The Girl in the Tower

by Katherine Arden

  He loved Vasya’s mother, the people had said of her father. He loved that Marina Ivanovna. She died bringing Vasilisa forth, and Pyotr Vladimirovich put half his soul in the earth when they buried her.

  Her sister wailed, a thin and bone-chilling cry. “Blood,” Vasya heard, from the crowd beside. “Blood—too much blood. Get the priest.”

  “Please!” Vasya cried to Morozko. “Please!”

  The noise of the bathhouse faded and the walls faded with it. Vasya found herself standing in an empty wood. Black trees cast gray shadows over the white snow, and Death stood before her.

  He wore black. The frost-demon had eyes of palest blue, but this—his older, stranger self—had eyes like water: colorless, or nearly. He stood taller than she had ever seen him, and stiller.

  A faint, gasping cry. Vasya let go his hands and turned. Olga crouched in the snow, translucent and bloody, naked, swallowing her anguished breathing.

  Vasya stooped and gathered her sister up. Where were they? Was this what lay beyond life? A forest and a single figure, waiting…Somewhere beyond the trees she could smell the hot reek of the bathhouse. Olga’s skin was warm, but the smell and the heat were fading. The forest was so cold. Vasya held her sister tightly; tried to pour all the heat she had—her burning, furious life—into Olga. Her hands felt hot enough to scorch, but the jewel hung bitterly cold between her breasts.

  “You cannot be here, Vasya,” the death-god said, and a hint of surprise threaded his uninflected voice.

  “Cannot?” Vasya retorted. “You cannot have my sister.” She clung to Olga, looking for a way back. The bathhouse was still there—all around them—she could smell it. But she didn’t know which steps would take them there.

  Olga hung slack in Vasya’s arms, her eyes glazed and milky. She turned her head and breathed a question at the death-god. “What of my baby? What of my son? Where is he?”

  “It is a daughter, Olga Petrovna,” Morozko returned. He spoke without feeling and without judgment, low and clear and cold. “You cannot both live.”

  His words struck Vasya like two fists and she clutched her sister. “No.”

  With a terrible effort, Olga straightened up, her face drained of color and of beauty both. She put Vasya’s arms aside. “No?” she said to the frost-demon.

  Morozko bowed. “The child cannot be born alive,” he said evenly. “The women may cut it from you, or you may live and let it smother and be born dead.”

  “She,” said Olga, her voice no more than a thread. Vasya tried to speak and found she could not. “She. A daughter.”

  “As you say, Olga Petrovna.”

  “Well, then, let her live,” said Olga simply, and put out a hand.

  Vasya could not bear it. “No!” she cried, and flung herself on Olga, struck the outstretched hand away, wrapped her sister in her arms. “Live, Olya,” she whispered. “Think of Marya and Daniil. Live, live.”

  The death-god’s eyes narrowed.

  “I will die for my child, Vasya,” Olga said. “I am not afraid.”

  “No,” Vasya breathed. She thought she heard Morozko speak. But she did not care what he said. Such a current of love and rage and loss ran between her and her sister at that moment that all else was drowned and forgotten. Vasya put forth all her strength—and she dragged Olya by force back to the bathhouse.

  Vasya came to, staggering, and found that she was leaning against the bathhouse wall. Splinters pricked her hands; her hair stuck to her face and neck. A thick, sweating crowd hovered around Olga, seeming to strangle her with their many arms. Among them stood one fully dressed, in a black cassock, intoning the last rites in a voice that carried easily over them all. A streak of golden hair gleamed in the dark.

  Him? Vasya, in a quick rage, stalked across the writhing room, pushed past the crowd, and took her sister’s hands in hers. The priest’s deep voice stopped abruptly.

  Vasya had no thought to spare for him. In her mind’s eye, Vasya saw another black-haired woman, another bathhouse, and another child who had killed her mother. “Olya, live,” she said. “Please, live.”

  Olga stirred; her pulse leaped up under Vasya’s fingers. Her dazed eyes blinked open. “There is its head!” cried the midwife. “There—one more—”

  Olga’s glance met Vasya’s, and then widened with agony; her belly rippled like water in a storm, and then the child came slithering out. Her lips were blue. She did not move.

