The Bear and the Nightingale

by Katherine Arden

  “What do we do?” Alyosha asked, very pale and breathing as little as possible.

  “A stake through the mouth,” said Vasya. “I made a stake this morning.”

  Alyosha shuddered, but knelt. Vasya knelt beside him, hands trembling. The stake was crudely shaped but sharp, and she hefted a large rock to do the hammering.

  “Well, brother,” said Vasya, “Will you hold its head or drive in the stake?”

  He was white as the snowdrifts, but he said, “I’m stronger than you.”

  “True enough,” said Vasya. She handed over stake and rock and pried open the thing’s jaws. The teeth, sharp as a cat’s, gleamed like bone needles.

  The sight of them shook Alyosha out of his stupor. Gritting his teeth, he thrust the stake between the red lips and slammed the rock down. Blood spurted, welling out of the mouth and over the gray chin. The eyes flew open, huge and horrible, though the body did not stir. Alyosha’s hand jerked; he missed the stake and Vasya snatched her fingers away just in time. There was a nasty crunch as the stone shattered the right cheekbone. The thing let out a thin scream, though still it did not move.

  To Vasya, it seemed that a roar of fury came faintly from the woods. “Hurry,” she said. “Hurry, hurry.”

  Alyosha bit his tongue and resettled his grip. The rock had made a shapeless ruin of the face. He struck the stake again and again, sweating despite the cold. At last the tip of the stake grated against bone, and a final, ferocious strike sent the stake out through the other side of the skull. The light went out of the corpse’s open eyes, and the stone fell from Alyosha’s nerveless fingers. He flung himself away, gasping. Vasya’s hands dripped blood, and worse things, but she let go of Agafya almost absently. She was staring into the forest.

  “Vasya, what is it?” Alyosha asked.

  “I thought I saw something,” Vasya whispered. “Look there.” She was on her feet. A white horse and a dark rider were cantering away, swallowed almost instantly in the loom of the trees. Beyond them, it seemed she saw another figure, like a great shadow, watching.

  “There is no one here but us, Vasya,” said Alyosha. “Here, help me bury her and smooth the snow. Hurry. The women will be looking for you.”

  Vasya nodded and hefted the shovel. She was still frowning. “I have seen the horse before,” she said to herself. “And her rider, who wears a black cloak. He has blue eyes.”

  VASYA DID NOT GO BACK to the house after the upyr was buried. She washed the earth and blood from her hands, went to the stable, and curled up in Mysh’s stall. Mysh nuzzled the top of her head. The vazila sat beside her.

  Vasya sat there a long time and tried to cry. For Dunya’s face as she died, for the bloody ruin of Agafya. Even for Father Konstantin. But though she sat a long time, the tears would not come. There was only a hollow place inside her, and a great silence.

  When the sun was westering, the girl joined the women in the bathhouse.

  All the women turned on her together. Heedless, they said. Wild. Hard-hearted. Softer, she heard, Witch-woman. Like her mother.

  “You’re an ungrateful little thing, Vasya,” gloated Anna Ivanovna. “But I expected nothing better.” That evening, she bent Vasya over a stool and plied her birch switch hard, though Vasya was too old for beatings. Only Irina was silent, but she looked at her sister with a red-eyed reproach that was worse than the women’s words.

  Vasya bore it all, but she could not summon speech in her defense.

  They buried Dunya at the close of day. The people whispered among themselves all through the quick, freezing funeral. Her father was haggard and gray; she had never seen him look so old.

  “Dunya loved you like her daughter, Vasya,” he said, later. “Of all the days to play truant.”

  Vasya did not speak, but she thought of her wounded hand, of the bitter, star-strewn night, of the jewel at her throat, of the upyr in the dark.

  “FATHER,” SHE SAID THAT NIGHT. The peasants had gone back to their huts. She drew her stool up beside Pyotr’s. The flames in the oven leaped red, and there was an empty space at their hearth where Dunya had been. Pyotr was making a new hilt for a hunting-knife. He scraped away a little curl of wood and glanced at his daughter. In the firelight, her face was drawn. “Father,” she said. “I would not have disappeared without need.” She spoke so soft that in the crowded kitchen only they two heard.

  “What need, then, Vasya?” Pyotr laid aside his knife.

