ANATHEMA—THÁNA—ATHAMÉ

      Burakh was torn awake by a ruffle. No, a rustle. No — some sort of bellowing snort. He leaned out of the bed and to the ground. The packed earth beneath the concrete slab felt hot. He dressed himself and walked into the workshop. 

      “Hey buddy,” he hailed Sticky, who was stacking something in a corner, “you heard anything?”
      “Sounded like an earthquake,” he replied. He didn’t sound too reassured. “Felt like one, too…”
      “It did, huh?”

Burakh slowly scaled the steps, waiting for the bellow to he heard again. It wasn’t.
In the rust-heavy foyer, a tiny silhouette was perched upon a crate, by the boiler. It threw Burakh a peach-pit, hardened glance as he approached.  

      “Oh, hello, you!” he greeted Murky as she kicked her feet, agitated. “Do you want to come in?”
      “I’ve been inside. I was inside. Dirty, dirty place.” Burakh was going to scold her (both for having broken in, and for being plain mean), but he didn’t. He would prefer she stayed inside… “You run fast with these big legs of yours,” she said after eyeing him up and down.
      “You could say I do,” Burakh mumbled — he felt an itch of pain in his bad knee.
      “We don’t like that.”
      “Who’s we?”
      “My friend and I. She doesn’t like that, so I don’t like that either.”

Burakh frowned. 

      “... And why doesn’t your friend like that, Murky?”
      “Because she likes being fast. She’s used to being fast. Faster than you.”
     “Is she watching me run around?”
      “... Yes. You could say that.”

Burakh felt a cold sweat down his back like a whisper.

      “And who’s that friend of yours who’s trying to race me? Do I know her name? If I met her, we could have a fair contest,” he tried to coax Murky into speaking. 
      “She doesn’t want to meet you… not yet.” The feral girl was stubborn as a bull and closed as a clam. “She says not yet.”
      “Very well. I will wait. Tell her I’m not one to go down without a fight, though!”
      “She knows. Yes, she knows.”

Murky’s eyes grew dark. She pouted, visibly irritated.
The cold sweat breathed down Burakh’s neck and sank to his kidneys like a blade brushing his spine.

      “I will wait,” he repeated.

Slowly, he made his way to the door. Murky didn’t move. She hummed and kicked her feet, as if deep in thoughts. 

He stepped outside, and stood here the Bride. She wasn’t dancing like she had been by the fire; her shoulders were low, her head high. She had been expecting him for a while. 

      “Oh my god,” Burakh choked out in surprise. “It’s you again. Did you follow me here?”
      “Khayaala you vex me… I did not need to, nor need to be told. Your steps are heavy with guilt and sorrow. They make the Earth shiver. I feel her tremors climb up my ankles and shins…”
      “Alright, I get it, I get it. Why have you come… again?”
      “We part. We part… for now. You will come back to me, but I will leave now.” 

Burakh had to hold back from gritting out a “ oh, thank god” .

      “I haven’t remembered your name,” he said. “That seemed important to you. Thought you might want to know.”
     “It is and isn’t. I have… many more. But know me now as Nara. Narana. Hear? That’s the sound of hooves hitting the soft autumn soil…”
      “Nice to meet you,” Burakh said flatly. 
      “Quite the same. I know you more than you do me.”

Quite the understatement, Burakh thought.

      “We will meet again. We will have to. Fear not, yargachin.”
      “Don’t—don’t call me that,” Burack groaned.
      “Don’t fear the name. Don’t fear the calling. Don’t fear the act… It will not hurt.”
      “What in Boddho’s name are you babbling on about, basaghan?”
      “Farewell, khayaala. We will meet again soon.”
      “... Farewell, basaghan. May mother Boddho carry your steps far and safe.”

She left. Her steps were light. Her feet were damp with dew. 

In her wake — oh, come on now… — six or seven figures emerged from the morning fog. 

      “Good morning, Khatanghe,” he greeted them through tight jaw and teeth. “Were you eavesdropping?”
      “Sayn baina, emshen Were you on your way?” spoke a woman as she came forth.
      “Yes,” lied Burakh. 
      “To the Town?”
      “We are in the Town.”
      “Wise, emshen, wise, wise,” spoke another. “We mean deeper into the Town. In the house where all gather.”
      “You could just say the Hospital,” Burakh replied, holding back a nervous chuckle. He had noticed they had all walked some more, surrounding him. He made sure not to take a step back. “And yes, I will go.” (He didn’t say he was going. )
      “Why?”

Burakh blinked.

      “Well, there’s an illness sweeping the Town clean of thousands, in case you haven’t noticed,” he replied.
     “Must you fight it?”

Burakh blinked again, slower this time. 

      “I beg your fucking pardon? Sorry — I beg your pardon?”
      “Don’t you understand?” the woman asked, tilting her head eagerly.
      “No, I don’t. That’s something we’re working on, actually. What has gotten into you?”
      “You have said it yourself. It is sweeping the Town clean.”

Burakh felt a wave of nausea hit his stomach like a brick — while it was probably due to a growing hunger, he truly felt it was timely. 

      “Are you out of your fucking mind? Sorry — are you out of your mind?”
      “Emshen, you should know, this Pest is nothing but the breath of the Earth.”
      “What in the… What makes you think that?”

The earnestness in her tone sent shivers down Burakh’s spine. No, no, he thought. Superstitions. Superstitions.

      “Everything is of her. From her. Because of her… We share her joys and her sorrows. She shares with us her flowers, her fruits, her gracious feather-grass and hardy, hearty twyres when she is joyous. She also shares with us her sunken pits, her bone-legged daughters, and her spat-out diseases when she is irate.”

Burakh kept silent.

      “We cannot pick and choose what we take from her, emshen, you know this. We must embrace her — embrace her just as she embraces us. And when we do, emshen, she extends mercy to us. When we do not tear ourselves from her skin, from her womb, where she feels the hollow we leave; if we nurture and give thanks to her, she will nurture and give thanks to us…”

(Burakh kept silent, louder this time. His head was starting to buzz.)

