Sister Mara Kozlova picked the wilted flowers from the headstones, collecting them in a plastic bag. She held the bag in the same right hand, gripping her elbow crutch, keeping her stable as she kneeled to clear the fleeting gifts of loved ones.
It was a much bigger cemetery than she was used to, this being attached to the old royal cathedral that oversaw her own little prayer house in the fishing village she grew up in. Even the river it stood over dwarfed the inlet she splashed around in, like a rusalka could reach out and drag her down to the bottom. Having once been clogged with naked corpses, it wasn’t unlikely there to be spirits of vengeance.
The cathedral had layers of black, pointed roofs with shingles discolored, curled, and patched up over decades. They narrowed into a short spire topped by an abstraction of swirling flame more resembling a black onion. The cemetery stood in its grand shadow, blocking the midday sun and sparing Mara’s uncovered eye from constantly squinting and her youthful face from burning.
For her, even this much labor in late autumn left her sweating in her traditional dress: a black sarafan down to her calves and a floral shoulder scarf shrouded by her army green poncho. The poncho was a charitable donation from a veteran of the Socialist Federation army: a relic from another time worth nothing on the street market.
She had tucked her coppery auburn waves behind her ears; Even the faintest sensations as these were dreadful, but she bared it.
Having collected the last of the wilted flowers, she returned inside. She admired the sculpture and woodwork of reaching hands lining the arch adorning the giant doors. Some were fresh replacements, although others were worn and rotting. This fashion—a pastiche of wood across eras and empires rekindled in bomb fire—characterized much of the building’s construction.
As of this century, it is the Prince Alexei Cathedral in spirit more than body. A whole new structure would replace this one in time, little by little. Wolf jawbone hung on the door as its watchdog, but even that could not protect against every evil from without or within.
Sister Mara descended to the basement chapel, holding her free hand against the wall with the bag pendulum-swinging on her forearm. Crutch and leg alternated down steps, and she breathed from relief upon reaching the bottom. Relieved, she pressed against one door with her shoulder.
The chapel served as a crypt, with stone pillars and arches of eroded brickwork holding up the room. It was lit with a few warm light fixtures, and the air always smelled of incense despite the ventilation.
At the altar, the priest spoke with a dignified young woman dressed like an imperial officer with her black velvet coat. Her platinum blonde hair was tucked into her ushanka, and she had glossed her lips violet. She was attentive to the priest, smiling gently with a rhythmic nod.
Father Ilya had receding, dark gray hair, a stern face, and a hard jaw. His black vestments came to the floor in ripples. His stole underneath was lined with intricate, flowing patterns. The presence of this divine warrior distracted from his glass eye, which Mara noticed shortly after their meeting yesterday.
He said to the young woman, “It is the highest honor to have you here today, princess. I have been one of your biggest supporters since you started your campaign. Bless you, your highness.” He held out his calloused, scarred hand, which she shook with white gloves.
She said, “I am grateful to know people still believe in the crown after all these years of red terror and liberal peacocking.” The two laughed like old friends: a rare sight without vodka present.
Mara tapped her crutch against the hard floor to get the priest’s attention. The holy man shook from his trance, and Mara held out the bag of flowers.
“Ah, you’ve finished up the graveyard. Excellent!” He took the bag and rubbed a wilted petal in his fingers. “These’ll be going straight to the compost. Oh, how beautiful the circle of life is; the dead can give life in time.” A rather cliché saying for an Umerinik priest, but Mara had been drawn to the faith for such sentimentality. It was much better for her than having been raised by Firebrand fanatics with a fondness for self-mutilation.
Father Ilya introduced the young ladies to one another. “Sister Mara, I’m sure you’ve heard the word about our lost princess, Verochka Adrikovna Vorona.”
“‘Vera’ will do fine, Sister. We’re on professional terms. A pleasure to meet you.” The princess gently shook Mara’s hand, grasping the priestess’ forearm. Mara’s nerves fired both from Vera’s aura and from the hate of being touched, creaking a faint, “Hello.”
The priest asked Mara, “Would you please see to it that the food is arranged properly upstairs? The others should have started, but I’m not going to leave to chance whether that commie Father Anton swipes any borscht like a red-loving vampire would.”
Father Anton was a priest of Mara’s monastery since he lost his administrative position after the Federation dissolved. He was thoughtful man in his forties and supplied Mara with much education to stomach her divine fascinations. Borscht was also something he disliked, and a vampire would never preach communism nowadays.
