The Bear and the Nightingale(88)

“Was I wrong?” said Morozko. “She is better off at home. Her brother will protect her. The Bear will be bound. There will be a man to marry her, and she will live in safety. She must carry the jewel. She must live long and remember. I will not have her risk her life. You know what is at stake.”

Then you deny what she is. She will wither.

“She is young. She will suit herself to it.”

The mare said nothing.



VASYA DID NOT KNOW how long she rode. Solovey had followed her into the snow, and blindly she clambered onto his back. She’d have ridden forever, but at length the horse returned her to the fir-grove. The house among the firs wavered in her sight.

Solovey shook his mane. Get off, he said. There is fire there. You are cold, you are weary, you are frightened.

“I am not frightened!” snapped Vasya, but she slid from the horse’s back. She flinched when her feet struck the snow. Hobbling, she brushed between the firs and stumbled over the familiar threshold. The fire leaped high in the oven. Vasya stripped off her wet outer things, not noticing the silent servants that took them away. Somehow she made her way to the fire. She sank into her chair. Morozko and the white mare had gone.

At last, she drank a cup of mead and dozed off with her chilled toes near the oven.

The fire burned down, but the girl slept on. In the darkest part of the night, she dreamed.

She was in Konstantin’s cell. The air reeked with earth and blood, and a monster crouched over the priest’s thrashing body. When it raised its face, Vasya saw its lips and chin all covered in gore. She raised a hand to banish it, and it shrieked and sprang through the window and disappeared. Vasya knelt beside the bed, scrabbling at the torn blankets.

But the face between her hands was not that of Father Konstantin. Alyosha’s dead gray eyes stared up at her.

Vasya heard a snarl and turned. The upyr had returned, and it was Dunya—Dunya dead, staggering, halfway through the window, her mouth a gaping hole, the bone showing in her finger-ends. Dunya who had been her mother. And then the shadows on the priest’s wall became one shadow, a one-eyed shadow that laughed at her. “Weep,” it said. “You are frightened. It is delicious.”

All the icons in the corner came alive and screeched their approbation. The shadow opened its mouth to laugh, too, and then it was not a shadow at all, but a bear—a great bear with famine between its teeth. It roared out flame—and then the wall was burning; her house was burning. Somewhere she heard Irina screaming.

A grinning face showed between the flames, mottled blue, with a great dark hole where an eye should have been. “Come,” it said. “You will be with them, and you will live forever.” Her dead brother and sister stood beside this apparition and seemed to beckon from behind the flames.

Something hard struck Vasya across the face, but she did not heed.

She reached out a hand. “Alyosha,” she said. “Lyoshka!”

But a quick pain came, sharper than before. Vasya was yanked out of the dream, strangling on a sound between a sob and a scream. Solovey was butting her anxiously with his nose; he had bitten her upper arm. She seized his warm mane. Her hands were like two lumps of ice; her teeth chattered. She buried her face in his coat. Her head was full of screaming, and that laughing voice. Come, or you will never see them again. Then she heard another voice, felt a rush of frigid air.

“Get back, you great ox.” There was a squeal of indignation from Solovey, and then there were cold hands on Vasya’s face. When she tried to look, all she could see was her father’s house burning, and a one-eyed man that beckoned.

Forget him, said the one-eyed man. Come here.

Morozko struck her across the face. “Vasya,” he said. “Vasilisa Petrovna, look at me.”

It was like dragging herself across a great distance, but his eyes came into focus at last. She could not see the house in the woods. All she saw were fir-trees, snow, horses, and the night sky. The air curled frigid about her. Vasya tried to quiet her panicked breaths.

Morozko hissed out something she did not understand. Then, “Here,” he said. “Drink.”

There was mead at her lips; she smelled the honey. She swallowed, choked, and drank. When she raised her head, the cup was empty and her breathing had slowed. She could see the walls of the house again, though they wavered at the edges. Solovey was thrusting his great head down to hers, lipping at her hair and face. She laughed weakly. “I’m all right,” she began, but her laughter became tears, and she was seized with a storm of weeping. She covered her face.

Morozko watched her, narrow-eyed. She could still feel the imprint of his hands, and one cheek throbbed where he had struck her.

At length her tears slowed. “I had a nightmare,” she said. She would not look at him. She hunched on her chair, cold and embarrassed, sticky with tears.

“Do not look so,” Morozko said. “It was more than a nightmare; it was my own mistake.” Seeing her shiver, he made a sound of impatience. “Come here to me, Vasya.”

When she hesitated, he added shortly, “I will not hurt you, child, and it will quiet you. Come here.”

Bewildered, she uncurled and stood, fighting back fresh tears. He put a cloak round her. She did not know where he had gotten it from—perhaps conjured from midair. He picked her up and sank onto the warm oven-bench with her in his arms. He was gentle. His breath was the winter wind, but his flesh was warm, and his heart beat under her hand. She wanted to pull away, to glare at him with all her pride, but she was cold and frightened. Her pulse throbbed in her ears. Clumsily she settled her head in the curve of his shoulder. He ran his fingers through her loosened hair. Slowly, her trembling eased. “I’m all right now,” she said, after a time, a little unsteady. “What did you mean, your own mistake?”