The Winter of the Witch

by Katherine Arden

THEY SAT DOWN AROUND the fire. Rodion and Sasha did not sheathe their swords. Morozko did not sit at all; he paced, restless, as though he did not know which he disliked more: the monks and their hostile firelight or the hot summer darkness.

  Vasya told the entire story, or the parts of it she could. She was hoarse by the end. Morozko did not speak; she got the impression that it was taking all his concentration not to disappear. Her touch might have helped, or her blood, but her brother kept a brooding eye on the frost-demon, and she thought it better not to provoke him. She kept her arms around her knees.

  When her voice wound raggedly to a halt, Sergei said, “You have not told us everything.”

  “No,” said Vasya. “There are things that have no words. But I have spoken the truth.”

  Sergei was silent. Sasha’s hand still toyed with the hilt of his sword. The fire was dying; Morozko seemed paradoxically more real in the faint red glow than he had in the full light of flames. Sasha and Rodion looked at him with open hostility. To Vasya it seemed suddenly that her hope was a foolish one; that it was impossible that these two powers would make common cause. Trying to put all her conviction into her voice, she said, “There is evil walking free in Moscow. We must face it together, or we will fall.”

  The monks were silent.

  Then, slowly, Sergei said, “If there is an evil creature in Moscow, then what is to be done, my daughter?”

  Vasya felt a stir of hope. Rodion made a sound of protest, but Sergei raised a hand, silencing him.

  “The Bear cannot be slain,” said Vasya. “But he can be bound.” She told them all she knew of the golden bridle.

  “We found it,” said Sasha, breaking in unexpectedly. “In the ruin of the burned stable the night—the night of—”

  “Yes,” said Vasya swiftly. “That night. Where is it now?”

  “In Dmitrii’s treasure-room, if he hasn’t melted it for the gold,” said Sasha.

  “If you and Sergei tell him together what it is for, will he give it to you?”

  Sasha’s mouth was open on what obviously was a yes. Then he frowned. “I don’t know. I haven’t— Dmitrii doesn’t trust me as he once did. But he has great faith in Father Sergei.”

  Vasya knew the admission hurt. And she also knew why Dmitrii didn’t trust her brother.

  “I am sorry,” she said.

  He shook his head once, but said nothing.

  “You cannot trust the Grand Prince’s faith in anyone,” Morozko broke in for the first time. “Medved’s great gift is disorder, and his tools are fear and mistrust. He will know that both of you are coming, and will have planned for it. Until he is bound, you cannot trust anyone; you cannot even trust yourselves, for he makes men mad.”

  The monks exchanged glances.

  “Can the bridle be stolen?” Vasya asked.

  All the monks looked pious at that and did not answer. She wanted to pull her hair in exasperation.

  * * *

  IT TOOK THEM A long time to lay their plans. By the time they had finished, Vasya was desperate to sleep. Not just for rest, but because to sleep here in her own midnight meant that there would be light when she awakened. All that time they talked, she was still in Midnight. They all were: caught fast in the darkness with her. She wondered if Sasha asked himself what had delayed the dawn.

  When she’d had enough, Vasya said, “We can speak again in the morning,” got up and left the fire. She found a place thick with old pine-needles, and wrapped herself in her cloak.

  Morozko bowed to the monks. A faint mockery in the gesture brought angry color to Sasha’s face.

  “Until morning,” said the winter-king.

  “Where are you going?” Sasha demanded.

  Morozko said simply, “I am going down to the river. I have never seen dawn on moving water.”

  And he vanished into the night.

  * * *

  SASHA WANTED TO FLING himself down in frustration and fear. He wanted to strike down that shadow-creature, he wanted to rid his mind of the thought of it whispering in the dark to his maiden sister. He stared at the place where the demon had vanished, while Rodion watched him with concern and Sergei with understanding.

  “Sit down, my son,” said Sergei. “It is not a time for anger.”

