by Various
Only Lula the nightingale came to see him. Perched in the branches of the birch tree, she twittered her laughter. “Not so clever, are you, Koja? No one will have you to visit and you are covered in scabs. You are even uglier than before.”
Koja was untroubled. “I can bear ugliness,” he said. “I find the one thing I cannot live with is death.”
* * *
When the year was up, Koja picked his way carefully through the woods near Tupolev’s farm, making sure to avoid the teeth of any traps that might be lurking beneath the brush. He snuck through the hen yard, and when one of the servants opened the kitchen door to take out the slops, he slipped right into Tupolev’s house. He used his teeth to pull back the covers on the farmer’s bed and let the fleas slip in.
“Have a fine time of it, friends,” he said. “I hope you will forgive me if I do not ask you to visit again.”
The fleas called their goodbyes and dove beneath the blankets, looking forward to a meal of the farmer and his wife.
On his way out, Koja snatched a bottle of kvas from the pantry and a chicken from the yard, and he left them at the entrance to Ivan Gostov’s cave. When the bear appeared, he sniffed at Koja’s offerings.
“Show yourself, fox,” he roared. “Do you seek to make a fool of me again?”
“You freed me, Ivan Gostov. If you like, you may have me as supper. I warn you, though, I am stringy and tough. Only my tongue holds savor. I make a bitter meal, but excellent company.”
The bear laughed so loudly that he shook the nightingale from her branch in the valley below. He and Koja shared the chicken and the kvas, and spent the night exchanging stories. From then on, they were friends, and it was known that to cross the fox was to risk Ivan Gostov’s wrath.
* * *
Then winter came and the black bear went missing. The animals had noticed their numbers thinning for some time. Deer were scarcer, and the small creatures too—rabbits and squirrels, grouse and voles. It was nothing to remark upon. Hard times came and went. But Ivan Gostov was no timid deer or skittering vole. When Koja realized it had been weeks since he had seen the bear or heard his bellow, he grew concerned.
“Lula,” he said, “fly into town and see what you can learn.”
The nightingale put her little beak in the air. “You will ask me, Koja, and do it nicely, or I will fly someplace warm and leave you to your worrying.”
Koja bowed and made his compliments to Lula’s shiny feathers, the purity of her song, the pleasing way she kept her nest, and on and on, until finally the nightingale stopped him with a shrill chirp.
“Next time, you may stop at ‘please.’ If you will only cease your talking, I will gladly go.”
Lula flapped her wings and disappeared into the blue sky, but when she returned an hour later, her tiny jet eyes were bright with fear. She hopped and fluttered, and it took her long minutes to settle on a branch.
“Death has arrived,” she said. “Lev Jurek has come to Polvost.”
The animals fell silent. Lev Jurek was no ordinary hunter. It was said he left no tracks and his rifle made no sound. He traveled from village to village throughout Ravka, and where he went, he bled the woods dry.
“He has just come from Balakirev.” The nightingale’s pretty voice trembled. “He left the town’s stores bloated with deer meat and overflowing with furs. The sparrows say he stripped the forest bare.”
“Did you see the man himself?” asked Red Badger.
Lula nodded. “He is the tallest man I’ve ever seen, broad in the shoulders, handsome as a prince.”
“And what of the girl?”
Jurek was said to travel with his half sister, Sofiya. The hides he did not sell, Jurek forced her to sew into a gruesome cloak that trailed behind her on the ground.
“I saw her,” said the nightingale, “and I saw the cloak too. Koja … its collar is made of seven white fox tails.”
Koja frowned. His sister lived near Balakirev. She’d had seven kits, all of them with white tails.
“I will investigate,” he decided, and the animals breathed a bit easier, for Koja was the cleverest of them all.
Koja waited for the sun to set, then snuck into Polvost with Lula at his shoulder. They kept to the shadows, slinking down alleys and making their way to the center of town.
Jurek and his sister had rented a grand house close to the taverns that lined the Barshai Prospekt. Koja went up on his hind legs and pressed his nose to the window glass.
