by E. P. Clark
“Will we?” asked Dasha. “How? How will we know? What if we miss it?”
“We won’t, Tsarinovna.”
“But…”
“We won’t, Tsarinovna,” the domovaya told her. “Chances like this aren’t missed. Now come. We need to return you to your chamber before your absence is discovered. And,” she winked at Dasha, “someone needs to find a certain bear chained up in a certain stall. Perhaps you should ask to go see him tomorrow. You know, for entertainment.”
“I don’t want to see him for entertainment,” objected Dasha.
“Well, for justice, then. You need to be there to ensure that justice is done. Even if you do not want to, Tsarinovna,” she added, seeing the reluctance on Dasha’s face. “Not all justice is pretty, or satisfying, but sometimes it must be done, and it is better done by someone like you, who doesn’t like it and doesn’t believe in it, then by someone who does. The just should not administer justice. As you will see, even if you cannot now. Morning is wiser than evening, after all. Now come. Take my hand.” She stretched out her hand and stepped into the shadows.
Chapter Thirteen
They stepped out of the shadows in the corner by the fireplace. It was already growing light, but not light enough for Dasha to avoid tripping over her own feet and falling onto the bed with a loud thump.
“Tsarinovna?” Mitya knocked on the door. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” she called back.
“You’re not having a fit?”
“No, I just fell.”
“What are you doing up, Tsarinovna?”
Several replies flitted through her mind, none of them appropriate. “I wanted a drink of water,” she told him.
“Oh. Well, that’s all right then. Call me if you need anything.”
“I will,” she promised. She waited until she could hear him move away from the door, and then whispered to the domovaya, “What am I going to do about this?”
“About what, Tsarinovna?”
“I’m filthy! How am I going to explain that?”
“You could tell the truth, Tsarinovna.”
“I can’t tell the truth!”
“Why not, Tsarinovna?”
“Because…because…I wasn’t supposed to leave this room!”
“And yet you did. Perhaps those who locked you in here need to know that.”
“Perhaps,” said Dasha doubtfully. She tried to imagine how Aunty Olga, and Oleg, and everyone else, would react to the story of her midnight adventure. She could envision a number of possibilities, none of them good. Her reasoning still seemed perfectly sound to her, but she doubted that any of them would see it that way. “What about the bear?” she asked. “Ah, not the real bear, that is. The man you turned into a bear. What about him?”
“What about him, Tsarinovna?”
“What’s going to happen to him?”
“That depends on you, Tsarinovna. What do you want to happen to him?”
“I…” Dasha remembered, felt, all the horrible things that had happened to the bear, the real bear. Many of them had been at his hand. “I want to do terrible things to him,” she said. “But I shouldn’t. I should rescue him.”
“May you have much luck with that, Tsarinovna,” said the domovaya. “I will leave you to it.”
“But what if I need you?”
“Then call for me, Tsarinovna. We will come for you when you call, and the third time of calling will be the one that pays for all the others. Sleep well, Tsarinovna.” The domovaya blinked her dark little eyes at her, and stepped into the shadows.
***
Dasha changed out of her clothes into her nightgown, and washed herself off as best she could with the water from the ewer on the table, but she was, she could tell, still dirty, as were her clothes. Then she settled down onto the bed and tried to go to sleep, but her head was stuffed so full of everything that had happened that night that her body was tingling and twitching all over, and the chamber was growing lighter and lighter, and birds were tweeting and chirping and making such a tremendous racket that it was a wonder there was a person still asleep in all of Lesnograd. After a while of this, when it was inarguably morning, if by “morning” one meant that the sun was above the horizon, Dasha gave up on sleep and tried to read the book Alik had brought her. It was old and stained and losing some of its pages, and was titled—she squinted—Spirits of the North.
Why did he bring me this? she said to herself, her voice sounding like a grumble even inside her head. Why couldn’t he have brought me a nice book of tales. I asked for tales! This is bound to be boring! But since she didn’t have anything else to do, she opened it, releasing a cloud of dust and a couple of torn pages, and started reading.
