The Winter of the Witch Page 14

  In her veins was the same strength that had broken the bars of her cage in Moscow. She wasn’t sleepy now.

  The leader of the camp came up for air, gasping. Men were shouting to him from above, cursing each other. Vasya swam three strokes, cutting across the current. The leader was a big man, but fortunately he could swim a little. She seized him under the arms, and on a last burst of strength, heaved him to shore. A stab of pain ran down her half-knitted ribs.

  The man just lay in the mud, gaping at her. She could hear men converging on all sides, but she didn’t speak, just whirled and dove back into the water, leaving the man clinging to the shore and staring after her.

  * * *

  SHE LET HERSELF BE SWEPT downstream until she caught a rock in the middle and clung there, gasping.

  “River-king!” she shouted. “I want to talk to you.”

  The water rushed along, with broken trees borne on its flood. She had to clamber higher on her rock to avoid a huge limb spinning toward her in the current.

  The vodianoy popped out of the water scarce an arm’s length away. His grinning mouth was filled with needle-sharp teeth, his skin thick with slime and river muck. Water ran like diamonds down his warty skin and foamed and boiled around him. He opened his spine-toothed mouth and roared at her.

  This is when I’m supposed to scream, Vasya thought. Then he laughs—and I cry out in despair, believing in my own death, and that is when he sinks his teeth into me and drags me down.

  That was how chyerti killed people, by making them believe they were doomed.

  Vasya spoke as composedly as one could, clinging to a rock in a current. “Forgive my intrusion.”

  It is not easy to startle the river-king. His gaping mouth closed abruptly. “Who are you?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Vasya. “Why were you trying to kill these men?” The water surged, struck her in the face. She spat it out, wiped water from her eyes, hitched herself a little higher.

  She only knew where the river-king was by his black bulk against the sky, the shine of his eyes. “I wasn’t,” he said.

  Her arms had begun to shake. She cursed her lingering weakness. “No?” she demanded, breathless.

  “The silver,” he said. “I was to drown the silver.”

  “Silver? Why?”

  “The Bear desired it of me.”

  “What do chyerti care for men’s silver?” she panted.

  “I know not. I only know the Bear bid me to do it.”

  “Very well,” said Vasya. “It is done now. Will you quiet the water, river-king?”

  The vodianoy rumbled with displeasure. “Why? Those men with their dust and their horses and their filth fouled my river. They left no offering, no acknowledgment. Better they drown with their silver.”

  “No,” she said. “Men and chyerti can share this world.”

  “We cannot!” snapped the vodianoy. “They will not stop—the bells will not stop, the cutting of trees and the fouling of water, and the forgetting will not stop until there are none of us left.”

  “We can,” she insisted. “I see you. You will not fade.”

  “You are not enough.” The black lips had pulled back again, revealing the needles of his teeth. “And the Bear is stronger than you.”

  “The Bear is not here,” said Vasya. “I am here and you will not kill these men. Quiet the water!”

  The vodianoy only hissed, mouth opening wide. Vasya did not recoil, but reached out a scraped hand and touched his warty face. She said, “Listen to me and be at peace, river-king.” The vodianoy felt like living water, cold and silken and alive under her hand. She committed the texture of his skin to memory.

  He shrank away. His mouth closed. “Must it be so?” he asked her, in a different voice. He sounded suddenly afraid. But beneath it was a thread of agonized hope. Vasya thought of what her great-grandmother had said, that the chyerti didn’t really wish to fight, at all.

  Vasya took a deep breath. “Yes,” she said. “It must.”

  “Then I will remember,” said the vodianoy. The raging force of the current slacked. Vasya drew a relieved breath. “You must also remember—sea-maiden.” The vodianoy sank gurgling beneath the water and vanished before she could ask him why he called her that.

  The level of the river began to drop. By the time Vasya dragged herself ashore, it was only muddy creek again.

