The Bear and the Nightingale

Chapter 12: The Priest with the Golden Hair

In the year that Vasilisa Petrovna turned fourteen, the Metropolitan Aleksei made his plans for the accession of Prince Dmitrii Ivanovich. For seven years the Metropolitan had held the regency of Moscow; he schemed and skirmished, made alliances and broke them, called men to battle and sent them home again. But when Dmitrii came to manhood, Aleksei, seeing him bold and keen and steady in judgment, said, “Well, a good colt must not be left in pasture,” and began making plans for a coronation. The robes were stitched, the furs and jewels bought, the boy himself sent to Sarai to beg the Khan’s indulgence.

And Aleksei continued, as ever, to look quietly about him for those who might be in a position to oppose the prince’s succession. It was thus that he learned of a priest named Father Konstantin Nikonovich.

Konstantin was quite a young man, true, but the fortunate (or unfortunate) possessor of a terrible beauty: old-gold hair and eyes like blue water. He was renowned throughout Muscovy for his piety, and despite his youth he had traveled far—south even to Tsargrad and west to Hellas. He read Greek and could argue obscure points of theology. Moreover he chanted with a voice like an angel, so that the people wept to hear him and lifted up their eyes to God.

But most of all, Konstantin Nikonovich was a painter of icons. Such icons, said the people, as had never been seen in Muscovy; they must have come from the finger of God to bless the wicked world. Already his icons were copied throughout the monasteries of northern Rus’, and Aleksei’s spies brought him tales of rapturous, rioting crowds, of women weeping when they kissed the painted faces.

These rumors troubled the Metropolitan. “Well, and I will rid Moscow of this golden-haired priest,” he said to himself. “If he is so beloved, his voice, should he choose, could turn the people against the prince.”

He fell to considering this means or that.

While he deliberated, a messenger came from the house of Pyotr Vladimirovich.

The Metropolitan sent for the man at once. The messenger arrived in due course, still in his dust and weary, awed by his glittering surroundings. But he stood steadily enough and said, “Father, bless,” with only a little stammer.

“God be with you,” said Aleksei, sketching the sign of the cross. “Tell me what brings you so far, my son.”

“The priest of Lesnaya Zemlya has died,” explained the messenger, gulping. He had expected to explain his errand to a less exalted personage. “Good fat Father Semyon has gone to God, and we are adrift, says the mistress. She begs you send us another, to hold us fast in the wilderness.”

“Well,” said the Metropolitan immediately. “Give thanks, for your salvation is just at hand.”

Metropolitan Aleksei dismissed the messenger and sent for Konstantin Nikonovich.

The young man came into the prelate’s presence, tall and pale and burning. His robe of dark stuff set off the beauty of his hair and eyes.

“Father Konstantin,” said Aleksei, “you are called to a task by God.”

Father Konstantin said nothing.

“A woman,” the Metropolitan continued, “the Grand Prince’s own sister, has sent a messenger begging our help. Her village flock is without a shepherd.”

The young man’s face did not change.

“You are the very man to go and minister to the lady and her family,” Aleksei finished, smiling with an air of studied benevolence.

“Batyushka,” said Father Konstantin. His voice was so deep it was startling. The servant at Aleksei’s elbow squeaked. The Metropolitan narrowed his eyes. “I am honored. But already I have my work among the people of Moscow. And my icons, that I have painted for the glory of God, they are here.”

“There are many of us to tend to the people of Moscow,” replied the Metropolitan. The young priest’s voice was soothing and unnerving at the same time, and Aleksei watched him warily. “And no one at all for those poor lost souls in the wilderness. No, no, it really must be you. You will leave in three weeks.”

Pyotr Vladimirovich is a sensible man, thought Aleksei. Three seasons in the north will kill this upstart, or at least fade that oh-so-dangerous loveliness. Better than killing him now, lest the people take his flesh for relics and make him a martyr.

Father Konstantin opened his mouth. But he caught the Metropolitan’s eye, which was hard as flint. The guards waited at every hand, and more in the anteroom, with long scarlet pikes. Konstantin bit back whatever he had wanted to say.

“I am sure,” said Aleksei softly, “that you have much to do before your departure. God be with you, my son.”

Konstantin, white-faced and biting his red lip, bent his head stiffly and turned on his heel. His heavy robe rippled and snapped behind him as he left the room.