The hunter sat with his friends at a table heaped with rich foods—wine-soaked cabbage and calf stuffed with quail eggs, greasy sausages and pickled sage. All the lamps burned bright with oil. The hunter had grown wealthy indeed.
Jurek was a big man, younger than expected, but just as handsome as Lula had said. He wore a fine linen shirt and a fur-lined vest with a gold watch tucked into his pocket. His inky blue eyes darted frequently to his sister, who sat reading by the fire. Koja could not make out her face, but Sofiya had a pretty enough profile, and her dainty, slippered feet rested on the skin of a large black bear.
Koja’s blood chilled at the sight of his fallen friend’s hide, spread so casually over the polished slats of the floor. Ivan Gostov’s fur shone clean and glossy as it never had in life and for some reason, this struck Koja as a very sad thing. A lesser creature might have let his grief get the best of him. He might have taken to the hills and high places, thinking it wise to outrun death rather than try to outsmart it. But Koja sensed a question here, one his clever mind could not resist: For all his loud ways, Ivan Gostov had been the closest thing the forest had to a king, a deadly match for any man or beast. So how had Jurek bested him with no one the wiser?
For the next three nights, Koja watched the hunter, but he learned nothing.
Every evening, Jurek ate a big dinner. He went out to one of the taverns and did not return until the early hours. He liked to drink and brag, and frequently spilled wine on his clothes. He slept late each morning, then rose and headed out to the tanning shed or into the forest. Jurek set traps, swam in the river, oiled his gun, but Koja never saw him catch or kill anything.
And yet, on the fourth day, Jurek emerged from the tanning shed with something massive in his muscled arms. He walked to the wooden frames, and there he stretched the hide of the great gray wolf. No one knew the gray wolf’s name and no one had ever dared ask it. He lived on a steep rock ridge and kept to himself, and it was said he’d been cast out of his pack for some terrible crime. When he descended to the valley, it was only to hunt, and then he moved silent as smoke through the trees. Yet somehow, Jurek had taken his skin.
That night, the hunter brought musicians to his house. The townspeople came to marvel at the wolf’s hide and Jurek bid his sister rise from her place by the fire so that he could lay the horrible patchwork cloak over her shoulders. The villagers pointed to one fur after another and Jurek obliged them with the story of how he’d brought down Illarion the white bear of the north, then of his capture of the two golden lynxes who made up the sleeves. He even described catching the seven little kits who had given up their tails for the cloak’s grand collar. With every word Jurek spoke, his sister’s chin sank lower, until she was staring at the floor.
Koja watched the hunter go outside and cut the head from the wolf’s hide, and as the villagers danced and drank, Jurek’s sister sat and sewed, adding a hood to her horrible cloak. When one of the musicians banged his drum, her needle slipped. She winced and drew her finger to her lips.
What’s a bit more blood? thought Koja. The cloak might as well be soaked red with it.
* * *
“Sofiya is the answer,” Koja told the animals the next day. “Jurek must be using some magic or trickery, and his sister will know of it.”
“But why would she tell us his secrets?” asked Red Badger.
“She fears him. They barely speak, and she takes care to keep her distance.”
“And each night she bolts her bedroom door,” trilled the n
ightingale, “against her own brother. There’s trouble there.”
Sofiya was only permitted to leave the house every few days to visit the old widows’ home on the other side of the valley. She carried a basket or sometimes pulled a sled piled high with furs and food bound up in woolen blankets. Always she wore the horrible cloak, and as Koja watched her slogging along, he was reminded of a pilgrim going to do her penance.
For the first mile, Sofiya kept a steady pace and stayed to the path. But when she reached a small clearing, far from the outskirts of town and deep with the quiet of snow, she stopped. She slumped down on a fallen tree trunk, put her face in her hands, and wept.
The fox felt suddenly ashamed to be watching her, but he also knew this was an opportunity. He hopped silently onto the other end of the tree trunk and said, “Why do you cry, girl?”
Sofiya gasped. Her eyes were red, her pale skin blotchy, but despite this and her gruesome wolf hood, she was still lovely. She looked around, her even teeth worrying the flesh of her lip. “You should leave this place, fox,” she said. “You are not safe here.”
