He seemed hardly to hear her. He raised his eyes to the world about them, with wonder and a touch of fear. His hands were still on hers; they were colder than any living man’s.
Vasya wanted to scream, with fear and with urgency. She struck him hard across the face. “Hear me! You are the winter-king. Call the snow!” She reached a hand behind his head and kissed him, bit his lip, smeared her blood on his face, willing him to be real and alive and strong enough for magic.
“If these were ever your people,” she breathed into his ear, “save them.”
His eyes found hers and a little awareness came back into his face. He got to his feet, but slowly, as though moving underwater. He was holding tight to her hand. She had the idea that her grip was the only thing keeping him there.
The fire seemed to fill the world. The air was burning up, leaving only poison behind. She couldn’t breathe. “Please,” she whispered.
Morozko drew breath, harshly, as though the smoke hurt him, too. But when he breathed out, the wind rose. A wind like water, a wind of winter at her back, so strong that she staggered. But he caught her before she fell.
The wind rose and rose, pushing the flames away from them—driving the fire back on itself.
“Close your eyes,” he said into her ear. “Come with me.”
She did so, and suddenly she saw what he saw. She was the wind, the clouds gathering in the smoky sky, the thick snow of deep winter. She was nothing. She was everything.
The power gathered somewhere in the space between them, between her flickers of awareness. There is no magic. Things are. Or they are not. She was beyond wanting anything. She didn’t care whether she lived or died. She could only feel; the gathering storm, the breath of the wind. Morozko there beside her.
Was that a flake? Another? She could not tell snow from ash, but some quality had changed in the fire’s noise. No—that was snow, and suddenly it was falling as thick as the fiercest of winter blizzards. Faster and faster it fell until all she could see was white, overhead and all around. The flakes cooled her blistered face. Smothered the flames.
She opened her eyes and found herself back in her own skin.
Morozko’s arms fell away from her. The snow blurred his features, but she thought he looked—tentative now, his face full of fearful wonder.
She found she had no words.
So instead she simply leaned back against him, and watched the snow fall. Her scorched throat ached. He did not speak. But he stood still, as though he understood.
For a long time they stood, as the snow fell and fell. Vasya watched the mad beauty of the snowstorm, the dying fire, and Morozko stood as silent as she, as though he was waiting.
“I am sorry,” she said at length, though she didn’t know, quite, what she was sorry for.
“Why, Vasya?” He stirred then, behind her, and one fingertip just touched the base of her throat, where the talisman had lain. “For that? Better the jewel was destroyed. Frost-demons are not meant to live, and the time of my power is over.”
The snow was thinning. She found, when she turned to look at him, that she could see him clearly. “Did you make the jewel, just as Kaschei did?” she asked. “To put your life in mine?”
“Yes,” he said.
“And you wanted me to love you?” she asked. “So that my love would help you live?”
“Yes,” he said. “That love of maidens for monsters, that does not fade with time.” He looked weary. “But the rest—I did not count on that.”
“Count on what?”
The pale eyes found hers, inscrutable. “I think you know.”
They measured each other in wary silence. Then Vasya said, “What do you know of Kasyan and of Tamara?”
He sighed a little. “Kasyan was the prince of a far country, gifted with sight, who wished to shape the world to his will. But there were some things even he could not control. He loved a woman, and when she died—he begged me for her life.” Morozko paused, and in the instant of chill silence, Vasya knew what had happened to Kasyan next. She felt unwilling pity.
“That was long ago,” Morozko went on. “I do not know what happened then, for he found a way to set his life apart from his flesh, to keep my hand from him. Forgot—somehow—that he could die, and so did not. Tamara lived with her mother, alone. It is said that Kasyan came to her house one day to buy a horse. Kasyan and Tamara fell in love and fled together. Then they disappeared. Until Tamara appeared alone in Moscow.”
“Where did Tamara come from?” Vasya asked urgently. “Who is she?”
He meant to answer. She could see it in his face. She often wondered, afterward, how her path might have been different, if he had. But at that moment, the monastery bell rang.
