The Winter of the Witch Read online

  She followed the turn of his marsh-light eyes. A reddish flicker showed between the black trees. Not daylight. Perhaps fire? A rush of fear sent her to her feet, cloak heavy with mud.

  But it was not fire. It was a living creature.

  A tall mare, limned with light, stood hock-deep in the marsh. Sparks like fireflies tumbled from her mane and tail, molten white against the silver-gold of her coat. Head up, she watched Vasya, motionless except for her tail, which lashed her sides with arcs of light.

  Vasya took an involuntary, stumbling step toward the mare, caught between wonder and rage. “I remember you,” she said to the horse. “In Moscow, I set you free.”

  The mare said nothing, only flicked her great, golden ears.

  “You could have just flown away,” Vasya said. Her voice cracked; her throat was raw. “But instead you dripped sparks over a city of wood and they—and they—” She could not say the words.

  The golden mare pawed defiantly, splashing, and spoke, I would have killed them all, if I could, she returned. Killed all the men in the world. They dared trick me, bind me. Scars of saddle and spur marked the mare’s golden perfection, and her face was striped with white where the golden bridle had been. I would have killed the whole city.

  Vasya said nothing. Grief was a frozen ball in her mouth; she could only stare with mute hatred at the mare.

  The mare spun and galloped away.

  “Follow her, fool,” hissed the swamp-demon. “Or if you prefer, stay here, and I will eat you.”

  Vasya hated the mare. But she did not want to die. She began to make her way through the trees, stumbling on bloody feet. On and on she went, following the dot of golden light, until she was quite sure that she could not walk a step more.

  But then she did not have to.

  The trees ended; she found herself in a sloping meadow leading down to a vast, frozen lake. It was earliest spring. Stars cast a faint silver sheen on the long grass of an open field. All around she could discern the shapes of great trees, black against the silver sky. Snow lay on this field only in hollows and patches. Faintly she could hear the sound of water under the lake’s ice.

  There were more horses grazing in the meadow. Three—six—a dozen. The night faded them all to gray except for the golden mare. Standing among them, she glittered like a fallen star, head up in challenge.

  Vasya halted, full of agonized wonder. Part of her was half-convinced that her own horse must be here, among his kin, that in a moment he would gallop toward her, flinging snow from under his feet, and she wouldn’t be alone anymore. “Solovey,” she whispered. “Solovey.”

  A dark head rose, then a paler one. All of a sudden, the horses were wheeling, fleeing. On four legs they fled from the sound of her voice, straight down toward the lake, but just before their hooves struck water, their hooves became wings. As birds they took to the air, and soared over the starlit water.

  Vasya watched them go, tears of pure wonder in her eyes. They winged across the lake, no two alike. Owl and eagle and duck and smaller birds: purely, miraculously, strange. Last of all to leave the earth was the golden mare. Her wings swept wide, trailing smoke, and her plumed tail was every color of flame: gold and blue-violet and white. She flew after her kin, calling. In moments, they were all swallowed by the darkness.

  Vasya stared at the place the horses had been. It was as though she’d dreamed them. Her vision swam with weariness. Her feet and her face were numb, and she had gone beyond shivering, cocooned icily in shock. Solovey, she wondered dimly. Why didn’t you fly away too?

  Just at the edge of the lake stood a single vast oak-tree. Its branches stood out like blackened bones against the moon-white ice. To her right, nestled among the trees, was a squat, dark shape.

  It was a house.

  Or rather, a ruin. The house’s roof, sloped steeply to keep off the snow, had fallen in; no firelight showed behind window or door. There was only silence, the faint creaking of trees, the crack of thinning lake-ice. And yet this place, this clearing by the water, did not feel empty. It felt watchful.

  The house had been built on a sturdy platform between two trees. The trees gave it a look of standing alertly on strong legs; the windows like black eyes, staring down. For an instant, the house didn’t seem dead at all. It seemed to be watching her.

  Then the illusion of menace faded. It was only a ruin. The steps were rotten, crumbling. There would be dead leaves within, and mice and unrelieved dark.

