by E. P. Clark
“You..!” He put his hand to his cheek and looked at up her from his half-kneeling crouch, the outrage and surprise plain even in the semi-darkness. “You..!” He lunged at her again. Dasha jumped to the side, and, instead of trying to hit him, she snatched at the jingling. Her hand closed over what was unmistakably a keyring, and she yanked on it as hard as she could. His cheap linen shirt, half-rotted from sweat and too many washes, came apart, and he tumbled past her, crashing heavily into the wall. Dasha held up the ring of keys in triumph.
“Which one is it?” she asked.
The man glared up at her in pain and confusion, and shook his head.
“Which one is it?” she repeated. “For the bear? Which one is it?”
“Is that…” He spat, and pulled himself upright, using the wall. “Is that what you’re here for? The bear? He’s mine! My property! Mine! You can’t steal him!”
“You stole him,” Dasha said. “You stole him from himself.”
“What…By all the mother-raping gods…you stupid, stupid little fool! Get away from him! He’s mine!”
“No,” said Dasha.
“The gods save me from stupid little girls! And you had to come pester me tonight, when Yarya’s away!” The man paused for a moment. “He’ll get to tell me he was right to leave me here, and won’t he be glad about that!”
“Leave me alone, and I won’t hurt you,” said Dasha. It seemed like the right thing to say, and also the most foolish thing she had ever said, since she had no way of doing anything to the man to get her way. Something the man seemed to notice, since he burst out into another tirade.
“What are you going to do? Keep him as a pet?! He’ll kill you before you get out the barn with him! One swipe of his paws, and he’ll kill you, or scar that silly little face of yours so bad you’ll wish you were dead! Go home! Go back to your minders and nannies, you stupid little halfwit, get out of here and go home before you get hurt!”
Dasha contemplated the keyring and then him, and then the keyring again. There were only three keys on it. She stepped into the stall with the bear, who was shifting from paw to paw in agitation from the fight.
“Stop!” shouted the man, moving as if to join her in the stall. The bear growled at him, making him stop dead. Dasha took a half-step back from the bear, but, when he made no move to harm her, she stepped up to him and tried first one key on his lock, and then the next. The third one worked, the lock opened with a satisfying click, and the chain fell free into her hand.
“Come on,” she told the bear. “Let’s leave here, and go somewhere better.” She couldn’t tell how well he understood her, but he followed her without hesitation out of the stall.
“Stop!” shouted the man, from where he was standing in indecision, half a dozen paces back from the stall. “What are you doing, stop, stop, stop! What are you…AKH!” The domovaya had stepped out of the shadows.
“What are we going to do with him, Tsarinovna?” she asked.
“Lock him in the stall?” Dasha suggested.
“How?” asked the domovaya.
“I don’t know,” Dasha admitted. “But I don’t have any better ideas.”
“You stupid..!” The man jerked himself out of his immobility and rushed at her. Dasha raised her elbow and caught him with a hard crack across the face as he flung himself at her. He fell back onto his seat and sat there, cursing.
“Don’t follow us,” Dasha told him.
“We could take him with us,” the domovaya suggested.
“How?” asked Dasha.
“I could bind him with magic, make him walk along with us.”
“And then what?” Dasha asked. “What would happen to him then?”
“Justice, Tsarinovna,” said the domovaya, and smiled a very toothy smile.
“What kind of justice?” Dasha asked.
“What he has done to our brother here,” the domovaya pointed at the bear, “would be done to him. Chained up, starved, beaten, forced to perform…we could transform him into a bear, you know, transform him into this bear, or so everyone would think, and he could live out the rest of his life in the place of his captive. What do you think?”
“I…” It was very tempting. A warm glow filled Dasha’s chest at the thought of the man sitting in front of her being beaten and starved, gawked at, forced to shuffle painfully for the hateful pleasure of others, just as he himself had done. It was right. It should be done.
