The Bear and the Nightingale(39)

Suddenly Vasya stumbled to a halt. She thought she’d heard a voice. Slowing her breath, she listened. No—only the wind.

But what was that there? It looked like a great tree: one she half-remembered, with an odd sly memory, that slid in and out of her mind. No—it was only a shadow, cast by the moon.

A bone-chilling wind played in the branches high above.

Out of the hiss and clatter, Vasya suddenly thought she heard words. Are you warm, child? said the wind, half-laughing.

In fact, Vasya felt her bones would splinter like frost-killed branches, but she replied steadily, “Who are you? Are you sending the frost?”

There was a very long silence. Vasya wondered if she had imagined the voice. Then it seemed she heard, mockingly, And why not? I, too, am angry. The voice seemed to throw echoes, so that the whole wood took up the cry.

“That is no answer,” retorted the girl. The sensible part of her pointed out that perhaps a little meekness was in order when dealing with half-heard voices in the dead of night. But the cold was making her sleepy; she fought it with every scrap of will and had none left over for meekness.

I bring the frost, said the voice. Suddenly it was curling icy, loving fingers about her face and throat. A cold touch like fingertips slipped beneath her clothes and wrapped round her heart.

“Then will you stop?” Vasya whispered, fighting fear. Her heart beat as though against another’s hand. “I speak for my people; they are afraid; they are sorry. Soon it will be as it always was: our churches and our chyerti together and no more fear or talk of demons.”

It will be too late, said the wind, and the forest took it up: too late, too late. Then, Besides, it is not my frost you should fear, devushka. It is the fires. Tell me, do your fires burn too fast?

“It is only the cold that makes them burn so.”

Nay, it is the coming storm. The first sign is fear. The second is always fire. Your people are afraid, and now the fires burn.

“Turn the storm aside then, I beg you,” said Vasya. “Here, I brought a gift.” She put a hand into her sleeve.

It was nothing much, just a scrap of dry bread and a pinch of salt, but when she held it out, the wind died.

In the silence, Vasya heard the wolf howl again, very near now, and answered in a chorus. But in the same instant a white mare stepped out from between two trees, and Vasya forgot the wolves. The mare’s long mane fell like icicles, and her snorting breath made a plume in the night.

Vasya caught her breath. “Oh, you are beautiful,” she said, and even she could hear the longing in her voice. “Are you bringing the frost?”

Did the white mare have a rider? Vasya could not tell. One instant it seemed she did, and then the mare twitched her skin and the shape on her back was only a trick of the light.

The white horse put her small ears forward, toward the bread and salt. Vasya held out her hand. She felt the horse’s warm breath on her face and stared into her dark eye. Suddenly she felt warmer. Even the wind felt warmer where it twined around her face.

I bring the frost, said the voice. Vasya did not think it was the mare. It is my wrath and my warning. But you are brave, devushka, and I relent. For the sake of an offering. A small pause. But the fear is not mine, and neither are the fires. The storm is coming, and the frost will be as nothing beside it. Courage will save you. If your people are afraid, then they are lost.

“What storm?” whispered Vasya.

Beware the turning seasons, she thought the wind sighed. Beware…and the voice was gone. But the wind remained. Harder and harder it blew, wordless, flinging clouds across the moon, and the wind smelled, blessedly, of snow. The deep frost could not last while it snowed.

When Vasya stumbled back through the door of her own house, the flakes that covered her hood and caught in her eyelashes effectively silenced her family’s clamor. Alyosha seized her in speechless delight, and Irina went laughing outside to catch a handful of the falling whiteness.

That night the cold indeed broke. It snowed for a week. When the snow finally stopped, it took them three more days to dig themselves out. By then the wolves had taken advantage of the relative warmth to feast on stringy rabbits and move deeper into the forest. No one ever saw them again. Only Alyosha seemed disappointed.



DUNYA SLEPT BADLY THOSE late-winter nights, and it was not only because of the cold and aching of her bones, nor yet her worry over Irina’s cough or Vasya’s pale face.

“It is time,” said the frost-demon.

There was no sledge in Dunya’s dream this time, no sunshine or crisp winter air. She stood in a gloomy and muttering forest. It seemed that a greater shadow lurked somewhere in the dark. Waiting. The winter-demon’s pale features were drawn fine as etching, his eyes drained of color. “It must be now,” he said. “She is a woman, and stronger than even she knows. I can perhaps keep evil from you, but I must have that girl.”

“She is a child,” protested Dunya. Demon, she thought. Tempter. Liar. “A child still—she teases me for honeycakes even when she knows there are none—and she has grown so pale this winter, all eyes and bones. How can I give her up now?”

The demon’s face was cold. “My brother is waking; every day his prison weakens. That child, all unknowing, has done what she can to protect you, with crusts and courage and the sight. But my brother laughs at such things; she must have the jewel.”