"I felt my lungs inflate with the onrush of scenery—air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, "This is what it is to be happy." Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
'What have you got there, Mar?'
Marya von Rothbart, adopted daughter and protégé of the famous Aloysius von Rothbart, had been caught. Aloysius's voice rang clear across the room, commanding and cold.
Nine years old, and her fourth master plan to sneak her friend into their cabin had failed. Miserably.
The little girl was sat on the floor, legs crossed and her long, snow-grey hair wild and frizzy. She was not small for her age, but rather skinny, with legs like a baby chicken. Vivid, icy eyes like a wolf peered out from her safe vantage point in the corner. Her skin had the typical shading of one of the most northern of the north clans— a warm shade of grey, tinged with blue. She looked like a wildcat, and acted like one too; most of the time, she hated wearing shoes because she couldn't feel the earth beneath her feet, and tonight was no exception. Two muddy feet and ten soil-filled toes had trotted dirt tracks across the old wooden floor.
The child was a curious creature, though; a mix of contradictions, of child and adult combined. Like her mother, but in all ways opposite. Marya might seem like a savage, but her heart was focused and pure. She would never sit on the soft and comfortable fur rug over by the embers of the fire. The pelts Aloysius tried to make her wear she would shun, even in the coldest of winters. Neither would she allow her father to bring back any of the animals he'd hunted to enjoy later. She was too young to understand that he still hunted them, regardless— but her priorities were still clear, for a young girl. No killing animals.
Tatiana had been the opposite. Aloysius's older sister had reminded him, over and over, of her prowess, her fame, her rise to power. The leader of the strongest magic clan, and the most respected woman in the north. Aloysius watched from the shadows as his sister took the glory first prize, again and again. And when one day someone had suggested that his sister have a child...
Tatiana wasn't the motherly type, but something had swayed her. She'd chosen the male— although never divulged who— and after Marya was born, immediately handed her over to a nursemaid.
'Raise her strong,' was all she instructed.
When Marya was fed chicken as her first meat, she'd spat it on the floor and howled in her highchair, a lamenting and sorrowful sound. She'd been vegetarian, albeit one that couldn't even pronounce the word, ever since. Tatiana had scowled.
'I told you to raise her strong,' she admonished the staff, 'Not nice.'
Aloysius, now her guardian after her mother's death and her clan's ruin, was rather bemused at his protégé's instinctual dislike of cruelty, the one thing he understood.
And the strange girl was cradling her one true friend in the whole world.
Aloysius sighed. His daughter's best friend wasn't human. In fact, none of her "friends" were human; not the wolf she'd strolled through the woods with last week, nor the bear she had climbed onto the back of a few months back. The white tiger of the north— as the legend told— had not made a reappearance, and, by all accounts, Marya had forgotten the event entirely. If she didn't apply herself, Aloysius worried that the potential she had within her would never surface. A child content to be ignorant would become an adult without skill.
Usually, Aloysius paid no heed to her intense connection to the nature that surrounded their life here in the forest. Other von Rothbarts had been known to have Marya's wild heart. Her great aunt had lived in the wilderness for most of her life, returning only to remind everybody who was the most powerful koldunya, before disappearing again. But Aloysius had a problem with this particular friend of hers. The damn thing was broken. A swan with a wing that would probably never fly.
If Marya were as powerful as he believed she could be, the swan would fly one day.
And that wasn't what he'd fled his family, his sister, his life, for. He'd fled his life on the promise of revenge.
'Make her strong,' Tatiana told him, over and over, every night in his dreams, her face crumbling to ashes when he tried to respond. 'Make them pay.'
No von Rothbart had ever been merciful. In fact, their ancestors— Marya's parents, may they walk with Dana along the Otherworld shore— would find him in the next life should he meet them there, and berate him for allowing their descendent to befriend a broken swan. He shuddered at the thought as though it was as dirty as Marya's feet.
The little girl looked at him with her huge glassy eyes, and blinked. She was a quiet one; never spoke unless she had something worthy to say, although the conversation she was having with the swan seemed entirely real. The two shrunk away from him, further into the corner.
'Mar, you don't want me to remove that swan, do you? Not like that hedgehog you wouldn't leave alone,' Aloysius cooed. The grin that split his face was from recalling the satisfaction of seeing him crack his daughter's poker face. The child had screamed as he bludgeoned the creature as though he'd struck Marya instead.