“Good riddance,” muttered Aleksei, though he was uneasy still. He dashed kvas into a cup and tossed it cold down his throat.

AT HIGH SUMMER, the roads were grass-grown and dry. The mild sun loved the sweet-smelling earth, and soft rains scattered flowers in the forest. But Father Konstantin saw none of it; he rode beside Anna’s messenger in a white-lipped rage. His fingers ached for his brushes, for his pigments and wood panels, for his cool, quiet cell. Most of all he ached for the people, for their love and hunger and half-frightened rapture, for the way their hands stretched out to his. Devils take the meddling Metropolitan. And now he was exiled, for no other reason than that people preferred him.

Well. He’d train some village boy, see him ordained, and then be free to return to Moscow. Or perhaps go farther south, to Kiev, or west to Novgorod. The world was wide, and Konstantin Nikonovich would not be left to rot on some farm in the woods.

Konstantin spent a week fuming, and then natural curiosity took over. The trees grew steadily larger as they rode deeper into the wild lands: oaks of giant girth and pines tall as the domes of churches. The bright meadows grew sparser as the forest drew in on either side; the light was green and gray and purple, and the shadows lay thick as velvet.

“What is it like, the land of Pyotr Vladimirovich?” Konstantin asked his companion one morning. The messenger started. They had been riding a week, and the handsome priest had hardly opened his lips except to eat his meals.

“Very beautiful, Batyushka,” the man replied respectfully. “Trees fine as cathedrals, and bright streams on all sides. Flowers in summer, fruit in autumn. Cold in winter, though.”

“And your master and mistress?” asked Konstantin, curious despite himself.

“A good man is Pyotr Vladimirovich,” said the man, warmth creeping into his voice. “Hard sometimes, but fair, and his folk never go wanting.”

“And your mistress?”

“Oh, a good woman; a good woman. Not like the mistress that was, but a good woman all the same. I know no harm of her.” He shot Konstantin a furtive glance as he spoke, and Father Konstantin wondered what it was that the messenger had not said.

THE DAY THE PRIEST ARRIVED, Vasya was sitting in a tree talking to a rusalka. Once, Vasya had found such conversations disconcerting, but now she had gotten used to the woman’s green-skinned nakedness and the constant drip of water from her pale, weedy hair. The sprite was sitting on a thick limb with catlike nonchalance, steadily combing her long tresses. Her comb was the rusalka’s greatest treasure, for if her hair dried, she would die; but the comb could conjure water anywhere. When she looked closely, Vasya could see the water flowing from the comb’s teeth. The rusalka had an appetite for flesh; she would snatch fawns drinking in her lake at dawn, and sometimes the young men who swam there at midsummer. But she liked Vasilisa.

It was late afternoon, and the light of the long northern days shone down on the two, bringing out the radiance in Vasya’s hair and fading the rusalka to a greenish, woman-shaped ghost. The water-spirit was old as the lake itself, and sometimes she looked wonderingly on Vasya, the brash child of a newer world.

They had become friends under strange circumstances. The rusalka had stolen a village boy. Vasya, seeing the youth vanish, gurgling, and the flash of green fingers, had dived into the lake after him. Child though she was, she blazed with the strength of her own mortality and was a match for any rusalka. She seized the boy and dragged him back into daylight. They made it safe to shore, the boy bruised and spitting water, staring at Vasya with equal parts gratitude and terror. He tore away from her and ran for the village as soon as he felt the earth under his feet.

Vasya had shrugged and followed, wringing the water from her braid. She wanted her soup. But late in the long spring twilight, when each leaf and blade of grass stood out black against the blue-tinged air, Vasya had returned to the lake. She sat down on the verge, toes in the water.

“Did you wish to eat him?” she asked the water conversationally. “Can you not find other meat?”

There was a small leaf-filled silence.

Then—“No,” said a rippling voice. Vasya sprang to her feet, eyes flicking through the foliage. It was luck more than anything else that her glance lit on the sinuous outlines of a naked woman. The rusalka crouched on a limb, a glimmering white thing clutched in one hand.

“Not meat,” the creature had said with a shudder, hair scudding like wavelets over her skin. “Fear—and desire—not that you know anything of either. It flavors the water and nourishes me. Dying, they know me for who I am. Otherwise I’d be no more than lake and tree and waterweed.”

“But you kill them!” said Vasya.