      “... And this is why you must not be sad, esegher.”
     “I’m sorry?”
      “We said, this is why you must not be sad. Your father is now in the Earth, in her depths; he is cradled and warm. You can still see and find him wherever your eye lands — wherever Earth stretches, where she is shut in her dark, silent embrace.”
      Burakh flinched then. “Don’t speak of my father, will you? Please.” Grief brewed. Grief brewed. He could taste it below his soft palate, threatening to roll forth and punch in his teeth. 
      “But it is true, esegher. Lay down your sorrow into the Earth, and she will take it; she is present and alive with the bones of your father, with the soul of your father, and she will be wherever you look.”
      “Okay,” Burakh gritted, “that’s enough. Enough. I’m going to leave. Alright? I’ll go. I’m going.”
      “To the Town?”
      “Yes,” came out of him as a hiss through a clenched jaw, “to the Town.”

The air grew distinctively heavy. A whisper rolled through the crowd like a broken wave, torn but potent.

      “Very well,” eventually spoke a man.
     “... You have said you — ‘we’ are working on tearing the Pest from its roots,” spoke another, slipping into the silence left by Burakh to ask something he could read on other faces. “Is he going to be here too?”
      “Who?” Burakh spat; he was starting to get fidgety, irritable, annoyed — on edge, too, having to have crushing control of himself not to let grief tug too hard at the ligaments of his throat.
      “Your father’s false student. The bastard.”
      “I’m a bastard too, in case you forgot,” he scoffed. He’d heard the heavy, sinister sibilance in the familiar-faced stranger, and kept himself from answering. Instead, he asked: “Why do you care?”
      “He’s treading dark waters,” spoke a soul. 
      “Dark, dissident, deceptive,” added another. “His steps sink into the Earth with guilt. We know he is partaking in a most putrid desecration… but we have yet to find it. To find him.”

Burakh really, really wanted to leave. Anger bubbled in his throat and wrung words out of him.

      “Worry about your damn selves! Don’t you have anything to worry about? I wish I didn’t! I do!”
      “We do not feel like we ought to worry, emshen,” replied a member of the crowd. “This is the Earth. This is our Mother… your Mother. We know her spirits more than we know ourselves. And we believe you’ll come to understand… You’ll come into being someone who knows.”
      “Damn right I will,” gritted Burakh.

He didn’t know who or what he would come to be. He couldn’t know who or what he would come to be. But all he had left was that bare hint of pride, and the cracked vial in his chest where bubbled up sorrow, restraint and resentment…

      “Come out then onto the steppe, emshen. Come out then into the Earth. Bother not the sick, who only feel the touch of the Earth… Worry not about your father…”

… and the damn thing overflowed. 

      “ENOUGH!”

All those who had gathered flinched.

      “ENOUGH! ENOUGH!” hammered Burakh — and his voice croaked and it sounded like a plea. “Keep my father’s name out of your mouth, you, all of you, keep my father’s name out of your damn mouths! Stop showering me with feel-good words about how he’s back where he came from, and how he isn’t in pain, and he can’t be in pain now, and he’s everywhere if I look for him, where I look for him. I know you believe it—and I know you want me to believe it—and I know you think I should believe it—and, fuck, maybe I do, but it doesn’t make anything easier. You understand?”

Eyes were on him. Eyes were on him, wide, shocked, surprised — eager and tense, too, as they listened carefully. 

      “I can never go back home and say hello to him. I can never walk the threshold of our own home—my own home now—and see him here brewing tea, or the disgusting coffee he tried to get me to drink once because he had… spiced it up with twyre florets or whatever that was—”

Sorrow struck him like a brick across the chest and he retched as grief tore through him from the guts up, bringing heartbroken bile to the back of his mouth. 

      “ — I can never have him tell me about my mother again, I can never tell him of my days at the Capital, I never got to, I can never come back to him and turn to him for comfort when I have these—” (he heaved — the sobs were tightening his throat and he struggled to breathe.) “ — horrific nightmares that none of you know anything about — I can never ask him to hold me again like I’m a fucking kid and I’m scared shitless. I can’t do that anymore. I can’t do that. Because he’s dead. Buried. And it brings me no fucking comfort to know I will hold him again when he is reborn as a blade of grass.”

Silence fell out of his mouth as his voice died on his lips. No one spoke, still. 

      “I took the train to this town as my father’s son, and I stepped foot in my own home as an orphan and an heir. This brings me no comfort,” he repeated, shaking his head slowly. It felt heavy, stuffed, hot. It was red. It rolled on the tense column of his neck like it could fall off. (He wished it would fall off.) 
      After a long silence Burakh wanted to cut with a knife, someone spoke: “We can tell you about your Mother…”

Burakh looked at them with wet, bulging eyes, mouth hanging open in what felt like shock. Anger jumped at his throat and bit into it with the force of a hound. He roared: 

      “LEAVE! Leave, all of you! Do not come to me with your words! Do not come to me to help you find anyone! Scatter, or I will make you!”

And they did — slowly, some walking backward, their piercing eyes still on him; still scratching the surface of his face as it unraveled. He unraveled. When all had gone, grief crushed him in half and he bent forward and fell, ground biting his open palms, and he sobbed, he sobbed. He cried horrible wails that he tried to contain because he was a grown-up, and he’d never felt less like one than now. He’d toughened at uni. He’d hardened at war. None of this mattered. The clay of his shell was breakable, red where his heart and lungs bled out slowly. The clay of his shell had been molded by his father’s hands. What was he to do with it now? He could see the cracks. He knows how to do stitches, sutures, hems and seams; he’s never repaired pottery in his life.

He cried until his face was so wet he felt he had run through a storm. 
Eventually, he managed to stop. His head felt stuffed with cotton. His ears were ringing. He couldn’t breathe through his nose. In a juvenile reflex, he wiped the snot on a sleeve.
Oh, you fucking idiot. 
Eventually, he sent himself onward. Stumbling and unsteady, he made his way to the Marrow. 
Crossing the Gullet, he stepped down the bank to the edge of the water; leaning down to attempt to wash his sleeve of the wet spot of tears and snot, he slid and his whole arm went into the water. 
OH, you FUCKING IDIOT!
The bite of the water was sharp and immediate like the maw of a hound. He stumbled back and held his wrist, as if he had gotten wounded. It had done the job of washing the stain away, but now a cold, piercing, persistent damp halo coiled itself around his arm. Burakh just prayed it’d dry fast and carried on to the Theater. (Damn thing was not drying fast.)

