Page 30 of When Among Crows
He looks at Niko, who’s drawn the sword at his back and is now hacking at the roots encircling his own ankles, and at Ala, who is hopping from one foot to the other like a child playing hopscotch. Dymitr doesn’t bother to take out his bow, he just watches the roots tumble into the space, bulging from the aisles, growing over and around each other until the entire left half of the theater is a labyrinth of bark and old, dusty seats.
Then the roots stop moving, but when Niko hacks at the ones trapping his ankles, they regrow immediately, as if he had never cut them.
“Well, fuck,” Ala says, and Dymitr swallows a laugh. He feels like he’s teetering at the very edge of his control.
“We’re not dead,” Niko says, bending down to prod atthe roots that are winding around his legs. “Which means there must be a way to get out of this.”
“Could try asking.” The only sign of Ala’s fear is the quiver in her voice. “Dymitr?”
She wouldn’t ask him if she didn’t need him to speak Polish, so Dymitr raises his head and says, into the stifling air: “Czego chcesz od nas?”
He feels foolish, speaking to nothing and to no one and expecting a response. But the jaw bone of the skull hinges open, the teeth separating, and a high, inhuman voice speaks.
“What I want,”the skull says,“is that which you are unwilling to give.”
The roots squeeze tighter around his legs, tight enough to hurt.
“Another riddle?” he says, grimacing.
“Hardly qualifies as a riddle,” Niko says, smacking a root that’s climbed up one of the theater seats and is now reaching for his wrist. “We have to make an offering, each of us. Something we’d rather not offer.”
Dymitr bends down to shove his fingers between his calf and the root, to create space. The rough bark bites into his knuckles. “If I have to pull out another goddamn fingernail—”
“Baba Jaga isn’t that crude,” Niko says. “She’d prefer something more powerful—a secret, or a confession—”
Dymitr yanks his fingers out from under the root so they don’t go numb and goes still, his eyes on the floor.
It’s not that he doesn’t have secrets—it’s that he has somany, so many secrets and so many confessions, that he can’t decide which one will do the least damage but still have enough power to satisfy Baba Jaga.
The roots seem displeased with his silence—they squeeze tighter, and grow so they’re now twisting around his knees.
“Fucking hell—” Ala grabs the root that’s again reaching for her hand and yanks down, breaking it. “Fine. I’ll go first. My confession is that I killed my mother.”
Dymitr can’t help but stare at her, despite the roots creeping around his thighs, binding his legs together. He knows that Niko has killed people—knew the first moment he saw him that he was capable of it. But Ala just doesn’t seem like she has it in her.
If Niko is surprised, though, he doesn’t show it. He offers his own confession.
“I was not born a strzygon,” he says. “I was changed into one.”
For a moment, Dymitr forgets about the roots wrapping around his legs. “That’s impossible.”
He’s never heard of someonebecoming strzygonbefore. He’s heard of magic that can store a mortal soul beyond their death, or infusions of magic that empower mortals to perform unnatural feats. He’s heard of bites that make ordinary men monstrous, or curses that warp a woman beyond recognition. But rumors of their vampirism are false; strzygi are born, not made.
“Oh, and you suppose that you, an ordinary mortal, understand the limitations of magic?” Niko says, with a quirk of his mouth.
“Dymitr!” Ala snaps. “Now!”
His silence is like a stone rolled over the entrance to a tomb. He’s trapped by it, too weak to heave it aside.
“Justdo it!”
“I am not,” Dymitr says, his voice breaking, “an ordinary mortal.”
As he speaks it, he’s not sure it will be enough. But he knows that as vague as it sounds, the harder they tug on the thread of it, the more of him will unravel. The roots twist away from his knees, release their grip on his calves and ankles. They disappear under the seats behind him. His legs are throbbing, and when he lifts a pant leg to see the damage the roots did, he sees a raw, red welt crisscrossing his ankle.
He’s about to ask what the purpose of all that was when he sees, descending from the ceiling like a single snowflake, a scrap of paper. It wafts toward Niko, flutters, and then settles in his outstretched palm, folded neatly down the middle. He opens it.
“It’s an address.”
