Page 38 of When Among Crows
Blood spills from between their palms, first just a trickle and then a flood of it, splattering over Baba Jaga’s worn carpet. It’s darker than it should be, almost black, and the purple-red stain of the Holy Order creeps over his fingers; he can feel the heat of it in his eyes, the Knight in him emerging.
Then he’s opening the door to his grandmother’s room on the first floor of his father’s house. His hand, pressed to the lacquered wood, looks softer than he’s used to, thefingertips not yet callused by a bowstring, the knuckles not yet marked by scars. He looks over his shoulder to see Ala standing in the hallway behind him, looking startled, and he tries to speak to her, to explain, but he’s powerless to make a sound.
The room beyond smells like faded perfume. He’s been in there only a handful of times in his life, mostly to fetch things for his elders. He’s never been welcome to explore it, which was a hardship for the curious boy he was, because it’s full of objects. There’s a line of medals on the bureau, from wars he wasn’t alive to witness; stacks of photographs on the bookshelves, in front of old volumes with gold lettering; glass figurines on the bedside table; journals piled on the foot of the bed; coins from every country in little glass dishes on the desk. So many things to touch and turn over and look through, and he’s never dared.
His grandmother—Joanna is the name she chose when she became a Knight, so it’s the only name for her he’s ever known, selected to honor Joanna D’Arc—sits in a chair by the window. Beyond it is the gate, and beyond that, the street. A lantern burns on a little table in front of her. She prefers its light to an electric lamp. Knights are long-lived—not quite as long as the creatures they hunt, but longer than a typical human life—so he’s not sure how old she is, exactly, but when she was born, electricity wasn’t abundant. She told him once that she never got used to it.
Her face is lined, the skin of her hands as fragile as paper, the veins showing beneath it. But her back is stillstraight, thanks to the bone sword buried in it. She’s still strong.
“Boy,” she says to him. “Come.”
He crosses the room, and goes to one knee in front of her, a soldier presenting himself to his commander.
“Babcia,” he calls her. “You asked for me?”
“I did.” She sits forward, her hands folded over her lap, and studies his face. Her teeth are crooked.
“Your ceremony is in the morning,” she says. “Are you prepared?”
“Yes, Babcia.”
“Are you afraid?”
He blinks at her, startled. No one has ever asked him that before. He assumed it didn’t matter whether he was afraid or not.
“Yes, Babcia,” he says, because he is. He’s so afraid he hasn’t slept through the night in months. There are so many reasons he’s afraid. He isn’t sure that he can kill. He doesn’t like pain. He doesn’t want to split his soul in half.
The old woman nods. “I can see it in you.”
She doesn’t reassure him, and he doesn’t expect her to. No adult in his life has ever reassured him, not about the dark, or about the monsters that lurk in it, or about the violence of the world beyond their walls.
“But you will do your duty,” she supplies.
“Yes, Babcia.”
“Good.” She sits back, and picks up the journal, bound in blue leather, that rests on the little table near her. “Ihave summoned you here to give you a secret. Each of my living descendants is entrusted with one on the eve of their ceremony, so that the knowledge of this family is preserved from generation to generation, yet no one person must bear the weight of all that I know. When you are my age, you will have as many secrets as I do, and you will bestow them on your children and your children’s children in just this way. Understand?”
He doesn’t, but he nods anyway.
She offers him the journal, and he takes it in both hands, as if it’s something precious.
“This is a book of curses,” she says.
“Curses? Like a witch’s curses?”
“No,” she snaps. “Not like a witch’s curses. These are the curses of a Knight.”
He raises his eyebrows.
“Some of our number know how to forge our weapons; some keep the grimoires of knowledge about our enemies; some keep the texts of our names and histories throughout the ages;youwill keep our curses.” Her eyes glitter. “Our magic.”
“I… didn’t know we could do magic, Babcia,” he says to her, feeling uneasy. “Isn’t that what monsters do?”
“Did you think the splitting of the soul was not done through magic, boy?” She shakes her head, and a strand of white hair escapes her braid. She tucks it behind her ear with clumsy fingers. “Our magic is not like their magic. It is not offered in repayment of debts; it is costly, righteous,and bloody. It is one of our most important weapons in fighting back the forces of darkness that threaten to claim our world.”
He stares down at the journal in his hands. It suddenly feels too heavy to hold.
“Listen,” she says, and he so rarely receives this kind of focus from his elders that he can’t look away from her. “We are long-lived, and we are strong. But we do not have the same innate power as the monsters we fight. With this book, I can not only summon stronger weapons to fight my enemies—I can make those fights unnecessary. I can turntheirpowers against them; I can create wounds that do not heal; and I can even, on occasion, attach a curse to their blood that will wipe out their entire family line. All I need to give…” She runs a finger along the outside of her forearm, where he can see the dark line of a scar. “… is a little pain.”