      Burakh didn’t speak at the Theater. (Well, the hospital, the morgue, the limbo.) He kept trying to clear his throat, but something still lingered, as if sorrow took a wicked pleasure in playing with his vocal cords, pinching them like strings. The feeling of the disposable glove was more uncomfortable than the wet patch on his sleeve, which was a feat of its own.
The task was simple, methodical: treating the sick with antibiotics, and collecting the blood of those who couldn’t be saved. (And many couldn’t be saved.) 
Burakh stayed clear from bumping into Dankovsky, not particularly eager to have him comment on his wrung voice and reddened eyes; he realized soon enough Dankovsky also stayed clear of him. Busy Bachelor was nervous. Competent and poised, as he usually was, but something thin and friable was holding his nerves together, and holding it poorly. 
He got a little repose when they had sorted the sick and the dead: Burakh saw him smoking outside. His free arm was tucked under his coat, wrapped around his torso. His wrist seemed to be pressed against his side — where the Haruspex had given him stitches. Burakh wondered if that was purely a reflex or if his sutures were coming undone — he should ask, he should have asked, that was the professional thing to do, but Burakh didn’t trust his own throat not to tear his words into croaky, fraying shards of voice, so he didn’t, and hoped the Bachelor could take care of himself if he needed to. 
Dankovsky was staring intently at the low sky. Well, rather at where the low sky was pierced of edges and planes — of the geometrical limbs of the Tower. His eyes were trailing the spiraling stairs, the enamel-pale planes. His gaze followed its stinger-like base that Burakh hadn’t approached to try to understand — the damn thing could try to understand itself. (Ah, well, and Dankovsky was on it, too.)

Hunger invited itself, and it was a mean, clingy guest. Burakh made the mental note to bring the collected blood to Dankovsky. He put the vials in one of the safes and went out; his head was spinning with the feeling of his empty stomach, and having sobbed earlied didn’t help. 

He exchanged no words with the clerk. He still believed he’d sound like shit from having cried but, at this point, he realized he might just be staying quiet for the feeling of it. It did feel good to shut up for once. More people should try it, he thought. An ugly snicker punched through his teeth and he received sidelong glances from kids nearby.

       He spotted a crowd; well, he heard it, first: the characteristic hums of Herb Brides echoed in the sprawling network of the town’s streets, followed by spoken words, by a chant that rose into the thin fog, by steps that grew louder but not closer. Burakh rounded a corner, and found a bull — beautiful beast, its head high, its pelt a spotted, rusty brown — and its entourage. The one Bride — Nara — was on its back. She didn’t look at Burakh as he approached. The rest of the crowd turned eyes on him; he recognized among them a few he had seen this morning. He considered apologizing for his outburst; he saw in their eyes how they held his gaze like they hadn’t minded it. (He also still stood by it. Speak not his father’s name — and let him mourn.)

      “Good afternoon, Khatanghe,” Burakh said. “What is this all about?”
      “Good afternoon, emshen. The booha is drinking there, see?” (And indeed, it was — taking long gulps out of a small trough. Burakh tensed remembering how the disease had seeped in the water; but then, this one looked clear.) “He is feeling the cool brush of Mother’s springs into his long smooth throat. He will also feed upon her blades of feather grass.”
      “Your tone sounds… solemn. What are you hiding? Why is she (he gestured at Narana, who didn’t pay him attention) up there?”
      “My tone is solemn, emshen. She is here to thank him — we are all here to thank him. To say goodbye to him, and to let him say goodbye back.”
      “Why?”
      “This evening, he will be brought to the Ragi Barrow. His perfect body — it will be divided… it must be divided in accordance with the rites.”

Burakh felt he knew what that meant. 

      “He will be laid on the Ragi stone and be open, like a perfect heart. And then, yes, his perfect heart will beat to the rhythm of Boddho’s breath. And then, yes, the sky will align itself to him, will align itself to her… Then… we will be aligned with him, and with her, and with the sky too.”
      “And who is to conduct that… rite? For what purpose? Is this bull getting sacrificed to stop the plague?”

Burakh knew he had misspoken immediately; he expected unkind gazes on him, but they were mostly… placid. As if they remembered his outburst, and didn’t want to shake him too much. (He found he disliked that more. His skin itched when the feeling that he was handled with kid’s gloves struck him.)

      “The weight of the illness brushes us barely. We tread here lightly, and it treads lightly around us. No, no… The booha will be opened for other reasons. Oh, as we’ve said… He will be to align. To stitch. To thread… And you are to conduct the rite, yargachin. We need you for it. Not cut but yours is acceptable.”

Burakh knew this was coming. 

      “Do you even trust me for this?”

The eyes of the crowd lightened, as if this morning had already been banished from their memories. They nodded, slowly, solemnly. 

      “We do, yargachin. We trust your steady hands. And then, we will trust you to do what needs to be done with the booha’s blood, with the booha’s meat. His flesh is clean, his fluid is pure, he has never been ill. He cannot be. We know you need it.”

Burakh could have reached out and felt the undertone, heavy, dense, thick and mildly derisive: “ we know you want it.”

     “I’ll come. I’ll cut your bull open.”
      “Not just our bull open, yargachin. Yours, too. The Earth’s bull. The Sky’s bull, the river’s, the hills’.” The speaking woman marked there a pause. “Which is to mean, yes, our bull. Tonight, at the Ragi Barrow. Do not make us wait, or we will send someone after you.”
      “I will find you.”

He bowed to the bull — oh, he didn’t make it solemn and grave, just a little tilt of the head, but this seemed to please the crowd a lot (and maybe the bull too). The crowd shaped itself like a wall around the beast and, slowly, with no harsh movement, made it carry on its way. Burakh thought about warning them of the unsafe districts around, but they already had gone forth without a care. The group walked the town’s threadlike hyphae of streets, passages and narrows. Burakh watched them be swallowed by the thin fog, and was on his way.