“Can you do it just for one day?” Dasha asked.
“Just for one day, Tsarinovna?”
“Yes, just for one day. I don’t want him to spend the rest of his life as a chained bear. That would be…that would make me him. And it wouldn’t do any good anyway. All he would do is suffer; he wouldn’t learn anything from it, he wouldn’t do anything to make things better. But if he could know for one day what it was like, that would be…better than justice. That’s what I want done to him.”
The domovaya frowned at Dasha, but said, “As you wish,” and raised her hands. For a moment there was nothing, and then Dasha could feel a warmth coming from her, as if from a gentle hearth fire, and then it grew hotter and hotter, like from a cooking fire, an oven heated for baking, and the man screamed, and twisted, and tried to run, and then he was grunting and snuffling, and it was no longer a man crouched before them, but a bear, a bear who looked identical to the one standing next to Dasha in every way, including the chain coming from his nose. He swayed back and forth, tried to take a step, and staggered and almost went down before pulling himself back upright and standing there, blinking in confusion and swaying like a drunkard.
“How did you do that?” Dasha asked the domovaya.
“Magic, Tsarinovna.”
“Even very powerful sorceresses couldn’t do that.”
“Even very powerful sorceresses are not very powerful compared to me, Tsarinovna. Because I know that our shapes are not as fixed as we think they are, Tsarinovna. Or rather, they are, but they can be changed nonetheless. Everything is a little bit like everything else, Tsarinovna, everything shares of the same essence, and some of us can make that essence flow from one shape to another, if we so desire.”
“Could you teach me to do that?”
“That, I think, is not your magic, Tsarinovna. Come.” She snapped her fingers at the bear, the one who had just been a man. He huffed at her, but then shuffled forward reluctantly, moving as if he wasn’t entirely sure how his legs worked, and made no move to resist her when she led him into the stall, and chained him to the same ring the real bear had been chained to before.
“I wonder who will find him in the morning,” Dasha said.
“That, Tsarinovna, is part of the justice. Come.” The domovaya snapped her fingers at Dasha and the real bear, and they stepped out of the dark barn and into the moonlit twilight of the Northern summer night.
***
Dasha expected them to encounter difficulties, perhaps people out walking at night who would demand to know their business, or perhaps the bear would be overcome with a sudden desire for freedom, but they made their way down the rutted dusty streets of Lesnograd with no hindrance at all. The few people who did cross their path were quick to get as far away from them as they could, either turning away and hurrying on, or shouting remarks at them from the far side of the street. A couple of the drunker ones laughed and threw things at the bear. Dasha thought they would notice the domovaya and say something about it, but everyone seemed to think that the domovaya was a child and Dasha was her mother.
“Are you hiding yourself from them somehow?” Dasha asked. “Why can’t they see what you really are?”
“Because they are not looking, Tsarinovna,” the domovaya told her. “Now come. We must hurry.”
“Why can’t we take the shadows, like we did before?” Dasha asked.
“The bear is very large, Tsarinovna.”
“Does that really matter?”
“Not really.” The domovaya smiled sharply at her. “But I can only
take those who are willing.”
“He seems willing. He’s following us willingly enough.”
“True. It may not be the same, though.”
“We won’t know unless we try,” Dasha pointed out.
“Don’t be so lazy, Tsarinovna,” the domovaya told her.
“I’m not being lazy! I just think that the more time we spend walking around where anyone can see us, the more likely we are to get caught.”
“Get caught by whom, Tsarinovna?”
“I don’t know. But I don’t want them to catch me anyway!”
“Oh, very well. We can try. Do you see that deep shadow over there?” The domovaya pointed to the end of the street they were on, where a high fence caused a black shadow to spread out across the entire street. “We’ll try there. Mishka!”
The bear raised his head and looked at her. “He knows his name,” said the domovaya. “Very good. Mishka, we’re going to go somewhere very fast. Somewhere good for you. Do you understand?”