“I haven’t been safe since I slipped squalling from my mother’s womb.”
She shook her head. “You don’t understand. My brother—”
“What would he want with me? I’m too scrawny to eat and too ugly to wear.”
Sofiya smiled slightly. “Your coat is a bit patchy, but you’re not so bad as all that.”
“No?” said the fox. “Shall I travel to Os Alta to have my portrait painted?”
“What does a fox know of the capital?”
“I visited once,” said Koja, for he sensed she might enjoy a story. “I was the Queen’s personal guest. She tied a blue ribbon around my neck and I slept upon a velvet cushion every night.”
The girl laughed, her tears forgotten. “Did you, now?”
“I was quite the fashion. All the courtiers dyed their hair red and cut holes in their clothes, hoping to emulate my patchy coat.”
“I see,” said the girl. “So why leave the comforts of the Grand Palace and come to these cold woods?”
“I made enemies.”
“The Queen’s poodle grew jealous?”
“The King was offended by my overlarge ears.”
“A dangerous thing,” she said. “With such big ears, who knows what gossip you might hear.”
This time Koja laughed, pleased that the girl showed some wit when she wasn’t locked up with a brute.
Sofiya’s smile faltered. She shot to her feet and picked up her basket, hurrying back down the path. But before she disappeared from view, she paused and said, “Thank you for making me laugh, fox. I hope I will not find you here again.”
Later that night, Lula fluffed her wings in frustration. “You learned nothing! All you did was flirt.”
“It was a beginning, little bird,” said Koja. “Best to move slowly.” Then he lunged at her, jaws snapping.
The nightingale shrieked and fluttered up into the high branches as Red Badger laughed.
“See?” said the fox. “We must take care with shy creatures.”
* * *
The next time Sofiya ventured out to the widows’ home, the fox followed her once more. Again, she sat down in the clearing and again she wept.
Koja hopped up on the fallen tree. “Tell me, Sofiya, why do you cry?”
“You’re still here, fox? Don’t you know my brother is near? He will catch you eventually.”
“What would your brother want with a yellow-eyed bag of bones and fleas?”
Sofiya gave a small smile. “Yellow is an ugly color,” she admitted. “With such big eyes, I think you see too much.”
“Will you not tell me what troubles you?”
She didn’t answer. Instead she reached into her basket and took out a wedge of cheese. “Are you hungry?”
The fox licked his chops. He’d waited all morning for the girl to leave her brother’s house and had missed his breakfast. But he knew better than to take food from the hand of a human, even if the hand was soft and white. When he did not move, the girl shrugged and took a bite of it herself.
“What of the hungry widows?” asked Koja.
“Let them starve,” she said with some fire, and shoved another piece of cheese into her mouth.
“Why do you stay with him?” asked Koja. “You’re pretty enough to catch a husband.”
“Pretty enough?” said the girl. “Would I be better served by yellow eyes and too large ears?”
“Then you would be plagued by suitors.”
Koja hoped she might laugh again, but instead Sofiya sighed, a mournful sound that the wind picked up and carried into the gray slate sky. “We move from town to town,” she said. “In Balakirev I almost had a sweetheart. My brother was not pleased. I keep hoping he will find a bride or allow me to marry, but I do not think he will.”
Her eyes filled with tears once more.
“Come now,” said the fox. “Let there be no more crying. I have spent my life finding my way out of traps. Surely, I can help you escape your brother.”
“Just because you escape one trap, doesn’t mean you will escape the next.”
So Koja told her how he’d outsmarted his mother, the hounds, and even Ivan Gostov.
“You are a clever fox,” she conceded when he was done.
“No,” Koja said. “I am the cleverest. And that will make all the difference. Now tell me of your brother.”
Sofiya glanced up at the sun. It was long past noon.
“Tomorrow,” she said. “When I return.”
She left the wedge of cheese on the fallen tree, and once she was gone, Koja sniffed it carefully. He looked right and left, then gobbled it down in one bite and did not spare a thought for the poor hungry widows.
