He stood next to his chair and gazed at the floor near Yeva’s feet for a time. He lifted his head. “A month ago,” he began, “I sent out a caravan headed for Constantinople. If the venture were successful, it would mean a new trade route, which would bring you girls—and the town, and all the surrounding cities—countless luxuries. And perhaps the return of the priests and of books, education, maps, life from beyond our borders. The Mongols prevent us from making outside contacts, but I thought—” He shook his head, as if at the folly of such a dream. “It was a foolish risk. A gamble I should not have taken.”
Yeva wanted to look at her sisters to see if they had figured it out yet, if they were beginning to understand the meaning of the visitor in the night. But she could not take her eyes off her father’s weary face.
“Our entire fortune was tied up in the caravan, along with investments from merchants and noblemen, vouchsafed by me. It is all gone.”
The breath went out of the room. Yeva felt Lena go stiff, and from across the room she heard one of the maidservants stifle a gasp.
“I have thought all night on what to do, and spent some time adding up what I owe to the investors. Our only option is to sell the house and most of our possessions. For you, the staff, I will find positions with the neighboring households. You will all have outstanding references. I still own my hunting cabin in the north wood. The girls and I will move there, and I will take up hunting again, and attempt to earn enough to pay back our debts.”
Silence followed this announcement, as though everyone in the room were waiting for him to continue. He stepped to the side and sank down into his chair, doubled over with his elbows resting on his knees, mug dangling between them from his fingertips.
Pechta began to wail, turning to one of the maidservants and burying her face in her shoulder. It seemed this was the cue for the entire household to break down—the two maidservants started to sob, as Albe stood gawking in shocked silence and Yeva’s sisters put their arms around each other. Yeva stood alone, watching her father. Amid the chaos, he lifted his head to meet her eye.
Yeva had always longed for nothing more than to live at her father’s hunting cabin, where she had spent so many happy days with him as a child on their expeditions. This—this meant she was free of trips to see the baronessa, free of figuring out how to deal with Solmir, how to tell her sisters where his interest truly lay. But at what cost? Would Radak still want to wed Lena if she had no wealth and connections to offer? And the hunting cabin was leagues from the nearest town. There were no eligible young men in the wilderness to speak for her and her sister, only the trees and the wind and the beasts.
She had seen the spirit die in her father’s eyes. He sat doubled over, looking up at her like a man of eighty. How long could he continue to hunt? He had not had to provide for himself, much less a family, solely by hunting in nearly twenty years.
A chunk of ice detached itself from the roof and slid off, scraping loudly across the sniffles and sobs punctuating the quiet. Winter was coming fast.
Yeva’s sisters watched their possessions and their futures being auctioned off to the highest bidders with no tears and with no outward signs of sorrow. Though in private Lena’s face was often drawn with worry—for her fiancé, Radak, was away on business and would not hear of what had befallen them until after they had gone—to the outside world, she and Asenka were as sunny as ever. They cheerfully explained to prospective buyers why this mirror was their favorite, that dress the most stylish, this mother-of-pearl box the most beautiful. If Yeva had inherited her father’s skill at hunting, they had inherited his ability to negotiate a deal. They earned more from their possessions than their father had calculated, but it still was not near enough to pay back the investors he owed.
In his youth, Yeva’s father had been widely considered the best hunter in the land. Though there were many hunters who took advantage of the rich wilderness in the black wood, he was the only one who ventured into its heart. Yeva’s father had told her stories when she was little of the things he claimed to have seen: the life-sucking kudlak, the great bears to the north who could change their fur to match the ice, the stuhac, who would steal the ligaments from a man’s legs to make bindings for his own feet in the snow. Soaring above them all was the story of the Firebird—Yeva’s favorite for as long as she could remember. Despite the darkness and danger of the black wood, the Firebird at its heart was a burning beacon. No hunter could catch it—the only one who had ever come close was nothing more than a legend of a hundred years or more. And he had only caught a single feather from its tail.
