She said nothing, eyes wide in the newborn dark. Solovey stood tense beside her, and her restless hand wound and unwound in the stallion’s mane.
“Sister, the truth,” said Sasha again.
Vasya swallowed, licked her lips and thought, I was saved from my dead nurse by a frost-demon, who gave me my horse and kissed me in the firelight. Can I say that? To my brother the monk? “I cannot tell you all of it,” she whispered. “I barely understand all of it myself.”
“Then,” said Sasha flatly, “am I to believe Father Konstantin? Are you a witch, Vasya?”
“I—I do not know,” she said, with painful honesty. “I have told you what I can. And I have not lied, I have not. I am not lying now. It is only—”
“You were riding alone in Rus’ dressed as a boy, on the finest horse I have ever seen.”
Vasya swallowed, sought an answer, and found her mouth dust-dry.
“You had a saddlebag full of all you might need for travel, even a little silver—yes, I looked. You have a knife of folded steel. Where did you get it, Vasya?”
“Stop it!” she cried. “Do you think I wanted to leave? Do you think I wanted any of this? I had to, brother, I had to.”
“And so? What are you not telling me?”
She stood mute. She thought of chyerti and the dead walking, she thought of Morozko. The words would not come.
Sasha made a soft sound of disgust. “Enough,” he said. “I will keep your secret—and it costs me to do it, Vasya. I am still my father’s son, though I will never see him again. But I do not have to trust you, or indulge your fancies. The Tatar ambassador is no bandit. You will make no further promises of service to the Grand Prince, tell no more lies than you can help, stop speaking when you should keep silent, and perhaps you will finish this week undiscovered. That is all that should concern you.”
Sasha vaulted the paddock’s bars with lithe grace.
“Where are you going?” Vasya cried, stupidly.
“I am taking you back to Olga’s palace,” he said. “You have said, done, and seen enough for one night.”
Vasya hesitated, protests filling her throat. But one look at his taut back told her that he would not hear them. Her breathing ragged, Vasya touched Solovey’s neck in parting and followed.
17.
Marya the Pirate
Vasya’s room in the men’s quarters was small, but warm and far cleaner than anything in Dmitrii’s palace. Some wine had been kept hot on the oven beside a little stack of butter-cakes, only a little gnawed by an adventurous mouse.
Sasha brought her to the threshold, said “God be with you,” and left.
Vasya sank onto the bed. The sounds of Moscow in festival filtered in through her slitted window. She had ridden all day every day for weeks on end, endured both battle and sickness, and was bone-weary. Vasya bolted the door, cast off cloak and boots, ate and drank without tasting, and climbed beneath the mound of fur coverlets.
Though the blankets were heavy and the stove sent out steady warmth, still she shook and could not fall asleep. Again and again she tasted the lies on her own tongue, heard Father Konstantin’s deep, plausible voice telling her brother and sister a tale that was—almost—true. Again she heard the bandit-captain’s war-cry and saw his sword flash in the moonlight. Moscow’s noise and its glitter bewildered her; she did not know what was true.
Eventually Vasya drifted off. She awoke with a jolt, in the still hour after midnight. The air had a thick tang of wet wool and incense, and Vasya stared bewildered into the midnight rafters, longing for a breath of the clean winter wind.
Then her breath stilled in her throat. Somewhere, someone was weeping.
Weeping and walking, the sound was coming nearer. Sobs like needles stabbed through the palace of Serpukhov.
Vasya, frowning, got to her feet. She heard no footsteps, just the gasp and choke of tears.
Nearer.
Who was crying? Vasya heard no sound of feet, no rustle of clothes. A woman crying. What woman would come here? This was the men’s half of the house.
Nearer.
The weeper paused, right outside her door.
Vasya nearly ceased to breathe. Thus the dead had come back to Lesnaya Zemlya, crying, begging to be taken in out of the cold. Nonsense, there are no dead here. The Bear is bound.
Vasya gathered her courage, drew her ice-knife to be cautious, crossed the room, and opened the door a crack.
A face stared back at her, right up against the doorframe: a pale, curious face with a grinning mouth.
