Pyotr drew a deep breath. “You are right, daughter,” he said. “You are right. Come, I will help you.”
The horses settled a little when the gate was shut behind them. Vasya took Mysh and Buran into the stable itself, while the less prized horses milled in the dooryard. The little vazila put his hand in hers. “Do not leave us, Vasya.”
“I must get my soup,” said Vasya. “Dunya is calling. But I will come back.”
She ate her soup curled in the back of Mysh’s narrow stall and fed the mare her bread. Afterward, Vasya wrapped herself in a horse-blanket and counted the shadows on the stable wall. The vazila sat beside her. “Do not go, Vasya,” he said. “When you stay, I remember my strength, and I remember that I am not afraid.”
So Vasya stayed, shivering despite the straw and her horse-blanket. The night was very cold. She thought she would never sleep.
But she must have, for after moonset she awoke, freezing. The stable was dark. Even Vasya, cat-eyed, could barely make out Mysh standing above her. For a moment all was still. Then, from without, came a soft chuckle. Mysh snorted and backed, tossing her head. The white showed in a ring around her eye.
Vasya rose in silence, letting her blanket fall. The cold air sank fangs into her flesh. She crept to the stable door. There was no moon, and fat clouds smothered the stars. The snow was still falling.
Creeping over the snow, silent as the flakes, was a man. He darted from shadow to shadow. When he let out his breath, he laughed deep in his throat. Vasya crept closer. She could not see a face, only ragged clothes and a thatch of coarse hair.
The man drew near the house and put a hand on the door. Vasya shouted aloud just as the man flung himself into the kitchen. There was no sound of flesh on wood; he passed through the door like smoke.
Vasya ran across the dvor. The yard glittered with virgin snow. The ragged man had left no footprints. The snow was thick and soft; Vasya’s limbs felt heavy. Still she ran, shouting, but before she could come to the house, the man had leaped back into the dooryard, landing animal-lithe on all fours. He was laughing. “Oh,” he said, “it has been so long. How sweet are the houses of men, and oh, how she screamed—”
He caught sight of Vasya then, and the girl stumbled. She knew the scars, the single gray eye. It was the face on the icon, the face…the face of the sleeper in the woods, years ago. How can that be?
“Well, what is this?” the man said. He paused. She saw memory cross his face. “I remember a little girl with your eyes. But now you are a woman.” His eye fastened on hers as though he meant to strip a secret from her soul. “You are the little witch who tempts my servant. But I did not see…” He came nearer and nearer.
Vasya tried to flee, but her feet would not obey. His breath reeked of hot blood, he blew it in waves over her face. She gathered her courage. “I am no one,” she said. “Get out, leave us be.”
His humid fingers flicked out and lifted her chin. “Who are you, girl?” And then, lower, “Look at me.” In his eye lay madness. Vasya would not look—knew she must not—but his fingers were like an iron trap and in a moment she would…
But then an icy hand seized her, pulled her away. She smelled cold water and crushed pine. Over her head a voice was speaking. “Not yet, brother,” it said. “Go back.”
Vasya could see nothing of the speaker except a curving line of black cloak, but she could see the other, the one-eyed man. He was grinning and cringing and laughing all at once.
“Not yet? But it is done, brother,” he said. “It is done.” He winked his good eye at Vasya and was gone. The black cloak around Vasya became the whole world. She was cold, and a horse was neighing, and far away someone was screaming.
Then Vasya awoke, stiff and shivering on the floor in the stable. Mysh pressed her warm nose to the girl’s face. But though Vasya was awake, the cry could still be heard. It went on and on. Vasya sprang to her feet, shaking away her nightmare. The horses in stalls whinnied and kicked, splintering the stable walls. The horses in the freezing dvor milled in panic. There was no ragged one-eyed figure. A dream, Vasya thought. Only a dream. She darted among the horses, dodging the heaving bodies.
The kitchen was churning like a nest of angry wasps. Her brothers bulled their way in, half-awake and armed; Irina and Anna Ivanovna crowded into the opposite doorway. The servants milled here and there, crossing themselves or praying or clutching one another.