The bear looked at her with interest.
“Who knows if you understand,” sighed the domovaya. “You have to trust us, do you understand? We’re going to take you somewhere, and you have to want to go with us, do you understand?”
The bear continued to look at her with interest. The domovaya sighed again, and led them to the high fence, where the shadow was blackest. “Take my hands, you two,” she said.
An instant later they were stumbling out of the shadow of a tall tree. “It worked!” cried Dasha in delight.
“Apparently our Mishka here is smarter than most bears,” said the domovaya.
“Or maybe all bears are this smart, and you’ve just never paid attention to them before,” said Dasha. “How do you do it, by the way? Travel through the shadows, that is.”
“Magic, Tsarinovna,” the domovaya told her, sounding distracted. She was looking around the glade they had found themselves in, as if searching for something she had expected to find there.
“Well, can you teach me how to do it?”
“That, I think, is not your magic either, Tsarinovna.”
“Why not?”
“All darkness is connected, Tsarinovna, just as all light is. I can travel from one pool of shadow to another, just as I can travel from one hearth fire to another. But I am part of all that. I am the creaking in the attic and the shadow in the corners just as much as I am the warmth and light and comfort of the hearth, because both are part of a home, and I am everything that a home is. But you are something else. Now stop bothering me. The time for teaching you will come. We need—”
“AKH!” Dasha screamed. A cold wind had risen out of nowhere, blowing away the summery warmth of the night, and causing her to stumble into the bear. For a heart-stopping moment she thought he might lash out at her from her unprovoked attack, but he only grunted and shifted his weight as she clutched at his coarse fur to steady herself.
“And here it is,” said the domovaya in satisfaction, as another gust of the cold wind buffeted Dasha, this time knocking her to the ground. She tried to cry out, to demand what was going on, but the wind had stolen her breath, and she could only sit there, gasping, as the bear reared up above her. She tried frantically to scramble backwards, to escape from his inevitable attack, but another gust of wind hit him, pushing him back, pushing him away from her. The chain flew out of her hand and sailed through the air as if it had a life of its own, and then it was…gone. It was just gone.
The bear reared up even higher, clawing at the air above his head, roaring at something Dasha couldn’t see. And then he was knocked down too, knocked down so hard that he tumbled and rolled across the ground until he came to a sprawling halt and lay there without moving.
“Is he…dead?” Dasha whispered.
“In a way, child,” the domovaya told her.
“How can you be dead ‘in a way’?” Dasha asked. She tried to pull herself upright to go to him, to see if there was something she could do for him, but none of her limbs seemed to be working properly. On the far side of the glade, the bear’s ears twitched.
“He’s alive!” she cried out in relief.
“In a way, child,” the domovaya told her, grabbing her and pulling her back down as Dasha tried once again to stand.
“How can he be alive ‘in a way’?” Dasha asked. The bear raised his head, and then lifted himself heavily to all fours.
“The same way your father is, child. He has left his natural lifespan behind, and entered into another life.”
The bear sniffed at the air, and then his head snapped around to look directly at Dasha. His eyes were burning gold.
Dasha found herself taking a step backwards, and then another. The bear began stalking in her direction.
“It’s—it’s me, Mishka,” she told him, her voice trembling. “It’s me, Mishka, Dasha. I saved you.” Or maybe not, she thought. He might not see it as being saved. “I…I mean you no harm, Mishka.” Her back came up against a tree trunk. She looked up. It was a slender birch, with no branches that she could pull herself up into. The bear was stalking closer. He looked bigger than he had before, much bigger, and the hump between his shoulders rose up high and menacingly as he moved. Dasha took a step to her left. The bear whuffed and stepped in the same direction. Dasha took a quick step to her right, thinking to run around the tree and try to escape into the woods. The bear whuffed again and took an even quicker step, bringing him no more than half a dozen paces away from her. His eyes were glowing so brightly she could see the light on her shirt, as if from a lantern.
