It reminded me of being chased before, of knowing I wasn’t nearly fast enough, of being struck and bound by chains. My heart raced, and my skin became so hard I no longer felt the cold drips of water.
There were no turns or forks, only a straight tunnel to follow. Before long, the way ahead grew brighter, the light cooler, more natural, and I knew I was nearly there. I slowed my steps, and the way grew so light that I could finally see: a great frozen river lay before me, the sun reflecting off the ice so powerfully it penetrated even the darkness of the hidden passageway.
I made my way out of the tunnel slowly, scanning my surroundings for the prince’s guardsmen. Before me, there was only the vastness of the Dnieper River. I looked up, and far above me loomed the palace, perched on the very top of a hill.
The river was silent as I crept toward the shore. My breath came out in great plumes, and at any moment, I expected someone to shout that I’d been spotted. I wasn’t seen, though, and made it to the river’s edge safely, only to realize two things. One was that the river only appeared frozen. Spring was mere weeks away, and I could see cracks forming on top, and places where the ice was thin, giving way to the rushing water beneath. I’d seen firsthand what could happen if a person ventured out onto a river that wasn’t quite frozen.
The other thing I noticed was that there was no other way across.
But as I touched the ice at the edge with my boot, I thought of what Kharan had said, that ice was my element. I gazed out at the wide stretch of river. I’d frozen small buckets of water before, but did I have enough control to freeze the river without resorting to using the cold fire? The ice inside me crept over my skin, until it felt as though I was carved from marble.
I took a step out onto the frozen water, and then another. I thought of holding my hand up to the prince’s, of pushing back against his fire with my own cold power. I’d made some progress in my level of control while at the palace, so I tried to push away any remaining doubts. I had to make it across this river.
As I made tentative progress away from the shore, I remembered a time I saw I an elk fall into a frozen river. The ice had cracked and split open so fast the animal had no chance of escape, and I’d stood at the very edge of the shore with my hand clutched to my chest. Its hooves thrashed uselessly at the chunks of ice that had broken off with it. It was torturous that there was nothing I could do. Eventually, Dedushka had shot it with an arrow just to end its suffering.
My ears strained for any ominous cracking, but there was nothing but the wind and my own footsteps. No one, either, to end my suffering should I be swallowed by the ice.
Still, I persisted, pushing past my own fear. I had to make it to my village and defend it from the armies; had to see Babushka again. I thought of Elation, too, of how I could find her again now—anything to stay calm.
A small sound came from beneath my feet, interrupting my thoughts. I froze in place and anxiously scanned the ice. Nothing—no signs of any cracks. Ever so slowly, I took another cautious step and let out a relieved breath. The ice held. It made me want to dash to the other side, but I knew that would be far more dangerous. If the ice was weak at all, my pounding footsteps would ensure its collapse.
I glanced back at the shore I’d come from, and my shoulders dropped. I’d hardly made any progress at all! I wasn’t even halfway.
I crawled along at my snail’s pace, the pale sun hidden behind the clouds above. I’d only taken a few more steps when another sound broke the silence, this time a definite cracking. I froze again, but when I looked down, I let out a cry of horror. The ice had splintered beneath me. Barely daring to breathe, I turned to look behind me, but there were jagged lines that way too.
The fear was like a wild animal within me, clawing my stomach and snatching away my breaths. Either way I chose to move, the ice could crack, the freezing-cold black water swallowing me without anyone even knowing what had happened to me.
Who would even care? a cruel voice inside me asked. The prince, but only because of the loss of my power.
I thought again of the elk that had fallen in, and I remembered what Dedushka had said. If only it hadn’t run, it might not have fallen through.
I just had to fight the urge to run and instead take tiny steps. My heart in my throat, I took a step, and then another. The ice splintered, and I bit my lip to keep from crying out.
Help me! I thought to my powers. Be useful for once!