The sound seemed to strike Morozko like fists, as though they would break him into snowflakes and send him whirling away. He shook; he did not answer.
“What is happening?” Vasya asked.
The talisman is destroyed, he might have told her. And frost-demons are not meant to love. But he did not say that. “Dawn,” Morozko managed. “I cannot exist anymore under the sun, in Moscow, not after midwinter, when the bells are ringing. Vasya, Tamara—”
The bell rang again, his voice died away.
“No. You cannot fade; you are immortal.” Vasya reached for him, caught his shoulders between her hands. On swift impulse, she reached up and kissed him. “Live,” she said. “You said you loved me. Live.”
She had surprised him. He stared into her eyes, old as winter, young as new-fallen snow, and then suddenly he bent his head and kissed her back. Color came into his face and color washed his eyes until they were the blue of the noonday sky. “I cannot live,” he murmured into her ear. “One cannot be alive and be immortal. But when the wind blows, and storm hangs heavy upon the world, when men die, I will be there. It is enough.”
“That is not enough,” she said.
He said nothing. He was not a man: only a creature of cold rain and black trees and blue frost, growing fainter and fainter in her arms. But he bent his head and kissed her once more, as though the sweetness of it struck a spark of something long since gone dim. But even as he did, he faded.
She tried to call him back. But day was breaking, and a finger of light crept through the clouds to illuminate the char and reek of the half-burnt city.
Then Vasya stood alone.
27.
The Day of Forgiveness
Sasha felt, disbelieving, the wind rise, saw the flames retreat and retreat again. Saw the snow blow up from nowhere and begin to fall. All around Dmitrii’s dooryard, voices were raised in thanksgiving.
Marya sat on Solovey’s withers, both small fists tight in the horse’s mane. Solovey snorted and shook his head.
Marya twisted to look up at her uncle. The sky was a deep and living gold, as the light of the great fire was smothered by the snow.
“Did Vasya make the storm?” Marya asked Sasha, softly.
Sasha opened his mouth to reply, realized that he did not know, and fell silent. “Come, Masha,” he said only. “I will take you home.”
They rode back to Olga’s palace through the deserted streets, with the muck of people’s flight slowly covered by fast-falling snow. Marya put out her tongue to taste the whirling snowflakes, and laughed in wonder. They could barely see their hands in front of their faces. Sasha, navigating the streets from memory, was glad to turn in to Olga’s gate, into the meager shelter of the half-deserted dooryard. The gate sagged open and many of the slaves had fled.
The dooryard was deserted, but Sasha heard the faint sound of chanting from the chapel. Well they might give thanks for deliverance. Sasha was about to dismount in the dooryard, but Solovey raised his head and pawed the slush.
The gate hung askew, its guards fled before the fire. A slender figure, alone, swaying, walked through it.
Solovey gave his deep, ringing neigh and jolted into motion. “Aunt Vasya!” Marya cried. “Aunt Vasya!”
Next moment, t
he great horse was nuzzling carefully over Vasya’s fire-smelling hair. Marya slid down Solovey’s shoulder and tumbled splashing into her aunt’s arms.
Vasya caught Marya, though her face went dead white when she did so, and lowered the child to the ground. “You’re all right,” Vasya whispered to her, holding her tight. Masha was weeping passionately. “You’re all right.”
Sasha slid from the stallion’s back and looked his sister over. The end of Vasya’s plait was singed, her face burned, her eyelashes gone. Her eyes were bloodshot, and she held herself stiffly. “What happened, Vasya?”
“Winter is over,” she said. “And we are all alive.”
She smiled at her brother, and began, in her turn, to cry.
VASYA WOULD NOT GO into the palace, would not leave Solovey. “Olga bade me go, and rightly,” she said. “She will not wish to see me again.”
And so Sasha reluctantly left his sister in the dooryard while he took Marya to find her mother. Olga had not fled the fire. Nor was she abed. She was in the chapel, praying with Varvara and her remaining women. They made a shivering, kneeling flock near the iconostasis.
