He shook his head.
Her voice softened. “Perhaps there is magic in the forest, enough for me to defy Anna Ivanovna; did you think of that?”
Alyosha laughed shortly. “You are too old for fairy tales.”
“Am I?” said Vasya. She smiled at him, though her lips trembled.
Alyosha remembered suddenly all the times her eyes had moved, following things that he could not see. His arms fell away. They looked at each other.
“Vasya—promise me I will see you again.”
“Give bread to the domovoi,” said Vasya. “Watch by the oven at night. Courage might save you. I have done what I can. Farewell, brother. I—I will try to come back.”
“Vasya—”
But she had slipped out the kitchen door.
Father Konstantin was waiting for her beside the door of the church. “Are you mad, Vasilisa Petrovna?”
Her green eyes flew up to his, mocking now. The tears had dried; she was cold and steady. “But Batyushka, I must obey my stepmother.”
“Then go take your vows.”
Vasya laughed. “She will see me gone; dead, or vowed; she doesn’t care. Well, I will please myself and her as well.”
“Forget your mad folly. You will be vowed. It will be as God wills, and he has willed it so.”
“Has he?” said Vasya. “And you are the voice of God, I presume. Well, I was given a choice and I am taking it.” She turned toward the wood.
“You are not,” said Konstantin, and something in his voice had Vasya spinning round. Two men stepped out of the shadows.
“Put her in the church tonight, and bind her hands,” said Konstantin, never taking his eyes from Vasya. “She will leave at dawn.”
Vasya was already running. But she had only three strides’ head start and they were very strong. One of them reached out, and his hand snagged on the hem of her cloak. She tripped and sprawled, rolling, striking out, panicked. The man flung himself on her, held her down. The snow was cold on her neck. She felt the scrape of icy rope on her wrists.
She forced herself to go limp, as though she had fainted in her fright. The man was more used to tying dead beasts for carrying; his grip relaxed while he fumbled with the rope. Vasya heard the footsteps as the priest and the other man approached.
Then she flung herself up, shrieking a wordless cry, jabbing her fingers at her captor’s eyes. He recoiled; she wrenched sideways, rolled to her feet, and ran as she had never run in her life. Behind her she heard shouts, panting, footsteps. But she would not be caught again. Never.
She ran on and did not stop until she was swallowed by the shadow of the trees.
THE CLEAR NIGHT LIT the snow, which lay firm underfoot. Vasya ran into the woods, bruised and panting. Her loosened cloak flapped about her. She heard shouting from the village. Her tracks showed clear in the virgin snow, so that her only hope was speed. She darted headlong from shadow to shadow, until the shouting grew fainter and at last died away. They dare not follow, thought Vasya. They fear the forest after dark. And then, darkly: They are wise.
Her breathing slowed. She walked deeper into the wood, pushing loss and fear into the back of her mind. She listened; she called aloud. But all was still. The leshy did not answer. The rusalka slept, dreaming of summertime. The wind did not stir the trees.
Time passed; she was not sure how much. The wood thickened and blotted out the stars. The moon rose higher and cast shadows, then the clouds came and threw the forest into darkness. Vasya walked until she began to grow sleepy, and then the terror of sleep forced her awake again. She turned north and east and south again.
The night drew on, and Vasya shivered as she walked. Her teeth clacked together. Her toes grew numb despite her heavy boots. A small part of her had thought—hoped—that there would be some help in the woods. Some destiny—some magic. She had hoped the firebird would come, or the Horse with the Golden Mane, or the raven who was really a prince…foolish girl to believe in fairy tales. The winter wood was indifferent to men and women; the chyerti slept in winter, and there was no such thing as a raven-prince.
Well, die then. It is better than a convent.
But Vasya could not quite believe it. She was young; her blood ran hot. She could not bring herself to lie down in the snow.
On she stumbled, but she was growing weaker. She feared her flagging strength; she feared her stiffening hands, her cold lips.
In the blackest part of the night, Vasya stopped and looked back. Anna Ivanovna would mock her if she returned. She would be bound like a hart, locked in the church, and sent to a convent. But she did not want to die, and she was very cold.
