The Winter of the Witch (Winternight Trilogy #3)(25)

Midnight’s black horse shied, and gave the Bear a wild-eyed look. Midnight smoothed a hand through his mane. “Perhaps” was all she said. “But you see, now I have helped you too. You will have the whole spring to do as you please. If you cannot secure your position, then perhaps the chyerti will be right to look instead to the powers of a half-grown girl.”

    “Where will I find her?”

“Summer, of course. Beside the water.” Midnight looked down on him, from her horse’s back. “We will be watching.”

“I have time then,” said the Bear, and looked again up at the wild stars.





9.


    To Travel by Midnight




VASYA WOKE TO A DARKNESS so deep, she thought she had been struck blind. She lifted her head. Nothing. Her body had chilled and stiffened; moving sent a cascade of pain through neck and back. She wondered vaguely why she was not dead, wondered also why she was lying on bracken instead of snow. It was quiet, except for the faint creaking of branches overhead. Gingerly, she put a trembling hand to her eyes. One was swollen shut. The other seemed all right, except the lashes were gummed together. Gingerly, she pried it open.

It was still dark, but now she could see. A faint sickle moon cast wavering light over a strange forest. Snow lay only in patches; mist veiled the trees, luminous in the moonlight. Vasya smelled cold, wet earth. She stumbled to her feet, turning in a circle. Darkness all around. She tried to remember the last hours, but there was only a vague memory of terror and flight. What had she done? Where was she?

“Well,” said a voice, “you are not dead after all.”

The voice had come from above. Vasya wrenched instinctively back, even as she searched for the speaker, her good eye watering. Finally, on a limb overhead, she caught sight of star-pale hair and bright eyes. As her own eyes adjusted, Vasya began vaguely to make out the shape of the midnight-demon, perched on the branch of an oak-tree and leaning against the trunk.

A deeper patch of black stirred in the shadows below the tree. Vasya, squinting, could just make out a marvelous black horse, grazing by moonlight. He lifted his head to look at her. Vasya’s heart thumped once, loud in her ears, and memory came rushing back: blood sticky on her hands, Father Konstantin’s face, fire…

    She stood perfectly still. If she moved, if she made a sound, she would flee, scream, go mad with memory, or the impossibility of this darkness, with Moscow nowhere in sight. What was real? This? Her horse dead, her life saved by magic? She shuddered, fell to her knees, pressing her hands into the icy, wet earth. Trying to understand was like grasping at rain. For a long time, all she could do was breathe, and feel her hands on the ground.

Then, with a terrible effort, she raised her head. The words came slowly. “Where am I?”

The demon let out a little sigh. “And in your right mind, too.” She sounded faintly surprised. “This is my realm. The country called Midnight.” The curve of her mouth was cold. “I bid you welcome.”

Vasya tried to slow her breathing. “Where is Moscow?”

“Who knows?” said Polunochnitsa. She slid from the limb of her tree, fell lightly to earth. “Not nearby. My realm is not made up of days or seasons, but of midnights. You can cross the world in an instant, so long as it is midnight where you are going. Or, more likely, you can die trying, or go mad.”

“I was told,” Vasya said thickly, remembering, “that I must find a lake. With an oak-tree growing on the shore.”

Polunochnitsa lifted a pale brow. “Which lake? My realm contains enough lakes to keep you searching for a thousand lives of men.”

Search? Vasya could barely stand. “Will you help me?”

The black horse flicked his ears.

“Help you?” answered Midnight. “I did help you. I have made you free of my realm. I even kept you here just now while you lay insensible. Must I do more?” Polunochnitsa’s hair fell like cold rain over the darkness of her skin. “You were discourteous at our last meeting.”

“Please,” said Vasya.

Midnight half-smiled and came closer still, whispered her answer as though it were a secret. “No,” she said. “Find it yourself. Or die here, die now. I will tell the old woman. She might even mourn, though I doubt it.”

    “Old woman?” said Vasya. The darkness seemed to press around her, horribly. “Please,” she said again.

“I do not forget insults, Vasilisa Petrovna,” said Lady Midnight, and turned away, laid a hand on the withers of the black horse. Then she was astride, wheeling, gone into the trees without a backward glance.

Vasya was alone in the darkness.



* * *





SHE COULD LIE DOWN in the leaf-litter and wait for dawn. But how could there be dawn in a country made of midnights? She could walk, though her legs shook when she stood. But where was she to go? She wore only Varvara’s cloak and the bloody, reeking remains of her shift. Her feet were bare and torn. It hurt to draw breath, and she was shivering. This night was a little warmer than the night near Moscow, but not much.

Had she come through fire, defied the Bear, escaped Moscow by magic only to die in the darkness? Go to the lake, Varvara had said. You will be safe there. The lake with an oak-tree growing at its shore.