But it did nothing except harden my skin. I was too panicked to help myself. I tried to be calm, to think of how I’d managed to control the cold fire at the palace—if only for a moment. And I thought of before, with the prince, only calling enough ice to repel his flames.
In one movement, I bent and touched my palms to the cracking ice beneath me. I reached deep inside me, where it was coldest, and I thought of every moment I’d ever commanded water to turn to ice. The fear and the doubt tried to stop me, but I pushed it aside.
Freeze, I commanded, and icy cold erupted from my palms, shimmering in the sunlight, and so cold it froze not only the river below but also the air itself. Ice crystals rained down as the river solidified.
And then I ran.
Above me, the beating of wings made me risk a glance at the sky. Elation swooped low, a soft cry of greeting. She’d found me!
I wanted to weep with relief. With her by my side, I had a chance. I ran still faster, until my legs and lungs burned, and I welcomed the sensation, because it meant I was free and alive.
I reached the shore and dry land, but I didn’t dare let myself stop. Elation continued to soar above me as I ran toward the cover of the woods. Only once I was surrounded by snowcapped spruce and fir trees, towering over me with their branches full of needles, did I allow myself to glance back at the palace.
There was no movement, no sign that anyone had seen me leave. The river, despite the cracks that had appeared, now looked untouched thanks to the cold inside me covering my tracks. No guardsman had noticed, nor the bogatyr, and I wondered if they’d been called to the prince as Grigory prepared the battalion of men to defend the villages.
Elation flew to a low branch, and I held out my arm to her, already hardening with ice before she landed. She looked at me with her golden eyes, and then bowed her head as I bowed mine.
“I’ve missed you,” I said, tears filling my own eyes. “But I don’t have time for a reunion. We must go to the village as fast as we can and pray we get there before the enemy destroys it.”
She let out a soft cry before taking off again, and I followed at a run.
Hurry, hurry, went every beat of my heart.
We continued through the day and long into the night, until I was stumbling with exhaustion, until I’d made it far past the woods beyond Kiev where I’d first left Elation behind. She flew to a spruce tree thick with needles, and I found a nice pile of branches at the base of the trunk. With the last of my energy, I cleared some of the snow away and fixed the branches so they formed a rough sort of shelter. My ability to withstand extreme cold ensured I wouldn’t need to waste time with a fire, and I was too tired to eat. For now, I curled beneath my little hut of branches and fell instantly to sleep, knowing Elation would keep watch.
Tomorrow, though, I would make my way to the village.
And pray I got there in time.
Elation’s soft cry awoke me at dawn. The sky was streaked a pale buttery yellow and pink, and my limbs felt heavy, but I knew Elation was right. I had to keep moving.
As I left the cover of the branches, I pulled out the bag of bread and cheese I’d taken from my room. I nibbled just a small hunk of the bread and two or three bites of cheese—it was better to save it in case I had a greater need later on. I was thirsty, too, my mouth dry from the mad dash to the woods, but I was sure I would come across a stream at some point. If not, I could always melt the snow and drink it if I had to.
With the sun behind me, I turned west. I knew my village was roughly northwest from Kiev, and the close
r I got to that area, the more I’d recognize the forest and its surroundings. But with Elation with me, I wasn’t afraid of losing my way. I had confidence that she knew how to return, and I had the added security of her superior vision. She would see Grigory and the battalion—if he’d even managed to mobilize them so soon—following long before they arrived.
The sense of urgency stayed with me, nipping at my heels though my endurance was low. I walked and trotted as much as I could, but the snow was thick in places and slowed me down, clutching at my legs.
Before I could stop myself, my thoughts turned to the prince. What would he think when he discovered I’d left? For a moment, a little twinge of fear snuck into my stomach. Would he rescind his pardon of my crime? Worse still was the thought of why he’d be angry. Would he be upset because I had left despite finally offering my help, or, more likely, would he be upset because he’d lost his weapon?