And then her father came, big and steady, his sword in one hand. He forced his way, cursing, between clusters of terrified servants. “Hush,” he said to the milling people. Father Konstantin burst in on his heels.
It was little Agafya, the maidservant, who was screaming. She sat bolt upright on her pallet. Her white-knuckled hands clutched the wool of her blanket. She had bitten into her lower lip so that the blood bloomed on her chin, and a ring of white showed around her unblinking eyes. The screams sliced the air, like icicles falling from the eaves outside.
Vasya pushed her way through the frightened people. She seized the girl by the shoulders. “Agafya, listen to me,” she said. “Listen—it’s all right. You are safe. All is well. Hush now. Hush.” She held the girl tightly, and after a moment Agafya moaned and fell silent. Her wide eyes slowly focused on Vasya’s face. Her throat worked. She tried to speak. Vasya strained to hear. “He came for my sins,” she choked. “He…” She heaved for breath.
A small boy crawled through the crowd. “Mother,” he cried. “Mother!” He flung himself on her, but she did not heed.
Irina was suddenly there, her small face grave. “She has fainted,” the child said seriously. “She needs air and water.”
“It is only a nightmare,” said Father Konstantin to Pyotr. “Best to leave her to the women.”
Pyotr might have replied, but no one heard, for Vasya cried out then in shock and sudden fury. The entire room convulsed in new fright.
Vasya was staring at the window.
Then—“No,” she said, visibly gathering herself. “Forgive me. I—nothing. It was nothing.” Pyotr frowned. The servants looked at her with open suspicion and murmured among themselves.
Dunya shuffled to Vasya, her breath rustling hollow in her chest. “Girls always have nightmares when the weather changes,” Dunya wheezed, loud enough for the room to hear. “Go on, child, fetch water and honey-wine.” She gave Vasya a hard look.
Vasya said nothing. Her glance strayed once more to the window. For an instant she could have sworn she’d seen a face. But it could not be, for it was the face out of her dream, blue-scarred and one-eyed. It had grinned and winked at her through the wavering ice.
AS SOON AS IT was light the next morning, Vasya went looking for the domovoi. She searched until the watery sun was high, and into the brief afternoon, shirking her work. The sun was tilting west when she managed to drag the creature surreptitiously out of the oven. His beard was smoldering around the edges. He was thin and bent, his clothes shabby, his manner defeated.
“Last night,” Vasya said without preamble, cradling a burnt hand, “I dreamed of a face and then I saw it at the window. It had one eye and it was smiling. Who was it?”
“Madness,” mumbled the domovoi. “Appetite. The sleeper, the eater. I could not keep it out.”
“You must try harder,” snapped Vasya.
But the domovoi’s gaze wandered, and his mouth drooped open. “I am weak,” he slurred. “And the wood-guard is weak. Our enemy has loosened his chain. Soon he will be free. I cannot keep him out.”
“Who is the enemy?”
“Appetite,” said the domovoi again. “Madness. Terror. He wants to eat the world.”
“How can I defeat it?” said Vasya urgently. “How may the house be protected?”
“Offerings,” muttered the domovoi. “Bread and milk will strengthen me—and perhaps blood. But you are only one girl alone, and I cannot take my life from you. I will fade. The eater will come again.”
Vasya seized the domovoi and shook him so that his jaws clacked
together. His dull eyes cleared, and he looked momentarily astonished. “You will not fade,” Vasya snapped. “You can take your life from me. You will. The one-eyed man—the eater—he will not get in again. He will not.”
There was no milk, but Vasya stole bread and shoved it into the domovoi’s hand. She did it that night, and every night thereafter, scanting her own meals. She cut her hand and smeared the blood on sills and before the oven. She pressed her bloody hand to the domovoi’s mouth. Her ribs started through her skin, her eyes grew hollow, and nightmares dogged her sleeping. But the nights slipped past—one, two, a dozen—and no one else screamed at something that was not there. The wavering domovoi held, and she poured her strength into him.
But little Agafya never spoke sense again. Sometimes she would plead with things that no one could see: saints and angels and a one-eyed bear. Later she raved of a man and a white horse. One night she ran out of the house, collapsed blue-lipped in the snow, and died.