“Everything dies.”

“I will not let you slay my people.”

“Then I will disappear,” replied the rusalka, without inflection.

Vasya thought for a moment. “I know you’re here. I can see you. I am not dying, and I am not afraid—but—I can see you. I could be your friend. Is that enough?”

The rusalka was looking at her curiously. “Perhaps.”

And true to her word, Vasya would come looking for the water-spirit, and in spring she threw flowers into the lake, and the rusalka did not die.

In return, the rusalka taught Vasya to swim as very few could, and to climb trees like a cat, and so it was that the two found themselves together, lounging on a limb overlooking the road, as Father Konstantin approached Lesnaya Zemlya.

The rusalka saw the priest first. Her eyes gleamed. “Here comes one who would be good eating.”

Vasya peered down the road and saw a man with dusty golden hair and the dark robes of a priest. “Why?”

“He is full of desire. Desire and fear. He does not know what he desires, and he does not admit his fear. But he feels both, strong enough to strangle.” The man was coming closer. It was indeed a hungry face. High, protruding cheekbones cast gray shadows over his hollow cheeks; he had deep-set blue eyes and soft, full lips, though set sternly as though to hide the softness. One of her father’s men rode beside him, and both horses were dusty and tired.

Vasya’s face lit. “I’m going home,” she said. “If he is come from Moscow, he will have news of my brother and sister.”

The rusalka was not looking at her, but down the path the man had taken, a hungry light in her eyes.

“You promised you wouldn’t,” said Vasya sharply.

The rusalka smiled, sharp teeth gleaming between greenish lips. “Perhaps he desires death,” she said. “If so—I can help him.”

THE DOORYARD BEFORE THE HOUSE churned like an ant pile, washed in gold by the afternoon light. A man was unsaddling the weary horses, but the priest was nowhere to be seen. Vasya ran for the kitchen door. Dunya, who met her at the threshold, hissed at the twigs in her hair and the stains on her cut-down dress. “Vasya, where—?” she said, then, “Never mind. Come on, hurry.” She hustled the girl off to have her hair combed and her dirty clothes exchanged for a blouse and embroidered sarafan.

Flushed and smarting, but more or less presentable, Vasya emerged from the room she shared with Irina. Alyosha was waiting for her. He grinned at her appearance. “Maybe they will manage to marry you off after all, Vasochka.”

“Anna Ivanovna says not,” Vasya replied composedly. “Too tall, skinny as a weasel, feet and face like a frog.” She clasped her hands and raised her eyes. “Alas, only princes in fairy tales take frog-wives. And they can do magic and become beautiful on command. I fear I will have no prince, Lyoshka.”

Alyosha snorted. “I’d pity the prince. But do not take Anna Ivanovna to heart; she does not want you to be beautiful.”

Vasya said nothing, and a quick shadow darkened her face.

“Well, so there is a new priest,” Alyosha added hastily. “Curious, are you, little sister?”

The two slipped outside and circled the house.

The look she gave him was limpid as a child’s. “Aren’t you?” she said. “He is come from Moscow; perhaps he will have news.”

PYOTR AND THE PRIEST sat together on the cool summer grass drinking kvas. Pyotr turned when he heard his children approach, and his eyes narrowed when he saw his second daughter.

She is nearly a woman, he thought. It is too long since I looked at her truly. She is so like and so unlike her mother.

In truth, Vasya was still awkward, but she had begun growing into her face. The bones were still rough-hewn and overlarge, her mouth still too wide and full-lipped for the rest of her. But she was compelling: the moods passed like clouds over the clear green water of her gaze, and something about her movements, the line of her neck and braided hair, caught the eye and held it. When the light struck her black hair it did not gleam bronze as Marina’s had, but dark red, like garnets caught in the silky strands.

Father Konstantin was regarding Vasya with raised eyebrows and a slight frown. And no wonder, Pyotr thought. There was something feral about her, for all her neat gown and properly braided hair. She looked like a wild thing new-caught and just barely groomed into submission.

“My son,” Pyotr said hastily, “Aleksei Petrovich. And this is my daughter, Vasilisa Petrovna.”

Alyosha bowed, both to the priest and to his father. Vasya was looking at Konstantin with transparent eagerness. Alyosha elbowed her, hard.

