Bohdana summons a goddess. The summoning is unbidden and inept, but she comes anyway.
It’s sunset—one of those days when the sky burns red at the horizon. Bohdana has climbed through the broken window of her childhood bedroom to sit on the grey slanted roof. Bits of glass debris and shrapnel keep her company. Below her, the tall metal fence that used to shield the yard from nosy neighbours has collapsed, and the gate swings precariously on one hinge. The bright blue paint is still cheerful, but rust has crept up around the edges and there are bullet holes in the metal—a hundred tiny, violent polka dots. But the plum trees are the same as always, bending toward the earth, their branches heavy with still-unripe fruit.
Bohdana uses her knees to hold steady the bottle of homemade wine as she opens it. The faded label says MORSHYNSKA, LIGHTLY CARBONATED, but the liquid inside is bluish purple.
Bohdana takes a sip. Scrunches up her nose. Then smiles. Baba Dasha hasn’t gotten any better at this over the years. Or maybe it’s the tired, untilled soil—too bitter to make good wine, no sweetness left for the grapes. Bohdana’s mother would say, This land eats everything up. You stay here long enough, myla, it will eat you up, too.
But Bohdana’s mother is not here anymore, and the wine tastes better in silence.
The truth is, Bohdana didn’t mean to come home. She thought she would live the rest of her life with the distant horror of watching the war deplete her homeland, knowing that even the family magic was not enough to keep the women in her bloodline safe, or to stop time from taking them the old-fashioned way. It’s been too many decades.
Bohdana was no stranger to change. Silver had started creeping through her dark strands. Her full cheeks had sallowed in sharp, severe lines. Her laugh lines settled into rough cracks around her mouth. Any trace of the soft-limbed girl who used to live here had now faded. It took her three tries to remind Baba Dasha—whom she used to see almost every day on their street—who she was. Bohdana had come back as someone else—a woman from elsewhere, tired and disappointed with what the world had to offer.
Still, a part of her had hoped … for solace in the recognition, maybe? Who knows. She certainly wasn’t looking to meddle with the local spirits. And yet.
The goddess comes when the familiar symphony of crickets becomes too much. Tears sting Bohdana’s eyes and roll down her cheeks. She can’t help it. The past is ricocheting loudly in her head and the real world becomes hazy.
“Ey!” Bohdana doesn’t hear her at first. The goddess tries again. “Kid! Over here, you little ungrateful demon!”
Finally, Bohdana looks down into the yard and spots a small figure vigorously waving her arms above her head. The goddess is scowling.
She must be half Bohdana’s size; a child, really. She’s wearing a white T-shirt, the hem of which has been cut up into a fringe. The goddess has braided a few of the strings together here and there. A Mickey Mouse appliqué cheerfully waves at Bohdana from the right thigh of the teal cotton shorts. The goddess’s dark hair is in two tight plaits on either side of her head, held up by puffy tulle pom-poms, the same kind Bohdana used to wear on the first day of school.
“Look at that, Murzik, it’s finally paying attention,” says the goddess. She looks like a nine-year-old, but she sounds like she’s been smoking a pack of cigarettes every day for the past forty years.
A scrappy, one-eyed tabby rubs himself on the goddess’s dusty bare feet.
Bohdana’s mouth opens. It’s been a long time since she’s been noticed by one of the spirits. That was one of the best and worst things of living so far from home. She didn’t even know she had any of that old magic left in her. She certainly didn’t remember any of them looking like that.
Bohdana blinks a few times to make the image make sense. The fact that she’s one of the spirits is obvious from the way her power makes Bohdana breathless, but the smug pubescent face evokes a wave of irritation in Bohdana. She has the foreign urge to send the goddess off to bed.
“I …” Bohdana isn’t sure what she’ll say. I’m sorry seems ridiculous under the circumstances.
The goddess’s stern gaze and round cheeks make Bohdana think of her grandmother. Maybe it’s the dim lighting. Or the shadow of the house. But she could almost hear Babusia Oksana telling her off for digging up the tulips again.