The women prepared the body with as much haste as was seemly. Father Konstantin kept vigil beside her, white to the lips, head bent, with a face no one could read. Though he knelt for hours at her side, he never once prayed aloud. The words seemed to catch in his straining throat.
They buried Agafya in the brief winter daylight while the forest groaned around them. In the swift-falling twilight, they hurried to huddle before their ovens. Agafya’s child cried for his mother; his wailing hung like mist over the silent village.
THE NIGHT AFTER THE FUNERAL, a dream seized Dunya like sickness, like the jaws of a hunting creature. She was standing in a dead forest strewn with the stumps of blackened trees. An oily smoke veiled the flinching stars; firelight flickered against the snow. The frost-demon’s face was a skull-mask with the skin drawn tight. His soft voice frightened Dunya worse than shouting.
“Why have you delayed?”
Dunya gathered all her force. “I love her,” she said. “She is like my own daughter. You are winter, Morozko. You are death; you are cold. You cannot have her. She will give her life to God.”
The frost-demon laughed bitterly. “She will die in the dark. Every day my brother’s power waxes. And she saw him when she should not have. Now he knows what she is. He will slay her if he can, and take her for his own. Then you well may talk of damnation.” Morozko’s voice softened, a very little. “I can save her,” he said. “I can save you all. But she must have that jewel. Otherwise…”
And Dunya saw that the flickering firelight was her own village burning. The forest filled with creeping things whose faces she knew. Greatest among them was a grinning one-eyed man, and beside him stood another shape, tall and slender, corpse-pale, lank-haired. “You let me die,” the specter said in Vasya’s voice, and her teeth gleamed between bloody lips.
Dunya found herself seizing the necklace and holding it out. It made a tiny scrap of brightness in a world formless and dark.
“I did not know,” Dunya stammered. She reached for the dead girl, the necklace swinging from her fist. “Vasya, take it. Vasya!” But the one-eyed man only laughed, and the girl made no sign.
Then the frost-demon put himself between her and horror, seized her shoulders with hard, icy hands. “You have no time, Avdotya Mikhailovna,” he said. “Next time you see me, I will beckon and you will follow.” His voice was the voice of the wood; it seemed to echo in her bones, vibrate in her throat. Dunya felt her guts twist with fear and with certainty. “But you can save her before you go,” he went on. “You must save her. Give her the necklace. Save them all.”
“I will,” whispered Dunya. “It will be as you say. I swear it. I swear…”
And then her own voice woke her.
But the chill of that burnt forest, of the frost-demon’s touch, lingered. Dunya’s bones shook until it seemed they would shake through her skin. All she could see was the frost-demon, intent and despairing, and the laughing face of his brother, the one-eyed creature. The two faces blurred into one. The blue stone in her pocket seemed to drip icy flame. Her skin cracked and blackened when her hand closed tight around it.
Vasya went to the horses every morning at first light during those clipped, metallic days, only a little after her father. They had a kinship in this, to fear so passionately for the animals. At night, the horses were put in the dvor, safe behind the palisade, and as many as would fit were sheltered in the sturdy stable. But during the day they were turned loose to fend for themselves, roaming the gray pastures and digging grass from beneath the snow.
One bright, bitter morning, not long before midwinter, Vasya ran the horses into the field, whooping, riding the bareback Mysh. But once the horses were settled, the girl dismounted and looked the mare over frowning. Her ribs were beginning to show through her brown coat, not from want, but from waiting.
He will come again, the mare said. Can you smell it?
Vasya had not the nose of a horse, but she turned into the wind. For an instant, the smell of rotting leaves and pestilence closed her throat. “Yes,” she said grimly, coughing. “The dogs smell it, too. They whine when the men set them loose, and run for their kennels. But I will not let him hurt you.”
She began her round, going from horse to horse with withered apple cores, poultices, and soft words. Mysh followed her like a dog. At the edge of the herd, Buran scraped the ground with a forehoof and bugled a challenge to the waiting wood.
“Be easy,” said Vasya. She came alongside the stallion and put a hand on his hot crest.
He was furious as a stallion that sees a rival among his mares, and he almost kicked her before he got hold of himself. Let him come! He reared, lashing out with his forefeet. This time I will kill him.