Then Vasya took in the trees on either side and realized that she did not know where she was.
No matter. She could follow her own trail back the way she had come. She looked behind again.
Her tracks were gone.
Vasya quelled a surge of panic. She was not lost. She could not be lost. She turned north. Her weary feet crunched dully in the snow. Once more, the ground began to look inviting. Surely she could lie down. Just for a moment…
A dark shape loomed before her: a tree, all twisted, bigger than any tree Vasya knew. Memory stirred, breaking through her fog. She remembered a lost child, a great oak, a sleeper with one eye. She remembered an old nightmare. The tree filled her sight. Go nearer? Run away? She was too cold to turn back.
Then she heard the sound of weeping.
Vasya halted, scarcely breathing. When she stopped, the sound stopped as well. But when she moved again, the sound followed her. The sickly moon came out and made strange patterns on the snow.
There—a white flicker—between two trees. Vasya walked faster, clumsy on her numb feet. There was no house to run back to, no vazila to offer her strength. Her courage flickered like a guttering candle. The tree seemed to fill the world. Come here, breathed a soft, snarling voice. Closer.
Crunch. Behind her, a step that was not hers. Vasya spun. Nothing. But when she walked, the other feet kept pace.
She was twenty paces from the twisted oak. The footsteps drew nearer. It grew difficult to think. The tree seemed to fill the world. Closer. Like a child in a nightmare, Vasya did not dare look back.
The feet behind broke into a run, and there came a shrill, desiccated scream. Vasya ran as well, spending her last strength. A ragged figure appeared before her, standing beneath the tree, a hand outstretched. Its single eye gleamed with greedy triumph. I have found you first.
Then Vasya heard a new sound: the smack of galloping hooves. The figure by the tree cried to her furiously: Faster! The tree was before her, the wheezing creature behind—but to her left a white mare came galloping, swift as fire. Blind, terrified, Vasya turned toward the horse. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the upyr lunge, teeth shining in the old, dead face.
In that instant, the white mare came up alongside. The horse’s rider reached out a hand. Vasya seized it and was flung bodily across the mare’s withers. The upyr landed in the snow where she’d been. The horse tore away. Behind them came twin cries: one of pain and one of fury.
The mare’s rider did not speak. Vasya, panting, had only a moment to be grateful for the reprieve. She hung head-down over the mare’s withers, and so they rode. The girl felt as though her guts would come through her skin with each strike of the mare’s hooves, yet on and on they galloped. She couldn’t feel her face or her feet. The strong hand that had seized her out of the snow held her still, but the rider did not speak. The mare smelled unlike any horse Vasya had ever known, like strange flowers and warm stone, incongruous in the bitter night.
They ran until Vasya could not stand the pain or the cold anymore. “Please,” she gasped. “Please.”
Abruptly, bone-jarringly, they came to a halt. Vasya slid backward off the horse and fell, doubled over in the snow, numb, retching, clinging to her bruised ribs. The mare stood still. Vasya did not hear the mare’s rider dismount, but suddenly he was standing in the snow. Vasya stumbled upright on feet she coul
d no longer feel. Her head was bare to the night. It was snowing; the snowflakes tangled in her braid. She had gone beyond shivering; she felt heavy and dull.
The man looked down at her, and she up at him.
His eyes were pale as water, or winter ice.
“Please,” whispered Vasya. “I am cold.”
“Everything is cold here,” he replied.
“Where am I?”
He shrugged. “Back of the north wind. The end of the world. Nowhere at all.”
Vasya swayed suddenly and would have fallen, but the man caught her. “Tell me your name, devushka.” His voice raised strange echoes in the wood around them.
Vasya shook her head. His flesh was icy. She pulled away, stumbling. “Who are you?”
The snowflakes caught in his dark curls; his head was bare as hers. He smiled and said nothing.
“I have seen you before,” she said.
“I come with the snow,” he said. “I come when men are dying.”
She knew him. She had known him the instant his hand seized hers. “Am I dying?”