***
Mara ascended the stairs with Vera volunteering to aid her in preparation. “I can help you up.” Mara shrugged her off and kept on her way.
Upstairs, Mara and the elderly Sister Olga prepared long tables draped in cloth.
Mara sliced apples and loaves of salted black rye bread, and Olga poured a pitcher of black tea with lemon and only stained the tablecloth twice. Someone placed two ceramic bowls of leftover holiday apples at each end of the table in front of the altar. A libation statue of a patron goddess modeled with a shawl and scythe watched the spread.
Having changed into the clerical attire of a dark cloak, beaded necklaces, a gray stole, and a shroud over the face, Mara stood watch at the front window through narrow, tall glass. She was fearful of meeting anyone else new in this big city for the rest of her stay. The beauty of being among the clergy was the amount of undisturbed time in solitude dedicated to one’s scholarship. Father Anton even permitted her use of a CD player with headphones, being quite perceptive of every noise around. Here, she was at the people’s mercy until she could retreat.
Families arrived either by foot or motor carriage, many of which were painted bright, sleek, and shiny. Back in the village, Mara had only seen them in magazines at the convenience store advertising their staggering water gallon per kilometer fuel rate. She had only even seen decades-old, low-riding trucks with wooden beds helmed by drinking men with Federation flags flying high: a red field with the raven skull, antlers, and wings of a chelvoron. Such beings were revered by the faithful in the Borealy, but those who flew the red observed a different faith and different gods.
Father Anton, the younger, spindly priest, pressed a door open with both hands to welcome the visitors. The early birds were wrapped in colorful, satin hanfu from Jōyun: the staple robes of diplomats, businesspeople, and race traitors to many in Kochevnia. At the stairwell, two stoic guardsmen stood by the princess and observed the doorway with suspicion.
Anton received kisses on the hand from the devout and they received a blessing in turn. Children either quietly behaved or compelled to silence as parents guided them down the center aisle. Mara winced at the correction of hyperactive boys.
More folk came in dully dressed, though the women were more prone to pamper themselves as best they could. Father Anton blessed them, and their children were rowdy as well.
Mixed in with them were young men dressed in military coats like the princess, though plainer and sporting side caps. Sister Mara recognized them as dashing, though she questioned the married women eying them.
The guests sat in rows of single chairs of eclectic style, and Father Ilya orated from the podium. “Thank you all for coming to observe the anniversaries of the loved ones who have parted from this world carried by Our Lady, Moryenya, along the veins of earth to the Lord and Warden of the Dead. Let us pray to Them the souls be unbound from this earthly plane and give new life to this world come springtime. Pray to Them we see prosperity in these dreadful days. Her Highness, Princess Vera, will lead us.”
He gestures an open hand towards her. A murmur ripples among the attendants in curiosity and excitement. It felt like a dream to have a princess anywhere near them in their lifetimes. Her picturesque elegance would have been alien when Mara was a girl. Although, one aged woman rolled her eyes.
The princess strolled in front of the podium and held out her hand with a charming smile to a blonde businesswoman with crow’s feet seated in the front. Awestruck, the woman accepted, holding her daughter’s hand as everyone joined in unitary prayer.
The cathedral filled with harmonious air, but Mara could only mouth along and held Father Anton’s baby-soft hand. She struggled to vocalize anything, especially in the company of strangers.
It quieted down, and Father Ilya returned to the podium to begin recounting those who had died on this day in the past after a sip of a crinkling water bottle. Each name recited cued quiet nods, silent prayer, and trickling tears. Even hardened Kochsky people had cracks in their emotional shells. To some, not mourning a loss is its own disrespect to the living and the dead.
After thirty minutes, the priest called the last name. “Vuk Ždžisławovich Orelov: a beloved son; an honored soldier; a patriot loyal to his faith in communism. Politics aside, we commend his sacrifice for our beautiful country though his body may never to be found. Bless you and let your journey be safe.”
In unison, the people recited, “And bless your family, too.” It was a reflex for many, even the unenthused.
Mara overheard a man snicker to his aged father. “Ždžisławovich? More of a mutt than a real Kochsky patriot, eh, papochka?” The old man dressed in a dark gray-green officer uniform with bright red shoulder straps. He said nothing to his son, but his face had a slight scowl. In his day, every nation in the proud Socialist Federation of Peoples’ Republics was of the same blood and creed even beyond Borealy.
A woman in rugged coat and headscarf elbowed the man in the arm. She whispered a rural accent through gritted teeth, “That was my grandfather, nationalist prick.”
