The Collected Short Fiction of C J Cherryh

by C. J. Cherryh

  White. All was white. He looked all about, suddenly dreading the slinking form that might be within that whiteness, itself immaculate and swift as the northwind. He imagined that he might see suddenly two strange darknesses staring at him, wolfish slanted; pink lolling tongue, and white, white teeth.

  He looked behind him, turning with a start. With haste he seized hard upon the rope and followed it, pushed through a wall of blowing snow, stumbled against the buried porch and climbed to the door, found it frozen shut. His nape prickled, and he would not look back. Something breathed there, in the silence of the howling wind, and he would not turn to see. He rapped at the door, called those inside, refusing panic. But the silence grew, and he could hardly move from the chill in his bones when the door opened and Anna and Ilya snatched him inside.

  "Oh, he is cold," Anna said, and they hastened him to the fire in the inmost hall, sitting him there to strip off his furs; they heated blankets before the fire and wrapped him in them, then brought him tea. All the house gathered, murmuring at some vast distance, and the children came and touched his cold hands, as did Anna and Dya's mother, who hugged him and chafed his fingers and kissed his brow, greatly concerned. But from the mantle above the fire Itya's wolf stared back at him.

  They danced that night, and drank and sang; he drank much and laughed and yet—the silence was there.

  He lay in bed that night and dreamed of blue nights and still snows, and that white shape which ran with the wind, amid moon-twinkling snowflakes and over drifts, never leaving a mark upon them.

  The next day dawned clear and bright.

  The whole of Moskva seemed to smile in the day, colored eaves peeking out from the deep drifts which lay between the houses, children and elders bundled like thick-limbed and thickly mittened dolls out breaking through the drifts to walk the streets and visit kin and friends. The Orlov children squealed with delight, breaking up the drifts to the stables, and breaking icicles off the eaves of the porch. Some children had sleds out on the streets, and the children clamored for their own.

  But Andrei met the morning with less cheer, quietly put on his outdoor boots - and his warm furs, took his gear out and saddled Umnik, who was restive and full of argument. He said no word to Anna or her parents, none to Ilya, only smiled bleakly at the children who grew quieter looking at him, and, stopping their sledding, stood like a row of huddled birds by the fence as he rode through the gate and passed down the street.

  "Good morning," the neighbors said cheerfully, pausing in their snow-shoveling. "A good morning to you, Andrei Vasilyevitch." He nodded absently and kept going. "Good morning," said white-bearded Pyotr by the gatehouse, and he forgot to return the greeting, but got down off Umnik and helped the gate wardens heave the gates inward, got up again on Umnik's back. The pony tossed his shaggy head and advanced on the drift which barred their way, lurched through it and onto smoother going, toward the bridge and the open land, snuffing the cold crisp air with red-veined nostils and pricking up his ears as he thumped across the bridge and jogged toward the hills.

  The sun climbed higher still, until it passed noon. Andrei wrapped his scarf about his face to warm his breath, and omitted the eyeshields, for there was still haze in the heavens, and the snow lay white and thick everywhere. There were few tracks, no promise of good hunting; the snow had not been long enough to turn the beasts desperate and reckless . . nor was the day warm enough to tempt them out of hiding. He should have waited a day, but the thought of the dark loft and sitting before the fire with nothing to do oppressed him. In idleness he had evil memory for company. He came out to deny it, to laugh at it, to hunt and to win this time.

  He was afraid. He had never felt the like before. Even in the bright, clear daylight he felt what he had felt in that ride to the gates, with the wolves baying at his back. He was afraid of fear. . . for the hunt was his livelihood, and when he feared too much, he could not come outside the walls.

  He rose in his stirrups and looked back, settled forward again as he rode. They were long out of sight of the city's wooden walls; snowy hills and snowy fields stretched in all directions but the south, where forest stood thickly whited and iced. There was no sound but Umnik's regular moving, the creak of harness, and the whuff of breath.

  Umnik moved more slowly now, having run out his first wind, wading almost knee-deep along the trail. And there was such beauty in the white snow that his fear grew less. He stopped the horse and turned and looked all about him, heard a rapid, doggish panting at his back.