  But there might be a working stove, even a handful of grain from the house’s last occupant. At the very least, she could get out of the wind.

  Only half-aware of what she was doing, Vasya crossed the meadow, stumbling on rocks, skidding on snow. Gritting her teeth, she crawled up the steps. The only sounds were the groaning of branches and her own hoarse breathing.

  At the top of the stairs stood two posts, carved with figures starlit and fantastic: bears, suns, moons, small strange faces that might have been chyerti. Over the door was a lintel carved in the shape of two rearing horses.

  The door hung askew on its hinges in a litter of slick, rotten leaves. Vasya paused to listen.

  Silence. Of course, silence. Perhaps there were beasts denning here, but she was beyond caring. The half-fallen door gave with a squeal from rusted hinges. Vasya stumbled inside.

  She found dust, old leaves, the smell of decay, and chill weary damp. It was no warmer than outside, though at least there was not the cold wind off the lake. Most of the house was taken up by a crumbling brick oven, its mouth a maw in the blackness. Across the room, where the icon-corner should be, there were no icons, only a big dark thing shoved against the wall.

  Vasya groped her way cautiously to that corner and found a wooden chest: bronze-bound and securely locked.

  She turned shivering back toward the oven. Mostly she just wanted to sink down on the floor in the dark and let unconsciousness take her; never mind the cold.

  Gritting her teeth, she heaved herself atop the oven-bench and gingerly touched the rough brick, where a person might have breathed her last. But there was nothing; no blanket, certainly no bones. What tragedy had left this strange ruin deserted? The night outside cradled the house with a silent menace.

  Her groping fingers found a few dusty sticks beside the oven. Enough for a fire, though she didn’t want fire. Her memory was full of flames, the choking smell of smoke. The heat would hurt her blistered face.

  But it was certainly cold enough for a wounded girl wearing only a cloak and shift to freeze to death. She meant to live.

  So, moved only by the cold embers of will, Vasya set about making a fire. Her lips and fingertips were quite numb. She bruised her shins on things she could not see, scrabbling for the sticks and pine-needles for kindling.

  After a half-blind effort that left her trembling, she had made a heap of sticks that she could barely see in the mouth of the oven. She felt over the entire house for flint and steel and charred cloth, but there were none.

  She could make a fire with a flat piece of wood and patience, and strength in the forearms. But both her strength and patience were at an end.

  Well, do it, or freeze. She took the stick between her hands. When she was a child, in the autumn woods, it had been a game. The stick, the board, the swift strong movement. Deftly handled, the smoke would turn into fire, and Vasya still remembered her brother Alyosha’s grin of delight, the first time she did it unaided.

  But this time, though she labored and sweated, not a single curl of smoke rose from the board between her knees; no ember glowed in the groove. At last Vasya let the stick fall, shivering, defeated. Useless. She was going to die after all, with only the dust of someone else’s life for company.

  She did not know how long she sat in the sour-smelling silence, not crying, not feeling anything, just hovering on the edge of unconsciousness.

 
She never knew what spurred her to raise her head once more, teeth sunk in her lower lip. She must have fire. She must. In her head, in her heart, was the terrible presence of fire, memory as strong as anything in her life, as though her soul were full of flames. Ridiculous that fire burned so bright in hated memory but there was no scrap of light here, where it could do some good.

  Why should it be only in her mind? She shut her eyes, and for an instant, memory was so strong that she forgot it wasn’t.

  Vasya smelled smoke first, and her eyes opened, just as her sticks burst into flame.

  Shocked, almost frightened of her success, Vasya hurried to add wood. The room filled with light; the shadows retreated.

  The hut looked even worse by firelight: ankle-deep in leaves, crumbling, mildewed, thick with dust. But there was a little woodpile she hadn’t seen: a few dry logs. And it was warmer now. The fire drove back the night and the chill. She was going to live. Vasya stretched out trembling hands to the fire.

  A hand shot out of the oven and grasped her wrist.

  10.

