The Bear and the Nightingale(64)

It was little Agafya, the maidservant, who was screaming. She sat bolt upright on her pallet. Her white-knuckled hands clutched the wool of her blanket. She had bitten into her lower lip so that the blood bloomed on her chin, and a ring of white showed around her unblinking eyes. The screams sliced the air, like icicles falling from the eaves outside.

Vasya pushed her way through the frightened people. She seized the girl by the shoulders. “Agafya, listen to me,” she said. “Listen—it’s all right. You are safe. All is well. Hush now. Hush.” She held the girl tightly, and after a moment Agafya moaned and fell silent. Her wide eyes slowly focused on Vasya’s face. Her throat worked. She tried to speak. Vasya strained to hear. “He came for my sins,” she choked. “He…” She heaved for breath.

A small boy crawled through the crowd. “Mother,” he cried. “Mother!” He flung himself on her, but she did not heed.

Irina was suddenly there, her small face grave. “She has fainted,” the child said seriously. “She needs air and water.”

“It is only a nightmare,” said Father Konstantin to Pyotr. “Best to leave her to the women.”

Pyotr might have replied, but no one heard, for Vasya cried out then in shock and sudden fury. The entire room convulsed in new fright.

Vasya was staring at the window.

Then—“No,” she said, visibly gathering herself. “Forgive me. I—nothing. It was nothing.” Pyotr frowned. The servants looked at her with open suspicion and murmured among themselves.

Dunya shuffled to Vasya, her breath rustling hollow in her chest. “Girls always have nightmares when the weather changes,” Dunya wheezed, loud enough for the room to hear. “Go on, child, fetch water and honey-wine.” She gave Vasya a hard look.

Vasya said nothing. Her glance strayed once more to the window. For an instant she could have sworn she’d seen a face. But it could not be, for it was the face out of her dream, blue-scarred and one-eyed. It had grinned and winked at her through the wavering ice.



AS SOON AS IT was light the next morning, Vasya went looking for the domovoi. She searched until the watery sun was high, and into the brief afternoon, shirking her work. The sun was tilting west when she managed to drag the creature surreptitiously out of the oven. His beard was smoldering around the edges. He was thin and bent, his clothes shabby, his manner defeated.

“Last night,” Vasya said without preamble, cradling a burnt hand, “I dreamed of a face and then I saw it at the window. It had one eye and it was smiling. Who was it?”

“Madness,” mumbled the domovoi. “Appetite. The sleeper, the eater. I could not keep it out.”

“You must try harder,” snapped Vasya.

But the domovoi’s gaze wandered, and his mouth drooped open. “I am weak,” he slurred. “And the wood-guard is weak. Our enemy has loosened his chain. Soon he will be free. I cannot keep him out.”

“Who is the enemy?”

“Appetite,” said the domovoi again. “Madness. Terror. He wants to eat the world.”

“How can I defeat it?” said Vasya urgently. “How may the house be protected?”

“Offerings,” muttered the domovoi. “Bread and milk will strengthen me—and perhaps blood. But you are only one girl alone, and I cannot take my life from you. I will fade. The eater will come again.”

Vasya seized the domovoi and shook him so that his jaws clacked together. His dull eyes cleared, and he looked momentarily astonished. “You will not fade,” Vasya snapped. “You can take your life from me. You will. The one-eyed man—the eater—he will not get in again. He will not.”

There was no milk, but Vasya stole bread and shoved it into the domovoi’s hand. She did it that night, and every night thereafter, scanting her own meals. She cut her hand and smeared the blood on sills and before the oven. She pressed her bloody hand to the domovoi’s mouth. Her ribs started through her skin, her eyes grew hollow, and nightmares dogged her sleeping. But the nights slipped past—one, two, a dozen—and no one else screamed at something that was not there. The wavering domovoi held, and she poured her strength into him.

But little Agafya never spoke sense again. Sometimes she would plead with things that no one could see: saints and angels and a one-eyed bear. Later she raved of a man and a white horse. One night she ran out of the house, collapsed blue-lipped in the snow, and died.

The women prepared the body with as much haste as was seemly. Father Konstantin kept vigil beside her, white to the lips, head bent, with a face no one could read. Though he knelt for hours at her side, he never once prayed aloud. The words seemed to catch in his straining throat.

They buried Agafya in the brief winter daylight while the forest groaned around them. In the swift-falling twilight, they hurried to huddle before their ovens. Agafya’s child cried for his mother; his wailing hung like mist over the silent village.



THE NIGHT AFTER THE FUNERAL, a dream seized Dunya like sickness, like the jaws of a hunting creature. She was standing in a dead forest strewn with the stumps of blackened trees. An oily smoke veiled the flinching stars; firelight flickered against the snow. The frost-demon’s face was a skull-mask with the skin drawn tight. His soft voice frightened Dunya worse than shouting.

“Why have you delayed?”