  He spun, hauling at the reins, and Umnik shied in the deep drift, rose on hind legs, almost falling.

  Nothing was there. He steadied the horse and patted it, and nothing was there. The light grew; the clouds parted. He reached for the eyeshields as the snows gathered the sunflares, misted gold and rose and amber; Umnik stood still, and Andrei stopped with the eyeshields in his hand. . . feeling a fascination for that light—for light had concealed the Wolf. He looked to the far hills—and to the sky, into the sun. He had never looked up in his life, save a furtive glance to know the condition of the sky—but not to see it. It smote his heart. And he looked north. The wolf was there, standing watchfully on the surface of a new drift, and its eyes were like the sun, and its coat was touched with the subtle shifting colors.

  He whipped Umnik and rode; he never remembered beginning. . . but he and Umnik skimmed the snows in terror, the white wolf never far.

  At last the city was before them, and he took the horn from his side to blow, but the sound of it seemed dim. Umnik faltered, and he whipped the pony, drove him, up to the approach to the city, across the wooden bridge and to the southern gate, while white shapes leaped and plunged about him and voices howled, far and still, as if his hearing were dulled, and all the world was wrapped in cold. Umnik slowed as they came to the opening gates, but he whipped the pony harder, and rode upon the streets, hooves skidding on the snow, and startled citizens and children with a sled scurried from the horse's path. He stopped, looked about, and the gates were closing slowly. "The wolves," he cried, but Pyotr the gate warden looked strangely at him, continuing to heave at the gates.

  Nothing had been there. The wolves were in his own eyes. He knew this suddenly, and the cold grew deeper in his heart.

  "Are you all right, Andrei?" Pyotr asked.

  He nodded, cold and shamed by the death he saw for himself. He reached vaguely for Umnik's reins, remembered how he had beaten the pony, and patted his neck as he led Umnik away down the street. Umnik shook himself, walked slowly and with head hanging, as if perhaps a bit of the coldness had come into his heart too, as if it had been driven there with blows.

  He did not go home. He went to the house of old Mischa the hunter, which huddled small and antlered and not so bright as others between the market stalls and the public baths. Snow had drifted heavily there, almost buried it to the eaves on one side. The stone head of a forgotten hero loomed up, peering out of the snow with only the dimmest impression of features. He walked upon the porch and tied Umnik to its rail, stamped his boots and opened the first door, walked across the inner porch and rapped at the second.

  There was no answer, no forbidding. "Mischa," he called, "it's Andrei Gorodin." He walked in, sweltering already in the warmth within, redolent with the smell of boiling oils and burned grease and dried herbs that was Mischa's house; antlers were everywhere, and feathers and a clutter of oddments. And a huddle of blankets before the fire. . . that was Mischa himself, a wrinkled face and dark narrow eyes and a skein of grisled hair trailing from his hood. One hand held a bundle of herbs which he had been crumbling into a saucer; there was no left hand: a wolf had gotten that, when Mischa had been a hunter himself. . . but that was before Andrei had been born. Andrei crouched down and met Mischa's sightless eyes.

  "So?" asked Mischa.

  The question stopped behind his lips. And slowly Mischa's hand lifted, touched his face spiderwise, drifted to his chest as if it searched for something there as well.
/>   "A visit with no questions, Andrei Vasilyevitch?"

  "I have lost my luck, Mischa."

  "So." Mischa dipped up water from the kettle, ladled it into the bowl, passed it to him. He took the bowl in gloved hands, inhaled the vapor, sipped the surface, for there was danger in heat so intense after the cold outside. He drank more after a moment, but the cold did not leave, nor the veil on the world dimmish.

  "I see wolves," Andrei said.

  The darkened eyes rested on his, wrinkle-girt as though they were set in cracked stone.

  "A white wolf," Andrei said. "Snow white. Ice white."

  Old Mischa crumbled more herbs into yet another bowl, ladled in more water, drank, black eyes hooded.

  "I shot at it," Andrei said. "But it was there again today. I've looked into the sun, Mischa."

  Mischa stared at him as if the eyes could see.