Make her strong.
The grin faded when he recalled that she hadn't cracked from that punishment. If anything, her affection and her unity with the animals around them had only increased since the incident, as though the group had come together from the disaster. A vein throbbed in his forehead; never a good sign.
'Marya von Rothbart, put that thing down. You are a koldunya, a noble magician, do you hear me? You command these animals. You do not share a home with them.'
The little girl shifted, almost imperceptibly, but enough that Aloysius detected her arms shift the swan into a position of safety and protection. Her eyes narrowed, and she lifted her chin to meet his eyes in defiance. Aloysius remembered, in that gesture, the girl that had brought down Koschei. Where had that power gone? They had all wondered.
When the king sent his armies and his torches, the little girl had not stirred. Not to save her mother. Not to save the Fort. Instead, Aloysius had taken her before they could capture her, and fled into the northern forest. They had travelled under the cover of stars and magic, avoiding the towns, where the king was decreeing the ban of magic across the nation.
No man or woman shall ever fear the power of another, he declared. He neglected to mention the kinds of power he hadn't banned. Royal ones, for example.
Again, Aloysius saw the battle of Marya and Koschei. What had moved her to act that day, and not any other?
Maybe the child was just lazy.
'Vasilisa is no thing,' she protested. 'Vasilisa is a girl.'
Aloysius was furious. 'Vasilisa? You gave it a name?'
Make her strong, Aloysius. I didn't say teach her to love.
Marya's hackles raised. For a moment, Aloysius was not staring at a frail nine-year-old, but a snarling wolf protecting a sheep. It was the second time he'd felt fearful of the slight wisp of a child.
'Vasi is my friend,' Marya said, squaring her shoulders.
'We are koldun, Marya. What would your mother think?'
'Mother is dead. Why should I care?'
Slap. Aloysius' hand moved faster than his own fury, wrenching across his daughter's face with a thunderous clap.
'Never,' he roared, 'Never say that again!'
Tatiana scowled at him, her ghost shaking her head in disappointment. Weak, she mouthed.
Aloysius blinked, snapping back to the cabin. The little girl lay on the floor, unmoving. The fury vanished, replaced with fear: fear that his kingdom would disappear before his eyes. Quickly, he knelt, reaching for her quicksilver curls.
The girl twitched, alive, and he sighed inwardly, relieved that the spirits of his ancestors would not be coming down to claim him today. 'Marya, don't scare me like that.'
A single eye fluttered open, squinting out at him from behind the mop of hair. Marya still lay on her front, arms wrapped around the swan in a protective embrace. Aloysius brushed her hair away from her face, feeling his muscles move into the warmest smile he could muster.
'Marya, sit up for me? Let me handle the swan.'
He pulled her up, clamping her arms so that she couldn't wriggle away. Marya twisted and fought, but her protests were weak. The swan in her arms frantically began to flap with Marya's distress, and Aloysius' temper flared once more.
So, he Spoke to the swan in the language that only a Danaan could.
The bird screeched and panicked as he took hold of its mind, bending it to his own will. Concentrating hard, he focused on the swan until it flapped from Marya's arms and began heading for the door, which slammed open with the breeze Aloysius summoned. Outside, a storm was raging; rain splattered across the wood on the hearth, washing away Marya's mud. All the while, the girl watched as if her heart were being split in two.
Then the door slammed shut, and the howling wind and hammering rain were shut out once more. Only a silent cabin remained, with Marya still curled in the corner and Aloysius straightening up.
'My little Swan Queen,' he said, 'That bird is not your friend. One day, you will have a kingdom to make friends.'
Marya did not look mollified. Her mouth had turned down, and her eyes remained fixed on the door. 'How will I get a kingdom if I don't have friends?'
Dana give me strength, he prayed. The child was going to need a fierce upbringing to turn her from this weak babe into a lioness.
'Marya, you are a powerful sorceress. When you are powerful, people have no choice but to be your friend.'
Marya looked thoughtful. 'No choice,' she repeated, and the way she said it made Aloysius' temper flare once more. It was as though she were looking down on him, at a metre tall.
