“Well, I have had enough of the dead coming back.” Vasya fought for a tone of icy detachment. But her voice wavered.
“I suppose you have,” he replied. But the wariness had gone from his face. “I will remember his courage, Vasya,” he said. “And yours.”
Her mouth twisted. “Always? When I am like my father, clay in the cold earth? Well, that is something, to be remembered.”
He said nothing. They looked at each other.
“What would you have of me, Vasilisa Petrovna?”
“Why did my father die?” she asked in a rush. “We need him. If anyone had to die, it should have been me.”
“It was his choice, Vasya,” replied Morozko. “It was his privilege. He would not have had it otherwise. He died for you.”
Vasya shook her head and paced a restless circle. “How did Father even know? He came to the clearing. He knew. How could he find us?”
Morozko hesitated. Then he said slowly, “He came home before the others and found you and your brother gone. He went into the woods to search. That clearing is enchanted. Until the tree dies, it will do all in its power to keep the Bear contained. It knew what was needed, better even than I. It drew your father to you, once he entered the forest.”
Vasya was silent a long moment. She looked at him narrow-eyed, and he met her gaze. At last she nodded.
Then, “There is something I must do,” Vasya said abruptly. “I need your help.”
IT HAD ALL GONE WRONG, thought Konstantin. Pyotr Vladimirovich was dead, killed by a wild beast on the threshold of his own village. Anna Ivanovna, they said, had run out into the woods in a fit of madness. Well, of course she did, he told himself. She was a madwoman and a fool; we all knew it. But he could still see her frantic, bloodless face. It hung before his waking eyes.
Konstantin read the service for Pyotr Vladimirovich scarce knowing what he said, and he ate at the funeral feast hardly knowing what he did.
But in the twilight, there came a knock at the door of his cell.
When the door opened, his breath hissed out and he stumbled back. Vasya stood in the gap, the candlelight strong on her face. She was grown so beautiful, pale and remote, graceful and troubled. Mine, she is mine. God has sent her back to me. This is his forgiveness.
“Vasya,” he said, and reached out to her.
But she was not alone. When she slipped through the door, a dark-cloaked figure unfolded from the shadows at her shoulder and glided in beside her. Konstantin could see nothing of the face, save that it was pale. The hands were very long and thin.
“Who is that, Vasya?” he said.
“I came back,” Vasya returned. “But not alone, as you see.”
Konstantin could not see the man’s eyes, so sunk were they in his skull. The hands were of a skeletal thinness. The priest licked his lips. “Who is that, girl?”
Vasya smiled. “Death,” she said. “He saved me in the forest. Or perhaps he did not, and I am a ghost. I feel a ghost tonight.”
“You are mad,” said Konstantin. “Stranger, who are you?”
The stranger said nothing.
“Alive or dead, I have come to tell you to leave this place,” said Vasya. “Go back to Moscow, to Vladimir, to Tsargrad, or to hell, but you must be gone before the snowdrops bloom.”
“My task—”
“Your task is done,” said Vasya. She stepped forward. The dark man beside her seemed to grow; his head was a skull, and blue fires burned in the sockets of his sunken eyes. “You will go, Konstantin Nikonovich. Or you will die. And your death will not be easy.”
“I will not.” But he was pressed against the wall of his chamber. His teeth rattled together.
“You will,” said Vasya. She advanced until she was near enough to touch. He could see the curve of her cheek, the implacable look in her eyes. “Or we will see to it that you are mad as my stepmother was, before the end.”
“Demons,” said Konstantin, panting. A cold sweat broke over his brow.
“Yes,” said Vasya, and she smiled, the devil’s own child. The dark figure beside her smiled, too, a slow skull’s grin.
And then they were gone, silently as they had come.
Konstantin fell to his knees before the shadows on his wall. He stretched out supplicating hands. “Come back,” begged the priest. He paused, listening. His hands shook. “Come back. You raised me up, but she scorned me. Come back.”
He thought the shadows might have shifted just a little. But he heard only silence.
“HE WILL DO IT, I think,” Vasya said.
“Very likely,” said Morozko. He was laughing. “I have never done that at another’s behest.”
