Cosmic Roots & Eldritch Shores, April 2025

“Piroshki on the Zero Line” by Tom Hickerson

Reviewed by Seraph

“Piroshki on the Zero Line” by Tom Hickerson

You hear people talk of war as a “necessary evil” in a way that seems to excuse the horrors wrought upon all who suffer it, but war cannot be simply waved away. It is rather an evil necessity that represents the last resort to combat other evils that cannot be resolved elsewise. Any other reason strips it of its necessity and leaves only evil, and anyone attempting to equivocate one way or the other is not sincere. To loosely paraphrase Sherman, war is cruelty, and cannot be other. It is only those who have never been on the front line, who have never seen the tragedy and desolation of war, who idolize and desire it. Yet, the greater the darkness, the more brilliant the light when it appears, and I think that more than anything this is what the author is attempting to communicate. Maria Ivanova was rescued once, when she was a child, from Mongol invaders. A kind older woman gifted her with a warm fire and hot piroshkis, and taught her to pray for all those souls lost in the slaughter. That moment echoes through time, just as Maria herself would do, and now that echo finds Maria diverting two lost soldiers from a path that would have seen them killed by artillery. Instead of driving through the zero line, which has been flattened by bombing, they find her waiting in a moment in time untouched by the explosions, with a basket full of fresh piroshkis and a kind word amidst the powerful manifestation of her faith. Is she the light the author is attempting to convey? Perhaps. One small moment and two lives saved is a small thing in the face of so much loss and pain. And yet, being reminding that a light exists at all in such a dark place may be all the more important for its seeming impossibility.