“You owe your salvation to God,” said Konstantin. “Look on His face and be saved.” They had never seen anything like his Christ’s great eyes, the pale flesh, and the long, thin hands. They looked and knelt and sometimes cried.
What is a domovoi, they said, but a tale for bad children? We are sorry, Batyushka, we repent.
Almost no one made offerings, even at the autumn equinox. The domovoi grew feeble and listless. The vazila grew thin and haggard and wild-eyed; the straw lay thick in his tangled beard. He stole rye and barley stored for the horses. The horses themselves began stamping in their stalls and shying at breezes. Tempers in the village grew short.
“WELL, IT WASN’T ME, boy, and it wasn’t a horse or a cat or a ghost,” snarled Pyotr to the stable boy one bitter morning. More barley had vanished in the night, and Pyotr, already on edge, was furious.
“I didn’t see!” cried the boy, sniffling. “I would never—”
The air smarted, those mornings in November, and the earth seemed to ring underfoot, brittle with frost. Pyotr stood nose to nose with the youth and answered his denials with a clenched fist. There was a thud and a howl of pain. “Never steal from me again,” Pyotr said.
Vasya, just slipping through the stable-door, frowned. Her father was never short-tempered. He never even beat Anna Ivanovna. What is happening to us? Vasya ducked out of sight and climbed into the hayloft. It took her a moment to locate the vazila, who was curled in on himself and half-buried in straw. She shivered at the look in his eyes.
“Why are you eating the barley?” she asked, gathering her courage.
“Because there have been no offerings.” The vazila’s eyes glowed disconcertingly black.
“Are you frightening the horses?”
“Their moods are mine and mine theirs.”
“You are very angry, then?” the girl whispered. “But my people do not mean it. They are only frightened. The priest will go away one day. Things will not always be so.”
The vazila’s eyes gleamed darkly, but Vasya thought she saw sorrow in them as well as anger.
“I am hungry,” he said.
Vasya felt a rush of sympathy. She had often been hungry. “I can bring you bread,” she said stoutly. “I am not frightened.”
The vazila’s eyelids flickered. “I need little,” he said. “Bread. Apples.”
Vasya tried not to think too hard about giving away part of her meals. Food was never plentiful after midwinter; soon she would be grudging every crumb. But— “I will bring them to you. I swear it,” she said, looking earnestly into the demon’s round, brown eyes.
“My thanks,” returned the vazila. “Keep your pledge and I will leave the grain alone.”
Vasya kept her pledge. It was never much. A withered apple. A gnawed crust. A drip of honey-wine, carried on her fingers, or in her mouth. But the vazila came for it eagerly, and when he ate, the horses quieted. The days darkened and drew in; the snow fell as though to seal them up in whiteness. But the vazila grew pink and content; the wintertime stable grew drowsy as of old.
Just as well. The season was a long one, and in January the cold deepened until even Dunya could remember nothing like it.
The remorseless winter dusk drove folk indoors. Pyotr had plenty of time to suffer the sight of his family’s pinched faces. They huddled by the fire, chewing at bread and strips of dried meat, taking turns adding wood to the blaze. Even by night, they did not dare let it burn low. The older folk murmured that their firewood burned too fast, that it took three logs to keep the flames high, where before they had needed one. Pyotr and Kolya decried that as nonsense. But their woodpiles dwindled.
Midwinter had come and gone; the days lengthened once more, but the cold only worsened. It killed sheep and rabbits and blackened the fingers of the unwary. Firewood they must have in such cold, come what may, and so as their stocks ran low, the people dared the silent forest under the glare of the winter sun. It was Vasya and Alyosha, out with a pony, a sledge, and short-hafted axes, who saw the paw prints in the snow.
“Ought we go after them, Father?” Kolya asked that night. “Kill some, take their skins, and drive the rest away?” He was mending a scythe, squinting in the oven-light. His son Seryozha, stiff and silent, huddled against his mother.
Vasya had given the enormous basket of sewing a dispirited look and seized her ax and a whetstone. Alyosha shot her an amused look over the haft of his own ax.
