Page 93 of Devil's Deal

In that one flash of light, I saw the thing that sat on me. Sickly pale and beastly, it had a pair of spiteful, narrow eyes and a wide-open maw filled with needle-sharp teeth. It’s head was huge, way too big for its rangy body that sat on top of my chest like a cat, its clawed paws resting on my breasts, the rest of it on my stomach.

It looked small, its size completely incongruent with its weight. In the light, it glistened, as if wet with a strange, viscous afterbirth. On its bald head, there were a few tufts of black and gray hair slicked back with the wetness.

Disgusting and horrible, I don’t even know how it got in my cottage, and that alone makes me feel painfully unsafe. I shake, my body still frozen, my eyes wide open and staring into the black.

I don’t know how much time passes. My heart slowly calms down as I lie in bed, motionless and terrified the thing will come back. I listen intently, but everything is quiet. No more scuttling steps, no more chuffing noises. But the darkness makes me feel vulnerable and defenseless, and I’m scared to leave my bed.

I’ve never been violated in my own home like this. I don’t even know what kind of bies it was, though my immediate thought is that it must have come from Woland.

“Wiosna?” I whisper quietly when I have enough control over my breathing not to hyperventilate. “Where are you?”

She doesn’t reply, and a new terror seizes me. What if the thing hurt her before it started on me? I don’t know what it was, but it might very well be able to hurt a being from the afterworld. Oh, gods. I can’t bear the thought of Wiosna being gone again. I’ve barely gotten her back.

And to think that my last words to her were a stupid threat about chasing her off.

“Wiosna, please,” I say, a bit more loudly. “Please, say something.”

My chest still hurts, but it’s getting manageable. I ponder whether to get out of bed and light the fire in my hearth to at least have some light. If the monster comes back, I definitely want to see it. And yet, I’m reluctant to leave my bed, even though this is the very place where I was attacked.

“Oh, Wiosna,” I sob, weak and broken.

I can’t pretend to be strong when I’m all alone in the dark.

“Why are you calling me in the middle of the night?” comes my mentor’s irate voice. “You should be asleep, and I have fun things to do in Nawie, so... Wait. What’s that foul aura?”

For a moment, I am too stupefied to speak, and then I laugh and wheeze, overwhelmed and so relieved, I get dizzy. Wiosna grumbles, but when her half-hearted reassurances of “there, there” don’t work, she simply waits until my fit passes. Finally, I grow quiet, only a small giggle escaping here and there.

“Tell me what was in here,” she says when I’m composed enough.

I explain what happened, doing my best to stay calm even though reliving the monster’s visit makes me shiver in fright. I felt truly helpless at that moment, weak and about to die. Just like all those years ago in the woods, when a knife was in my belly and I realized I couldn’t be saved.

It seems I can’t escape that night, no matter how fast I run. It doesn’t matter I was saved in the end, because the savior is supposed to be me, and I am not enough. Too often, I fear I never will be.

Wiosna listens without interrupting until she finally laughs, completely unconcerned.

“Oh, Jagusia. That was just a zmora. They are ugly and a bit intense, but ultimately harmless. Next time it visits, you should invite it to breakfast.”

I’m about to explain with indignation that the thing almost killed me and was in no way harmless when Wiosna’s final words register.

“Wait, what did you just say? What do you mean, breakfast?”

Chapter thirty-one

Free

In the light of the morning, I feel silly and embarrassed by my nightly terror. Of course, it was a zmora. I should have recognized it.

A zmora is a kind of bies born from strong hatred toward another person. Unlike many other demons, it’s not a mortal turned into a creature after a violent death nor somebody cursed by the gods. No, the zmora is an emanation of hate. It’s created unconsciously in most cases, and very difficult to shake off without killing the person who made it.

I have a pretty good idea who might hate me enough to send the bies after me. The problem is, it could be more than one person, the main two suspects being Czeslawa and Swietko. But even if I knew who did it, that wouldn’t help me much. I’m not about to kill them for this. They might not even know they sent a bies into my cottage.

Also, I don’t want to trust the tales blindly.

Neither Wiosna, nor her mentor before her have ever dealt with a real zmora, or any other bies, for the matter. Everything I know comes from Wiosna’s lessons, and those tales are old and have been passed down from generation to generation for who knows how long.

Some details might be off. And if Woland is behind all this, dealing with the zmora might be trickier than the lore suggests. All of that makes me very cautious, though for now, all I have to go on are Wiosna’s stories.

I know from the folk tales a zmora comes in the night, usually when its host is asleep, their hatred untethered. It wanders into the victim’s bed and sits on their chest, immobilizing them with terror. The bad news is, zmoras aren’t as harmless as Wiosna says, because I remember just a few visits can make a victim’s heart give out from fear. If that doesn’t happen, the victim wastes away to nothing within weeks, unable to sleep and weakened by fear.

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