  “Are we then to make a deal with a demon? It is sin, God will be angry—”

  Sergei said reprovingly, “It is not for men and women to presume what the Lord wishes. That way lies evil, when men put themselves too high, saying, I know what God wants, for it is also what I want. You may hate the one she calls the winter-king, for the way he looks at your sister. But he has not harmed her; she says he has saved her life. You could not do as much for her.”

  That was severe, and Sasha flinched. “No,” he said, low. “I could not. But perhaps he has damned her.”

  “I do not know,” said Sergei. “We cannot know. But our business is with men and women: the helpless, and the afraid. That is why we are going to Moscow.”

  Sasha was silent a long time. Finally, wearily, he threw a log on the fire and said, “I do not like him.”

  “I fear,” said Sergei, “that he does not care in the slightest.”

  * * *

  VASYA WOKE IN BRILLIANT DAYLIGHT. She leaped to her feet and lifted her face to the sun. Out of the country of Midnight, at last; and she hoped never to take that dark way again.

  For a moment, she enjoyed the warmth. Then the heat began to gather, inexorable. Sweat slid between her breasts and down her spine. She was still wearing the wool shirt from the house at the edge of the lake, though now she wished for linen.

  Her bare feet drank coolness from the dew-damp earth. Morozko was only a few paces off, grooming the white mare. She wondered if he’d kept near them that night, or if he’d gone wandering, touching the summer earth with strange frost. The monks still slept, in the easy way men sleep in daylight in summer.

  Morozko’s fur and embroidered silk was gone, as though he could not maintain the trappings of power in the harsh light of day. He might have been any peasant, feet bare in the grass, except his steps starred the earth with frost, and the cuffs of his shirt dripped cold water. A little coolness hung about him, even in the humid morning. She breathed it in, comforted, and said, “Mother of God, the heat.”

  Morozko looked grim. “That is the Bear’s work.”

  “In winter, I have often wished for mornings like this,” Vasya said, to be fair. “To be warm all the way through.” She went over to stroke the white mare’s neck. “And in summer, I remember how suffocating such mornings are. Do you get hot?”

  “No,” he said shortly. “But the heat tries to unmake me.”

  Remorseful, she put a hand on his, where it moved on the mare’s withers. The connection between them flared to life, and his outline looked a little less vague. His hand curled around hers. She shivered, and he smiled. But his eyes were far away; he could not enjoy the reminder of his own weakness.

  She dropped her hand. “Do you think the Bear knows you’re here?”

  “No,” said Morozko. “I will try to keep it that way. Best we take two days on the road, and go into Moscow in bright morning.”

  “Because of the dead things?” said Vasya. “The upyry? His servants?”

  “They only walk at night,” he said. His colorless eye was savage. Vasya bit her lip.

  An old war, Ded Grib had called it. Had she made herself a third power in it as the chyert suggested? Or merely taken the winter-king’s side? The wall of years between them suddenly seemed as insurmountable as it had been before the night in the bathhouse.

  But she forced herself to say crisply, “I imagine that by the end of the day even my brother would sell his soul for cold water. Please do not bait him.”

  “I was angry,” he said.

  “We won’t be traveling with the
m for long,” she said.

  “No,” he returned. “I will endure the summer as long as I can, but, Vasya, I cannot endure it forever.”

  * * *

  THEY ATE NOTHING; it was too hot. All of them were flushed and sweating even before they started off. They took the narrow track that wound alongside the Moskva, approaching the city from the east. Vasya’s stomach knotted with nerves. Now that they’d come to it, she did not want to go back to Moscow. She was deathly afraid. She trudged through the dust, trying to remember that she could do magic, that she had allies. But it was hard to believe, in the harsh light of day.

  Morozko had let the white mare go, to graze beside the river and keep out of the sight of men. He was staying out of sight himself: little more than a cool breeze ruffling the leaves.

  The sun rose higher and higher over the swooning world. Gray shadows lay like bars of iron along the trail. To their left ran the river. To their right was a vast wheat-field, red-gold as Pozhar’s coat, hissing as a hot wind flattened the stalks. The sun was like a mallet between the eyes. The path coated their feet with dust.