“And I suppose you frighten people all the time on your own account,” said Vasya.
“I?” said Morozko. “I am only a story, Vasya.”
And it was Vasya’s turn to laugh. Then her laugh caught in her throat. “Thank you,” she said.
Morozko inclined his head. And then the night seemed to reach out and catch him up, fold him inside itself, so that there was only the dark where he had been.
THE HOUSEHOLD HAD GONE to bed, and only Irina and Alyosha sat alone in the kitchen. Vasya glided in like a shadow. Irina had been crying; Alyosha held her. Wordless, Vasya sank onto the oven-bench beside them and wrapped her arms around them both.
They were all silent awhile.
“I cannot stay here,” said Vasya, very low.
Alyosha looked at her, dull with sorrow and battle-weariness. “Are you still thinking of the convent?” he said. “Well, you needn’t think of it again. Anna Ivanovna is dead, and so is Father. I will have my own land, my own inheritance. I will look after you.”
“You must establish yourself as a lord among men,” Vasya said. “Men will look less kindly upon you when it is known that you harbor your mad sister. You know that many will blame me for all this. I am the witch-woman. Has the priest not said so?”
“Never mind that,” said Alyosha. “There is nowhere for you to go.”
“Is there not?” said Vasya. A slow fire kindled in her face, easing the lines of grief. “Solovey will take me to the ends of the earth if I ask it. I am going into the world, Alyosha. I will be no one’s bride, neither of man nor of God. I am going to Kiev and Sarai and Tsargrad, and I will look upon the sun on the sea.”
Alyosha stared at his sister. “You are mad, Vasya.”
She laughed, but the tears blurred her sight. “Entirely,” she said. “But I will have my freedom, Alyosha. Do you doubt me? I brought snowdrops to my stepmother, when I ought to have died in the forest. Father is gone; there is no one to hinder. Tell me truly, what is there for me here but walls and cages? I will be free, and I will not count the cost.”
Irina clung to her sister. “Don’t go, Vasya, don’t go. I will be good, I promise.”
“Look at me, Irinka,” said Vasya. “You are good. You are the best little girl I know. Much better than I am. But, little sister, you don’t think I am a witch. Others do.”
“That is true,” said Alyosha. He had also seen the villagers’ black stares, heard their whispers during the funeral.
Vasya said nothing.
“Unnatural thing,” said her brother, but he was sad more than angry. “Can you not be content? Men will forget about all this in time, and what you call cages is the lot of women.”
“It is not mine,” said Vasya. “I love you, Lyoshka. I love you both. But I cannot.”
Irina began to cry and clung closer.
“Don’t cry, Irinka,” added Alyosha. He was looking at his sister narrowly. “She will come back. Won’t you, Vasya?”
She nodded once. “One day. I swear it.”
“You will not be cold and hungry on the road, Vasya?”
Vasya thought of the house in the woods, of the treasures heaped there, waiting. Not a dowry now, but gems to barter, a cloak against the frost, boots…all she needed for journeying. “No,” she said. “I do not think so.”
Alyosha
nodded reluctantly. Implacable purpose shone like wildfire in his sister’s face.
“Do not forget us, Vasya. Here.” He reached up and drew off a wooden object, hanging on a leather thong about his neck. He handed it to her. It was a little carven bird, with worn outspread wings.
“Father made it for mother,” said Alyosha. “Wear it, little sister, and remember.”
Vasya kissed them both. Her hand closed tight around the wooden thing. “I swear it,” she said again.
“Go,” said Alyosha. “Before I tie you to the oven and make you stay.” But his eyes too were wet.
Vasya slipped outside. Just as she touched the threshold, there came her brother’s voice again, “Go with God, little sister.”
Even when the kitchen door swung shut behind her, it was not enough to muffle the sound of Irina’s weeping.
SOLOVEY WAS WAITING FOR her just outside the palisade. “Come,” Vasya said. “Will you bear me to the ends of the earth, if the road will take us so far?” She was crying as she spoke, but the horse nuzzled away her tears.
His nostrils flared to catch the evening wind. Anywhere, Vasya. The world is wide, and the road will take us anywhere.
