by Naomi Novik
But Panov Mandelstam didn’t let go and Panova Mandelstam didn’t. She was staring at the Staryk, and her face was white and sick, and she didn’t say anything; but she shook her head a little. He raised his hand, and Miryem cried out, “No!” and tried to pull her own hand free from Panova Mandelstam’s, but Panova Mandelstam still wouldn’t let go, and then the doors in the side of the room flew open again, so hard that everyone near them had to jump or run out of the way. They banged into the walls with a crash.
There was another king and queen standing in the doorway. Only the queen was wearing a crown, but I knew he was a king, because it was the tsar and tsarina that we had seen that same day in the sleigh, going in the gate before us after we had waited and waited. And the tsar looked into the room at the Staryk and he laughed out loud, a laugh like a fire makes, and the Staryk went very still.
“Irina, Irina,” the tsar said, “you have kept your promise and he is here! Give me the chain!”
The tsarina opened the box and took out a silver chain and gave it to him, and he came into the room grinning his teeth bare. None of us got in his way. We were all pressed up against the walls, as far away as we could be.
But the Staryk said suddenly, fiercely, “Do you think to catch me so easily, devourer? I have never seen your face before, but I know your name, Chernobog.” He jumped forward and took hold of the chain in the middle with both his hands. Ice went suddenly shooting along its length, long sharp points of icicles growing out of it like a whole blizzard happening at once, and the ice went all the way to the tsar’s hands and climbed over them. He howled and let go of the chain. The Staryk threw it to the floor behind him with a crash, and then he struck the tsar with the back of his hand.
Da would hit me sometimes like that, or Wanda or even Sergey, and Da was very big and strong, but even when he hit just me, I only just fell down on the floor. But when the Staryk hit the tsar, it was like he was hitting a straw doll. The tsar’s feet came off the ground and even after he landed hard on the floor his whole body went sliding all the way across the floor until he smashed into the stage and some of the instruments went over with a big awful twanging sound around him.
I thought he must be dead, when he was hit like that. When Da took the poker to hit Wanda, I thought he was going to kill her if he hit her with it, but he could not hit her hard enough even with the poker to make her whole body go across the room. But the tsar was not dead. He didn’t even just lie there on the ground being glad not to be dead and trying to hide from being hit again. Instead he got back on his feet. He didn’t just stand up, he came up in a strange twisting way, and there was blood coming from his mouth and red all over his teeth, and he hissed at the Staryk, and when he hissed, the blood started to smoke and burn out of his mouth, and his eyes were red.
“Get out!” the tsarina called suddenly. “Everyone, all of you, run, get out of the house!”
It was like she had let everybody loose. Everyone started to go out of the room. Some people ran past her and out the open doors into the courtyard and some people ran back through the door to the other room where the men had been dancing and some people ran out through the kitchen door. The bride and groom ran that way hand in hand. The children were being picked up and the old people were being helped. Everyone was going.
I thought we should go, too, but Wanda wouldn’t. Miryem was trying to make Panova Mandelstam go with everyone else, but she was not going either. She was holding on to Miryem’s hand with both her hands and she was not letting go.
“Father, please! Mama, he’ll kill you!” Miryem said.
“Better we should die!” Panova Mandelstam cried to her.
“You go, you run,” Panov Mandelstam was saying. He was trying to put his arm around her.
And Miryem shook her head and turned and cried out, “Wanda! Wanda, please, help me!”
So Sergey and I couldn’t go, because Wanda ran to her. Miryem pushed her mother towards Wanda and said, “Please, get her away!”
“No!” Panova Mandelstam said, still holding tight.
I could tell that Wanda did not know what to do. She wanted to do what Miryem wanted and she wanted to do what Panova Mandelstam wanted. She wanted to do both things so much that she couldn’t leave that room, and then I couldn’t leave either, because I couldn’t leave Wanda and Sergey in there.
