Page 25 of When Among Crows
Dymitr doesn’t contradict him. His gray eyes are intent on Niko’s, and his breaths are coming faster.
“Is that why you’re helping me?” Dymitr says.
“I’m helping Ala because she deserves it,” Niko says. “I’m helping you because you’re beautiful.”
Niko isn’t shy. He never has been. He sees no reason to waste time with his life being as dangerous as it is. If Dymitr finds that off-putting, better to know now, really.
But Dymitr only laughs, as if the idea of him being beautiful is an obvious joke. “Oh really.”
“Are there better reasons?” Niko shrugs. “People fight for honor, for love, why not for beauty?”
Niko stands, so their bodies are just barely touching, so his mouth is poised over Dymitr’s. He watches Dymitr’s Adam’s apple bob in a nervous swallow, but still, he doesn’t pull away.
“You only know what I’ve showed you,” Dymitr says.
“That…” Niko touches his lips to Dymitr’s cheek, right beside his mouth. “… is true of everyone, all the time.”
Dymitr hesitates for just a moment, his warm breaths against Niko’s face. He smells like sweat and antiseptic, but it doesn’t matter; Niko is still prickling everywhere they aren’t quite touching, and warm everywhere they are. Then Dymitr relaxes a little, and turns his face so their lips meet. Despite his initial hesitance, it’s a firm, decisive kind of kiss that ends in the hard slide of teeth against Niko’s skin. He swallows down a helpless sound.
“I have to go,” Dymitr says, his voice rough. Then he’s gone, and Niko is alone with the scent of hand soap and chemical cleaner and toothpaste.
7A DEAL RENEGED
Ala is in the middle of watching a Knight of the Holy Order chop off a czort’s head with an ax when Dymitr walks in. It must be afternoon, because she’s lucid enough to speak to him, and that wouldn’t have been possible earlier.
“Get out,” she says, too dully to make an impact.
Dymitr steps right through the Knight standing in triumph over the czort’s disembodied head, and sits in the chair next to her bed.
“Would it help if you showed it to me as you watched it?” he says.
She shakes her head. “Not interested in traumatizing both of us.”
“I can handle it.”
She sighs, but the work of creating illusions is enjoyable to her, the way she imagines other people feel about knitting or cross-stitch. She re-creates the Knight, the czort, the bare country road where they encountered each other beneath a lone streetlight.
“Poor czort,” Dymitr says. “I’m given to understand they rarely cause trouble.”
“Gentle souls cast as devils in humankind’s ongoing stage play of existence. It’s Oppression 101: find a bad guy, and if you can’t, make one up.” The curse has left her sweaty and weak. She wants to go home and wrap herself in her grandfather’s quilt and watch television. Instead, she’s stuck in this place that stinks to high heaven of dread, one of her least favorite of the fear flavors—like toasted walnut, maybe, or a honey-wheat cracker.
“Will you tell me about the Knight…” she says to him, as the vision changes. Now they’re in a village square, all cobblestones and stone fountain and hedgerows. The sky is orange-pink from the setting sun—or the rising sun, it’s hard to say. She layers the imagery over the hospice room so Dymitr can watch it unfold with her.
Toasted walnut—Dymitr’s dread.
“Tell me about the Knight you want Baba Jaga to destroy?” she finishes. The village square is empty, but she’s sure the Holy Order will appear soon. They always do.
He asks, “What do you want to know?”
“What did he do to deserve your ire?” She tilts her head. “Orshe,I suppose. They’re letting women do it, these days.”
“My ire. Yes, I guess you could call it that.”
He clasps his hands in his lap. She notices the gauze around his fingers, the lost fingernail finally bandaged.
In the village square, a black car pulls up to the curb just outside a pharmacy. The neon sign in the window of a nearby bar—a beer logo—is dizzying. It reflects on the tinted car windows.
A woman all in white steps out of the car, her bone sword already in hand.
