The Winter of the Witch (Winternight Trilogy #3)(29)

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VASILISA PETROVNA NEVER KNEW how long she slept. She had dim memories of nightmares, of screaming for Solovey to run. She dreamed the midnight-demon’s voice—It must be done, Polunochnitsa said, send her forth, for all our sakes—and the domovaya’s voice raised in distress. But before Vasya could speak, darkness pulled her under once more.

Uncounted hours later, she opened her eyes to dawn: the light almost shocking after the long dark. It was as though she’d only dreamed the tangled roads of Midnight. Perhaps she had. Lying in the blurred gray light of early morning, she could have been anywhere, atop any oven. “Dunya?” she called, her childhood strong in her mind. It had always been her nurse who comforted her after nightmares.

Memory crashed in. She made an inarticulate sound of distress. A small head appeared at once beside her pallet, but Vasya barely saw the domovaya. Memory had her by the throat. She was shivering.

The domovaya watched, frowning.

“Forgive me,” Vasya managed at length. She pushed her ragged hair back from her face. Her teeth chattered. The oven was warm, but there was still a hole in the roof, and memory was colder than the air. “I—I am called Vasilisa Petrovna. Thank you for your hospitality.”

The domovaya looked almost sad. “It is not hospitality,” she said. “I was asleep in the fire. You awoke me. You are my mistress now.”

“But this is not my house.”

The domovaya made no reply. Vasya sat up, wincing. The domovaya had done her best while Vasya slept. The dust and dead mice, the rotten leaves, were gone. “It is much more like home now,” Vasya said, cautiously. Now that it was daylight, she saw that most of the wood on the rooftree and table was carved like the lintel outside, worn to smoothness from use and care. The house had a dignity to match its hearth-spirit: an old, subtle beauty that time could not quite conceal.

The domovaya looked pleased. “You mustn’t lie abed. The water is hot. Your wounds must be cleaned again and bound afresh.” She disappeared; Vasya heard her adding wood to the fire.

Getting down to the floor left Vasya panting, as though she were new-recovered from fever. To add insult to injury, she was also hungry. “Is there—” croaked Vasya, swallowed, tried again. “Is there anything to eat?”

    Lips pursed, the domovaya shook her head.

Why would there be? It was too much to suppose that the house’s long-vanished mistress would have conveniently left a loaf and cheese.

“Did you burn my shift?” Vasya asked.

“I did,” said the domovaya, shuddering. “It stank of fear.”

Well it might. Then Vasya stiffened. “There was a token—a carving—I was carrying in it. Did you—?”

“No,” said the domovaya. “It is here.”

Vasya seized the little carved nightingale as if it were a talisman. Perhaps it was. It was dirty but undamaged. She wiped it clean, thrust it again into her sleeve.

A bowl of snowmelt steamed on the hearth. The domovaya said briskly, “Take off that shirt; I am going to wash your wounds again.”

Vasya did not want to think about her wounds; she did not want to have flesh at all. Just below the surface of her mind lurked the most howling grief; the memory of death, of violation. She did not want to see those memories scribed on her skin.

The domovaya was not sympathetic. “Where is your courage? You do not want to die of a poisoned wound.”

That at least was true; a slow and horrible death. Before she could lose her nerve, Vasya, wordless, peeled the shirt over her head, stood up shivering in the light from the crumbling roof and looked down at her body.

Bruises of every color: red and black, purple and blue. Cuts latticed her torso; she was glad she could not see her own face. Two teeth were loose; her lips were split and sore. One eye was still half swollen shut. When she raised her hand to her face, she was met with a clotted gash on her cheek.

The domovaya had produced dusty-smelling herbs, honey for bandaging, lengths of clean linen from the chest in the corner. Vasya, staring, said, “Who leaves such things in a locked box in a ruin?”

“I hardly know,” said the domovaya shortly. “They were here, that’s all.”

“Surely you remember something.”

    “I don’t!” The domovaya looked suddenly angry. “Why are you asking? Isn’t it enough that it was here, that it saved your life? Sit down. No, there.”

Vasya sat. “I am sorry,” she said. “I was only curious.”

“The more one knows, the sooner one grows old,” snapped the domovaya. “Hold still.”

Vasya tried. But it hurt. A few cuts had closed in their own blood; the domovaya left them alone. But many had been pulled open under the stresses of the night, and she had not got all of the soot and splinters, working by firelight.

But all were bound up and salved at last. “Thank you,” Vasya said, hearing her voice shake. Hurriedly she put on her shirt to shut away the sight of herself, and then rubbed a bit of her charred hair between two fingers. Foul. Tangled, fire-smelling; it would never be clean again.

“Will you cut my hair off? As short as you can,” said Vasya. “I have had enough of Vasilisa Petrovna.”

The domovaya had only a knife to cut with, but she took it up without a word. Hanks of black hair tumbled down, soundless as snow, to be swept out and flung away for the nesting birds. When it was done, the air seemed to whistle strangely past Vasya’s ears and down her neck. Not long ago, Vasya would have wept to lose her black hair. Now she was glad to have it gone. Her long, glossy plait belonged to another girl, in another life.