“See?” said Father Konstantin to Anna. “Look around you. In God’s grace is your deliverance.” Anna’s eyes were fastened on his face; her sewing lay forgotten on her lap.
Pyotr wondered at his wife. She had never seemed so much at ease, though this was the bitterest winter in memory.
“I think not,” said Pyotr, in answer to his son’s question. He was inspecting his boots; in winter, holes could cost a man a foot. He put one down near the fire and picked up the other. “They are bigger than boarhounds, the wolves from the high north; it has been twenty years since they came so near.” Pyotr reached down and caressed Pyos’s gaunt head; the dog gave him a dispirited lick. “That they do so now means they are desperate, that they would hunt children if they could, or slaughter sheep under our noses. The men together might take on a pack, but it is too cold for bows; it would be spear-work, and not everyone would come back. No, we must look to our children and our livestock, and only go into the forest in daylight.”
“We might set snares,” put in Vasya, over the scrape of her whetstone.
Anna gave her a dark look.
“No,” Pyotr said. “Wolves are not rabbits; they would smell you on the trap, and no one will risk the forest on such a small chance of gain.”
“Yes, Father,” Vasya said, meekly.
That night was deadly cold. They all huddled together on top of the oven, packed like salted fish and covered with every blanket they possessed. Vasya slept badly; her father snored, and Irina’s small, sharp knees dug into her back. She tossed and turned, tried not to kick Alyosha, and at last, near midnight, fell into a shallow sleep. She dreamed of wolves howling, of winter stars swallowed up by warm clouds, of a man with red hair, a woman on horseback, and last of a pale, heavy-jawed man with a look of hunger and malice, who leered and winked his single good eye. She woke up gasping, in the bitter hour before dawn, and saw a figure cross the room, outlined by the light of the banked oven-fire.
It is nothing, she thought: a dream, the kitchen cat. But then the figure paused, as though it sensed her regard. It turned a fraction. Vasya hardly dared to breathe, for she saw its face, a pale scrawl in the dim light. The eyes were the color of winter ice. She drew breath—to speak or to scream—but then the figure was gone. Daylight was filtering in round the kitchen door and from the village there came a wailing cry.
“It is Timofei,” said Pyotr, naming a village boy. Pyotr had risen before dawn to see to his stock. Now he came briskly through the door, stamping snow from his boots and brushing away the ice that had formed in his beard. He was hollow-eyed from cold and sleeplessness. “He died in the night.” The kitchen filled with exclamations. Vasya, half-awake on the oven, remembered the figure that had passed in the darkness. Dunya said nothing at all, but went about her baking, lips set. Her glance flicked often and worriedly from Vasya to Irina. Winter was cruel to the young.
At midmorning, the women gathered in the bathhouse to wrap his wasted body. Vasya, spilling into the hut behind her stepmother, caught a glimpse of Timofei’s face: he was glassy-eyed, the tears frozen on his thin cheeks. His mother clutched the stiffening body to her, whispering to him, ignoring her neighbors. Neither patience nor reason would draw the child from her, and when the women tugged him forcibly from her arms, she began to scream.
The room dissolved into chaos. The mother flew at her neighbors, crying for her son. Most of the women had children themselves; they quailed at the look in her eyes. The mother clawed blindly, scrabbling. The room was too small. Vasya thrust Irina out of harm’s way and seized
the reaching arms. She was strong, but slender, and the mother was wild with grief. Vasya clung and tried to speak. “Let go of me, witch!” screamed the woman. “Let go!” Vasya, disconcerted, loosened her grip and an elbow caught her across the face. She saw stars, and her arms fell away.
In that moment, Father Konstantin appeared in the doorway. His nose was red, his face as raw as anyone’s, but he absorbed the scene in an instant, took two strides across the tiny hut, and caught the mother’s groping fingers. The woman gave one desperate wrench and then stilled, trembling.
“He is gone, Yasna,” Konstantin said, stern.
“No,” she croaked. “I held him in my arms, all last night I held him, as the fire burned low—he cannot, he will not leave if I hold him. Give him back to me!”
