The Bear and the Nightingale(42)
Vasya met the mare’s eye. A flicker of humor showed in the brown depths. “Does your leg not pain you?” she asked, feebly, nodding at the half-healed gash on the mare’s flank.
No, Mysh replied. Mount.
Vasya thought of her hot supper, of her stool by the oven. Then she gritted her teeth, backed up, ran, and flung herself belly-down onto the mare’s back. A bit of squirming, and Vasya settled herself uncomfortably just behind the hard withers.
The mare’s ears eased back at the scrabbling. You will need practice.
Vasya could never remember where they went that day. They rode, of necessity, deep in the woods. But the riding was painful; that, Vasya always remembered. They jogged along until Vasya’s back and legs trembled. Be still, said the mare. It is as if there are three of you instead of one. Vasya tried, slipping this way and that. At last, exasperated, Mysh pulled up sharply. Vasya rolled over the mare’s shoulder and landed, blinking, on the loamy forest floor.
Get up, said the horse. Be more careful.
When they returned to the pasture, Vasya was filthy, bruised, and certain that walking was beyond her. She had also missed her supper and earned a scolding. But the next evening she did it again. And again. It was not always with Mysh; the horses took turns teaching her to ride. She could not go every day. In spring she worked incessantly—they all did—to put the crops in the earth.
But Vasya went often enough, and slowly her back and thighs and stomach began to hurt less. Finally the day came when they did not hurt at all. And in the meantime, she learned to keep her balance, to vault to a horse’s back, to spin and start and stop and leap until she could no longer tell where the horse ended and she began.
The sky seemed bigger that midsummer, clouds scudding across it like swans. The barley rippled green in the fields, though it was stunted and Pyotr shook his head over it. Vasya, her basket over her arm, disappeared into the forest every day. Dunya would sometimes look askance at the girl’s offerings—birchbark, mostly, or buckthorn for making dye, and rarely in sufficient quantities. However, Vasya was golden and shining with happiness, so Dunya just harrumphed and said nothing.
But all the while, the heat deepened until it was honey-thick: too hot. For all the people’s prayers, fires broke out in the tinder-dry forest, and the barley grew but slowly.
A white-hot day in August saw Vasya making her way to the lake, trying not to limp. Buran had taken Vasya riding. The gray stallion—white now—was still the biggest of the riding horses, and he had the wickedest sense of humor. Vasya had bruises to prove it.
The lake dazzled in the sunlight. As Vasya drew nearer, she thought she heard rustling in the trees that fringed the water. But when she looked up, she saw no flash of green skin. After a few moments’ fruitless search, Vasya gave up, stripped, and slid into the lake. The water was purest snowmelt, cold even at midsummer. It drove the air from her lungs, and Vasya bit back a yelp. She dove at once, the icy water startling life from her weary limbs. She cavorted about underwater, peering here and there. But there was no rusalka. Vaguely uneasy, Vasya paddled to the bank, pulled her clothes into the water, and pounded them clean on rocks. Finally she hung them, dripping, on a nearby limb and climbed the tree herself, stretching catlike along a branch to dry in the sun.
Perhaps an hour later, Vasya roused herself from an exhausted stupor and eyed her half-dry clothes. The sun had passed its zenith and begun to tilt west, which meant, in the long days of midsummer, that the afternoon was well advanced. By now Anna would be seething, and even Dunya would give her a tight-lipped glare when she slunk in the door. Irina was no doubt crouched over the sweltering oven or wearing out her fingers with mending. Feeling guilty, Vasya crept down to a lower limb—and froze.
Father Konstantin was sitting in the grass. He might have been a handsome farmer and not a priest at all. He had traded his robe for a linen shirt and loose trousers, studded with bits of barley-stem, and his uncovered hair blazed in the afternoon sun. He was looking out at the lake. What is he doing here? Vasya was still screened by the tree’s foliage; she hooked her knees around the branch, let herself down, and snatched her clothes, quick as a squirrel. Perching awkwardly on an upper limb, trying not to fall and break an arm, she slipped into her shirt and leggings—stolen from Alyosha—and used her fingers to wrestle some order into her hair. Finally she flicked the end of a lumpy braid behind her, caught the tree-limb, and swung to the ground. Maybe if I creep away very quietly…
Then Vasya saw the rusalka. She was standing in the water. Her hair floated around her, half-masking her bare breasts. She smiled, just a little, at Father Konstantin. The priest, entranced, stood up and swayed toward her. Without thinking, Vasya darted at him and caught his hand. But he shoved her off, almost casually, stronger than he looked.
Vasya turned to the rusalka. “Leave him alone!”
“He will kill us all,” the rusalka replied, voice soft, eyes never leaving her prey. “Already it has begun. If he goes on as he has, all the guardians of the deep forest will disappear; the storm will come and the land will go undefended. Have you not seen it? Fear is first, then fire, then famine. He made your people afraid. And then the fires burned, and now the sun scorches. You will be hungry when the cold comes. The winter-king is weak, and his brother very near. He will come if the wards fail. Better anything than that.” Her voice shook with passion. “Better I take this one now.”