Deathless by Catherynne Valente Page B

worth mentioning! Such a dear little creature, too. But the reviews! Oh, they have savaged me, Masha!”
    “Savaged?”
    Lebedeva tapped her cigarette; ash drifted. “ Savaged . They said it should have looked like a parakeet, not a ‘ridiculous miniature pelican.’ Apparently, I shouldn’t have cut my nails during the forty days, which is why it understands animal tongues but doesn’t grant wishes. And my selling it to that vodyanoy was an act of blatant mercantilism and I ought to be questioned. Critics, my darling, are never happy unless they are crushing something underfoot. A pelican! I ought to eat his eyes.”
    A waiter in a crisp white shirt appeared noiselessly at their side. He bowed with genteel solicitude. “More soup, Madame?” His bald head shone in the lamplight, save for the strip of wild white hair that flowed down the center of his skull like a horse’s mane. Lebedeva’s face blossomed.
    “How delightful to meet another vila! One’s countrymen are always a comfort. No, dear.” Madame Lebedeva smiled, her charm perfect, ripe, chill. She had practiced in the mirror for days. “I have a delicate constitution. Marya will certainly have another bowl of your captivating ukha, however! Humans are so robust. Is that sturgeon I smell in the broth?”
    “Very perceptive, Madame. And the chef sends his compliments on your production of Tuesday last. Pelicans will surely be all the rage next season.”
    Lebedeva scowled. The waiter turned his attention to Marya, his pale eyes moist with anticipation. For her own part, Marya wanted no more fish stew, though it warmed her with a delicate, salty, dill-rich flavor. She was quite full—but she loved to make Madame Lebedeva happy, and what made her happy, chiefly, was ordering others about.
    The waiter bent to speak more intimately with them. His skin smelled like frozen pine sap.
    “If Comrade Morevna would be interested, I myself have been working on a small glamour she might enjoy. It’s nothing, really,” he demurred before Marya could say anything at all. “But if you like it, perhaps you could whisper a word to the Tsar?”
    “I … I’m hardly a judge. I know nothing about the business of magicians.”
    “Marya,” whispered Lebedeva, “surely you know how this works. We took extensive notes on our visits to Moscow.”
    “Yes, but in Moscow this sort of cafe is for writers .” Lebedeva and the waiter both looked pleasantly perplexed, disliking to be shown up, but gladdened all the same, certain now to receive a lesson from the source. “Writers?” Marya said encouragingly. Speaking to the folk of Buyan was like walking on ice—they could be conversing just as smoothly as you please, and then suddenly Marya would fall through into their alien ideas, shocked at what they did not know. “Novelists? Poets? Playwrights?” Lebedeva sucked on her cigarette, which never seemed to get smaller, no matter how much ash fell from it like snow.
    “I’m sure it sounds fascinating, dear. What are they, some sort of conjurers?”
    “No, no, they tell stories. Write them down, I mean.” Marya grabbed at her tea to buy a moment’s thought. Buyanites had an insatiable lust for information about the human world, but anything Marya told them became a daring new fashion, spreading like gossip. She had to be careful. “A playwright writes a story that other people act out. They memorize the story and pretend that they are the heroines and villains of it. A poet writes one that rhymes, like a song.” Marya grinned suddenly. She shut her eyes and recited, the words coming back to her like old friends:
     
There, weeping, a tsarevna lies, locked in a cell.
And Master Grey Wolf serves her very well.
There, in her mortar, sweeping beneath the skies,
the demon Baba Yaga flies.
There Tsar Koschei,
he wastes away,
poring over his pale gold.
    The waiter tucked his cloth under an arm and applauded vigorously. Lebedeva clapped her hands. “Oh, superb! It’s about