“Oh!” said Vasya. “You are welcome here, Batyushka.” And then she added, all in a rush, “Have you news of our brother and sister? My brother rode away seven years ago to take his vows at the Trinity Lavra. And my sister is the Princess of Serpukhov. Tell me you have seen them!”

Her mother should take her in hand, Konstantin thought darkly. A soft voice and a bent head were more fitting when a woman addressed a priest. This girl stared him brazenly in the face with fey green eyes.

“Enough, Vasya,” said Pyotr, stern. “He has had a long journey.”

Konstantin was spared any reply. There came a rustle of feet in the summer grass. Anna Ivanovna swept breathlessly into view, dressed in her finest. Her small daughter, Irina, followed her, spotless as always and pretty as a doll. Anna bowed. Irina sucked her finger and stared round-eyed at the newcomer. “Batyushka,” said Anna. “You are most welcome.”

The priest nodded back. At least these two were proper women. The mother had a scarf wrapped round her hair, and the little girl was neat and small and reverent. But, despite himself, Konstantin’s glance slid sideways and caught the other daughter’s interested stare.

“COLORS?” SAID PYOTR, FROWNING.

“Colors, Pyotr Vladimirovich,” said Father Konstantin, trying not to betray his eagerness.

Pyotr was not sure he’d heard the priest aright.

Dinner in the summer kitchen was a raucous affair. The forest was kind, in the golden months, and the kitchen garden overflowed. Dunya outdid herself with delicate stews. “And then we ran like hares,” said Alyosha, from the other side of the hearth. Beside him, Vasya blushed and covered her face. The kitchen rang with laughter.

“Dyes, you mean?” said Pyotr to the priest, his face clearing. “Well, you need have no fear on that score; the women will dye whatever you like.” He grinned, feeling benevolent. Pyotr was content with life. His crops grew tall and green beneath a clear, fair sun. His wife wept and shrieked and hid less since this fair-haired priest had come.

“We can,” Anna interjected breathlessly. She was neglecting her stew. “Anything you like. Are you still hungry, Batyushka?”

“Colors,” said Konstantin. “Not for dyes. I wish to make paints.”

Pyotr was offended. The house was painted under the eaves, scarlet and blue. But the paintwork was bright and well-kept, and if this man thought he needed to meddle…

Konstantin pointed to the icon corner opposite the door. “For the painting of icons,” he said very distinctly. “For the glory of God. I know what I need. But I do not know where to find it, here in your forest.”

For the painting of icons. Pyotr eyed Konstantin with renewed respect.

“Like ours?” he said. He squinted at the smoke-dimmed, indifferently painted Virgin in her corner, with the candle-stub set before her. He had brought the family icons from Moscow, but he’d never seen an icon-painter. Monks painted icons.

Konstantin opened his mouth, closed it, smoothed his features, and said, “Yes. A little like them. But I must have paints. Colors. Some I brought with me, but…”

Icons were holy. Men would honor his house when they knew he harbored a painter of icons. “Of course, Batyushka,” said Pyotr. “Icons—the painting of icons—well, we’ll get you your paints.” Pyotr raised his voice. “Vasya!”

On the other side of the hearth, Alyosha said something and laughed. Vasya was laughing, too. The sunlight shone through her hair and lit the freckles adorning the bridge of her nose.

Gawky, Konstantin thought. Clumsy, half-grown. But half the house watches to see what she will do next. “Vasya!” Pyotr called again, more sharply.

She left off whispering and came toward them. She wore a green dress. Her hair had loosened at the temples and curled a little about her brows, beneath her red and yellow kerchief. She is ugly, thought Konstantin, and then wondered at himself. What was it to him if a girl was ugly?

“Father?” said Vasya.

“Father Konstantin wishes to go into the wood,” said Pyotr. “He is looking for colors. You will go with him. You will show him where the dye-plants grow.”

The look she threw the priest was not the simper or shy glance of a maiden; it was transparent as sunlight, bright and curious. “Yes, Father,” she said. And, to Konstantin: “At dawn tomorrow, I think, Batyushka. It is best to harvest before full light.”

Anna Ivanovna took the moment to ladle more stew into Konstantin’s bowl. “By your leave,” she said.

He did not take his eyes off Vasya. Why couldn’t some man of the village help him find his pigments? Why the green-eyed witch? Abruptly he realized he was glaring. The brightness had faded from the girl’s face. Konstantin recalled himself. “My thanks, devushka.” He sketched the sign of the cross in the air between them.

