"No,” Zemun replied. “Just ask him. He knows about dark magic."

"I thought you didn't believe in magic,” Yakov said.

Zemun measured him with her languid gaze. “What does my belief in it has to do with its existence?” she said.

"We better go,” Galina said, and pulled Yakov's sleeve. “How do we find him?"

"Try the Pub,” Zemun said. “Everyone shows up there sooner or later."

"Good idea,” Elena said. “I'll come along too."

As much as Yakov tried to avoid any political involvement in his life, he had sat through his share of a variety of meetings and lectures on Marxist theory, which were just as boring and filled with the same dull rhetoric. When he was young enough to be a member of Komsomol, whose voluntary character was a bald-faced lie, he amused himself by carving obscenities into the edge of the large wooden table around which they all sat, under the watchful and blind gaze of Lenin and Marx gypsum busts. Their white eyes followed Yakov every time he lifted the green cloth covering the meeting table and carefully cut ‘dick', ‘fuck', and ‘cunt’ into the wood, the simple incantations warding against gypsum deities. He was thrilled with a mixture of joy and fearful anticipation, and cringed when he imagined the lightning bolts they could summon to strike him down. The profanities protected him.

Even here, underground, the word ‘meeting’ did not fill him with anything but a low-key ennui, even if it was a meeting summoned by the Celestial Cow. The Pub had a billiard table covered with green fabric, and its polished raised edges beckoned Yakov; he wished he had a penknife so he could carve his simple-minded charms into the exposed wood, the better to ward off boredom.

David bustled around, moving chairs and pushing together tables so that everyone could fit, including Zemun. Sovin helped, his old back and arms stiffening with the effort. He occasionally stopped to bark a cough and spit, but did not slow down. The patrons stood in clusters, whispering; Yakov wondered at first how the rumors managed to spread so fast, until he saw the group of rusalki. They had brought the corpse with them, water dripping in slow rivulets from its dark hair. Yakov had to look away from its gaping mouth and the dislocated lower jaw sticking out at a disturbing angle. The rusalki held the body up and moved its hands like a marionette's, laughing softly.

Yakov recognized some of the people and creatures present; others were new to him, and he tried to guess who they were. There was a man in a long military coat and hat with a large splayed star, the fashion he remembered from the movies about the Civil War; another one, narrow-eyed and sallow-faced looked like a character from a historical drama about the Golden Horde, and Yakov pegged him for a Tatar-Mongol circa 13th century or thereabouts. Others were dressed in less identifiable garb-checkered shirts and dark trousers that could belong anywhere in the twentieth century. The thought made him sad, that one could become so detached and lost in the stream of time.

Among the people, strange creatures mingled-besides easily identifiable vodyanoys and leshys, there were things that seemed the stuff of nightmares, or at least the fairytales he hadn't heard of. He was especially intrigued by a short stocky gentleman, flanked by two attendants brandishing iron pitchforks, with eyelids so long they brushed the ground. A large winged dog sat next to him on the floor, but seemed unaffiliated. Sovin's rats tried not to get underfoot but kept close to their benefactor, and glared a bit at the small creatures-some anthropomorphic, some not so much-who scurried about with pails of sawdust, covering up the dark spots left by water dripping off the corpse and the aquatic creatures, and Zemun's cowpats.

David touched his shoulder. “How are you making out?"

"Fine,” Yakov said, and pointed at the long-lidded person. “Who's that fellow?"

"Viy,” David answered. “What, you haven't read Gogol?"

"Sure I have. But I thought these were mythological creatures here, not literary."

"Viy is mythological,” David said. “He's a general in Russian hell."

Galina walked up to them. “We get a special hell?"

"Not a Christian hell.” David thought a bit, absentmindedly wiping his hand on the stained apron. “A pagan hell… or underworld, if you will."

Galina nodded. “He's the only one who's supposed to be here, then."

Fyodor sauntered up, and an old man in a red coat followed him. “What's going on?” he slurred.

Yakov stepped back from the assault of alcohol on Fyodor's breath. “A meeting,” he said. “We're just waiting for Koschey the Deathless."

Fyodor laughed and stopped, once he realized Yakov was not joking. He turned to his companion. “Know anything about him, Father Frost?"

The old man fluffed his white beard. “We're not friends, if that's what you're asking. But he knows a lot."

"There he is.” David left the group and headed toward the entrance, to shake hands with a very tall and thin man dressed in a black suit.

"I expected him to be scarier,” Galina whispered to Yakov.

He agreed inwardly; the villain of so many fairytales he read as a child, of so many movies that fascinated him on Saturday mornings, was always portrayed as not quite human, a deformed creature possessed of an unhealthy fascination with young women, and who invariably ended up defeated by those who could find his cleverly hidden-away death. He did not seem particularly malignant now, just stern.

"Order!” Zemun called, and shook her head from side to side; little stars swimming around her neck jangled like bells, and quiet followed on their wake.

Everyone settled at the giant table, set in the middle of the star-shaped pub, and for a few moments there was nothing but muffled coughs and shifting and scrabbling of the chair legs on the floor. House spirits started on a song somewhere in the walls, but stopped as soon as Zemun cleared her throat. Everyone remained silent except for the albino jackdaws, perched on the ceiling beams, who would not stop squawking.

The rusalki brought the corpse with them, arranging it carefully across several laps as they sat side by side. Yakov found a place between Fyodor and Elena, who rolled the blue gem from one palm to the other, the blue flashes of light playing across her high cheekbones. Koschey the Deathless, seated to her right, watched the stone too, and Yakov noticed how deep-set his eyes were. They twinkled with reflected light, somewhere deep in the dark eye sockets.

"Order!” Zemun bellowed again, and the shifting and the coughing stopped. At her signal, the rusalki rose to present the corpse.

"This,” Zemun said, “has surfaced today in the Rusalki's Lake. It was just the day after these three newcomers arrived, following the birds from the surface who appear to pass freely between the surface and the underground. Moreover, there's reason to believe that these birds are people who recently underwent transformation. We are thus forced to conclude that there's magic on the surface, and the dead bodies are able to cross here."

Yakov smiled to himself, at the cow's ability to dispense with lengthy introductions and avoid any dialectics altogether. Based on his limited experience, he expected to hear about dialectics at every meeting. A buzz of excited conversation filled the room, and Viy's attendants used their pitchforks to lift his eyelids so he could view the dead body.

"Don't worry,” Elena whispered to Yakov and Fyodor. “His gaze won't turn you into stone. It's just a rumor."

"Thanks,” Fyodor whispered back. “I was worried about that."

"Does anyone know where this body came from?” Zemun said.

"No.” Koschey's voice crackled like a dry twig. “But I can find out."