  An anxious, breathless hush replaced the first cries of relief, as the midwife cleared the scum from the girl-child’s lips and breathed into her mouth.

  She lay limp.

  Vasya looked from the small gray form to her sister’s face.

  The priest thrust his way forward, knocking Vasya aside. He smoothed oil over the baby’s head, began the words of the baptism.

  “Where is she?” stammered Olga, groping with feeble hands. “Where is my daughter? Let me see.”

  And still the child did not move.

  Vasya stood there, empty-handed, jostled by the crowd, sweat running down her ribs. The heat of her fury cooled and left the taste of ashes in her mouth. But she was not looking at Olga. Or the priest. Instead, she was watching a black-cloaked figure put out a hand, very gently, take up the chalky, bloody scrap of humanity, and carry it away.

  Olga made a terrible sound, and Konstantin’s hand fell, the baptism finished: the only kindness anyone would ever do the child. Vasya stood where she was. You are alive, Olya, she thought. I saved you. But the thought had no force.

  OLGA’S EXHAUSTED EYES SEEMED to stare through her. “You have killed my daughter.”

  “Olya,” Vasya began, “I—”

  An arm, black-robed, reached out and seized her. “Witch,” hissed Konstantin.

  The word fell like a stone, and silence rippled out in its wake. Vasya and the priest stood in the center of a faceless ring, full of reddened eyes.

  The last time Vasya had seen Konstantin Nikonovich, the priest had cowered while she bade him go: to return to Moscow—or Tsargrad or hell—but to leave her family in peace.

  Well, Konstantin had indeed come to Moscow, and he looked as though he’d endured the torments of hell between there and here. His jutting bones cast shadows on his beautiful face; his golden hair hung knotted to his shoulders.

  The women watched, silent. A baby had just died in their arms, and their hands twitched with helplessness.

  “This is Vasilisa Petrovna,” said Konstantin, spitting out the words. “She killed her father. Now she has killed her sister’s child.”

  Behind him, Olga shut her eyes. One hand cradled the dead infant’s head.

  “She speaks to devils,” Konstantin continued, not taking his eyes from her face. “Olga Vladimirova was too kind to turn her own lying sister away. And now, this has come of it.”

  Olga said nothing.

  Vasya was silent. What defense was there? The infant lay still, curled like a leaf. In the corner, a twist of steam might almost have been a small, fat creature, and it was weeping, too.

  The priest’s glance slid to the faint figure of the bannik—she could swear they did—and his pale face grew paler. “Witch,” he whispered again. “You will answer for your crimes.”

  Vasya gathered herself. “I will answer,” she said to Konstantin. “But not here. This is wrong, what you do here, Batyushka. Olya—”

  “Get out, Vasya,” said Olga. She did not look up.

  Vasya, stumbling with weariness, blinded with tears, made no protest when Konstantin dragged her out of the inner room of the bathhouse. He slammed the door behind them, cutting off the smell of blood and the sounds of grief.

  Vasya’s linen shift, soaked to transparency, hung from her shoulders. Only when she felt the chill from the open outer door did she dig in her heels. “Let me put on clothes at least,” she said to the priest. “Or do you want me to freeze to death?”

  Konstantin let her go suddenly. Vasya knew he could see every line of her body, her nipples hard thro
ugh her shift. “What did you do to me?” he hissed.

  “Do to you?” Vasya returned, bewildered with sorrow, dizzy with the change from heat to cold. The sweat stood on her face; her bare feet scraped the wooden floor. “I did nothing.”

  “Liar!” he snapped. “Liar. I was a good man, before. I saw no devils. And now—”

  “See them now, do you?” Shocked and grieving as she was, Vasya could muster nothing more than bitter humor. Her hands stank with her sister’s blood, with the ripe, ugly reality of stillbirth. “Well, perhaps you did that to yourself, with all your talk of demons; did you think of that? Go and hide in a monastery; no one wants you.”

  He was as pale as she. “I am a good man,” he said. “I am. Why did you curse me? Why do you haunt me?”