  The man that she had rescued was standing on the bank when she came wading out. She was bedraggled, panting and shivering, but at least she wasn’t sleepy. She jerked to a halt when she saw him waiting, quelled a startled impulse to flee.

  He raised his hands. “Do not be afraid, boy. You saved my life.”

  Vasya didn’t speak. She didn’t trust him. But the water was at her back, the night, the forest, the Midnight-road. All promised refuge. She was afraid of the man with an instinctive fear, but it wasn’t like Moscow, where walls hemmed her in. So she stood fast and said, “If you are grateful, Gospodin, then tell me your name and your purpose here.”

  He stared. Vasya realized belatedly that he had thought she was a peasant boy but that she didn’t sound like one.

  “I suppose it is of no matter now,” he said after a grim silence. “I am called Vladimir Andreevich, the Prince of Serpukhov. I, with my men, was to take a tribute of silver to Sarai, to the puppet-khan and his temnik Mamai. For Mamai has mustered an army and will not disperse it until he has his tax. But now the silver is gone.”

  Her brother-in-law, sent by Dmitrii on an errand meant to avert a war, now thwarted. Vasya understood why affinity had brought her here; knew also why the Bear had wanted to drown the silver. Why bring down Dmitrii himself when he could get Tatars to do it?

  Perhaps the silver could be found. But not in darkness. Could she force the vodianoy to retrieve it? She hesitated between the forest and the water.

  Vladimir was considering her, narrow-eyed. “Who are you?”

  “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” she assured him with perfect honesty.

  His sharp gray eyes took in the fading cuts and bruises on her face. “I mean you no harm,” he said. “Wherever you ran away from—I won’t send you back. Would you like something to eat?”

  The unexpected kindness almost drove tears from her; she realized how bewildered and frightened she had been, and still was. But she had no time for tears.

  “No,” she said. “I thank you.” She had decided. To end the Bear’s mischief once and for all, she needed the winter-king.

  So she fled, a wraith in the darkness.

  15.

  Farther, Stranger Countries

  THE MOON WAS HANGING NEAR the horizon and it was still endless, sapping night. Vasya was barefoot, and now she was cold.

  Ded Grib popped out from behind a stump, clutching Vasya’s basket. He looked outraged. “You are wet,” he said. “And you are lucky I kept you in sight. What if you and I and the horse had all gone into different midnights? You would have been lost.”

  Vasya’s teeth were chattering. “I didn’t think of it,” she said to her little ally. “You are so wise.”

  Ded Grib looked a little mollified.

  “I am going to have to find somewhere to dry my clothes,” Vasya managed. “Where is Pozhar?”

  “There,” said Ded Grib, pointing to a glimmer in the darkness. “I kept you both in sight.”

  Vasya, in gratitude, bowed deeply and sincerely before him, and then she said, “Can you find a place where no one will see if I build a fire?”

  Grumbling, he did. She laid a fire and then hesitated, looking at the wood, feeling the rage and terror—and flame—in her soul just waiting to be let out.

  The sticks went up in a shower of sparks, almost before she thought of it, and reality at once yawed at her feet. The infinite darkness of this place already weighed on her; now it
felt a hundred times worse.

  Her shaking hand crept to the lump in her clothes, where the domovaya had sewn the wooden nightingale. Her hand closed around it. It felt like an anchor.

  A light gleamed through the thick trees. Pozhar came out of the dark, mincing in the bracken. She shook her mane. Stop making magic, foolish girl. You will be as mad as the old woman. It is easier than you’d think, to lose yourself in Midnight. Her ears flicked. If you go mad, I am leaving you here.

  “Please don’t. I will try not to go mad,” Vasya said hoarsely, and the mare snorted. Then she went to graze. Vasya stripped and began the tedious process of drying her clothes.

  How she wanted to sleep now, and wake up in light. But she couldn’t. So, she stood and paced naked, pinching her arms, going away from the fire so that the chill drove her to alertness.

  She was standing, wondering if her clothes were dry enough to keep her from freezing, when she heard a squeal from Pozhar. She turned to see Midnight’s black horse, almost indistinguishable from the night, step into the firelight.

