16: One-Eyed Likho
The soldiers went about their business outside-Galina heard their footsteps, accompanied by the cheerful clinks of their spurs against the cobbles of the yard.
Timur-Bey shook his head in disapproval. Tearing up their horses sides, that's not good. Horse is a clever animal. It's like spurring your child."
"I don't know about that, Yakov replied. Be quiet-I'm trying to hear what's going on."
The voices that reached them were muffled, the words indistinguishable. And then there were other sounds-scratching and awful quiet slurping, and whispers like icy needles. Galina bit down on the knuckle of her index finger, trying to keep herself from screaming and running in blind terror.
The terrible sounds-she didn't dare to imagine their source, but she knew without verbalizing it that the calamity outside was not human-drew closer. It was as if someone was licking the door of the barn with a scratchy yet wet gigantic tongue. Stories, stories forgotten out of fear when she was still a child, flooded her memory, as fresh as years ago. The witch that licked through oven doors made of seven layers of cast iron. Creatures with tongues hanging down to their withered breasts, their claws finding the eyes of their children-victims with the unflinching accuracy of fate. Words like needles, eyes like coals.
The snuffling by the door. A giant wet nose pressed against the treacherous boards, sniffing out the human flesh inside. Hot fetid breath reached her face through the gaps between the wooden planks, bathing it in a stench of rotten onions. She bit harder in order not to gag.
Even Zemun seemed scared-her massive body pressed into Galina, seeking comfort and almost toppling her. She pushed back, and the warmth and the milky smell of the cowhide momentarily comforted her. She wondered what was inside Zemun-was it real flesh or just stars? If one were to poke a hole in her white hide, would the blinding light spill out, burning everything in its proximity to hot astral cinders?
And then, just like that, something burst through the boards, like a blast from a sawed-off shotgun. Galina saw spread claws and a giant eye, burning like the stormy anxious sun, and she felt a knock on her chest, an impact throwing her to the ground. Yakov and Timur-Bey grabbed at the intruder, and Zemun's hooves beat the air as she reared up. Her horns tilted and threw the attacker against the wall. He landed with a dull thump and Galina sat up, her breath ragged and wheezing.
The creature was smaller than she had originally thought-it was human-sized, but with sharp talons and tufts of feathers on wrists covered with puckered livid skin. Its lipless mouth twisted, baring large yellow teeth square like the grid of a chessboard. Its single eye blazed from the middle of its forehead, and Galina realized who had just laid hands on her.
Zemun spoke first. One-Eyed Likho, she said. I thought we were rid of you two."
Galina heard the stories about Likho and its companion, Zlyden. She knew these two parasitic entities, the embodiments of bad fortune, that attached themselves to their victim until the victim lost everything and was eventually killed by the sheer constellation of bad luck.
Likho breathed heavily. Stupid cow, it said in a rasping voice. You think putting me into a barrel and throwing me into a river would get rid of me? There's always some poor fool who will open it. People can't stand closed barrels and chests and boxes-haven't you learned that?"
"Those soldiers let you out then, Koschey said. Stupid mortals."
"Yes, they did, Likho gloated. And we stuck to them, stuck to them like tar to fur. We followed them home, only they were dead and dumb, stuck on the wrong side of the river, never to find their kin, never to find your stupid little town. Too dead to know what bad luck is."
"Why are you staying with them then? Timur-Bey asked. And why the birds?"
Likho gave a small, demented titter. Too curious and yet too blind. Blind like Berendey-stupid old man, thought he could lure us back into a barrel. But we changed his luck, changed his luck. And your luck will change too, you two-insane girl, lazy cop. You'll have it so bad you'll think you had it good before."
The soldiers crowded the doorway, muskets at the ready.
Zemun lowed and shook her head at them. You don't have to do what Likho and Zlyden tell you to."
"Yes, we do, said the Corporal. They promised us life, they promised us that we will walk the earth again, escape this tepid hell and live again. They promised us eyes and wings of birds that fly, that see"
As his voice trailed off and his musket lowered, its bayonet leveling at Yakov's chest, he stepped forward. The embrasure left where the door used to be let in the scant light, and Galina's gaze followed the upward sweep of the palace wall outside. The roof was too high above to see it, but she could imagine it, crusted over with the black mass of poor displaced birds. Masha! she screamed.
The soldiers stepped closer but stopped, unsure whether they should do anything-after all, she was not fighting them, but calling. Masha, Masha!"
A thunderous clapping of wings and cawing answered her, the birds startled by her screams. She could picture them, circling, crying out-and then they came, pouring in a feathered stream, black as pitch, through the doorway.
The birds seemed confused as they attacked the soldiers, then turned on Galina and her friends. Zemun chased the flapping birds away with flicks of her tail, unimpressed by their sharp beaks and shiny eyes. Yakov just covered his head with his folded arms, but looked up into the cloud of birds, as did Galina, both of them searching for the impossible recognition-every jackdaw looked the same as any other, every crow was the same too. Maybe Masha was among them, maybe not. And she suspected that Yakov was hoping to see his pet crow Carl, and perhaps ask his forgiveness.
She peeked between the fingers protecting her eyes, and saw that the soldiers chased the birds away with their muskets, even knocking some out of the air with the stocks. There were feathers fluttering through the air. One of them, shiny-black, spun past her face like a miniature helicopter rotor.
"Please, Galina whispered to the spinning feather, even as rough hands and wooden musket stocks pushed her through the doorway, please don't let me die before finding you. Please don't let them kill me before I talk to you again. She whispered to the feather until it hit the ground, like it was a falling star.
"Of course they're not going to kill us, Yakov said. Weren't you listening? Why would they kill us if they can just drain our luck? Use your brain, for once."
Galina bit her lip and didn't answer. Ever since they had been ushered into the palace, all the while fending off frenzied, screeching birds, Yakov had seemed unsettled. His usual apathetic demeanor was replaced with irritability and occasional vicious malice.
The room they currently occupied was a bona fide dun-geon-underground, with a crisscrossing of thick beams, a heavy bolted door and a stern tiny window in the door, guarded by iron bars. There was plenty of straw to sleep on and a dim light in which Yakov's face seemed haunted and angry. Perhaps it's just the beard, Galina thought, giving him that hungry, desperate countenance. But his angry words still rang in her ears, and she retreated to a corner, wishing nothing better than to bury herself in the straw and disappear.
Yakov paced the room. I can't believe it, he said. This place they plunder everything you believe, then they take your memories, and now our luck. What kind of place is this?"