The Winter of the Witch Read online

  Medved was a spirit: no more made of flesh than Ded Grib, and yet in that clearing he seemed to pulse with raw life. “You killed my father,” Vasya said.

  He spread his hands. “Your father threw himself upon my claws. My brother got your allegiance with lies, didn’t he? With whispers and half-truths in the dark and his two blue eyes, so tempting to maidens?”

  She fought to keep all feeling from her face. The corner of his mouth curled before he continued. “But here I am, asking for your allegiance with nothing but the truth.”

  “If you are here with the truth, then tell me what you want,” said Vasya. “With less art and more honesty.”

  “I want an ally. Join me and take your vengeance. We, the old ones, will rule this land once more. That is what the chyerti want. That is why the bagiennik brought you here. That is why they are all watching. For you to hear me, and agree.”

  Was he lying?

  She found herself, horribly, wondering how it would be, to agree, to let the rage inside her loose in a spasm of violence. She could feel the impulse echoed in the scarred figure before her. He understood her guilt, her sorrow, the fury that had come down on Ded Grib’s head.

  “Yes,” he whispered. “We understand each other. We cannot make a new world without first breaking the old.”

  “Breaking?” said Vasya. She hardly recognized her own voice. “What will you break in the making of this new world?”

  “Nothing that cannot be repaired. Think of it. Think of the girl-children that will not face the fire.”

  She wanted to go to Moscow in power and throw the city down. His wildness called to her, and the sorrow of his long imprisonment. The golden mare stood very still.

  “I would have my vengeance?” she murmured.

  “Yes,” he said. “In full measure.”

  “Would Konstantin Nikonovich die screaming?”

  She thought he hesitated before answering. “He would die.”

  “And who else would die, Medved?”

  “Men and women die every day.”

  “They die according to God’s will; they do not die for me,” said Vasya. The nails of her free hand tore into her palm. “Not one life lost is worth the price of my grief. Do you think that I’m a fool, that you can drip words like sweet poison in my ear? I am not your ally, monster, nor will I ever be.”

  She thought that a murmur rose from the forest all around, but she couldn’t tell if it was a sound of delight or disappointment.

  “Ah,” said the Bear. The regret in his voice seemed real. “So wise in some ways, little Vasilisa Petrovna, and yet so foolish in others. For of course if you do not join me, you cannot remain alive.”

  “My life was the price of your freedom,” Vasya said. The lake was a cold presence at her back, the golden mare still stood warm and trembling beside her. “You cannot kill me.”

  “I offered you your life,” said the Bear. “It is not my fault you are a stubborn fool and did not take it. My debt is paid. Besides, I am not going to kill you. You can join me alive. Or you can be my servant.” His mouth quirked irrepressibly. “Less alive.”

  * * *

  VASYA HEARD A SOFT, shuffling footstep. Another. Vasya’s pulse sounded loud in her ears; in her mind echoed an old warning. The Bear is loose. Beware the dead.

  “I am going to enjoy this,” said Medved. “Tell me what you decide.” He stepped back. “Either way, I will give my brother your regrets.”

  To her left, a dead man with red eyes and a filthy visage slunk into the light. To her right, a woman grinned, blood on her lips, a few locks of rotten hair still clinging to her bone-white skull. The dead things’ eyes were pits of hell: scarlet and black. When their mouths opened, the points of their teeth dazzled, sharp, in the last of the firelight. Vasya and the mare were surrounded by a shrinking half-circle.

  The golden mare reared. For an instant, it seemed as though vast wings of flame flared from her back. But she came to earth, a horse still, and wounded. She couldn’t fly.

  Vasya dropped her useless ax. Her soul was still full of remembered fire. She clenched her fists and forgot that the dead things were not burning.

  It worked better than she could have hoped. Two went up like torches. The upyry screamed as they burned and blundered about, howling. She had to snatch up a branch and fend them off, her bare feet in the water. The golden mare backed up, striking out with frantic fore-hooves.