  On and on they walked, still passing the wheat. It seemed endless. It seemed…Suddenly Vasya halted, shading her eyes with a hand, and said, “How large is this field?”

  The men stopped when she did; now they looked at each other. No one could tell. The hot day seemed interminable. Morozko was nowhere to be seen. Vasya peered out over the wheat-field. A whirlwind of dust spun through the red-gold grass; the sky was dull with yellow haze, the sun overhead—still overhead…How long had it been overhead?

  Now that they’d stopped, Vasya saw that the monks were all flushed and breathing fast. Faster than before? Too fast? It was so hot. “What is it?” asked Sasha, wiping the sweat from his face.

  Vasya pointed to the whirlwind. “I think—”

  Suddenly, with a muffled gasp, Sergei slumped over his horse’s mane and toppled sideways. Sasha caught him; Sergei’s placid horse didn’t move, only tilted a puzzled ear. Sergei’s skin was scarlet; he’d stopped sweating.

  Behind the monks, Vasya glimpsed a woman with fair skin and hair bleached white, raising a pair of cutting shears in one bone-colored hand.

  Not a woman. Without thinking, Vasya leaped, caught the chyert’s wrist, forced it backward.

  “I have met Lady Midnight,” said Vasya to her, not letting go. “But not her sister Poludnitsa, whose touch, they say, strikes men with heat-sickness.”

  Sasha was kneeling in the dust now, holding Sergei and looking stricken. Rodion had run for water. Vasya wasn’t sure he’d find any. The wheat-field at noon was the realm of Midday, and they had stumbled into it.

  “Let me go!” hissed Poludnitsa.

  Vasya did not slack her grip. “Let us go,” she said. “We have no quarrel with you.”

  “No quarrel?” The chyert’s white hair snapped like straw in the sultry wind. “Their bells will be the end of us. That is quarrel enough, don’t you think?”

  “The bell-makers wish only to live,” said Vasya. “As we all do.”

  “If they can only live by killing,” snapped Lady Midday. “Better they all die.” Rodion came back without water; Sasha had risen to his feet, a hand on the searing hilt of his sword, but he couldn’t see who Vasya was talking to.

  Vasya said to Midday, “Their deaths are yours; men and chyerti are bound together for good or ill. But it can be for good. We can share this world.” To show her good intentions, Vasya reached out and bloodied her thumb on the shears. Behind her, she heard the monks gasp, and realized that the touch of her blood had allowed them to see the demon.

  Midday laughed, shrill. “Are you going to save us, little mortal child? When the Bear has promised us war, and victory?”

  “The Bear is a liar,” said Vasya.

  Just then Sergei’s thready voice whispered behind her, “Fear and flee, unclean and accursed spirit, visible through deceit, hidden by pretense. Whether you be of the morning, noonday, midnight, or night, I expel you.”

  Midday cried out, this time in real pain; she dropped her shears, fell back, vanishing, vanishing…

  “No!” Vasya cried to the monks. “It’s not what you think. It’s not what they think.” She lunged and seized Midday’s wrist, keeping her from disappearing utterly.

  “I see you,” she said to her, low. “Live on.”

  Midday stood an instant, wounded, afraid, wondering. Then she was swept up in a whirlwind and vanished.

  Morozko stepped out of the noonday glare. “Didn’t your nurse warn you about wheat-fields in summer?” he asked.

  “Father!” Sasha cried, just as Vasya turned back to the monks. Sergei was breathing too fast; his pulse vibrated in his throat. Morozko might have hesitated, but, muttering something, he knelt in the dust, laid long fingers against the frantic pulse in the monk’s neck. As he did, he breathed out, his other fist clenched hard.

  “What are you doing?” Sasha demanded.

  “Wait,” said Vasya.

  The wind rose. Sluggishly at first, then faster, flattening the wheat. It was a cold wind: a wind of winter, pine-smelling, impossible in all the heat and the dust.

  Morozko’s jaw was set; his outline grew fainter even as the wind grew stronger. In a moment he would disappear, his presence as unimaginable as a snowflake at high summer. Vasya caught him by the shoulders. “Not yet,” she said into his ear.

