Share
Chapter 44: A Goddess Is Born
Morozko and Ivan did not encounter any other ghosts. Morozko suspected Maria Morevna held her spectral sisters at bay, already having claimed Ivan as her own. He wondered if Ivan’s deaths each night at Maria’s hands was the tithe they were paying to enter the deathless lands, for everything here had a price. Food was scarce, game nearly nonexistent, and they often went hungry.
The morning of the summer solstice came, and they arrived at a steep rim of mountains that ringed the deathless lands. A great lair of a cave lay atop the tallest mountains: the domain of Zmei Gorynych.
Greyback made quick work of the scree with Ivan on his back, and Morozko rose as a winter storm to the mountain’s peak. Still, the summit was tall, and it took them half a day to scale it. In the interim, the sun sang her solstice song, luring Zmei out of his cave. The dragon took wing and courted his celestial love with a radiant d
Related chapters
Jack Frost's Bride Chapter 45: Gardens To Tend
Morozko could barely see through the fury of the storm. Lightning split an amethyst birch in two, setting the jewel tree aflame. From behind the fallen tree slunk an orange tabby. “It is about time that you arrived,” purred Aym. Morozko stopped in his tracks. “Pus in boots? How the hell did you get here?” Aym laughed. “I have my ways. You look rather blue – sadness at my mistress’s disappearance must have taken a toll on you. I would say that you are practically frozen in sorrow.” Ivan rounded a corner on Greyback. His eyes gaped wide. “Something has changed,” he breathed. “I can feel it in my soul, now bound to another master. Actually, no – mistress? A – a goddess? But how?” Aym wove in between Greyback’s legs, purring. “You wouldn’t happen to have any cream, would you, bud? The deathless lands have lackluster food, and that’s an understatement.”
Jack Frost's Bride Chapter 46: Falcon Wild
“I missed you too. You do not, um, mind that I look like this now, do you? I thought, in order to save you, that I had to become something else. Someone I am not.”Anya avoided stepping on a mushroom. “Well, your skin is cold, but you are still you. You put on Ded Moroz’s crown for me. If you can accept me as I am now, as a – as Bilobog, or whatever, then I can still love you.”Morozko stopped, taking both of her hands into his. “Anya, I would not care if you became a hag. I would still adore you. Remember? I am your sidekick. All I want is your happiness.”Anya leaned into him. “Thanks, Kolya. You mean the world to me, too.”Their lips met.Aym coughed up a hairball. It landed square on Morozko’s cheek, interrupting their kiss. Aym purred with laughter as Morozko wiped the matted fur from his f
Jack Frost's Bride Chapter 47: Promenade
They backpacked Europe, hostel by hostel. It was Anya’s insistence that they travel simply, no planes, all train, bus and foot. Morozko mastered the art of smoking when you were a walking refrigerator. Anya learned to pack light. Both needed time to heal – one had lost his body, the other had lost her soul.Despite the marvels of the Old Word – the museums, the culture, the castles and cathedrals - Anya could not sleep. When she shut her eyes, she saw the deathless girls, each whispering silently, tears on their cheeks like pearls. Alina was always at the forefront, swirling into dust.It had been a year since they set out on their journey, though Anya’s body had stopped aging. Physically, she would always remain eighteen, perpetually frozen in time. She turned, restless, in Morozko’s arms, glamoured like him, for now light poured from her throat. It made sleeping even more diffic
Jack Frost's Bride Chapter 48: Happy Ending
The problem with gods is that often, they like to stay hidden. And the most sacred place in all Buyan, the World Tree, where Perun nested in the branches and Veles snaked round the roots, was not really a tree, but a woman.Mother Mokosh, whose name Russian peasants centuries ago would swear on by taking dirt into their mouths – Mokosh’s body - and spitting it out, like the Greeks making an oath on the River Styx, echoed a tradition that may as well have been Neolithic.To swear on Mother Mokosh was to swear on the vitality of the land, summoning the very magic that bound Buyan together. But that magic was failing, reckless, with vines choking forests, greenery growing like mad beyond even the leshys’ control. Dmitri’s forest was nearly unnavigable, and the tsar went out each day, pruning and plucking, trying to put a stopper on the wilderness.Anya and Morozko stowed what little they had in the oversized bac