He found he hadn’t walked far from the Theater and picked a bench to sit on. He ate hardened bread and dried meat in silence, welcoming the bites with an almost religious bliss. He chewed longly. A tooth in the back of his mouth protested a particularly firm bite with a twinge of pain. Oh, tough it out.  

Burakh thought about the bull — the dying bull, the already-dead bull. Oh, was he happy? Was there bliss on being brought to the slaughter? Then, he thought: was there bliss in slaughtering? Oh, that thought landed where his mind bore a crack; grief (this damned thing again) collided with the thorn-in-flank of a memory of war (of how a body comes overflowing), and Burakh felt himself retch; he retched and heaved and sobbed again. He felt like he could throw up a lung. He wished he would, he found, he wished he would; one less thing to carry. One less vessel for sorrow to fill to the brim and tip into him slowly. 

He crept back into the Theater to retrieve the vials, and was back out again.

_____________

      “Oynon?” Burakh called in the stairs. 

His voice had croaked, still wrung thin from earlier, but he was sure he could be heard. When he received no reply, he walked into the room, pushing the door slowly. Peeking in, he couldn’t see Dankovsky at his desk, or by the window. 

      “Oynon?” he repeated, lower. 

With a sweeping gaze, he spotted the Bachelor's pants, draped over the room divider. 

      “Oh,” Burakh muttered. 
      “Burakh,” he was called from behind the screen. 
      “Sorry. I can come back some other time.”
      “I am merely lying down. I got the hems of these pants wet.” (Burakh fiddled with his own wet sleeves, feeling the cold gnaw through. Bad day for us both, then? ) “What is it that you want?”
      “I’ve brought more samples from the hospital… the morgue… however you want to call it.”

There was a pause, in which Burakh heard the Bachelor sigh, as if struggling to keep himself awake. 

      “Leave them by the microscope. I’ll get to them.”

Burakh did. 

      “What happened?” he asked, pointing — not that Dankovsky could see — at the pants let out to dry. 
      “I went knee-deep in the river, Burakh. Nothing to write home about.”
      “Aah,” Burakh teased, “did you get pushed?”

Dankovsky didn’t reply and silence started to swell like an uncomfortable, cumbersome parasite. Burakh lowered his arm. He… didn’t understand what that could be about.

      “I tried to cross it, Burakh.”
      “But why? The other side is barren.”

Another silence. 

      “Yes. So I’ve heard.”

Another, another pause. 

      “Anything else you wanted?”
      “I… had also hoped I could hit the cot here — busy evening,” Burakh laughed nervously, anticipating the meeting at the Barrow, “but I can see it’s taken, so I won’t stay.”

He heard the ruffle of something heavy, the twisting of the Bachelor’s body against the mattress, and that mattress against the bed slats. Taking a few steps forward, he found Dankovsky had shoved himself on one side of the bed. His back was turned to Burakh, blanket possessively pulled on him to his shoulder.  

      “Oynon?”
      “Keep distance between us. Lie on your side.”
      “... Are you mocking me? Is this some kind of test?”
      “I’ll take the whole bed back, if you don’t want it.”

It couldn’t be that weird, Burakh needed the time to think. Not weirder than when they slept, they all slept, huddled together in the field tents; huddled close enough to make sure they didn’t, somehow, spill out — like they’d seen others do. 
Burakh shook the thought out of his head forcefully. That was a comfortable bed — more comfortable than his own, than the army cots, than the raw earth just under his army coat that he had to fold into a pillow. 
Dankovsky’s head had moved, which Burakh wouldn’t have noticed if he didn’t catch the obsidian eye turning to him under heavy, tired eyelashes. It took Burakh a second to understand he might have been alarmed by anything from the croak in his voice to the tight, breathy coil in his throat. 
Don’t mention it. Oh, please, don’t mention it…

      “... Allergies, I reckon.” spoke the Bachelor (and Burakh held back a sigh of relief. He was offering him the option to not talk about it).
      “Yeah.” (He sniffled still.)
      “Rough pollen around, I’ve heard.”
      “Yeah, it’s pretty harsh this time of year.”

Burakh watched the onyx eye blink, and the Bachelor turned back. He pointedly shifted even closer to the wall.

      “My tunic is also wet,” Burakh said. 
      “Then take it off. There’s probably enough room on the divider to hang it out to dry.”

Sure seemed like it. 
Burakh extirpated himself from the rough cloth only to find his sweater underneath also damp. He took it off as well. The Stillwater was a little cold on his bare arms, and he regretted his undershirt being sleeveless. He laid his tunic and sweater over the room divider, flattening them so they could dry, trying to keep a few centimeters between his clothes and the Bachelor’s — only proper etiquette in these situations, he thought to himself (and the thought was only as absurd as the situation itself). 
He managed to pluck some of the blanket off the Bachelor’s reserved, stiff silhouette; lying down on his side, he found they could in fact both fit. 

      “What’s that cold thing?”
      “The buckle of my sock garters, Burakh.”
      “Your sock…?”
      “If you even think of moving that blanket to get a look, I will kick you out.”

Burakh stopped thinking. He tucked his arm under his head and… waited, really, for sleep to wash over. It didn’t—it was capricious, distant, as if Dankovsky kept it at bay. 
Footsteps grew in the stairs—Burakh tensed; they were not those of the lady of the house. 

      “Doctor?”

Oh, you have to be kidding me.
Rubin stepped in the room, strides determined — and he came to an abrupt stop right in front of the divider. 

      “Oh.”

Burakh sank into the mattress and, in an almost juvenile attempt to hide, pulled the blanket over him. He wasn’t scared, he wasn’t sure he was even ashamed — he just knew this looked incredibly compromising, and that Stakh would hold this over his head until they went to their graves (and even then, Burakh was sure he’d find a way to taunt him even six feet under). 
The Bachelor sat up promptly so his face could peek over the screen. Burakh dug his head into the mattress lest the damn blanket fall off the Bachelor’s lap and uncover his underclothes, which Burakh had no intention of being found looking at. 

      “Colleague.” Dankovsky said.
      “Bachelor,” Rubin replied, voice flat and thin, a hint nervous.
      “What brings you here?”
      “I, ah, had brought samples I thought we ought to discuss, but —”

Beyond the screen, where Burakh couldn’t see, Rubin was staring at the Bachelor blankly. He then blinked once and turned his eyes on the pants, smock and sweater he could recognize beyond the shadow of a doubt, then on the Bachelor’s face again.