  The Devil in the Oven

  VASYA DREW A SINGLE, STARTLED breath, but she did not pull away. The hand was as small as a child’s, long-fingered, traced in red and gold from the firelight. It did not let her go. Instead, Vasya found herself pulling a tiny person into the room.

  She was a woman no taller than Vasya’s knee, with eyes the color of earth. She was licking embers hungrily off the end of a stick, but she paused to look up at Vasilisa and say, “Well, I have overslept and no mistake. Who are you?” Then the chyert caught sight of the decay all around them and her voice rose in sudden alarm. “Where is my mistress? What are you doing here?”

  Vasya sank down onto the crumbling oven-bench in exhausted surprise. Domoviye did not live in ruins; they did not live on in houses at all when their families had gone. “There is no one here,” Vasya said. “Only me. This place—it is dead. What are you doing here?”

  The domovoi—no, a female—a domovaya—stared. “I do not understand. The house cannot be dead. I am the house, and I am alive. You must be lying. What have you done to them? What have you done to this place? Stand and answer me!” Her voice was shrill with fright.

  “I cannot stand,” Vasya whispered. That was true. The fire had taken the last of her strength. “I am only a traveler. I thought only to make a fire and stay here for the night.”

  “But you—” The domovoi—domovaya—peered again about the house, took in the extent of the rot. Her eyes widened in horror. “Overslept indeed! Just look at this filth. I cannot just let vagabonds stay without my mistress’s leave. You will have to go. I must set things to rights, against her return.”

  “I do not think your mistress is coming back,” said Vasya. “This house is abandoned. I do not know how you managed to survive, in that cold oven.” Her voice broke. “Please. Please let me stay. I cannot bear any more.”

  A small silence. Vasya could feel the domovaya’s narrow regard. “Very well then,” she said. “You will stay here tonight. Poor child. My mistress would want it.”

  “Thank you,” Vasya whispered.

  The domovaya, still muttering to herself, went at once to the chest shoved against the wall. She had a key hanging at her throat; she unlocked the iron hasp of the chest. It gave with a rusty click.

  Before Vasya’s astonished eyes, the domovaya produced linen and a clay bowl, laid them on the hearth. Then she took a bucket and went outside for snow, which she set at once to heating, and a branch of young pine-needles, which she scattered in the water.

  Vasya watched the steam rise through the hole in the roof, only half-aware of the domovaya’s deft movements as she peeled away the shift that had so nearly been Vasya’s shroud, briskly sponged off the worst of the fear-sweat, the soot, and the blood, washed away the scum about Vasya’s injured eye. The latter hurt, but when the crust was wiped away, Vasya could see through a slit. She was not blinded. She was too tired to care even for that.

  From the chest in the corner, the domovaya produced a wool shirt. Vasya barely felt the domovaya put it on her, found herself lying atop the oven under rabbit-skin blankets with no idea how she’d gotten there. The brick was warm. The last thing she heard before oblivion claimed her was the small voice of the domovaya, saying, “A little rest will put you aright, but you are going to have a scar on your face.”

  * * *

  VASILISA PETROVNA NEVER KNEW how long she slept. She had dim memories of nightmares, of screaming for Solovey to run. She dreamed the midnight-demon’s voice—It must be done, Polunochnitsa said, send her forth, for all our sakes—and the domovaya’s voice raised in distress. But before Vasya could speak, darkness pulled her under once more.

  Uncounted hours later, she opened her eyes to dawn: the light almost shocking after the long dark. It was as though she’d only dreamed the tangled roads of Midnight. Perhaps she had. Lying in the blurred gray light of early morning, she could have been anywhere, atop any oven. “Dunya?” she called, her childhood strong in her mind. It had always been her nurse who comforted her after nightmares.

  Memory crashed in. She made an inarticulate sound of distress. A small head appeared at once beside her pallet, but Vasya barely saw the domovaya. Memory had her by the throat. She was shivering.

  The domovaya watched, frowning.

  “Forgive me,” Vasya managed at length. She pushed her ragged hair back from her face. Her teeth chattered. The oven was warm, but there was still a hole in the roof, and memory was colder than the air. “I—I am called Vasilisa Petrovna. Thank you for your hospitality.”

