About three months after we came to the caves, Pavel found me rolling pallets out. It was part of my daily routine to get the large chamber that doubled as a dormitory and classroom ready for sleeping after class was done for the day. In the mornings, I worked with the kids, which was not easy, necessarily, but more interesting. It was hard to get the children to sit still, but they were curious and creative and less hollowed out by life than their parents, whom I taught in the evenings. The evenings were harder. Sit still though they might, adults could not let go. Their worries could not quiet.
“Good day?” Pavel said, leaning just inside the curtain we’d hung at the chamber’s entrance.
I forced down the smile that wanted to split my lips when I saw him. I still had a bone to pick with him. “You would know if you had been there,” I said, dusting off my knees.
“I’ll be here tomorrow, I promise.”
“That’s what you said yesterday!”
“I know, and I’m sorry. There’s always so much to do.”
I let myself smile now. “I’m going to have to start charging private tutoring rates if you keep waking me up in the middle of the night to study.”
“Yusha, I don’t think I’ve ever caught you sleeping. I catch you sitting up and drinking, and I find a better way to occupy your time.”
“That’s debatable. Would you begrudge me my relaxation?”
He pushed himself off the wall with languid movements. “You spend all day teaching people how to relax.”
“That is not how I would characterize it.”
“No? I find it very relaxing.”
“Maybe that’s why, after three months, you can barely push a rock across the room. Nadya’s only been at it a little longer than you have, and she can punch a hole in the wall.”
“Nadya has a lot of anger to channel.” He sat down on the pallet I’d just rolled out, groaning as his knees creaked.
“Exactly. She’s not relaxing.”
“Forgive me, Teacher. I promise I’ll do better.”
I plopped down in front of him. “You’d be really good if you’d just try.”
“You’re right. It’s hard to find the time is all. But the running, Yusha. I swear I could run like that all day.” He sighed, smirk morphing into a warmer smile. “But I’ve got something a little more interesting for us to work on tonight.”
“Oh yeah?” It didn’t take much to pique my interest. I’d been stuck here for three months, doing the same thing every day, and I was bored out of my skull.
“I want you to give me your zhiva—”
“Why? Are you sick? Just really tired? Cause you look fine, and that’s not what—”
“As much as I love playing guessing games with you, perhaps you could let me finish?” His smile didn’t flag.
I made a stitching motion over my lips and told him to continue with a flourish of my wrist.
He chuckled and looked down at his lap. “I want you to take zhiva from yourself and put it into me. Not because I’m sick, or tired, though I’m certainly the latter and probably the former as well. I don’t think any amount of zhiva could cure that. I’ve just been thinking. We tried with Antosha, and it didn’t work. But there’s got to be more we don’t know about how zhiva works, and maybe if we found out—”
“Okay,” I said. “You don’t have to convince me. But we’re not going to find out how to bring him… you know…”
“I know, I know. Just humor an old man.”
“I’ll do it on one condition. I take your zhiva and put it in myself instead.”
“Yusha, are you trying to kill me?” He laughed.
“No, that’s the opposite of what I’m trying to do. I don’t know what happens when you put zhiva into someone who doesn’t need any more. I know what happens when you take zhiva out of someone, and it won’t kill you. And I think you know that, and that’s why you suggested the other way around.”
“You found me out. Don’t protest, Yusha, you’re much more important than I am. We can do without me. We can’t do without you.” He put his hand on my knee. “Nothing’s gonna happen to me, but if it did, you have a much better chance of fixing me than I or anyone else here has at fixing you. And if the worst happens—which it won’t, but if it does… then I get to see my son.”
I flattened my lips. “Fine. But you’ll have to tell him it wasn’t my fault.”
He had a bottle of returner ready in his pocket.
I had to take a few moments to recover from draining my zhiva, but I was used to it by now. I could control it, force myself through the conflicting depletion and rush. Lean on the rush.
While I collected myself, Pavel took off his tunic and his undershirt, folded them neatly beside him, and waited patiently, hands clasped in his lap.
I put my hand out but hesitated. “I’ll give you a little bit, but if anything feels off, I’m going to stop immediately.”
“Of course.” He took my wrist in his hand and pressed my palm on his sternum.
I let the zhiva go.
He shuddered, and I almost stopped, but he tightened his grip on my wrist and nodded. I let more in.
When I did this with Sanya, I noticed his imperfections. The tiny adolescent bumps on his smooth skin. Pavel’s skin was worn, loosened with age and prickly with hair. Under my palm, it changed.