  “Have you brought your rider here to offer more advice?” Vasya asked the horse, not very kindly.

  Don’t be silly, said Pozhar to Vasya. I called him. Voron. She gave the black horse a wicked look, and the stallion licked his lips submissively. The Swan is farther off than I thought, and Voron knows better than I how to get to her—he is more used to the ways of this place. I am getting tired of wandering about, especially when you make it hard for me to keep you in sight. At this speed, we aren’t going to make it before you have to sleep. She fixed Vasya with both ears. Twice you have saved me: in Moscow and by the water. Now I will have saved you twice too, and there will be no more debt between us.

  “None,” said Vasya with a surge of gratitude, and bowed.

  The midnight-demon stalked into the firelight behind her horse, looking sour. Vasya knew that look. She had worn it herself, when Solovey badgered her into something. She almost laughed.

  “Pozhar,” said Midnight. “I have business far from here, and I cannot be—”

  “Delayed because your horse is ignoring you?” interrupted Vasya.

  Midnight gave her a venomous look.

  “Well, then help me now,” said Vasya. “And you can go about your business the sooner.” The black horse twitched his heavy ears. Pozhar looked impatient. Come on, she said. It was amusing at first, but I am tired of this darkness.

  A little reluctant humor came into Midnight’s face. “What do you hope to do, Vasilisa Petrovna? He is trapped beyond recall, trapped in memory, in place, and in time: all three.”

  Vasya was frankly incredulous. “Am I so vain as to think that the winter-king would let himself be imprisoned for eternity for my sake? He is not a half-witted fairy-tale prince, and heaven knows I am not Yelena the Beautiful. So he must have had a reason, known there was a way out. Which means I can free him.”

  Midnight put her head to one side. “I thought you besotted, and that was why you were risking the depths of my realm for his sake. But it’s not that, is it?”

  “No,” said Vasya.

  Now the midnight-demon looked resigned. “Better put your boots on.” She eyed Vasya’s half-dry clothes critically. “You are going to be cold.”

  * * *

  IT DID GROW COLD. The first Vasya felt of it was frost-crystals breaking under her boots, as she stepped between midnights. The green smell of summer took on a wilder, earthy note; the stars grew sharp as sword-points, where they were not caught fast in racing clouds. The soft rustling of summer leaves became a dry rattle, and then nothing: only bare trees against the sky. And then between one midnight and another, Vasya’s feet broke through a crust of wet snow. Ded Grib halted abruptly. “I cannot go on; I will wither.” He eyed the white stuff with terror.

  Vasya knelt before the little mushroom-spirit. “Can you go back to the lake alone? I have to go on.”

  He looked miserable. His sickly green glow wavered. “I can always go back to the lake. But I promised.”

  “You kept your promise. You found me food, you found me after the flood.” She touched his head, gave him another piece of bread from her basket. She said, on sudden inspiration, “Perhaps you could talk to the other chyerti for me. Tell them that I—that I—”

  Ded Grib brightened. “I know what I will tell them,” he said.

  That was somewhat worrying. She opened her mouth, thought better of it. “All right,” she said. “But—”

  “Are you sure you won’t go back to the lake?” asked Ded Grib. He gave the snow a look of loathing. “It is dark and cold and the ground is hard.”

  “I cannot. Not yet,” said Vasya. “But one day. When this is over. Perhaps you can show me where the lisichki grow.”

  “Very well,” said Ded Grib sadly. “Mind you tell anyone who asks that I was first.” He disappeared, not without a few backward glances.

  Vasya straightened, and peered ahead. Winter midnights spread out before them: cold copses, ice-choked streams, and perhaps dangers she couldn’t see, hidden in the darkness. A chill wind raced down over them, so that Pozhar, in her summer coat, switched her tail and flattened her ears.

  “Are we deep in your country now?” Vasya asked Polunochnitsa.