Vasya smiled suddenly. “Tomorrow, then,” she said.

“Run along, Vasya,” said Anna, a little shrill. “The holy father can have no more need of you.”

THERE WAS A MIST on the ground the next morning. The light of the rising sun turned it to fire and smoke, striped with the shadows of trees. The girl greeted Konstantin with a wary, glowing face. She was like a spirit in the haze.

The forest of Lesnaya Zemlya was not like the forest around Moscow. It was wilder and crueler and fairer. The vast trees whispered together overhead, and all around, Konstantin seemed to feel eyes. Eyes…nonsense.

“I know where the wild mint grows,” said Vasya as they followed a thin dirt track. The trees made a cathedral-arch above their heads. The girl’s bare feet were delicate in the dust. She had a skin bag slung across her back. “And there will be elderberries if we are fortunate, and blackberries. Alder for yellow. But that is not enough for the face of a saint. You will paint us icons, Batyushka?”

“I have the red earth, the powdered stones, the black metal. I even have the lapis-dust to make the Virgin’s veil. But I have no green or yellow or violet,” said Konstantin. Belatedly he heard the eagerness in his own voice.

“Those we can find,” said Vasya. She skipped like a child. “I have never seen an icon painted. Neither has anyone else. We will all come and beg you for prayers, that we might stare as you work.”

He had known folk to do just that. In Moscow, they thronged about his icons…

“You are human after all,” said Vasya, watching the thoughts cross his face. “I wondered. You are like an icon yourself sometimes.”

He did not know what she’d seen on his face and was angry at himself. “You wonder too much, Vasilisa Petrovna. Better to stay quiet at home with your little sister.”

“You are not the first to tell me that,” said Vasya without rancor. “But if I did, who would go with you at dawn to find bits of leaves? Here—”

They stopped for birch, and again for wild mustard. The girl was deft with her small knife. The sun rose higher, burning away the mist.

“I asked you a question yesterday when I should not,” said Vasya, when the lacy mustard-greens were tucked in her bag. “But I will ask again today, and you will please forgive a girl’s eagerness, Batyushka. I love my brother and my sister. It is long since we have had news of either. My brother is called Brother Aleksandr now.”

The priest’s mouth narrowed. “I know of him,” he said, after a brief hesitation. “There was a scandal when he took his vows under the name of his birth.”

Vasya half-smiled. “Our mother chose that name for him, and my brother was always stubborn.”

Rumors of Brother Aleksandr’s impious intransigence on the matter had spread throughout Muscovy. But, Konstantin reminded himself, monastic vows were not a subject for maidens. The girl had fastened her great eyes on his face. Konstantin began to feel uncomfortable. “Brother Aleksandr came to Moscow for the coronation of Dmitrii Ivanovich. It is said he has gained a certain renown for his ministry in the villages,” the priest added stiffly.

“And my sister?” said Vasya.

“The Princess of Serpukhov is honored for her piety and for her strong children,” Konstantin said, wishing an end to the conversation.

Vasya spun around with a little whoop of satisfaction. “I worry for them,” she said. “Father does, too, though he pretends not. Thank you, Batyushka.” And she turned on him a face all lit from within, so that Konstantin was startled and unwillingly fascinated. His expression grew colder. There was a small silence. The path widened and they walked abreast.

“My father said you have been to the ends of the earth,” said Vasya. “To Tsargrad, and the palace of a thousand kings. To the Church of Holy Wisdom.”

“Yes,” said Konstantin.

“Will you tell me of it?” she said. “Father says that at dusk the angels sing. And that the Tsar rules all men of God, as though he were God himself. That he has roomfuls of gems and a thousand servants.”

Her question took him aback. “Not angels,” Konstantin said slowly. “Men only, but men with voices that would not shame angels. At nightfall they light a hundred thousand candles, and everywhere there is gold and music…”

He stopped abruptly.

“It must be like heaven,” Vasya said.

“Yes,” said Konstantin. Memory had him by the throat: gold and silver, music, learned men and freedom. The forest seemed to choke him. “It is not a fit subject for girls,” he added.

Vasya lifted a brow. They came upon a blackberry bush. Vasya plucked a handful. “You did not want to come here, did you?” she said, around the blackberries. “We have no music or lights, and precious few people. Can you not go away again?”

