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The Firebird - Chapter 5

Pairing: Prince Paul (Catherine the Great) x OFC, Fairytale AU

Summary: When Paul, a spoiled young prince, spots a strange bird in the forest near his palace, he impulsively chases after it, hoping to both escape from and prove himself to his disapproving mother. Thus he is plunged into an exhilarating adventure across a magical realm populated by enchanted princesses, dangerous monsters, and powerful wizards, an adventure that may change him more than he can ever imagine.

Chapter warning: none

Chapter word count: 4.2k

Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4

Chapter 5 - Tales

The sun was setting when Paul woke. He tactfully put Zhara's clothes behind a bush, and once she finished dressing, they continued on their way. There were more signs of human habitation on this stretch of meadow, fences along the forest, the trample of cattle's feet along the bank of the stream, and the cattle themselves, strange, ferocious-looking creatures, as big as bulls but covered in coarse black hair, lying asleep in the grass like huge, shaggy boulders. The stream now widened into ponds and pools, headed toward the big river that wrapped around the distant hills like a scarf made out of cloth of silver.

Some of these ponds and pools were occupied by a number of young ladies, who sat on the bank with their feet in the water or swinging on the branches of the willow trees that grew by the edge, brushing out their long hair, their pale, pale skin glowing in the dusk. They giggled and waved to Paul as he went past, and suddenly he found the heat of the meadow unbearable, his skin itchy with sweat and dust, while the water of the pond felt so cool and inviting. Without realizing it, he started toward the women, and would have jumped into the pond with them, had Zhara not put out an arm to stop him.

"Be careful," she said. "Those are rusalkas. Summer is the height of their feeding frenzy. Get in that water and they'll drown you."

Paul looked again and saw that the young women's smiles were hungry, their teeth sharp, their hair green and stringy, and they were brushing it with fish bones. For some reason, it was these fishbone combs that horrified him and broke the spell. He scurried after Zhara. The rusalkas' watched him go with protruding and colorless eyes, like a fish's, but didn't follow.

Eventually, the ground became too rough and muddy for Zhara's bare feet, and they stopped beside another pond, an empty one—or so Paul thought. Zhara examined the duckweed and water lilies covering its surface with interest, apparently seeing something there that Paul couldn't see. "Do you have any tobacco?" she asked him.

Though surprised at her question, he dug through his pockets anyway. His fingers closed around an enamel snuffbox in his waistcoat. He didn't take snuff much, but he carried it around because all fashionable men carried snuffboxes around. "Will this do?" he said, showing it to Zhara.

"Perfect." She took a pinch of snuff and, placing it in the water, whispered some words that Paul did not quite catch. A tiny whirlpool appeared, swirling the snuff around and sucking it down into the water, which started to bubble. Even though Paul had prepared himself for the appearance of another magical being, he couldn't help shrinking back in disgust at the creature rising out of the pond, with its half-frog, half-human face, green hair and beard covered in mud and algae, and webbed paws holding a still-wiggling fish.

Zhara laughed. "Don't be frightened," she said. "He's a vodyanoy that lives in the pond. He's far more benevolent than the rusalkas, trust me."

The vodyanoy's eyes, which glowered like two red coals, did not look particularly benevolent to Paul. The creature tossed the fish onto the grass, nodded at Zhara, and ducked under the lily pads without a word.

"Here, you can clean the fish," Zhara said, handing Paul the broken sword. While Paul had been all for throwing it away, she had taken a stone and smoothed down its jagged edge. It now resembled a rather misshapen dagger, but at least it had some edge to it and was more useful.

Paul looked at the flopping fish as though it were some monstrous thing, which, considering where he was, it might very well be. "How?" he asked blankly.

"You cut open its belly and pull out all the guts."

"That is simply barbaric! I've never had to clean a fish in my life!"

"And who do you think cleaned the fish you've been eating, Your Excellency?" Zhara asked, tossing the sword at his feet. "You're going to have to dirty your hands if you want to eat."

She left to gather firewood. Paul reluctantly picked up the sword with one hand and the fish with the other, wrinkling his nose. He made rather a big mess of things, partly because the sword was not sharp enough, and mostly because he had no idea what he was doing, but Zhara said nothing about it. She simply skewered the fish with a green birch twig and put it over the fire she'd just started.

By the time Paul came back from washing his hands at the pond, the fish had finished cooking. Like everything in this world, it tasted sweeter and more buttery than any fish he'd ever eaten.

"Does your—does your brother have that power too?" he asked, nodding at the fire. He'd been trying to think of a way to bring up the question of her brother without sounding nosy. Now, seeing Zhara flinch and seem to withdraw into herself, he felt guilty that he'd even asked at all.

She then let out a long, deep sigh, and said, "No. I inherited this from my mother. She was a vila, a nymph—well, she is one, if she's still alive." Seeing Paul's quizzical look, Zhara smiled sadly. "There aren't as many nymphs around as there used to be. My father was traveling in the northern mountains of Arthania when he met her. He fell in love with her, and she with him, but her kind isn't meant to be wives and mothers. She vanished after I was born, leaving me with her fiery eyes and her fiery power as the only things to remember her by."

Paul's chest tightened with a pang of unaccustomed sympathy. So she was an orphan too, like him.

"Soon after that, my father took another wife, a Lukomorian, and she gave birth to Lariosha—my younger brother. My half-brother, really. Illarion. Lariosha was my pet name for him when we were children."

The story was taking shape for Paul, the familiar pattern of the old tales becoming clear. "I suppose she was cruel to you growing up, wasn't she?" he said. "The evil stepmother, always favoring her own child, a son?"

Zhara stared at him, aghast. "What? No!" she exclaimed. "What a horrible thing to say! She raised me as her own. She was the only mother I ever knew."

Paul looked down, cheeks flushed from his blunder, and mumbled a quick "Sorry." He must remember never to assume anything in this world.

"But that was perhaps why everything went wrong with Lariosha," she continued.

"What do you mean?"

"You asked if my stepmother favored her own child over me. The truth was the opposite. Both she and Father favored me. Because I was the firstborn, because my mother left me, because I have this power... Lariosha ended up neglected. I tried to befriend him, I really did." She shook her head. "But the older he grew, the more he resents me. He believes that as the only son, he should be the one that inherits the throne, not some—some half-breed such as myself, and a girl at that." Paul shifted uncomfortably. "Father hated him for that. So Lariosha turned to dark magic, searching for ways to obtain power. And eventually, he found it."

"Koschei?" Paul asked, remembering her puzzling answer when he brought up that mythical dark wizard.

Her eyes were bleak as she looked into the fire. "Nobody had seen or heard from Koschei in a long, long time, even longer than Baba Yaga," she said. "Perhaps he had gone to the same place my mother and her sisters had, to Vyriy, the place birds fly to for the winter and souls go after death, where the veil between the worlds is still impenetrable.

"But Lariosha must have found him, or his source of magic, for he unleashed it the day Father announced me as his heir. As the whole court gathered for the ceremony, Lariosha announced his plan to rule, not just Arthania, but the whole of Lukomorye as well. And then he murdered Father. In front of me. I tried to stop him, but I failed." She repeated, to herself as much as to Paul, "I failed. I failed."

"It wasn't your fault," Paul said.

"Was it not?" Her look of despair went through his heart like a knife, and, without thinking, he reached out and put his hand over hers. Her eyes snapped to him, astonished, and he quickly withdrew.

"How did you get away?" he asked, to hide his embarrassment.

She buried her face in her hands and shuddered at the memory.