  “I don’t,” said Vasya. “Why would I want to? I came to Moscow to see my sister. Look what came of it.”

  Coldly, shamelessly, she stripped off her wet shift. If she was to go out into the night, she did not mean to court death.

  “What are you doing?” he breathed.

  Vasya reached for her sarafan and blouse and outer robe, discarded in the anteroom. “Putting on dry clothes,” she said. “What did you think? That I am going to dance for you, like a peasant girl in spring, while a child lies dead just there?”

  He watched her dress, hands opening and closing.

  She was beyond caring. She tied her cloak and straightened her spine. “Where do you wish to take me?” she inquired, with bitter humor. “I don’t think you even know.”

  “You are going to answer for your crimes,” Konstantin managed, in a voice caught between anger and bewildered wanting.

  “Where?” she inquired.

  “Do you mock me?” He gathered some measure of his old self-possession, and his hand closed on her upper arm. “To the convent. You will be punished. I promised I would hunt witches.” He stepped nearer. “Then I will see devils no longer; then all will be as it was.”

  Vasya, rather than falling back, stepped closer to him, and that was obviously the one thing he did not expect. The priest froze.

  Closer still. Vasya was afraid of many things, but she was not afraid of Konstantin Nikonovich.

  “Batyushka,” she said, “I would help you if I could.”

  His lips shut hard.

  She touched his sweating face. He did not move. Her hair tumbled damply over his hand, where it lay locked around her arm.

  Vasya made herself stand still despite his pinching grip. “How can I help you?” she whispered.

  “Kasyan Lutovich promised me vengeance,” Konstantin whispered, staring, “if I would—but never mind. I do not need him. You are here; it is enough. Come to me now. Make me whole again.”

  Vasya met his eyes. “That I cannot do.”

  And her knee came up with perfect accuracy.

  Konstantin did not scream, nor fall wheezing to the floor; his robes were too thick. But he doubled over with a grunt, and that was all Vasya needed.

  She was out in the night—crossing the walkway, then running out through the dooryard.

  23.

  The Jewel of the North

  A corpse-gray moon just showed above Olga’s tower. The prince of Serpukhov’s dooryard echoed with the shriek of the still reveling city outside, but Vasya knew there would be guards about. In a moment Konstantin would raise the alarm. She must warn the Grand Prince.

  Vasya was already running for Solovey’s paddock before she remembered that he would not be there.

  But then there came a thump and a snowy crunch of hooves.

  Vasya turned with relief to fling her arms around the stallion’s neck.

  It was not Solovey. The horse was white, and she had a rider.

  Morozko slid down the mare’s shoulder. Girl and frost-demon faced each other in the sickly moonlight. “Vasya,” he said.

  The stench of the bathhouse clung to Vasya’s skin, and the smell of blood. “Is that why you wanted me to run away tonight?” she asked him, bitterly. “So I wouldn’t see my sister die?”

  He did not speak, but a fire, blue as a summer sky, leaped up between them. No wood fueled it; yet its heat drove back the night, and cradled her shivering skin. She refused to be grateful. “Answer me!” She gritted her teeth and stamped on the flames. They died as quickly as they had risen.

  “I knew the mother or the child was to die,” Morozko said, stepping back. “I would have spared you, yes. But now—”

  “Olga threw me out.”

  “Rightly,” he finished, coldly. “It was not your choice to make.”

  Vasya felt the words like a blow. There was a ball in her gut, a knot in her throat. Her face was sticky with dried tears.

  “I came to save you, Vasya,” Morozko said then. “Because—”

  The knot of grief broke and lashed out. “I don’t care why! I don’t know if you will tell me the truth; why should I listen? You have guided me as though I were a dog on the hunt, bidden me go here and there and yet told me nothing. So you knew Olga was to die tonight? Or—that my father was to die, there in the Bear’s clearing? Could you have warned me then? Or—” She wrenched out the sapphire from beneath her shirt and held it up. “What is this? Kasyan said it made me your slave. Was he lying, Morozko?”

  He was silent.

  She came quite close and added, low, “If you ever cared, even a little, for the poor fools you kiss in the dark, you will tell me all the truth. I can stomach no more lies tonight.”