      “ — I can come back later.”

Dankovsky did the same; looked at Rubin’s face, at the clothes laid next to each other, then at Rubin’s face again.

      “This is not what it looks like,” he said.
      “I can come back later.” Rubin repeated pointedly.
      “Don’t be foolish. Stand here, give me a minute.”

He threw himself out of bed and Burakh almost snapped his own neck trying to avoid slipping out an intrusive gaze. He heard the sound of rustling corduroy as the Bachelor grabbed then put on his pants, the clinking of the belt, the flipping of shoes, and felt Dankovsky’s entire weight on his thigh as he had nowhere to do that from but sitting right here, behind the shield of the screen. The Bachelor jumped forward and directed Rubin to his desk. 

     “What have you brought?” the Bachelor asked.
     “This is a sample of…”

Rubin’s voice lowered, lowered, until Burakh couldn’t hear it anymore. They kept speaking, he could see their lips moving — but he wasn’t invited to join. The Bachelor had his back to the bed and leaned towards the desk, on which Rubin displayed colored vials the size of a finger and his notes. Periodically, Stanislav would throw Burakh, who hadn’t budged and stared at them from the pillow of his bent arm, sidelong glances; they didn’t feel particularly accusatory or mocking, but Burakh still found himself jittery under them. 
Burakh then did something profoundly stupid — he had no idea what compelled him to, maybe wanting to make Stanislav uncomfortable in return, maybe he felt particularly emboldened now that he didn’t have the pocket of his smock to fit idiocy in — and pointedly wiggled his eyebrows. Stanislav didn’t flinch. He observed Burakh and waited for him to dig himself a little deeper — which he did: he threw a glance at Dankovsky, and wiggled his eyebrows again. When Stanislav still didn’t react, he did it again, pointedly raking his gaze down the Bachelor’s back before the eyebrow wiggle. 
It hit Burakh that this was, in fact, going to make matters potently worse. Right as the genius idea to stop struck him, the Bachelor turned around swiftly and stared at him dead in the eye. 

     “Anything I can help you with?” he asked, his voice booming and frank.

Burakh buried himself more into the mattress and shook his head, feelin’ like a kid getting scorned. The Bachelor immediately brought his attention back to the desk. He and Rubin exchanged some more words that Burakh didn’t hear (or couldn’t hear as he tried to make his head go through the pillow) and Rubin, finally, stepped back. 

     “Not much else I can do,” he spoke — he sounded a hair’s width from defeated. 
     “I understand,” the Bachelor said. He sighed. “I know. Thank you, colleague. I’ll come to see the rest when I can.”
      “Farewell, colleague.”
      “Farewell. Your efforts will not be in vain, I will make sure of it.” He stopped there, and his eyes fit on Burakh’s face, sympathetic this time. “We will make sure of it.”

Rubin took his leave, and Dankovsky stood in the middle of the room until he heard the downstairs door be opened and closed. Then, he let out a gritted curse and just short of tore his pants from his legs, undoing the buckle furiously. “It’s still so damn cold!” he hissed, and he threw the cloth back on top of the screen. Burakh instinctively rolled to the wall-side of the bed so the Bachelor wouldn’t have to crawl over him, and they both settled back down. The Bachelor let out an almost-comical shivering sound.

      “I need to leave soon,” Burakh eventually spoke. (He thought about how he didn’t really need to tell him that and could just leave. Then he thought about how he’d have to wriggle past the Bachelor as he lay to get out of that bed, and how he did well to warn him then.)
      “I won’t keep you here.”
      “I was offered an opportunity. Whatever the outcome, it will bring me closer to… if nothing else, a truth.”

The Bachelor turned his head to him — not his body; his tired eye landed on Burakh’s face and raked it thoroughly, nervous and interested. Burakh corrected himself: 

      “It will bring us closer to a truth, whatever it might be.”
      “Rubin wasn’t particularly enthusiastic about what he has brought me, and I have to admit, I am not either. There’s only so much we’re able to do. I pray—well, I hope you have better luck than we’ve been dealt.” He rubbed his eye, his face with the heel of his gloved palm. “I’ll be at the Broken Heart later tonight — if your friend’s samples are any different from what we’ve managed to scrap, I’ll be there to celebrate; if not…”

An uncomfortable pause — the likes of which were starting to grow in length and swell in weight, Burakh found.

      “If not, you’ll be drinking your sorrows away, I take it.”

Dankovsky didn’t answer. 

      “Fine, then. I’ll meet you there.”
      “Be careful around these streets, Burakh.”
      “Oynon, I know them better than you could.”
      “It’s not about knowing. The townsfolk are getting… agitated.”
      “They have been for a while.”
      “It’s only getting worse.” (He sighed.) “It’s only going to get worse.”

____________

      The mound of the Ragi Barrow felt three steps from the sky as Burakh scaled it intently. The torches had been lit. The light blinded him, and the steppe below looked darker than it had ever been.
Flanking the granitic plinth, Brides and Worms and unfamiliar faces of his Kin came forward. The brides stood still and stiff, unnaturally so, their heads high as if pulled by strings. Their chests heaved with difficult breaths as they recovered from frantic dances, and their skins glistened with sweat. 
Someone felt missing. Someone was missing. The bull was made to kneel and Burakh felt his own knees buckle under him.

      “Time has come, yargachin; just like you have.”
      “I have.”

The Pale Beast came forth and it bore no Death. Burakh watched it and was amazed that its flaking hooves allowed it to climb the ritual mound, and that its emaciated body had the strength to carry the Bride that rode on its back. Burakh recognized her — she was at his lair this morning, and on the bull’s back later that day. She held onto its thinning mane for balance as it scaled the barrow, her torn clothes draping its ribs and croup. Her head swayed with a composed anticipation as she intently watched Burakh be bestowed the Menkhu’s Finger — he looked at the blade in fear it would turn on him and, oh, it didn’t; it fit in his palm like a held hand. 

“Oh, nay… Some times Death is not Death; but the transformation of thy whole being…

Some times cut is not cut but mouth hungry; but eye-opening. 