She swung onto the stallion’s back and he was away, swift and silent as a night-flying bird.
Soon enough, Vasya saw a fir-grove, and firelight glancing between the trees, spilling gold into the snow.
The door opened. “Come in, Vasya,” Morozko said. “It is cold.”
Students and speakers of Russian will surely note, and possibly deplore, my wildly unsystematic approach to transliteration.
I can almost hear the hand-wringing of readers, who will be asking, for example, by what possible method could I have gotten vodianoy from the Russian водяной and then have turned around and gotten domovoi from the Russian домовой, a word with an identical ending?
The answer is that in transliterating, I had two aims.
First, I sought to render Russian words in such a way as to retain a bit of their exotic flavor. This is the reason I rendered Константин as Konstantin rather than the more familiar Constantine, and Дмитрий as Dmitrii rather than Dmitri.
Second, and more important, I wanted these Russian words to be reasonably pronounceable and aesthetically pleasing to speakers of English.
I like the way vodianoy looks on the page, just as I like the look of the name Aleksei (Алексей) but preferred to render the name Соловей as Solovey.
I dropped any attempt to indicate hard and soft signs, with apostrophes or otherwise, as these have absolutely no meaning for the average English-speaking reader. The only exception is in the word Rus’, where the extensive use of that spelling with the apostrophe in historiography has made it the most familiar of any to English-speaking readers.
To students of Russian history, I can say only that I have tried to be as faithful as possible to a poorly documented time period. When I have taken liberties with the historical record—for example, in making Prince Vladimir Andreevich older than Dmitrii Ivanovich (he was actually a few years younger) and marrying him to a girl named Olga Petrovna—it was for dramatic purposes, and I hope my readers will indulge me.
BABA YAGA—An old witch who appears in many Russian fairy tales. She rides around on a mortar, steering with a pestle and sweeping her tracks away with a broom of birch. She lives in a hut that spins round and round on chicken legs.
BANNIK—“Bathhouse dweller,” the bathhouse guardian in Russian folklore.
BAST SHOES—Light shoes made of bast, the inner bark of a birch tree. They were easy to make, but not durable. Called lapti.
BATYUSHKA—Literally, “little father,” used as a respectful mode of address for Orthodox ecclesiastics.
BOGATYR—A legendary Slavic warrior, something like a Western European knight-errant.
BOLOTNIK—Swamp-dweller, swamp-demon.
BOYAR—A member of the Kievan or, later, the Muscovite aristocracy, second in rank only to a knyaz, or prince.
BURAN—Snowstorm.
BUYAN—A mysterious island in the ocean, credited in Slavic mythology with the ability to appear and disappear. It figures in several Russian folktales.
DEVOCHKA—Little girl.
DEVUSHKA—Young woman, maiden.
DOCHKA—Daughter.
DOMOVOI—In Russian folklore, the guardian of the household, the household-spirit.
DURAK—Fool; feminine form dura.
DVOR—Yard, or dooryard.
DVOROVOI—In Russian folklore, the guardian of the dvor, or yard. Also, the janitor in modern usage.
ECUMENICAL PATRIARCH—The supreme head of the Eastern Orthodox Church, based in Constantinople (modern Istanbul).
GOSPODIN—Form of respectful address to a male, more formal than the English “mister.” Might be translated as “lord.”
GOSUDAR—A term of address akin to “Your Majesty” or “Sovereign.”
GRAND PRINCE (VELIKIY KNYAZ)—The title of a ruler of a major principality, for example, Moscow, Tver, or Smolensk, in medieval Russia. The title tsar did not come into use until Ivan the Terrible was crowned in 1547.
HOLY FOOL—A yurodivy, or Fool in Christ, was one who gave up his worldly possessions and devoted himself to an ascetic life. Their madness (real or feigned) was believed to be divinely inspired, and often they would speak truths that others dared not voice.
ICONOSTASIS (ICON-SCREEN)—A wall of icons with a specific layout that separates the nave from the sanctuary in an Eastern Orthodox church.
IZBA—A peasant’s house, small and made of wood, often with carved embellishments. The plural is izby.