  "What shall I do, old hunter?"

  Mischa moved his left hand, showing the stump. "Appease it," he said. "That is all you can hope to do."

  Andrei set down the bowl, wrapped his furred arms the tighter about him, gazed at the old hunter. Wizard. Seer of visions-who had had the white sickness—and lived.

  "You have looked," the seer said. "You have talked to the wind and heard it answer; you have run ahead of the wolf. And the light has got into your eyes, as it did your father's, my old friend. It took all of him. I gave it part of me. And I am still alive, Andrei Vasilyevitch. Your mother birthed you and pined away; and so they both went. But I am still alive, friend's son."

  Andrei stumbled up and hurried for the door, looked back at the wizened face shrouded in gray hood, single hand cupping the bowl. He felt the cold even greater than before, on face and in heart, wherever the blind hunter's fingers had touched. "I will bring your fee," he said, "on my next hunt, a fat rabbit or two, Mischa."

  "I take nothing," the old man said. "Not from you, until you see, Andrei Vasilyevitch."

  He fled the house, stamped outside and closed the outer door. Umnik waited. He walked down the step to the pony, and noticed for the first time how the paint was peeling on the house opposite, how all the colors of Moskva looked gaudy, how stained the snow and how disarrayed the people, bundled in mismatched furs.

  Slowly, with a squinting of his eye and a turning of his shoulder, he looked up. Colors shifted in the sky, danced along the rooftops, ran the ridges, streaming glories of pink and gold. This was beauty. About him was painted ugliness.

  All his heart longed to go on looking, to go out to the ice and ride into the north, into the pure fair beauty.

  But the Wolf was there. And the beauty killed.

  He shuddered, took Umnik's reins and walked slowly into the street, walked down it among people who stared curiously and whispered behind their hands. This was the wasting. He knew now. . . what drank up the souls of those who took ill with the sickness. It was vision. It was looking on all that hands made and knowing that one had only to look up—and having looked, to yield to that blankness which would exist after all the world was done. To measure one's self and one's acts against that white sheet, and to find them small, and unlovely after all.

  Beauty waited, outside the walls, near as a look at the unguarded sky; beauty waited. . . and the Wolf did.

  Appease it, the old hunter said, no longer a hunter, Mischa who saw no more sunrises, who had given a part of himself to the wolves. . . to the Wolf.

  He went home. Ilya and Ivan Nikolaev ran outside to meet him, and the women and children too, concerned for him. Anna came, and Katya, each hugging him. Quietly he took the harness from Umnik and expected he should go away to his stable. . . but Umnik stood. "Take him," he bade little Ivan, and the boy led the pony away. Andrei looked after the plodding horse and shivered. He felt within his gloved hand another hand, felt a touch upon his arm. . . . He looked into Anna's loving eyes, into her face, saw flaws which he had never seen before, the length of nose, the breadth of cheek, the imperfection of her brow. On it was the tiny fleck of a scar, not centered, and her hair, which he had always thought bright as the sunset on snow, was dull, the braids lusterless against the snowflakes blowing upon them, tiny stars sticking in the loose hair. . . . This was beauty, recalling cold, and fear.

  "Come in," Anna urged him, and he surrendered the harness to Ilya, walked with Anna's hand in his, before them all to the house and the inner porch. He shed his outdoor boots and furs, and greeted the children indoors with a touch of his hand and greeted the old ones by the hearth with a kiss, seeing everywhere mortality, man's short span, and smallness.

  "Andrei?" Anna sat by him, near the fireside, taking his hand again. He kissed and held hers because it was kind, but love and hope were dried up in him. . . a hunter who could not go outside the walls again, who sat with his soul withering within him.

  There was nothing beautiful among men. There was only that beauty above and about Moskva. It would draw the mind from him, or cost the light of his eyes. He stared into the fire, and it was nothing to the brilliance of the sun on ice.

  A silence settled about him, whether it was the silence of the house, that they knew there was something amiss with him, or the silence in his soul. He thought how easy it should be, how direly easy tomorrow noon, to walk outside, to stare at the sun until he had no more sight, but even then, there would be the memory.

