The Bear and the Nightingale(46)
THE DAY WOUND ON to dusk and past, so that the only light was the pale glow of summer that lit the nights like morning. “Dunya,” said Pyotr. “How long has Vasya been a woman?” They sat alone in the summer kitchen. All around them the household slept. But for Pyotr, the daylit nights banished sleep, and the question of his daughter bit at him. Dunya’s limbs ached, and she was not eager to lie down on her hard pallet. She twirled her distaff, but slowly. It struck Pyotr how thin she was.
Dunya gave Pyotr a hard glance. “Half a year. It came on her near Easter.”
“She is a handsome girl,” said Pyotr. “Though a savage. She needs a husband; it would steady her.” But as he spoke, an image came to him of his wild girl wedded and bedded, sweating over an oven. The image filled him with a strange regret, and he shook it away.
Dunya put aside her distaff and said slowly, “She has not thought of love yet, Pyotr Vladimirovich.”
“And so? She will do as she is told.”
Dunya laughed. “Will she? Have you forgotten Vasya’s mother?”
Pyotr was silent.
“I would counsel you to wait,” said Dunya. “Except…”
All the summer, Dunya had watched Vasya disappear at dawn and return at twilight. She had watched the wildness grow in Marina’s daughter and a—remoteness—that was new, as though the girl was only half-living in her family’s world of crops and stock and mending. Dunya had watched and worried and struggled with herself. Now she made a decision. She plunged her hand into her pocket. When she withdrew it, the blue jewel lay nestled upon her palm, incongruous against the worn skin. “Do you remember, Pyotr Vladimirovich?”
“It was a gift for Vasya,” said Pyotr harshly. “Is this treachery? I bade you give it her.” He eyed the pendant as though it were a serpent.
“I have kept it for her,” replied Dunya. “I begged, and the winter-king said I might. It was too great a burden for a child.”
“Winter-king?” said Pyotr angrily. “Are you a child, to believe in fairy tales? There is no winter-king.”
“Fairy tales?” returned Dunya, an answering anger in her voice. “Am I so wicked that I would invent such a lie? I, too, am a Christian, Pyotr Vladimirovich, but I believe what I see. Whence came this jewel, fit for a khan, that you brought for your little daughter?”
Pyotr, throat working, was silent.
“Who gave it to you?” Dunya continued. “You brought it from Moscow, but I never asked further.”
“It is a necklace,” said Pyotr, but the anger had gone from his voice. Pyotr had tried to forget the pale-eyed man, the blood on Kolya’s throat, his men standing insensible. Was that he, the winter-king? Now he remembered how quickly he had agreed to give the stranger’s trinket to his daughter. Ancient magic, it seemed he heard Marina say. A daughter of my mother’s bloodline. And then, softer: Protect her, Petya. I chose her; she is important. Promise me.
“Not just a necklace,” said Dunya harshly. “It is a talisman, may God forgive me. I have seen the winter-king. The necklace is his, and he will come for her.”
“You have seen him?” Pyotr was on his feet.
Dunya nodded.
“Where did you see him? Where?”
“Dreaming,” said Dunya. “Only dreaming. But he sends the dreams and they are true. I am to give her the necklace, he says. He will come for her at midwinter. She is no longer a child. But he is deceitful—all his kind are.” The words came out in a rush. “I love Vasya like my own daughter. She is too brave for her own good. I am afraid for her.”
Pyotr paced toward the great window and turned back toward Dunya. “Are you telling me the truth, Avdotya Mikhailovna? On my wife’s head, do not lie to me.”
“I have seen him,” said Dunya again. “And you, I think, have seen him, too. He has black hair, curling. Pale eyes, paler than the sky at midwinter. He has no beard, and he is dressed all in blue.”
“I will not give my daughter to a demon. She is a Christian maid.” The raw fear in Pyotr’s voice was new, born of Konstantin’s sermons.
“Then she must have a husband,” said Dunya simply. “The sooner the better. Frost-demons have no interest in mortal girls wed to mortal men. In the stories, the bird-prince and the wicked sorcerer—they only come for the wild maiden.”
“VASYA?” SAID ALYOSHA. “MARRIED? That rabbit?” He laughed. The dry barley-stalks rustled; he was raking beside his father. There were straws in his brown curls. He had been singing to break the afternoon stillness. “She’s a girl still, Father; I knocked down a peasant that watched her overlong, but she noticed nothing. Not even when the oaf went about for a week with his face all bruised.” He had knocked down a peasant that called her witch-woman as well, but he did not tell his father that.
“She has not met a man that caught her fancy, that is all,” said Pyotr. “But I mean that to change.” Pyotr was brisk, his mind made up. “Kyril Artamonovich is my friend’s son; he has a great inheritance, and his father is dead. Vasya is young and healthy, and her dowry is very fine. She will be gone before the snow.” Pyotr bent once more to his raking.
Alyosha did not join him. “She will not take kindly to it, Father.”