KASHA—Porridge. Can be made of buckwheat, wheat, rye, millet, or barley.
KOKOSHNIK—A Russian headdress. There are many styles of kokoshniki, depending on the locale and the era. Generally the word refers to the closed headdress worn by married women, though maidens also wore headdresses, open in back. The wearing of kokoshniki was limited to the nobility. The more common form of head covering for a medieval Russian woman was a headscarf or kerchief.
KREMLIN—A fortified complex at the center of a Russian city. Although modern English usage has adopted the word kremlin to refer solely to the most famous example, the Moscow Kremlin, there are actually kremlins to be found in most historic Russian cities.
KVAS—A fermented beverage made from rye bread.
LESHY—Also called the lesovik, the leshy was a woodland spirit in Slavic mythology, protector of forests and animals.
LESNAYA ZEMLYA—Literally, “Land of the Forest.”
LITTLE BROTHER—English rendering of the Russian endearment bratishka. Can be applied to both older and younger siblings.
LITTLE SISTER—English rendering of the Russian endearment sestryonka. Can be applied to both older and younger siblings.
MEAD—Honey wine, made by fermenting a solution of honey and water.
METROPOLITAN—A high official in the Orthodox church. In the middle ages, the Metropolitan of the church of the Rus’ was the highest Orthodox authority in Russia and was appointed by the Byzantine Patriarch.
MYSH—Mysh’, mouse.
OGON—Ogon’, fire.
OVEN—The Russian oven, or pech’, is an enormous construction that came into wide use in the fifteenth century for both cooking and heating. A system of flues ensured even distribution of heat, and whole families would often sleep on top of the oven to keep warm during the winter.
PODSNEZHNIK—Snowdrop, a small white flower that blooms in early spring.
PYOS—Dog, cur.
RUS’—The Rus’ were originally a Scandinavian people. In the ninth century C.E., at the invitation of warring Slavic and Finnic tribes, they established a ruling dynasty, the Rurikids, that eventually comprised a large swath of what is now Ukraine, Belarus, and Western Russia. The territory they ruled was eventually named after them, as were the people living under their dynasty. The word Rus’ has lasted into the present day, as we can see i
n the names of Russia and Belarus.
RUSALKA—In Russian folklore, a female water nymph, something like a succubus.
RUSSIA—From the thirteenth through the fifteenth century, there was no unified polity called Russia. Instead, the Rus’ lived under a disparate collection of rival princes (knyazey) who owed their ultimate allegiance to Mongol overlords. The word Russia did not come into common use until the seventeenth century. Thus, in the medieval context, one would not refer to “Russia,” but rather to the “land of the Rus’,” or simply “Rus’.”
RUSSIAN—There are two adjectives in the Russian language, russkiy and rossiyskiy, that each translate to “Russian” in English. The first, russkiy, refers specifically to the Russian people and culture without distinction or boundaries. Rossiyskiy refers specifically to the modern Russian state. When the word Russian is used in the novel, I always intend the former meaning.
SARAFAN—A dress that looks something like a jumper or pinafore, with shoulder straps, worn over a long-sleeved blouse. This garment actually came into common use only in the early fifteenth century. I included it in the novel slightly before its time because of how strongly this manner of dress evokes fairy-tale Russia to the Western reader.
SOLOVEY—Nightingale.
STARIK—Old man.
SYNOK—An affectionate diminutive derived from the word syn, meaning “son.”
TSAR—The word Tsar is derived from the Latin word Caesar, and originally was used to designate the Roman emperor (imperator), and later the Byzantine emperor, in Old Church Slavonic texts. In this novel, therefore, the word Tsar refers to the Byzantine emperor in Constantinople (or Tsargrad, literally “city of the tsar”) and not to a Russian potentate. Ivan IV (Ivan the Terrible) was the first Russian Grand Prince to take the title Tsar of All the Russias, almost two hundred years following the fictional events of The Bear and the Nightingale. Russian rulers assumed the title of Tsar, because, following the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in 1453, they considered Moscow to be the “Third Rome,” the heir of Constantinople’s spiritual authority among Orthodox Christians.
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