"It was chaos," she said. "Lariosha had a bunch of medallions in his hand—I didn't know what they were for. He tried throwing one at me, but I burned it off. That really angered him. He started throwing curses left and right at the courtiers, turning them into birds, squirrels, foxes. I don't think he meant to curse me, but one of the spells may have hit me by mistake... I've been on the run ever since." She looked at Paul, her eyes swimming with tears. "I can't understand what I have done that angered him so. I was willing to rule with him, or even forfeit my claim and give him the throne. Yet he wants more."

Paul listened to her with a sinking heart. How many times had he dreamed about his mother's demise so he could take the throne? How many times had he complained to Panin and anyone who would listen that a woman should not rule? Had he been just as bad as Zhara's brother? Could he be as bad, given the chance? Could he kill his own mother to get the throne? He wasn't sure if he wanted to know the answer.

"Why are you so sure that he didn't mean to curse you?" he asked, trying to avoid those horrifying thoughts.

"Because he needs me alive. And in full power." She spread her trembling fingers, and sparks shot out of them, blending in with those from the crackling fire. "Remember how I had to use my blood to chase away the Noon Wraith?"

"Was it not because you couldn't do this"—he snapped his fingers—"as a bird?"

"No, not quite." She flexed her hand, and the sparks swirled above her palm like a swarm of tiny fireflies. "See, this is just normal fire. This can never touch the Noon Wraith. The fire from my blood, though, is different. It's magic. It can destroy everything in its path. Nothing can stop it, not even the heaviest flood or the coldest freeze. But it can also bring power, if used the right way. And the more I bleed, the more powerful it is. So that's what Illarion wants. To bleed me dry and use my fire to temper a needle, where he stores his death, making it indestructible. He will then hide that needle inside an egg—"

"—and hide the egg inside a duck, hide the duck inside a hare, hide the hare inside a chest, and put the chest underneath a stone at the center of the world," Paul finished. "So he could become immortal." Zhara glanced at him sharply, and he shrugged. "It's a well-known tale."

"Yes, I believe that is his aim," she said.

"Can he do it?"

She gave a mirthless laugh. "You've seen what he did to poor Alyosha. I have no doubt he is capable of it. Would it work? That's another matter. But even if it doesn't work, it will be too late by then. He will have destroyed the entire kingdom to hunt me down."

"So you're hoping that Baba Yaga could help you stop him?"

"She's only one powerful enough."

"And to find her, we need Tsar Afron's horse."

The girl examined him more closely in that usual birdlike way of hers. "Why are you so calm?" she asked. "Only two nights ago, you were screaming bloody murder because of the leshy, yet now here you are, not a ruffled feather in sight."

Paul shrugged again. "I grew up listening to these stories," he said slowly. "There is always that disappointment when one realizes they are just that—stories." But in the last two days, he had seen so many things he never thought were real, marvelous, uncanny things, knights that turned into wolves and princesses that turned into birds, walking trees and singing toadstools, mermaids and frog-men. Even the idea of someone killing his own sister to achieve immortality, horrific as it may sound, had a sense of wonder about it. "I suppose it is a relief to find out they are real after all."

Zhara looked at him for a moment or two longer, her eyes unreadable. Eventually, she said. "We, too, have heard tales of those few Russians, fortunate or unfortunate enough, depending on how you look at it, to stumble upon Lukomorye. In those tales, they are stupid, or cruel, or both. It is a relief to know they are not all like that." Having uttered those enigmatic words, she turned her back to the fire and lay down. "Get some rest. We have to look presentable to request an audience with Tsar Afron tomorrow."

***

By late afternoon the next day, they reached the fortress. The stream had now turned into a river, where the sun was dipping low, its rays glittering on the water, reflected on the white walls of the fortress, and covering the hazy snow-covered peaks in the distance with a coat of gold. There was no need to worry about the Noon Wraith here, for the meadow was gone, replaced by a settlement that had sprung up along the river, surrounding the fortress that towered on the hill above it. The river was diverted into a moat that wound its way around the fortress, and a stone bridge spanned the moat, leading to the main gate set deep inside the battlements.

This settlement was much bigger than the tiny village Paul had visited on his first day—it was a real town, with tall houses made of wood and daub, their roofs, windows, and doors painted and carved in all colors and shapes. Smoke spewed from countless chimneys, and yet more houses were being built all along the river. In fact, it would have been quite undistinguishable from a normal town in his empire, if it hadn't been for some strange creatures he saw—an excessively hairy one perching on bags of wheat on the back of a wagon, something that looked like a ball of soot with eyes lurking behind a window, and a naked, green-skinned old man covered in birch leaves sitting at the door of a bathhouse—no doubt guardian spirits of some kind. But those creatures had the furtive, listless air of displaced people, and there was none of the otherworldly feel of the forest and the meadow about the town. No wonder the nymphs and Koschei and Baba Yaga were abandoning this land.

People and carts thronged the main thoroughfare, but nobody gave Paul a second glance, which suited him just fine. Zhara didn't know if Illarion was tracking her or not—had it been a coincidence that Alyosha had shown up in the forest just mere hours after Paul mentioned her name in the village? So, to be safe, Zhara had asked Paul to hide her, and he was now sweating from the double dose of heat from her body as she nestled in his waistcoat, which felt rather like having a bed warmer in one's pocket, and the heavy cloak covering everything up.

Since they couldn't present themselves to Tsar Afron before Zhara returned to her human form, Paul avoided the main road leading to the fortress and headed down the river. This area was also crowded with boats and skiffs, loading and unloading timber and stones and bricks, dry goods, and other merchandise. He went further down the bank. He was hungry again—they had divided the last of the bread rings between themselves that morning—so when he saw a man sitting by his wagon eating dinner, he had to swallow his pride and traded his snuff for a bottle of kvass and a wedge of the man's vegetable pie. His face burned with the humiliation of having to beg and trade, like a commoner, for every scrap of food, but it was either that or go hungry. At least nobody knew him here, so the humiliation was solely his own making.

Eventually, the crowd thinned. Paul sat down under a willow tree by the riverbank with a sigh, took off his cloak, and let Zhara out of his pocket. She looked a little squished from being squeezed into his waistcoat all morning, and she gave him an annoyed look as she tried to preen her feathers back to shape.

"Don't look at me like that, you're the one that wanted to stay hidden," Paul said, as he broke off some of the pie for her.

After finishing his meager meal, Paul went on a little walk to explore and kill time, with Zhara perching on his uninjured shoulder. He walked down the riverbank, following the tall stone walls of the fortress, pointing out to Zhara how similar it was to the Moscow Kremlin, only without the more modern buildings. There was something medieval in those white walls, with their battlements and watch towers, and in the high turrets and the onion domes of the castle that peeked over the walls. Not for the first time, Paul wondered how old this world was, and whether it had been one with his world in the past and had drifted apart at some point.

He had almost completed a circle around the fortress when he came upon a large clearing that stood directly under the castle, surrounded by a tall fence made out of sharpened logs. A watchtower looked down on it, so soldiers inside could keep an eye on both the castle and the clearing. This special care piqued his curiosity, and he put his eye to an opening between two logs to see what was inside.

He found himself looking at a pasture, scrupulously maintained with lush, emerald-green grass, which put the meadow around it, yellowing from smoke and heat and trampling footsteps, to shame. The moat widened into a pond inside the clearing to provide drinking water, and willow trees around its bank gave some cooling shades at the height of noon. And standing in the middle of that pasture was the most magnificent horse Paul had ever seen, tall and slender, its ivory white coat shone with a metallic sheen, its mane and tail, of a bright gold color, rippled like ripe wheat under the setting sun, as it gracefully lowered its head to drink from the pond.

"It's the horse," he breathed out. "The horse with the golden mane."