But the second Marya’s foot stirred the threshold, Olga raised her head. She was pale as death. Varvara caught her, helped her rise, staggering. “Masha!” Olga whispered.
“Mother!” shrieked Marya then, and flew across the intervening space. Olga caught her daughter and embraced her, though her lips went white with pain and Varvara held her up, so that she not crumple to the floor.
“You should be abed, Olya,” said Sasha. Varvara, though she said nothing, looked as if she heartily agreed.
“I came to pray,” Olga returned, gray with exhaustion. “I could do nothing else…What happened?” She ran a feverish hand over her daughter’s hair, holding her close. “Half my slaves fled the fire; the other half I sent looking for her. I was sure she was dead. I had them take Daniil safe away, but I couldn’t—” Olga was not crying; her composure held, but it was a near thing. She stroked her hand again and again over her daughter’s head. “We came back from the bathhouse,” she finished, pale, breathing in short gasps, “and Marya was gone. The nurse had fled, and most of the guards. The city was on fire.”
“Vasya found her,” said Sasha. “Vasya saved her. It is not the child’s fault; she was stolen from her bed. God saved the city, for the wind turned and it began to snow.”
“Where is Vasya?” Olga whispered.
“Outside,” said Sasha wearily, “with her horse. She will not come in. She believes herself unwelcome.”
“Take me to her,” Olga said.
“Olya, you are not fit. Go to bed; I will bring—”
“Take me to her, I said!”
VASYA STOOD IN THE DOORYARD, leaning exhausted against Solovey. She did not know what to do; she did not know where to go. It was like thinking in deep water. Her dress was torn, burned, bloody. Her hair had come straggling out of its plait and hung about her face and throat and body, singed and frizzled at the end.
Solovey lifted his ears first, and then Vasya looked up and saw her brother and sister and niece coming toward her.
She went very still.
Olga was leaning heavily on Sasha’s arm, holding Marya by her other hand. Varvara followed them, frowning. Above Moscow, day was breaking. The clouds of winter had dissipated, and a light, fresh wind drove back the remainder of the smoke. Olga looked younger in the soft morning light. She raised her face to the breeze and a hint of color touched her cheekbones.
“It smells of spring,” she murmured.
Vasya gathered her courage and went to meet them. Solovey walked with her, his nose at her shoulder.
Vasya halted a long pace from her sister and bowed her head.
Silence. Vasya looked up. Solovey had stretched out his nose, delicately, toward her sister.
Olga was looking wide-eyed at the stallion. “This is—your horse?” she asked.
The question was so different from what Vasya expected that sudden laughter rose in her throat. Solovey was nibbling at Olga’s headdress now with a casual air. Varvara looked as though she wanted to tell him off, but hadn’t the nerve.
“Yes,” said Vasya. “This is Solovey.”
Olga reached out a jeweled hand and stroked the stallion’s nose.
Solovey snorted. Olga’s hand fell. She looked again at her sister.
“Come inside,” she said. “You will all come inside. Vasya, you are going to tell us everything.”
VASYA BEGAN WITH THE COMING of the priest to Lesnaya Zemlya and finished with the summoning of the snow. She did not lie, and she did not spare herself. The sun was peeping in the tower windows by the time she finished.
Varvara brought them stew and kept all away. Marya fell asleep, wrapped in a blanket beside the oven. The child would not consent to be taken to bed, and indeed neither her mother, her uncle, nor her aunt wanted her out of their sight.
Vasya’s tale ended, she sat back, her vision swimming with weariness.
There was a small silence. Then Olga said, “What if I don’t believe you, Vasya?”
Vasya returned, “I can offer you two proofs. The first is that Solovey understands the speech of men.”
“He does,” Sasha put in unexpectedly. The monk had sat silent as Vasya talked. “I rode him fighting in the prince’s dooryard. He saved my life.”
“And,” said Vasya, “this dagger was made for me by the winter-king.”
