The Bear and the Nightingale(77)

Then she flung herself up, shrieking a wordless cry, jabbing her fingers at her captor’s eyes. He recoiled; she wrenched sideways, rolled to her feet, and ran as she had never run in her life. Behind her she heard shouts, panting, footsteps. But she would not be caught again. Never.

She ran on and did not stop until she was swallowed by the shadow of the trees.



THE CLEAR NIGHT LIT the snow, which lay firm underfoot. Vasya ran into the woods, bruised and panting. Her loosened cloak flapped about her. She heard shouting from the village. Her tracks showed clear in the virgin snow, so that her only hope was speed. She darted headlong from shadow to shadow, until the shouting grew fainter and at last died away. They dare not follow, thought Vasya. They fear the forest after dark. And then, darkly: They are wise.

Her breathing slowed. She walked deeper into the wood, pushing loss and fear into the back of her mind. She listened; she called aloud. But all was still. The leshy did not answer. The rusalka slept, dreaming of summertime. The wind did not stir the trees.

Time passed; she was not sure how much. The wood thickened and blotted out the stars. The moon rose higher and cast shadows, then the clouds came and threw the forest into darkness. Vasya walked until she began to grow sleepy, and then the terror of sleep forced her awake again. She turned north and east and south again.

The night drew on, and Vasya shivered as she walked. Her teeth clacked together. Her toes grew numb despite her heavy boots. A small part of her had thought—hoped—that there would be some help in the woods. Some destiny—some magic. She had hoped the firebird would come, or the Horse with the Golden Mane, or the raven who was really a prince…foolish girl to believe in fairy tales. The winter wood was indifferent to men and women; the chyerti slept in winter, and there was no such thing as a raven-prince.

Well, die then. It is better than a convent.

But Vasya could not quite believe it. She was young; her blood ran hot. She could not bring herself to lie down in the snow.

On she stumbled, but she was growing weaker. She feared her flagging strength; she feared her stiffening hands, her cold lips.

In the blackest part of the night, Vasya stopped and looked back. Anna Ivanovna would mock her if she returned. She would be bound like a hart, locked in the church, and sent to a convent. But she did not want to die, and she was very cold.

Then Vasya took in the trees on either side and realized that she did not know where she was.

No matter. She could follow her own trail back the way she had come. She looked behind again.

Her tracks were gone.

Vasya quelled a surge of panic. She was not lost. She could not be lost. She turned north. Her weary feet crunched dully in the snow. Once more, the ground began to look inviting. Surely she could lie down. Just for a moment…

A dark shape loomed before her: a tree, all twisted, bigger than any tree Vasya knew. Memory stirred, breaking through her fog. She remembered a lost child, a great oak, a sleeper with one eye. She remembered an old nightmare. The tree filled her sight. Go nearer? Run away? She was too cold to turn back.

Then she heard the sound of weeping.

Vasya halted, scarcely breathing. When she stopped, the sound stopped as well. But when she moved again, the sound followed her. The sickly moon came out and made strange patterns on the snow.

There—a white flicker—between two trees. Vasya walked faster, clumsy on her numb feet. There was no house to run back to, no vazila to offer her strength. Her courage flickered like a guttering candle. The tree seemed to fill the world. Come here, breathed a soft, snarling voice. Closer.

Crunch. Behind her, a step that was not hers. Vasya spun. Nothing. But when she walked, the other feet kept pace.

She was twenty paces from the twisted oak. The footsteps drew nearer. It grew difficult to think. The tree seemed to fill the world. Closer. Like a child in a nightmare, Vasya did not dare look back.

The feet behind broke into a run, and there came a shrill, desiccated scream. Vasya ran as well, spending her last strength. A ragged figure appeared before her, standing beneath the tree, a hand outstretched. Its single eye gleamed with greedy triumph. I have found you first.

Then Vasya heard a new sound: the smack of galloping hooves. The figure by the tree cried to her furiously: Faster! The tree was before her, the wheezing creature behind—but to her left a white mare came galloping, swift as fire. Blind, terrified, Vasya turned toward the horse. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the upyr lunge, teeth shining in the old, dead face.

In that instant, the white mare came up alongside. The horse’s rider reached out a hand. Vasya seized it and was flung bodily across the mare’s withers. The upyr landed in the snow where she’d been. The horse tore away. Behind them came twin cries: one of pain and one of fury.

The mare’s rider did not speak. Vasya, panting, had only a moment to be grateful for the reprieve. She hung head-down over the mare’s withers, and so they rode. The girl felt as though her guts would come through her skin with each strike of the mare’s hooves, yet on and on they galloped. She couldn’t feel her face or her feet. The strong hand that had seized her out of the snow held her still, but the rider did not speak. The mare smelled unlike any horse Vasya had ever known, like strange flowers and warm stone, incongruous in the bitter night.

They ran until Vasya could not stand the pain or the cold anymore. “Please,” she gasped. “Please.”

Abruptly, bone-jarringly, they came to a halt. Vasya slid backward off the horse and fell, doubled over in the snow, numb, retching, clinging to her bruised ribs. The mare stood still. Vasya did not hear the mare’s rider dismount, but suddenly he was standing in the snow. Vasya stumbled upright on feet she could no longer feel. Her head was bare to the night. It was snowing; the snowflakes tangled in her braid. She had gone beyond shivering; she felt heavy and dull.