“I go where God sends me,” Konstantin said, coldly. “If my work is here, then I will stay here.”

“And what is your work, Batyushka?” said Vasya. She had stopped eating blackberries. For an instant, her glance darted to the trees overhead.

Konstantin followed her eyes, but there was nothing there. An odd feeling crept up his spine. “To save souls,” he said. He could count the freckles on her nose. If ever a girl needed saving, it was this one. The blackberries had stained her lips and her hands.

Vasya half-smiled. “Are you going to save us, then?”

“If God gives me strength, I will save you.”

“I am only a country girl,” said Vasya. She reached again into the blackberry bush, wary of thorns. “I have never seen Tsargrad, or angels, or heard the voice of God. But I think you should be careful, Batyushka, that God does not speak in the voice of your own wishing. We have never needed saving before.”

Konstantin stared at her. She only smiled at him, more child than woman, tall and thin and stained with blackberry juice. “Hurry,” she said. “It will be full light soon.”

THAT NIGHT, FATHER KONSTANTIN lay on his narrow cot and shivered and could not sleep. In the north, the wind had teeth that bit after sunset, even in summer.

He had placed his icons, as was right, in the corner opposite the door. The Mother of God hung in the central place, with the Trinity just below. At nightfall, the lady of the house, shy and officious, had given him a fat beeswax candle to set before the icons. Konstantin lit it at dusk and enjoyed the golden light. But in the moonlight, the candle cast sinister shadows over the Virgin’s face and set strange figures dancing wildly among the three parts of the Almighty. There was something hostile about the nighttime house. Almost, it seemed to breathe…

What foolishness, thought Konstantin. Annoyed with himself, he rose, intending to blow out the candle. But as he crossed the room, he heard the distinct click of a door closing. Without thinking, he veered to the window.

A woman darted across the space before the house, muffled in a heavy shawl. Plump she looked, and shapeless under the wrapper. Father Konstantin could not tell who she might be. The figure came to the church door and paused. She set a hand on the bronze ring, dragged the door open, and disappeared inside.

Konstantin stared at the place where she’d vanished. Of course there was nothing to prevent someone going to pray in the dead of night, but the house had its own icons. One might easily pray before them without braving the dark and the damp night air. And there had been something furtive—almost guilty—in the woman’s manner.

Growing more curious and irritated—and wakeful—by the moment, Konstantin turned from the window and drew on his dark robe. His room had its own outer door. He slid noiselessly through, not bothering with shoes, and made his way across the grass to the church.

ANNA IVANOVNA KNELT IN the dark before the icon-screen and tried to think of nothing. The scent of dust and paint, beeswax and old wood, wrapped around her like a balm, while the sweat of yet another nightmare dried in the chill. She had been walking in the midnight woods this time, black shadows on all sides. Strange voices had risen around her.

“Mistress,” they cried. “Mistress, please. See us. Know us, lest your hearth go undefended. Please, Mistress.” But she would not look. She walked on and on while the voices tore at her. At last, desperate, she began to run, hurting her feet on rocks and roots. A great cry of lamentation rose up. Suddenly her path ended. She ran on into nothingness and fell back into her skin, gasping and dripping sweat.

A dream, nothing more. But her face and feet stung, and even awake, Anna could hear those voices. At last she bolted for the church and huddled at the foot of the icon-screen. She could stay in the church and creep back at first light. She had done it before. Her husband was a tolerant man, though all-night disappearances were awkward to explain.

The soft creak of hinges slipped thieflike to her ears. Anna lurched upright and spun around. A black-robed figure, silhouetted by the risen moon, passed softly through the doorway and came toward her. Anna was too frightened to move. She stood frozen until the shadow came close enough for her to catch the gleam of old-gold hair.

“Anna Ivanovna,” Konstantin said. “Is all well with you?”

She gaped at the priest. All her life, folk had asked her angry questions and exasperated questions. “What are you doing?” they said, and “What is wrong with you?” But no one had ever asked her how she did in that tone of mild inquiry. The moonlight played over the hollows of his face.

Anna stuttered into speech: “I—of course, Batyushka, I am well, I just—forgive me, I…” The sob in her throat choked her. Shaking, unable to meet his eyes, she turned away, crossed herself, and knelt again before the icon-screen. Father Konstantin stood over her for a moment, wordless, then turned, very precisely, to cross himself and kneel at the other end of the iconostasis, before the tranquil face of the Mother of God. His voice as he prayed came faintly to Anna’s ears: a slow, resonant murmur, though she could not catch the words. At last the whine of her breathing quieted.