But eye opening. But opening.”

Burakh wiped between thumb and index the blade of the tool; his sweat met the dried blood and trickled it off.

“Are all lines created equal? Are all lines made equal?

You know by thy hands the difference between murder and surgery;

are you the one to decide?

Should you be?”

Burakh brought the blade to the densely-haired, soft pelt.

“Hear, hear.

Should you be?”

The skin parted under the cut with a sickening familiarity. The epidermis split. The skin glistened with blood, the pearls of it not unlike pearls of sweat. Burakh didn’t dare a glance away from the bull, but if he had, he would have seen the Brides flinch and shiver — instead, he heard the long, almost relieved hiss that coursed through them like one single voice.

He traced first the neck — modny ish, the tree-trunk; then the shoulder, where he cut around the rounded hill of the triceps, brachialis, and deltoid muscles — khavirgan sar, the moon-crescent; then the tense, fat belly — golyn ereg, the river bank…
“Good boy,” he said, low enough not to be heard. “Sorry.” (His father had thanked the bull, the first time Artemy saw him cut one. Artemy had apologized to it when it was his turn — then, thanked it too.)
… then the part of the flank where stomachs push the ribs outward — tolgod, the hill. Then, then…

The Bull’s flesh yielded meat to the blade; its insides yielded blood to the hands. As it was vialed, Burakh could see — it was of a red of fantastic brilliancy, heavier than man’s, smoother than fine ink. 

      “A cut that is good aligns the sun in its sky. A cut that is good aligns the ground with her trees. A cut that is good opens the Mother along the Line where her grass and her children and children-grass and grass-children grow… A cut that is good, yargachin, will undo a knot so bound can be the threads that need be.”
      “And was this a good cut, Worm?”
      “Watch and see. He has thanked you generously.”

He had. (Burakh thanked him, again, in return.)

      “This blood, yargachin, is precious. Special. Drink, don’t spill it.”
      “One of you told me the bulls do not get sick. Is this true?”
      “As true as the tongue allows it. As true as the Earth bears truth. Yes…”
      “Very well.”

Burakh carefully wrapped the meat so it could be transported — it was not to go to waste. He felt himself salivating. He picked and carried the vial. He picked up a jog; then a run; then he dashed past the cemetery and into the town, where he almost slammed face-first into the Broken Heart’s shut door.

____________

      In the dense, suffocating air of the bar, where music hung dense and low like thunderclouds, the Bachelor was nowhere to be seen. Burakh looked around — the glances on him were less bitter than they had been, but he still felt how they clung to his skin. (He realized the bloodstain on his stomach where the meat seeped through the cloth and the vial had a leak couldn’t help.)
He looked between the room dividers, threw glances under curtains in the hopes of seeing the familiar black shoes — all he found were two Herb Brides, uninterested in the rites or dancing on the stage, who shared a settee with limbs intertwined, and threw his glance right back at him until his mouth cracked an embarrassed, apologetic smile and he walked on. 
There was noise coming from one of the back rooms as he approached; a voice — it sounded just like the Architect’s (the batty one. Well... the batty and aggressive one).

      “You know it wouldn’t be the most despicable thing this town has seen, right?”

In its wake, another; the… Bachelor? It sounded just like the Bachelor…

      “I know.”

As his words fell, Andrey again: 

      “... Not that I think it’s despicable. You know my stance on that.”
      “I know, Andrey, I know…”

Burakh was eavesdropping: he had leaned against the door, he had held his breath. He pulled himself out of it powerfully, like the childish fear of getting caught doing something naughty whipped his head back. Childish still, he was: he walked in place, making his steps grow increasingly louder, pretending to just walk in; he pretended to hit the door in his race; he pretended to trip into the room, tumbling in. His ruse seemed to have worked: the three men, Architect, Bachelor, and paler, ghostlier Architect looked up from the table they shared, from the drinks in front of them, and pinned their eyes on him. Burakh caught Dankovsky’s gloved hand absentmindedly, abstractedly running index, middle finger and thumb up and down the cylinder of his empty glass. 

      “Eavesdropping, are we?” rose Andrey’s voice, sharp and clear in the fog of incense and smoke.

Burakh shut the door behind him slowly.

      “And if I was? Would you rat me out? Would you dare? We don’t like snitches around here.”

For a moment, the Architect’s face didn’t budge, and his eyes seemed to freeze over. Then, his mouth split in a wide, enamel-keyed smile, his eyes thinned; amusement and threat painted the mist-hazed features pinned on the fabric of his face. Burakh seemed to have passed some kind of unspoken test. 

      “Clever guy. You’re starting to get it. What have you come for?”
      “Not for you,” Burakh said, and he turned to the Bachelor.

Dankovsky had brought his hands together. He was waiting, but not particularly eager; Burakh could see how his usual smirk struggled to cling to his face, and his eyes had darkened with something akin to cynicism or pessimism.

      “I got something,” he blurted out. “Bulls can't get infected.”

The Bachelor broke the seal of his hands and opened them, palms to Burakh, as if to have the words fall right in them.

      “Burakh, if this is true, it would be an incredible and marvelous breakthrough. Is there any way we could test this?”

Burakh plucked the vial of blood from his pocket and raised it to shoulder height, as if presenting a raw gem. The Bachelor looked at it, then his eyes closed and his head tipped back as if relief was washing over him. Pride, pride tore through Burakh’s chest; he felt his heart swell twofold. 

      “Come with me, then,” the Bachelor said; and he got up swiftly. 

He adjusted his coat under the twins’ watchful eyes; Andrey’s darted to Burakh like blue-haloed pinheads. As he escorted Burakh out of the bar, he got hold of a rifle that had been tucked away. 

      “Where’d you get this…?” Burakh asked. 
      “Saburov,” Dankovsky replied plainly, and with a twinge of pride. “As compensation for the work he’s given me.”
      “They’ve truly sent you around this town ten times over by this point, eh?”
      “Make it eleven, Burakh. Make it eleven.”

He checked the rifle was loaded.

      “Are you armed?”
      “Got my knife…”
       The Bachelor grimaced. “Well, in the absence of anything else, this ought to do. Allons-y.”
      “What?”
      “Let’s go.”