* * *
Koja knew he had to be especially cautious now if he hoped to loosen Sofiya’s tongue. He knew what it was to be caught in a trap. Sofiya had lived that way a long while, and a lesser creature might choose to live in fear rather than grasp at freedom. So the next day he waited at the clearing for her to return from the widows’ home, but kept out of sight. Finally, she came trundling over the hill, dragging her heavy sled behind her, the wool blankets bound with twine, the heavy runners sinking into the snow. When she reached the clearing, she hesitated. “Fox?” she said softly. “Koja?”
Only then, when she had called for him, did he appear.
Sofiya gave a tremulous smile. She sank down on the fallen tree and told the fox of her brother.
Jurek was a late riser, but regular in his prayers. He bathed in ice-cold water and ate six eggs for breakfast every morning. Some days he went to the tavern, others he cleaned hides. And sometimes he simply seemed to disappear.
“Think very carefully,” said Koja. “Does your brother have any treasured objects? An icon he always carries? A charm, even a piece of clothing he never travels without?”
Sofiya considered this. “He has a little pouch he wears on his watch fob. An old woman gave it to him years ago, after he saved her from drowning. We were just children, but even then, Jurek was bigger than all the other boys. When she fell into the Sokol, he dove in after and dragged her back up its banks.”
“Is it dear to him?”
“He never removes it and he sleeps with it cradled in his palm.”
“She must have been a witch,” said Koja. “That charm is what allows him to enter the forest so silently, to leave no tracks and make no sound. You will get it from him.”
Sofiya’s face paled. “No,” she said. “No, I cannot. For all his snoring, my brother sleeps lightly and if he were to discover me in his chamber—” She shuddered.
“Meet me here again in three days’ time,” said Koja, “and I will have an answer for you.”
Sofiya stood and dusted the snow from her horrible cloak. When she looked at the fox, her eyes were grave. “Do not ask too much of me,” she said softly.
Koja took a step closer to her. “I will free y
ou from this trap,” he said. “Without his charm, your brother will have to make his living like an ordinary man. He will have to stay in one place and you will find yourself a sweetheart.”
She wrapped the cables of her sled around her hand. “Maybe,” Sofiya said. “But first I must find my courage.”
* * *
It took a day and a half for Koja to reach the marshes where a patch of dropwort grew. He was careful digging the little plants up. The roots were deadly. The leaves would be enough to manage Jurek.
By the time he returned to his own woods, the animals were in an uproar. The boar, Tatya, had gone missing, along with her three piglets. The next afternoon their bodies were spitted and cooking on a cheery bonfire in the town square. Red Badger and his family were packing up to leave, and they weren’t the only ones.
“He leaves no tracks!” cried the badger. “His rifle makes no sound! He is not natural, fox, and your clever mind is no match for him.”
“Stay,” said Koja. “He is a man, not a monster, and once I have robbed him of his magic, we will be able to see him coming. The wood will be safe once more.”
Badger did not look happy. He promised to wait a little while longer, but he did not let his children stray from the burrow.
* * *
“Boil them down,” Koja told Sofiya when he met her in the clearing to give her the dropwort leaves. “Then add the water to his wine and he’ll sleep like the dead. You can take the charm from him unhindered, just leave something useless in its place.”
“You’re sure of this?”
“Do this small thing and you will be free.”
“But what will become of me?”
“I will bring you chickens from Tupolev’s farm and kindling to keep you warm. We will burn the horrible cloak together.”
“It hardly seems possible.”
Koja darted forward and nudged her trembling hand once with his muzzle, then slipped back into the wood. “Freedom is a burden, but you will learn to bear it. Meet me tomorrow and all will be well.”
Despite his brave words, Koja spent the night pacing his den. Jurek was a big man. What if the dropwort was not enough? What if he woke when Sofiya tried to take his precious charm? And what if they were successful? Once Jurek lost the witch’s protection, the forest would be safe and Sofiya would be free. Would she leave then? Go back to her sweetheart in Balakirev? Or might he persuade his friend to stay?