  He looked as though he feared her answer, Vasya realized; she bit back the jumbled confession quivering in her throat. The upyr is dead, she thought. I will not burden him more, not to salve my own pride. He must be strong for all of us.

  “I—went to Mother’s grave,” she said hastily. “Dunya bid me go and pray for them both. She is with Mother now. It was—easier to pray there. In the silence.”

  Her father looked wearier than she had ever seen him. “Very well, Vasya,” he said, turning back to his hunting-knife. “But it was ill-done, to go alone and with no word. It has made talk among the people.” There was a small silence. Vasya twisted her hands together. “I am sorry, child,” he added more gently. “I know Dunya was as a mother to you. Did she give you anything before she died? A token? A trinket?”

  Vasya hesitated, caught. Dunya said I must not tell him. But it is his gift. She opened her mouth…

  There came a great thundering knock on the door, and a man burst through and fell, half-frozen, at their feet. Pyotr was on his feet in an instant, and the moment was lost. The winter kitchen filled with cries of astonishment. The man’s beard rattled with the ice of his breathing; his eyes stared out over mottled cheeks. He lay shivering on the floor.

  Pyotr knew him. “What is it?” he demanded, stooping and catching the shuddering man by the shoulder. “What has happened, Nikolai Matfeevich?”

  The man said nothing; only lay curled on the floor. When they drew off his mittens, his frozen hands were like claws.

  “We’ll need hot water,” Vasya said.

  “Get him to speak as soon as you can,” said Pyotr. “His village is two days distant. I cannot think what disaster would bring him here at midwinter.”

  Vasya and Irina spent an hour rubbing the man’s hands and feet and pouring hot broth down his throat. Even when his strength returned, all he would do was huddle by the oven, gasping. Finally he took food, gulping it down scalding-hot. Pyotr bit back his impatience. At last the messenger wiped his mouth and looked fearfully at his liege lord.

  “What brings you here, Nikolai Matfeevich?” demanded Pyotr.

  “Pyotr Vladimirovich,” the man whispered, “we are going to die.”

  Pyotr’s face darkened.

  “Two nights since, our village caught fire,” said Nikolai. “There is nothing left. If you do not take pity, we are all going to die. Many of us have died already.”

  “Fire?” said Alyosha.

  “Yes,” said Nikolai. “A spark fell from an oven, and the whole village went up. An ill wind was blowing, and such a wind—too warm for midwinter. We could do nothing. I left as soon as we had dug the living from the ashes. I heard them scream when the snow touched their skin—better perhaps if they had died. I walked all day and all night—such a night—with terrible voices in the wood. It seemed the screams followed me. I did not dare to stop, for fear of the frost.”

  “It was bravely done,” said Pyotr.

  “Will you help us, Pyotr Vladimirovich?”

  There was a long silence. He cannot go, thought Vasya. Not now. But she knew what her father would say. These were his lands, and he was their lord.

  “My son and I will ride back with you tomorrow,” said Pyotr heavily, “with such men and beasts as can be spared.”

  The messenger nodded. His eyes were far away. “Thank you, Pyotr Vladimirovich.”

  THE NEXT DAY DAWNED in a dazzle of blue and white. Pyotr ordered the horses saddled at first light. The men who would not ride laced snowshoes to their feet. The winter sun shone coldly down.
Great white plumes curled from the horses’ nostrils like the breath of serpents, and icicles dangled from their whiskery chins. Pyotr took Buran’s rein from the servant. The horse stretched out his lip and shook his head, the ice rattling in his whiskers.

  Kolya crouched in the snow, eye to eye with Seryozha. “Let me come with you, Father,” pleaded the child. His hair fell into his eyes. He had come out leading his brown pony and wearing every garment he possessed. “I am big enough.”

  “You are not big enough,” said Kolya, looking harried.

  Irina hurried out of the house. “Come,” she said, taking the child by the shoulder. “Your papa is going; come away.”

  “You’re only a girl,” said Seryozha. “What do you know? Please, Papa.”

  “Go back to the house,” said Kolya, stern now. “Put your pony away and listen to your aunt.”

  But Seryozha did not; instead he howled and bolted, startling the horses, and disappeared behind the stable. Kolya rubbed his face. “He’ll come back when he’s hungry.” He heaved himself onto his own horse’s back.