Yeva used to dream of being the one to catch the Firebird—she dreamed of it long after she stopped believing in the other tales her father spun for her. But even without the kudlak, without the monsters of the fairy tales she loved as a child, the depths of the wood were dangerous, far more deadly than the more commonly hunted perimeters of the wilderness.
Her father had once fearlessly ventured into the deepest reaches of the wood, but how could he return to such a life now? He had given up the danger of the hunt for love of Yeva’s mother, who could not bear to see him disappear into the black wood day after day.
And what of his heart? He’d huddled in front of the fire that night like a broken man. He was proud, as proud of his mercantile empire as he’d been of his hunting abilities as a younger man. He could not hope to earn enough simply from pelts and meat of deer and rabbit; he would have to venture deep to bring back the heads and skins of trophy game. How could he hope to be so bold and so strong now, with this humiliation and ruin weighing on him like twenty extra years?
So Yeva’s sisters tried to earn as much as they could from their treasures, parting with them readily. Yeva lacked their skill with people and was more than happy to leave the sale of her own possessions to them. She kept aside only a few of her plainest dresses to bring with her to the cabin.
There was talk of selling the dogs as well, for they were purebred and Yeva’s father could still hunt without them. Yeva’s heart nearly broke at the idea, but she recalled her sisters cheerfully handing over their cherished books and trinkets, and she agreed to meet a man who had asked about purchasing them. Pelei was cautiously interested in the prospective buyer, sniffing at his hand with great determination, but Doe-Eyes—the gentlest dog Yeva had ever encountered—flung her ears right back and growled when he approached, the fur standing up along her back in a ridge.
Yeva’s father had shrugged after the buyer had left, and said only, “I suppose we will have to build them a kennel to sleep in at the cabin.”
With the dogs safe, Yeva turned her mind to packing the family’s few remaining belongings. At her father’s instruction she had placed three of their four servants with new families—only Albe remained. He came to them one morning and dropped to the floor, knees striking wood with a loud thud.
“Please let me come, master, mistresses,” he begged, taking hold of Tvertko’s hand. “You know I’m no good, I’ll only be thrown out of another house. I break things and I forget. But for you I’ll be better. I can do a bit of cooking and cleaning and whatever you need, I’ll make it worth keeping me, I will.”
“But we can’t pay you,” Yeva said gently, as her father patted Albe’s hand and tried to get him to stand back up.
“Don’t care, miss,” he protested. “Where else would I go? Been here since me mother died, been with you since I was seven. Where else would I go?”
From then on Albe oversaw the packing, and would relieve Yeva of anything she tried to carry out to the wagon. He generally made a nuisance of himself, always underfoot and performing his tasks with such enthusiasm that he nearly knocked the sisters over. But his antics caused them to smile more often than shout at him, and so when the family finally departed the house, their spirits were not quite as low as they might have been otherwise.
With the men walking and the dogs trotting alongside, and the wagon pulled by the plow horse they’d borrowed from a n
eighbor in exchange for a rug, they set off on the road north.
It was a three-day journey from their house in town to their father’s hunting cabin. They stayed in inns along the way, an expense Yeva protested each night. But her father refused to allow his girls to spend the night in a barn, or worse, wrapped in their cloaks on the ground beside the road—they had not sunk that low, he said, in a too-calm voice that Yeva knew better than to question. On the third day the weather took a turn for the worse, the skies lowering and gathering gray until the air turned white with snow in the late afternoon.
As the day faded toward twilight Doe-Eyes began to stumble, her long legs shaking in the snow. Yeva hopped down in order to help lift the dog up into the back of the wagon, and joined her there. Doe-Eyes was built for speed, bred in a land far to the west, with a slim body and shorter fur; a summer dog, not bred for the winter hardships she’d face at the edge of the black wood.