Abruptly, she begins to cry again. The goddess rolls her eyes.
“Why do they all cry?” she says. “Haven’t they cried enough already?”
Murzik agrees with a disdainful meow.
“What are you doing here?” she yells at Bohdana.
She can’t reply at first, but then manages: “Icamehome … ghghgh … thewarghrhh … nooneghghghisheeeere … everythinggoooneghnnn …”
Her words disappear again into a snotty cacophony of gasps and wails. Bohdana has been a woman for a long time now, but she cries like the girl she was when she lived here: with her whole body.
The entire month before, her dreams had been full of her grandmother. Of needles pricking the palmar flexion creases on her palms. Of mirrors upon mirrors showing green-eyed women—all different yet familiar. Of her grandmother covering her in hundreds of white-tipped willow branches. Of that unmistakable heady smell of her grandmother’s twisted magic.
But she had woken up on the morning of Victory Day, her body burning. Her thoughts eclipsed by the way the house always looked on her way home, when she first spotted it around the bend. The land calling. That gaping gnawing in her chest. Her grandmother’s voice nudging her out the door. Now, now, now, she whispered.
So even though it was a bad idea, Bohdana packed a bag and drove straight to the airport. The pull was so strong, she was almost surprised that her grandmother wasn’t here to scold her for being late. But there was no grandmother, just a tiny, surly goddess.
The goddess sighs. “Hasn’t been home for twenty years, now she doesn’t like it. What did she think she was going to find? A feast in her honour? What am I supposed to say, Murzik? Thanks for showing up when no one needs you anymore?”
Murzik licks his paw in reply.
Bohdana’s heart squeezes. The goddess is right. She should have come back earlier. She should never have left. She should have let the land eat her up. It’s too late now, though. She doesn’t belong here anymore. She had enough trouble stringing five unaccented, half-forgotten words together to tell the grim border guards why she came. (To see again, family, friends.) And the land has gorged itself now. Too many have fallen.
Bohdana gives in to memory, lets easy summer days in her grandparents’ village tear her up inside. It’s what she deserves, after all. She thought she was so smart before. Getting into a Western university, going abroad to live in a “civilised” country, marrying a city man. Believed that “home” was just a word people used to mean house, not the distinct, shadowy imprint she carried inside her. She thought she was invincible.
She doesn’t know what she is now.
A hard green plum hits Bohdana’s temple, knocking her thoughts sideways.
The goddess is glaring at her, an armful of plums ready to go. And she’s glowing—the colour of a warm coal in the pichka on a blustery winter night.
“Listen here, my little rotten radish,” the goddess says. “ This is how it’s going to go. You will climb down from there, pour that gross wine-water into the bushes, and start sweeping up the porch. In exchange—”
Bohdana scoffs. What’s the point of sweeping up the porch, when the whole place looks like shit? What could she possibly offer that would reverse all this?
“Tssssk, look at this dull creature, Murzik. She thinks I’m going to do all the work for her. We should have just eaten her when she came in,” the goddess mumbles, and Murzik seems to agree.
“In exchange,” she says louder to Bohdana, like she’s still trying on her grown-up voice. “I’ll give you a gift.”
Bohdana narrows her eyes with suspicion. The gods around here didn’t just give you things. It wasn’t their way.
“What gift?” she asks, voice hoarse.
The goddess smiles slyly—all innocence around the mouth but daggers around the eyes.
“A homecoming gift. Bread and salt, my version,” she says. Then, seeing the expression on Bohdana’s face, adds, “You’ll like it.” It’s not reassuring.
For good measure, the goddess zaps Bohdana’s arm with a spark of swamp-green magic. It hurts, but then, everything hurts today.
Bohdana sighs and climbs back into the house. She walks across black-and-white family photos strewn across the floor, upended stacks of Komsomolskaya Pravda, the one relic from her grandfather left among her grandmother’s and aunt’s things, and pieces of grimy broken china. Someone had ransacked the house by the time she reclaimed it. The ancient TV is gone, half the books, a piece of copper pipe. But her grandmother’s rushnyk is still here—Bohdana spots the black and red embroidery peeking out of a drawer in the living room.