“It’s me, Mishka,” she said again, looking around wildly. Where was the domovaya? Why wasn’t she taking Dasha away from this? Surely she could just grab Dasha’s hand and pull her away through the shadows. But she was nowhere to be seen. “I’m sorry if this wasn’t the kind of saving that you wanted, Mishka,” Dasha said, looking back at the bear.
He stopped and cocked his head at her. She hoped for a moment that he was going to turn around and leave her, but then he took another step in her direction. She would never be able to evade or outrun him, and even less fight him off. One leap, and he would be upon her. He gathered himself as if to make that leap.
Dasha dropped to the ground, curling up and covering her head. She waited for the blow, the sensation of claws the length of her hand ripping through her flesh. Nothing. Nothing except for warm breath on the back of her neck, followed by a warm wet tongue. She risked peeking out from under her arms, just in time to see his mouth engulfing her head. But there was no following bite. Just a warm whole-head kiss, and then he let her go and settled down beside her. Slowly, one inch, one joint at a time, Dasha lifted up her head and met his gaze, no more than a hand’s breadth from hers. The golden glow was already starting to fade, disappearing as if being sucked back into his head. As Dasha looked into it, she could feel herself being sucked in along with it, falling into his vision until she could see it too, see and feel what he had seen and felt. Being captured as a cub, torn away from his mother and surrounded by terrifying giants who pierced his nose and kicked and cuffed him until he learned to cringe away from them, to do the mysterious things they forced him to do, even though that earned abuse too, every confusing and mysterious thing he did earned abuse, and now he had been torn away again, kicked and cuffed again, only this time he felt not fear, but strength, strength he had always had all along, but had only realized just now, strength to fight back, to escape, to…
Enough! said a sharp voice, and a cold gust struck Dasha in the back and blew up against the bear’s face, pushing him away from her. Enough with all this! said the cold wind. Time to go, both of you!
The bear retreated, regretfully, Dasha thought, and began moving away from her. He turned back to look at her one last time as he stepped into the shadow of the trees. There was a flash of gold, and then he was gone.
“Where did he go?” Dasha asked, scrambling to her feet. She was covered in twigs and moss stains, and her head and neck were st
icky from the bear’s saliva.
“To where he needed to be, child,” said the domovaya, stepping out of the shadows.
“And where were you?” Dasha demanded. “He could have attacked me, and you were gone! You did nothing!”
“Did I need to, child?” asked the domovaya. “Were you in any danger?”
“Well…yes! He could have killed me in an instant!”
“But he didn’t.”
“Well…no. But he could have!”
“He could have,” agreed the domovaya. “But he didn’t. And now he is gone off to be where he needs to be, to learn how to be the bear that he is meant to be. You saved him, child, you did what you wanted to do.”
“I didn’t do much,” said Dasha. “You did most of it.”
“Is that so, child? Who unlocked him from his chain, and led him out of his cage? Who greeted him in his new form, once he had been changed? You, and you alone.”
“Yes, but you could have done all of that, and better than I could,” said Dasha.
“But I didn’t. I just gave you that little extra magic that you needed to make it happen. As a sign of good faith. A sign that we really do want to help you, Tsarinovna, we are all on the same side and we will help you as best we can. Which is better than anyone else can.”
“Do you want me to run off with you, then?” asked Dasha. “Right now?”
“Right now? No, child. Think on all of this for a time. And then run off with us. When we come calling for you for the third time, run off with us then. Then it will be the time. It has not yet been the time. We, like everyone else, are so anxious for you to come into your gift, child, to become the woman you are meant to be, that we have been guilty of rushing too fast. Everyone wants you to grow up, to become what you are meant to be, and to not become what we all fear you could, so that we’ve all been rushing, rushing forward, rushing into it, when we should have been sitting back and letting it come to us. So now we will sit back and let you come to us. We will both know when it is time.”