All the time they were arguing, the tsar and the Staryk were fighting. But the tsar was not fighting like a tsar. I thought a tsar would fight with a sword. Sergey told me stories sometimes about knights that killed monsters that Mama had told him. Once a knight rode down our road. I was with the goats and I saw him coming from a long way off. I didn’t see him use his sword but I walked along the road as far as I could to keep seeing him. I could do it for a long time because he didn’t go very fast. He had a sword and he had armor and two boys that walked with him leading a spare horse and a mule with baggage. After I saw him and I knew what a knight was, sometimes I fought with a sword in the field when I was with the goats, except it was just a stick, except I pretended it was a sword.
I thought a tsar would be like a knight only his armor would be more splendid and his sword would be bigger, but the tsar did not have armor at all. He was wearing a coat of red velvet and it had been splendid but it was torn and wet and burned now. And he did not have a sword. He was fighting with his hands, trying to catch the Staryk, but he kept missing. I didn’t know how he was missing because the Staryk was right there, but he would grab and then the Staryk wouldn’t be where he had grabbed anymore. And if he grabbed a chair or a table that was in the way or put his hand on the floor, there was a smell of smoke, and when he took his hand away there was a burned mark in the shape of his hand left behind. There was something in his face that I couldn’t look at for too long or else it made me feel as if he was putting that burning hand on me, inside my head.
I thought, he was not really a tsar. He was Chernobog, that name the Staryk had said, and that was a name of something that was like the Staryk, just another monster. And I didn’t want the Staryk to win, but also I didn’t want Chernobog to win. I hoped maybe they would go on fighting forever, or at least long enough so we could all just get away. But I could see the Staryk was going to win. Chernobog was a monster, but he was still inside a person. Each time he missed, the Staryk hit him back, like taking turns, and the tsar was starting to be all bloody. His face was getting strange and swelled up, and it made me think of when the kasha came on Da’s face. I didn’t want to look at his face but I couldn’t stop. I was afraid if I hid my face the Staryk would win when I wasn’t looking. Then the Staryk would come and kill Panova Mandelstam and Panov Mandelstam. I didn’t think I could stop him from doing it by looking, and I didn’t want to watch if it happened, but I didn’t want to look back and see that it had happened, either.
The tsarina had run around the fighting to Miryem. “The silver chain!” she said. “We need a silver chain to bind him!”
So then Panov Mandelstam turned and got the silver chain from the floor. It was broken into two pieces and those pieces looked too short to go all around the Staryk. But the tsarina put her hands up around her neck and took off her necklace. It was made of silver and it was shining and beautiful like snowflakes going past a window. She put one end of it through the first half of the chain and then she put the other end of it through the second half of the chain, and then she clasped the necklace, and it was one long chain again, from start to finish. Then Panov Mandelstam took that chain from her.
The tsar went at the Staryk hissing again, even though his face was all red now with blood, and not just his face. Some of his fingers were the wrong way around, and his legs were sagging like a twig that was broken part of the way, but he still flung his arms forward. The Staryk darted out of his way like if you try and catch a fly and you think you have it, but you open your hand and it’s not there, and then it buzzes next to your ear again. But he was not a fly. He was standing by the fireplace. When they had start
ed fighting they were all the way in the middle of that big room, but now they had moved all the way across it. The whole time they were fighting the Staryk had been making the tsar chase him closer and closer to the fireplace. He did all that on purpose and now they were there, and when the tsar missed him this time, the Staryk grabbed him.
A big hissing cloud of steam came off the Staryk’s hands, and he looked like it hurt him, but he still grabbed the tsar, and then he threw him down into the fireplace, and said, “Stay where you belong, Chernobog! By your name I command you!”
A horrible roaring crackling sound came out of the tsar’s mouth and where his mouth was open and his eyes were open there was fire inside them, but he went all limp everywhere else. The crackling sound made a voice and said, “Get up! Get up!” like he was talking to himself, but he didn’t listen to himself. He didn’t get up. He just lay there in the fireplace and didn’t move.