  “Oh ho,” said the Bear, in a new voice. “Moscow put the fire in your soul, did it? Truly, you are half chaos-spirit; you would like being my ally. Won’t you reconsider?”

  “Are you never silent?” Vasya demanded. Her body was streaming cold sweat. Another upyr burst into flames and reality began to waver. Now she understood. Magic makes men mad. They forget what is real because too much is possible.

  But there were still four more; she had no choice. The dead things were advancing once more.

  The Bear’s eye locked on hers, as though he could see the seed of insanity there. “Yes,” he breathed. “Lose your mind, wild girl. And you’ll be mine.”

  She drew a deep breath and—

  “Enough,” said a new voice.

  The sound seemed to shake Vasya out of a dark dream. An old woman, big-handed and broad-shouldered, strode between the trees, took in the lurid scene, and said irritably, as though it were the most natural thing in the world, “Medved, you shouldn’t have tried it at midnight.”

  At the same moment, a wave from the lake nearly swamped Vasya, and the bagiennik appeared, floating in the shallows, teeth bared. “Eater, you didn’t say anything about hurting the horses.”

  The old woman might have been tall once, but she was crabbed with age, her clothes rough, her hands long-nailed, her legs bowed. There was a basket on her back.

  Vasya, standing with her feet in the lake, reality gone pliant as mist, could see the Bear startled, wary. “You are dead,” he said to the old woman.

  The old woman chortled. “At midnight? On my own lands? You should know better.”

  Vasya, as though in a dream, thought she caught the gleam of the midnight-demon’s hair, her starry eyes, half-hidden in the trees, watching.

  The Bear said, placating, “I should have known better. But why interfere? What care you for your traitorous family?”

  “I care at least for the mare, you great hungry thing,” retorted the old woman. She stamped her foot. “Go back to terrorizing Muscovy.”

  One of the upyry was creeping up behind the old woman. She didn’t look, didn’t even twitch, but the dead thing burst into white fire, and collapsed with a shriek.

  “I suppose,” said the Bear, “I’d have to wait a long time for you to go mad.” There was respect in his voice. Vasya listened in astonishment.

  “I have been mad for years,” said the old woman. When she laughed, every hair on Vasya’s body rose. “But at midnight, this is still my realm.”

  “The girl won’t stay with you,” said the Bear, with a jerk of his chin at Vasya. “She won’t stay, however you try to persuade her. She’ll leave you just like the others. When she does, I’ll be waiting.” To Vasya, he added, “Your choice still stands. You are going to be my ally one way or the other. The chyerti will not have it otherwise.”

  “Go away,” snapped the woman.

  And, unbelievably, the Bear bowed to them both, and slunk away through the dark. His servants, shambling, the hell-light gone from their eyes, followed him.

  13.

  Baba Yaga

  THE SOUNDS OF THE NIGHT resumed. Vasya’s feet were numb in the water. The golden mare’s head hung low. The old woman pursed her lips, inspecting girl and horse.

  “Babushka,” said Vasya cautiously. “Thank you for our lives.”

  “If you want to stand in the lake until you grow fins, that is your affair,” the old woman
replied. “Otherwise come to the fire.”

  She stumped away, added sticks to the blaze. Vasya waded out of the lake. But the mare did not move. “You are bleeding,” Vasya said to her, trying to get a look at the gash on her foreleg.

  The mare’s ears were still pinned to her head. Finally, she said, I ran, while the others flew, to lead the upyry away. But they were too fast, and then my leg was torn and I could not fly.

  “I can help you,” Vasya volunteered.

  The mare made no answer. But suddenly Vasya understood her stillness, the golden head sunk low. “Do you fear being bound again? Because you are wounded? Do not be afraid. I killed the sorcerer. Tamara is dead too.” She could feel the old woman at her back, listening. “I have no rope here, let alone a golden bridle. I will not touch you without your leave; come to the fire.”

