The Winter of the Witch (Winternight Trilogy #3)(35)

“What do you think?” replied Ded Grib. “You denied both the winter-king and his brother, didn’t you? You made yourself a third power in their war.” He frowned. “Or are you going to find the winter-king to join his side?”

“I am not sure what difference it makes,” said Vasya. “All these questions of sides. I want to find the winter-king because I need his help.” That was not the entire reason, but she was not about to explain the rest of it to the mushroom-spirit.

Ded Grib waved this away. “Well, even if he does join your side, I will always have been first.”

Vasya frowned at her unlit fire. “If you don’t know how to find the winter-king, then how do you mean to help me?” she asked cautiously.

Ded Grib reflected. “I know all about mushrooms. I can make them grow, too.”

This pleased Vasya inordinately. “I love mushrooms,” she said. “Can you find me any lisichki?”

If Ded Grib answered, it went unheard, for the next moment she drew a sharp breath, and let her soul fill with the searing memory of fire. Her pile of sticks burst into flame. She added twigs with satisfaction.

    Ded Grib’s mouth fell open. All around, a whispering rose, as if the trees were speaking to one another. “You should be careful,” said Ded Grib, when he could speak.

“Why?” said Vasya, still pleased with herself.

“Magic makes people mad,” said the mushroom. “You change reality so much you forget what is real. But perhaps a few more chyerti will follow you after all.”

As though to punctuate his words, two fish flopped out of the lake and lay gasping, red-silver in the light of Vasya’s campfire.

“Follow me where?” Vasya demanded in some exasperation, but she did go and take the fish. “Thank you,” she added grudgingly in the direction of the water. If the bagiennik heard, he didn’t answer, but she didn’t think he’d gone away. He was waiting.

For what, she didn’t know.





12.


    Bargaining




VASYA GUTTED THE FISH AND wrapped them in clay to roast in the coals of her fire. Ded Grib, true to his word, scampered off and brought her handfuls of mushrooms. Unfortunately, not only did he not know which were lisichki, he didn’t know which were edible. Vasya had to pick through alarming handfuls of toadstools. But the good ones she stuffed into her fish, along with herbs and wild onion, and when they were done, she burned her fingers eating them.

A full stomach was pleasant, but the night itself was not. The wind blew sharp off the lake, and Vasya could not shake the sense of being watched, of being measured by eyes she could not see. She felt like a girl hurled unwary into a tale she didn’t understand, with folk all around waiting for her to take up a part she didn’t know. Solovey’s absence was a gnawing misery that did not ease.

Eventually Vasya fell into a chilly doze, but even sleep was no respite. She dreamed of fists and enraged faces, of shouting for her horse to run. But instead he turned into a nightingale, and a man with a bow and arrow shot him out of the sky. Vasya jerked awake with her horse’s name on her lips, and heard somewhere in the darkness the thud of uneven hoofbeats.



* * *





SHE HAULED HERSELF UPRIGHT, stood barefoot in the cool summer bracken, painfully stiff. Her fire was down to a few red-edged coals. The moon hung low on the horizon. A light was coming through the trees. She thought of men with torches, and her first instinct was to flee.

But it wasn’t torches, she realized, squinting. It was the golden mare, alone. Her glow from the night before had dimmed; she was stumbling on a bad foreleg, her breast spattered with foam. Vasya thought she heard whispers in the wood beyond the horse. A foul smell gusted on the wind.

Swiftly, Vasya threw wood onto her little campfire. “Here,” she called.

The mare tried to run, tripped over nothing, turned her steps to Vasya. Her head hung low. In the newborn firelight, a gash in her foreleg was clearly visible.

Vasya picked up her ax and a flaming log. She couldn’t see what pursued the mare, though the smell of it thickened all around them, rotten-ripe, like carrion in the heat. Holding her pitiful weapons, she backed toward the water. Vasya had no love for the living spark that ignited Moscow. But—she had failed her own horse. She would not fail this one. “This way,” she said.

The mare had no words in reply, nothing but terror, communicated with her whole body. Still she came toward Vasya.

“Ded Grib,” Vasya called.

A patch of mushrooms, glowing sickly green in the darkness, quivered. “You had better survive this. What good will my being first be, otherwise? Everyone is watching.”

“What—?”

But if he answered she did not hear, for the Bear stepped softly out of the trees, into the moonlight beside the water.



* * *





IN MOSCOW, HE HAD looked like a man. He still did, but it was a man with sharp teeth, and wildness in his single eye; she could see the beast in him stretching out like a shadow at his back. He seemed stranger, older: at home in this impossible forest.

    “I suppose this is why the bagiennik wanted me to spend the night in the forest,” she said, standing tense. Hoarse, snarling breaths sounded from the undergrowth. “He did want me dead, after all.”