She kissed the icon of Christ and slanted a glance at Father Konstantin. He was contemplating the dim images before him, hands clasped. His voice, when it came, was deep and quiet and unexpected.

“Tell me,” he said, “what brings you to seek solace at such an hour.”

“They have not told you that I am mad?” Anna replied bitterly, surprising herself.

“No,” the priest said. “Are you?”

Her chin dipped in the barest fraction of a nod.

“Why?”

Her eyes flew up to meet his. “Why am I mad?” Her voice came out a hoarse whisper.

“No,” Konstantin answered patiently. “Why do you believe that you are?”

“I see—things. Demons, devils. Everywhere. All the time.” She felt as though she stood beyond herself. Something had taken control of her tongue and was shaping her answers. She’d never told anyone before. Half the time she refused to admit it to herself, even when she muttered at corners and the women whispered behind their hands. Even kind, drunk, clumsy Father Semyon, who had prayed with her more times than she could count, had never wrung this confession from her.

“But why should that mean you are mad? The Church teaches that demons walk among us. Do you deny the teachings of the Church?”

“No! But…” Anna felt hot and cold at once. She wanted to look into his face again but did not dare. She looked at the floor instead and saw the faint shadow of his foot, incongruously bare beneath the heavy robe. At last she managed a whisper:

“But they aren’t—can’t—be real. No one else sees…I am mad; I know I am mad.” She trailed off, then added slowly: “Except sometimes I think—my stepdaughter Vasilisa. But she’s only a child who hears too many stories.”

Father Konstantin’s gaze sharpened.

“She speaks of it, does she?”

“Not—not recently. But when she was a little girl sometimes I thought…Her eyes…”

“And you did nothing?” Konstantin’s voice was supple as a snake and well-tuned as any singer’s. Anna quailed under his tone of incredulous contempt.

“I beat her when I could and forbade her to talk of it. I thought, maybe, that if I caught her young enough, the madness wouldn’t take hold.”

“Is that all you thought? Madness? Did you never fear for her soul?”

Anna opened her mouth, closed it again, and stared at the priest, bewildered. He stalked toward the center of the iconostasis where a second Christ sat enthroned, surrounded by apostles. The moonlight turned his gold hair to gray-silver, and his shadow crawled black across the floor.

“Demons can be exorcised, Anna Ivanovna,” he said, not taking his eyes from the icon.

“Ex—exorcised?” she squeaked.

“Naturally.”

“How?” She felt as though she were thinking through mud. All her life she had borne her curse. That it might just go away—her mind wouldn’t compass the notion.

“Rites of the Church. And much prayer.”

There was a small silence.

“Oh,” Anna breathed. “Oh please. Make it go away. Make them go away.”

He might have smiled, but she couldn’t be sure in the moonlight.

“I will pray and think on it. Go back and go to sleep, Anna Ivanovna.” She stared at him with big stunned eyes, then whirled and blundered toward the door, feet clumsy on the bare wood.

Father Konstantin prostrated himself before the iconostasis. He did not sleep at all the rest of the night.

The next day was Sunday. In the green-gray dawn, Konstantin returned to his own room. Heavy-eyed, he flung cold water over his head and washed his hands. Soon he must give service. He was weary, but calm. During the long hours of his vigil, God had given him the answer. He knew what evil lay upon this land. It was in the sun-symbols on the nurse’s apron, in that stupid woman’s terror, in the fey, feral eyes of Pyotr’s elder daughter. The place was infested with demons: the chyerti of the old religion. These foolish, wild people worshipped God by day and the old gods in secret; they tried to walk both paths at once and made themselves base in the sight of the Father. No wonder evil had come to work its mischief.

Excitement rolled through his veins. He’d thought to molder here, in the back of beyond. But here was battle indeed, a battle for mastery of the souls of men and women, with evil on one side and him as God’s messenger on the other.

The people were gathering. He could almost feel their eager curiosity. It was not yet like Moscow, where people snatched hungrily at his words and loved him with their frightened eyes. Not yet.

But it would be.

