The Bear and the Nightingale(38)

In that moment, Father Konstantin appeared in the doorway. His nose was red, his face as raw as anyone’s, but he absorbed the scene in an instant, took two strides across the tiny hut, and caught the mother’s groping fingers. The woman gave one desperate wrench and then stilled, trembling.

“He is gone, Yasna,” Konstantin said, stern.

“No,” she croaked. “I held him in my arms, all last night I held him, as the fire burned low—he cannot, he will not leave if I hold him. Give him back to me!”

“He belongs to God,” said Konstantin. “As do we all.”

“He is my son! My only son. Mine—”

“Be still,” he said. “Sit down. This is unseemly. Come, the women will lay him before the fire and heat water for washing.” His deep voice was soft and even. Yasna allowed him to lead her to the oven and sank down beside it.

All that morning—indeed, all that brief dull winter day—Konstantin talked, and Yasna stared at him like a swimmer caught in a riptide, while the women stripped Timofei’s body, and washed it, and wrapped it in cold linen. The priest was still there when Vasya came back from another bitter day searching for firewood; she saw him standing before the door of the bathhouse, gulping the cold air as though it were water.

“Would you like some mead, Batyushka?” she said.

Konstantin jerked in surprise. Vasya made no noise walking, and her gray furs mingled with the falling night. But after a pause he said, “I would, Vasilisa Petrovna.” His beautiful voice was little more than a thread, the resonance gone. Gravely she handed him her little skin of honey-wine. He gulped it with desperate eagerness. Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he handed the skin back to her, only to find her studying him, a furrow between her brows.

“Will you keep vigil tonight?” she asked.

“It is my place,” he replied with a hint of hauteur; the question was impertinent.

She saw his annoyance and smiled; he frowned. “I honor you for it, Batyushka,” she said.

She turned toward the great house, melting into the shadows. Konstantin watched her go, lips pressed together. The taste of mead was heavy in his mouth.

The priest kept that night’s vigil by the body. His gaunt face was set, and his lips moved in prayer. Vasya, who had returned in the small hours to keep her own vigil, could not help but admire his steady purpose, though the air had never echoed so with sobs and prayers as it had since his coming.

It was far too cold to linger over the boy’s tiny grave, hacked with much labor out of the iron-hard earth. As soon as decency permitted, the people scattered back to their huts, leaving the poor thing alone in his icy cradle, with Father Konstantin hindmost, half-dragging the bereaved mother.

People began cramming into fewer and fewer izby, with extended families sharing one oven to save firewood. But the wood disappeared so quickly—as though some ill wish made it burn. So they went into the woods regardless of paw prints, the women goaded by the sight of Timofei’s marble face and the dreadful look in his mother’s eyes. It was inevitable that someone would not come back.

Oleg’s son Danil was only bones when they found him, scattered widely over a stretch of trampled and bloody snow. His father brought the gnawed bone-ends to Pyotr and, wordless, laid them before him.

Pyotr looked down at them and said nothing.

“Pyotr Vladimirovich—” Oleg began, croaking, but Pyotr shook his head.

“Bury your son,” he said, his glance lingering on his own children. “I shall summon the men tomorrow.”

Alyosha spent the long night checking the haft of his boar-spear and sharpening his hunting-knife. A little color showed in his beardless cheeks. Vasya watched him work. Part of her itched to take up a spear herself, to go and brave dangers in the winter wood. The other part wanted to crack her brother over the head for his heedless excitement.

“I will bring you a wolfskin, Vasya,” Alyosha said, laying his weapons aside.

“Keep your wolfskin,” Vasya retorted, “if you can only promise to bring your own skin back without freezing your toes off.”

Her brother grinned, his eyes glittering. “Worried, little sister?”

The two sat apart from the mob near the oven, but Vasya still lowered her voice. “I don’t like this. Do you think I want to have to chop your frozen toes off? Or your fingers?”

“But there’s no help for it, Vasochka,” said Alyosha, putting down his boot. “Wood we must have. Better to go out and fight than freeze to death in our houses.”

Vasya pursed her lips but made no answer. She thought suddenly of the vazila, black-eyed with wrath. She thought of the crusts she brought him to quiet his anger. Is there another who is angry? Such a one could only be in the wood, where the cold winds blew and the wolves howled.

Don’t even think it, Vasya, said the sensible voice in her skull. But Vasya glanced at her family. She saw her father’s grim face, her brothers’ suppressed excitement.

Well, I can but try. If Alyosha is hurt tomorrow, I will hate myself forever if I did not try. Without pausing to think longer, Vasya went for her boots and winter cloak.

No one bothered asking where she was going. The truth would not have occurred to anyone.

Vasya climbed the palisade, hampered by her mittens. The stars were few and faint; the moon cast a blaze of light over the hard-frozen snow. Vasya passed the eave of the wood, from moonlight into darkness. She walked briskly. It was dreadfully cold. The snow squeaked under her feet. Somewhere, a wolf howled. Vasya tried not to think of the yellow eyes. Her teeth would surely rattle out of her head from shivering.