“Perhaps.” He put a cold hand beneath her jaw. Vasya felt her heart throbbing against his fingers. Then, all at once, pain struck. Her breath came short; she sank to her knees. Shards of crystal seemed to form in her blood. He knelt with her. Karachun, Vasya thought. Morozko the frost-demon. Death, this is death. They will find me frozen in the snow, like the girl in the story.
She took a breath and felt that the frost had spread to her lungs. “Let go,” she whispered. Her lips and tongue were too cold to obey. “You would not have saved me at the tree if you meant to kill me.”
The demon’s hand dropped. She fell back into the snow, gasping, doubled over.
He got to his feet. “Would I not, fool?” he said, his voice thin with anger. “What madness brought you into the forest tonight?”
Vasya forced herself to stand. “I am not here by choice.” The white mare came up behind her, blew warm breath on her cheek. Vasya buried her cold fingers in the long mane. “My stepmother was going to send me to a convent.”
His voice was alive with scorn. “And so you ran? Easier to escape a convent than the Bear.”
Vasya met his eyes. “I did not run. Well, I did run, but only…”
She could manage no more. She clung to the horse, at the end of her strength. Her head swam. The horse curved her neck around. The smell of stone and flowers revived Vasya a little; she straightened and firmed her lips.
The frost-demon came nearer. Vasya put out one hand, instinctively, to keep him back. But he caught her mittened hand in both of his. “Come then,” he said. “Look at me.” He pulled the mitten away and set his palm to hers.
Her whole body tensed, dreading the pain, but it did not come. His hand was hard and cool as river ice; it was even gentle, against her frozen fingers.
“Tell me who you are.” His voice sent a shiver of bitter air across her face.
“I…am Vasilisa Petrovna,” she said.
His eyes seemed to bore into her skull. She bit her tongue and did not look away.
“Well met, then,” said the demon. He let go and stepped back. His blue eyes threw sparks. Vasya thought she had imagined the look of triumph on his face. “Now tell me again, Vasilisa Petrovna,” he added, half-mockingly, “what are you doing wandering the black forest? This is my hour and mine alone.”
“I was to be sent to the convent at dawn,” said Vasya. “But my stepmother said I needn’t go if I brought her the white flowers of spring, the podsnezhniki.”
The frost-demon stared, and then he laughed. Vasya gazed at him in astonishment, then continued, “The men tried to stop me. But I got away. I ran into the forest. I was so frightened I couldn’t think. I meant to turn back, but I got lost. I saw the twisted oak-tree. And then I heard footsteps.”
“Folly,” the frost-demon said drily. “I am not the only power in these woods. You should not have left your hearth.”
“I had to,” Vasya rejoined. Blackness darted suddenly before her eyes. Her brief flare of strength was fading fast. “They were going to send me to a convent. I decided I would rather freeze in a snowbank.” Her skin shivered all over. “Well, that was before I began to freeze in a snowbank. It hurts.”
“Yes,” said Morozko. “Yes, it does.”
“The dead are walking,” Vasya whispered. “The domovoi will disappear if I am gone. My family will die if they send me away. I don’t know what to do.”
The frost-demon said nothing.
“I must go home now,” Vasya managed. “But I do not know where it is.”
The white mare stamped and shook her mane. Vasya’s legs suddenly buckled, as though she were a newborn foal.
“East of the sun, west of the moon,” said Morozko. “Beyond the next tree.”
Vasya did not answer. Her eyelids fluttered closed.
“Come, then,” Morozko added. “It is cold.” He caught Vasya as she was falling. Beside them stood a grove of old firs with interlaced branches. He picked the girl up. Her head and hand hung limp; her heart stirred feebly.
That was a near-run thing, said the mare to her rider, blowing a cloud of steaming breath into the girl’s face.
“Yes,” replied Morozko. “She is stronger than I dared hope. Another would have died.”
The mare snorted. You did not need to test her. The Bear has done that already. Another instant and he’d have had her first.
“Well, he did not, and we must be grateful.”
Will you tell her? asked the mare.
