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