  The domovaya looked almost sad. “It is not hospitality,” she said. “I was asleep in the fire. You awoke me. You are my mistress now.”

  “But this is not my house.”

  The domovaya made no reply. Vasya sat up, wincing. The domovaya had done her best while Vasya slept. The dust and dead mice, the rotten leaves, were gone. “It is much more like home now,” Vasya said, cautiously. Now that it was daylight, she saw that most of the wood on the rooftree and table was carved like the lintel outside, worn to smoothness from use and care. The house had a dignity to match its hearth-spirit: an old, subtle beauty that time could not quite conceal.

  The domovaya looked pleased. “You mustn’t lie abed. The water is hot. Your wounds must be cleaned again and bound afresh.” She disappeared; Vasya heard her adding wood to the fire.

  Getting down to the floor left Vasya panting, as though she were new-recovered from fever. To add insult to injury, she was also hungry. “Is there—” croaked Vasya, swallowed, tried again. “Is there anything to eat?”

  Lips pursed, the domovaya shook her head.

  Why would there be? It was too much to suppose that the house’s long-vanished mistress would have conveniently left a loaf and cheese.

  “Did you burn my shift?” Vasya asked.

  “I did,” said the domovaya, shuddering. “It stank of fear.”

  Well it might. Then Vasya stiffened. “There was a token—a carving—I was carrying in it. Did you—?”

  “No,” said the domovaya. “It is here.”

  Vasya seized the little carved nightingale as if it were a talisman. Perhaps it was. It was dirty but undamaged. She wiped it clean, thrust it again into her sleeve.

  A bowl of snowmelt steamed on the hearth. The domovaya said briskly, “Take off that shirt; I am going to wash your wounds again.”

  Vasya did not want to think about her wounds; she did not want to have flesh at all. Just below the surface of her mind lurked the most howling grief; the memory of death, of violation. She did not want to see those memories scribed on her skin.

  The domovaya was not sympathetic. “Where is your courage? You do not want to die of a poisoned wound.”

  That at least was true; a slow and horrible death. Before she could lose her nerve, Vasya, wordless, pe
eled the shirt over her head, stood up shivering in the light from the crumbling roof and looked down at her body.

  Bruises of every color: red and black, purple and blue. Cuts latticed her torso; she was glad she could not see her own face. Two teeth were loose; her lips were split and sore. One eye was still half swollen shut. When she raised her hand to her face, she was met with a clotted gash on her cheek.

  The domovaya had produced dusty-smelling herbs, honey for bandaging, lengths of clean linen from the chest in the corner. Vasya, staring, said, “Who leaves such things in a locked box in a ruin?”

  “I hardly know,” said the domovaya shortly. “They were here, that’s all.”

  “Surely you remember something.”

  “I don’t!” The domovaya looked suddenly angry. “Why are you asking? Isn’t it enough that it was here, that it saved your life? Sit down. No, there.”

  Vasya sat. “I am sorry,” she said. “I was only curious.”

  “The more one knows, the sooner one grows old,” snapped the domovaya. “Hold still.”

  Vasya tried. But it hurt. A few cuts had closed in their own blood; the domovaya left them alone. But many had been pulled open under the stresses of the night, and she had not got all of the soot and splinters, working by firelight.

  But all were bound up and salved at last. “Thank you,” Vasya said, hearing her voice shake. Hurriedly she put on her shirt to shut away the sight of herself, and then rubbed a bit of her charred hair between two fingers. Foul. Tangled, fire-smelling; it would never be clean again.

  “Will you cut my hair off? As short as you can,” said Vasya. “I have had enough of Vasilisa Petrovna.”

  The domovaya had only a knife to cut with, but she took it up without a word. Hanks of black hair tumbled down, soundless as snow, to be swept out and flung away for the nesting birds. When it was done, the air seemed to whistle strangely past Vasya’s ears and down her neck. Not long ago, Vasya would have wept to lose her black hair. Now she was glad to have it gone. Her long, glossy plait belonged to another girl, in another life.