Mara
I’m neither dead nor alive. And no one but the dead can see me.
I like it this way. The less you contact the living, the better. People are boring. They do a helluva lot of (cool, important) stupid things, then talk about it on their Facebook like they’ve done something mega epic. Sometimes, they don’t even do anything, just talk on their Facebook. Boring! Here, deep in the Carpathian woods, it’s never like that. Woods listen. Woods understand. Woods live by what they do, rather than chatting and posting selfies.
And when someone dies, they don’t talk about it on the Internet. They come to my woods.
***
It’s winter. Cold creeps under my padded hoodie as I walk, ducking under the clawlike twigs of dozing firs. A heavy bundle of brushwood pulls my arms down. Aidan hops ahead, his tail up and crooked into a fluffy question mark. His little black paws barely touch the thick carpet of winter leaves. We’re almost there. Huttuh, my magic home with chicken legs, lurks behind the sleepy trees. I recite the password:
Huttuh Bohattah, for all good,
stand with your face to my face
and your back to the wood.
A tremor runs through the hut. Huttuh opens her windows first, then drowsily hoists up her clumsy trunk before stretching out her long bird’s legs with curved talons. She shuffles around, halts with her door facing us, and drops a set of steps down to our feet. It’s the only way to get into my house. There’s no need to carry keys or to suffer shrieking alarms. When you’re Baba Yaga and live between worlds, nothing mortal ever bothers you.
“We need to make the beacons before dark.” I throw the brushwood on the floor at the chimney and take a penknife from my pocket.
Aidan jumps into his favourite armchair and curls into an ink-black furball against the embroidered cushion.
You do the beacons. I’m just a cat.
I roll my eyes and set about grating the bark from the pole. Then I fit a human skull on top of it and look into its empty eye sockets. “Don’t sulk, mate. Tonight, you’ll help your brothers and sisters find their way back home. Isn’t dying the most marvelous moment after being born?”
Are you talking to skulls again? Aidan lifts his muzzle and stares at me with his sleepy green eyes. He’s like a hundred years dead.
“So what? The dead are charming companions,” I snap and take the next stick from the floor.
The thing is, they are my only companions. I’m The Slit keeper, the one who sees the deceased through the gates of death. It’s a noble and super responsible job that only experienced Yagas can handle. I was proud as hell when Mother Death appointed me.
***
The fire in the chimney crackles and splutters, reflecting gold off Aidan’s glossy fur. The oven heat catches my forehead as I turn the pancake toasted side up while sucking lemonade through a straw. When really bored, I sneak a bottle from the town shop. It doesn’t matter if Huttuh says soft drinks soften my stomach—I don’t care, they’re yummy!
I notice the ringing silence of the twilight, and my western window glitters with the colours of the dying day.
“It’s starting.” I leave the half-eaten pancake on the plate, grab the beacons, and stomp outside.
Aidan skips before me and leaks out like a dollop of jelly before I fully open the door. The forest has changed. It stands still, alert, and crisp, burning silently under the shimmering rays of the setting sun, perfectly deserted.
I breathe in fresh and fragrant evening air and press beacons into the ground. One by one, they form a chain fence around my house. The moment the final skull locks the circle, The Slit opens: Huttuh flickers and pulses in a growing beat… faster and faster, then… silently… explodes into a giant dragon eye, splitting the world in two.
My beacons light up with a soft candle glow. The skulls’ empty eye sockets stare in all directions, luring the dead. I turn to the forest and spot the first volunteers, wandering between the trees. They look like a bunch of giant butterflies with ragged wings, fluttering around, searching the light. As if pulled by some invisible power, the butterflies sail towards my burning skulls and gradually shape back into their lost human forms. The Slit gives them this chance to remember themselves and bid their final goodbyes.
My heart pumps burning excitement down through my veins. The beacon I hold in my hand shakes so much that the skull’s teeth chatter as if it’s laughing at me. I root to the ground, sweating like a troll under my suddenly hot hoodie, and focus anywhere but on the dead’s glittering eyes. Eyes give me the creeps. There is always something sad, lost, or angry about them. I’ve never seen any of them dying super blissful.
An elderly woman paces gingerly towards me, reaching out her hand with rough, crooked fingers that clasp mine. She is plump but stiff under her polka-dotted vintage dress, with long, grey hair pulled back into a tight bun. “Vasia? Vasia, is that you?” she asks, peering at me. “Oh, Vasia, it’s been so long…”
“Yes, Love, we’ve finally met.” I smile back at her.
The dead always see someone else in me—their deceased grans, old friends, or holy angels. Sometimes, I am just their dead pet they loved to the moon and back. It’s fine with me, cos it immediately lets me into their past. And it’s not like listening to their tangled, foggy memories over black-and-white photo albums, but actually living through their lifetimes in just a split second. Tonight, in a flash, I turn into a girl named Love.
