Page 3 of When Among Crows
The leszy detaches the string from the bow, and straightens it, dries it, stiffens it until it becomes his staff again.
“Many have sought the fern flower,” the leszy says. “They seek a talisman that will bring them happiness andwealth, power and wisdom. Or they wish to trade it so they can carve a new path for themselves, or bring illumination to their short and dark lives. Sometimes, the most selfless among them even seek special healing for brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, friends and lovers. For which of these purposes does he seek the fern flower?”
“None,” the man replies. “I seek it for a stranger. A… creature.”
The leszy knows that men lie. He tilts his head back to look at the ceiling again, the crowd of people draped in robes and listening to holy pronouncements.
“Kupala Night is a night of whims,” the leszy says, and he steps aside, gesturing to the altar behind him.
“Thank you,” the man says softly.
“Once he faces this test, he may wish he hadn’t thanked me.”
With a tap of his staff, the enchantment that shrouds the altar lifts. Growing from the center of the stone top is a lush green fern.
The flower is about to bloom. The air feels like a stitch drawn taut against a hem, or lips braced against a whistle. The man walks past the leszy to the altar, and it’s fitting, the leszy supposes, that someone who calls himself a supplicant should approach an altar in this way.
Something shifts in the center of the fern: a stem. It grows like a drawbridge raising, the leaves around it creaking and shuffling to accommodate it. It grows like time speeding forward, but only in this sliver of space that the fern occupies. The leszy watches as the bud of the flowerswells, and when it breaks open, the man falls to his knees. He reaches for the flower, but halfheartedly, as if he doesn’t expect to touch it.
And indeed he doesn’t.
Power surges in the air. It rages around the man like a powerful wind, though the pages of the hymnals left open on the benches and the delicate violets in the leszy’s eye sockets don’t stir with its force. It’s so strong that it lifts the man from the ground and splays his limbs, as if he’s a puppet raised by its strings.
The man screams, but only for a moment before the force—whatever it is—wraps around his mouth and silences him. His fingers constrict in the air at odd angles, as if they’re breaking—no, they’re the spasms of someone in pain.
The leszy steps back down the aisle when the girl appears.
She’s young. Hardly more than a child. Small, with sallow cheeks and a bare rib cage instead of a chest, though the rest of her appears to be covered in flesh. Beating in the rib cage is a heart, black as tar, that follows the same syncopated rhythm as a human heart. Her eyes are milky white all the way through. She carries a sickle far larger than she is, with a wicked, gleaming blade.
She is a poludnica—a noonwraith. She’s not at home in the dark any more than the leszy is at home indoors. But for the fern flower, she makes an exception. All of those whom Baba Jaga tasks with its protection do.
She looks up at the man, and blinks slowly.
“What is within you?” Her voice is high and girlish. She tilts her head to the other side, the movement a little too fast, a little too bent. “I must know.”
She drums her fingers on her breastbone, and the man collapses to the ground, the force holding him up disappearing. She bends down and wraps her long, clawed fingers around his jaw. She wrenches his face toward hers. He’s trembling, and his eyes are full of tears.
“Give me your name, and I will be able to open your heart,” she says.
His next breath shudders on the exhale, and he doesn’t respond. He is watching her black heart pulsing between the rib-bars of its cage.
“I must open your heart to determine if you are worthy of this prize,” she says.
His tongue darts out to wet his lips. He says, in a weak, cracking voice: “Dymitr.”
“Dymitr,”she whispers, and she releases him.
She steps back and sits on the edge of the altar, and the leaves of the fern stretch toward her. She wears a ragged white dress, tattered at the hem and open across her bone torso. She drums her sternum again, considering the man. Then she gestures, sudden and sharp.
The man gasps, and his shirt opens over the chest, baring the red rosette he painted over his heart—another protective symbol, the leszy notes—
And then a spray of blood strikes the altar like a dusting of holy water as his skin peels away from his chest—
And then muscle and bone, cracking and breaking apart, though his screams are, yet again, inaudible—
And the leszy stares at the man’s heart, pulsing red and strong in his chest. Blood trickles down the man’s breastbone. The noonwraith’s eyes glow like the moon. She taps a claw against her lips.
“Oh, my,” she says softly, after a moment. It’s a sigh, and the leszy can’t tell what kind.