“He belongs to God,” said Konstantin. “As do we all.”
“He is my son! My only son. Mine—”
“Be still,” he said. “Sit down. This is unseemly. Come, the women will lay him before the fire and heat water for washing.” His deep voice was soft and even. Yasna allowed him to lead her to the oven and sank down beside it.
All that morning—indeed, all that brief dull winter day—Konstantin talked, and Yasna stared at him like a swimmer caught in a riptide, while the women stripped Timofei’s body, and washed it, and wrapped it in cold linen. The priest was still there when Vasya came back from another bitter day searching for firewood; she saw him standing before the door of the bathhouse, gulping the cold air as though it were water.
“Would you like some mead, Batyushka?” she said.
Konstantin jerked in surprise. Vasya made no noise walking, and her gray furs mingled with the falling night. But after a pause he said, “I would, Vasilisa Petrovna.” His beautiful voice was little more than a thread, the resonance gone. Gravely she handed him her little skin of honey-wine. He gulped it with desperate eagerness. Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he handed the skin back to her, only to find her studying him, a furrow between her brows.
“Will you keep vigil tonight?” she asked.
“It is my place,” he replied with a hint of hauteur; the question was impertinent.
She saw his annoyance and smiled; he frowned. “I honor you for it, Batyushka,” she said.
She turned toward the great house, melting into the shadows. Konstantin watched her go, lips pressed together. The taste of mead was heavy in his mouth.
The priest kept that night’s vigil by the body. His gaunt face was set, and his lips moved in prayer. Vasya, who had returned in the small hours to keep her own vigil, could not help but admire his steady purpose, though the air had never echoed so with sobs and prayers as it had since his coming.
It was far too cold to linger over the boy’s tiny grave, hacked with much labor out of the iron-hard earth. As soon as decency permitted, the people scattered back to their huts, leaving the poor thing alone in his icy cradle, with Father Konstantin hindmost, half-dragging the bereaved mother.
People began cramming into fewer and fewer izby, with extended families sharing one oven to save firewood. But the wood disappeared so quickly—as though some ill wish made it burn. So they went into the woods regardless of paw prints, the women goaded by the sight of Timofei’s marble face and the dreadful look in his mother’s eyes. It was inevitable that someone would not come back.
Oleg’s son Danil was only bones when they found him, scattered widely over a stretch of trampled and bloody snow. His father brought the gnawed bone-ends to Pyotr and, wordless, laid them before him.
Pyotr looked down at them and said nothing.
“Pyotr Vladimirovich—” Oleg began, croaking, but Pyotr shook his head.
“Bury your son,” he said, his glance lingering on his own children. “I shall summon the men tomorrow.”
Alyosha spent the long night checking the haft of his boar-spear and sharpening his hunting-knife. A little color showed in his beardless cheeks. Vasya watched him work. Part of her itched to take up a spear herself, to go and brave dangers in the winter wood. The other part wanted to crack her brother over the head for his heedless excitement.
“I will bring you a wolfskin, Vasya,” Alyosha said, laying his weapons aside.
“Keep your wolfskin,” Vasya retorted, “if you can only promise to bring your own skin back without freezing your toes off.”
Her brother grinned, his eyes glittering. “Worried, little sister?”
The two sat apart from the mob near the oven, but Vasya still lowered her voice. “I don’t like this. Do you think I want to have to chop your frozen toes off? Or your fingers?”
“But there’s no help for it, Vasochka,” said Alyosha, putting down his boot. “Wood we must have. Better to go out and fight than freeze to death in our houses.”
Vasya pursed her lips but made no answer. She thought suddenly of the vazila, black-eyed with wrath. She thought of the crusts she brought him to quiet his anger. Is there another who is angry? Such a one could only be in the wood, where the cold winds blew and the wolves howled.
Don’t even think it, Vasya, said the sensible voice in her skull. But Vasya glanced at her family. She saw her father’s grim face, her brothers’ suppressed excitement.
Well, I can but try. If Alyosha is hurt tomorrow, I will hate myself forever if I did not try. Without pausing to think longer, Vasya went for her boots and winter cloak.