Zhara, balancing on a fence post, nodded at him. And with her confirmation, the nagging feeling that had been bothering Paul since their encounter with the wolf suddenly became clear. "It's the fairy tale, isn't it?" he continued. "Prince Ivan, the Firebird, and the Gray Wolf. I'm the prince, you're the firebird, and we've met the wolf—only he wasn't as helpful as the wolf in the tale. And now we're supposed to be stealing the horse and then bring back the princess..." He paused as the familiar story came back into his mind. "So why are we wasting time waiting for Tsar Afron? Who knows if he would even let us borrow the horse? We can steal it as long as we don't touch the golden bridle, and this horse has no bridle! Let's just take it!"

The moment he mentioned stealing the horse, Zhara started twittering in an agitated manner and tried to fly into his face. Confused, Paul glanced at the watchtower, but it remained closed. The meadow was empty all around. There didn't seem to be any imminent danger. He pushed her aside and searched for a way into the pasture. The gate was locked, but the fence wasn't high—he could just about reach the top. Paul put a finger to his lips to shush Zhara's frantic chirps for fear she may alert the horse, and tried to climb the fence. Zhara was still flying around his head, her chirps turning into angry squawks, but he refused to be deterred. After several tries, he was able to hook his fingers in a gap between the tops of the fence posts and hoist himself over.

The horse had noticed their presence and was now eyeing them curiously yet calmly, which Paul took to be a good sign. Though dusk was falling, its coat was so bright that he could still see it quite well. He carefully approached it, keeping his eyes on it, his hands held out in front of him. The horse tossed its beautiful mane and let out a soft whicker.

Zhara flew behind the bank of willow trees. A moment later, as the last rays of the sun winked out, she poked her head out from behind the bushes and hissed at Paul, "You fool! Stop this nonsense at once!"

"Be quiet," he said. "You'll thank me for this."

"At least give me my clothes!"

Paul realized he was still carrying her rolled-up clothes on his back. He untied the belt and tossed the bundle to her, without taking his eyes off the horse. He was now only a few steps away. A moment later, Zhara, now dressed, ran out into the pasture and tugged at his hand.

"Get back before you'll get us into trouble!" she said in an angry whisper.

"What, is it going to turn into a monster and eat me?"

"No, but even if you catch it, how do you propose we ride it without a saddle, you idiot?"

Paul hesitated. It was true; he had never ridden a horse bareback before. He began to realize how foolish he'd been. And this was right after he'd told himself not to assume anything in this world too! Just then, the horse inched forward, spurred by curiosity or perhaps a want for companionship, and pushed its soft nose under Paul's hand.

Before Paul could be surprised by this astonishing turn of events, there was a movement in the grass. A shape jumped out of seemingly nowhere and landed square on his head.

"Thief!!!" A scream pierced Paul's ears, while blows and kicks rained down on him, blinding him as to where they may be coming from. "Horse thief! Villain! Catch them!" He stumbled, trying to throw off the thing on his back, while next to him, Zhara was squealing in pain as the thing turned on her, yanking at her hair.

Paul's legs were thrown out from under him. As he fell with a painful thud on his back, the thing jumped on his chest to pin him down, and he finally had a good look at it—a creature the size of a small child, covered in coarse black hair like the cattle he'd seen on the meadow, with the face of an old man, a pair of calf's ears, goat's legs, and skinny arms with hands that ended in long claws. Its eyes, shining malevolently from deep sockets, glared at Paul. Paul tried to shake the thing off, only to find his hands and feet bound tightly by ropes that had sprung up from the ground. Next to him, Zhara was similarly tied up.

"What is this thing?!" he screamed.

"A dvorovoi. He protects the pasture and the stables," Zhara explained in a long-suffering voice.

"Burn off the ropes and get us out of here!"

"No." She lay back and stared up at the sky. "You have gotten us into enough trouble as it is, so excuse me if I'm not going to take your order, Your Excellency."

Soldiers filed in through the gate. The dvorovoi jumped off Paul's chest and disappeared into the grass, while soldiers hauled the two of them to their feet.

"Trying to steal the Golden Horse, are you?" the commander said. "Some nerves you've got. Off to the dungeon with him! As for this one—" He ran a knuckle down Zhara's throat. "We'll have some fun with her, won't we, lads?"

"Leave her alone!" Paul shouted, straining against the ropes, which only earned him a round of derisive laughs from the soldiers.

Zhara whipped her head away from the commander. "How dare you touch me!" she said, her eyes ablaze with fury. "I am Tsarevna Zhara Artyomovna of Arthania, and I demand an audience with Tsar Afron!"

"Nice try, lassie," the commander snickered. "But everybody knows that Tsarevna Zhara Artyomovna is a fugitive. She'd be a fool to show her face here."

"Is that so?" Zhara snapped her fingers, and just as Paul had done the first time he'd seen it, the soldiers all recoiled in alarm when fire burst from her hand. A second later, the ropes burned right off her wrists, while the soldiers stared, mouth agape. "Now, are you going to take us to the Tsar or not?"

Chapter 6

A/N: There is no mention in mythology or fairy tales of the rusalkas using fish bones as combs, but I got the idea from Joe's Off Menu episode, where Ed and James both misremembered "The Little Mermaid" and insisted that Ariel used fish bones as a comb (she uses a fork! But to be fair, it was a very funny bit in the podcast.)

Taglist: @ali-r3n

#prince paul fic #the firebird #you paint such vivid pictures in this wonderful world <3 #swamp thing!#ahahaha pretty little princeling gutting his first fishie #our girl bleeds hellfire!#this is like... a russian nesting doll of horcruxes #hey babe maybe don't steal from magic-folk #never heard of a dvorovoi but holy crap that soudns terrifying

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wheels-of-despair · 9 hours

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Okay, we need to have a heart to heart, Eddie Nation... This is a mullet:

Not a mullet:

Mullet:

Not a mullet:

Mullet:

Not a mullet:

Eddie's hair is layered, which the majority of styles in the 80s were (Billy has a mullet, and Steve is pushing boundaries). A mullet--all business up front, and party in the back--was not really the thing for metalheads. Long, flowing, full locks were. Bonus points by the late 80s if it was longer than most women's. Actually, the mullet became a big part of lesbian culture in the 80s.

But, just so we understand one another, Eddie's hair... not a mullet.

#THANK YOU #this drives me fucking nuts

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wheels-of-despair · 10 hours

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Joseph quinn with WARFARE cast bowling in London.

I love this man. 🤪

#jq #*flail!*

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wheels-of-despair · 10 hours

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The Firebird - Chapter 4

Pairing: Prince Paul (Catherine the Great) x OFC, Fairytale AU

Chapter warning: violence, minor character death

Chapter word count: 3.5k

Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3

Chapter 4 - The Gray Wolf

It was a scream of fear and panic, quickly cut short. Paul froze in his path for a moment, then ground his teeth and continued on his way. She'd said he was a burden. She could very well be a deceitful, dangerous witch. The fairy tales were full of those, weren't they? The princess who betrayed the hero because she didn't want to be married to him, the beautiful maiden who turned out to be a hag. Let her scream. He would not be duped by her again.

Another scream, more desperate this time. Paul bit his lip as his anger fought with his conscience. It was true that in the stories, the disloyal princess often repented and was forgiven by the hero, and the hag was usually under a curse and would become beautiful again once the curse was lifted. And never, ever did the hero walk away from a lady in distress, even if she was Baba Yaga herself. If he did, he risked getting punished by other magical beings he'd meet later. There were rules to these things.

He let out a deep sigh and plodded back.

