A Gift for Saint Oksana by Jim Wright

Anya was plucking a mushroom from the leafy dirt of the forest when she saw the man, thirty yards away, watching her from a stand of birch trees. But she was not afraid. The voice in her head that spoke with the tongue of bells had brought her to this place in the woods and had foretold the man’s arrival. She dropped the mushroom into the basket and looked back at the birch trees. The man was gone.

The late afternoon sun shone warm through gaps in the trees, but in the forest shadows, Anya could feel the chill of the coming autumn night. Today was joyous—the feast day of her beloved Saint Oksana! Since morning, she had wandered under the trees in search of mushrooms to bestow as a feast-day gift. Her straw basket was overflowing. She stood, brushed the leaf litter from her skirt, and started back toward the village.

Anya was a small, angular woman, with a twist to her spine that tilted her left shoulder. The villagers called her Wild Anya. At any hour, they might see her hurrying down streets, across fields, or along woodland trails on unknown errands, always with dried wildflowers tucked in her braided hair and a radiant smile lighting her sun-darkened face. They joked that she was part woods-spirit.

Now she moved with speed through the forest. She could hear trailing her an echoing set of footfalls, uneven and stumbling. When she reached the gravel road, Anya stopped and turned to look. The phantom footsteps also stopped. Far back under the darkening forest canopy, she made out a man-sized blot of deeper shadow, unmoving.

***

Father Hedeon and the caretaker Nikolai hurried out of the Church of the All-Merciful Savior and climbed into Nikolai’s old Lada sedan. It was twilight, and a full moon had just cleared the horizon.  Anya had not yet returned.

“I’m sure she’s alright,” Father Hedeon said in a worried voice. Nikolai grunted, turned the key, and pumped the gas pedal to coax the Lada’s engine into a wheezing clatter.

The two men had spent the afternoon in the cemetery next to the church, digging a grave and preparing the grounds for a funeral tomorrow. At about four o’clock, Nikolai’s wife trotted over all out of breath from their house behind the church to tell them that the radio said a convicted murderer had escaped that morning from the prison in nearby Lviv. He was last sighted loping into a state forest, on the move south in the general direction of their village. With the sun having set and Anya still not home, Father Hedeon decided to search for her.

“First, let’s try going west,” Father Hedeon said, pointing up the road. “That’s Anya’s usual shortcut to the woods.” Both men lit cigarettes. The Lada eased into the street and lurched forward in a blue cloud of exhaust.

The men rode in silence. In about a mile, ranks of trees appeared, crowding both sides of the road. Soon, Nikolai turned left onto a gravel track and into the forest.

“They say that Anya isn’t right in the head,” said Nikolai.

Father Hedeon started. “What?” he asked.

“People. They say Miss Anya is crazy as a bedbug,” Nikolai said with a snort.

“Folks shouldn’t be so quick to judge, Nikolai,” Father Hedeon said gently. “Miss Anya is a great help to me and to our church. She cares for our shrine to Saint Oksana and collects the offerings from the pilgrims who visit. And she lives such a simple life…just a small chest of clothes and a cot tucked in a corner of the shrine.”

The headlights of the Lada painted the passing tree trunks with anemic light. It seemed to Father Hedeon that the car burrowed on through an endless tunnel of night.

He looked over at Nikolai. “Do you remember the stories of Saint Oksana we heard as children, my friend? How she was a mighty warrior queen of the Rus almost a thousand years ago? How she fought off the godless Mongols?” Nikolai nodded.

“And our church that holds her blessed tomb has stood for eight hundred years, even surviving the Nazis,” said Father Hedeon. “A miracle! Do you know, Nikolai, that, across those many centuries, our Saint Oksana has always had a blessed helper like Anya to tend to her shrine? You can read it right there in our church archives…these helpers all came from our little village of Tushivo—the poor, those without family, those with mental illness. Surely, it’s God and Saint Oksana who call them to this post. And God and Saint Oksana who protect them. If Anya is crazy, she is a Holy Fool.”

“Or a holy bedbug…” Nikolai muttered.

“Wait, what was that?” Father Hedeon shouted. “Back up!”

“What’s the matter, Father?” Nikolai said, clenching his cigarette tightly between his teeth. He stomped on the brakes, then wrestled with the stick shift and clutch. The car crawled in reverse with a whine. As it backed up, Father Hedeon looked intently at the row of trees to the right.

“I thought I saw a face,” he whispered.

Nikolai stopped the car and they both stared ahead into the illuminated cone of the headlights.

“I don’t see anything. What did it look like? Was it Anya?” asked Nikolai.

“It was the face of a man. Or a wolf. Wicked.”

Nikolai let out a long whistle. He reached over, opened the glove compartment, and pulled something out.

“I carry this for emergencies,” he said.

“A weapon?” said Father Hedeon.

“Vodka,” said Nikolai.

He unscrewed the top of a flask, took a long drink, and handed it to Father Hedeon, who looked at it skeptically.

