She stops, heaving an annoyed breath, and takes off again, wobbling a little. I swallow my huff of amusement. Unlike her, I’m not winded, so I speed up until we go arm in arm down the main nave, flaming mosaics glittering around us.
Time to up the stakes. I know how to get her to talk, even if I hate making myself so vulnerable. But I tried everything else, and none of it worked.
This is what’s left. Trust for trust. We played this game before.
“When I was Woland for the first time, I kept falling over before I learned how to keep my balance. Hooves were never meant for two-legged creatures,” I say, glancing at her profile.
She doesn’t react, which I take for tacit interest. I never told her why I have two forms—hardly anyone knows the truth. I push past my reluctance to share this secret and lay myself truly bare for this woman who doesn’t even want me anymore.
“It happened after I freed myself from the prison in the roots of the Great Oak,” I begin my story. “I stood here, setting gems into a wall, when suddenly, a great wave of magic swept around me, and there I was, no longer Weles, but Woland.”
I fall silent, waiting, until finally…
“What happened?”
I smile and tell her the rest.
Chapter five
Woland
“Before mortals were created and started praying, gods were self-sufficient,” I explain, and Jaga’s steps slow in interest.
“We created the world around us and filled it with plants and creatures with infinite freedom, and the same power applied to our bodies and souls. Each god shaped themselves at will, until they settled on an image they liked for a time. If we wanted to change, we did. Mokosz was far more adventurous in those times, experimenting with her body without the fear of being ugly. She’s terrified of ugliness now, of course.”
Jaga grits her teeth. “Then I’ll make her ugly one day. That cunt.”
“You have my blessing. Now, when mortals built shrines and called on our names over the smoke of a burning sacrifice, something changed. It was subtle at first and took centuries for us to notice, but… We grew more solid. More set in our ways, reluctant to change as much. Strzybog, who used to frolic with all elements equally, lost interest in all but the wind. Mokoszsettled on one face and body that she kept perfecting. Swarog spent more and more time in the forge. Perun grew volatile like a summer storm.”
I smile bitterly, falling silent as I remember those days. That was when the war with my brother truly began, though I didn’t see it yet. We fought often before because of Mokosz, but never likethat.
After we noticed the changes in us, Perun screamed that it was my fault for making mortals in my image, so creative, powerful, possessed of magic. They gained power over us. We were no longer limitless.
If he’d been free to make them in his way, he claimed, none of that would have happened. They would have been docile, easy playthings for us to pick up and discard at will, and we would have been free.
But limitless freedom is boring.
“What then?” asks Jaga, and I can tell she’s annoyed by my silence, by having to ask. She can’t pretend to be disinterested. Good.
“It took some time to figure out what happened, but I did. It turned out mortal beliefs had power, and a lot of it. By believing certain things about us, calling us certain names, mortals forced us into frames. Mokosz, the most beautiful of goddesses. Weles the wise, the healer, the creator. Perun, the impulsive thrower of thunder.”
I smile ruefully, nostalgia for the times before my imprisonment sweeping over me briefly. Jaga stops and leans her back against a pillar encrusted with sapphires and obsidians. It’s dark in this part of the Hall, cozy. I see a distant fire reflected in her rapt eyes.
“Was it before he gave mortals the ancestral souls to control them?”
I nod. There’s a weight in my throat. I don’t like remembering that part—Perun spoiling my most beloved creation while I was helpless to stop him.
“My brother was furious. He went into the mortal world a lot in those days, causing storms that destroyed entire villages sometimes. It was ironic—he raged against the mortals for making him who he was, yet he reacted exactly like they expected: with mindless, all-consuming fury.
“But Perun is cunning, too, and after his rage was spent, he sat down and pondered. At last, he decided to use the mortals’ beliefs for his own gains.”
I clench my teeth. Jaga steps from foot to foot, probably in pain from her boots.
“Let’s sit.”
A thrill runs down my spine when she takes my offered arm. It was a good choice to tell her, even though my soul aches all over again as I remember that pain.
We sit down in an alcove hidden in shadow, where only large ember-like rubies gleam softly by the floor. Jaga sits close but doesn’t touch me.