The Staryk was standing over him holding his hands together and watching to see if he would get out of the fireplace. And then Panov Mandelstam ran at him and tried to throw the chain around him.
I didn’t see it because I stopped looking right when he started running. I thought the Staryk was going to kill him and I didn’t want to see after all. So I put my head down and wrapped my arms around it and then Panova Mandelstam cried out, “Josef!” and Miryem said, “No!” and I couldn’t keep from looking. Panov Mandelstam was lying on the floor and he was not moving. I thought he was dead, but then he moved, so he wasn’t dead, but the chain was not around the Staryk, either. It was on the floor far away from him. Panova Mandelstam had run to Panov Mandelstam and was kneeling next to him. Miryem had run to stand in front of the Staryk, and suddenly she took the crown off her head and threw it onto the ground with a big crash of metal, and she said very loud, “I’ll never go back with you if you hurt them! I’ll die first! I swear it!”
The Staryk had his hand up as if he was going to do something to Panov Mandelstam, but he stopped when she said that. He did not want to stop; he was angry. “You trouble me like summer rain!” he shouted at Miryem. “He came at me with a chain to bind me! Am I to make no answer?”
“You came first!” she shouted back. “You came first and took me!”
The Staryk was still angry, but after a moment he made a grumbling noise and he dropped his hand. “Oh, very well!” He said it as if he still did not like it very much, but maybe he would not bother to kill Panov Mandelstam, and then he put out his hand to Miryem. “Now come! The hour is late, and the time is done, and never again will I bring you hence, to be insulted by weak hands who dare think they can keep you from me!”
He waved his other hand at the doors. They opened again, and outside it was not the courtyard. It was that forest where we were dancing, but now there were no stars. There was only that grey sky and the sleigh with the monsters pulling it, waiting for them.
Miryem did not want to go with him. I would not want to go with him either, so I was sorry for her, but I still wanted her to go. I wanted her to take his hand because then he would take only her and go and not come back. Then Chernobog would be stuck in the fireplace and the Staryk would be gone and we would all be safe. Panov Mandelstam and Panova Mandelstam would not die. I wished and wished she would go.
She looked around at her parents so that I saw her face, and I felt a big swelling relief in me because I could see she was going to go. I felt sorry because she was crying, and it made my stomach go sick and knotted inside to think about what if it was me and Panova Mandelstam was my mother and I had to go away from her with the Staryk, but I was still glad. I was also afraid because what if she changed her mind, but she didn’t. She was only looking around for one last time to see them, and then she turned back to the Staryk, even though she was crying, and she took a step towards him.
“No!” Panova Mandelstam cried, but she was not holding Miryem’s hand anymore, she was kneeling on the floor with Panov Mandelstam’s head in her lap too far away. She reached out her hand anyway and called, “Miryem, Miryem!”
The Staryk made an angry noise. “And still you dare!” he hissed at Panova Mandelstam. “Think you to bind her? Victory has come to my hands this night, and the devourer is cast down! Now for a lifetime of men I will close the white road and keep my kingdom fast, until all who know my lady’s name have died, and I will leave you not even scraps of memory to try and catch her with!”
Then he reached out to grab Miryem’s hand, and pulled her away towards the door, and I was so glad that he was going that I didn’t even notice what Wanda was doing in time to be afraid or to look away, and so I was looking when she threw the chain around him.
I saw what he had done to get away from it last time because he almost did it again. He twisted to get out from under the chain, but this time when he did it, Miryem threw herself to the floor, and because he had her hand, she pulled him off his feet a little, and Wanda brought her arms down fast and kept the chain around him. So when he stood up again, he was still inside the chain. His face was so angry a white light came into it. He did not let go of Miryem’s hand, but he reached out with his other hand and grabbed the ends of the chain and pulled them.
