The Winter of the Witch

by Katherine Arden

  Finally they crested a small rise. The whole blood-drenched battlefield lay clear at their feet. Vasya dismounted and went to Pozhar.

  “Thank you, lady,” she said. “Will you fly free now, as you have long wished to do?”

  Pozhar lifted her head, aloof, and her nostrils flared, as if to test the winds of heaven. But then she bent her golden head, delicately, and lipped Vasya’s hair. I will be at the lake when you return, she said. You may prepare a warm place for me on stormy nights, and comb my mane.

  Vasya smiled. “It will be done,” she said.

  Pozhar slanted her ears back a fraction. Do not neglect the lake. For it will always need a guardian.

  “I will guard it,” said Vasya. “And I will watch over my family. And I will ride the world, in between times, through the farthest countries of dark and day. It is enough for one life.” She paused. “Thank you,” she added to the mare. “More than I can say.”

  Then she stepped back.

  The mare threw her head up, small flames licking at the edge of her mane. One ear slanted toward Solovey, perhaps with a touch of coquetry. He rumbled softly at her. Then the mare reared—up and up. Her wings flared, brighter than the pale morning sun, gilding all the snowflakes, making shadows of the whirling snow. Then the firebird soared aloft in a rush of glory. Men who watched from afar later told each other that they had seen a comet, a sign of God’s blessing, flying between heaven and earth.

  Vasya watched Pozhar go, eyes fixed on the brightness, and only looked down when Solovey nudged her in the small of her back. She buried her face in her horse’s mane, breathed the reassuring smell of him. He had none of Pozhar’s alarming tang of smoke. She could even, for an instant, forget the smell of blood and filth, fire and iron.

  A coolness at her back, and she lifted her head and turned.

  Morozko had dirt under his nails, a streak of soot on his cheek. The white mare behind him looked as weary as he, her proud head hanging low. She nuzzled Solovey, her colt, once, lightly.

  Morozko looked weary, as men are weary, at the end of long labor. His eyes searched her face.

  She took his hands in hers. “Will it be thus for you,” she asked him, “so long as you live? To stand beside us, and to grieve for us?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Perhaps. But—I think that I would rather feel pain than not feel anything at all. Perhaps I am grown mortal, after all.”

  His tone was wry, but then his arm closed around her tightly, and she put her arms around his neck and pressed her face to his shoulder. He smelled of earth and blood and fear, of that day’s slaughter. But beneath, as always, were the scents of cold water and of pine.

  She tilted her head up and pulled him down to her and kissed him fiercely, as though at last she could lose herself, forget duty and that day’s horror in the touch of his hands.

  “Vasya,” he said, low, in her ear. “It is almost midnight. Where do you wish to go?” His hand was in the snarls of her hair.

  “Somewhere with clean water,” she said. “I am sick to death of blood. And then? North. To tell Olya how…” She trailed off, had to steady her voice before she continued. “Perhaps—after—we may ride to the sea together, and see the light on the water.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  She almost smiled. “And then? Well, you have a realm in the winter forest, and I have mine, on the bow-curve of a lake. Perhaps we might forge one country in secret, a country of shadows, behind and beneath Dmitrii’s Russia. For there must always be a land for chyerti, for witches and for sorcerers, and for followers of the forest.”

  “Yes,” he said again. “But for tonight, food and cool air, clean water and untainted earth. Come with me, Snegurochka. I know a house in a winter forest.”

  “I know,” she said, and a thumb brushed away her tears.

  She would have said she was too tired to vault to Solovey’s back, but her body did it despite her.

  “What did we gain?” Vasya asked Morozko as they rode away. The snow had stopped, the sky shone clear. The season of frost had barely begun.

  “A future,” returned the frost-demon. “For men will say in later years that this was the battle that made Rus’ a nation of one people. And chyerti will live on, unfaded.”

  “Even for that, the price was very high,” she said.

  They were riding knee to knee; he made no answer. The wild darkness of Midnight was all about them now. But somewhere ahead, a light shone through the trees.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  ALMOST FROM THE EARLIEST DAYS of drafting The Bear and the Nightingale, I knew I wanted to end my trilogy at the Battle of Kulikovo. This battle always seemed to me to create a natural point of reconciliation for many of the conflicts I wished to consider on the pages of these three books: the Rus’ against the Tatars, Christian against pagan, Vasya trying to balance her own desires and ambitions with the needs of her family and her nation.

