Dancing with Bears by Michael Swanwick

it could possibly require”—he swept out a hand to take in the room, the bath towels, the candles, and the table which had already been efficiently and deferentially cleared of the emptied plates—“all this…well, that is completely beyond my understanding.”
    “Yes. You are exactly right. The truth is completely beyond your comprehension. But I can tell you that—”
    There was a knock on the door.
    “Ah! Here she is! Answer that, will you?”
    When Arkady opened the door, a woman rushed past him and flung herself into Koschei’s arms. She kissed him deeply and passionately. Then she knelt down and kissed his feet. He raised her up with a smile. “Little daughter!”
    “Holy father!” She ran her fingers through the strannik’s beard. “It has been so long since I have known the joy of your body.”
    Arkady’s eyes all but bulged. Outlander though he might be, he was not so ignorant as to not know that a woman dressed as this one was, with such makeup as she wore, and behaving as she did, could be only one thing. The combination of astonishment and alarm brought to the surface his inherent arrogance. “Why have you brought this… this… harlot here?”
    The crimson woman looked at him with open amusement. The strannik clucked his tongue in disapproval—not of the whore, but of him!
    “Is not God everywhere?” Koschei demanded. “One who cannot see God in a harlot is unlikely to find Him anywhere else.” He turned back to the woman. “Take off your clothing, my child.”
    Arkady had thought he could not possibly be more amazed than he already was. He was wrong. For the whore immediately did as the pilgrim commanded, revealing a body that more than fulfilled the promise made by her low-cut gown. Clothed, she had been a cheap and obvious bit of goods. Naked, she was infinitely desirable.
    Provided one did not look at her face.
    As Arkady did not.
    “You are confused,” Koschei said. “This is good. Confusion is the first step on the road to salvation. It tells you that your understanding of the world is faulty. Your thoughts and the conventional religious teachings of your family and village say to you that this dear woman is filthy and disgusting. Yet your eyes tell you otherwise. As does your body. Which, then, should you trust? Your thoughts, which are of your own devising? Your education, which is the work of men? Or your body, which is the work of God?”
    “I… hardly know what to think.”
    “That is because up until this moment, you have been living in a dream. You looked at things and saw only what you projected upon them. You have never known reality. You have never known love.”
    This last statement filled Arkady with indignation, for he knew it was not true. “I love Aetheria!”
    “You are in love with your idea of her, and that is a very different thing from loving the woman herself. There is a real person there, assuredly, but you do not know her. Tell me her likes and dislikes. Relate an incident from her girlhood. Reveal to me her soul. You cannot! The songs you sing to her praise superficialities—her eyes, her hair, her voice—beyond which you have not sought. Your love has been a delusion, a mirage existing only within your mind. It is the work of the Devil. It must be rejected and put behind you.”
    “I, however, am real.” The doxy cupped a breast and lifted it slightly. “Touch me, if you doubt it. Place your hand or any other part of your body wherever you like. I will not stop you.”
    There was no comparing this strumpet’s merely carnal beauty with Aetheria’s unearthly perfection. Still, she was a woman. And naked. And present. She moved so close to Arkady that he could smell the musky scent of her sex. “I—”
    The strannik had turned away and was rummaging in his leather medicine pouch. “Your education to date has been all words. It is time they were put into action.” He emerged with a vial and shook from it two black specks. “But before you do