His skin grew firmer, smoother.
My eyes snapped to it, and when I looked up again, I jumped back.
He let me go. The zhiva was done. His face was younger by a decade at least. Wrinkles receded, the bags under his eyes flattened. His hair was still graying, still drawn back at his temples, but he looked… He looked more like Antosha than ever.
***
He must have seen the look on my face, because he said, “What?”, smooth brow furrowing. “Are you okay?”
“Are you?” I said, sounding slightly accusatory.
“I feel good,” he said. “Better. Less tired. I…” He looked down at his hands and jolted. His hands went to his face, then all over, like he was searching his pockets. “What—”
“I don’t know,” I said, still recoiled. “I’ve never seen—I’ve never even heard of anything like this before.”
“What is it, Yusha?”
“It’s just… You look younger. A lot younger. Oh! You’re always complaining about your knees. How do they feel?”
He paused before he climbed to his feet, looking unsure, like he might not remember how to stand up. “Better,” he said again, bewildered smile creeping onto his face. “Do I really complain about my knees so much?” He laughed, pulling each knee up to his chest like he was getting ready for a race. “I told you I like to run but the myortva doesn’t do anything for my joints.” His voice even sounded different—not significantly, but there was a different tenor to it, less gravel, less wear.
This seemed to make him happy, and why wouldn’t it, but I felt—I wasn’t sure exactly what I felt, but put-off, at the very least. Wrong-footed. It wasn’t that such a thing could be done (though it should have been. I should have seen how devastating this would be), it was that it had been done to him. He wasn’t him.
He saw me looking up at him and sobered. “I’m being selfish,” he said, unable to tamp down his grin, and folded back down in front of me with a limberness he had never before displayed. (I had always thought he affected his groans and overstated his aches and pains; I thought he liked playing the old man.) “What do we learn from this?”
“Uh…”
But he couldn’t keep his hands off his face, kept running his fingers over the corners of his eyes and stroking his chin, down his neck. “Do you think it stays this way?” he said. “I really can’t believe it.”
I shrugged. “I guess we’ll see.”
“I bet you didn’t think I was ever young,” he said.
I shook my head, pressing the heel of my hand in my eye.
“Are you okay?” He put the back of his hand on my forehead.
My muscles tensed, and I forced myself to relax. “I’m just tired. I think I should go to bed.”
“Do you want to go to sleep, or do you want to sit in here alone, drinking?” He cocked his head, and I had to look away.
“Are we back on this again?”
“I’ve seen it destroy men.”
“What will destroy me is dying here of boredom.”
“If you’re bored, you can talk to me about what we just did. What you just did.”
“It was your idea; you can take credit.”
“Did I do something to upset you?”
“No,” I said. “No, you didn’t do anything. I’m just tired. And well… whatever this is, we’ll have to see how it goes.”
“Okay. If you want to be left alone, that’s fine.” He made to stand up, then thought better of it. “I don’t know how to walk out into everyone like this.” The lopsided grin came back. “Everyone will be wanting this done.” He furrowed his brow. “They will. We don’t have enough returner, and you don’t have enough zhiva.” His face grew very serious, as serious as it could without the weight of his wrinkles to lend him gravity.
“Don’t worry.” I waved his concern away. “Everyone already wants me to do a million things I can’t possibly do.”
He didn’t look convinced. “I’ll have to show my face around them sooner or later,” he spoke softly, more to himself than to me. He thought for a moment, quick eyes shifting at nothing over my shoulder. “I’ll go tonight, just to be out of the way, to see if it reverses itself. I’ll be back in a few days.” He stood up.
“Where are you going?” I spat out. “If you don’t want anyone to see you?”
“What would you have me do?”
“I can’t show my face, so I’m stuck here. Why don’t you see how you like it?”
“Yusha…”
“We’ll say you’re sick. Surely you can tell Irisha about it. And if, in a few days, nothing’s changed, then we can figure out how to tell people. This way, I can keep an eye on it.”
His youthful face couldn’t hide things like his age had. He looked crestfallen. But he nodded. “Okay. If that’s what you want.”
“You don’t have to do things just because I want you to.”
He looked, for a moment, like he was going to yell at me, and my heart leapt. Then he closed his eyes and took a breath. “I’m going to go set up a sick room. Please tell Irisha what's going on before you drink yourself stupid.”
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