Jaga’s lips part on a soft sigh, and she frowns. This is not what she expected to hear, and I grit my teeth and pull her down to sit in the grass. She watches me but doesn’t hurry me along, and I’m grateful.
“This is humiliating,” I say after a while. “It was every time I told it in the past. Well, there’s nothing for it. You see, when Perun chained me to the roots of the Great Oak, he made a sort of burrow for me. There was a narrow hole in the ground, just big enough for everyone who wanted to look in and see me suffer.”
Or pour hot oil or piss on me.I don’t say it.
“I was imprisoned in a sort of chamber made of packed earth, the roots I was chained to sturdy and black. There was just enough space for one person to join me, and Perun often did. But not only him.”
Jaga leans her chin on her fist, sitting cross-legged in front of me. I want to look away in shame, but she watches me with such keen interest, I decide to make the most of it. It will be shameful whether I look into her eyes or not.
“I was weak. So weak, Jaga. You have no idea. He came often to make me bleed. Mokosz came, too, from time to time, ripping off my clothes and taunting me. I was their toy. My magic was constantly sucked out by his tree, and the humiliation of that must have been the greatest of all: knowing I had no hopes of ever regaining my power, because he took it all for himself. Hegorgedhimself on it, and then used it to flail me or rip out my tongue and gouge out my eyes. I healed so very slowly. It hurt.”
She swallows audibly, the skin around her eyes tightening with tension even as she struggles to keep her face neutral. I laugh, bitter and cold with self-loathing.
“Do you pity me yet?”
“Maybe a little. Go on.”
“Jutrzenka visited me very rarely at first. Usually, she just looked in through the hole above, letting in a few rays of morning light that warmed my skin. I ignored her at the start. The first two hundred years… I was so very proud, Jaga. SocertainI could do it somehow. I struggled against the chains, I fought the tree, I desperately tried to hoard my magic and not let it be stolen. Two hundred years. That was a long time, I think, before I gave up and accepted my fate.”
“Very long,” she murmurs, her face a mask of neutrality even though there’s a tiny catch in her voice.
I give her a wry smile, pulling at my goatee before I realize what I’m doing and clench my hand into a fist.
“She liked to watch me cry. I did a lot after I broke down. It just… The sheer thought of spending an eternity like that, with no hope of being free, with no power… I’m not proud of myself, but I couldn’t handle it. I still… Ah.
“So yes, I was very much broken, and wept a lot. Jutrzenka watched. Then one day, I looked up and saw her crouching by my hole, and I thought to myself—well, what if I can dosomething?Maybe I will never be free, maybe I’ll be shackled for all of eternity, but who says I can’t look for moments of entertainment among the misery? I spoke to her. She ran away the first time, and came back three days later. She brought me an apple.”
I smile grimly, because I still remember the taste of that apple she fed me centuries ago. It was the first thing I had in my mouth after over two hundred years.
“We started talking. Jutrzenka, well, she had no reason to trust or even like me. We stole her once, me and Chors. It was in the old days, before Perun started tinkering with mortal beliefs. One day, when she came out to open the gates of dawn and see off Dadzbog, we grabbed her and took her to Nawie. It was nothingmore than a joke, but Perun and Dadzbog were very offended. Oh, and Mokosz—because we chose another woman to capture. She was so angry.”
I snicker as I remember it, Mokosz jumping up and down in place while telling me off because I dared to take a woman who was not her. We were done at that point, my infatuation well and truly over, and I simply found her hilarious.
“They attacked us with enormous forces, and we fought. Nyja’s nawkas died in droves. We gave Jutrzenka back after a week, because a prank wasn’t worth all that bloodshed. That’s when we called the mountain Mogila. Its slopes drank so much blood back then.”
“How come she ended up setting you free?” Jaga asks, leaning closer. Her eyes are rapt with curiosity, and I think she forgot to keep her expression in check.
“I made her love me,” I say with a disgusted curl of my lip. “It wasn’t hard. She kept coming back, and I told her stories and asked her for small favors. A sip of water to wet my lips. A cloth to wipe my forehead. There came a point when she would spend hours curled up by my side, talking or listening.”
Jaga’s eyes grow distant and cool, but there is no loathing on her face. I shake my head.
“I never promised her anything. It wasn’t like that. I didn’t even honestly believe she was brave enough to act against Dadzbog, who was a stern father to her. I think while I was quietly plotting to pull her to my side, she was scheming to make me fall in love. She confessed to me one time that I intrigued her ever since I kidnapped her. It was her first time outside Wyraj, you know. She didn’t know many men since her father kept her on a tight leash.”
“And you never promised her eternal love in exchange for setting you free?” Jaga asks with mocking disbelief.
I see. She must see parallels between my seduction of Jutrzenka and the way I manipulated Jaga, but I was way smarter with the goddess of dawn. Because I didn’t care for her like I care for my poppy girl.
I look pointedly at the pendant hanging between her breasts to remind her I can’t lie.
“Never. But not because it was honorable—I would lie and promise her the throne of Nawie if she freed me at that point. No, I sensed deeply that once Jutrzenka got my love or the promise of it, she would be content keeping me chained in that hole forever. So I subtly led her on, dangling that love like a treat and never giving her enough to be satisfied. I manipulated her to do more and more for me, giving her only paltry rewards for her services.”
“Did you kiss or have sex?” Jaga asks, and her voice is so frosty, I can’t help but laugh.
“Oh, she tried. But no. She was too inexperienced to rape me like Mokosz, and when I refused, she scarcely knew what to do. No, I didn’t. Again, not because I was honorable or good but simply because I couldn’t think of her that way. There were many days when she behaved like a little girl from sunrise till sunset, and it spoiled any charms she might have had.”
Jaga’s mouth works and she looks away, frowning. She tears out clumps of grass, seemingly angry, and I make an inquiring sound. She clears her throat without looking up.
“So Mokosz… Did that to you.”
