Page 15 of One For my Enemy

Juliet, (3.2.22–25)

II. 1

(The Matriarch.)

The most important thing to know about Marya Antonova is that she is a single force to be reckoned with, even as she occupies the bodies of two women.

At least, that was how the elder Marya Antonova had always viewed her firstborn daughter.

“Name the baby Ekaterina, after my mother,” Marya’s husband had said when their daughter was born, but Marya refused.

“You can name the next one,” Marya assured him, holding the infant close, and in her head, she had thought:You can have the next one, and all the ones after that, but this baby is mine.

Marya Antonova was sixteen years old when she was given in marriage to a man she only ever called by his surname, Antonov, because he had never really felt real to her. He was already advanced in age (somewhere just south of thirty, which certainly seemed ancient at the time) and though he wasn’t unkind, he wasn’t particularly soft, either. Antonov was a businessman and a Borough witch, the youngest ever to reach the title of ‘Elder’ in the Manhattan Borough, but he spent most of his free time concealing his shadier business practices, most of which Marya only came to learn while fading obediently into the background. She brought him his meals, refilled his glasses, and fetched his effects while he met quietly with other witches, never realizing how intently his young wife was listening. He didn’t even know she spoke English until well into four years of marriage.

Marya gave Antonov seven children, all daughters. There was Masha—her eldest, named for herself—who sat quietly at Marya’s knee, learning everything. Masha’s eyes were wide and keen and sharp, and she was every inch the beauty Marya had been; perhaps more beautiful, even, and from the time she was a child, a witch uniquely blessed with rare abilities. Two years after Masha, like clockwork, there was Ekaterina (as promised to Antonov) and Irina, the twins; two years later, Yelena; two years later, Liliya; eleven months later, unluckily, Galina; and then, finally, there was the baby Alexandra, called Sasha.

“I cannot have more,” Marya had told Antonov after Sasha, feeling something inside her shift and go wrong during her final birth. She’d always been highly aware of her body, and the moment Sasha had left her womb, she’d felt the last of her fertility go out. “I am sorry, but I cannot give you a son.”

“Fine. I’m getting old anyway,” Antonov had said, and he was right. Within ten years he finally slipped away, passing unremarkably in the night.

Unlike Antonov, Marya had not particularly needed a son. Antonov had been quietly desperate for one, being dated and old-fashioned (and envious of his good friend Lazar Fedorov’s boys, particularly the eldest, Dimitri) but Marya knew she had exactly the heir that she needed in her eldest daughter, Masha. The younger Marya Antonova was cunning and witty, careful and meticulous, and of such undeniable beauty that she wore it cleverly as a mask, just as Marya herself always had.

This is the important thing, after all: nobody fears a beautiful woman. They revere them, worship them, sing praises to them—but nobodyfearsthem, even when they should. Antonov could not have known that his young wife, who dutifully spoke to him only when spoken to, had been watching all of his movements. She had seen the hazy promise of the business he could build designing intoxicants; had scoffed quietly to herself at the way he merely gave them away for free, mistaking their value. He’d told his friend Lazar (whose alternate identity they’d both believed, foolishly, that Marya did not know) that one day they would build an empire, a great enterprise of fanciful witchery. Lazar had nodded solemnly, agreeing, and what Antonov had missed, Marya had seen: that Koschei would have taken it for himself if he could.

So, when Antonov’s health first began to flag, Marya took it first.

“I need you to do something for me,” she said to Masha, who at the time was in the bloom of her youth; as old as Marya had been when she was first married to Antonov. “You know your Papa’s potions?”

“Yes, Mama,” Masha said dutifully.

“We need to sell them,” Marya said, and gave Masha a list of names and ingredients. “Can you do this with Mama, Masha? Can you help me? Are you afraid?”

“I am not afraid,” Masha had said, and Marya knew it to be true. She and her daughter were one soul in two bodies, and that was how she eventually built an empire.

There had been only one time that Marya ever feared Masha might fail her. Masha was a young girl then, subject to youth’s indiscretions; when they took on the shape of a handsome, golden-haired, broad-shouldered boy, even Masha struggled to resist. Marya could see that every time Dimitri Fedorov walked into a room, her daughter’s knees went weak, Masha’s unbending spine softening instantly in his presence.

Antonov, who’d so long envied his friend Lazar for his eldest son, had encouraged the silly, coltish romance between Masha and Dima, having failed to see in his own daughter what Marya had seen so clearly from the start. Marya knew Masha was an heir, a blessing. By contrast, Antonov only saw Masha as a fortunate means to offer the world to Dimitri, to little Dima—who was handsome and bright, yes, but not his biological son, and certainly nothing like Masha. Not at all deserving of Marya’s Masha.

Marya waited patiently for her husband to die, watching her daughter fall more in love with Dimitri Fedorov each day, until she could no longer stand to wait.

“I know what you did,” Lazar Fedorov said to her in a low voice at Antonov’s funeral. “I know what you did, but I won’t tell anyone. In fact, I respect you for it. He was a fool,” he added, gesturing discreetly to the coffin. “A fool who was not worthy of you.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Marya replied carefully, catching Masha’s eye across the room. Masha stood with Dima, of course. Marya could see his fingers twitching towards her, half-stroking the air for lack of holding her. He had enough sense to know that openly touching her was not an option, but still, Marya had seen his fingers brushing the small of Masha’s back, or resting too long on her forearm. Small things, certainly, but Marya knew her daughter like she knew her own pulse. Not just anyone could touch Masha. She was full of sharp edges; always a pointy little thing, a rose lined with thorns. Nobody got close to Masha unless she had already let them.

“I could build his business for you,” Lazar offered, and Marya glanced at him, wary. She knew that he could; while Lazar’s identity as Koschei was artfully hidden to all but her and her family, it wasn’t a very well-kept secret what his activities were. She also knew his own wife had died while giving birth to his youngest, Lev, and since then he had only grown more detached from the rest of the Manhattan witches.

“I don’t need your help,” Marya said firmly, watching Masha’s cheeks flush as Dima leaned in, whispering something in her ear.

“Of course not,” Lazar permitted, sparing her one of his slow, grim smiles.

Without Antonov there to express his disapproval, Marya finally rented a storefront. It was expensive, but she brought Masha with her, and between the two of them the landlord was successfully persuaded to lower his monthly rent. The products, too, were designed by Marya with Masha at her side, the two of them working late into the night and nudging each other sharply to keep from falling asleep.

Within months, the store and its elusive ownership were a meager success. The more successful Baba Yaga’s apothecary became, however, and the closer Marya and Masha came to staking a sizable claim amid New York’s magical black markets, the keener Marya’s sense that obstacles, whether in the form of dangerous rivals or disastrous repercussions, almost certainly remained ahead.

That Marya’s hand might ultimately be forced against her wishes became inevitable one night when Lazar invited her to dinner; Masha was newly nineteen, Marya herself long past counting. She warily accepted the invitation, wondering if Koschei planned to proposition her for her business.

Or, as it turned out, for other things.

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