Yeva rubbed and rubbed at the dog’s body and legs until the tremble left them. Doe-Eyes licked her wrist and curled herself into a nest Yeva made of her remaining few dresses. They’d be covered in hair and smell like dog, but what did Yeva care? Out here there would be no baronessa to notice. Yeva left the dog slumbering in her nest and rejoined her sisters atop the broad wagon.
Beside her she felt Lena tremble, and she glanced aside. Her sister’s face was turned resolutely out toward the passing trees, but Yeva saw her hands, folded so tightly in her lap that the knuckles shone white. They had sent word of their misfortunes to Lena’s fiancé, but they’d had no time to wait for a reply, especially since there was no guarantee the message would even find him. Radak would mostly likely return from his business trip to find Lena gone, and all reason for marrying her too. There was no good now to be had from an alliance with the family—to marry one of them would be to marry their debts, which could well cripple a young entrepreneur.
Yeva folded her hands over her sister’s. They were nearly as cold as hers were, but they relaxed under her touch and after a time, both Yeva’s hands and Lena’s warmed to the company.
The weather worsened as they turned from the high road onto a smaller path into the woods, and they had to break their own trail through the snow, for no one had come this way since the storm had begun. Albe called out, suggesting they turn back and make for the inn several leagues behind. Yeva’s father said something in reply that she could not hear, but Albe quieted, tugging his coat more closely about his shoulders. She jumped down from the wagon, landing calf-deep in snow, and shouted over the wind, “Take my seat awhile, Albe.”
He protested, face flushing beet red, but she shook her head. “Please—I’d like to speak to my father in private.”
Reluctantly Albe let her give him a leg up onto the wagon as it groaned along through the snow. Yeva stepped over to her father and linked her arm through his, for warmth as much as companionship.
“That was kindly done,” he said, patting her hand.
“Right now, Albe is our only friend in the world.”
Her father’s hand stilled against hers, head bowing against the biting cold. For a time there was only the jingle of the horse’s harness and the groaning of the wagon, the dull thud of hoof on snow, the occasional distant thump as a branch gave way and dropped its heavy burden to the forest floor.
“I was a fool.” Her father’s voice was a whisper, but the quiet of the snow did little to hide it. “Such a fool.”
Yeva had never had to comfort her father before. Her heart squeezed with the kind of fear she never felt outside of nightmares, the kind of fear that made her blood pound. “It isn’t your fault,” she said finally, searching for any words that might ease the tension in the arm linked through hers.
Her father exhaled a grunt of a laugh, the mist of it hanging in front of his lips like a ghost. “We had enough. More than enough. That caravan—I was a fool to put everything we had into such a fragile venture. But I wanted more for you, for my girls—I wanted—”
His voice cracked, and with it Yeva’s heart. For decades their town, along with a vast stretch of the country, had been cut off from other parts of the world by marauders who intercepted travelers and convoys alike. The books her father owned all came from a time before the Mongols; the priests who had blessed Yeva at her naming ceremony were some of the last to make it through on their pilgrimages.
“You wanted the world for us,” Yeva whispered, hugging her father’s arm close against her body. “There’s no shame in that.” Still, her heart stirred uneasily. Had she not been berating herself the same way for wanting more than the life a husband like Solmir could offer her?
“I had the world,” her father replied, his pace faltering for a few steps until Yeva stopped too. Her father’s red-rimmed eyes met hers, the snow melting on his cheeks and trickling into his beard. “I was just too blind to see it.”
Yeva swallowed hard. “You have us,” she said softly. “We have you. That’s all we need. Come, Father—you’ll get stiff if you stop moving.”
As they continued, Yeva found movement warmed her, and that walking was much more preferable to riding on the wagon—but she had not been walking for three days through ankle-deep snow. After just half an hour she found that little-used muscles had begun to ache and protest the exercise.