He almost dragged Wanda off her feet, but Sergey ran to her across the room and grabbed the chain too. He grabbed one end of the chain and Wanda grabbed one end of the chain and then they were both holding tight with their feet hard like trying to pull a stump out of the ground, except the stump was pulling back at them, and it was about to pull them down instead of them pulling it up. And I was scared, I was so scared, but I thought, it was the same as the dancing, and I climbed out from under the table and I ran across the room and I grabbed hold of the knot of Wanda’s apron and the back of Sergey’s old rope belt and I made the circle with them.
When I did that, the Staryk made a shriek that was like the sound when the ice on the river broke at the end of winter. It was a terrible noise and it made my ears hurt, but I kept holding on and he stopped making it. He stood there and stamped his foot and said to Wanda angrily, “Very well, you have bound me! What will you have to let me go?”
We stood there and then Wanda said, “Leave Miryem and go!” Miryem was still on the floor trying to pull free from him, but he was still holding her hand.
The Staryk glared back at her, glittering. “No! You have caught me with silver, but your arms have not the strength to hold me. I will not surrender my lady!”
Then he threw himself against the chains again, and tried to break our hands loose. But it was not just us holding anymore: Panov Mandelstam had climbed up from the ground and he had come and grabbed the chain with Wanda, and Panova Mandelstam was pulling on Sergey’s side, and she and Panov Mandelstam were holding hands behind my back to help me be strong. We were all pulling tight, and he nearly dragged loose anyway, but he didn’t, and then he stopped and was angry again, and he said to Wanda, “What will you have to loose your bond? Ask for something else, or fear what I shall do when you tire!”
But Wanda shook her head and said, “Let Miryem go!” and he shrieked that awful ice-breaking noise again and hissed, “Never! I will not leave you, my queen, my golden lady; once I was a fool, twice I will not be!” and he fought again, so hard he pulled us across the floor, all of us with our feet sliding and almost falling. I thought, I thought, we could not hold him for much longer. I could see that Wanda’s hands and Sergey’s hands were slipping on the chain. They had put their fingers into the links, but their hands were getting sweaty and the chain had slid through one link at a time and they could not risk letting go of it long enough to grab it higher again, or else he would pull free at once.
But this one more time we held on to him, and he stopped. He breathed hard, three times. Big clouds of frost streamed away from his lips when he panted. Then he stood up very tall, and ice started to grow on him. It crept out from his edges in a thin layer that you could see through and then a little more crept over it and then there was another thin edge poking out but
the first one was thicker, and that kept happening over and over and the ice was getting sharp and prickly and I could feel the terrible cold of it on my face. Sergey and Wanda were both leaning away from it, and it was climbing down the chain towards their fingers.
The Staryk did not shriek at Wanda again. When he spoke this time, he sounded soft instead, like when deep snow has stopped falling and you go outside and everything is very quiet. “Let go, mortal, let go, and ask a different boon of me,” he said. “I will give you a treasure of jewels or elixir of long life; I will even give you back the spring, in fair return for holding fast. But you reach too far, and dare too high, when you ask me for my queen. Try me thus once again, and know I will lay winter in your flesh and flay your hearts open to freeze in red blood upon that snow: you have no high powers, no gift of magic true, and love alone cannot give you strength to hold me.”
When he said that, I knew he was not lying. We all knew it. And Miryem got up on her feet again. She had stopped pulling on his hand where it was around her wrist. She said, “Wanda,” and she meant that we should let the Staryk go.
But Wanda looked at Miryem and she said, “No,” and it was the no she had said to our father, in our house, when he wanted to eat her up.
I didn’t mean to say no to him that day. I had never said no to him before, because I knew if we did he would hurt us, and he hurt us anyway already, and so I knew he would hurt us even worse if we said no. I would not have even thought of saying no to him no matter what he did, because he could always do something worse. And when Wanda said no to him, I said no too, but I didn’t really decide to say no, I just said it. But now, I thought, I had said it because there wasn’t anything worse he could do to me than hit Wanda with that poker over and over and make her dead while I was there just watching. If he was going to do that then I could be dead too, and that would not be as bad as just standing there.