In the morning, the apple was whole again.
She cut it in half, the blade cutting into her finger. It was easier these days, for her skin was weaker, stretched out feebly over hollowing bones. She barely registered the pain, but Marya could feel her blood sing in memory, pain and pleasure so familiar together she couldn't quite distinguish anymore.
She did not eat of it; half was carefully allotted to Ivan, who let it half melt in his mouth, and then chewed it with too much effort, as if the very act of eating were a performance. His jaws continued moving half-heartedly even after he had finished, as if in an attempt to convince himself that his meal was not over before it had truly began.
He never kissed her to share in the way Koschei had done on that first journey, and Marya did not take food down to the cellar to share with her husband anymore, for there was none. Neither of them talked about this.
Sometimes she traced her fingers over his ribs, pressing her hands against him for warmth, for there was no fire without something to burn, and handling German threats wasn't worth the consequences. And Tsar Koschei, he wastes away.
The pages of her books had curled up as they burned, the words consumed in the blaze. It hurt to remember. Despite the Yelenas in their factory, mutely stitching soldiers, Koschei had been kinder in his rule.
The other half she handed over to Ksenya Yefremovna, though she was a stranger to the house. But that was the corrupt thinking of the former people; the thinking of the Tsaritsa Marya might have been once. It was obscene to steal; important to remember and forget at will. The degree of treachery did not matter: being bourgeoisie was to sympathise with the Germans, even if you didn't.
Outside the house now on Dzerzhinskaya Street, people fell down onto beds of snow and did not get up again. Just like everywhere else.
It helped to keep things clear like that: the war was going badly, even if she couldn't say it.
Both of the wars were always going badly, and yet Marya could only consider one of them real. For the Germans might have been dropping their plans on wasted paper but if she couldn't see them, couldn't kill them until they were too dead to even belong in Viy's country, then it couldn't be a real war at all. But the city that had once been Petersburg was silver and white, all ice and snow, and it felt like they were all already in Viy's country.
Marya Morevna couldn't tell. After all, Leningrad had never been her city, not in ways that mattered.
Perhaps if Koschei had not come like Tsar Saltan and taken her, the youngest daughter, for his consort, she would have seen the city change in the way she had seen the birds fall and change into her sisters' husbands, and learned to belong.
She might have brought herself a new red scarf, and read her Pushkin and helped her twelve mothers with their various work, and become one of the People in truth.
But a girl to whom the world had shown its magic could never have quite fit in with the collective, living on ration cards and careful words.
Already this world was scratching at her, pushing and pulling her, as if the very wind and snow around them could feel that Marya Morevna should not have been there at all, as if fighting to remove her in the way the men who were no longer her countrymen were fighting to remove the Germans, and only succeeding in aiding Viy in his constant struggle.
The war was being lost, on many fronts, but Marya would have nonetheless given a lot to see it end in Buyan, surrounded by her friends and her husband, and their court, instead of this snowy city where lives were of no consequence.
But Naganya, Zemlehyed, and Madame Lebedeva were not there, and Marya was cold down to her very bones, which wasn't far for the pain to travel anymore, and she felt somewhat despondent.
The question was still, who was to rule? In Leningrad it could not be her. But Russia had sent its Little Father to serve Viy, and Papa Lenin who had never been a bird had followed soon after. And Papa Stalin, who was meant to care and cherish them all, could not protect them in the way Koschei had protected Buyan for so long.
Far away, he was either helpless or stubbornly unhelpful; though mentioning either would mean an end worse than the loss of a beloved scarf, or the loss of her identity as a good girl, one of the loyal and true.
Marya was neither at heart, not to this strange frozen country which had devoured the Russia of her childhood.
There was still a gun under her bed.
She crouched down and pulled it out, fingers coiling around it from memory. It felt good to hold it again, as if she were still in control.
It was both beautiful and terrible, the remnant of her former life, when she had sent Viy's soldiers further even then the confines of the land of the dead, and it still held one bullet within.
Marya had not misaimed for years. It would not take much, to lift it up and press it against her temple, and pull the trigger again.
Perhaps Viy's country would be warmer. Perhaps there might be food, and friends, or what remained of them at least. Perhaps she wouldn't care. After all, she was not safe, for Koschei had lied.
Ivan could drink her blood like she had Koschei's, and live.
But Marya Morevna had fought in the war, and had seen too many sewn soldiers torn apart to give herself up to the enemy of her own free will.
A shield remained between her and Viy after all, even though Koschei had lied. That shield was weak, and made only of her own strength, but for the time being it would be enough.
And so, the gun remained under the bed, and Koschei stayed in the cellar.
In the morning, the apple would be whole again.