  The path I charted to get to the battle has varied wildly since those early days. But the destination never changed.

  The Battle of Kulikovo really happened. In 1380, on the Don river, Grand Prince Dmitrii Ivanovich acquired his historical moniker Donskoi, of the Don, by leading a combined force from several different Russian principalities against a host commanded by the Tatar temnik Mamai.

  Dmitrii won. It was the first time the Russian people combined under the leadership of Moscow to defeat a foreign adversary. Some have argued that this event marks the spiritual birth of the nation of Russia. I have chosen to take it as such, although in reality, the historical significance of this battle is the subject of ongoing debate. Who, if not the novelist, has the right to cherry-pick historical interpretations that suit her best?

  My fairy-tale version of this battle ignores the incredible amount of political and military maneuvering that led up to the event itself: the threats, the skirmishes, the deaths, the marriages, the delays.

  But the great events of my version of Kulikovo are drawn from history:

  A warrior-monk named Aleksandr Peresvet really fought in single combat with a Tatar warrior named Chelubey, and died victorious. Dmitrii really did trade places with one of his minor boyars, so that he could fight with his men, unmarked by the enemy. Oleg of Ryazan really did play an ambiguous role in the battle: perhaps he betrayed the Russians, perhaps he betrayed the Tatars, perhaps he merely strove to chart a path between the two.

  All that is true.

  And perhaps, beneath the battle recorded by history, there was fought another, between holy men and chyerti, over how they were to coexist in this land of theirs. Who knows? But the concept of dvoeveriye, dual faith, persisted in Russia up until the Revolution. Orthodoxy coexisted with paganism in peace. Who is to say that wasn’t the work of a girl with strange gifts and green eyes?

  Who is to say, in the end, that the three guardians of Russia are not a witch, a frost-demon, and a chaos-spirit?

  I find it fitting.

  Thank you for reading all the way to the end. I started this series in a tent on a beach in Hawaii when I was twenty-three years old, and now you are holding the final piece of that work in your hands.

  I am still astonished by the journey, and more grateful than I can say that it happened.

  A NOTE ON RUSSIAN NAMES

  RUSSIAN CONVENTIONS OF NAMING AND address—while not as complicated as the consonant clusters would suggest—are so different from English forms that they merit explanation. Modern Russian names can be divided into three parts: the first name, the patronymic, and the last, or family, name. In medieval Rus’, people generally had only a first name, or (among the highborn) a first name and a patronymic.

  FIRST NAMES AND NICKNAMES

  RUSSIAN IS EXTREMELY RICH in diminutives. Any Russian first name can give rise to a large number of nicknames. The name Yekaterina, for example, can be shortened into Katerina, Katya, Katy
usha, or Katenka, among other forms. These variations are often used interchangeably to refer to a single individual, according to the speaker’s degree of familiarity and the whims of the moment.

  Aleksandr—Sasha

  Dmitrii—Mitya

  Vasilisa—Vasya, Vasochka

  Rodion—Rodya

  Yekaterina—Katya, Katyusha

  PATRONYMIC

  THE RUSSIAN PATRONYMIC IS always derived from the first name of an individual’s father. It varies according to gender. For example, Vasilisa’s father is named Pyotr. Her patronymic—derived from her father’s name—is Petrovna. Her brother Aleksei uses the masculine form: Petrovich.

  To indicate respect in Russian, you do not use Mr. or Mrs., as in English. Rather, you address someone by first name and patronymic together. A stranger meeting Vasilisa for the first time would call her Vasilisa Petrovna. When Vasilisa is masquerading as a boy, she calls herself Vasilii Petrovich.

  When a highborn woman married, in medieval Rus’, she would exchange her patronymic (if she had one) for a name derived from her husband’s name. Thus Olga, who was Olga Petrovna as a girl, has become Olga Vladimirova (whereas Olga and Vladimir’s daughter is called Marya Vladimirovna).