As he drew closer to the oak tree, Paul began to think he'd made a blunder. The dense trees formed a wall in front of him, through which the faint moonlight only darkened the shadows without illuminating much, so he couldn't quite see what was threatening Zhara just yet, but what he was hearing did not exactly fill him with courage. There were the girl's frightened whimpers, and other sounds, scratching, accompanied by a low, throaty growl, and heavy, heavy breathing, like that of an animal.

Then the wall of trees thinned, and a terrifying sight met his eyes.

A wolf, the largest wolf Paul had ever seen, its fur shining under the moon like a silver coat, was standing on its hind legs at the base of the oak tree, its front paws swiping at the top branch, where Zhara was crouched, holding on for dear life. A ragged piece of cloth dangling from a knot on the trunk showed where she had clambered up the tree, and perhaps in the nick of time as well. The wolf was twice as tall as a grown man, its snout easily reaching the main fork where the trunk started splitting into branches. If Zhara had been only one branch lower, the wolf's jaw, with the two rows of white, razor-sharp teeth, would have closed around her leg and dragged her down. And by the looks of it, she wouldn't last until her transformation at daybreak—already the wolf was looking for a purchase to claw its way further up the tree. Paul had never heard of a wolf that could climb trees, but perhaps like most things in this world, its wolves were built differently.

As he contemplated this fact, Paul's heart dropped in dismay. How was he supposed to fight this monster? He didn't even have a weapon—his sword was just for show, it had no edge and was useless. Rather like myself, he thought bitterly. Should he go to the village for help? No. That would only convince the peasants that he and Zhara were bringing doom to their home. Could he sneak up on it and knock it out with a big rock? Or should he just turn and run? But on the flat and empty meadow, the wolf would be sure to catch him in just one bound of those enormous legs. At least in the forest, he would have places to hide.

Anyway, he couldn't very well run now, for Zhara had spotted him, and her eyes widened with relief. She opened her mouth to call out for him, then closed it again, apparently afraid of drawing the wolf's attention to him. At that very moment, Paul, while fumbling about searching for a more reliable weapon than his blunt sword, stepped on a treacherous branch. It snapped with a noise like a gunshot that reverberated through the forest and brought the wolf whirling around to him.

The animal fixed its baleful eyes on him, eyes that glowed with an unnatural green spark, sending shivers down Paul's back and freezing him in place. Moonlight glinted on something around its neck, and Paul saw that it was a gold chain with a medallion of some sort hanging off it. This was no ordinary wolf.

Somehow he found the strength to remove his sword from its scabbard and raised it, rather awkwardly, in front of him, while the wolf slowly padded toward him on paws the size of dinner plates. It leaped at him before he realized it had moved. He dove blindly to the side, swinging the sword as he did. The blade connected with a ribcage as large and hard as a beer barrel and flew out of Paul's hand. The force of the strike rang through his arms and his shoulders, rendering them numb.

The wolf landed lightly on its feet as though it had been hit with a mere twig and crouched low on its hind legs, getting ready to pounce once more. Casting wildly about, Paul's eyes landed on a flat rock at his feet. He scrambled over on all four and, with an effort no doubt strengthened by desperation, managed to lift it with both hands just as the wolf charged again. Paul let the rock go. It flew by harmlessly, missing the target by a mile. Cursing under his breath, Paul dodged the wolf's sharp claws, picked up the rock, and threw it again, willy-nilly. This time, the rock grazed one of the wolf's legs, not hard enough to stop it, but enough for it to draw back with a whine. Paul seized the opportunity to find his sword. It may not help much, but at least he could hold it, unlike the rock.

"Please don't hurt him!" cried Zhara from her branch. "He's a friend!"

"You think it can understand you?" Paul shouted back.

"I wasn't talking to you," she said, irritably, "I was talking to him!"

"What, the wolf?"

"He's not a wolf! He's been cursed, like me! He doesn't know what he's doing!"

As though to disprove her, the wolf chose that moment to come at Paul. He sidestepped, but not fast enough. The wolf's teeth snapped at his cloak and pulled the garment free with such force that it sent Paul stumbling backward until he hit a tree trunk with the back of his head. Stars exploded over his eyes.

Through the ringing in his ears and the pounding of his head, he could dimly make out the girl's voice, saying, "Alyosha Popovich, please! Remember who you are!" She had made her way down the tree and was slowly approaching.

The wolf growled, hesitating between the two preys. It started toward Zhara, only to retreat when fire burst from her hands. Deciding Paul was the easier prey, it turned on him again. Paul recoiled, but the tree was behind him and there was nowhere else to go. Zhara ran in front of him, brandishing her fiery hands, and the wolf shrank back, though only slightly this time. Then, with a flash of its eyes, it lunged forward anyway, and the acrid smell of burning hair hit Paul's nostrils. The wolf snarled at the flames in frustration, lips curling up to show dripping fangs, a blood-red tongue swiping across the burned patch on its snout.

"Why don't you just burn it?" Paul asked.

"I don't want to hurt him!"

"He's trying to hurt us!"

Ignoring him, Zhara lowered her hands and cautiously took a step toward the wolf. "Alyosha Popovich," she said. "Please, try to think. It's me, your friend Zhara. Remember? This isn't who you—"

The wolf interrupted her with an ear-splitting, hair-raising howl. Zhara shrank back, and Paul instinctively threw a protective arm around her while lashing out with his sword. He hit the burn on the wolf's snout, which only enraged the beast more. It sprang on Paul, so close he could smell its hot, rancid breath on the side of his face. There was a tearing noise. He felt liquid on his shirt, and for a confused moment, didn't know where it came from. It was only when a searing pain went through his arm that he realized the wolf had scratched his shoulder.

Flames ignited on his right. Zhara threw a fireball at the wolf. The beast howled and scratched his head between his paws, trying to put out the fire. The girl seized Paul's hand and dragged him into the clearing behind.

"It's the medallion," she whispered.

"What?"

"Did you see how it flashes along with his eyes?"

Paul looked at the wolf. It had managed to extinguish the fire. Its eyes, standing out amongst the burned fur, shone with a light more terrible than ever, and the medallion, green like malachite, was indeed flickering with the same strange glow.

"It's controlling him," Zhara went on. "Try to destroy it. I shall distract him."

Before Paul could ask how he could destroy a magical medallion, she had set her hands aflame again and walked out to face the wolf. Paul noticed his cloak, torn away by the wolf, was crumpled in a heap on the forest floor. An idea occurred to him. Ignoring the sting on his shoulder, he picked up the cloak. The wolf was circling Zhara, wary eyes fixed on the fire in her hands. It certainly didn't want to get burned a third time. This was his chance.

Running at the wolf from the side, Paul tossed the cloak as high as his injured shoulder allowed, mimicking the move of a retiarius, a net-fighter, that he'd seen in a picture book about Ancient Roman gladiators as a child. As soon as the cloak landed on the wolf's head, stunning the beast momentarily, he raised the sword with both hands and, forgetting his pain in the rush of the moment, brought the dull blade down as hard as he could on the medallion.

It fractured. The glow went out, and the wolf collapsed.

Clutching each other's hands, Paul and Zhara approached the prone form. Before their eyes, the wolf shrank. The silvery pelt disappeared, the paws were replaced by hands and feet, and there, sitting up under the cloak, was a young man, not much older than Zhara or Paul himself, with white-blonde hair and blue eyes. Even with singed patches of hair and the burned marks on his face, he was still handsome and his countenance remained noble, the perfect example of a bogatyr, a knight of the old tales. Paul, with his lopsided wig and torn shirt, felt positively wretched.

