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That's how you get deathless, volchitsa. Walk the same tale over and over, until you wear a groove in the world, until even if you vanished, the tale would keep turning, keep playing, like a phonograph, and you'd have to get up again, even with a bullet through your eye, to play your part and say your lines.
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That's how you get deathless, volchitsa. Walk the same tale over and over, until you wear a groove in the world, until even if you vanished, the tale would keep turning, keep playing, like a phonograph, and you'd have to get up again, even with a bullet through your eye, to play your part and say your lines.
the tradition of faeries as these sometimes beautiful often terrifying vicious impulsive threatening seductive beings not of our world, or of our world as it was before we came to be, and therefore not concerned with petty human grievances or morality
the faeries that dance you dead in mushroom rings and imprison you under hills when you take a bite of their food. mermaids that drown handsome sailors and love them even as they die (especially as they die) and imps that dye their hats red with human blood and lights flashing in the dark that draw you in until you can't remember where your home is, but the light is so beautiful
that's the kind of folklore deathless deals in.
any time deathless came close to being too sweet or romanticized (which...nah. it didn't really come close, but) it would then take a turn and become vicious and dark and inexplicable again.
the writing is so balanced. it somehow continually denies over-romanticization or trite escapism even while maintaining its poetry.
basically fuck catherynne valente, how does someone do that
does koschei the deathless count as a manic pixie dream boy
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whenever i think about fairy tales and magic i see (or feel...?) washed out afternoon light and the top of an old dark oak table and my mother's bookshelf filled with very old books, because when i was little and playing at being a witch i would take an old "magic looking" book off the shelf and pretend to read it and make marks on a separate piece of paper on top of our old dark oak table in the dining room, and i'd turn the pages of the book very quickly pretending i was in urgent need of a spell, and if anyone walked through the dining room i would close the book very quickly so that they wouldn't know what i was up to
the first chapters of deathless when marya is still at home are infused with this feeling, of the books and the dark wood and the secrecy, because i spent my fair share of time as a little girl walking through my house barefoot waiting to find faeries
and the fact that deathless is a fairy tale and written so poetically and taking that half-fiction, prettily-worded approach to war and atrocity can so easily land badly. come off disrespectful to the reality, or sensationalistic, or idealized
but the leningrad chapter of deathless is beautiful and stark and unspeakable and manages to seem so, so quiet, and maintain that acknowledgement of both the reality and unreality of war. it's not exploiting history for the sake of a good chapter in a novel, it's bearing witness.
just.
"a war story is a black space"
"when you love someone you do not make them tell war stories"
i can't think about that for too long without my eyes preparing themselves for tears and my face heating up
