Jack Frost's Bride

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 mix of steam and snow, was born a traveler. After birth, he toddled his first steps out of his mother's womb into the wilds. Snegurochka had to catch him in her snowflake-spun arms before he disappeared for good.

He was named Morozko after Snegurochka's Father Frost, or Ded Moroz's present-giving ways. Ded Moroz was the Winter King that wanted little to do with a bastard prince and much less to do with the rabble-rousing bannik that had sired him. Snegurochka melted with bliss at the sight of her newborn boy and in doing so scared away her lover. Banniks were never good fathers anyways. They were too concerned with steaming saunas and overseeing the rituals of the banya to make attentive parents. Banyas were the heart of Russian communities and banniks, overseers of the rituals of the bathhouse, had little care for their offspring. They considered the banya their only children.

So Morozko grew up fatherless save for Ded Moroz's stern gaze. He was half of frost, half of fire, and nothing at all like his family.

"Mother, why does dedushka hate me?" Morozko asked before Russia was little more than a land fought over by pagans erecting poles the to snakeskin Veles the chthonic god in the underworld below and thundering Perun the king of the gods above. The people still swore on the Earth Mother Mokosh in those days. They still spilled blood on the death goddess Morena's altar. And Baba Yaga, fabled witch of the mountains, devourer of wandering children, was watching. The hag of the iron teeth was young, though she never remotely looked it.

After asking about his grandfather, Snegurochka had enfolded the sparks in her son's hands and molded them into a rose of fire encased in ice. "You are a treasure, Kolya. That is why Ded Moroz does not understand you. My father showers treasure down upon girls in need like ice crystals from clouds but never keeps them for himself. He gave me away once to the people and only took me back when I was on Morena's doorstep. Ded Moroz is known for winter's barrenness, not summer's warmth, and you are your father, all heat. My father does not know what to make of such a rare jewel as you, my dearest prince."

Tsar Vladimirs came and conquered, ambitious princes of Kievan Rus uniting Russia. The capital city was rechristened St. Petersburg in the Eastern Orthodox faith. The rulers burned the wooden idols of the old gods and erected crosses for the new. The kings and magistrates dunked the pagan Slavs in the capital's river to baptize them in impromptu fashion.

Baba Yaga watched from her chicken hut all the while stroking her chin hairs, smoking her pipe, waiting. The pagans, now Christians, still paid tribute to the old gods as saints and renamed them. The peasants of dvoeverie double faith renamed the gods but never forgot them. Veles and Perun retreated, the Zoryas abandoned their shining star thrones, and Mokosh slept deep below the mountains at the base of the Tree of Life.

And one god with a rotting black heart took another name. He watched, coveting, always waiting. He had a thousand princesses kept under lock and key in his palace of ice and glass. It was lit only by flitting firebirds and jewel fresh diamond fruit. Still, it was missing a crucial light in all the dead magnificence. It was something that would haunt Morozko in due time.

Morozko paid little attention to the rise and fall of immortals. He was too busy growing. He watched cranes fly across the northern wastes and shot arrows of steam at elk to be dried and cured in the smokehouse. His grandfather barely tolerated him, Snegurochka loved him, and that was enough to churn butter for a small while.

Morozko gave little heed to the passage of the gods into history.

One day he would remember his mother's stories of Chernobog the Black.

Nechist - what the farmers in fields called land spirits - continued life in Buyan unaffected by Christianity, like Snegurochka and Morozko. Peasants still left out kasha for house elf domovois. Humans continued avoiding the rivers in the evening lest they stray upon the drowned human suicides. The dead girls, now siren rusalka, would sing and seduce them to a freezing watery death. The peasants prayed that the Amazonian vila, guardians of the weather, would not drench crops in rain. Once in a blue moon, a wild girl would wander back to her village covered in moss and half-mad having escaped from an ill-fortuned marriage as a wood wife to a forest king leshy.

Thanks to shifting belief, Ded Moroz became something like Santa and rebranded the family business to deliver presents to children across Russia at New Years. Father Frost was nothing if not good at giving away gifts like blizzards. He and Snegurochka worked with the efficiency of a snowstorm.