The man's eyes widened as they landed on Zhara. "Lady Zhara!" he exclaimed, his voice hoarse. "I am so sorry—I didn't mean to—I should've protected you, but your brother, he captured me and turned me into this—this—"

Zhara knelt and took the man's hand. "No, Alyosha, you mustn't blame yourself."

"And you! How have you managed to escape? When I last saw you, Illarion was hitting you with the curse..."

"I didn't escape wholly unscathed," Zhara said, looking down. "But my tale can wait. Tell me, what of your sworn brothers, Dobrynya and Ilya?"

"I haven't seen them. I pray Illarion wasn't hunting them as w—"

Alyosha didn't finish the sentence. His eyes bulged. He clawed at his neck, making a choking sound. The cloak fell off, and to Paul's horror, he saw that the chain, from which the medallion had hung, was now closing around Alyosha's throat, strangling him. Zhara tried to wriggle her hand between his neck and the chain to pull it off, but it kept tightening inexorably, and she was forced to pull back or lose her fingers. Alyosha's face had gone purple.

Paul could only watch in a state of helpless horror until her cry "Please help him!" jolted him into action. Not knowing what else to do, he grabbed the sword and wedged it between the chain and Alyosha's neck, to pry the chain off. With a dry snap, the chain broke the sword in two. At the same moment, Alyosha's eyes went still. He fell back and ceased moving.

Before Paul and Zhara could fully grasp what had just transpired, a wisp of green smoke emanated from the cracked medallion.

"My dearest sister," a sepulchral voice emerged from that smoke. Zhara fell back, her face deathly white. That voice was nothing like Paul had ever heard before. Both cold and oily, it penetrated one's ears like an icicle and crawled down one's spine like a serpent, setting one's teeth on edge. "You cannot evade me forever. Give yourself up, and I may show you mercy. If you continue to oppose me... well, you've seen how powerful I have become, what I can do to those who try to fight me. Think about it. I await you on Buyan. Be quick, sister, for my patience wears thin..."

Paul had had enough. He slammed the broken end of the sword he was still holding into what remained of the medallion—

Crack! It shattered into a thousand pieces, and the voice died out in a horrible, inhuman wail.

Merciful silence reigned over the forest once more. Paul staggered over to Zhara, who was still hunched over the motionless form of Alyosha Popovich. She lifted her red-rimmed eyes to Paul's face and sniffed.

"I suppose you want me to explain everything?" she said.

"Where, or what is Buyan?"

"An island off the coast of Arthania. It is said that at the center of it is a magical stone of great power, the Alatyr—"

"Please." Paul held up a hand. "Please, no more. The rest can wait until morning. Provided that we survive until then, that is." He couldn't take any more that night. No more curses and magic and monsters. No more anything. He wished he could just curl up and go to sleep, and when he opened his eyes, it would all be just a horrible, horrible dream. He would even take his mother's reprimands over this.

Zhara let out a long sigh. She, too, seemed exhausted. Her face had gone so pale that even in the moonlight, Paul could see the freckles standing out on her skin.

"We must give him a proper burial," she said, indicating Alyosha. "The leshy won't thank me for leaving him in the middle of the forest."

"But where was the leshy then, when the wolf—when Alyosha was attacking us?" Paul demanded indignantly. "He was going to kill me for throwing rocks, yet he sat by while a cursed wolf tore us apart?"

Zhara shook her head. "If you go searching for rhyme or reason in the way Lukomorians behave, you'll be disappointed."

"But—but there are rules to the stories! The hero always gets the princess, the orphan girl always gets to go to the ball, the youngest prince always defeats the evil wizard, and—and—" He knew he was getting hysterical, but all the fear and panic of the past two days were building inside him like floodwater, threatening to drown him.

Zhara tilted her head at him, eyes infinitely sad and weary. "Don't believe everything you heard in those stories, Pashenka," she said.

Her condescending tone made his temper flare. "Don't call me Pashenka," he said, scowling.

"What should I call you then? Pasha? Pavlushka? Little Pavlik?"

Paul's cheeks heated. "How dare you talk to me with such—such impertinence! You will address me by my proper title!"

"And what's that?"

"Your Excellency, Tsarevich Pavel Petrovich!"

A spark of anger flashed in her golden eyes. "You're not my excellency," she said. "Remember, Pavel Petrovich"—Paul wondered how she managed to pack so much contempt into those few short syllables—"you're no longer in your precious Rus'. You're in Lukomorye now, and here, we have our own tsars and tsarinas. I am a princess as well, don't you forget. My kingdom may be in ruins and I may be running for my life, but I am still a princess. So I shall call you by whatever name I damn well please!"

Sometimes, when one is afraid, sternness can work much better than gentleness to assuage the fear. Zhara's words, acerbic as they were, acted like a dam against the rising panic inside Paul, and he realized how utterly ridiculous he was, complaining about titles and ranks while they were standing over a dead body in the middle of a God-forsaken forest and an evil wizard was after them.

"How are we going to bury him?" he grudgingly asked.

Zhara regarded him for a moment, and some of the contempt and annoyance faded from her eyes. Without saying a word, she took the broken sword out of his hand and lifted her skirt.

"What are you doing?" Paul took a step back, alarmed, remembering how she had drawn her own blood to fight the Noon Wraith. Was that what it took to create a big enough fire—her blood?

"Calm yourself," she said, rolling her eyes. Taking the ragged edge of the broken sword, she tore a strip of linen from the bottom of her chemise and used it to bind his shoulder. Paul had completely forgotten about the wound. Fortunately, despite the blood, it wasn't deep.

"I guess we're truly equal now," Zhara said once she finished, gesturing to his cravat still wrapped around her arm with a rueful smile.

They spent the rest of the night building a funeral pyre for the ill-fated bogatyr in the middle of the clearing. It was almost dawn by the time they finished. Zhara lit the pyre with a snap of her fingers, and stood back watching the flames flicker and shroud the body, which was covered with all the fragrant wild herbs and flowers they could find. The leshy made no appearance, but his children, the toadstools and the leaves and twigs were back, standing just outside the clearing, eyeing the fire with a mixture of curiosity and fear.

Paul wondered if they should say a few words. He had never been to a funeral, not even his father's.

"We grew up together, you know," Zhara said. "My father had always hoped that one day we would—" She cut herself off and wiped at her eyes with her sleeve. "But Alyosha was more interested in finding adventures. And I was definitely not interested in getting married. And so we remained friends. He was my most loyal friend."

Paul cleared his throat, not knowing if he should try to comfort her somehow. It had never occurred to him to consider another person's feelings, their grief or anger or joy, and now, he was surprised to find himself sympathizing with her. He, too, had known loss, even if it was the loss of a father he didn't remember.

He turned to her, wanting to say something, but the first rays of the sun hit them then, and Zhara disappeared in a glow of golden light, leaving her clothes to fall to the ground in a heap. A moment later, a gold-plumed head poked out of the clothes, and the bird flew up into the morning sky, while the fire continued to burn and consume, red-hot tongues licking all the way to the leafy dome overhead.

***

Despite their exhaustion, they walked for most of the morning, making use of as much daylight as they could. Unlike the previous day, Paul was silent. He was too tired. He had only been in this land for two full days, yet it felt much, much longer, for so much had happened. He concentrated on putting one foot ahead of the other and tried not to think of the gray wolf, the funeral pyre, which remained smoldering when they left the clearing, and the cracked medallion with the terrible green smoke and the voice that was still ringing in his ears. The weight and warmth of the bird-girl on his shoulder were almost reassuring, after all that horror.