“Everything?” the demon said. “Of bears and sorcerers, spells made of sapphire and a witch that lost her daughter? No, of course not. I shall tell her as little as possible. And hope that it is enough.”
The mare shook her mane and her ears eased back, but the frost-demon did not see. He strode into the fir trees, the girl in his arms. The mare sighed out a breath and followed.
Some hours later, Vasya opened her eyes to find herself lying in the loveliest bed anyone had ever dreamed of. The coverlets were white wool, heavy and soft as snow. Pale blues and yellows drifted through the weave, like a sunny day in January. The bed-frame and posts were carved to look like the trunks of living trees, and over it hung a great canopy of branches.
Vasya struggled to get her bearings. The last thing she remembered: flowers, she had been looking for flowers. Why? It was December. But she had to get flowers.
Gasping, Vasya heaved herself upright, floundering in the drifts of blanket.
She saw the room and fell back, shuddering.
The room—well, if the bed was magnificent, the room was simply strange. At first Vasya thought she was lying in a grove of great trees. High above hung a vault of pale sky. But the next moment, she seemed to be indoors, in a wooden house whose ceiling was painted a thin sky-blue. But she had no idea which was real, and trying to decide made her dizzy.
At last Vasya buried her face in a blanket and decided she would go back to sleep. Surely she’d wake up at home, with Dunya by her side asking if she’d had a nightmare. No, that was wrong—Dunya was dead. Dunya was wandering the woods wrapped in the cloth they’d buried her in.
Vasya’s brain whirled. But she couldn’t remember…and then she did. The men, the priest, the convent. The snow, the frost-demon, his fingers on her throat, the cold, a white horse. He had meant to kill her. He’d saved her life.
She struggled again to sit up, but only managed to kneel among the blankets. She squinted desperately, but failed to make the room stay still. Finally she shut her eyes, and discovered the edge of the bed by tumbling over it. Her shoulder struck the floor. She thought she felt a brush of wetness, as though she had fallen into a snowdrift. No—now the ground was smooth and warm, like well-planed wood near a hearth. She thought she heard a fire crackling. She stood up, unsteadily. Someone had taken off her boots and stockings. She had frozen her feet; she saw her toes white and bloodless.
She could not look at anything in the house
. It was a room; it was a fir-grove under the open sky, and she could not decide which was which. She shut her eyes tight, stumbling on her injured feet.
“What do you see?” said a clear, strange voice.
Vasya turned toward the voice, not daring to open her eyes. “A house,” she croaked. “A fir-grove. Both together.”
“Very well,” said the voice. “Open your eyes.”
Flinching, Vasya did so. The cold man—the frost-demon—stood in the center of the room, and at least she could look at him. His dark, unruly hair hung to his shoulders. The sardonic face might have belonged to a youth of twenty or a warrior of fifty. Unlike every other man Vasya had ever seen, he was clean-shaven—perhaps that was what gave his face the odd note of youthfulness. Certainly his eyes were old. When she looked into them, she thought, I did not know anything could be that old and live. The thought made her afraid.
But stronger than fear was her resolve.
“Please,” she said. “I must go home.”
His pale stare swept her up and down. “They cast you out,” he said. “They will send you to a convent. And yet you will go home?”
She bit down hard on her lip. “The domovoi will disappear if I am not there. Perhaps my father has returned by now and I can make him understand.”
The frost-demon studied her a moment. “Perhaps,” he said at length. “But you are wounded. You are weary. Your presence will do the domovoi little good.”
“I must try. My family is in danger. How long was I asleep?”
He shook his head. A faint dry humor curled his mouth. “Here there is only today. No yesterday and no tomorrow. You may stay a year and be home just after you left. It does not matter how long you slept.”
Vasya was silent, absorbing this. At last she said, in a lower voice, “Where am I?”
The night in the snow had blurred in her memory, but she thought she remembered indifference in his face, a hint of malice and a hint of sorrow. Now he looked only amused. “My house,” he said. “As far as I have one.”
That is not helpful. Vasya bit back the words before they could escape, but they must have shown on her face.
The Bear and the Nightingale Page 24
