”

“And then you’ll let us go?”

His steep shoulders slumped. “If that’s what you wish, kikimora.”

“Don’t call me that!”

“I can call you whatever you wish me to, but it won’t change what you are.” His eyes were black holes, bottomless in the bark of his face; deep dark caverns, home to bats and night birds. “I need a swamp to bring the water to my trees; I need creeks and puddles, moss and bogs.”

I sighed. “How do I do that?”

He gave me an apprehensive look, as if worried that I will swing at him again. “I’ll help you along. Just be what you are.”

And then I was. I unraveled and un-spun, my limbs splaying and elongating. My fingers twined with Anya’s, watery and comforting. My skin split, exposing the hummocks of sphagnum moss (were they always there?), and my veins divided and opened, overflowing with blood as clear as Anya’s. The tree roots entangled in my toes, I stretched and engulfed, fed and watered, laughed and nurtured. And Anya’s hands caressed mine, our lips met, our hearts beat as one. I felt the leshy nearby, getting stronger, feeding on us, melding with us, mud and water, blood and moss, lichen and stone.

I did not know how many days had passed, but the trees came back to life—the spruces had regrown their needles, and the birches stood surrounded by a pale halo of young greenery. The leshy, healthy and exuberant, disengaged himself from the tree roots and my mires, and stood once again in a human form next to Anya’s shore. I followed his example and deflated and creaked, putting myself back together. My skin had grown green like my hair, and mushrooms sprouted where my fingers used to be. “Turn her back,” I said. I would take care of myself later.

“As you wish.”

The water of the lake agitated and formed a pillar, still and shining like glass. Then its surface clouded, as if someone spilled milk into it, and Anya’s sweet face looked at me without reproach. She stepped onto the shore of an empty lake basin, her skin clear, her hair long and golden, flowing down her shoulders. My breath caught in my throat, and simultaneously I grew selfconscious and ashamed. She was so pretty and perfect, and I had become a nasty, ugly thing. A swamp kikimora, fit only to frighten travelers and give children nightmares.

The leshy and Anya smiled at me, unfazed.

“I can’t go back like this,” I said to the leshy. “Can you make me the way I used to be?”

“If that’s what you want.” He shrugged with pretend indifference, and looked away.

“Anya?”

She shook her head. “I’d rather stay.” Her voice lilted and sung, like a creek jumping from stone to stone. “What’s back there? What do you miss?”

I stumbled for words. There was nothing there but the cold and the wolf-year, eager to tear out every jugular. Nothing but the shifty-eyed people, quickly dismantling everything that we ever knew, everything that retained a shred of meaning. Nothing but money that no one had but everyone wanted.

“Well?” the leshy said. “Should I turn you into a girl and send you on your way?” A spark danced inside his deep tree hole eyes, as if he already knew what I was going to say.