Still Morozko couldn't summon a single snowflake, much less command the winds to carry him to merchant's homes and give their daughters baubles. So he set out with his mother's blessing and grandfather's disgrace. He sought his fortune in cities and the wilds when nechist still walked Russia and beyond alongside humanity. Morozko threw his icy crown off the ends of Buyan's glaciers and renounced Ded Moroz's heritage. He was fully content to be a bannik, not a prince.

"To hell with princehood," he muttered, "I'm a bastard through and through, and I would rather have nothing to my name and be free than be bound by convention and a court."

So Morozko set off past the glaciers, to the land of evergreen and birch, and Snegurochka wept tears 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 carried madness with her like a worm in her brain. Watching her bare milky-breasted, nipples like pink daggers as she beat at her chest with venik branches to guide the winds, Baba Yaga was proud of Morena's ferocity. Her witch-daughter was all wolf, all wild, and the best hope at destroying Chernobog for good.

If Morena was a wolf, then Chernobog was a vulture, circling in the sky waiting for a feast. Would this spell or the next seal the coffin in his box? The Zorya's whispered in their prophetic trills that Morena would birth Bilobog, the remedy to Chernobog's destruction, but so far her union with the sunlit god Jarilo had proven tempestuous and fruitless.

Baba Yaga had tried spell after spell to make Morena's inhospitable womb of ice and night a planting ground for Jarilo's seed, but stillborn embryo after bloody abortion followed. It drove Morena deeper into her madness and desperation, and it drove Jarilo farther from Morena. They failed again and again, Chernobog's blackness spread, and Buyan was growing darker. The crops failed more, the spirits thirsted, and the deathless maidens haunted the outer boundaries, hunting for ungiven comfort.

It was time for Baba Yaga to tell Morena, her dearest godchild, a heartbreaking truth. They had sent a fetch in the form of a giant to Chernobog's deathless lands with the fruit of that night's labor, enchanted to wreak havoc on his palace of glass and ice and tear the oak tree of his heart from its roots. Each egregore and familiar that died at Chernobog's hands infuriated him more, and drew him further into no man's land, where they might strike him in earnest with spells and curses, but Chernobog was wily, and deathless to boot. It would take a mortal to kill him, and a mortal man to bring life to the goddess of death, as only humanity tasted of the black cup of destruction and passed on into the great unknown no god or nechist knew.

Baba Yaga told this to Morena, that her marriage to Jarilo would prove fruitless, and that she should seek a mortal's bed. There were rats on Morena's shoulders and crows in her black black hair. She gave a ragged sigh, moths leaving her mouth as she exhaled.

"I suppose it is true, witch-mother. Burning day and dark night are never on earth at the same time, and for Bilobog to walk the earth, my child must have mortal blood. All the heroes, from Ilya Muromets to Dobryna Nikitich, were partially human after all. They were the ones to slay dragons, not insipid Jarilo or my stubborn father Perun." Morena looked out the window of Baba Yaga's chicken hut and the darkness of the night shuddered under the death goddess's gaze. "I will travel Russia for however long it takes to find the father of Buyan's avenger, though my trek may span centuries."

Baba Yaga gave a weak smile. "This war is tiring for us both, and you have a heavy cross to bear, dear Marzanna."

Morena plaited her tangled hair. "If I could but have one child, one witch-babe to suckle at my breasts and coddle under the starlight and winds, it will have been worth it."

Baba Yaga did not want to tell the daydreaming Morena that to keep a half-mortal child in a house of immortals at war would be a death sentence, but for once in her long long life, she kept quiet.

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 rocking chair. Her wood-dark eyes were like kindling.

She smiled like a shark.

"You are lost, Prince Morozko," Baba Yaga observed.

Morozko stood up and dusted off his trousers of snow. "I have no compass to guide me, babushka. Every day that I wander farther into the wilds I find that I am losing my way. I do not know what I am looking for still! After all these godforsaken years, I am alone."