  “Yes,” she said. “These are the winter midnights, and we started in summer.”

  “The domovaya said I couldn’t get back,” said Vasya. “If the season turned.”

  “In the lands by the lake,” returned Polunochnitsa. “But this is Midnight. You can go anywhere you wish, in Midnight. Any place, any season. Except that, so far from where you began, you must not fall asleep.”

  “Let’s go on then,” said Vasya, with a glance at the frozen sky.

  They walked on in silence. Occasionally there would be a chink, as Pozhar’s hoof struck a rock beneath the snow. But that was all. They passed like ghosts over the silent earth.

  One instant, they would be walking through cloud-torn darkness, but the next moment, the moon would beam down, almost too bright for Vasya’s night-adjusted eyes. Then a great gust of wind would tear at her hair. It was getting even colder as they walked, the land wilder. Snow stung her face.

  Once Polunochnitsa said, abruptly, “If you had tried to use your own bond to the winter-king you would have died quickly, lost. You were right; it is too capricious, mortal to immortal, and there are too many half-truths between you. But I never—the Bear never—thought of the horses.”

  Vasya said, “There is no bond at all now, between me and the winter-king. The necklace was destroyed.”

  “None at all?” Midnight looked amused.

  “Misplaced longing was all there ever was,” Vasya insisted. “I do not love him.”

  To that Midnight made no answer.

  Vasya wished they could linger, for she began to get glimpses of things far off; of cities in festival, on high hilltops, where the shrieks of revelers by torchlight came clearly to her ears.

  “There are farther, stranger countries,” said Midnight. “Places you would have to journey long in the dark to get to. Places that you might never be able to get to, for your soul could not comprehend them. Places that are not a part of your lifetime of midnights; they are from when your earliest ancestor was born, or when your furthest grandchildren will die. Even I cannot get to all of them. By that I know that one day I will cease to exist, and not every midnight in the life of the world will know my hand.”

  Vasya felt a little thrill, deep inside her. “I would like to see the far reaches of your country,” she said. “To feast in strange cities, break midnight bread in a bathhouse before a wedding, or see the moon on the sea.”

  Midnight glanced sideways at her. “You are a strange girl, to want that danger. And you have much to do before you can think of journeying, in Midnight or anywhere.”

  “And yet, I will thin
k of the future,” Vasya retorted. “To remind me that the present is not forever. One day I may see my brother Alyosha again, and my sister Irina. I might have a home of my own, a place and a purpose, a victory. What is the present without the future?”

  “I do not know,” said Midnight. “Immortals have no future: only now. It is our blessing and great curse.”

  It was growing steadily colder. Vasya began to shiver. Big, frosty stars showed overhead; the sky was clear through the leafless trees. Now her feet broke through deep snow with every step. Vasya began to stumble, dazed with tiredness. Only fear kept her awake.

  Finally, Voron and Pozhar stopped. A slim creek, blue with ice, lay before them. Beyond that stood a small, palisaded village. It was a perfectly clear winter night. The stars lay overhead thickly as water slopped from a careless bucket.

  The houses had holes for the smoke, not chimneys. The places under the eaves were carved but not painted, and the palisade was low and simple; designed to keep cows and children in, not marauders out. Strangest of all: there was no church. Vasya, in all her life, had never seen a community without a church; it was like seeing a person with no head. “Where are we?” she asked.

  “The place you sought.”

  16.

  The Chains of the Winter-King

  “MOROZKO IS HERE?” VASYA ASKED. “This is a prison for a frost-demon?”

  “Yes,” said Midnight.

  Vasya eyed the village. What here could keep the winter-king imprisoned? “The white mare—the swan—is she close?” she asked Pozhar.

  The mare lifted her golden head. Yes, she said. But she is afraid. She has been waiting for him a long time in the dark. I am going to find her. She needs me.

  “Very well,” said Vasya. She laid a hand on Pozhar’s neck. The mare didn’t even bite. “Thank you. When you see the white mare, tell her I am going to try and save him.”