Hunted(48)

Yeva, breathless, stared at it, and it stared back. At her side, Doe-Eyes sniffed interestedly—but didn’t go stiff as she would have done had an ordinary fox appeared in their path.

“Well?” said the fox.

Yeva yelped, and couldn’t help but take a step back, half lifting her bow. She caught her breath, noticing the fox had the same pale-blue eyes the man had had. She swallowed. “What are you?”

“I am Borovoi.”

Yeva shifted her grip on her bow, forcing herself to relax lest the fox—or old man, or whatever he was—sense her nervousness. “Is that your name, or what you are?”

The fox’s head tipped to the side. “I am Borovoi. What a waste of a question. You only have one more.”

Yeva’s mouth opened to protest, but she stopped herself before she could speak. In her father’s tales, the number three was always important. Three sons, three wishes . . . this world was ruled by the laws of those stories. She took a deep breath, choosing her words carefully, and asked, “Can you show me how to destroy the Beast?”

The fox paused for a long moment. Then his lips drew back into a wide, toothy grin, and he whirled with a flash of his red tail and darted off into the forest. Yeva broke into a run without thinking, shoving her bow onto her shoulder and sprinting as fast as she could. She could see no tracks, but the fox was always just ahead of her, visible as a flash of red fur against the white canvas of snow. She ran until she stumbled into a dense thicket, which tangled about her legs; her momentum tried to keep her moving and she went crashing down into the dry, leafless branches.

Gasping, she crawled forward, detangling herself as best she could, ignoring the scratches on her face and the branches snagging her hair. When she finally stumbled free, she found herself in a snowy clearing—and the fox, Borovoi, was nowhere to be seen.

Yeva stood panting, trying to catch her breath as Doe-Eyes came wriggling through the thicket after her. Tongue lolling, gap-jawed, Doe-Eyes gazed up at her mistress as though to say, What fun! Again! Still winded, Yeva dropped into a weary crouch. She rubbed at Doe-Eyes’s ears as she scanned the clearing.

There had to be a clue here, some importance to this section of the wilderness. Though tricksters were everywhere in fairy tales, they rarely lied—any misfortunes were always the fault of the hero or heroine, misunderstanding what was really being said. So Yeva doubted she would find some weapon buried beneath the snow that could kill the Beast, but she knew some piece of the answer must lie here.

She set off across the clearing, steps cautious, eyes scanning. It wasn’t until she was nearly halfway across that she noticed a flat expanse that was lower than the rest, and mostly clear of snow.

When she drew closer she found that it was a pool, a woodland spring that had frozen over in the cold. Yeva strode halfway around it, peering at the ice, which showed little but black water beneath it. Ordering Doe-Eyes to stay put, Yeva gingerly stretched a foot out to test the ice’s surface. It gave only the tiniest groan in response as she shifted more of her weight onto that foot.

She was about to take another step when a flash of gold beneath the ice made her stop short. Heart pounding, she stared into the black depths, hoping for another glimpse. It came again, a sweep of fire gold, and then abruptly it was there.

The Firebird.

Yeva gasped and threw herself down onto her knees to stare beneath the ice. The Firebird was trapped there, its golden wings outstretched, beating futilely against the ice’s surface. With a cry, Yeva drew her fletching knife from her boot and chipped at the ice—she forgot about Borovoi, forgot about her reason for coming to the wood alone, forgot even the Beast himself. She could see only the Firebird, hear only its muffled cries, each one a stab at her heart.

All her life she’d longed for the tiniest glimpse of this creature. She would not let it drown—she would free it, take it for her own, feel the heat of its fiery wings on her face. She stabbed down at the ice again and again, feeling it shudder beneath her. Each groan of the ice made her work harder, faster. Doe-Eyes’s frantic barking at the pool’s edge faded to a distant buzzing in her ears. All she heard, all she was, was the Firebird’s song.

The ice gave a mighty crack, and a spray of water flecked Yeva’s face. She moved so she could drive down at the hole with her boot, putting every ounce of strength she had behind it—and then the entire sheet gave way with a roar.

Yeva was in the water before she knew what was happening, air driven from her lungs and rushing back in a huge gasp before her head went under. For a long instant she felt nothing—no cold, no wet, no fear at the sudden darkness—only the need for the Firebird, the longing to touch it even once, even if it flew away and she never saw it again.

Something wrapped around her from behind and she turned, joy flooding her heart as she expected to see the Firebird at last, whole and in front of her, not obscured and blurred by the ice. Instead, a rotting face loomed out of the blackness at her, bony arms pulling her close. It had once been a woman, her long hair still clinging to what remained of her scalp, and the flesh of her cheeks had sunken and rotted so that Yeva could see her teeth in profile as the thing leaned forward to whisper in her ear.

“Stay with me,” the dead woman sighed, holding on to Yeva with unnatural strength. They were sinking, down into darkness, far deeper than a meadow pool should be. The thing’s hair curled around Yeva, wrapping around her neck, slithering along her skin beneath her clothes.