  Vasya suited action to word, making her own way to the fire. The mare stood still, the set of her ears uncertain. The old woman was standing on the other side of the flames, waiting for Vasya. Her hair was white. But her face was a distorted mirror of the girl’s own.

  Vasya stared, with shock, hunger, recognition.

  The forest still seemed thick with eyes, watching. There was an instant of perfect silence. Then the woman said, “What is your name?”

  “Vasilisa Petrovna,” said Vasya.

  “What was your mother’s name?”

  “Marina Ivanovna,” said Vasya. “Her mother was called Tamara, the girl who put a bridle on the firebird.”

  The woman’s eyes roved over Vasya’s torn and bruised face, her cropped hair, her clothes, and perhaps more than anything the expression in the girl’s eyes. “I’m surprised you didn’t frighten the Bear off,” said the old woman, drily. “With your face so frightful. Or perhaps he liked it. Hard to know, with that one.” Her hands were trembling.

  Vasya said nothing.

  “Tamara and her sister were my daughters. Long ago, it would seem to you.”

  Vasya knew that. “How are you alive?” she whispered.

  “I’m not,” said the old woman. “I died before you were born. But this is Midnight.”

  The golden mare broke their silence with splashing as she stepped out of the lake. As one, they turned to the horse. The firelight gleamed cruelly on the scars of whip and spur. “A pitiful pair you make,” said the old woman.

  Vasya said, “Babushka, we are both in need of help.”

  “Pozhar first,” said the old woman. “She is bleeding still.”

  “Is that her name?”

  A shrug. “What name would compass a creature like her? It is only what I call her.”

  * * *

  BUT HELPING THE MARE was not so easy. Pozhar laid back her ears if either of them tried to touch her. When she switched her tail, showers of sparks tumbled to the summer earth. One began to smolder; Vasya put it out with a booted foot. “Wounded or no, you are a menace.”

  The old woman snorted. The mare glared. But Pozhar was exhausted, too. At last, when Vasya ran a hand from her shoulder to her knee, she only shuddered. “This is going to hurt,” said Vasya grimly. “You are not to kick.”

  I am not promising anything, said the mare, ears pinned.

  Between them, they convinced the mare to stand still long enough for the girl to sew up her leg, although Vasya had a few new bruises by the time it was done. After, when a shaken Pozhar had escaped, limping, to graze at a safe distance, Vasya sank to the earth beside the fire, pushing sweaty hair off her face. Her clothes had dried in the heat of the mare’s body. It was still blackest night, although it seemed hours since the Bear had come.

  The woman had a pot in her basket, salt, some onions. When she thrust her hand in the lake, she withdrew fish, as naturally as a woman pulls bread from her own oven. She set about making soup, as though it were not midnight.

  Vasya watched her. “Is it your house?” she asked. “The house by the oak-tree?”

  The old woman was gutting the fish and didn’t look up. “It was, once.”

  “The chest—did you leave it there? For me to find?”

  “Yes,” said the woman, still not looking up.

  “You knew that I—you are the witch of the wood then,” said Vasya. “Who tends the horses.” She thought of Marya and the old, dread name, the fairy-tale name, came to her lips unbidden. With a shiver, she said, “Baba Yaga. You are my great-grandmother.”

  The old woman brayed a short laugh. The fish guts shone darkly between her fingers when she flung them back into the lake. “Near enough, I suppose. This witch and that were woven into a single fairy tale. Perhaps I am one of the witches.”

  “How did you know I was here?”

  “Polunochnitsa told me, of course,” returned the old woman. She was rummaging in the contents of Vasya’s basket now, adding greens to the pot. Her eyes gleamed in the dark, big and wild and reddened by the fire. “Although she almost waited until it was too late; she wanted you and the Bear to meet.”

  “Why?”

  “To see what you’d do.”

  “Why?” Vasya asked again. She felt perilously close to breaking into a child’s whining complaint. Her feet ached, and her ribs, and the cut on her face. More than ever she felt as if she’d been thrust into a tale she hardly understood.

