He came for her as dawn began to crest, illuminating the strange marvels of that place, the houses which trembled like flesh, the roads supple as a spinal cord. He came for her and lifted her out of the grimy stable in which she had curled up to sleep, and such relief and joy filled her at the sight of him that she could have wept. The neglectful indifference of his punishment had frightened her; it is fearful indeed to be friendless in a strange place, alone where only so shortly before one has been held close and cosseted, fed on delicacies and tenderly cared for in illness. But now Koschei was beside her again, his dark eyes lively with delight, and all was well again.
"How industrious you have been, my Masha!" he exclaimed with his hands upon her arms, helping her up, "What a tsarevna you shall make for me, with your hair dark as the forest and your strong hands and back!" He pressed his lips against her forehead, and heat surged up in her. "You have taken your punishment well, my darling, and I forgive you your disobedience." A laugh, like the surge of a great river. "You have much still to learn, but I promise that they shall be pleasurable lessons, and we shall delight in them together." His hands encircled the hinge of her jaw, pressing at the place where the bones met, tenderly, painfully. "You aren't yet ready to give your will over to me; you are doubtful still, a little cautious, a little suspicious. That is only to be expected. But I think that you want this very much. Is that true?"
Marya, who did not yet know whether she was permitted to speak, simply nodded.
"Tell me, my darling, what it is you want?"
She found her throat briefly hoarse with sleep and weariness, but managed to clear it. "I want the magic. I want it within my grasp, clear and steady, where I cannot doubt my eyes and think that I've imagined it. I want you." Her voice caught on the last word, and she looked down.
"And what else do you want?"
"I want to feel things, more than I have before." Marya exhaled slowly, allowed her jaw to loosen, to relax into his palm. "I want you to touch me."
She thought she felt Koschei's fingers tremble, and a strange, new satisfaction bubbled up. Ah, Marya thought, he desires me too. He desires me so much that it makes him shake, however much control he may pretend at.
"That," Koschei answered slowly, "you will have. But you have been so starved for touch, and you're thin with it, hollow in your sternum. And one can be surfeited by too much touch, made sick, just as one can with rich food. We will have to go slowly."
The words poured out of her in a rush. "I don't care if it makes me sick. I want you."
Koschei tugged at her left earlobe, as if in affectionate chastisement. "Patience, Marya. There is so much fun to be had in playing, in teasing, in leaving off still frustrated with longing. Trust me."
He brought her out of the stables then, and and led her to a bathhouse, where servants with feathers and scales in the most surprising places helped her to clean her body of manure and car oil. Marya tried not to stare; to be attended by servants was strange and unexpected enough as a child of revolution, and she was at that time still unused to the multitudinous beings who populated Buyan. When Marya was clean, a girl with dapple-patterned fur and claws for feet wrapped her in a soft white cloth and led her through the halls of Koschei's palace into a wide room where he sat upon a strange throne, dark and white, constructed, it seemed, only of sharpness and angles. Marya found herself admiring the easy spread of his knees on the throne, his back straight and his fingers lightly open across the armrests. He occupied the throne as if it had been made for him.
Of course, it probably had. Koschei the Deathless, he was, Tsar of Life.
Marya felt very small and insignificant with her wet hair and loosely wrapped towel.
Koschei was looking at her, easily and steadily, though Marya imagined that perhaps there was desire somewhere, warm within his cold body as embers at the heart of a fire. Recklessness stirred in her. She let the cloth drop from her body.
"What is it you want, Comrade Koschei?" she asked, her voice sweet.
He leaned forward, fingers curling around the armrests of the throne. "Come to me, Marya."
She did, desire and excitement dizzying her. It was strange, to be gazed at such, to feel the air upon her naked body. She decided that she liked it. She thought, with a smile to herself, that there would likely be many new things that she would be soon learning to like.
"When I came to you," Koschei said, "I knelt at your threshold and offered my kingdom, my heart, and my love. The sight thrilled you, didn't it? And perhaps one day you will see me kneel again."
Marya imagined it, twining her fingers in Koschei's dark curls, so soft, so heavy. The Tsar of life obeying her every desire.
"But not now. Now it is your will which is in question, my darling, and we must work together to help you cede it over to me. Now you will learn to satisfy my every wish, and what I want now is to see you kneeling at my feet."