Jack Frost's Bride Chapter 1: Frostbite
The prince was born in the northernmost kingdom, with the aurora borealis for his bower. His mother was Snegurochka the Snow Maiden, who once long ago had lost her heart to a village boy. This time she had lost it to a bannik. Perhaps it was the curve of the bathhouse spirit’s strong arms as he chopped wood for the banya that had done Snegurochka in. Perhaps it was his rascal smile. Whatever it was, it had worked. Taking unattainable lovers was a snow maiden habit, after all.Time tended to move in cycles in Buyan, home to the Slavic spirits. Buyan was a land a bit west of the morning and evening star Zorya goddesses and a bit to the north of dreams. Its residents’ actions were no exception to the mythic circles of their fairytale land. Snegurochka’s heart was notorious for wandering and it too fell victim to Buyan’s ebb and flow.Just like his mother’s heart the prince, a strange
Jack Frost's Bride Chapter 2: Kingdom of Ice
Baba Yaga was aback her mortar and pestle with her witch-daughter Morena, the wind-wild goddess with a body like a birch. Morena flew aback a broom in a red velvet cloak and black rags of a dress. They were flying as fast as an eagle over the Caucasus Mountains, sending their flocks of crows and owls to harvest ingredients: poisonous herbs and dwarven treasures, alongside a fair amount of children’s first breaths and mother’s last words. This spell would be one in a long line against Chernobog, the Black God, who longed to unseat Morena and her consort Jarilo from the heavens and spread sterile, cold perfection with the infection of his cursed deathless lands upon Buyan. Nature abhors a vacuum, but vacuums abhor nature, and Chernobog was the void that ate all he drained of blood and left his victims cold and lifeless. Russia was both light and dark, poison and honey, and black Morena was the queen of immortals. Passionate but feral, she
Jack Frost's Bride Chapter 3: Nechist, Cherti, Those In Between
Morozko became famed for his treatment of guests at banyas and his divination prowess. Word traveled of the tenderness with which he beat bushels of green peeled venik against patron’s backs. He could steam and ice the different pools just so, and his reputation began to precede him. Morozko worked for different leshys in different kingdoms who had carved Buyan up between them in a patchwork thanks to games of chess and war. Leshy tsars sometimes lost half a forest to an ill-thought bet. Winners led their pampered squirrels in great migrations to their new lands.First Morozko traveled on foot, then on horseback when he had saved enough money. He possessed his mother’s wandering heart, always searching for a place to belong but never finding it. He was camping by the Volga River one night when he heard the click-clack creak of a hut on chicken legs. A hag with iron teeth and a fence of bones sat smoking her pipe in a
Jack Frost's Bride Chapter 4: Anya, You Are Mine
Centuries passed, but Buyan stayed the same. Morozko settled into tending the banya and thought of Dmitri as his father and the staff as his brothers and sisters. He delighted in Dmitri’s annual councils with his leshy noblemen and the celebrations in the village that followed. He would chase after vila warrior women and flirtatious, dangerous rusalka on St. John’s Eve, searching for fern flowers that would lead to an evening of lovemaking. Many times he sat with Dmitri in the kitchen by the woodstove on rainy evenings and read from Dmitri’s collection of human literature.Baba Yaga watched, waited, and smoked her perpetual pipe. She took Morozko under her hoary wing to become the babushka he never had.It could have been today or tomorrow when Morozko got the letter of a present to deliver. Perhaps a package just like Ded Moroz and Snegurochka carried on the winter holidays. He had not forgotten his wor
Latest chapter
- Jack Frost's Bride Chapter 48: Happy Ending
- Jack Frost's Bride Chapter 47: Promenade
- Jack Frost's Bride Chapter 46: Falcon Wild
- Jack Frost's Bride Chapter 45: Gardens To Tend
- Jack Frost's Bride Chapter 44: A Goddess Is Born
- Jack Frost's Bride Chapter 43: Even Gods Can Be Killed
- Jack Frost's Bride Chapter 42: Ivan Tsarevich
- Jack Frost's Bride Chapter 41: Lion in a Cage
- Jack Frost's Bride Chapter 40: Glazed
