The Girl in the Tower (The Winternight Trilogy #2)(44)

“But,” he added slowly, “you have been brave, to get this far. I do not blame you, child. I do not.”

The tears came to her throat again, but she swallowed them back.

“Come on, then,” Sasha said, stiffly. “Try to go to sleep now, Vasya. You will come with us to Moscow. Olya will know what to do with you.”

Olya, Vasya thought, her heart lifting. She was going to see Olya again. Her earliest memories—of kind hands and of laughter—were of her sister.

Vasya was sitting opposite her brother, on a cot beside the clay stove. Sasha had built a fire, and the room was slowly warming. Suddenly all Vasya wanted was to pull the furs over her head and sleep.

But she had one last question. “Father loved you. He wished you would come home. You promised me you’d come back. Why didn’t you?”

No answer. He had busied himself with the fire; perhaps he had not heard. But to Vasya, the silence seemed to thicken suddenly with regrets that her brother would not utter.



SLEEP SHE DID: a sleep like winter, a sleep like sickness. In her sleep the men all died again, stoic or screaming, their guts like dark jewels in the snow. The black-cloaked figure stood by, calm and knowing, to mark each death.

But this time a terrible, familiar voice spoke also in her ear. “See him, poor winter-king, trying to keep order. But the battlefield is my realm, and he only comes to pick over my leavings.”

Vasya whirled to find the Bear at her shoulder, one-eyed, lazily smiling. “Hello,” he said. “Does my work please you?”

“No,” she gasped, “no—”

Then she fled, slipping frantic over the snow, tripping on nothing, falling into a pit of endless white. She did not know if she was screaming or not. “Vasya,” said a voice.

An arm caught her, stopped her fall. She knew the shape and turn of the long-fingered hand, the deft and grasping fingers. She thought, He has come for me now; it is my turn, and began to thrash in earnest.

“Vasya,” said his voice in her ear. “Vasya.” Cruelty in that voice—and winter wind and old moonlight. Even a rough note of tenderness.

No, she thought. No, you greedy thing, do not be kind to me.

But even as she thought it, all the fight went out of her. Not knowing if she were awake or still dreaming, she pressed her face into his shoulder, and broke into a storm of violent weeping.

In her dream, the arm went hesitantly round her and his hand cradled her head. Her tears lanced some of the poisoned wound of memory; at last she fell silent and looked up.

They stood together in a little moonlit space, while trees slept all around. No Bear—the Bear was bound, far away. Frost fretted the air like silver-gilt. Was she dreaming? Morozko was a part of the night, his feet incongruously bare, his pale eyes troubled. The living world of bells and icons and changing seasons seemed the dream then, and the frost-demon the only thing real.

“Am I dreaming?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said.

“Are you really here?”

He said nothing.

“Today—today I saw—” she stammered. “And you—”

When he sighed, the trees stirred. “I know what you saw,” he said.

Her hands clenched and unclenched. “You were there? Were you only there for the dead?”

Again he did not speak. She stepped back.

“They mean for me to come to Moscow,” she said.

“Do you wish to go to Moscow?”

She nodded. “I want to see my sister. I want to see more of my brother. But I cannot stay a boy forever, and I do not want to be a girl in Moscow. They will try to find me a husband.”

He was silent a moment, but his eyes had darkened. “Moscow is full of churches. Many churches. I cannot—chyerti are not strong in Moscow, not anymore.”

She drew back, crossing her arms over her breast. “Does that matter? I will not stay forever. I am not asking for your help.”

“No,” he agreed. “You are not.”

“The night under the spruce-tree—” she began. All around them the snow floated like mist.

Morozko seemed to gather himself, and then he smiled. It was the smile of the winter-king, old and fair and unknowable. Any hint of deeper feeling vanished from his face. “Well, mad thing?” he asked. “What do you mean to ask me? Or are you afraid?”

“I am not afraid,” said Vasya, bristling.

That was true, and it was also a lie. The sapphire was warm beneath her clothes; it was glowing, too, though she could not see it. “I am not afraid,” she repeated.

His breath slipped cool past her cheek. Goaded, she dared to do dreaming what she would not awake. She twisted her hand in his cloak and pulled him nearer.

She had surprised him again. The breath hitched in his throat. His hand caught hers, but he did not untangle her fingers.

“Why are you here?” she asked him.

For a moment she thought he would not answer, then he said, as though reluctant, “I heard you cry.”

“I—you—you cannot come to me thus and go away again,” she said. “Save my life? Leave me stumbling alone with three children in the dark? Save my life again? What do you want? Do not—kiss me and leave—I don’t—” She could not find the words for what she meant, but her fingers spoke for her, digging into the sparkling fur of his robe. “You are immortal, and perhaps I seem small to you,” she said at last fiercely. “But my life is not your game.”