The North is thickly peopled with spirits, she read, more so than other provinces and districts, and they mingle more easily with ordinary mortals than elsewhere.
Well, she had just seen evidence of that with her own eyes. Perhaps Alik hadn’t been so wrong in bringing her this book after all.
All the animals of the North have spirit forms, and
Dasha sneezed violently and dropped the book. When she picked it up, another page fell out. She retrieved the page and began reading it.
Vodyaniye, the spirits of the water, are unique in having many forms. Some say they appear as fish, and some as frogs, and some as watersnakes or eels. It appears that they can change their shape at will. They are the most maleficent of the spirits, along with their kin the water-maidens, and will often drown those who fall afoul of them. They fear fire, but fire has no power in their watery domain. It is said that if one could bring fire and water together, that person could have no fear of the vodyaniye and water-maidens. It is unlucky to
Dasha was running through the tall grass. Something was running alongside her, just out of sight. Was it pursuing her—or was it guarding her? Both, perhaps. She could hear its heavy footsteps and heavier breathing, but could not make out its shape. She looked around wildly, but all she could see was grass.
Suddenly a ravine opened up before her, but she ran lightly across it on a shaking bridge of two birch poles, and was on the other side with barely a hesitation. She kept running and running, as her lumbering companion kept to her left side, just out of sight.
Something was moving through the grass on the right. Something horrible. Dasha tried to veer to the left, but the ground there, which a moment ago had been a flat plain, dropped off dizzily to a sheer cliff, forcing her to continue on straight. Her companion to the left was gone, leaving only the looming unseen presence to the right.
The grass suddenly ended in front of her, and she was teetering on the edge of a riverbank, the water snaking under the stars far below her. She clutched at a tree growing at an angle out of the edge of the bank. It moved under her hand.
“AAAAKH!” screamed Dasha, and tumbled over the edge of the bank. She could see the stars in the sky above her, and the same stars reflected in the water far, far below her, but now rushing up to meet her. She clutched desperately at the air, but her hands met nothing but flame. Because they were on fire. They were filled with flame, for the all the good it did her. The water was about to hit her, it was about to hit her, it was about to hit her…
“AKH!” cried Dasha, as the book fell out of her grasp and hit her in the face. She pushed it away from her and sat up. She must have fallen asleep.
“Tsarinovna?” called Mitya through the door. “Are you all right?”
“I just…I just…I was reading and I dropped my book,” she told him.
“That’s why you shouldn’t read, Tsarinovna,” he told her cheerfully. “If you’re up, I’ll send for some breakfast for you. They must be up in the kitchens at least. Do you want anything else?”
“A new book?” she called. “I asked for a book of tales, but this one is”—she picked it up and squinted at it. The title now read A Compilation of Tales of Northern Zem’. “Never mind,” she said, hoping she was the only one who could
hear how her voice was shaking.
***
Dasha expected her escape to be discovered over breakfast, but Mitya slipped the tray to her with nothing more than a brief glance, and seemed to notice nothing unusual about her appearance. This made her hope that no one else would notice anything either, but those hopes were dashed when Aunty Olga came bursting into her chamber, followed more circumspectly by Apraksiya Bozhenovna, and immediately cried out, “How did you get so dirty! What have you done!”
“The domoviye came for me,” Dasha told her. “Well, a domovaya.”
This response rocked Aunty Olga back on her heels for a moment. “What? Why? What do the domoviye have to do with any of this? And how did they get you so dirty?”
“They want me,” Dasha told her. “To come train with them. They keep coming after me.”
“Tfoo!” cried Aunty Olga, spitting to the side in disgust. “But why are you so dirty?” she asked.
“The one who came for me—she took me outside. To that bear.” Dasha rushed on as Aunty Olga’s face darkened. “As a sign of good faith, she helped me rescue that bear, the one who was at the market, being forced to dance.”
“Tsk! Why you have such a bee in your bonnet about that bear…”
“So we went to where he was being kept, and we took him out into the woods, and then…the gods took him. He couldn’t live on his own, not after everything that had happened to him, but they took him as one of their servants.”
“You can’t just steal someone’s bear!” Aunty Olga exclaimed in dismay.