  The old woman didn’t answer at once. She studied Vasya again. Finally she said, “Most of the chyerti do not want to strike a blow at the world of men. But they don’t want to fade either. They are torn.”

  Vasya frowned. “Are they? What has that to do with me?”

  “Why do you think Morozko went to such lengths to save your life? Yes, Polunochnitsa told me that, too.”

  “I don’t know why,” said Vasya, and this time her voice rose a note despite her best efforts. “Do you think I wanted him to? It was utter madness.”

  A quick, malicious gleam from beneath the old woman’s lids. “Was it? I suppose you’ll never know.”

  “I would if you’d tell me.”

  “That—no. It is something you must come to understand yourself, or not.” The old woman grinned, still with that edge of malice. She tossed salt in the soup. “Is it an easy road you’re after, child?”

  “If it were, I’d not have left home,” retorted Vasya, holding hard to courtesy. “But I am tired of stumbling blind in the dark.”

  The old woman was stirring the pot now; the firelight caught a strange expression on her face. “It is always dark here,” she said.

  Vasya, still bursting with questions, found herself silenced, ashamed of herself. In a different voice, she said, “You are the one who sent Midnight to me, on the road to Moscow.”

  “I am,” said the old woman. “I was curious, when I heard a girl-child of my blood had gone wandering, with a horse from the lake.”

  Vasya flinched at the reminder of Solovey. The soup was ready; the witch ladled up a large bowl for herself, a meager one for Vasya. Vasya didn’t mind; she’d stuffed herself on fish earlier. But the broth was good; she drank it slowly.

  “Babushka,” she asked, “did you ever see your daughters, after they left this place?”

  Baba Yaga’s old face grew still as carven stone. “No. They abandoned me.”

  Vasya thought of Tamara’s withered ghost, wondered if this woman could have prevented that horror.

  “My girl plotted with the sorcerer to take the firebird by force!” snapped the old woman, as though she could read Vasya’s thought. “I could not catch them. The mare is the fastest thing that runs. But at least my daughter was punished.”

  Vasya said, “She was your child. Do you know what the sorcerer did to Tamara?”

  “She did it to herself.”

  “Shall I tell you what happened to her?” Vasya asked, growing angry. “About her courage and her despair? Of how she was trapped in the terem of Moscow until she d
ied? And even after! You shut your lands and didn’t even try to help her?”

  “She betrayed me,” retorted the witch. “She chose a man over her own kin; gave the golden mare into Kaschei’s keeping. My Varvara left me too. She tried first to take Tamara’s place, but she could not. Of course she could not; she had not the sight. So, she left, the coward.”

  Vasya stilled, struck with sudden understanding.

  “I didn’t need either of them,” the old woman went on. “I shut the way in. I shut every road but the Midnight-road and that road is mine, for Lady Midnight is my servant. I have kept my lands inviolate until a new heir should come.”

  “Kept your lands inviolate?” Vasya demanded incredulously. “While your children were trapped in the world of men, while your daughter was abandoned by her lover?”

  “Yes,” said the witch. “She deserved it.”

  Vasya said nothing.

  “But,” the old woman went on, her voice softening, “I have a new heir now. I knew you’d come, one day. You can speak to horses; you awakened the domovaya with fire, you survived the bagiennik. You will not betray me. You will live in the house by the oak-tree and I will come every midnight to teach you all I know. How to master chyerti. How to keep your own people safe. Don’t you want to know those things, poor little girl, with your burned face?”

  “Yes,” said Vasya. “I do want to know those things.”

  The woman sat back, looking satisfied.

  “When there is time to learn,” Vasya continued. “But not yet. The Bear is free in Rus’.”

  The old woman bristled. “What is Rus’ to you? They tried to burn you, didn’t they? They killed your horse.”

  “Rus’ is my family. My brothers and sister. My niece, who sees as I do. Your grandchildren. Your great-grandchildren.”

  The woman’s eyes began, disconcertingly, to gleam. “Another with the sight? And a girl-child? We will walk through Midnight and get her.”