The meadow remained flat and empty, but in the distance, Paul could see a range of undulating hills and something colorful and gleaming on top of them, which must be the fortress. As the sun climbed higher and the day got warmer, they retreated into the forest once more to avoid the wrath of Lady Midday. Here they sat down to a simple meal of the remaining bread and cheese. Paul crumbled up the cheese and tore the bread into tiny pieces and spread them on a napkin for Zhara. Then he stretched out under the shade of an elm tree, his head pillowed on the bundle of clothes—her chemise and sarafan, and his cloak, all wrapped up and tied with a belt—for a nap, after the sleepless night.

"I'm sorry about your friend," he said. Somehow, he found it easier to talk when she was a bird. It was almost like talking to himself. Zhara, who was hopping about the napkin picking up the last of the bread crumbs, looked at him with her bright, sun-lit eyes. "I only have one friend back in my world, Andrei Razumovsky. We also grew up together, and he is like a brother to me, so if something is to happen to him—" He paused. Perhaps he shouldn't mention brothers to her.

But Zhara didn't seem to mind. She watched him for a moment longer, then came over, laid her head against his arm, and made a soft noise, somewhere between a chirrup and a coo, like that of a turtle dove, before flying up to the branches and finding herself a place to nap as well.

Paul watched her tail feathers disappear into the green canopy, while a strange feeling, unknown and unnamed, bloomed in his heart. The simple eloquence of her gesture had touched him more deeply than he'd thought possible. He knew she was thanking him for comforting her, but she also meant they didn't have to talk about it. He'd never understood another person so thoroughly before, and the fact that the person was currently a bird couldn't stop that strange warmth from spreading across his chest.

Chapter 5

Taglist: @ali-r3n

#prince paul fic #the firebird #awww poor baby with the blunt sword #do something dammit!#get something silver!#lmao nvm of course the wolf is a friend #paul is still wearing the wig? *shakes head*#call him a big baby 'cause that's what he is XD #awwww he fed her bird-sized food #our boy's in love with a bird <3

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wheels-of-despair · 11 hours

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Me when random period cramp:

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wheels-of-despair · 11 hours

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I am looking neither respectfully nor disrespectfully. I gaze without recognition of your form, and without understanding.

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wheels-of-despair · 12 hours

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He crawls into your lap as you’re playing another game on the teal Switch held tightly between your hands.

The tv is muffled as the earbuds fill your ears with the sounds of your character running through the halls of the hospital featured in the horror game that has held your attention for most of the day.

Eddie sinks his head into the pillow now resting on your legs, pulls the mustard-colored throw blanket up to his chin as he settles on your lap and focuses on the tv again.

You watch as another cutscene begins, one hand leaving its hold on the Switch to run throw Eddie’s damp curls.

You feel the deep breath he takes in before a sigh leaves him as your fingers begin their journey along the faded scars running from his cheek to below his jaw, fingertips kissing as they move up and down.

After a few strokes he grabs your hand in his , bringing it to his lips, smacking a loud kiss to the palm of your hand, breathing you in with eyes closed. His eyes meet yours over your hands, happiness filling the depths of those brown eyes, before turning back towards the tv and letting your hand go.

No words are spoken or needed as you both exist in each other’s space, resting contently on the well-loved olive couch, where touch is more than enough for now.

#eddie munson fic #want himmm

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wheels-of-despair · 18 hours

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Joseph Quinn as Eddie Munson in S4.01 "The Hellfire Club"

#eddie munson

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wheels-of-despair · 18 hours

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#eddie munson #sooooo true

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wheels-of-despair · 1 day

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The Firebird - Chapter 3

Pairing: Prince Paul (Catherine the Great) x OFC, fairytale AU

Chapter warning: some mentions of blood and injuries

Chapter word count: 4.1k

Chapter 1 - Chapter 2

Chapter 3 - Wraith and Rumor

Paul was woken by the gnawing and the rumbling of his stomach. He sat up, stretching out his limbs, stiff from sleeping on the cold, hard ground, and readjusted the wig that had fallen off in the night. In the morning, the world looked more familiar—not familiar in the sense that he knew where he was and where he needed to go, but familiar in the sense that the trees were now trees instead of guardian spirits and toadstools were toadstools instead of teasing imps. Paul wondered if they only came alive at night, in a reverse of the curse that plagued Zhara. When he woke up, the girl had transformed back into the bird and was perching on top of his cloak, watching him with inquisitive eyes. It was strange, but when she was a girl, Paul had thought her manner birdlike, and now, when she was a bird, he couldn't help but notice how disconcertingly human her gaze was.

"Can you understand me?" he asked, feeling rather foolish.

She tilted her head. He took that as a "yes".

"So how far is it to this fortress? I'm absolutely starving and could do with some breakfast."

She hopped away. Paul rushed to pick up the cloak and his blood-stained cravat and follow her. His hope for breakfast was soon dashed when she only led him to a bush. It was true that the bush was full of ripe berries, gleaming black like jet beads amongst the leaves, but after having nothing to eat since the previous evening except for a gulp of birch sap, he was not exactly looking forward to berries for breakfast. Still, there was nothing else to eat, so as Zhara started pecking enthusiastically at a berry, Paul shrugged and popped one in his mouth as well. The berry exploded between his teeth, so much sweeter and juicier than the strawberries and cherries from the gardens of Tsarskoye Selo. He picked another, and another, and another, until his hands were stained purple and only the unripe berries were left. He looked up at Zhara, shame-faced. She rolled her eyes at him, but her chirps sounded more amused than irritated.

Paul was still licking the berry juice from his fingers when Zhara led the way out of the grove and into the meadow. She flew a little down the stream that murmured along the forest, then stopped and tilted her head at Paul, clearly waiting for him to catch up. Paul hurried to follow her, but his steps slowed in astonishment as he took in the landscape around him. The meadow spread out under the endless summer sky like a green velvet blanket, with a coverlet of wildflowers that nodded and swayed in the breeze. Most of these Paul recognized—cornflowers as blue as the sky above, ox-eye daisies with their friendly yellow centers and milk-white petals, delicate crimson poppies, lacy wild carrots, proud, spiky thistles—though like the berries, they looked bigger, their colors brighter, their scent more fragrant than the flowers of the world he'd left behind. Even the bees and butterflies that buzzed between these seemed more alive, and when he looked more closely, Paul could have sworn he saw tiny faces peeking out from between their wings.

They walked across that vast meadow, keeping the dark forest on their right and the stream on their left. It was slow going. The bird-girl flew as long as she could—her wound had stopped bleeding, but her wing was still weak—then resorted to hopping on the ground for a while, before trying to fly again. Eventually, Paul couldn't take it anymore and offered her his arm. She looked at him with those human, haughty eyes but refused to move.

"Come on," he said. "At this rate, I'll have a beard down to my belly before we can find Baba Yaga." She relented and hopped onto his arm, though she held herself rather stiffly as she made her way to perch on his shoulder.

Paul didn't know how long they walked. His wonder at the landscape soon waned. As the sun rose, even the bees and the butterflies—or the creatures that looked like bees and butterflies—fell into a kind of stupor, so it wasn't difficult to imagine he and the bird-girl were the only living things in the vast, empty meadow. It put him in mind of the Great Steppe of Kazakh—not that he knew what it was like. With a jolt, Paul realized that he knew so little about his empire, the empire he hoped to rule one day. All he only ever knew was Moscow and Saint Petersburg and the surrounding countryside.

Questions crowded into Paul's mind, and, because he had no one else to talk to, he started voicing them out loud, despite knowing that the girl could not answer him. How far away the fortress was, what sort of creatures they might meet, could she understand other birds and animals, how much she knew about his empire, how many Russians had ended up in this land and how many inhabitants of this land had ended up over there, and whether they ever found their way back. To all this chattering, the bird-girl only tossed her plumed head and moved a little further away, to the very tip of his shoulder, without making a sound.