He swung the rifle’s leather sling over his shoulder and held it at the ready. He gestured they be on their way, and they were. 

      “Burned district right after that corner,” the Bachelor announced.
      “Seeing looters already…”
      “You know our chances to go past unseen,” Dankovsky said. Burakh snickered nervously and got thrown a sidelong glance — touchy subject… “Weapon at the ready,” he ordered, and Burakh obeyed instinctively, bringing his palm to the pommel of his knife.

They were halfway through the Warehouses when Burakh realized they were hunted. A sudden shiver crawled up him like a fire ant. I should have kept that damn rifle when the commander offered it to me. He turned on his heels, unsheathing blade, and barely had the time to realize the Bachelor had pushed him down that a thrown knife swung overhead. The deafening sound of a gunshot tore through his jaw from joint to joint, and the bullet it tailed tore through a mugger’s skull directly between the eyes. He was moving fast enough that Burakh knew he would have missed, and his mouth hung open from both shock and awe. 

      “You’re a wicked good shot, oynon” Burakh panted as Dankovsky pulled him on his feet, and the thin line of the Bachelor’s smile tugged on the sides just a little bit more. In the daze, Burakh remembered an intuition he had had when they first met, and asked: “What battalion were you in?”
      “Oh, I didn’t go to war, Burakh.”
      “You didn’t? You don’t seem the ‘too-sickly-to-fight’ type… I doubt they’d have refused on account of lunacy, either.”

Dankovsky shot him a dark glance — oh, I’ve pissed him off — but the anger in it vanished as fast as it had come, and he replied:

      “I was lucky. I received a grant for my research just in time, and I was passed over.” He brushed dirt off Burakh’s elbow and picked up the pace.
      “Then where?”
      “My father,” he started, weaving through narrow streets — Burakh found he had this barely-perceptible sigh in the voice that he couldn’t quite decipher was irritation or fondness, “was an officer. He insisted on teaching me to handle weapons; I do not doubt he had the hope of making a military man out of me right until I left for university. He trained me. He made sure I could handle a weapon.”
      “And trained you well. Jesus Christ,” Burakh mouthed, throwing one last glance at the man he had shot as precisely as an arrow hits a coin. 
      “You flatter me, Burakh,” Dankovsky protested light-heartedly — but Burakh very much heard the pride in his voice at the offered admiration. 

Don’t get too excited, I’m not trying to do that too often either.

      “You never struck me as the… gun-fond child type.”
      “It’s because I wasn’t.” As if to contradict himself, but impressing Burakh nonetheless, Dankovsky aimed and hit a mugger directly in the hand he was readying himself to throw a knife with — the bullet went straight and frank through the palm, the knife fell blade-first into the mugger’s shoulder. “I vastly preferred collecting beetles with him.”
      “Why the insistence, then?”

Before they made a dash to the train station, Burakh saw the Bachelor’s thinly-stretched, lingering not-quite-smile contorted in a pensive wave. 

      “He had a lot to compensate for.”
      “He did…?”

Burakh was… well, not intrigued per say, but this was the most the Bachelor has spoken with this strange, almost foreign lightness. It was pleasant — and it didn’t fit the urgency of the situation one bit, which was for the better. 

      “He did.”

They slowed down as they skirted the station. They took a breather by the younger Vlad’s shack and observed the districts ahead.
Despite the contemplative composure on the Bachelor’s face which Burakh could plainly see covered a latent desire to tell some more (or, well, did it? The Bachelor’s mouth fell back into his enigmatic, pinched smile), the signal was clear: that is on that. Burakh decided to not pry — even if he really wanted to. He would have loved to linger on it, but they still had to cross into the Atrium.

      “Plagued district ahead,” the Bachelor announced.
      “I know, I’ve seen it on Notkin’s map. It was fine yesterday…”
      “Cover your nose, Burakh.”

He fished a flimsy cloth mask out of his pocket, and the Bachelor did the same. An illness of great equalizing qualities, eh?
The Bachelor swung the rifle in his back and walked in front. Burakh was almost amazed at how long his short-legged strides were — as if to keep him on his toes about his own, his bad knee shot an arrow of pain into his patella. 

_____________

      Walking into the Stillwater, the Bachelor bowed to miss Yan — her smile faltered when she spotted Burakh behind him, and she tucked herself away, afraid.

      “I’m never living down that damn nickname, am I,” Burakh cursed under his breath.
      “She’ll warm up to you,” Dankovsky replied, and he scaled the stairs three steps at once.

He tucked his rifle in a corner and hurried to his desk.

      “Give me the vial. I’ll test it right away.”
      “What about what Stakh… what Rubin brought you earlier?”

The Bachelor sighed.

      “I wasn’t at the Broken Heart for nothing, you know. It’s… more of the same. We’re not getting anywhere. By all accounts,” he insisted, “it’s better than nothing, but we’re not finding anything new. We’ve run into… wall, after wall, after wall.” He sighed again, again… “The scientific method has never failed me. Never has it… before. But of the — many! — ways I’ve found to bring forth breakthroughs… none of them allow me to walk through walls.”

Burakh held back from telling him “ you could ask the twins” , as regardless of the genuineness of his words, he knew how the Bachelor would take it — not well, that is.

      “You can hit the cot behind,” Dankovsky said. “I will wake you when I have results.”
      “And then kick me out so you can sleep?” Burakh said, a hint of jest in the voice — he remembered too late the Bachelor telling him to stop with this question. “Or would you rather sleep downstairs,” he teased. 

Dankovsky looked at him blankly. Burakh wasn’t sure if he hadn’t gotten the implication, if he had gotten it and didn’t want to, or didn’t know how to respond, or if this was his response. “Forget it”, Burakh mouthed, and tucked himself into bed — all for him, this time.

      Burakh wasn’t asleep, he couldn’t really be. He heard the Bachelor tinker with the blood; the chiming sounds of glass slides being examined over and over. He realized Dankovsky knew he wasn’t asleep when his voice rose in the silent attic:

      “I think you might have gotten the wrong impression about me and Eva, Burakh.” His tone was composed, placid, and a bare hint amused. Burakh didn’t answer. He watched him move around slides, vials and syringes, then stretch longly before shedding off his coat. “Don’t get me wrong, I think she is a lovely person, and she knows I am very thankful that she let me stay here, but… for all intents and purposes, my feelings for her are purely platonic.” 