When Bohdana comes out onto the porch, the goddess is gone. She sweeps just as promised but keeps the sour homemade wine. She had to pay Baba Dasha ten dollars—yes, dollars—for it; it would be a waste to dump it out.
The shards in her heart soften with the work. Bohdana breathes a little more easily, and for the first time since arriving, something in her thaws.
• • •
That night, Bohdana dreams that the sea had flooded the garden. And she had stood there, gulping in the pitch-black water like a fish. She startles awake to the sound of loud banging on the window.
The goddess peers back at her from between the curtains.
“Wake up, my little petrified mushroom,” she says, her smile full of sharp teeth. “Time to go.”
“It’s not even dawn yet,” Bohdana hisses back.
The goddess scowls. Mutters: “Come. Don’t come. You choose. I don’t care. What did she want, a personal invitation from the president, huh, Murzik? Kids these days.”
Of course the cat is there.
Bohdana obliges. Who knows why. Maybe it’s because she’s too jet-lagged and restless. Maybe she simply has no good arguments in the face of the goddess’s vaguely threatening divinity. Bohdana follows the goddess sleepily to the outskirts of the town. She eyes the sign that reads CAUTION! MINES. But the goddess waves it off.
“That won’t hurt me,” she says.
But what about me? Bohdana thinks, and follows her into the field anyway.
Long, untamed grass slaps her legs and shoulders with cold dew. She’s soaked by the time the three of them stop.
“We’re here. Start digging,” the goddess says. A spade has appeared out of nowhere, and she throws it to Bohdana.
“For what?” Bohdana asks, uncertain if she’s holding the spade properly. The empty field gives away no clues.
“The river,” the goddess replies. “Don’t come home until it’s all dug up.”
Bohdana stares at her. The ground suddenly seems too wet and she finally notices the bulrushes swinging their mossy brown tips above her head.
“This river has been drying up since before I was born!” she protests. The wet dirt soaks her shoes—the only clue that there is a river underneath the earth. That and a tiny stream trickling over a few haphazardly strewn rocks. The rest of the river has been smothered as the town expanded and the climate changed for the worse.
The goddess is the picture of indifference. Her dirty nails are suddenly the most interesting thing in the world to her.
“I mean it. You won’t be able to find your way home until it’s done. All roads lead back to the river,” she says. Then giggles and disappears into the grass.
Bohdana assumes she means that literally. She won’t be able to walk in any other direction. The spirits here have always had a specific sense of humour.
“Gahhhh!” Bohdana lets out her frustration into the warming air. This isn’t going to work, she’s sure. But she digs.
The earth squelches under the spade, but the river is slow to come. It resists.
Bohdana digs all day and into the night. When the owls begin their nightly hunt and the sky unfurls its blanket of stars, she sinks to her knees, exhausted. Still the river does not come.
Bohdana clenches her fists so tight that her knuckles groan in protest. She thinks of the goddess, fuming. She thinks, I’ve got a spade with your name on it … Then realises she doesn’t know the goddess’s name anyway.
Bohdana thinks a hundred other terrible things instead. She curses herself. She should have never come here in the first place. This land is cursed.
Just then, the full moon pushes aside a wispy cloud and bathes the entire field in silver. Something glitters in the mud just outside Bohdana’s reach. She lunges for it. She doesn’t know why, exactly, only that she must have it.
Bohdana uncovers a small wooden statue. A vaguely recognizable face is delicately carved into it. The figure holds some sort of rune between her wooden hands. Bohdana knows it’s pagan, but cannot read it. She could almost picture the tiny wooden lips forming the words my little rotten radish, in repeat of yesterday. Something in her chest squeezes with pity. This is not supposed to be here. She traces her fingers gently across the idol, wiping the mud away from its crevices, and does not hear the sound of rushing water.
The river hits her in the back, pulls her under, refilling its old banks. The earth trembles in ancient recognition.
Spat out on the paved road and sputtering, Bohdana uses the spade to slowly rise to her feet. Dirty river water is running down her neck. Her legs shake.