His legs, not used to such prolonged exercise, started to tire, but when he tried to sit down for longer than a few minutes, the bird-girl would chirp crossly by his ears and peck at his arms, so he would reluctantly stand and walk again. However, by midday—judging by the sun and by the twisting of his stomach—he was too exhausted to go on. The berries seemed a long, long time ago. His scalp itched and sweated under the wig, his feet were blistering, his hip felt bruised where his sword had been tapping against it, and his legs were like two logs ill-fitted to his hips.

"This is unbearable," he groaned and slumped down on the grass bank of the stream, causing the bird-girl to tumble off his shoulder. She struggled to her feet and shot him a look of pure loathing. "You can bring Baba Yaga to me once you find her, but I'm not taking another step."

Ignoring her furious twittering and jabbing, he lay down, burying his face in a clump of clover. He was letting its sweet smell cool him down when suddenly Zhara gave a screech of warning and poked at his head through the wig. Paul yelped but was too tired to push her away. He only raised a hand and gave her a feeble swipe, as one would a fly. She pecked him again, at the back of his hand, her beak surprisingly sharp.

"That hurt," he protested, raising his head to glare at her. She was frantically gesticulating with her beak, and following her movement, he saw what she was trying to gesture at.

A figure was coming toward them across the field, an unmistakably female figure. She was dressed in a flowing white dress, and there was a wreath of cornflowers in her hair, which was the color of ripe wheat.

"Oh, blessed be the Saints," Paul breathed out. "I was beginning to think this entire place was devoid of people. You there! Can you help us?"

The figure turned slightly, but she was too far away and her hair was in her face, so Paul couldn't see it very clearly. As he started toward the figure, Zhara flew into his face, hitting him with her wings, squawking angrily, trying to drive him toward the forest. Paul stepped back in confusion, and then alarm, not just because of Zhara's fury, but also because he'd noticed something odd about the way the figure on the meadow was moving. She wasn't walking. She was gliding. And there was a scythe in her hand.

The figure drew near, and Paul saw she was no girl at all. But he couldn't tell how young or old she was, for her skin had rotted away like that of a corpse left under the sun. Her nose was gone. Her eyes were two shriveled, empty sockets. She opened her ruined mouth in a silent scream, and a blast of scorching hot wind came out of that gaping hole, hitting Paul in the face, dizzying him and sending a sharp pain across his skull. He fell on his back as the wraith bore down on him, her scythe raised high like Death.

Zhara flapped her wings at the wraith. Sparks flew, but the wraith's hot breath immediately blew them out. Zhara turned and pecked at her injured wing, drawing blood. She then flung the drops of blood at the grass at the wraith's feet. Fire erupted from the blood, and the dry roots from last year's growth caught at once, spreading quickly to the ragged hem of the wraith's dress. With a furious scream, the wraith swung her scythe, hitting Zhara with the handle, hurling her across the meadow. Paul lunged after the bird-girl. He landed painfully on his belly but managed to stretch out his arms and catch Zhara in his palms, just before she fell into the stream.

Turning her back on them, the wraith busied herself with moving the scythe across the burning grass, putting out the fire. While the wraith was distracted, Paul scooped Zhara's limp body into his arms and stumbled across the meadow, across the stream, and into the cover of the trees. The wraith rushed after them, only to lurch back as though slammed into an invisible wall. Still running, Paul risked a look behind him. The wraith swirled and shook her scythe, but it was in vain—she couldn't cross the stream. With a final shriek of impotent rage, she dissolved into a dust devil, leaving the meadow just as peaceful and pretty as it had been.

In the safety of the forest, Paul tried to catch his breath. He looked down at the red-and-gold shape in his hands and sighed in relief to see her getting to her feet, her feathers a little ruffled but otherwise looking none the worse for wear. "You couldn't have warned me that there were demons in the field attacking people in broad daylight?!" he said hoarsely, afraid that if he raised his voice, it may bring the wraith back.

Zhara wriggled her neck and shoulders apologetically. Before Paul could ask what they were going to do next, her eyes widened in fear as footsteps founded in the distance. Paul jumped up. But no, the wraith had no footsteps. It was only a muzhik, a peasant, sauntering through the trees with a fishing rod on his shoulder and swinging a string of fish in one hand, seemingly without a care in the world. The man hadn't seen Paul or the bird-girl yet, hidden as they were behind a big oak tree.

"That's not a monster in disguise, is it?" Paul asked. She shook her beak. "All right, then there must be a village nearby. They will have food there, maybe even a horse—" Before he could finish, she had hopped out of his hands and slipped into a bush at the base of the oak. "Fine!" he grunted. "Stay here if you want, but I won't starve for you!" He would show her that he could survive in this world without her help.

He came out from behind the tree and hallooed to the muzhik. The man came toward him at once, smiling amicably, and Paul felt a little easier to see that he looked no different than the peasants of his empire, in a coarse linen shirt, woolen breeches, and bast shoes. "Good day to you," the muzhik said. "Where did you come from and where are you going?"

Paul hesitated, wondering how much of the truth he could tell without sounding like a madman. But then again, perhaps the people of this land were used to strangers turning up out of nowhere. "I'm searching for Tsar Afron's fortress," he said, ignoring the man's first question. "But when I was walking across the field, we—I was attacked by—by—a—" He wasn't sure what to call the wraith.

The man understood at once. "Ah, I see, you've had a run-in with our Lady Midday!" he said, clapping Paul on the back. "You were lucky to escape with your life then. A fair few of my fellow villagers had lost their heads to her, before we knew to avoid the meadow at noon." Paul whitened, but the man only laughed. "Best stick to the forest, lad, at least until the sun is past its hottest."

"Do you know how far it is to Tsar Afron's fortress?"

The man scratched his beard. "A couple of days' walk from here, I reckon."

Two more days! Paul didn't know if he could bear walking for two more days with nothing but tree sap and berries to eat. "Is your village nearby?" he asked. "Does anyone have a horse or a carriage for hire?"

"Horses!" The muzhik laughed. "What would we be doing with horses? But you're welcome to stay with us for the night. The village is just yon that rank of oaks there. Come, come! We're but a small village, but you'll find us friendly enough. Anyone who's survived Lady Midday deserves some hospitality."

With one last look at the bush where Zhara was hiding, Paul followed the man through the forest.

Though the man said the village was "just yon", it took them until mid-afternoon to reach it. It was indeed a small one, only a handful of wooden huts scattered around what looked like a chapel that stood in the middle of a clearing. There was no cross on the onion-shaped dome of the chapel, and Paul wondered what sort of God, or gods, these people worshipped.

His arrival seemed to be a great source of interest to the villagers. In such a small place, words soon got around that Timofey Arkadyevich had brought home a stranger, someone who had survived Lady Midday, and they came out in droves to stare and point at him and laugh openly, just as the toadstools had the night before. Paul kept his chin up and squared his shoulders, but he couldn't stop the heat from rising to his cheeks and prickling his insides. When some little imp, no doubt egged on by his friends, ran up and tried to snatch his sword from his belt, he snapped, "Keep your hands off me, you brat!"

The boy shrank back with quivering lips, and the villagers' faces turned stony as they called their children to them and took them home. The muzhik—Timofey—cleared his throat, embarrassed, and Paul's face burned again with a different kind of shame.

Timofey led Paul into his izba, a small, one-room hut. Paul hesitated to enter the dark interior. He had been taught that the peasants were little more than a faceless mass to be controlled. Those who joined the army were all sullen or desperate, and Paul only selected the ones that had been whipped into shape—quite literally—for his brigade.