  GLOSSARY

  BABA YAGA—An old witch who appears in many Russian fairy tales. She rides around on a mortar, steering with a pestle and sweeping her tracks away with a broom of birch. She lives in a hut that spins round and round on chicken legs. In The Winternight Trilogy, she is Vasya’s great-grandmother.

  BANNIK—“Bathhouse dweller,” the bathhouse guardian in Russian folklore.

  BATYUSHKA—Literally, “little father,” used as a respectful mode of address for Orthodox ecclesiastics.

  BELIYE—Porcini, a kind of mushroom.

  BOYAR—A member of the Kievan or, later, the Muscovite aristocracy, second in rank only to a knyaz, or prince.

  BROTHER ALEKSANDR PERESVET—Historically a monk and member of the Trinity Lavra under Sergius of Radonezh; he fought a single combat with Chelubey to open the Battle of Kulikovo. Both men were killed, but according to Russian sources, Chelubey was unhorsed first.

  BYZANTINE CROSS—Also called the patriarchal cross, this cross has a smaller crosspiece above the main crossbar, and sometimes a slanted crossbar near the foot.

  CAFFA—A city in Crimea, now known as Feodosia. In the era of The Winternight Trilogy, the city was under the control of the Genoese.

  CATHEDRAL OF THE ASSUMPTION—Uspenksy Sobor. Also known as the Cathedral of the Dormition. Commemorates the dormition (aka falling asleep, aka death of the Mother of God and her being taken to heaven). Located in the modern-day Moscow Kremlin, the original limestone structure was begun in 1326 and consecrated in 1327. The building presently on the site dates to the sixteenth century.

  CHELUBEY—Called Chelubey by Russian chroniclers and Temir-Murza by his own countrymen, Chelubey was the champion for the Tatar side at the battle of Kulikovo. He was defeated by Aleksandr Peresvet.

  CHERNOMOR—An old wizard and sea-king in Russian folklore whose name literally derives from “Black Sea.” With his thirty-three sons he would come out of the sea to guard the island of the swan-maiden in the fairy tale of Tsar Saltan.

  CHYERTI (SINGULAR: CHYERT)—Devils. In this case a collective noun meaning the various spirits of Russian folklore. Another, and possibly better, term is nyechistiye sili, literally “unclean forces,” but that is an unwieldy mouthful for Anglophone readers.

  DAN—Tribute; in this case, the tribute owed by the conquered Rus’ to their Mongol overlords.

  DED GRIB—Grandfather Mushroom. There is no historical source for this one; he was inspired by and is a shout-out to a character in the old Soviet children’s movie Morozko.

  DMITRII DONSKOI—Called Dmitrii Ivanovich in The Winternight Trilogy, he earned the moniker “of the Don” following his victory at the Battle of Kulikovo.

  DOMOVOI—In Russian folklore, the guardian of the household, the household-spirit. Feminized in The Winter of the Witch as domovaya. In some sources, the domovoi had a wife, called the kikimora, but I felt that feminizing the name of the main household-guardian was more appropriate for a witch’s house.

  DVOR—Dooryard. The space between outbuildings in the property of a highborn medieval Russian.

  DVOROVOI—The dooryard-guardian of Russian folklore.

  ECUMENICAL PATRIARCH—The supreme head of the Eastern Orthodox Church, based in Constantinople (modern Istanbul).

  GAMAYUN—A black bird in Russian folklore that speaks prophecy, generally depicted as a bird with a woman’s head.

  GER (YURT)—A portable round tent made of felt or skins and used by Mongol armies on the march. Generally they were taken down and put up each night, but the finest one, used by the Khan or the leader of the host, was often left intact and transported from place to place on a giant platform drawn by oxen.

  GOLDEN HORDE—A Mongol khanate founded by Batu Khan in the twelfth century. It adopted Islam in the early fourteenth century, and at its peak ruled a large swath of what is now Eastern Europe, including Muscovy.

  GOSPODIN—Form of respectful address to a male, more formal than the English “mister.” Might be translated as “lord.”

  GOSUDAR—A form of address akin to “Your Majesty” or “Sovereign.”