You, it gobbled. Get out, go—
Vasya slammed the door and flung herself backward to the bed, heart hammering. Some pride—or some instinct of silence—buried her scream, though her breath snarled in and out.
She had not bolted the door, and slowly it creaked open.
No—now there was nothing there. Only shadows, a trickle of moonlight. What was that? Ghost? Dream? God be with me.
Vasya watched a long time, but nothing moved, no sound marred the darkness. At length, she gathered her courage, got up, crossed the room, and shut the door.
It was a long time before she fell asleep again.
VASILISA PETROVNA AWOKE ON the first day of Maslenitsa, stiff and hungry, remorseful and rebellious, to find a pair of large dark eyes hanging over her.
Vasya blinked and gathered her feet beneath her, wary as a wolf.
“Hello,” the owner of the eyes said archly. “Aunt. I am Marya Vladimirovna.”
Vasya gaped at the child, and then tried for an older brother’s outraged dignity. She still had her hair tied up in a hood. “This is improper,” she said stiffly. “I am your uncle Vasilii.”
“No, you’re not,” said Marya. She stepped back and crossed her arms. Her little boots were embroidered with scarlet foxes, and a band of silk hung with silver rings set off her dark hair. Her face was white as milk, her eyes like holes burned in snow. “I crept in after Varvara yesterday. I heard Mother telling Uncle Sasha everything.” She looked Vasya up and down, a finger in her mouth. “You are my ugly aunt Vasilisa,” she added, with a fair attempt at insouciance. “I am prettier than you.”
Marya might well have been called pretty, in the unformed way of children, were she not so pale, so drawn.
“Indeed you are,” Vasya said, torn between amusement and dismay. “But not as pretty as Yelena the Beautiful, who was stolen by the Gray Wolf. Yes, I am your aunt Vasilisa, but that is a great secret. Can you keep a secret, Masha?”
Marya lifted her chin and sat down on the bench by the stove, taking care with her skirts. “I can keep a secret,” she said. “I want to be a boy, too.”
Vasya decided it was too early in the morning for this conversation. “But what would your mother say,” she asked, a little desperately, “if she lost her little daughter, Masha?”
“She wouldn’t care,” retorted Marya. “She wants sons. Besides,” she went on, with bravado, “I have to leave the palace.”
“Your mother may want sons,” Vasya conceded. “But she wants you, too. Why must you leave the palace?”
Marya swallowed. For the first time, her air of jaunty courage deserted her. “You wouldn’t believe me.”
“I probably would.”
Marya looked down at her hands. “The ghost is going to eat me,” she whispered.
Vasya lifted a brow. “The ghost?”
Marya nodded. “Nurse says I mustn’t tell tales and worry my mother. I try not. But I am scared.” Her voice faded away on the last word. “The ghost is always waiting for me, just as I fall asleep. I know she means to eat me. So I have to leave the palace,” said Marya, with an air of renewed determination. “Let me be a boy with you, or I’ll tell everyone that you’re really a girl.” She delivered her threat with ferocity, but shrank back when Vasya rolled out of bed.
Vasya knelt before the little girl. “I believe you,” she said mildly. “I have also seen this ghost. I saw it last night.”
Marya stared.
“Were you scared?” she asked at length.
“Yes,” said Vasya. “But I think the ghost was scared, too.”
“I hate her!” Marya burst out. “I hate the ghost. She won’t leave me alone.”
“Perhaps we should ask her what she wants, next time,” said Vasya thoughtfully.
“She doesn’t listen,” said Marya. “I tell her to go away, and she doesn’t listen.”
Vasya considered her niece. “Masha, do you ever see other things that your family doesn’t?”
Marya looked warier than ever. “No,” she said.
Vasya waited.
The child looked down. “There is a man in the bathhouse,” she said. “And a man in the oven. They scare me. Mother told me I must not tell such stories, or no prince will wish to marry me. She—she was angry.”