But now, his hunger overpowered his hesitation, and the promise of food pushed his feet forward. Most of the hut was taken up by a cook stove. A table and two benches stood by one window, a spindle and loom at another, and a small bed at the corner made up all the furniture. Yet for all its small size and simple furnishing, the place was spotless. The walls, ceiling, and floor were scrubbed to a shine, the curtains were white as snow, and there were pots of cheerful red geranium at the windows.

Timofey handed the fish to his wife, whose cheeks were as red and cheerful as the geranium, and told her to make a fish pie and put the rest in a stew.

"You'll have to forgive the village folk," he said to Paul. "We're simple people and not used to strangers. You must have come from very far away."

"Yes, very far," Paul said cautiously. Timofey eyed his clothes and wig but said nothing more.

The stew, which had leeks and turnips in it, was very good, and the pie, with its buttery, crumbly pastry, was even better, though at this point, Paul was so hungry that it could be sheep brains and rat tails for all he cared. Only when the gnawing in his stomach stopped that he remembered Zhara. He was still angry at her for not warning him about the wraith, but he realized, with a slight prick of conscience, that their encounter with the wraith had probably left her weakened and in pain. Besides, it was getting dark soon, and this close to the village, someone may stumble upon her in the forest. He couldn't leave her to fend for herself. After all, she was his only hope of returning to his world.

During the meal, Timofey and his wife kept asking about his journey and what he hoped to do at the fortress. Paul kept it vague, not knowing how much he could reveal. Baba Yaga may be real in this world, but people may fear her and think it foolhardy to go searching for her.

He reluctantly turned down Timofey's offer to stay the night. While Timofey's wife was wrapping up a rye loaf, some hard cheese, and a string of bread rings in a napkin for him, Paul remembered something else and asked, even more reluctantly, if she had some women's clothes to spare.

"Women's clothes?" she repeated, eyebrows disappearing into her headscarf. "What would you be wanting with them?"

They must be thinking that he was some sort of debauched libertine. "They're for my—companion," he said.

"A lass?" Timofey asked. "Why didn't you bring her here then?"

"And what happened to her clothes?" the wife chimed in.

Their curious looks made Paul's temper flare once more. The audacity of these peasants, to question him so boldly! With difficulty, he reminded himself that they didn't know who he was. But surely, they would know Zhara. Even the leshy knew her...

"If you must know," he said, bristling, "my companion is Tsarevna Zhara Artyomovna of Arthania, and she has suffered a great..."

He trailed off, as an astonishing change had come over his host and hostess. Timofey's sunburned face went white under his beard, his wife's cheeks lost their ruddiness, and both made a warding gesture with their arms.

"It—it can't be!" the muzhik stammered. "They're all dead! The entire kingdom! She killed them! And her brother, the new tsar, has put a price on her head!"

"If you're with her, then please, don't hurt us!" Timofey's wife ran into a corner, took some clothes out of a trunk, and flung them along with the bundle of food at Paul's feet. "Please take these and go away! We never did you no harm! Leave us alone! "

They truly seemed out of their wits with fear. Bewildered, Paul picked up the food and the clothes and left. He could hear every door and shutter throughout the village slamming shut behind him as he went.

Could it be true? Could it be that the bird-girl was not a cursed princess, a damsel in distress in need of rescuing, but an evil sorceress? And if it was true, then what did she want with him?

Paul wavered at the edge of the forest, uncertain of what to do. He could continue alone. He could find the fortress and ask for help. But then he remembered the leshy and the wraith, and how Zhara had saved him from them. Even if it had all been a ploy to gain his trust, he had to admit that the likelihood of his survival rather increased with her around. With a sigh, he plunged on.

It was fully dark by the time he found the oak tree where he'd left Zhara. She was still there, hidden behind the foliage. Her face lit up upon seeing him, and brightened even more when she saw the clothes and food he brought back. When she emerged from behind the bush, dressed in the ill-fitting chemise and sarafan, she looked more human, less ethereal, even with a flame flickering on the tip of her finger like a candle. "How do I look?" she asked, smiling.

"Very well," answered Paul stiffly.

"I'm really sorry about earlier today," she said. "I truly didn't know there was a Noon Wraith on that meadow. I just thought we ought to keep to the stream to avoid getting lost."

Paul shrugged. "It's fine."

She didn't seem to notice anything amiss in his tone, absorbed as she was by the bread and cheese, which she was tearing into with gusto. "This is excellent," she said, between mouthfuls. "You have no idea how tired one gets of berries and seeds."

Paul sat against an elm tree and watched her. She had wrapped his cravat back around her wound, which was bleeding again, and the beginning of a bruise was blooming on her cheek, where the wraith's scythe handle must have hit her. He went over what Timofey and his wife had said, how frightened they had been, but he couldn't quite believe it. This fragile-looking girl, a murderous witch? No, it couldn't be true.

"I hope you found a way to pay the villagers for these," Zhara said. "Or at least thank them sufficiently."

Paul, who had never thanked anyone for anything in his life, realized that the idea hadn't even occurred to him. But he didn't say so. Instead, he said, "I didn't have a chance to do either. They chased me away."

She looked up. "Why?!"

He decided there was nothing to do it but to speak truth. "The villagers said that your entire kingdom was massacred," he said slowly. "By you."

The piece of bread froze halfway to Zhara's mouth. "Did you mention my name to them?" she said in a horrified tone.

"Yes."

She put the bread down on the napkin. "No, no, no..." she groaned, hands reaching up to grip at her braid. "What have you done?"

"What have I done? What have you done?!"

"I didn't do anything."

"Then why does your brother have a bounty for your capture?"

Her hands shook, and a spark flew out of her fingers. She squeezed her palms shut. Paul began to think that perhaps it wasn't wise to confront someone who was wanted for mass murder, especially when that person could shoot fire out of her hands.

"Because he wants me dead." Her amber eyes flashed. "It's all a lie told by my brother to legitimize his claim to the throne. He was the one who killed our father and destroyed any of the boyars that dared to oppose his rule. He was the one that cursed me."

The tale was a familiar one to Paul, and it only increased his suspicion. Could it be that the girl knew of his mother's rise to the throne and was using it to gather his sympathy? "I thought you were cursed by Koschei," he said.

"It's a long story." The girl looked at Paul. "You don't believe me."

"I don't know what to believe."

"Why would I lie to you?"

This was exactly what Paul had been asking himself, and even now, he had no satisfactory answer. "To gain my trust, to get me to help you."

"Help?" The girl let out a derisive laugh. "Why would I need your help? How have you helped me, exactly? You've been nothing but a burden. I could've been halfway to Tsar Afron's fortress by now if it weren't for you!"

Getting berated by two women in the span of two days was more than Paul could bear. He jumped to his feet as though stung by a bee, and stormed off.

"Yes, leave!" the girl said. "Get yourself killed and see if I care!"

He kept walking without a look back. Through the trees, he could see moonlight glimmering silver on the stream, and he remembered to keep it on his right as they had during the day, though he didn't dare leave the forest. The muzhik had said the wraith only appeared at noon, but better be safe than sorry. He would walk all night if he had to. He stumbled over roots and got his feet tangled in the undergrowth, but he righted himself and walked on. He would show her—he would show them all—that he could survive.

Then he heard the girl scream.

Chapter 4

Taglist: @ali-r3n

#prince paul fic #the firebird #you slept in your wig? booooy #a bird rolling her eyes? love it #awwww he's carrying her <3 #oook the wraith was intense #get back here you dumb boy #ooooh she's dangerous #(and/or framed)#UGH i want more but i mustn't *sigh*

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