  “God be with you, brother,” said Irina.

  “And you, sister,” said Kolya. He clasped her hand and turned away.

  Cold leather creaked as the men put up the horses’ girths and checked the bindings of their snowshoes. Their steaming breath thickened the icy bristles in their beards. Alyosha stood at the edge of the dvor, a look of thunder on his good-natured face. “You must stay,” Pyotr had said to him. “Someone must look after your sisters.”

  “You will need me, Father,” he had said.

  Pyotr shook his head. “I will sleep easier if you are guarding my girls. Vasya is rash and Irina is fragile. And Lyoshka, you must keep Vasya at home. For her own sake. There is an ugly mood in the village. Please, my son.”

  Alyosha shook his head, wordless. But he did not ask again.

  “Father,” said Vasya. “Father.” She appeared at Buran’s head, face strained, her hair very black against the pale fur of her hood. “You must not go. Not now.”

  “I must, Vasochka,” Pyotr said, wearily. She had begged the night before. “It is my place, and they are my people. Try to understand.”

  “I understand,” she said. “But there is evil in the wood.”

  “These are evil times,” said Pyotr. “But I am their lord.”

  “There are dead things in the wood—the dead are walking. Father, the woods are dangerous.”

  “Nonsense, Vasya,” snapped Pyotr. Mother of God. If she started spreading such stories about the village…

  “Dead,” said Vasya again. “Father, you must not go.”

  Pyotr seized her shoulder, hard enough to make her flinch. All about him, his men were clustered and waiting. “You are too old for fairy tales,” he growled, trying to make her see.

  “Fairy tales!” said Vasya. It came out a strangled cry. Buran threw his head up. Pyotr got a better grip on the stallion’s rein and settled the horse. Vasya flung her father’s hand aside. “You saw Father Konstantin’s broken window,” she said “You cannot leave the village. Father, please.”

  The men could not hear everything, but they heard enough. Their faces showed pale beneath the beards. They stared at Pyotr’s daughter. More than one glanced toward his wife or his children, standing small and valiant against the snow. There would be no ruling them, Pyotr thought, if his foolish daughter kept on. “You are not a child, Vasya, to take fright at tales,” Pyotr snapped. He spoke calmly and crisply, to reassure the men. “Alyosha, take your sister in hand. Do not be afraid, dochka,” he said, lower and more gently. “We shall win a brave victory; this winter will pass like the others. Kolya and I will come back to you. Be kind to Anna Ivanovna.”

  “But, Father—”

  Pyotr sprang to Buran’s back. Vasya’s hand closed on the horse’s headstall. Anyone else would have been yanked off his feet and trampled, but the stallion pricked his ears at the girl and stood.

  “Let go, Vasya,” said Alyosha, coming up beside her. She didn’t move. He laid a hand on hers where it wrapped round the bridle, and bent to whisper in her ear: “Now is not the time. The men will break. They are afraid for their houses and they are afraid of demons. Besides, if Father heeds you, they will say he was ruled by his maiden daughter.”

  Vasya sucked a breath between her teeth, but she let go of Buran’s bridle. “Better to believe me,” she muttered.

  Released, the brave, aging stallion reared up. The subdued men fell in behind Pyotr. Kolya saluted his brother and sister as the party trotted out into the white world, leaving the two alone in the stable-yard.

  THE VILLAGE SEEMED VERY QUIET when the riders had left. The icy sun shone gaily down. “I believe you, Vasya,” said Alyosha.

  “You drove the stake in with your own hand; of course you believe me, fool.” Vasya paced like a wolf in a cage. “I should have told Father everything.”

  “But we slew the upyr,” said Alyosha.

  Vasya shook her head helplessly. She remembered the rusalka’s warning, and the leshy’s. “It is not over,” she said. “I was warned: beware the dead.”

  “Who warned you, Vasya?”

  Vasya halted in her pacing and saw her brother’s face cold with faint suspicion. She knew a twist of despair so strong she laughed. “You, too, Lyoshka?” she said. “True friends, old and wise, warned me. Do you believe the priest? Am I a witch?”