Vasya remembered, vividly, her own helpless confusion when told the world she saw was a world that did not exist. “The man in the bathhouse is real, Masha,” Vasya said sharply. She took the child by the shoulders. “You must not be afraid of him. He guards your family. He has many kin: one to guard the dooryard, another for the stable, another for the hearth. They keep wicked things at bay. They are as real as you are. You must never doubt your own senses, and you must not fear the things you see.”
Marya’s brow creased. “You see them, too? Aunt?”
“I do,” Vasya returned. “I will show you.” A pause. “If you promise not to tell anyone I am a girl.”
A light had come into the little girl’s face. She thought for a moment. Then, every inch a princess, Marya returned, “I swear it.”
“Very well,” said Vasya. “Let me get dressed.”
THE SUN HAD NOT risen; the world was subtle and flattened and gray. A sweet and waiting hush lay over Moscow. Only the spiraling smoke moved, dancing alone, veiling the city as though with love. The dooryards and staircases of Olga’s palace were quiet; its kitchens and bakeries, breweries and smokehouses just stirring.
Vasya’s eye found the bakery unerringly. The air smelled marvelously of breakfast.
She thought of bread, smeared with cheese, and then she gulped, and had to hasten after Marya, who was running straight down the screened-in walkway to the bathhouse.
Vasya seized the girl by the back of her cloak an instant before she grabbed the latch. “Look to see if there is no one there,” said Vasya, exasperated. “Has no one ever told you to think before you do things?”
Marya squirmed. “No,” she said. “They tell me not to do things. But then I want to and I can’t help it. Sometimes nurse turns purple—that is best.” She shrugged, and the straight shoulders drooped. “But sometimes mother tells me she is afraid for me. I do not like that.” Marya rallied and hauled herself free of her aunt’s grip. She pointed to the chimney. “No smoke—it is empty.”
Vasya squeezed the girl’s hand, lifted the latch, and they stepped into the chill dark. Marya hid behind Vasya, clinging to her cloak.
Her bath the day before had been too rushed for Vasya to take note of her surroundings, but now she gazed appreciatively at the embroidered cushions, the glossy oak benches. The bathhouse at Lesnaya Zemlya had been strictly functional. Then she said into the dimness, “Banchik. Master. Grandfather. Will you speak to us?”
Silence. Marya poked a cautious head around Vasya’s cloak. Their breath steamed in the chill.
Then—“There,” said Vasya.
Even as she said it, she frowned.
She might have been pointing to a wisp of steam, fire-lit. But if you turned your head just so, an old man sat there, cross-legged on a cushion, his head to one side. He was smaller even than Marya, with cloudy threads of hair and strange, faraway eyes.
“That is him!” said Marya, squeaking.
Vasya said nothing. The bannik was even fainter than that other bannik in Chudovo, fainter far than the weeping domovoi in Katya’s village. Little more than steam and ember-light. Vasya’s blood had revived the chyerti of Lesnaya Zemlya, when Konstantin terrified her people into casting them out. But this kind of fading seemed both less violent and harder to halt.
It is going to end, Vasya thought. One day. This world of wonders, where steam in a bathhouse can be a creature that speaks prophecy. One day, there will be only bells and processions. The chyerti will be fog and memory and stirrings in the summer barley.
Her mind went to Morozko, the winter-king, who shaped the frost to his will. No. He could not fade.
Vasya shook away her thoughts, went to the water bucket and poured out a ladleful. She had a crust in her pocket, which she laid, along with a birch-branch from the corner, in front of the living wisp.
The bannik solidified a little more.
Marya gasped.
Vasya tapped her niece’s shoulder and pried the child’s hands off her cloak. “Come, he will not hurt you. You must be respectful. This is the bannik. Call him Grandfather, for that is what he is, or Master, for that is his title. You must give him birch-branches and hot water and bread. Sometimes he tells the future.”
Marya pursed her rosebud mouth, and then she made a most stately reverence, only a little wobbling. “Grandfather,” she whispered.
The bannik did not speak.
Masha took a hesitant step forward and proffered a slightly squashed crumb of cake.
The bannik smiled slowly. Marya quivered but did not move. The bannik took the cake in his foggy hands. “So you do see me,” he whispered, in the hiss of water on coals. “It has been a long time.”