I hated this line of thinking—hated that it twisted my insides into knots. Just because he’d been kind to me, I expected him to care for me? The thought was laughable.
Just because he was kind and blindingly handsome, I found myself drawn to him? This last thought made me so angry I squished the bread in the sack I was holding, and then I was furious with myself that I’d done so.
Instead, I tried to make myself think of what I’d say to Babushka if I managed to reach the village. If the villagers didn’t chase me away with pitchforks like some monstrous creature—though I could hardly blame them if they did.
That was if the enemy soldiers hadn’t arrived there first.
I didn’t know if Babushka would speak to me at all. I had hope, though, from her words to me before I’d left in the prince’s sleigh. Before I was taken not to my execution as my village had thought, but to a palace where I was treated as a guest. Over and over in my head I practiced what I would say to her if I found her alive: I would tell her how terribly sorry I was, that I was only trying to save Dedushka before everything went out of control. That I missed him, too. That I was infinitely sorry for destroying the life we’d had together.
I was full of regret that even though they’d raised me as their own and saved me from dying alone in the woods as a baby, I’d only thanked their generosity with death and destruction.
I walked and ran until I could go no farther, and even then, I pushed on until the sun was setting. It turned the sky a vibrant orange and pink and purple, and all I could do was sit beneath a spruce and stare in a haze of exhaustion at the sunset’s beauty. It reminded me of fire, and fire now reminded me of the prince.
Elation had flown off while I was lost in my own thoughts, but when she returned, she had a hare clutched in her talons.
“That’s kind of you, but I don’t know if I can eat,” I said. My belly churned with fear for Babushka. What if I couldn’t save her in time?
But Elation only dropped the hare into my lap and stared at me with a glint in her eyes, like she might start ripping into the meat herself and feeding it to me.
“I suppose you mean to say I’ll need my strength.”
She had a point. The hare would be more filling than just the bread and cheese I’d brought with me.
After gathering the driest wood I could find, I made a neat little triangular pile and used the flint from the tinderbox to light it. While the fire crackled, I skinned the hare with my knife and put it to roast on a spit I made from a stick.
The meat was unseasoned, of course, but still delicious a couple of hours later. After filling my belly, I created another rough shelter with branches to sleep under, leaving the fire to burn cheerfully nearby.
I closed my eyes and tried to sleep, but my mind kept dragging up images of Babushka. Her izba was tucked into the woods beyond the village. Would the enemy soldiers go that far? A twinge of fear snuck up my back to think of facing the soldiers on my own, but I had only to think of protecting Babushka as I’d failed to do for Dedushka, and a surge of strength flowed through my body.
I would do whatever needed to be done.
After a time, I finally fell into an uneasy sleep, but my dreams were full of fire and ash.
The next day began as the one before it: at dawn. I broke my fast on a small bit of bread and cheese as I continued on my way, supplemented by cold, fresh water from a partially thawed stream that crossed my path.
It was toward midday that I saw it: smoke rising above the tree line in the distance. Despair wrapped my heart in chains. It was my village, I knew.
I had no energy left, but still I ran. I ran like a pack of wolves would tear me apart if I stopped. Thick firs and pines reached for me as I raced by, needles brushing my cheek. This was the forest I was familiar with: the same oak tree where mushrooms always grew, the same rotted tree stump that looked like a monster in the wrong light, and the stream, where just beyond lay the elder’s house, and the beginning of the village.
Only, as I ran across the stream and out of the woods, there was no elder’s house. What remained was a blackened ruin. I was too late. The knowledge stabbed low, cold and hard as a blade of ice.
The stables and the blacksmith were jagged piles of wood and ash. And the other side of the village, the side I’d destroyed with my own power, but where the villagers had tried to rebuild—the frames of the izby still visible—was nothing but skeletal charred wood.
Where were Grigory and his men? How had I arrived here before them?
