Likho watched the happenings with its single eye burning. It swallowed often and looked around, as if searching for escape routes, but as the tar kept pouring and dripping, forming long streaks like melting candle wax, Likho's gaze focused on Slava, as it were drawn to him with some inexplicable force.
The rusalki loosened the bonds, and Likho strained toward Slava, now just an amorphous mass of tar. They let it go, and Likho bounded to its victim, claws extended and mouth slavering. In one long low jump Likho reached Slava, wrapped its scaly arms around him and clung, suddenly submissive and content.
"What's happening? Fyodor whispered.
"A curse, Koschey explained. Likho will stick to him now. Whatever he attempts, he won't succeed."
"You're not going to kill him? Fyodor asked.
Koschey turned to face him; in the twilight his cheeks were dark hollows, and his eyes barely glistened from under the dark heavy eyelids. I'm not a merciful entity, Koschey said. They call me chthonic. They call me Deathless, but death is my realm, and I want nothing to do with his kind. Let him walk the earth forever, like accursed Cain with a red brand on his face, let One-Eyed Likho follow him for all eternity."
"You're going leave this thing here? Fyodor said.
Koschey shrugged. You heard the countess. Better you than us."
"But I thought"
"What you thought doesn't matter, Elena interrupted. As long as you're on the surface, you're not a friend. You have your problems, we have ours. You dumped enough corpses and spoiled magic underground already. Let's see you deal with your own problems for a while."
"She's not a benign entity either, Koschey said, and a shadow of affection snuck into his old brittle voice.
The tar had thickened around Likho, making it into a shapeless lump-Slava looked like a hunchback, Likho just an ugly growth now. The tar started to melt and soon was absorbed, leaving only a few unclean stains and drips on the cabin floor.
Slava shook-shuddered, even, with strong convulsing spasms. Likho became just a bump on his back, smaller than before, but certainly disfiguring and prominent enough to split open the maroon jacket along the seam. His gaze cast wildly about, as if it were Likho looking out of his wide eyes.
"Go, Koschey motioned. Go and don't ever come back to Kolomenskoe, or you'll regret it."
Slava hunched over, eyeing them all like a cornered wolf. I know where your death is, he howled to Koschey, and bounded through the lights into the surrounding darkness. There was a crunching of snow and a snapping of branches, and Fyodor exhaled in relief.
Koschey sighed too. Everyone knows where my death is, he said, addressing the direction of Slava's flight. What no one understands is that it doesn't matter."
"How do you mean? Yakov said. He had remained silent until then, his head cocked to one shoulder as if he was listening to some distant whispers rather than the goings-on. Why doesn't it matter? Aren't you afraid that someone will find it?"
Koschey took the white feather out of his pocket. They can find it, he said, but they can't destroy it. How do you destroy a negation?"
"Metaphysics, Elena interrupted. Come on, turn the birds into people."
"Wait, Galina said, anxious. Are you sure they are all there?"
"As sure as we're going to be, Elena said. The mermaids and the First Cavalry scoured every corner and shooed them all here."
"I thought you said they were symbols, Fyodor said.
Elena tossed her head impatiently, letting loose a long serpentine coil of her smooth hair. What does that have to do with their ability to scare up birds?"
Koschey stepped to the lights that now burned brighter. The white feather in his fingers trembled and stretched, shooting long tendrils of blinding-white fog that stood against the darkness around the cabin like the flares of the aurora borealis.
The birds, invisible in the black branches of the trees, rose as one to meet the wrapping of the tendrils; the fog spread until Fyodor saw nothing but white, and then he had to look away.
When he looked back, he saw people like any others. Their feathers turned into black and gray and brown clothes with only occasional splashes of color. They looked around them as if waking from deep sleep; Fyodor tried to imagine what was it like for them-were their lives as birds just vague ghosts now, things one remembers in a dream? Did they wonder how they got there? And, most importantly, what was it like, waking up back in one's body, and finding oneself in Kolomenskoe at the very break of dawn?
He tried to imagine it now-their lives, their dreams. They were just like everyone else; Fyodor thought about the time when everything changed. He was glad then that he'd chosen to live in the streets, painting the overly-expressive gypsies and sentimental landscapes, and not having to deal with the shifting economic and political climate. He could ignore the fearful glances of the people who suddenly felt that the very fabric of reality had been yanked from under them as the oil industry became privatized and classified ads bristled with scary and foreign job titles-copywriter, realtor, and manager. The techy kids, marked from childhood by their glasses and pasty complexion for the engineering careers, dropped out of colleges and opened their own programming companies, while the engineers, suddenly finding themselves on the brink of starvation, sold cigarettes through the tiny clear plastic embrasures of the subway kiosks.
Fyodor remembered the conversation he had overheard in the street once. Two men, both small, slender and unremarkable-likely engineers or junior researchers-stopped by Fyodor's paintings. Not to buy (he had a pretty good instinct in that regard) but to stare at the inviting cloudless azure of the summer sky on one of the canvas.
"I have to take another job, one of them said. He looked the epitome of the Soviet engineer, a gray harmless creature, timid to the point of invisibility. Sveta wants to privatize the apartment, and Grandma is ailing and her pension only pays for the fish for her cat."
"You can work for me, his companion said. You can sell shawls-we have a joint venture with those folk-masters from Vologda. Nice lace too."
"Sell? his interlocutor repeated with a note of candid fear in his voice. I can't. I don't know how."
"There's nothing to know, his friend reassured. His distracted gaze slid over Fyodor as if he were as inanimate as one of his paintings. Easy; just hold those things up and be loud."
"I don't know how to be loud, the presumed engineer said, desperation edging into his voice.
As Fyodor watched the group of people outside, as they looked at each other and shook their heads, trying to remember, and cried silently, he realized what they had in common. The bird people were the ones who did not know how to be loud, in any sense of the word-they only tried to carry on as best they could, holding to the memory of a dignity that didn't seem to be allowed in the new capitalist jungles that sprouted around them, lush and suffocating and seductive but blocking the view of everything but themselves. He felt acute pity for their voicelessness, for their inability to adjust or to turn back time.
He watched as Galina and Fyodor stepped outside and mingled with the crowd. Oksana nudged him. Do you want to go to them?"
"Why? Fyodor said. What can I do?"
"It doesn't matter, Oksana said. Can't you see? They need someone to tell them it's going to be all right."
Fyodor followed her down the steps of the cabin, which seemed to have reappeared from the dimmed lights, outlined anew against the gray dawn sky. He promised himself never to go back to this place, to avoid every memory of Peter the Great and his blasted cabin that harbored rather more than he was willing to take on. He wondered if it was possible to simply forget such things, and smiled to himself lopsidedly-his drinking would surely take care of that, and who needed a liver anyway.