  They looked at each other, stone-faced in the silvered darkness. “Vasya,” he whispered from the shadows. “It is not the time. Come away, child.”

  “No,” she breathed. “It is the time. Am I such a child, that you must lie to me?”

  When he still said nothing, she added, the faintest of breaks in her voice, “Please.”

  A muscle twitched in his cheek. “The night before he died,” Morozko said flatly, “Pyotr Vladimirovich lay awake beside the ashes of a burnt village. I came to him at moonset. I told him of your fading chyerti, of the priest sowing fear, of the Bear worming his way free. I told Pyotr that his life could save his people’s. He was willing—more than willing. I guided your father after me, through the woods, on the day the Bear was bound, so that he came timely to the clearing—and he died. But I did not kill him. I gave him the choice. That is what he chose. I cannot take a life out of season, Vasya.”

  “You lied to me, then,” Vasya said. “You told me my father happened upon the Bear’s clearing. What else have you lied about, Morozko?”

  Again, he was silent.

  “What is this?” she whispered, holding the jewel between them.

  His glance went from the stone to her face, sharp as shards. “I made it,” he said. “With ice and my own hands.”

  “Dunya—”

  “Took it on your behalf from your father. Pyotr received it from me when you were a child.”

  Vasya yanked the necklace down so that it lay gripped in her hand, chain dangling, broken. “Why?”

  For a moment, she thought he would not answer. Then he said, “Long ago, men dreamed me to life, to give a face to the cold and the dark. They set me to rule over them.” His glance strayed beyond hers. “But—the world wound on. The monks came with vellum and ink, with songs and icons, and I diminished. Now I am only a fairy tale for bad children.” He looked at the blue jewel. “I cannot die, but I can fade. I can forget and be forgotten. But—I am not ready to forget. So I bound myself to a human girl, with power in her blood, and her strength made me strong again.” A flush of blue washed his pale eyes. “I chose you, Vasya.”

  Vasya felt very far from herself. This, then, was the bond between them, not shared adventure, wry affection, or even the fire he might set in her flesh, but this—thing. This jewel, this not-magic. She thought of the pale wisps of chyerti, fading in their bell-bound world, and how her hand, her words, her gifts could make them briefly real again.

  “Is that why you brought me to your house in the
forest?” Vasya whispered. “Why you fought my nightmares and gave me presents? Why you—kissed me in the dark? Because I was to be your worshipper? Your—your slave? It was all a scheme to make yourself strong?”

  “You are no slave, Vasilisa Petrovna,” he snapped.

  When she was silent, he went on, more gently. “I have had enough of those. It was emotions I needed from you—feelings.”

  “Worship,” retorted Vasya. “Poor frost-demon. All your poor believers turned to newer gods, and you were left groping for the hearts of stupid girls who don’t know better. That is why you came so often, and why you left again. That is why you bade me wear the jewel and remember you.”

  “I saved your life,” he returned, harsh now. “Twice. You have carried that jewel, and your strength has sustained me. Is it not a fair exchange?”

  Vasya could not speak. She barely heard him. He had used her. She was a doom to her kin. Her family lay in ruins—and her heart.

  “Find another,” she said, surprised at the calm in her voice. “Find another to wear your charm. I cannot.”

  “Vasya—no, you must listen—”

  “I will not!” she cried. “I want nothing of you. I want no one. The world is wide; surely you will find another. Perhaps this time you will not use her unknowing.”

  “If you leave me now,” he answered, just as evenly, “you will be in terrible danger. The sorcerer will find you.”

  “Help me, then,” she said. “Tell me what Kasyan means to do.”

  “I cannot see. He is wound about with magic, to keep me out. Better to leave, Vasya.”

  Vasya shook her head. “Perhaps I will die here, as others have died. But I will not die your creature.”

  Somehow the wind had risen in the space between her heartbeats, and to Vasya it seemed they stood alone in the snow, that the stinks and the shapes of the city were gone. There were only herself and the frost-demon, in the moonlight. The wind shrieked and gibbered all around them, yet her plait did not stir in the gusts.