He surfaces from the memory kneeling in the dark blood he and Ala spilled on the carpet, his hand still clutched in Ala's with the ribbon binding them together. She looks at him with an expression he can't quite name. She lifts her free hand as if to touch his face, then thinks better of it, letting it drop back into her lap instead.
"The petal," she says.
She reaches into her pocket, produces the brown paper, and offers it to him. He unwraps it as carefully as his trembling hands allow. The fern flower rests inside, almost as fresh as the day he picked it—a lifetime ago. It looks almost like a lily, with big, thick petals that taper to an elegant point, symmetrically arranged around a central labellum. He pinches off one of the petals. It doesn't feel powerful, but perhaps that is the nature of power. Like the zmory, like Baba Jaga herself. True power doesn't always need to declare itself.
He puts the petal in his mouth and chews. It tastes like green. There is no better word for it—like grass, or leaves, with just a hint of sweetness. He swallows. As he does, he feels the petal carve a line of heat down his esophagus and into his stomach.
Pain returns, less focused this time, more of a burning that envelops his entire body at once, as if he's been thrust into a fire. Heat swallows him whole. From Ala's whimper across from him, he knows she suffers the same. They reach for each other simultaneously with their free hands, clutching tight until the ribbon strains around their knuckles.
Their eyes meet, and the pain vanishes. He sits back on his heels, panting. The fern flower lies fallen on the carpet by his ankle.
Baba Jaga bends over them and cuts the ribbon with a paring knife. They do not let go right away.
"It was her," she whispers to him, as if sharing a secret.
"It was," he says. "And she chose me as her successor."
His voice is bitter. He knows what it means: she saw in him the same capacity she feels in herself. He peels his fingers from hers. They are tacky with blood.
"But you aren't," she says. "You came to me instead."
He cannot look at her. He cannot bear her mercy.
The smell of this place is familiar to Niko. All witch houses smell the same: lavender, smoke, and salt. And now blood, of course. The combined blood of Ala and Dymitr stains the rug between their knees. As they pull their hands apart, Niko is relieved to see the bleeding has slowed, the wounds returning to normal. They rise. Niko bends to pick up the ribbon that fell between them. He knows Baba Jaga too well to leave her with such a token. She could do too much with it.
He tucks the ribbon into his pocket. Before, he wouldn't have said you could see the curse on Ala... but he can certainly see its absence now. She stands straighter. Her eyes are brighter. He doesn't know much about the visions that haunted her, except—*It was her*. She just said it to Dymitr, and he seemed to understand. Something strange has passed between them, something Niko can't comprehend.
Baba Jaga is waiting. Niko can tell by the restless shift of her bare feet. Her toes are red with Ala and Dymitr's blood. Her eyes lift to meet his. For a moment, he sees a spark of light there, like a child's delight. It is a feat for a woman who has seen and done so much to still find room for wonder.
"And now we come to the main event, I think," Baba Jaga says as Dymitr turns to face her, Ala and Niko at his back. She leans against the table behind her, jostling some of the jars with the heels of her hands. Teeth clatter together in one; live moths flap their wings against the glass in another.
"Make your request, Knight," Baba Jaga says to Dymitr.
"I'd like you to destroy my sword," he says. "So the powers and the oaths of my kind are beyond my reach."
"You wish to hobble yourself," Baba Jaga says. She tilts her head as she regards him. In this light, it is easy to see the strzyga buried deep in her blood. Baba Jaga is neither strzyga, nor zmora, nor mortal, nor wraith, yet she has collected bits and pieces of so many things in her long years that she can, at times, resemble them all.
"Why?" she asks.
"I have done wrong," Dymitr says. He sounds exhausted, just as he did in the foyer.
"And you were taught that pain is penance," Baba Jaga says.
Dymitr receives this in silence. Niko looks at Ala. She is biting down on her lip hard enough to draw blood. The look she gives him carries a question. He suspects it is something like: *Are we really going to let him do this?* If Niko didn't believe so strongly in letting people make their own choices, perhaps the answer would be no. But he does.
Doesn't he?
"Very well," Baba Jaga says. "I have heard that the longer you go without drawing that blade, the more difficult it is to unsheathe. Is that true?"
Dymitr nods.
"How long has it been?"
"Over a year."
"Then I suggest you kneel."
Dymitr looks at his hands. Niko looks with him. His right pinkie is taped to the finger beside it, wrapped in gauze—the fingernail he gave to Lidia. His palm is cut from taking Ala's curse. His fingertips are bright red, irritated from the bowstring.
Dymitr takes off his jacket and tugs his shirt over his head. Niko stifles a gasp.
He can see the sword buried in Dymitr's spine. It is a longsword, the hilt flat against his shoulders, but so deeply submerged in his flesh that Niko can only see a sliver where it catches the light. He knows from experience that the blade itself is bone white, but he cannot see it. It is inside Dymitr's body. Dymitr will need to pull it free with his bare hands.
He holds the jacket and shirt out to Ala. She takes them, her eyes wide. Dymitr glances at Niko.
"You might not want to watch," he says to Niko and Ala.
"If you have to feel it, the least I can do is see it," Niko replies sharply.