Watching the river as it groans, stretching from its long sleep, Bohdana grins. She feels triumphant; strong; angry. I actually fucking did it.
And finally, because it’s about damn time, she throws her head back and screams as loud as she can into the sky. At the enemy, who has already slinked away with his tail between his legs. At the goddess, for being unkind. At herself, for everything else.
Bohdana arrives home dishevelled and dead-tired. The goddess is sitting on the porch staining her fingers with green walnuts, but Bohdana only grunts at her in passing. She falls asleep under the walnut tree and doesn’t dream. The wooden idol is still in her hand.
• • •
The rain wakes Bohdana in the morning. It clatters loudly against the leaves of the walnut tree and the sound shatters through the darkness in Bohdana’s mind.
Dry garden earth is stuck to her cheek. The air smells of ozone.
Bohdana rises.
The rain is coming down in unforgiving sheets, but she is dry. Someone has bent the branches of the old walnut tree to create a canopy over her. At first she thinks the tree has broken in the storm, but she quickly notices that it has simply leaned over its left side and moved its branches closer together, like it was reaching toward something, someone.
Bohdana puts a hand on its rough bark. Smiles.
She has climbed this tree many times in search of treats when she was supposed to be helping her grandparents. When she was too small, she’d put a bench to reach its lowest branches, then climb higher and higher until you could barely spot her from the ground. Just like the goddess, she ate the nuts when there was still a thick lime-green skin around them. Then got in trouble for staining her fingers brown right before the first day of school. But it was worth it.
“Oi! You’ve decided to join us,” says a now-familiar voice. “Finally. I don’t have all day, you know.”
The goddess stands with her arms crossed, wearing a purple raincoat two sizes too big for her. If Bohdana was closer, she might almost be tempted to pull the coat tighter to protect the girl from the cold. The cat is sitting loaf-shaped under the awning to avoid the downpour, its one eye lazily peering at them.
“For your last task, my miserable bean sprout …” she continues.
But Bohdana can’t listen to the rest of the speech. One revived river was not enough to smooth over years of damage. There was not enough of her left for another impossible win. And she’s suddenly very annoyed at the way the goddess, hiding in schoolgirl-sized skin, speaks to her.
“I’m tired,” Bohdana complains. “No more tasks. Just leave me alone.”
The goddess is silent for a moment.
“I didn’t tell you to stay. You chose this,” she accuses. “You think I have nothing better to do?”
“I didn’t think it would be so hard,” Bohdana says. There is an emptiness in her that makes the words sound desperate.
“Hard? You don’t know hard. I’m going easy on you,” the goddess says. She bares her teeth. “You’re not the one who’s had it hard.”
Bohdana’s guilt returns. Flashes of war-torn bodies from her Instagram feed flicker through her mind. She wonders about the house at the end of the street, hanging by a thread on its broken foundation. The family inside it is gone. Bohdana doesn’t even remember their names, but had always known where they lived. The old grey dog curled up by the bus station, waiting for the owners who would never return. She scowls in the face of the cruelty, like it would keep it at bay. Like it hadn’t already saturated everything inside of her.
The goddess measures her up and down, her gaze far beyond the age of her chosen body.
“None of the others are left to try. It’s your magic or nothing. Listen,” she says. Her words are almost kind. She patiently gives Bohdana instructions. Bohdana barely hears them over the whine of her own hollowness.
“Go now or you’ll never find it,” the goddess commands. But Bohdana’s thoughts spiral. Yesterday’s triumph was fleeting, and all she feels now is raw fatigue.
“It’s raining!” Bohdana shouts, pointing outside her little dry bubble. “I’m not going anywhere.”
The goddess shrieks, her face puckered in anger, and the branches of the walnut tree snap up, soaking Bohdana with rainwater. Cleaving through Bohdana’s thoughts with its sharp coldness.
In the end, Bohdana goes.