No one bothered asking where she was going. The truth would not have occurred to anyone.
Vasya climbed the palisade, hampered by her mittens. The stars were few and faint; the moon cast a blaze of light over the hard-frozen snow. Vasya passed the eave of the wood, from moonlight into darkness. She walked briskly. It was dreadfully cold. The snow squeaked under her feet. Somewhere, a wolf howled. Vasya tried not to think of the yellow eyes. Her teeth would surely rattle out of her head from shivering.
Suddenly Vasya stumbled to a halt. She thought she’d heard a voice. Slowing her breath, she listened. No—only the wind.
But what was that there? It looked like a great tree: one she half-remembered, with an odd sly memory, that slid in and out of her mind. No—it was only a shadow, cast by the moon.
A bone-chilling wind played in the branches high above.
Out of the hiss and clatter, Vasya suddenly thought she heard words. Are you warm, child? said the wind, half-laughing.
In fact, Vasya felt her bones would splinter like frost-killed branches, but she replied steadily, “Who are you? Are you sending the frost?”
There was a very long silence. Vasya wondered if she had imagined the voice. Then it seemed she heard, mockingly, And why not? I, too, am angry. The voice seemed to throw echoes, so that the whole wood took up the cry.
“That is no answer,” retorted the girl. The sensible part of her pointed out that perhaps a little meekness was in order when dealing with half-heard voices in the dead of night. But the cold was making her sleepy; she fought it with every scrap of will and had none left over for meekness.
I bring the frost, said the voice. Suddenly it was curling icy, loving fingers about her face and throat. A cold touch like fingertips slipped beneath her clothes and wrapped round her heart.
“Then will you stop?” Vasya whispered, fighting fear. Her heart beat as though against another’s hand. “I speak for my people; they are afraid; they are sorry. Soon it will be as it always was: our churches and our chyerti together and no more fear or talk of demons.”
It will be too late, said the wind, and the forest took it up: too late, too late. Then, Besides, it is not my frost you should fear, devushka. It is the fires. Tell me, do your fires burn too fast?
“It is only the cold that makes them burn so.”
Nay, it is the coming storm. The first sign is fear. The second is always fire. Your people are afraid, and now the fires burn.
“Turn the storm aside then, I beg you,” said Vasya. “Here, I brought a gift.” She put a hand into her sleeve.
It was nothing much, j
ust a scrap of dry bread and a pinch of salt, but when she held it out, the wind died.
In the silence, Vasya heard the wolf howl again, very near now, and answered in a chorus. But in the same instant a white mare stepped out from between two trees, and Vasya forgot the wolves. The mare’s long mane fell like icicles, and her snorting breath made a plume in the night.
Vasya caught her breath. “Oh, you are beautiful,” she said, and even she could hear the longing in her voice. “Are you bringing the frost?”
Did the white mare have a rider? Vasya could not tell. One instant it seemed she did, and then the mare twitched her skin and the shape on her back was only a trick of the light.
The white horse put her small ears forward, toward the bread and salt. Vasya held out her hand. She felt the horse’s warm breath on her face and stared into her dark eye. Suddenly she felt warmer. Even the wind felt warmer where it twined around her face.
I bring the frost, said the voice. Vasya did not think it was the mare. It is my wrath and my warning. But you are brave, devushka, and I relent. For the sake of an offering. A small pause. But the fear is not mine, and neither are the fires. The storm is coming, and the frost will be as nothing beside it. Courage will save you. If your people are afraid, then they are lost.
“What storm?” whispered Vasya.
Beware the turning seasons, she thought the wind sighed. Beware…and the voice was gone. But the wind remained. Harder and harder it blew, wordless, flinging clouds across the moon, and the wind smelled, blessedly, of snow. The deep frost could not last while it snowed.
When Vasya stumbled back through the door of her own house, the flakes that covered her hood and caught in her eyelashes effectively silenced her family’s clamor. Alyosha seized her in speechless delight, and Irina went laughing outside to catch a handful of the falling whiteness.
The Bear and the Nightingale Page 12