Dymitr turns away and kneels at Baba Jaga's feet. He draws a deep, slow breath, then brings his hands up to the back of his neck. For a moment they hover there, trembling.
"Dzierżymy miecz," he says softly. "I znosimy jego ból."
We bear the sword, and we bear the pain of the sword.
Then he digs into his own flesh. A shudder travels through Niko's entire body. Beside him, Ala presses a palm to her mouth, as if to stifle a scream. Blood spills down Dymitr's back, around his fingertips. He digs deeper, harder, making a strangled sound—something between a whimper and a scream.
Niko steadies himself. Everything in him wants to launch himself at Dymitr, to pull his hands away from his back—to save him from this unnecessary agony. But he won't. Besides, it is too late now.
Dymitr screams into his teeth and plunges his hands into his flesh, wrapping them fully around the hilt. It lifts away from his spine now, soaked in blood, skin, and muscle. Dymitr sags over his knees with a sob, but the job is not done. The blade is still buried inside him.
For a moment, Niko thinks he has given up, that he won't be able to finish. But then Dymitr sucks in a sharp breath, straightens, and screams again as he yanks the sword upward. It pulls free from the sheath of his spine. He holds it aloft for a moment, blood soaking the blade, the hilt, his hands, and forearms.
The open wound in his back is already knitting together, the skin sealing where he broke it with his fingernails. He drops the sword at Baba Jaga's feet with a clatter and falls forward onto his hands and knees, gasping. Niko's knees feel weak with relief. Ala closes her eyes.
Baba Jaga bends down to examine the sword. She seems unmoved by the display of pain she just witnessed. Her eyes glint as she looks over the blade, the simple gold-plated hilt. The instrument of so many nightmares: the bone sword of a Knight of the Holy Order.
"Are you certain?" she says to Dymitr.
Dymitr lifts his head. He hesitates for just a moment. That moment is all Niko needs.
"Wait!" he says. The word tears its way out of him. Baba Jaga raises an eyebrow. He falls to his knees beside Dymitr, laying a hand on his bare, bloody arm and turning him to face Niko.
Niko's hands are cold against Dymitr's shoulders.
"Don't do this," Niko says.
"Do you know how many of your kind I've killed?" Dymitr asks, his voice rough.
"No, but—"
"Neither do I," Dymitr whispers. "I didn't keep track. It didn't occur to me that the number would matter. Don't you understand? I have to do something. I have to."
"Pain is not penance." It is Ala who speaks this time. She draws Dymitr's eyes up, over Niko's shoulder. "You hurt me. You killed people I love. But I still have no use for your pain. I still don't want you to destroy yourself."
"It's not just that," Dymitr says. His hands come up to Niko's elbows, unbearably gentle. His gray-brown eyes are soft. "I can't be this anymore. I can't bear it."
"Then be something else instead," Niko says firmly. He looks up at Baba Jaga. "Change him."
"You say that as if it's simple," she says.
"You changed me into a strzygoń," he says. He doesn't mean to say it. His connection to Baba Jaga is private. But then, these two already know more about him than anyone else. When his mother died, the secret of his mortal origins died with her. The other secrets he carries, he has kept alone since then. It is something of a relief to share that burden.
Baba Jaga seems unfazed by his disclosure.
"You already had strzygi blood," she says with a shrug. "I merely amplified it."
Niko looks down at Dymitr's hands, at the wound in his palm. He thinks of the ribbon in his pocket, stained with Ala and Dymitr's intermingled blood.
"He already has Ala's blood in him," he says. "Zmora blood."
Baba Jaga brings a finger up to tap against her lips, considering the wound just as Niko did.
"Interesting," she says.
She pulls away from the desk and walks on silent feet to one of the windows, pulling back the curtain to look out at the city. Niko has walked through this apartment before with all the curtains drawn. He knows its impossibilities: how it stands on the edge of the Chicago River in the Loop, but also on top of Harold's Chicken in Buena Park, but also overlooking Hyde Park, depending on which segment of the apartment you are in. Still, he finds himself amazed by the line of light along the river. Chicago always reminds him of a stray line from T. S. Eliot—*Unreal City, under the brown fog of a winter dawn*—though he knows, of course, that the line refers to London.
Baba Jaga lets the curtain fall back across the window and turns to Dymitr, Niko, and Ala again.
"The payment I require for changing you," she says, "is your sword."
Dymitr stiffens beneath Niko's hands.
"My soul, you mean," he says.
"A piece of it. Yes."
"And what will you do," Dymitr says quietly, "with a piece of my soul?"
"What I wish," Baba Jaga says.
The back of Niko's neck prickles. His mother was in Baba Jaga's debt once. She refused to tell him what the witch asked of her, but he saw the aftermath. Night after night, for a year, his mother came home with dirt caked under her fingernails, sweat curling her hair, and trouble in her eyes. It is no small thing to be the hands and feet of Baba Jaga.
"Will you ever return it to me?" Dymitr asks.
"For the right price," she replies.
There is that, at least. It is a door left cracked, instead of closed and locked. Dymitr looks at Niko, and then Ala.
"Is this what you want from me?" he asks. "To change?"
She crouches in front of him and reaches for his hand. He gives it to her and holds on.
"I want you to live," she says. "I want you to try."
It takes a long time, but finally, Dymitr nods.