“They did. The people who captured him as a cub. They stole him from his parents when they took him, and from himself when they kept him.”
Aunty Olga couldn’t seem to think of a good reply to that, and so tsked in frustration again, before saying, “You didn’t do him any favors, you know. You can’t just set something free and expect it to thrive. He’ll die out there, like as not he’s already dead!”
“Weren’t you listening?” Dasha’s outburst caused Aunty Olga to bridle and shake her head, but Dasha hurried on before she could respond. “I didn’t set him free. The gods took him! He’s their servant now! They’ll watch over him!”
“You didn’t do him any favors with that, either,” said Aunty Olga, the corners of her mouth turning down so that the lines between her mouth and nose stood out sharply. “And now what are we going to do? What are going to do for his owner, now that you’ve stolen his bear from him, like as not his only source of livelihood?”
Dasha had several sharp retorts she wanted to make to that, but instead she said, “Why don’t we go see him?”
Aunty Olga gave her a suspicious look. “Go see him?”
“Yes,” Dasha said. “Why don’t we go see him?”
“I don’t know…in your condition…”
“I’m not with child,” Dasha said tartly. “I’m not even really ill. You just think I am.”
“Tell her!” Aunty Olga turned to Apraksiya Bozhenovna. “Tell her she mustn’t go running about!”
“In truth, Olga Vasilisovna…” Apraksiya Bozhenovna stepped forward. “I don’t know that it would do her any harm to go out. Here, let me examine you, child.” She sat Dasha down on the bed, and placed her hands on Dasha’s temples.
The soothing warmth that Dasha had felt the last time Apraksiya Bozhenovna had touched her spread out across her head once again, followed by the relief of aches and pains she hadn’t even known she had had. Even her heart felt lighter.
“I still cannot say whether or not she has the falling sickness,” said Apraksiya Bozhenovna, removing her hands from Dasha’s temples. “But I do not believe she is in any greater danger of falling into a mortal fit today than she was in the past, and keeping her caged in here could only make her more anxious, and increase her chances of falling into a fit. A gentle excursion might be good for her.” She winked at Dasha. “It might set her mind at ease, at least, and that is the most important thing in her condition.”
Aunty Olga grumbled for a while about that, and about interfering, highhanded domoviye and flighty-headed girls who didn’t know what was good for them and who couldn’t be bothered to consider the trouble and heartache they caused others. She seemed to take Dasha’s midnight adventure as a personal betrayal, with no thoughts of how her attempts to confine Dasha against her will were a betrayal as well. But with Apraksiya Bozhenovna’s gentle persuasion, she eventually gave in and agreed that they would all go to see the erstwhile owner of the bear, “So you can make your apologies, and provide him recompense,” she told Dasha sternly. “And don’t look at me like that, my girl! Why are you looking at me like that?!”
“I was just wondering how often you yourself have apologized for doing similar things,” said Dasha.
This caused more grumbling on Aunty Olga’s part, as well as a hearty sniff, but she then told Dasha to wash up, get dressed in clean clothes that would be sent to her, and be ready to leave promptly, so that she could go witness the consequences of her actions.
***
There was a minor scene when a serving girl came and, standing outside the door and speaking in a quavering voice, called for Dasha to hand over all her old clothes to be washed and mended, and put on the new clothes that had been brought for her. Dasha, acting mainly out of sheer pigheadedness (as she admitted to herself), said she didn’t want to hand over her old clothes, since they had been sewn for her specially by sorceress-seamstresses from the black earth district, and they had kept her safe on her journey North. This made the serving girl to call back, sounding as if she were about to burst into tears, that Olga Vasilisovna had very particularly ordered her to take all the Tsarinovna’s old things away to be washed, and have her put on clean clothes.
“You’re not going to take away my clothes!” Dasha shouted back, feeling like a fool as she did so, but unable to stop herself.
“By all the gods, Tsarinovna, just give her the clothes and put on the clean sarafan she’s brought you!” shouted Alik through the door.
“What are you doing here?” she shouted back. “Where’s Mitya?”