Arousal spiked in her, hard and fast, heady. How could she have known how pleasurable it would be, to listen to that smooth voice, so kind in its commands, so present and close to her? How could she have known the strength of her wanting, so powerful that it seemed as though it could move worlds?
She knelt, feeling her bare knees against the hard floor, keeping her eyes up, fixed on him in his throne. She thought, though she might have been imagining it, that she could hear him inhale slowly, as if taking in the mingling of their desires.
"What would you take for me, Marya?" he asked softly, "What would your pretty skin drink in?"
"Anything," she told him, proud.
He laughed gently. "That isn't true, though I know how honestly you must mean it. Desire thinks it can take anything, like a ravenous fire, but I could bring you up against the limits of your endurance too fast, and your body would reject me, sick and overcome. I won't do that. But would you let me silence you again? Lash your body with birch, as I did upon our journey? Bind you so fast you cannot move away? Obey my every command - where to move, when to speak, when to breathe?"
Marya felt the sudden desire to touch herself, if he would not touch her, if he would just drive her mad with his words. But, no - patience, he had told her. He was right, perhaps, that it was fun to wait, however frustrating. "Yes," she told him, with no hesitation, "all of that."
He reached down from his throne and caught her dark hair within his fingers. "Oh, good girl. My Masha, my darling. How you gratify me."
When he let go of her hair, Marya felt a twinge of disappointment. He stood, went to an armoire which stood at the side of the room. Marya followed him with her eyes and noticed the steady surge of the armoire's walls, as though they were breathing. She saw him take things from it - lengths of cream colored wool, a gag of dark cotton, and a birch branch, white and smooth and thin. How lucky she was, she thought to herself, how fortunate, beyond all fantasy.
He came back, and laid the things down on the table behind her. "There will be no need for you to speak during this, Marya. I know this was difficult for you last time, and you slipped up in your silence. I can gag you this time, if you like, to make it easier. Do you want that?"
Marya nodded, and then felt embarrassment flush her face. How much more difficult it was, to acknowledge such specific desires, than simply to kneel before him.
She saw him smile, and then he fitted the gag upon her, the cotton filling her mouth, the straps knotted at the back of her head. It was a peculiarly satisfying feeling. When he had finished, he crouched down beside her and traced down the line of her spine with the tips of his fingers, vertebra by vertebra. For an instant, they scratched her, as though uncovered bone itself pressed against her skin, and then his touch was cool and smooth. She found herself pressing back into it, wanting more.
"Yes," he said, "I know what you want. Greedy Masha, hungry for touch. Patience, still. Enjoy the marvel of what you have so far."
He removed his hand, disappointing her sharply. She turned her head and saw him pick up the birch rod, and was caught in a thrill of excitement and nervousness. How much this had stung when he whipped her with it in the bathhouse during her illness, how surprised she had been at its feeling! This time, she was perhaps better prepared, but this only seemed to make the anticipation more sharp and difficult to bear.
Koschei ran the birch smoothly down the length of her back, and then across her front, over her breasts. So new, these feelings, so overwhelming. "Spread your legs for me," he said softly. She did, and he ran the birch up the inside of her thighs and then into the cleft between them, sharply painful and exciting. She moaned into the gag.
"I think," he said, his voice gentle and delighted, "that part of you likes being gagged, likes the novelty of it. You are such a talkative, chattering little bird that it must be a relief to briefly stop thinking about whether to speak, what to see. You like to have me choose for you, to have such things out of your control. Is that right?"
Marya nodded.
"I thought so. Come then, on your feet."
He bound her to the table, bent over and exposed before him, and beat her till her skin was stinging and sensitive, alight and desirous. When it was done he touched her between her legs, still bound, one hand between her shoulder-blades to hold her still under his touch. Marya writhed at the contact, at the pleasure and at the narrow lines of the welts swelling on her back. And then, suddenly, he stopped touching her, and pulled the gag from her mouth.
"You may speak now."
"More," she said instantly, and she did not know whether she was begging or commanding him, "give me more."
But he only laughed. "Patience, my Marya, my Masha, my gluttonous Tsarevna. Wait, my darling."
His hand was still near her face from having just removed the gag; she bit at it, playful and cruel. Blood rose between her teeth. She let go.
"Don't I command you as well, Koschei? Aren't you, too, weak before your desires? And I tell you - give me more."
And Koschei, Tsar of Life, obeyed her.