  “You are my sister,” said Alyosha, very firmly. “And our mother’s daughter. But you should stay out of the village until Father returns.”

  THE HOUSE FELL GRADUALLY silent that night, as though the hush crept in with the nighttime chill. Pyotr’s household huddled by the oven, to sew or carve or mend in the firelight.

  “What is that sound?” said Vasya suddenly.

  One by one, her family fell silent.

  Someone outside was crying.

  It was little more than a choked whimper, barely audible. But at length there could be no doubt—they heard the muffled sound of a woman weeping.

  Vasya and Alyosha looked at each other. Vasya half-rose. “No,” Alyosha said. He went himself to the door, opened it, and looked long into the night. At last he came back, shaking his head. “There is nothing there.”

  But the crying went on. Twice, and then three times, Alyosha went to the door. At last Vasya went herself. She thought she saw a white glimmer, flitting between the peasants’ huts. Then she blinked, and there was nothing.

  Vasya went to the oven and peered into its shining maw. The domovoi was there, hiding in the hot ash. “She cannot get in,” he breathed in a crackle of flames. “I swear it, she cannot. I will not let her.”

  “That is what you said before, but it got in then,” said Vasya, under her breath.

  “The fearful man’s room is different,” whispered the domovoi. “That I cannot protect. He has denied me. But here, now—that one cannot get in.” The domovoi clenched his hands. “She will not get in.”

  At length the moon set, and they all sought their beds. Vasya and Irina huddled close together, wrapped in furs, breathing the black dark.

  Suddenly, the sound of crying came again, very near. Both girls froze.

  There was a scratching at their window.

  Vasya glanced at Irina, who lay open-eyed and rigid beside her. “It sounds like…”

  “Oh, don’t say it,” pleaded Irina. “Don’t.”

  Vasya rolled out of bed. Unconsciously, her hand sought the pendant between her breasts. The cold of it burned her flinching hand. The window was set high in the wall; Vasya clambered up and wrestled with the shutters. The ice in the window distorted her view of the dvor.

  But there was a face behind the ice. Vasya saw the eyes and mouth—great dark holes—and a bony hand pressed to the frozen pane. The thing was sobbing. “Let me in,” it gasped. There was a thin screeching noise, nails on ice.

  Irina whimpered.

  “Let me in,” hissed the thing. “I am cold.”

  Vasya l
ost her hold on the windowsill, fell, and landed sprawling. “No. No…” She scrambled to regain the window. But all was empty now and still; the moon shone untroubled over the empty dvor.

  “What was it?” whispered Irina.

  “Nothing, Irinka,” snapped Vasya. “Go to sleep.”

  She had begun to cry, but Irina could not see her.

  Vasya crawled back into bed and wound her arms around her sister. Irina did not speak again but lay long awake shivering. At last she drifted off, and Vasya put aside her sister’s arms. Her tears had dried; her face was set. She went to the kitchen.

  “I think we will all die if you are gone,” she said to the domovoi. “The dead are walking.”

  The domovoi put his weary head out of the oven. “I will hold them off as long as I can,” he said. “Watch with me tonight. When you are here, I am stronger.”

  FOR THREE NIGHTS PYOTR did not come back, and Vasya stayed in the house and kept watch with the domovoi. On the first night, she thought she heard weeping, but nothing came near the house. On the second night, there was perfect silence, and Vasya thought she would die of wishing to sleep.

  On the third day she resolved to ask Alyosha to watch with her. That evening a bloody dusk flamed up and died, leaving blue shadows and silence.

  The family lingered in the kitchen—the bedchambers seemed very cold and remote. Alyosha sharpened his boar-spear by oven-light. The leaf-shaped blade threw little dazzles onto the hearth.

  The fire had burned low, and the kitchen was full of red shade, when a long, low wail sounded without. Irina huddled beside the oven. Anna knitted, but all could see she was clammy and shivering. Father Konstantin’s eyes were so wide that the white showed in a ring; he whispered prayers under his breath.

  There came the sound of dragging footsteps. Nearer they came, nearer. Then a voice rattled the window.

  “It is dark,” said the voice. “I am cold. Open the door. Open it.” Then—Tap. Tap. Tap on the door.

  Vasya rose to her feet.

  Alyosha’s hands locked around the haft of his spear.