  GRAND PRINCE (VELIKIY KNYAZ)—The title of a ruler of a major principality, for example Moscow, Tver, or Smolensk, in medieval Russia. The title tsar did not come into use until Ivan the Terrible was crowned in 1547. Velikiy Knyaz is also often translated as “Grand Duke.”

  GREAT KHAN—Genghis Khan. His descendants, in the form of the Golden Horde, ruled Russia for two hundred years.

  HEGUMEN—The head of an Orthodox monastery, equivalent to an abbot in the Western tradition.

  ICONOSTASIS (ICON-SCREEN)—A wall of icons with a specific layout that separates the nave from the sanctuary in an Eastern Orthodox church.

  IVAN—This reference is to the fairy tale Marya Morevna, where Ivan, having been cut apart by the wicked sorcerer, is restored to life by his brothers-in-law, the bird-princes, who go and get him the water of death (which restores his flesh) and the water of life (which returns him to life).

  IZBA—A peasant’s house, small and made of wood, often with carved embellishments. The plural is izby.

  KOKOSHNIK—A Russian headdress. There are many styles of kokoshniki, depending on the locale and the era. Generally the word refers to the closed headdress worn by married women, though maidens also wore headdresses, open in back, or sometimes just headbands, that revealed their hair. The wearing of kokoshniki was limited to the nobility. The more common form of head covering for a medieval Russian woman was a head scarf or kerchief.

  KOLOMNA—A town that still exists today, part of the Moscow region. Its name likely derives from the Old Russian word for a bend in the river. Its official arms were granted by Catherine the Great. The historical location of Dmitrii’s mustering of the Russian army before marching to Kulikovo.

  KREMLIN—A fortified complex at the center of a Russian city. Although modern English usage has adopted the word kremlin to refer solely to the most famous example, the Moscow Kremlin, there are actually kremlins to be found in most historic Russian cities. Originally, all of Moscow lay within its kremlin proper; over time, the city spread beyond its walls.

  KULIKOVO—Kulikovo Pole, literally “Snipes’ Field.” The location of the historic Battle of Kulikovo, which took place in 1380.

  LESNAYA ZEMLYA—Literally, “Land of the Forest.” Vasya, Sasha, and Olga’s home village, the location for much of the action of The Bear and the Nightingale, referenced in The Girl in the Tower and The Winter of the Witch.

  LETNIK—A calf-length, light woman’s garment with long, wide sleeves, worn over a shift.


  LISICHKI—Chanterelles, a kind of mushroom.

  LITTLE BROTHER—English rendering of the Russian endearment bratishka. Can be applied to both older and younger siblings.

  LITTLE SISTER—English rendering of the Russian endearment sestryonka. Can be applied to both older and younger siblings.

  MATYUSHKA—Literally, “little mother,” a term of endearment.

  MEAD—Honey-wine, made by fermenting a solution of honey and water.

  METROPOLITAN—A high official in the Orthodox church. In the Middle Ages, the Metropolitan of the church of the Rus’ was the highest Orthodox authority in Russia and was appointed by the Byzantine Patriarch.

  MONASTERY OF THE ARCHANGEL—The monastery’s full name was Aleksei’s Archangel Michael Monastery; it was more familiarly known as the Chudov Monastery, from the Russian word chudo, miracle. It was dedicated to the miracle of the Archangel Michael at Colossae, where the angel purportedly gave the power of speech to a mute girl. It was founded in 1358 by Metropolitan Aleksei.

  MOSCOW (RUSSIAN: MOSKVA)—Currently the capital of the modern Russian Federation, Moscow was founded in the twelfth century by Prince Yury Dolgoruki. Long eclipsed by cities such as Vladimir, Tver, Suzdal, and Kiev, Moscow rose to prominence after the Mongol invasion, under the leadership of a series of competent and enterprising Rurikid princes.

  MOSKVA RIVER—River along which Moscow was founded.

  MUSCOVY—Derived from Latin Moscovia, from the original Russian appellation Moscov, the term refers to the Grand Duchy or Grand Principality of Moscow; for centuries, Muscovy was a common way to refer to Russia in the West. Originally Muscovy covered a relatively modest territory stretching north and east from Moscow, but from the late fourteenth to the early sixteenth century it grew enormously, until by 1505 it covered almost a million square miles.