She descends the hill, avoiding the pockmarked footsteps of tanks and soldiers that have since become murky puddles, and winds through old streets, adjusting the map in her head with all that has changed. There are pieces of the village that are missing. Bohdana isn’t sure if time swallowed them or if it was the war. The not knowing is another dull ache within her void.
She sees a man digging through the rubble of what used to be her kindergarten building. His well-worn wheelbarrow is full of something colourful. Children’s books, she realises, and wonders if somewhere between those pages is another girl trying to complete three impossible tasks before she is allowed to live.
The man squints in her direction, trying to place her. Bohdana turns away before her family’s dark hair and sharp cheekbones remind him of someone he used to know.
The entrance to the market towers over her just the same, but the giant R for Rynok is missing. Bohdana lets out a surprised giggle. The word has lost its meaning, which matches the desolate state of it; it has become a mere nonsensical hiccup and, for some reason, it’s the first thing to make Bohdana laugh again.
The stands are mostly empty. But there are a few hardened farmers who have come out again with handfuls of potatoes and slivers of cheese, hoping there is someone left to buy from them. It’s a far cry from the bustling Saturdays with Babusia Oksana and Bohdana’s mom and aunt when they would all drag the week’s groceries home on foot.
Bohdana walks fast with her eyes downcast. She can’t seem to look at them. She thinks they know she doesn’t belong. Maybe she walks too easily. Can they tell that her step doesn’t have the same tired heaviness as theirs? Does the veneer of a happier land linger on her? Does it stink?
Amazingly, the candy seller is still there. She even smiles the same.
“Everybody needs a bit of sweetness now and then,” she says when Bohdana stares for too long. Then: “You’re one of Oksana’s girls?”
Bohdana nods.
“Well, I have something for you,” she says, waddling over to the back in plastic men’s Adidas slippers. She speaks to Bohdana through the curtain, her voice too loud in the stillness. “I’ve kept it all this time, you know, like Oksana said. I knew one of you girls would be back again. There was Marichka for a while, of course, but, well, you know what happened. So sad. Oh, where is that darn thing? It’s like the devils ransacked this place. Can’t find anything anymore, good god. Ah! Here it is.”
She untangles herself from the curtain, and with wrinkled, trembling hands offers Bohdana a large yellowed egg. Around its equator is a carefully painted ring of wheat stalks in black.
“It’s a giant white stork,” the candy seller explains, then laughs to herself. “I still remember how your grandmother climbed up to that nest, way up high on the electricity pole. Everyone called her foolish, but I knew she could do it. She was just that kind of woman. Put the hatchling back in the nest faster than the firemen could yank her down. The storks remembered, left her this egg in the end. Haven’t seen them in years, though. Maybe they’ll come back now. Just like you.”
Bohdana is dizzy from the flurry of words and her kind smile. Tears prick her eyes.
“And take this,” the candy seller says, and winks. “To share with a friend.”
Bohdana puts the chocolate bar in her pocket. She thinks it’s just the kind of sickeningly sweet treat a certain small goddess might like. She cradles the egg to her chest, unsure if the painted charm was enough to keep it alive all this time.
As if reading her thoughts, the seller calls out to her, “Keep it warm! If I know anything in my old age, it’s that life keeps going, but sometimes it needs a bit of help.”
At home, Bohdana sets up the egg on a bed of wool scraps under the strongest working lamp she could find. A small crack has already appeared near the top. A small tuft of feather is sticking out of it like a struggling blade of grass. Bohdana pets it gently, wondering how one ought to teach a bird to fly.
The goddess is still missing. Bohdana sighs, wishing she could have had the foresight to grow a little kindness between the two of them. Long past sunset, when the sky has traded in its pinks and purples for shimmering blacks, Bohdana decides to summon her.
She topples stacks of never-used Soviet-era towels, digs her fingers into the small latch at the back of the linen closet, and smiles when it swings open. Babusia Oksana’s box of mixtures and tinctures is where it’s always been. A poor hiding place from the curious little fingers of her granddaughters. Bohdana remembers each stroke in the petrykivka design and each scratch in the cheap black lacquered surface.