“I see you,” said Marya. She crowded nearer, forgetting fear in the way of children. “Of course I see you. You never talked before though, why not? Mother said you weren’t real. I was scared. Will you tell the future? Who am I going to marry?”
A dour prince, as soon as you have bled, Vasya thought darkly. “Enough, Masha,” she said aloud. “Come away. You do not need prophecies—you aren’t going to marry yet.”
The chyert smiled with a ghost of wickedness. “Why shouldn’t she? Vasilisa Petrovna, you have had your prophecy already.”
Vasya said nothing. The bannik at Lesnaya Zemlya had told her that she would pluck snowdrops at midwinter, die at her own choosing, and weep for a nightingale. “I was grown when I heard it,” she said at last. “Masha is a child.”
The bannik smiled, showing its foggy teeth. “Here is your prophecy, Marya Vladimirovna,” he said. “I am only a wisp now, for your people put their faith in bells and in painted icons. But this little I know: you will grow up far away, and you will love a bird more than your mother, after the season has turned.”
Vasya stiffened. Marya went very red. “A bird…?” she whispered. Then—“Never! You’re wrong!” She clenched her fists. “Take that back.”
The bannik shrugged, still smiling with a little edge of malice.
“Take it back!” Marya shrilled. “Take it—”
But the bannik had turned his glance on Vasya, and something hard gleamed in the backs of his burning eyes. “Before the end of Maslenitsa,” he said. “We will all be watching.”
Vasya, angry on Marya’s behalf, said, “I do not understand you.”
But she was addressing an empty corner. The bannik was gone.
Marya looked stricken. “I don’t like him. Was he telling the truth?”
“It is prophecy,” Vasya said slowly. “It might be true, but not at all in the way you think.”
Then, because the girl’s lower lip quivered, her dark eyes big and lost, Vasya said, “It is early still. Shall we go riding, you and I?”
A sunrise dawned on Masha’s face. “Yes,” she said at once. “Oh, yes, please. Let’s go now.”
A certain furtive giddiness made it clear that galloping about the streets was not something Marya was allowed to do. Vasya wondered if she had made a mistake. But she also remembered how, as a small child, she had loved to ride with her brother, face against the wind.
“Come with me,” said Vasya. “You must stay very close.”
They
crept out of the bathhouse. The morning had lightened from smoke to pigeon-gray, and the thick blue shadows had begun to retreat.
Vasya tried to stride along like a bold boy, though it was hard since Marya kept such a tight hold of her hand. For all her ferocity, Marya only ever left her father’s palace to go to church, surrounded by her mother’s women. Even walking about in the dooryard unchaperoned had the flavor of rebellion.
Solovey stood bright-eyed in his paddock, snuffing the morning. Vasya thought for a moment that a long-limbed creature with a tuft of beard sat combing the horse’s mane. But then the monastery bells all rang outrenya together; Vasya blinked and there was no one.
“Oh,” said Marya, skidding to a halt. “Is that your horse? He is very big.”
“Yes,” said Vasya. “Solovey, this is my niece, who wishes to ride you.”
“I don’t much want to, now,” said Marya, looking at the stallion with alarm.
Solovey had a fondness for scraps of humanity—or maybe he was just puzzled by creatures so much smaller than he. He minced over to the fence, snorted a warm breath into her face, then put his head down and lipped Marya’s fingers.
“Oh,” said Marya, in a new voice. “Oh, he is very soft.” She stroked his nose.
Solovey’s ears went back and forth, pleased, and Vasya smiled.
Tell her not to kick me, Solovey said. He nibbled Marya’s hair, which made her giggle. Or pull my mane.
Vasya relayed this message and boosted Marya up onto the top of the fence.
“He needs a saddle,” the child informed Vasya nervously, clutching the fence rail. “I have watched my father’s men ride out; they all have saddles.”
“Solovey doesn’t like them,” Vasya retorted. “Get up. I will not let you fall. Or are you scared?”
Marya put her nose in the air. Clumsy in her skirts, she swung a leg over and sat down, plop, on the horse’s withers. “No,” she said. “I’m not.”
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