“It’s my turn now. And no one else wants to deal with you, anyway. Just put on the clean clothes and we can leave. Please, Tsarinovna? It will make Olga Vasilisovna happy.”
“I don’t see why she cares!” cried Dasha, hating the petulant sound of her voice, but giving it free rein anyway.
“Just between you and me, Tsarinovna…” Dasha could hear Alik come up and lean against the door, and she instinctively came up and leaned against the opposite side of the door, so that there was nothing but a piece of wood between them. She thought she could feel the warmth of his body through the door, but that was most likely just her fancy. “Just between you and me,” he repeated in a low voice, “she thinks your clothes are magic.”
“They are! So I can’t let anyone take them away from me! I need them!”
“So it was the clothes that let you slip out from under my nose last night?”
“Well…no. That was the domovaya.”
“Sounds to me like you don’t need those clothes at all, then, Tsarinovna. You’ve already got so much magic on your side; whatever spells are stitched into those clothes aren’t going to make a bit of difference. Plus they’re all falling to pieces. Pretty soon they’re just going to fall right off you, and then where will you be?”
Dasha couldn’t help but smile at that thought, and she was sure that Alik was smiling too. “Fine,” she said. “But I want them back!”
“I’ll be sure to tell the seamstresses, Tsarinovna. Now stand back from the door so I can bring them in.”
Dasha wanted to sulk about that, but instead she made herself go and sit on the bed and pretend to be in a good mood while Alik, who looked to be suppressing a laugh, and the serving girl, who looked to be suppressing tears of terror, came in and left a pile of clean shirts and sarafans on the chest against the far wall. Seeing the tattered state of Dasha’s traveling clothes jolted the servi
ng girl out of her fear, and she left shaking her head in disapproval. Alik, still suppressing a laugh, winked at Dasha and told her to be quick about changing, as Olga Vasilisovna wouldn’t want to be kept waiting, before leaving and locking the door against behind him.
Once Dasha had gotten over her fit of pique that he’d locked the door, even though she was about to leave anyway, it took her almost no time at all to be dressed and ready to depart. Naturally, though, it was a much longer wait for the others, and she sat cooling her heels in her locked chamber until midmorning, when everyone else was finally ready to set off. Everyone had decided to come along, and so they were a group of eight as they walked down the dusty streets of Lesnograd.
Dasha had only the vaguest idea of where the barn where the bear had been was located, but when she described it to Aunty Olga, she said she knew where it was.
“Of course, he might be long gone, off searching for his missing bear,” she said sourly. “But we’ll start there.”
“Only if he’s very good at escaping,” Dasha said.
“Dasha! You don’t mean to say you locked him up!”
“First the domovaya turned him into a bear. Then we chained him up.”
This news outraged Aunty Olga so much it left her incapable of saying anything at all, much to Dasha’s relief. She glanced over at Oleg out of the corner of her eye, and saw that he appeared to be holding back a smile. He, unlike Aunty Olga, seemed to be somewhere between resigned and amused at Dasha’s story, and had merely said, “If it is the will of the gods, it is the will of the gods.”
“You have very strange gods here,” Susanna whispered to Dasha. “I have never heard that gods wanted people to steal bears before.”
“I don’t think it’s common,” Dasha whispered back, to which Susanna made no reply. Svetochka looked as if she didn’t know what to think, and was torn between desperate curiosity and a strong desire to return to her bed. Dmitry Marusyevich, like Oleg, seemed amused, especially by Aunty Olga’s grumpiness, and had made several remarks about how Aunty Olga was finally getting a taste of her own medicine, and how now she knew how her sister felt, faced with her own intemperate actions. This did not improve Aunty Olga’s temper. Mitya, Alik, and Seva all seemed proud, as if Dasha’s abilities reflected back on them. Dasha had been afraid that Mitya would get in trouble for letting her escape, but when Aunty Olga started to say something to him in reprimand, Oleg had told her that when spirits and gods wanted to have their way, a mere man could do little to withstand them, and it wasn’t his fault. Mitya had grinned at that, as if being made a pawn of the gods were something to take pride in, and had insisted on going along with the others, even though he had been up all night, standing guard.
