Page 2 of To Clutch a Razor
“Doyouknow what will happen to me if I don’t get it back?”
He should have asked from the start. Foolish boy.
“I have suspicions,” she replies. “But whatever the truth is, I know it’s not good to walk around with only half a soul.”
The Knight swallows hard. He nods.
“You’re in a terrible bargaining position,” she says. “You come here with nothing but that tragic face, appealing to my merciful nature—Oh, this Knight who would rather suffer and die than kill another monster, take pity on him, Babcia—well, let me see how deep my well of mercy is today, shall I?”
She closes her eyes, and she feels herself shifting, hunching beneath the weight of time, her hair shivering as it turns dry as a corn husk and her skin softening over her bones. She has seen so many things, and death is one of them. And where there has been death, there have also beenKnights.
Knights, their palms stained red, their eyes glinting red, their swords dripping red blood onto the hard ground.
Knights, chasing her brothers and sisters, daughters and sons, into the ancient woods of her old home.
Knights carving wounds into their own flesh to curse her kind with bloodthirsty crows or flesh-hungry wolves.
Knights who take every powerful symbol they find to twist it and warp it into their own.
Knights who crave death, and seek it, and cling to it like an oath.
“You were named for the harvest,” she says to him, and she hears it, the way her voice deepens as she allows time to rush into her body again. It’s so heavy, time. Easier, really, to keep it at bay, like a dog she has to keep nudging away from the front door with her foot every time she opens it.
“You were named for the harvest, and harvest you will.” She looks at him. He doesn’t look well. The skin under his eyes is almost purple. “Thirty-three bones made the sword that you used to slay the innocent, and to earn them back, you will bring me thirty-three swords drawn from the spines of the dead.”
“You…” He almost whispers it. “You want me to kill thirty-three Knights?”
“Not just thirty-three Knights. You will begin with the one you call Babcia.”
He stares at her, his eyes wide.
“Whatever one sows, that he will also reap,” Baba Jagasays. “Your grandmother sowed you. And you, my Knight, have sowed nothing but death.”
She almost expects it, the way he goes to his knees. The posture of a supplicant comes to him too easily; he knows, too well, that he has nothing to offer but himself. A meager thing indeed.
He bows his head, and says, “Please.”
Baba Jaga’s bones ache. The light of the setting sun is orange, and acrid as the fruit that shares its color. She prefers night.
“I know…” His voice cracks. “I know they’re…”
“You know they’re what? Murderous? Violent?”
“Monsters,” he supplies. “I know they’re monsters. But a man can love a monster.”
Kosciej,something inside her whispers.
She remembers. She has loved a great many monsters, and Kosciej was the greatest of them. In some ways he reminds her of the man kneeling in front of her. His soul displaced. His nature still undecided. Crooked and shrouded in darkness. But unlike this creature who begs her for mercy, Kosciej knelt for no one.
“A man can love a monster, yes,” she says. “And a man can also kill the things he loves.”
“It would destroy me, to do what you ask.”
“And you think I should care?” Something fierce rises up inside her, a memory self she hasn’t encountered in some time. She grits her teeth so hard her jaw aches, and says, “Destruction is what you came to me for, Knight!”
A strong wind blows through the herbs that hang in dried bundles from her ceiling, blows through the pages of the books she’s left open on tables and desks, here and there and everywhere, and it whips through the Knight’s hair and clothes like it’s fighting to tear him apart.
“Killing is all you’re good for!” she shouts over the tumult.