Bohdana doesn’t know what all the little vials are for, so she chooses a red one she likes the look of best. It smells tart, like crushed rowanberries. She lights a candle; smudges the red paste on the wooden idol; places the chocolate bar in the middle of the table.
Waits.
After a while, she says, “Do I have to start crying again, or are you coming on your own?”
The goddess relents to the summons with a scowl. She’s still wearing her purple raincoat. Her eyes are glittering coals in the shadow of her hood. Murzik, patchy and dishevelled, perches on her shoulder. Bohdana has never been so happy to see a stray before.
The goddess eyes the egg, then the chocolate bar. She snatches it and takes a savage bite, all sharp teeth on display. Bohdana rolls her eyes.
“Is this you?” Bohdana shows her the red-faced wooden idol.
The goddess is so surprised, her mouth hangs open; the chocolate and caramel are left unchewed on her tongue. Then, she squints angrily at Bohdana.
“Here. Take it back,” Bohdana says, pushing the idol across the table. “I found it in the river. I wonder how long it’s been buried there.”
“Seven hundred years and three days,” the goddess growls in reply. Smacks her hand over the idol and drags it into her jacket pocket.
“How did you lose it?” Bohdana asks, aiming for casual.
“Didn’t lose it,” the goddess says. “A pack of ungrateful little turnips, like you, didn’t like what I had to say to them.”
The goddess, all grace and ethereal power, shoves the rest of the chocolate bar in her mouth. Chews loudly.
“Been stuck here since. But,” she smirks, “you reap what you sow.”
Bohdana shivers. She’s unsure what happened to the little turnips exactly, but she’s sure it had plenty of loneliness and misfortune in the mix. The tiny goddess knows those things well; she has lived through this war, too, and many others. And maybe, when provoked, she passes them along to those who don’t respect the land or its spirits.
“What’s your name?” Bohdana asks cautiously.
The goddess watches the shadow of the candle flame dance on the wall.
“Don’t have one. Too small.”
“I could help you pick one,” Bohdana says. Her words are followed by a long stretch of silence.
Then: “Sorry about all that. I was just having fun.” The goddess waves her hands in the air, vaguely mimicking Bohdana running around doing the goddess’s bidding. “The land remembered you, but you had to learn to trust the magic again.”
Bohdana smiles at the egg. “It wasn’t so bad in the end. I got a stork out of it.”
She has a reason to stay now. At least until the egg hatches and the storks return.
“There’s more …” The goddess shrugs. “If you want.”
“What? More magic?” Bohdana asks. Thinks of the way her grandmother was bitter that Bohdana didn’t stay long enough to learn the old ways. “You’ll teach me?”
“Don’t act so surprised,” mumbles the goddess, gaze averted. Her stomach grumbles.
“Hungry?” Bohdana warms milk on the stove, dribbles wildflower honey into it, feeds the goddess, then her cat.
They sit listening to the darkness crackling through the house. Murzik yawns loudly, stretching. Bohdana feels soft all over. She remembers, finally, that once, there were many nights just like this one. That this warmth and happy silence is what home meant once.
“Should be something big and scary, like a storm,” the goddess suddenly says.
“Hmm?”
“My name,” she explains. “Something cool. Thunder and lightning, you know?”
Bohdana smiles into her cup. The little goddess is becoming predictable.
“Of course,” she agrees. “We’ll think of something tomorrow. After I fix the gate.”
The goddess tilts her head, as though to listen to something far away. “Of course,” she echoes. “Who knows what might come in with those loose hinges.”
And just then …
Bohdana hears a loud scrape outside. Catches the goddess’s mischievous smile before she disappears. Hears a roar that sends her running to the door.
“Just one more task,” the goddess’s voice whispers into the night. “Don’t get eaten, my little mouldy potato, or I’ll be so mad.”
Bohdana laughs. Rolls her eyes at the goddess’s terrible sense of timing. She has a feeling that this isn’t the last task nor the hardest one. She knows that she has a long way to go to become even half like her grandmother. She has so much to learn, so much to mend and stitch back together.
But first, there’s the creature at her door.
• • •