The Winter of the Witch (Winternight Trilogy #3)(39)

“How did you know I was here?”

“Polunochnitsa told me, of course,” returned the old woman. She was rummaging in the contents of Vasya’s basket now, adding greens to the pot. Her eyes gleamed in the dark, big and wild and reddened by the fire. “Although she almost waited until it was too late; she wanted you and the Bear to meet.”

    “Why?”

“To see what you’d do.”

“Why?” Vasya asked again. She felt perilously close to breaking into a child’s whining complaint. Her feet ached, and her ribs, and the cut on her face. More than ever she felt as if she’d been thrust into a tale she hardly understood.

The old woman didn’t answer at once. She studied Vasya again. Finally she said, “Most of the chyerti do not want to strike a blow at the world of men. But they don’t want to fade either. They are torn.”

Vasya frowned. “Are they? What has that to do with me?”

“Why do you think Morozko went to such lengths to save your life? Yes, Polunochnitsa told me that, too.”

“I don’t know why,” said Vasya, and this time her voice rose a note despite her best efforts. “Do you think I wanted him to? It was utter madness.”

A quick, malicious gleam from beneath the old woman’s lids. “Was it? I suppose you’ll never know.”

“I would if you’d tell me.”

“That—no. It is something you must come to understand yourself, or not.” The old woman grinned, still with that edge of malice. She tossed salt in the soup. “Is it an easy road you’re after, child?”

“If it were, I’d not have left home,” retorted Vasya, holding hard to courtesy. “But I am tired of stumbling blind in the dark.”

The old woman was stirring the pot now; the firelight caught a strange expression on her face. “It is always dark here,” she said.

Vasya, still bursting with questions, found herself silenced, ashamed of herself. In a different voice, she said, “You are the one who sent Midnight to me, on the road to Moscow.”

“I am,” said the old woman. “I was curious, when I heard a girl-child of my blood had gone wandering, with a horse from the lake.”

Vasya flinched at the reminder of Solovey. The soup was ready; the witch ladled up a large bowl for herself, a meager one for Vasya. Vasya didn’t mind; she’d stuffed herself on fish earlier. But the broth was good; she drank it slowly.

    “Babushka,” she asked, “did you ever see your daughters, after they left this place?”

Baba Yaga’s old face grew still as carven stone. “No. They abandoned me.”

Vasya thought of Tamara’s withered ghost, wondered if this woman could have prevented that horror.

“My girl plotted with the sorcerer to take the firebird by force!” snapped the old woman, as though she could read Vasya’s thought. “I could not catch them. The mare is the fastest thing that runs. But at least my daughter was punished.”

Vasya said, “She was your child. Do you know what the sorcerer did to Tamara?”

“She did it to herself.”

“Shall I tell you what happened to her?” Vasya asked, growing angry. “About her courage and her despair? Of how she was trapped in the terem of Moscow until she died? And even after! You shut your lands and didn’t even try to help her?”

“She betrayed me,” retorted the witch. “She chose a man over her own kin; gave the golden mare into Kaschei’s keeping. My Varvara left me too. She tried first to take Tamara’s place, but she could not. Of course she could not; she had not the sight. So, she left, the coward.”

Vasya stilled, struck with sudden understanding.

“I didn’t need either of them,” the old woman went on. “I shut the way in. I shut every road but the Midnight-road and that road is mine, for Lady Midnight is my servant. I have kept my lands inviolate until a new heir should come.”

“Kept your lands inviolate?” Vasya demanded incredulously. “While your children were trapped in the world of men, while your daughter was abandoned by her lover?”

“Yes,” said the witch. “She deserved it.”

Vasya said nothing.

“But,” the old woman went on, her voice softening, “I have a new heir now. I knew you’d come, one day. You can speak to horses; you awakened the domovaya with fire, you survived the bagiennik. You will not betray me. You will live in the house by the oak-tree and I will come every midnight to teach you all I know. How to master chyerti. How to keep your own people safe. Don’t you want to know those things, poor little girl, with your burned face?”

    “Yes,” said Vasya. “I do want to know those things.”

The woman sat back, looking satisfied.

“When there is time to learn,” Vasya continued. “But not yet. The Bear is free in Rus’.”

The old woman bristled. “What is Rus’ to you? They tried to burn you, didn’t they? They killed your horse.”

“Rus’ is my family. My brothers and sister. My niece, who sees as I do. Your grandchildren. Your great-grandchildren.”

The woman’s eyes began, disconcertingly, to gleam. “Another with the sight? And a girl-child? We will walk through Midnight and get her.”