He clenched his fists, said another prayer to the goddess, and then ordered the little girl to go to bed. He hadn't wanted any of this, he wanted to tell her. He would have stayed and died at the Fort, with his people, with honour. Perhaps he would be dining at Dana's table by now, drinking wine with his fellow koldun. He would not have been living in a cottage in the woods, a cottage he'd taken from the previous occupant, an aloof old woman with a penchant for weaving. Her weaves still decorated the cottage.
No, he wouldn't have chosen any of this. He didn't want to raise a child, nor teach magic. That was what the Fort had been for: tutelage, child nursing, a home to return to when not on the road. But Aloysius hadn't been given a choice.
Only the small, daily choices were granted. Everything else, he thought, was already written on your gravestone.
Aloysius grunted, grabbing his cloak. After such an argument, he was desperate to leave the confines of the cabin, and he swept from the room without looking back.
Marya waited exactly nine minutes and twenty-nine seconds before slipping on her woollen overcoat and climbing out of her bedroom window into the storm.
Every night, her uncle-turned-guardian Aloysius took his natural form and went hunting. She knew he much preferred his owl skin to his human one, and would be gone for hours.
And he never noticed her nightly wanderings to the lake.
She made her way there now, staggering against the horizontal rainfall and the battering ram of wind that was coursing through the trees. The deep, dark woods did not scare her; she was growing up surrounded by howling and creaking, and already knew the noises of the land by heart.
Besides, the horrors of the forest did not scare her. The horrors of nature were nothing compared to the horrors of man.
When she finally glimpsed the lake, she was soaked through and her teeth were chattering.
She slipped across the wet mud to reach the water, blurred by droplets of rain across its surface.
The lake was so large she couldn't see where it ended. In the middle, an idyllic hideaway of a rocky, grassy island was nearly obscured by the weather, the gentle trees bent double. Rain slicked the mud, turning the world into smudges of green and brown, and making her feet slip and slide.
But the swans were delighting in it.
The thunder, the lightning, the flashes across the surface of the lake— the horde of white feathers and honking circled one another, flapping their wings and dancing in their excitement.
The swans were in pairs, their slender necks forming beautiful heart shapes as they came close. Marya didn't understand what mating was— swan terminology, when they spoke to her, didn't translate to human— but she could see one swan was alone, always alone, drifting in the storm around her.
Vasilisa. That's what Marya had decided to name her. She called out to her, the screech harsh against her throat, but it worked. Vasilisa's almond eyes flickered to locate the sound, and the swan moved to greet her.
At times like this, Marya wished she was a swan so that she could swim on the lake with her friend. She had tried to as a human to swim in her underwear, but had very nearly died of cold on several of those occasions, and had no wish to try again.
Well if she couldn't become a swan...an idea formed, and took hold.
Every day, Aloysius taught her magic. Fire magic, to burn. Ice magic, to freeze. Air magic, to strangle. Light, to blind, darkness, to trick. Every day, Marya grew bored of learning magic to maim, whilst outside the world was filled with colours that swirled with all the enchantment she needed. She didn't know if she could do anything other than hurt and kill with her magic.
She stared at Vasilisa, summoning the magic that sat in the pit of her stomach, the tips of her fingers, the circuits of her brain. The magic that thrummed through her blood and longed to connect.
At first, she thought it was just the storm; the wind howled harder, and the waves crashed higher against the birds. They streaked away, startled, as the water began to ripple around the lone swan.
The air whipped strongly, causing Marya to step back and pray that she hadn't harmed Vasilisa. The swan had all but disappeared among the blur that was the weather and the lake, and the strong wind causing her eyes to tear and blink. Bright white light pushed between her eyelids, forcing her eyes away.
And as soon as it had formed, the magic went away. The wind dropped, and the air stilled.
Marya gasped.
Where a pearly white swan had been before, a young girl of her age now stood, naked and knee-deep in the lake water. Copious amounts of bright, corn-blonde hair poured from her scalp, falling in waves around her arms and down her back. She flexed her wrists tentatively, examining her pale, skinny arms in the moonlight with reverence. Pivoting on the spot to survey her surroundings with fresh eyes, the girl paused and blinked, cocking her head in a swan-like fashion towards Marya.
And that was how Marya turned her best friend into a human.