“Why don’t you join us, Weles?” Wiosna asks graciously, inviting me to my own table.
I incline my head and sit, piling my plate high with food. Jaga watches me with her brow gently arched, maybe curious, maybe judgmental. I pay her no mind and eat fast, replenishing the magic I lost slaying dragons.
“My, my, I’d have never guessed the great Weles himself would eat my food,” Wiosna says with pleasure, shaking her head. “Make sure you have this for dessert, too. You’re too thin.”
She pushes a bowl of honeyed fruit toward me, and Jaga sighs in exasperation, her nostrils flaring.
“Has death muddled your brain?” she asks viciously, stabbing a piece of carrot with her fork. “Stop treating him like… Like a grandson! He is Woland. Don’t you remember what he did to me?”
Wiosna pats her hand. “There, there. Of course I remember. But let me be a bit selfish here. If he falls, I’ll cease to exist, Jagusia. It’s in my best interest to keep him fed and strong, eh?”
I swallow a bite of meat and laugh, amused by Wiosna’s pragmatism. “Is that really why you’re nice to me? Aren’t you a cunning vixen.”
She shrugs, smoothing her black dress on her lap. “Am I wrong? Jaga told me Perun almost took you. If he conquers Nawie, I doubt he’ll want to keep things as they are. Souls are magic, aren’t they? He’ll just devour us all to gain more power.”
Souls are magic.
I shoot Jaga a sharp, inquiring look. Is that really it? But how?
My suspicion is confirmed when I catch her giving Wiosna a murderous glare. The old whisperer ignores it, leaning back in her chair with a happy sigh.
“Well, I spent a lot of time in this body to cook. Forgive me.”
The edges of her physique grow blurry, her form becoming transparent, less solid. She exhales for the last time and settles into an incorporeal state, where she needs no air, no food, no magic to exist.
“Be smart, Jagusia. Goodbye.”
The half-transparent ghost of Wiosna kicks away from the floor and rises up, passing through the ceiling. Since I brought her here myself, she can come and go as she pleases. Jaga follows her with her gaze, a mixture of resentment and hesitation on her face.
“I can’t get used to it,” she finally says, leveling me with a cool look of her narrowed eyes. “How they just flit about one moment, then go solid to fuck someone or eat before they shed their body again. Why did you set it up this way?”
I press a linen napkin to my mouth before I take a healthy drink of dewberry wine.
“I didn’t. After I created mortals, and they multiplied, I didn’t give much consideration to what would happen after they died. Afterlife was a purely hypothetical concept since I’m immortal.
“So when the first souls found their way to me, their maker, I just let them settle in my kingdom. More kept coming, and I built more tunnels, more halls, entire areas that grew out into towns, meadows, forests… They come here as birds, but they aren’t truly solid. Most change into forms resembling their former bodies after a few days. I suppose they go back to what’s familiar.”
“And they can grow solid for a few hours a day?”
I nod, taking another sip. I don’t think I’ve had her wine in weeks, and it’s like cool water soothing my parched throat.
“Usually, they have enough magic to last a few hours, yes. Then, they go back to their spirit forms and recharge until they can manifest a body again. Those bodies are only facsimiles of the true mortal ones. For example, they can choose not to feel pain or anything else they don’t like.”
Jaga frowns. “And bieses go to Wyraj after they die? Why?”
I snort with amusement. “You have to remember we weren’t wise or intentional when we played with creation back then. It was just games and experiments. Not mortals. That was my project of love. But after, with the bieses, every god joined in the fun. Each wanted to make their own.
“Now, a bies is a mortal that’s twisted and wrought until they become something else, but they still have a soul. That’s the key. To make a bies, the soul needs to stay trapped behind, and it twists together with the body. Bieses can die, too, as it turned out. First bieses were made by Mokosz and Strzybog, and they found their way to their makers after death. Perun claimed them.”
“But bieses can have children, too?” Jaga asks, shaking her head in frustration.
“Yes, but unlike mortals, they don’t have inborn souls. You see? Their bodies were made in ways that allow them to procreate, but Perun and Mokosz, and other gods joining in the fun, forgot to add that godlike spark. They used what was available—the mortal souls—but once they are twisted beyond recognition, those souls don’t proliferate like the mortal ones. A bies soul is like a mule, I suppose. You can make one, but it won’t breed.
“So now, whenever a bies woman conceives, she receives one of the multiple souls roosting in the Great Oak.”
Jaga grimaces, crushing her berries with a spoon. “There is no logic to this. How can you be gods yet do such a sloppy job of, well, everything?”
I shrug. “We devised solutions as problems arose. The system worked perfectly until Perun schemed to grab more and more power. He skewed the scales, and now everything is out of balance.”