Vasya dodged the flying hooves, pressing her body to his. “Wait,” she said into his ear.
The horse spun, snapping his teeth, but she clung close and he could not reach her. She kept her voice quiet. “Keep your strength.”
Stallions obey mares; Buran put his head down.
“You must be strong and calm when it comes,” said Vasya.
Your brother, said Mysh. Vasya turned to see Alyosha, hatless, running toward her out the palisade-gate.
In an instant, Vasya had her forearm behind Mysh’s withers, and then she was on the horse’s back. The mare galloped across the field, kicking up the frozen glaze. The sturdy pasture fence loomed, but Mysh cleared the barrier and ran on.
Vasya met Alyosha just outside the palisade. “It is Dunya,” said Alyosha “She will not wake. She is saying your name.”
“Come on,” said Vasya, and Alyosha sprang up behind her.
THE KITCHEN WAS HOT; the oven roared and gaped like a mouth. Dunya lay atop the oven, open-eyed and unseeing, still except for her twitching hands. She muttered to herself now and again. Her brittle skin stretched over her bones, so tight that Vasya thought she could see the ebbing blood. She climbed quickly atop the oven. “Dunya,” she said. “Dunya, wake up. It is I. It is Vasya.”
The open eyes blinked once, but that was all. Vasya felt a moment of panic; she forced it down. Irina and Anna knelt side by side before the icon-corner, praying. The tears slid down Irina’s face; she wasn’t pretty when she cried.
“Hot water,” snapped Vasya, turning round. “Irina, for God’s sake, praying will not keep her warm. Make soup.” Anna looked up with venomous eyes, but Irina, with surprising quickness, got to her feet and filled a pot.
All that day, Vasya sat at Dunya’s side, hunched atop the oven. She packed blankets around her nurse’s shriveled body and tried to coax broth down her throat. But the liquid dribbled out of her mouth, and she would not wake. All that long day the clouds drifted in, and the daylight darkened.
In the late afternoon, Dunya sucked in a breath as though she meant to swallow the world, and caught at Vasya’s hands. Vasya jerked back in surprise. The strength in her old nurse’s grip astonished her. “Dunya,” she said.
The old lady’s eyes wandered. “I did not know,” she whispered. “I did not see.”
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br /> “You will be all right,” said Vasya.
“He has one eye. No, he has blue eyes. They are the same. They are brothers. Vasya, remember…” And then her hand fell away and she lay still, mumbling to herself.
Vasya spooned more hot drinks down Dunya’s throat. Irina kept the fire roaring. But the old lady’s pulse faded with the daylight. She ceased to mutter and lay open-eyed. “Not yet,” she said to the empty corner, and sometimes she cried. “Please,” she said then. “Please.”
The feeble day flickered, and a hush fell over house and village. Alyosha went out for firewood; Irina went to tend to her peevish mother.
When Konstantin’s voice broke the silence, Vasya nearly leaped out of her skin.
“Does she live?” he said. The shadows lay across him like a woven mantle.
“Yes,” Vasya said.
“I will pray with her,” he said.
“You will not,” snapped Vasya, too weary and frightened for courtesy. “She is not going to die.”
Konstantin came nearer. “I can ease her pain.”
“No,” Vasya repeated. She was going to cry. “She is not going to die. As you love God, I beg you, go.”
“She is dying, Vasilisa Petrovna. This is my place.”
“She is not!” Vasya’s voice came wrenching from her throat. “She is not dying. I am going to save her.”
“She will be dead by morning.”
“You want my people to love you, so you made them afraid.” Vasya was pale with fury. “I will not have Dunya afraid. Get out.”
Konstantin opened his mouth, then closed it again. Abruptly he turned and left the kitchen.
Vasya forgot him at once. Dunya had not wakened. She lay still, her pulse a thread, her breathing barely felt on Vasya’s unsteady hand.
Night fell. Alyosha and Irina returned; the kitchen filled briefly with a subdued bustle as the evening meal was served. Vasya could not eat. The hour drew on and the kitchen emptied once more until it was only they four, Dunya and Vasya, Irina and Alyosha. The latter two dozed on the oven. Vasya was nodding herself.
The Bear and the Nightingale Page 20