She drew her knife. It lay blue-hilted, pale-bladed in her grip, beautiful and cold, except—Vasya looked closer. Except that a thin drip of water ran off the blade, as though it were an icicle melting in spring…
“Put that ungodly thing away,” Olga snapped.
Vasya sheathed the knife. “Sister,” she said. “I have not lied. Not now. I will go away today—I will not trouble you again. Only I beg—I beg you will forgive me.”
Olya was biting her lips. She looked from her sleeping Marya to Sasha and back to Vasya. She said nothing for a long time.
“And Masha is the same as you?” Olga asked suddenly. “She sees—things? Chyerti?”
“Yes,” Vasya said. “She does.”
“And that is why Kasyan wanted her?”
Vasya nodded.
Olga fell silent again.
The other two waited.
Olga said, slowly, “Then she must be protected. From the evils of sorcerers, and the cruelty of men both. But I do not know how.”
Another long silence. Then Olga looked up, directly at her siblings. “At least I have you to help me.”
Vasya and Sasha were silent, startled.
Then— “Always,” said Vasya, softly. The morning sun slanted across the burned backs of her hands, and put a little color on Olga’s gray-pale one. Vasya felt as though the light had kindled inside her somewhere.
“There will be time for recriminations later,” Olga added. “But there is also the future to plan for. And—and I love you both. Still. Always.”
“That is enough for one day,” said Vasya.
Olga put out her hands; the other two took them, and they sat a moment silent, while the morning sun strengthened outside, chasing winter away.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The icy, earthy terrain of medieval Muscovy is not necessarily the most natural setting for a fairy tale. This time and place are brutal, complex, and fascinating, but the fairy-tale form—strong on villains and princesses—does not always leave room for the infinite shades of gray necessary to do this location and time period justice.
It would take a far longer and more ambitious novel than The Girl in the Tower to give a full and vital picture of the wars, the shifting alliances, the ambitions, of the monks, priests, merchants, peasants, princesses, nuns, and faiths that made up this incredible and poorly documented era.
In this book, I have striven for accuracy; I have also tried my best to at least hint at complex depths—of personality and of politics—when I could not delve into them more deeply. I h
ave tried to stay true to the fairy tales that are my source material, but not to lose the texture of a time and a place I have come to love.
I have done my best. For inaccuracies and shortcomings, I apologize.
There are plenty of books out there for those wishing to learn more about the realities of this time period. I would like to recommend the dense and fascinating Medieval Russia, 980–1584 by Janet Martin (2007, Cambridge University Press). I have also benefited from Russian Folk Belief by Linda Ivanits (second edition, Routledge, 2015). The Domostroi is one of a few primary sources—it is a householder’s manual written somewhat later than the events of this novel, around the time of Ivan the Terrible.
Any of these will help those hungry for more historical detail.
As always, thank you all for reading.
A NOTE ON RUSSIAN NAMES
Russian conventions of naming and address—while not as complicated as the consonant clusters would suggest—are so different from English forms that they merit explanation. Modern Russian names can be divided into three parts: the first name, the patronymic, and the last, or family, name. In medieval Rus’, people generally had only a first name, or (among the highborn) a first name and a patronymic.
First Names and Nicknames
RUSSIAN IS EXTREMELY RICH in diminutives. Any Russian first name can give rise to a large number of nicknames. The name Yekaterina, for example, can be shortened into Katerina, Katya, Katyusha, or Katenka, among other forms. These variations are often used interchangeably to refer to a single individual, according to the speaker’s degree of familiarity and the whims of the moment.
Aleksandr—Sasha
Dmitrii—Mitya
Vasilisa—Vasya, Vasochka
Rodion—Rodya
Yekaterina—Katya, Katyusha
Patronymic
THE RUSSIAN PATRONYMIC IS derived from the first name of an individual’s father. It varies according to gender. For example, Vasilisa’s father is named Pyotr. Her patronymic—derived from her father’s name—is Petrovna. Her brother Aleksei uses the masculine form: Petrovich.
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