“What good is vodka against a killer?”

Nikolai shrugged. “Vodka gives you many superpowers. And a hangover.”

Father Hedeon barked a laugh, then looked sheepish. He took a swig from the flask and coughed.

“Maybe it was my imagination,” he said.

The two men sat with the engine idling and sipped the vodka. When the flask was empty, they continued driving along the track.

***

As the car lights appeared, cutting through the comforting darkness, Anya stepped off the track into the concealment of the forest.  She would not have minded a lift back to the village but needed to attend to the voice in her head and to stay ahead of the man who still trailed her.

The car passed and stopped abruptly a distance down the road. Anya waited, listening through the silence until she heard footsteps resume behind her. She started off again.

She was almost giddy with the excitement of this game. Whenever the steps grew faint, she would slow her pace so as not to lose her pursuer. When the moon shone through openings among the trees to light the path, the man could see her plainly and he would break into a sprint. Then Anya would hug the edge of the trees with her basket of mushrooms pressed tight against her chest and run like a deer until the steps again receded.  So, sometimes slower, sometimes faster, Anya and her shadow came at last to the edge of the village.

The church was waiting there to receive them, its massive three-tier bell tower standing like a sturdy giant. Anya felt tremors of delight to be home. She smiled at the church, with its high windows and peaked roof that loomed over Tushivo’s tiny collection of houses. The building gleamed in the silvered moonlight like a fairy fortress.

Anya heard footsteps coming closer but paid no attention. She ran up the stairs to the large oak-plank door, pushed it open, and crossed into the vestibule. Here candles burned, illuminating a wall of icons. Anya bowed toward these familiar, friendly faces of saints and crossed herself.  But instead of walking straight ahead into the nave of the church, she ducked through a low archway in the side wall and descended a long staircase of worn stone. At the bottom, she went through another oak door.

The room she entered was of ancient stonework, with a low vaulted ceiling supported by simple columns. The space was lit by a table of flickering votive candles left by pilgrims who had visited earlier that day. Against the far wall and dominating the room was a large gray granite sepulcher that came nearly to Anya’s shoulders—the alter-tomb of Saint Oksana. 

A square opening had been cut into the top of the tomb and fitted with a wrought-iron screen. Anya set her basket of mushrooms on the tomb and stood over the screen in the dim light, peering with rapture down at the tranquil face of the saint, white as marble, incorruptible…

Anya heard the door creak behind her and turned. Someone stood in the doorway, a wiry man in torn shirt and trousers of dark blue cloth. He was ruddy, with a long face and a sharp nose. His head was shaved, and he had black tattoos that peeked above his collar. The man’s eyes were pools of emptiness.

 He slipped inside and gently pushed the door closed. Finding a key in the door, he turned it until the lock clicked. He pocketed the key.

“I have been following you for a long while, little friend,” he said in a soft voice as he looked Anya over. “I knew you would bring me to a safe place.”

Anya made a small curtsy and blushed under the man’s stare. She stood silent for a moment, with a distracted look, as if eavesdropping on a conversation. Then she gave a small nod.

“Stranger,” she said in a strong, clear voice. “Saint Oksana welcomes you to her shrine. If your heart is pure and you seek forgiveness, you may claim her protection.”

The man laughed. He reached lazily into a pocket, pulling out a length of rope with fat knots tied at each end. As he dangled it, he studied a shelf of cups and candlesticks and bowls that gleamed gold and silver above the tomb. His eyes darted over to a large brass offering plate on the floor brimming with bills and coins from that day’s visiting pilgrims.

Anya again paused as if listening, then mouthed silent words and nodded. She faced the tomb, dropped to her knees, and bowed her head. The man’s mouth tightened, and he gripped the rope in both hands. As he crept up behind the kneeling woman, she picked up a piece of chalk and scrawled on the side of the tomb in childish block letters: OKSANA.

A stream of air hot as fevered breath poured from the screen atop the tomb. The air filled with flecks of ash that swirled and whirled, spinning at last into the shape of a slender pillar. And then the pillar flexed and became a woman.

She was tall, dressed in a ragged tunic of scarlet silk under a suit of chain-mail and a rusting helmet. Iron-grey hair hung loose about her shoulders. The woman’s withered face and forearms were striped with scars. Her parchment skin glowed blue-white like fungus.

The man drew back in terror but was pinned by her gaze and could not scream or flee. Fierce and luminous as suns, her eyes told a long-ago story of fire and pillage, of murder, of whole armies put to the sword. And above all, of the hunger, her eternal hunger. She tilted her head and curled her lip, revealing teeth with glittering dagger-points.

In a lightning motion, the creature embraced the man in an iron grip, plunged her fangs into his neck, and fed and fed and fed.

Anya watched the attack. She hugged herself and wept— overcome with pride and exultation that she had brought so fine a feast-day gift to her blessed Saint Oksana.

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