"Family, a home, a father, love – I can give it all to you if you give me something precious."

Morozko peered up at the famous witch who Snegurochka had sometimes entertained in his grandfather's kingdom. "I have nothing of value – I threw my inheritance away, I travel with only a quiver full of cheap arrows and a doddering broken horse. What could you possibly want?"

Baba Yaga took a gigantic pestle from beside her rocking chair, set down her pipe, and pointed the pestle in Morozko's direction: "Your word, half-blood bannik. One day I will ask you to do me a favor. If you value your life, you will not refuse me. If you accept my offer, I will give your wandering heart a home."

"Where? I have searched nearly every inch of Buyan and I have found nothing but petty leshys. I know warring vila and seductress rusalka and absolutely nothing that suits me. I have had my heart broken by a vampir with hair like autumn leaves. My money was stolen by leshy tsars that shortchanged me and my services. My name has been lost to the wind. All I know is that a bastard belongs nowhere!"

"Pah, soap shavings! Everyone belongs somewhere, even a down-on-his-luck half-breed. Come, sit on my porch, drink my vodka, eat a pierogi, and stop wallowing in your misery. I will take you to Tsar Dmitri's emerald forests where I make my home. There is no place kinder or sweet as baby's bubbling marrow in Buyan."

Morozko's eyes widened. "I thought Dmitri was a myth. He is the famous leshy that won his woods from Saint Vladimir the Great when Russia was first formed. The one with an army of a thousand vila and an inn famed for its beauty. Its banya must be splendid..."

"Hah!" Baba Yaga laughed like a crow. "A banya that needs tending. The old bannik died. Climb up my steps, I promise the snakes do not bite."

Morozko did.

"Hut, hut, turn your back from this wintry waste and your face to Dima's realm!" Baba Yaga commanded, smacking her pestle on the porch.

The chicken-legged hut spun like a drunk duck; their surroundings blurred. Morozko steadied himself on the femur railing. When they landed, they were in a hollow tucked away into autumn woods. Ferns bordered the fence next to an herb garden raked with spines.

Baba Yaga ambled along the porch using her pestle as a cane. "Come come soap shavings! I told Dima he would have a visitor. His staff are excited to meet you – that or scared of what I may bring. They never do like my presents very much, especially the squealing children."

Morozko followed Baba Yaga – the crone moved faster than her hobbled appearance let on. She mounted her hovering mortar, churned the air with her pestle, and was off. Morozko ran to keep up.

"Hah! The wind in my hair makes me feel young again. Being chased by a pretty boy, why, it's just as in my youth!"

Morozko frowned. "I cannot imagine you were ever much to look at," he muttered between breaths.

They came to a wooden three-story inn fronted by a millpond with the most perfect banya Morozko had ever seen. He quaked at the sight of it. His smoky magic reached out and sensed the power and enchantment of the bathhouse. He measured the potency within its wall and suddenly knew how it would bend to his will. It would be his work, bread, and soul.

Tsar Dmitri and his staff waited in the meadow fronting the inn. The smile on the leshy's face was like sunlight on water:

"Welcome home, my son," Dmitri said.

"Tsar Dmitri, it is an honor," Morozko said, kneeling before the forest king.

Dmitri's blue face crinkled in a smile. The bells on his antlers chimed as he extended his hand to help Morozko up: "No use bowing, dear lad. Here we are all just keepers of the woods, wayward souls in the haven that is my forest. Here you will find lecherous vodyanoi mermen that can outdrink you by ten gallons of vodka. There are witches who will steal your heart away if you are not careful. Here, come, Liliya, help Morozko to his quarters."

Morozko found himself inside a banya that was built for him. The fire in his belly simmered to a gentle steam. He stretched on his wolfskin bed and looked up at the ceiling, which would look just so studded with trespassing human's souls. Dmitri's wolves called to salute the rising moon.

He got up and settled at a rickety desk, dipped a quill into an inkpot, and began a letter to Snegurochka:

"Mother, I am finally home. My wandering heart is now, despite all my dreams, content."