NINE

“Who’s a naughty Koschei?” A beautiful human girl with emerald eyes and curly brown hair was standing in front of Koschei. She was as naked as him, except for a crown on top of her head.

“Don’t you recognize me?” The girl grinned.

He didn’t. It turned out she was Tsarevna Snake.

“I shed my skin, and voilà,” she said, and Koschei realized they had a lot in common. He looked at her and admired her softness: it wasn’t something a skinny Koschei could ever aspire to.

“So why do you have all the Koscheis?” he asked, trying to stick to the important stuff.

“Oh, it’s just that they kept trying to kidnap me. And Papa doesn’t like that.”

“I’m sorry. As I said, I’m not into that sort of thing.”

“Well, who knows? Maybe it’s in your nature. Want to go to my room?”

Koschei followed Tsarevna Snake while admiring the swell in her thighs from behind. Her room was similar to the bedroom he’d been appointed, but it was much bigger and had a large fireplace with real flames within. The tsarevna sat Koschei down on the coral sofa, offered him a plate of lily pod seeds and a pot of sea buckthorn tea to snack on, and left for the bathroom, to freshen up.

As Koschei crunched on the popped seeds, he saw that a snakeskin glittering with green hues lay on the floor in the middle of the room. He tried it on, to see if he could become a snake, but he turned it in every direction, enjoying the dry, scaly surface, and couldn’t figure out the opening.

When the tsarevna emerged from the bathroom, Koschei quickly threw the skin to the ground and pretended that he was stretching his legs.

The tsarevna sat him back down on the coral and sat next to him, too close for comfort, her breath, which smelled like plankton and raw blood, hot on his cheek. She put her arm on his thigh. Koschei didn’t mind being next to Tsarevna Snake, but he’d so much prefer to look at her supple body instead of having it shoved into him.

“Will Toad be joining us?” he asked to lighten the mood. He wondered if Tsarevich Toad could also become a boy.

“We don’t need him. We can do perfectly well like this,” the tsarevna said and produced a large, red and spiky sea cucumber from somewhere behind her back.

As the cucumber whirled in Snake’s hand, Koschei looked in her eyes and saw the same red glint he’d already encountered. It scared him, and he jumped away from the couch.

“Is something wrong?” the tsarevna asked sweetly.

“No, I feel a stomachache coming. I should go back to bed.”

“Oh, my friend can help with that too.” The tsarevna started coming at him with the cucumber in hand, gyrating her hips.

Koschei tried to pass by her, but then Snake’s eyes lit up with red, and she shot a firebomb right next to him. She seemed to be much better versed in the operational technique than the soldier before her, and the firebomb lightly grazed Koschei’s leg.

“I don’t think I need to explain what the consequences will be if you don’t come with me right now,” the tsarevna said.

Koschei stepped back and almost tripped over. It was the snakeskin, which he seized. Maybe if he threatened to take it away, the tsarevna would stop?

“Let go of it right this minute.” She started shooting firebombs to both sides of Koschei while moving in closer.

Koschei hesitated for a moment because it was in his nature to respect other people’s belongings, but then he turned to the fireplace and threw the snakeskin into the flames. It shriveled up quickly and then disappeared.

Snake’s eyes turned back to emerald right then, and she couldn’t attack anymore.

“What have you done?” Tsarevna Snake weakly threw the sea cucumber at Koschei and burst into tears. “Papa won’t let me work in hell anymore: if I come as a human, the devils don’t listen. Now everything is going to stupid Toad!”

She stomped her foot, ran to her bed, and plunged herself into the sponge, her body rocking with the sobs.

“I’m sorry, I . . .” Koschei started, feeling like he had to make amends. He had wanted her to stop, not lose her job.

Suddenly he saw the door to the room open and three green heads, which looked a lot like the tsarevna in her Snake incarnation, peek in.

“I returned early, my dear,” one of the heads said tenderly, as the other two nodded along. “Why does it smell like this? Are you about to eat the human?”

“He’s a Koschei,” Tsarevna Snake corrected, as she turned around and sat on the bed. “Papa, he wanted to kidnap me, and when I tried to resist, he burned my snakeskin!”

And then red glimmers lit up in all six eyes that belonged to the creature, and Snake’s papa, the serpent Zmey Gorynych, came into the room and breathed fire out of his nostrils into Koschei’s face.