As I came closer to individual buildings and izby, I saw the dead. They, too, were burned, the elder recognizable only by the tattered remains of his coat, the men who had survived my own attack dead with their paltry weapons nearby, and perhaps the most ghastly, Yana, a girl my own age, whose skin had peeled away from her flesh from the heat of the fire.
The enemy soldiers hadn’t even taken prisoners. They’d burned and destroyed wantonly, leaving only death in their wake.
I picked up my pace, running toward Babushka’s izba. I could just see it at the far end of the village, almost hidden among the trees, but it, too, was burned and blackened. By some miracle, though, half of it was still standing. Though in this cold wind, the two walls left and no roof were of little use. Elation flew ahead and landed at the top of one of the walls, making a soft little cry.
Anger at those who would do such a thing to an innocent old woman—to an entire village—burned cold and bright within me.
As I got closer, ice coated my skin and I walked along with my heart in my throat. I both did and did not want to see what was in the izba.
“Babushka,” I said quietly, and then louder: “Babushka!”
A noise came then, and I couldn’t be sure what it was. A breath, a sigh, a rustle. Whatever the sound was, I ran toward it.
Babushka was there, on the floor by the fireplace. She was alive, but even from the threshold I could see that her breathing was labored, her skin burned away by fire, patches of it blackened, other parts as red as blood. Half of her hair had been burned off, and she’d been wearing her red-and-orange kerchief at the time, so part of it had melded to the skin of her face. It was grievous that she was still alive, and I found I couldn’t even rejoice in the last chance to speak to her. She had to have been in agony. A pain beyond what little comfort herbs would be.
Too late, whispered through my mind. Too late to help her; too late to comfort her; too late.
I knelt beside her. The eye on the side of her face that had not been burned fixed on me, and I choked back a sob. Elation flew to me, pressing her body against the side of my hip.
“I’ve come to ask your forgiveness, though I do not deserve it,” I said. “I’ve brought nothing but horror down upon this house and village.”
“No,” she said in a croak. She smacked dried lips and a parched tongue, and I raced outside with my cup to fill it from the well. I ran back to her side and carefully allowed the water to dribble into her mouth. She took precious few sips and then said, “It’s not your fault. I knew of your true power, but I never told you—I t
hought if we never spoke of it, it would never manifest. But I was wrong. And your dedushka died because of it.”
Tears welled in my eyes and fell. “He didn’t die. I killed him.”
She took in a gasping breath. “Your true power was too much for this small village. We knew it, and yet we couldn’t bear to part with you. There is nothing to forgive. You are our blood.” She held my gaze as best she could with the eye that wasn’t burned.
I went still. “But you said . . . you found me abandoned as a baby.”
“I lied all those years ago. I am your babushka.”
“Then . . . you know who my mother is? My father?”
“There,” she gasped, her gaze shifting to her herbal medicine cabinet. “Bottom of the drawer is false.”
Hesitant to leave her, even for the moment it would take to cross the room, I went and pulled open the drawer. Reaching to the very bottom, I found a little notch in the flat wood that I’d never noticed before. I pulled it up, and below it was a small, brown leather book. I took it out.
“That is the truth of how you came to us.”
Her voice was fading, and I ran back to her side, grasping her gnarled hand. “The eagle will lead you.” I glanced at Elation. Lead me where?
Babushka gave a great shuddering gasp, and I wrenched my attention away from the eagle at my side.
“Babushka, please,” I said, tears thick in my throat. “I don’t want to lose you.”
“I love you,” she said. “I love you both.”
And then she breathed her last.
Chapter Eleven
I RELEASED A CHOKING TORRENT OF pain. Tears fell unchecked down my cheeks, clinking to the floor as pieces of ice once they came into contact with the chill of my body. I watched Babushka’s face for what seemed like hours, as if she might suddenly open her eyes again. Her skin was warm, but she had the stillness that only came with death: no flush of life, no intake of breath, no twitching of her muscles. Finally I bowed my head as her final words echoed in my mind.
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