Burakh watched him fish a matchstick box out of his pocket and light the few candles that stuck out from his desk like stalagmites. The flickering light made his tired eyes look even more sunken. 

      “And I would ask you to refrain from implying otherwise,” Dankovsky said, his voice rising with an exaggeratedly piqued tone, “it makes me uncomfortable and vexes me!”

Despite his comically melodramatic inflection and the tongue-in-cheek smile he tried to pull on his face, Burakh heard loud and clear he was genuine — he saw it in the way his face fell, serious and a hint uneasy, once the words had run their course across the room. 
Touchy subject… (Burakh couldn’t quite figure out if the Bachelor was peevish in general, or if he had truly overstepped then.) Burakh nodded. 

      “Noted.”
      “Thank you. If you’ll excuse me.”

He got up and Burakh watched him disappear behind the expansive bookshelf that lined the attic wall and the small wooden door — into a small bathroom.
He heard the muffled sound of the Bachelor kicking off one shoe, then the other, the clinking of his belt being undone, the ruffle of corduroy pants being shed — he told himself it was really weird to lend that attentive of an ear and pulled the blanket over himself.

      “I should have asked,” the Bachelor began first thing when he walked back in. Burakh noted his wet hair; it caught the candlelight like an oil spill. “What do your… people think of the disease?”

Burakh propped himself on his elbows. Now that was new, for the usually logical Bachelor.

      “They say it is of Earth. That when it… she is joyous, she fills the fields with twyre. When she is irate, she makes shabnak, pits, and disease…”
      “Shabnak…? Oh. Yes, right. What they mistook these poor girls for…” 
      “Yes…” Dankovsky’s eyes on him felt heavy, prying. He could see in their squint that he wasn’t particularly on board with that explanation, in the quirk of his mouth that he found it profoundly backward — that almost reassured Burakh. He was still his stoic self after all. “The usual. Whatever is happening, the Earth is behind it.”
      “A very… religious view of things.”
      “Spiritual, I would say. … But, yes. You hear more or less the same from the mouths of those who believe a God is behind every good and evil.”
      “ … There might be truth to it,” Dankovsky said, and Burakh almost jumped out of the cot in surprise. “We know that, up North, some diseases have been trapped in the permafrost, and that disruptions in the natural environment might release diseases we’ve thought gone for decades, or centuries.” He fiddled with the hem of his glove. “I have… other hypotheses. More probable hypotheses. I won’t discard that one — I just want to go through the other, more… credible ones first.”
      “My people is a… superstitious people.” (The Bachelor scoffed and mouthed: I noticed. Burakh tensed and frowned. He had meant it, but still felt hurt. He felt so close and so distant. He decided the Bachelor didn’t need to know about whatever turmoil that was.) “There is always some truth to what they say, but… how much of it is hard to quantify.”

The Bachelor nodded.

      “... So? About that blood?”

The Bachelor brought his eyes on him, then on the messy desk. He sighed. 

      “You were right,” he said. “About the bulls not getting sick, I mean. They have a… fantastic immunodefensive response. Their antibodies proliferate incredibly fast — they… could, theoretically could be useful to us, but…”
      “But?”
      “Observe this sample. Compare it with this one. Notice something?” Burakh didn’t have the time to open his mouth that he continued: “The… bacteria is in constant mutation in human blood. It keeps… shifting shape, so to speak, to bypass or annihilate every natural defense. In bulls’ blood… it is stagnant. See? It doesn’t even act. Once inoculated, it… falters. It dies.”
      “You said the bull blood could be useful.”
      “Conditional. We could use these antibodies, but the difference of action of the Pest in human and in bovine blood makes it more interesting on a purely theoretical basis. An inoculation would likely result in the native and the xenogeneic antibodies turning against each other as an immune response. The body attacking itself… and we wouldn’t even know how to stop it. At least we know the Pest kills fast…”

Burakh saw how the Bachelor trailed his hands over his arms and shoulders. He watched the nervous shudder run through him — restrained, crushed by gloved hands as they gripped his shirt. He was getting angry. He was getting tired…

      “I don’t understand why it behaves this way, Burakh. I don’t understand how it can behave this way. It’s like it… has a goal. A purpose…”
      “Oynon, you are talking nonsense. You’re very tired…”

(He was. Very tired, Burakh meant. He was less sure the Bachelor was speaking nonsense. The illness playing shapeshifters was starting to unnerve him.)

      “I am.” (He rubbed his closed eyes with his gloved hands.) “I am. I’m going to get some fresh air. Walk to the Tower, maybe…”
      “Is that what you were talking about, at the bar? The Tower?”

Burakh knew what he had heard. It didn’t sound like it was about the Tower.
The Bachelor didn’t reply for as long as he took to put on his coat.

      “... Yes, Burakh. We were talking about the Tower.”

Burakh didn’t like being lied to his face. His frown deepened. The Bachelor turned his back to him as he readied to leave — Burakh found him tense and fidgety. 
(Maybe he’d accept being lied to, this time. He felt there was something Dankovsky didn’t say — something subterranean and hidden. Or, maybe subcutaneous would be more suited; Burakh saw damn well how he fiddled with his cuffs, his gloves, his perfectly-placed cravat. It lived within.)

The Bachelor left, and his steps were slow, purposeful. Pensive.

      Burakh didn’t fall asleep. Burakh couldn’t fall asleep. He slipped out on tiptoes; outside, the Bachelor had sat on a bench, a stone’s throw away from the Cathedral. His head was dipped back. His hands were clasped almost meditatively. His eyes were on the Tower. Again, his eyes were on the Tower.
Burakh stopped to look at it. Damn thing was tall. 
It was tall, and it was a little bit beautiful. Alright? Burakh could admit, if nothing else, that it was a little bit beautiful. In the night, and out of the streetlamps’ halos, the coil of its stairs was pitch black, its planes a crystalline ivory that radiated light from within — and, if nothing else, it and the Bachelor, black-cloaked, black-haired, black-eyed, skin pale, didn’t look too dissimilar.