The Girl in the Tower (Winternight Trilogy #2)(63)

Vasya shook away her thoughts, went to the water bucket and poured out a ladleful. She had a crust in her pocket, which she laid, along with a birch-branch from the corner, in front of the living wisp.

The bannik solidified a little more.

Marya gasped.

Vasya tapped her niece’s shoulder and pried the child’s hands off her cloak. “Come, he will not hurt you. You must be respectful. This is the bannik. Call him Grandfather, for that is what he is, or Master, for that is his title. You must give him birch-branches and hot water and bread. Sometimes he tells the future.”

Marya pursed her rosebud mouth, and then she made a most stately reverence, only a little wobbling. “Grandfather,” she whispered.

The bannik did not speak.

Masha took a hesitant step forward and proffered a slightly squashed crumb of cake.

The bannik smiled slowly. Marya quivered but did not move. The bannik took the cake in his foggy hands. “So you do see me,” he whispered, in the hiss of water on coals. “It has been a long time.”

“I see you,” said Marya. She crowded nearer, forgetting fear in the way of children. “Of course I see you. You never talked before though, why not? Mother said you weren’t real. I was scared. Will you tell the future? Who am I going to marry?”

A dour prince, as soon as you have bled, Vasya thought darkly. “Enough, Masha,” she said aloud. “Come away. You do not need prophecies—you aren’t going to marry yet.”

The chyert smiled with a ghost of wickedness. “Why shouldn’t she? Vasilisa Petrovna, you have had your prophecy already.”

Vasya said nothing. The bannik at Lesnaya Zemlya had told her that she would pluck snowdrops at midwinter, die at her own choosing, and weep for a nightingale. “I was grown when I heard it,” she said at last. “Masha is a child.”

The bannik smiled, showing its foggy teeth. “Here is your prophecy, Marya Vladimirovna,” he said. “I am only a wisp now, for your people put their faith in bells and in painted icons. But this little I know: you will grow up far away, and you will love a bird more than your mother, after the season has turned.”

Vasya stiffened. Marya went very red. “A bird…?” she whispered. Then—“Never! You’re wrong!” She clenched her fists. “Take that back.”

The bannik shrugged, still smiling with a little edge of malice.

“Take it back!” Marya shrilled. “Take it—”

But the bannik had turned his glance on Vasya, and something hard gleamed in the backs of his burning eyes. “Before the end of Maslenitsa,” he said. “We will all be watching.”

Vasya, angry on Marya’s behalf, said, “I do not understand you.”

But she was addressing an empty corner. The bannik was gone.

Marya looked stricken. “I don’t like him. Was he telling the truth?”

“It is prophecy,” Vasya said slowly. “It might be true, but not at all in the way you think.”

Then, because the girl’s lower lip quivered, her dark eyes big and lost, Vasya said, “It is early still. Shall we go riding, you and I?”

A sunrise dawned on Masha’s face. “Yes,” she said at once. “Oh, yes, please. Let’s go now.”

A certain furtive giddiness made it clear that galloping about the streets was not something Marya was allowed to do. Vasya wondered if she had made a mistake. But she also remembered how, as a small child, she had loved to ride with her brother, face against the wind.

“Come with me,” said Vasya. “You must stay very close.”

They crept out of the bathhouse. The morning had lightened from smoke to pigeon-gray, and the thick blue shadows had begun to retreat.

Vasya tried to stride along like a bold boy, though it was hard since Marya kept such a tight hold of her hand. For all her ferocity, Marya only ever left her father’s palace to go to church, surrounded by her mother’s women. Even walking about in the dooryard unchaperoned had the flavor of rebellion.

Solovey stood bright-eyed in his paddock, snuffing the morning. Vasya thought for a moment that a long-limbed creature with a tuft of beard sat combing the horse’s mane. But then the monastery bells all rang outrenya together; Vasya blinked and there was no one.

“Oh,” said Marya, skidding to a halt. “Is that your horse? He is very big.”

“Yes,” said Vasya. “Solovey, this is my niece, who wishes to ride you.”

“I don’t much want to, now,” said Marya, looking at the stallion with alarm.

Solovey had a fondness for scraps of humanity—or maybe he was just puzzled by creatures so much smaller than he. He minced over to the fence, snorted a warm breath into her face, then put his head down and lipped Marya’s fingers.

“Oh,” said Marya, in a new voice. “Oh, he is very soft.” She stroked his nose.

Solovey’s ears went back and forth, pleased, and Vasya smiled.

Tell her not to kick me, Solovey said. He nibbled Marya’s hair, which made her giggle. Or pull my mane.

Vasya relayed this message and boosted Marya up onto the top of the fence.

“He needs a saddle,” the child informed Vasya nervously, clutching the fence rail. “I have watched my father’s men ride out; they all have saddles.”

“Solovey doesn’t like them,” Vasya retorted. “Get up. I will not let you fall. Or are you scared?”