I grow up through sobbing tantrums over Mom’s slapping my neck for not eating her borscht and the intoxicating joys of going fishing with my brothers. The gripping wish for a Barbie doll turns into a no less gripping desire to dye my hair blonde or rip that extra flesh off my imperfect sides. I see a streetlight blink into my window. The foamy surf washes over my feet. I smell nail polish and hear my pals laugh over some silly cartoon. I lose my balance on my too-big brother’s bike: the skies spin like in a turbo-speed blender, and the asphalt grazes my knee with killing pain that I’ll feel only in a long, long second… The pictures of my life flip like the pages of my favourite fashion magazines. Memories flash through my mind in an endless carousel before the entire world swirls around just one person, Vasia.
The agony of loving and hating this guy is overwhelming. But it dulls eventually and tangles into millions of other little loves and hates. I find myself drowned in a boring routine with a few flashes of delight, but also despair about having my kids. Getting lost in them, then found again, older, fatter, and alone. Then I no longer understand where I’m heading. Time runs so fast behind the hard work, talks, eternal bus trips, chores, and gossip. I’m only happy when I drink because it halts this time race for a moment. If only Vasia didn’t dump me, didn’t die. Life used to be so fun when he was around…
I walk Love to the gates, and her eyes open wide, mirroring the shine of The Slit. They glisten with tears of fear and relief. I release her hand and watch her dissolve into the light.
If you stick there a tad longer, this swarm will start calling me Vasia, Aidan meows. He hops from one foggy person to another, milling about the burning skulls.
“Yeah, sorry.” I rush to a gloomy teenager in all black with long, greasy hair stuck to the back of his neck. “Hello, Artur.”
He hides his bleeding wrists behind his back as he glares at me incredulously. “Mom? You… You didn’t die?”
Oh, boy, I was born dead, and yet I live thousands of lives without getting out of my wood. Isn’t it the best-ever job in the world?
***
I let out a sigh of contentment and fall into the armchair by the fire. “Nothing is better than a fulfilled mission. A cup of cocoa, Huttuh, and I’ll sleep like a happy piggy.”
The floorboards beside my armchair swell, rise, and turn into an elegant table covered with a lace doily. A cup of fragrant, steamy cocoa pops out of it and lands neatly on top without shedding a single drop.
Aidan pads through the door before Huttuh shuts it tight and bolts it.
And coffee for me, please, he purrs, swishing his tail wearily.
Another table pulls up from the floor next to his seat like a magic bean tree. Aidan springs up, then—poof!—turns into a smiley guy with impish hazel eyes under black bushy eyebrows. A curly blast of fluffy hair just over his shoulders gives him an air of a dandelion, rock version. He wears a red tartan shirt this time, which looks like a warning sign: he’s in one of his dangerous romantic moods.
“The woman called Love who lost her love before she lost her life,” Aidan mumbles, taking his guitar from the corner and placing his springy person in front of me. “How sad.”
“It’s not sad, it’s stupid,” I grumble, picking dirt from under my fingernail. “People grasp at all sorts of garbage ideas throughout their lives, and all for what? They’ll just die in the end.”
Aidan plucks his guitar strings instead of answering and plays that old Italian song about love that drives me mad, “Ti Amo.” He sings it to me, smiling, but the lyrics are different.
You are evil,
Your life is not living.
You talk to the dead
Instead of a friend
Young Devil.
Cos trust your old pal,
You’ll cut them to bleed
And throw in The Split
To have a new skull.
“Ha. Ha.” I slap my hip. “I may be evil, but I’m not a fool. Why would I bother wasting my time on the living and all their bullocks when I’ve got so many friends every night?”
“You can just as well watch some film and say you befriended so many actors,” Aidan says, with his eyes set on the twanging strings.
“Yes. So? I’m happy with my actors. You know how it goes: when your life is good, try to make it perfect and ruin it all.” I grab a book from the pile on the floor and cross my legs, holding my cocoa in the other hand to indicate the talk is over.
Aidan fingers the guitar strings and lets them dance in a melancholy, graceful melody. “I wish I had a friend for longer than one night,” he sighs.
I peek over my book. “I am your friend, ain’t I?”
“Yes, but…” Aidan stops playing and glances at me. His expressive eyes shine with a mischievous gleam. “I want a proper friend, a warm, smiling human. You are dead, cold and fat like a boulder.”
“What!” I scowl and hurl my book at him.
In a moment, he turns into a cat and darts off, howling. The guitar drops from the armchair with a melodramatic bang, and my tome of Greek Legends and Myths hits the cushion.
The rest of the night, I’m messing around with a mop and broom, trying to rescue Aidan from under the sofa where he thrust his furry body in and got dead stuck. “Who’s fat now, eh?” I chide.
Meow!