As dusk fell the cabin came into view, the same white and black with snow and wood as the forest. The huddled occupants on the wagon leaped down, Albe unhitching the horse as soon as the wagon pulled into the lee of the house. Exhaustion made them all slow and stupid, even those who had ridden on the wagon, for the cold and the swaying, jouncing movement were nearly as wearying as walking. Asenka could barely move, her bad leg was so stiff, and Lena helped her through the snow with some difficulty. Yeva collected Doe-Eyes from her sleepy warm nest and whistled for Pelei, who had roamed too far, dancing around the trees, sniffing and shivering with excitement at their new surroundings. Albe put the horse in a dilapidated shed to be tended later, and everyone made their way to the house. It had lain unoccupied for the better part of a decade, and with a long breath their father shoved the door open for the first time since Yeva had been a child.
It was covered in dust and dirt, half the window shutters broken, drifts of fallen leaves and snow filling the corners. Something rustled in the back, its nest disturbed by the human arrivals. The only light came from behind the broken shutters and from a hole in the roof, plugged mostly with snow, allowing only for the cold blue glow of twilight through the ice. Flakes drifted down from the hole, glinting in the shaft of light.
This was not the cozy home Yeva had remembered from her childhood. She found herself wishing her father had listened to Albe back on the road—if he had, they would be warm and fed in an inn by now. But then, her father’s too-thin purse would be several coins leaner.
They all stood inside the doorway, dripping snow and ice onto the floor, surveying the dank interior of the cabin in silence. Asenka spoke first, taking a limping step forward. “Albe,” she said softly, “if you will be so good as to use the shovel there at the hearth and remove the snow from inside, I will lay a fire.”
Lena, as if shaking herself from a dream, stumbled forward to take her older sister’s arm and help her to the hearth. The two set to clearing leaves from the fireplace as Albe took the ash shovel and began hauling the snow out the windows. Yeva knelt and whispered to Pelei, one hand on his quivering shoulder, “Go on, I know you smell them. Remind them that this is our house.” When she straightened and pulled her hand away, Pelei was off to the far corner of the cabin like a bolt from a crossbow, sending frantic rustles throughout the leaves there as the house’s previous occupants fled before him. Yeva located the broad, sturdy table amid the debris and, with Albe’s assistance, set it on its legs and then smoothed her hands over its top to wipe off the worst of the dust.
Yeva’s father remained in the doorway, unmoving, watching his family get to work. When Yeva turned toward him he inhaled sharply through his nose, pa
ssing his hand over his face. “My girls,” he said hoarsely, pressing his lips together. After a silence he shook himself and cocked his head toward Yeva with a smile. “I will go excavate the tea.” And he left to begin bringing things in from the wagon.
Over the next few days the cabin slowly became habitable. Albe was put to work felling a few nearby trees and hewing rough timber to repair the worst holes and shore up the loft space to make it safe. There was one bedroom at the back of the house and two pallets in the loft. Tvertko and Albe took the beds in the loft, for Asenka could not manage the ladder—she and Lena took the bed at the back of the house, the one that had been their father’s when he still used this as a hunting cabin.
Yeva herself made a pallet by the hearth. In the evenings it was warm from the day’s fire, and as night grew thicker, the dogs curled up on either side, and she was as cozy as any in the house. Her father protested the arrangement, and her sisters too, but when Lena offered to take it in turns with her sleeping on the floor, Yeva turned her down.
“They are my dogs,” she pointed out with a smile, “and you’ll only complain in the mornings of their smell.” Yeva was usually the first in the family to wake anyway, and so it became her habit to stir the fire at dawn so that the water was just beginning to boil for tea when Albe came down the ladder rubbing his eyes.
Yeva’s father began making forays into the surrounding forest, learning the woods again. He’d taught Yeva that the key to being a good hunter was not to track a creature through the forest but to know the forest so well it was like tracking your prey through your own home. He rarely came back with much those early days, but he made imminent plans for trips deeper into the woods.
Yeva begged him to let her come along.
“You’re not a child anymore,” said her father with a sigh. “When I’ve paid my debts we’ll move back to town. By that time, I fear, you’ll have gone so wild that the confines of civilization will break your heart.”
Hunted Page 3