Other Plans

I had other plans this year. 

 

I was supposed to be getting married. My father, who had led my household but had trouble leading the horses from the stalls to the fields and back again, had found someone I didn’t mind marrying, and had actually convinced the man to say yes to me. It was one of the few things my father had ever put complete effort into. The rest of the work- the housework, the rearing of my brothers and I, the breaking of the stallions- had been left to us. Chores, or tasks, or opportunities for him to be anywhere but the house, anywhere but in a position of leadership, anywhere but at court, offering the king his service because servicing was what he did best. I had always assumed it was odd for my father to give up all the responsibility he had to my brothers, and to his daughter. But I was born a peasant, and he was born a man of the court, and he had never allowed our two worlds to overlap. I didn’t know a thing. 

 

I recalled all of the chores he had given me when I staked him through the heart the day before last. He had once told me, “Your nurse has told you too many of the old stories, Dochka. You’ll be fishing in the frozen river for leshy next.” I looked at his white skin and blue mouth and said, “Maybe it’s time to go fishing for leshy next, hm, starik?” Then I used his cane, which he’d only just begun to need to get anywhere quickly, to turn his heart into pulp inside his chest cavity. A little of it spilt on the ground out of him as well. 

 

Sasha, my older brother, had told me that in a battle, it never got easier. It was filthy work, and it did not matter how many lives you ended, ending another was always difficult. Our younger brother, Alex, insisted it didn’t matter that we were looking at false humanity right now. A human face was meant to inspire compassion, so ending a life, when you knew it wasn’t much of a life, and knew it would end your life if you gave it the chance, was still an uneasy endeavor. Alex was meant to become a scholar, to follow our father to the court one day. He was thigh deep in snow right, sweating as much as if he were next to the oven, from hacking into the frozen dirt. It was a dirty sight to see, because it was the end of all hope for a courtly life full of text and ideas and gentle women. 

 

I have been visiting our late mother’s sister when the illness hit, helping her prepare for her child, and helping once it had arrived. The child wasn’t particularly bright, if birthing was an indication. As useless as a dumb foal. He had tried to be born backward, and in the end there had been nothing for it but to allow him to die, or else kill my mother’s sister. It was just as well, in the end. A babe was a beautiful and wonderful gift in the world, especially in winter, before the spring arrived, when the flowers and the child could blossom together. But it was less useful than an able-bodied woman when you were fighting legions of the dead. A woman with nothing left to lose, and a heart full of grief-become-rage, and even the dead know to be afraid. 

 

But there was no battle to return to. No fighting at all when I got home. My brothers hadn’t thought, at any point, to pick up one of father’s knives or sword, or the axe in the wood shed, and try their hand at taking back the country. Not a single household in our town had tried to drive the upyrs back. They had ceded before the fight even began. When I put my mind to it, I believe it’s because of the stories. Stories. That’s all. Every dark story our nurse told us, every myth our father had disagreed with, was battling against them in their minds, and rather than sort out the conflict, they allowed it to rage and took several steps back. The dead had risen, the upyrs were here, and they had decided it was all God’s will and we weren’t meant to survive. Friends and family that had died were clawing and pounding their way out of their coffins and through the frozen soil to come take the rest of us back with them, and my brothers could not overcome the realization of our nurse’s stories. Not even when our nurse, death-white, pocked with holes where maggots had eaten her in the warmer time of the year. 

 

Idiots, I said. Exactly like father. It was nothing worse than battling off the birds that came for bodies on the battlefield before they could be returned to their families. What disturbed them greatly, I think, is the upyr appetite for blood and flesh. It is a necrotic disease wearing the faces of our loved ones. It is the unknown, and the known. It is the nightmares our nurse shared with us. The embodiment of my mother’s sister’s grief at her lost child. And upyr are not slow. They are as quick and violent as the men Sasha had fought in battle. But they die like men. Not of illness, but trauma. For Sasha, it may never get easier, but it may become more bearable if he can avoid looking into their faces and believing that, for all they look like they want to devour you, they are still your kin. 

 

Because they no longer are. 

 

This morning I saddled our horses and loaded a neighbour’s caravan with the last of the bread, and our warmest clothing, and every axe and shovel and knife and pick I could find on our property. I put out the oven, then shoved Alex off of it and into the caravan, and pulled Sasha onto a horse at the front with me, and we’re off to take back our town, and then the next one, and then the next until this land is ours once more. There may be more upyr now than there are our kind- there are certainly more dead than alive. And perhaps in the spring when the soil is warmer and softer, they will climb out in droves and pull us from the backs of our horses and pick at us like vultures on the battlefield.

 

Until that day, though, my brothers and I will continue to do what our father always encouraged us to do. Which is, what everyone else should be doing. This is not our responsibility alone, but we are willing. That will have to be enough for now. Because if all the stories are true, and darkness has risen, there must also be someone to defeat it. 

Art by Kim Myatt