Enchantment

This time it was Little Esther's turn to finally understand. "Mama!" she said. "You're Sleeping Beauty!" Her brothers laughed and praised her for figuring it out. Mother and Father hugged her and let her lie on the slab herself. She closed her eyes and then said, "Kiss me, somebody, and wake me up!" And her father knelt down, and bent over her, and kissed her, while Matt and Steven and Luke all growled and roared like bears.

Then they joined hands again, the bridges appeared, and they crossed into Taina.

No one waited for them—that was what they asked for, not so much for privacy as because the day of their arrival was never certain, for the calendars of the two places fit together unpredictably. Why should someone waste his life waiting and watching for a queen and king who could find their own way through the woods?

This time, though, they didn't rush away from the chasm. The children were told to play—"But stay away from the edge!"—while Mother and Father stood beside the pit and talked.

"What if one of us dies?" Ivan said to her. "A car crash. An accident at harvest time. Everyone will be stranded then, on whatever side of the bridge we're on."

"If only the children had been born with the power to use both bridges."

"But they can't use either of them without us, and they need both of us to cross at all. We can't leave this to chance, can we? Don't we want the children to be free to choose?"

"They're too young to divide the family."

"I don't want to divide us either," said Ivan. "I want us to live to be a hundred. But life is fragile."

"Someday we'll make them choose, and settle them on whichever side they want, and then we'll choose ourselves, and stay together in the world we want to grow old in. But not yet."

"So if one of us dies..."

"We plan what we plan, and if it doesn't work out, then that's the way life will be. What else can we do? Divide the family now, and guarantee unhappiness, for fear of a different misery later?"

"You're right," said Ivan. "You're right, of course. But having children makes a man afraid."

"Afraid, yes, and also very brave."

"Did we really do the things the stories say?" asked Ivan.

"We did."

"And tell me, Sleeping Beauty, are you living happily ever after?"

"Yes, I am."

They called the children then, and as they made the trek through the wood, Matfei joked that Father ought to take his clothes off so people would recognize him when he arrived. "We should never have let people tell those stories to the children," Ivan said to Katerina.

They got to the village and the cheering started, the crowds following them, the parade. They sat down to a feast and heard tales of the winter past, and who had babies, who died, who got married.

It was nearly dark before Ivan and Katerina slipped away and went to the church, where Bishop Sergei was waiting for them, greeting them with a kiss and an embrace. Together they walked into the graveyard, where King Matfei's body had been buried five winters before, and where Father Lukas had a little shrine. "He'll never be a saint," said Sergei ruefully, "and in truth he didn't deserve it. But he was a hero all the same."

"And a great missionary," said Katerina.

"So are the children Jews or Christians?" asked Sergei.

"In Ivan's country, they are Jews," said Katerina. "And here they're Christians. Two worlds. Two lives. Someday they'll decide. Or God will decide for them."

"Doctrinally, there are problems with that," said Sergei. Then he laughed. "But I'm glad you're here."

"So are we," said Ivan. "We miss our dear friends when we're away."

They left the graveyard then, and returned to the royal house, where they had to speak sternly to the children before they'd finally go to bed. Then they, too, lay down on mattresses stuffed with straw, hearing the music of the flies to buzz them to sleep, holding each other's hands as they dozed, thinking of the miracles by which love works its will in the world.

Acknowledgments

Since this novel is set in milieux that are unfamiliar to me, I have relied on various sources, especially:

Pinhas Sadeh, Jewish Folktales, trans. Hillel Halkin (New York: Anchor, 1989; 441 pp.). For stories and motifs used in Enchantment, especially the story of the Sky, the Rat, and the Well.

Charles Downing, Russian Tales and Legends (H. Z. Walck, 1968; 215 pp.). For stories and motifs used in Enchantment.

Vladimir Propp, Morphology of the Folktale, trans. Laurence Scott (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1968; 158 pp.). The pivotal book whose conclusions Ivan is testing.

Hillel Halkin, "Feminizing Jewish Studies," Commentary 105:2 (February 1998, pp. 39-45). For the rhetoric of Jewish feminism.

Jerome Blum, Lord and Peasant in Russia: From the Ninth to the Nineteenth Century (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1961; 656 pp.). For a rough idea of how the Russian people were governed before the dominance of the Rus'.

Marjorie Mandelstam Balzer, ed. Russian Traditional Culture: Religion, Gender, and Customary Law (M. E. Sharpe, 1992). Many articles were very helpful in grounding my speculations about religion and law in the imaginary kingdom of Taina.

Bruce Cockburn, for the album Ivan listens to in chapter 14. Sharp-eyed readers will note that The Charity of Night was released in 1997, rather too late for Ivan to listen to it in 1992. But my opinion is that if you can accept the idea of Ivan and Katerina passing back and forth between 1992 and 890, there should be no problem with Cockburn's music traveling only four years back in time. Think of it as the sound track for that scene.

Sam Kinison, whose screaming comedy is sorely missed, died only a few months before the 747 returned from Taina. But this novel is a fantasy, and in that fantasy Kinison is still alive.

Alexander Pushkin, Eugene Onegin, trans. James E. Falen (Oxford University Press, 240 pp.). The best of the translations, I found it with the help of Douglas Hofstadter, Le Ton Beau de Marot.

I owe thanks to many individuals for helping me create this novel or prepare it for publication, particularly:

To Derryl Yeager, for the idea of Sleeping Beauty waking up today, and to Nik Gasdik, for putting the story in Russia.

To Krista Maxwell, for details and corrections in my depiction of Russia in several centuries, and for everything in this book that is correct about my use of Old Church Slavonic and proto-Slavonic; the errors that remain are my own, despite Krista's best efforts. Ivan is especially in Krista's debt for the wonderful food Sophia served to him; I had no reason to change Krista's list, so there it stands in her words.

To Linda Bass for the correct spelling of mohel.

To D'A

To Clark and Kathy Kidd and to Mark and Margaret Park, for once more opening their homes to me, and for countless other helps, only some of which can be repaid.

To Kathleen Bellamy, who reads my novels last, to catch those pernicious errors that have evaded all other eyes.

To Scott Allen, who keeps the tools of my trade cleaned and oiled.

To Kristine Card, Kathy Kidd, Peter Johnson, Jay Parry, and Robert Stoddard, who read the chapters as they came along.

To Lisa Collins, for a superb and sympathetic job of copy editing.

To Amy Stout and Kuo-Yu Liang, whose patience passes understanding.

To Barbara Bova, who makes it possible for me to live from the proceeds of this hobby of mine.

To Erin Absher, for Baba Tila's real identity and for being our help in all good things.

And, above all, to Kristine and to our children, Geoffrey, Emily, Charlie Ben, Zina, and Erin Louisa, whose lives are the meaning of my life, and who have made me, not yet a virtuous man, but one who knows what virtue is and yearns for it.