Mara’s eyes darted; her temples ached from the rising tension which followed.
The man’s face went hot and red, “If those commies were real countrymen, I wouldn’t have to work in some Jōyunese factory making plastic bullshit.” He glanced at those dressed in exotic dress over the woman’s shoulder before returned his attention.
Mara nudged to Father Anton and gestured toward the two. He calmly approached and leaned down to say, “Excuse me, but could I ask you to step out with me to resolve this matter?”
The man glared at him. “No, I think we’re fine.”
The woman said, “No, no, I think we should—”
His knuckles bore into her nose, her head knocking against the skull of the young pregnant woman next to her, which startled her little girls. Everyone’s eyes were on the scene, with a small boy pumping his fist in excitement. Father Anton looked to Mara and Olga, waved them away and mouthed, “Police.”
The two holy sisters hustled out of the cathedral as the princess’ men and the military boys stepped in. In a pinch, Mara always could make a swift getaway with a crutch.
***
Outside, Mara pulled back her headdress and finger-combed her hair while she sat on a bench by the cemetery, now dotted with fresh flowers. Olga let her recoup from heavy breathing and social fatigue while she went to call the authorities. From the bench, she heard faint shouting coming from inside.
Deep in the back of her mind, she feared all their negative energy would rouse the ire of the dead with her parents’ warnings still seared into her brainstem. An ecclesiastical scholar of divination with the dead should not believe such things, she thought. But who knows what malevolent things lurk in the catacombs beneath the cathedral and the city beyond?
She rested her chin on her hand while looking out at the remaining woodlands enshrining the city. Her good eye widened as she witnessed a spectral ashen wolf at the edge of the woods. Locking eyes with her, the spectral ashen wolf had a dark red stain from its muzzle to its chest. The otherworldly being circled around once, dashed, and disappeared.
Mara, being well read, knew that such spirits were one of the first icons of worship along with the chelvoron on the Boreaski continent, which was once named Zemlyataygi as any local nationalist would inform. The Boreaski peoples had known them as envoys of Death, and their wooden totems stood rotting in forgotten ruins or museums on the other side of the world. Wherever they came, Death followed in their shadow.
She saw the man and woman being led out of the cathedral, and so she hobbled back to the giant front doors. Although she noticed white, hard fragments littering the foot of the door. Having thought to fetch the broom, she stepped closer. Shards of the wolfen jawbone lay broken, having once hung from the door. Fidgeting, she rolled a smooth carnivore tooth in her fingers.
Shivering in her warm garb, she thought the door may have violently swung, but the thought of it haunted her it had broken from divining the presence of a malevolent being it could not withstand. Something was within this holy place.
She hustled beyond the tainted threshold, looking for Father Anton nowhere to be seen. Those inside were moving onto blessing the men in uniform, each coming to the front of the line to bow their head to the princess holding up three fingers, giving a few good words for fighting morale, and then flicked water on their head so their souls may pass on from battle.
Mara found Father Ilya standing to the side, talking to the pregnant woman in lively conversation, and the priestess poke at his shoulder.
She asked, “Anton? Where go?”
Father Anton gave her a wide-eyed look. “What is the matter, Sister Mara?”
She held up the piece of the bone charm, and spoke with a soft, hoarse voice, “Charm bro-broken… fight anger spirits, yes? Catacomb demon?” Over the past two decades, there had been countless rumors of demonic activity deep in the ageless catacombs beneath the city of Serayavoda. The city council decreed to bar off most of the entrances around the city, except for religious institutions and approved anthropologists. Still, daring thieves and college students drunk on the cheapest counterfeit liquor they could find would sneak in. Royal treasures would tempt anyone with the average Kochsky salary.
Anton felt surprised and composed himself. “Sister, I’m sorry, but I have never b3en convinced such charms do as they say. Besides, if the supposed demon was beneath the cathedral, why would it have destroyed the door’s charm?”
Mara reflected on this, but was still worried.
“Divination?” she asked sheepishly.
Anton seemed to consider the idea. “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to try. Later tonight, we could arrange a communion with the dead. We must prepare.”
She nodded. Given her young adulthood, she had rarely ever performed such rituals. Traditionally, women of the cloth perform the process, believing they have a distinct connection to the soul cycle due to their ability to bear children. Priestesses foregoing motherhood instead channel their efforts in communing with spectral beings beyond the material realm. The other women of her convent assured her she was adept for her age, and yet, she could not help feeling she was always going to do something wrong. For being “gifted,” she felt quite useless.