  He thought again and again of old Mischa, who had lost his eyes and lost his hand. . . appease it: but which had gone first, which availed against the Wolf? He should have asked.

  "Andrei?" Hya took his arm. He heard someone weeping by him, perhaps Anna, or some other one who loved him. Perhaps it was himself. He saw Hya's face before his, much concerned, saw a hand pass before his eyes, heard them all discussing his plight, but he could not come back from that far place and argue with them. He had no desire in him.

  They fed him, set food into his hands; and he ate, hardly tasting it. At last Anna took his face between her Soft hands and kissed him on the brow; as mother Katya did. "What is wrong with Andrei?" a child's voice asked. He would have explained to the child but someone else did: "He is ill. He is hurt. Go to bed, child."

  "His hands are cold," said another; and Anna's voice: "Lock the doors. Oh, lock the doors, don't let him stray." Some did walk away to die, taken with the wasting, who sought the night, and frozen death.

  "I shall not go," he said, great effort to speak; and no easier when he had done it. It cheered them all. They hugged him and chafed his hands.

  "Perhaps," said Anna's still, faraway voice, "he only looked up a little moment. Perhaps he will get well."

  "He will," someone vowed, but he was not sure who. Easier to retreat, back into that far place, but they gave him no peace.

  "I will see him to bed," Hya said. "Go, sleep. I will take care of him. No, Anna—Anna, please go."

  Someone kissed him, gently, sadly. The house fell then slowly into silence. He rested, staring at the fire, disturbed only when Ilya would reach to stir the embers. "Will you go upstairs?" Dya asked at last. "Dare you sleep?"

  He roused himself out of kindness to them who loved him, rose, and rising, caught at the mantlepiece, stared fixedly at the face of Hya's carven wolf, which seemed starker and truer than all else in the room. He looked at the other work which Ilya had made, the carven mantle itself, ran his fingers over the writhing wooden vines and leaves, touched the carven flowers, traced the gaudy, garish colors.

  "I have seen beauty," he said. "Hya, you do not know. It waits out there—"

  "Andrei," Hya said.

  "I have seen colors. . . you have never seen." Hya reached out and turned his face toward him, lightly slapped his cheek. There was a terrible pain in Hya's face, like Anna's pain. "Tell me," Ilya said. He thought of it, and would not.

  "Andrei, if you go, Anna will follow. Do you understand? Anna loves you; and you will never go alone."

  He thought of this too, and deep within, tainted by self and small, there was a kindness where love had been, that wa
s the other pole which drew him. The death outside pulled at him, but within the walls there was a bond to living souls, so that at last he knew what he ought to choose, which was Mischa's way. He would not wish this torment on those who loved him. Not on Anna. "Is there still sun?" he asked. "No," Ilya said softly. "The sun has gone."

  "Tomorrow then."

  "What, tomorrow?" Ilya asked. "What will be tomorrow?" It was hard to resist Hya, close to him—so long his friend. Brother. Other self. "There was a wolf," he said slowly, leaning there against the mantel, and fingering the carvings Hya's hand had made. "I hunted it. . . and it hunts me. I have talked with old Mischa, do you know, Ilya? And Mischa knows that beast. Mischa said I must appease it, and then I shall be free; and so I shall. You love beauty, Hya, and I hunted it, and I have seen it. . . out there, I have seen the sun, and the light, and the ice, and I am cold, Ilya. I shall look now by little stolen moments and sooner or later I will have to go outside the walls. Then it will be waiting there."

  "Anna—would follow you. Do you understand that, Andrei? How much she loves you?"

  He nodded. "So," he said, still staring at the wolf, "so I shall not wish to go. I shall try not to, Hya."

  "What. . . did you see?"

  He looked into Hya's eyes, and saw there a touch of that same cold. Of furtive desire. "No," he said. "Let be. Don't stay near me. Let me be."

  "So that you can go, and die?"

  He shrugged. Ilya stared at him, distraught. He patted Ilya's shoulder, walked away to the ladder to the loft. Stopped, for he could hear the wind outside, calling him, to the wolf. "It's there," he said. "Just outside."