  He shot her a brief look and hung on.

  As the air cooled, Sergei’s breathing and rabbit-fast pulse began to slow. Sasha and Rodion looked better too. Vasya was drinking in the cold air with great gulps. But Morozko’s outline was wavering badly now, despite her grip.

  Unexpectedly, Sasha asked, “What can I do?” Hope had won out over the censure on his face.

  She glanced at him in surprise, and said, “See him. And remember.” Morozko’s lips thinned, but he said nothing.

  Sergei drew a deep breath. The air about them was cool enough to dry the sweat beneath Vasya’s stifling shirt. The wind faded to a breeze. The sun had moved; the heat was still intense, but not deadly. Morozko dropped his hand, bowed forward, gray as spring snow. Vasya kept her hands on his shoulders. Cold water ran down her fingers, over his shoulders.

  All were silent.

  “I don’t think we’re going any farther for a while,” Vasya said, looking from the frost-demon to the sweat-stained monks. “No point in doing the Bear’s work for him, and perishing before we get there.”

  No one said anything to that.

  * * *

  THEY FOUND A LITTLE HOLLOW of the river, cool with grass and moving water. The river rolled brown at their feet, running fast toward Moscow, where the Moskva and the Neglinnaya joined. In the distance, thick with haze, they could see the sullen city itself. A little way beyond them, the river was full of boats.

  It was too hot to eat, but Vasya took a little bread from her brother and sprinkled crumbs in the water. She thought she caught a flash of bulging fish-eyes, a ripple that was not part of the current, but that was all.

  Sasha, watching her, said abruptly, “Mother—Mother put bread in the water too, sometimes. For the river-king, she said.” Then he shut his lips tight. But to Vasya it sounded like understanding, it sounded like apology. She smiled tentatively at him.

  “The demon meant to kill us,” said Sergei, his voice still hoarse.

  “She was afraid,” said Vasya. “They are all afraid. They do not want to disappear. I think the Bear is making them more afraid, and so they lash out. It wasn’t her fault. Father, exorcisms will only drive more of them to the Bear’s side.”

  “Perhaps,” said Sergei. “But I did not wish to die in a wheat-field.”

  “You didn’t,” said Vasya. “Because the winter-king saved your life.”

  No one said anything.

  She left them in the shade, r
ose and went downstream, out of earshot. She sank down in the tall grasses, dabbled her feet in the water and said aloud, “Are you all right?”

  Silence. Then his voice spoke in the summertime stillness. “I have been better.”

  He stepped soundlessly through the grass and sank to the earth beside her. It was somehow harder to look at him now, as the eye slides, without comprehension, over any impossible thing. She narrowed her eyes and kept looking until the feeling passed. He sat with his knees drawn up, staring out at the glaring-bright water. Sourly he said, “Why should my brother fear my freedom? I am less than a ghost.”

  “Does he know now?”

  “Yes,” said Morozko. “How could he not? Calling the winter wind, so…I could not have made clearer sign of my presence short of shouting it to his face. If we still mean to go to Moscow, we will have to go today, despite the risk of sunset. I had hoped to avoid night and the upyry both, but if he is going to send his servants to try to kill you anyway, better we have the bridle first.”

  Vasya shivered in the midday sun. Then she told him, “There is a reason chyerti like Lady Midday are on the Bear’s side.”

  “Many perhaps. Not most,” Morozko returned. “Chyerti don’t want to disappear, but most of us know what folly it is, to go to war with men. Our fates are bound together.”

  She said nothing.

  “Vasya, how close did my brother come to persuading you to join him?”

  “He didn’t come close,” she said. Morozko raised a brow. Lower, she added, “I thought about it. He asked me what loyalty I could have to Rus’. The mob of Moscow killed my horse.”

  “You freed Pozhar, who set fire to Moscow,” Morozko said. He was looking out at the water again. “You caused the death of your sister’s infant, though she was ready to die to give the babe life. Perhaps you only paid for your foolishness.”

  His tone was wounding, the words sword-sharp in their suddenness. Startled, she said, “I did not mean—”