VASYA TWITCHED A SHOULDER and wished she could take off her headdress. Because they were in church, Dunya had added a veil to the heavy contrivance of cloth and wood and semiprecious stones. It itched. But she was nothing compared to Anna, who was dressed as though for a feast-day, a jeweled cross round her neck and rings on each finger. Dunya had taken one look at her mistress and muttered under her breath about piety and gold hair. Even Pyotr raised an eyebrow at his wife, but he held his peace. Vasya followed her brothers into church, scratching her scalp.

Women stood on the left of the nave, before the Virgin, while men stood on the right, in front of the Christ. Vasya had always wished she could stand next to Alyosha so they could poke and fidget during the service; Irina was so small and sweet that poking was not rewarding, and anyway Anna always saw. Vasya locked her fingers behind her back.

The doors at the center of the iconostasis opened, and the priest came out. The murmurs of the assembled village drifted into silence, punctuated by a girl’s giggle.

The church was small, and Father Konstantin seemed to fill it. His golden hair drew the eye as even Anna’s jewels could not. His blue gaze pierced the throng like knives, one at a time. He did not speak at once. A breathless hush spread like sound among the people, so that Vasya found herself straining to hear their soft, eager breathing.

“Blessed is the kingdom,” said Konstantin at last, his voice washing over them, “of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit now and ever and unto ages of ages.”

He didn’t sound like Father Semyon, thought Vasya, though the words of the liturgy were the same. His voice was like thunder, yet he placed each syllable like Dunya setting stitches. Under his touch, the words came alive. His voice was deep as rivers in spring. He spoke to them of life and death, of God and of sin. He spoke of things they did not know, of devils and torments and temptation. He called it up before their eyes so that they saw themselves submitting to the judgment of God, and saw themselves damned and flung down.

As he chanted, Konstantin pulled the crowd to him until they echoed his words in a daze of fascinated terror. He drove them on and on with the supple lash of his voice until their answering voices broke and they listened like children frightened during a thunderstorm. Just as they were on the verge of panic—or rapture—his voice gentled.

“Have mercy on us and save us, for He is good and the Lover of mankind.”

A heavy silence fell. In the stillness, Konstantin raised his right hand and blessed the crowd.

They trickled out of the church like sleepwalkers, clutching one another. Anna had a look of exalted terror that Vasya couldn’t understand. The others looked dazed, even exhausted, the trailing ends of fearful rapture in their eyes.

“Lyoshka!” Vasya called, darting over to her brother. But when he turned to her, he was pale like the others, and his gaze seemed to meet hers from a long way away. She slapped him, frightened to see his eyes blank. Abruptly Alyosha came back to himself and gave her a shove that should have put her in the dust, but she was quick as a squirrel and wearing a new gown. So she writhed backward and kept her feet, and then the two were glaring at each other, chests heaving and fists clenched.

They both recovered their senses at the same time. They laughed, and Alyosha said, “Is it true then, Vasya? Demons among us and torments in store if we do not cast them out? But the chyerti—is he talking about the chyerti? The women have always left bread for the domovoi. What care has God for that?”

“Stories or no, why should we cast out the household-spirits on the word of some old priest from Moscow?” snapped Vasya. “We have always left them bread and salt and water, and God was not angry.”

“We have not starved,” said Alyosha hesitantly. “And there have been no fires or sickness. But perhaps God is waiting for us to die so that our punishment might never end.”

“For heaven’s sake, Lyoshka,” Vasya began, but she was interrupted by Dunya calling. Anna had decreed a meal of special magnificence, and Vasya must roll dumplings and stir the soup.

They dined outside, on eggs and kasha and summer greens, bread and cheese and honey. The usual cheerful muddle was subdued. The young peasant women stood in knots and whispered.

Konstantin, chewing meditatively, wore a glow of satisfaction. Pyotr, frowning, swung his head here and there like the bull that scents danger but has not yet seen the wolves in the grass. Father understands wild beasts and raiders, thought Vasya. But sin and damnation cannot be fought.

The others gazed at the priest with terror and a hungry admiration. Anna Ivanovna glowed with a kind of hesitant joy. Their fervor seemed to lift Konstantin and carry him, like a galloping horse. Vasya did not know it, but in the silence of the nave after all the people had gone, the priest had thrown that feeling into his exorcism, thrown it all, until even a man without the sight would swear he could hear devils crying out and running for their lives, out of Pyotr’s walls and far away.

THAT SUMMER, KONSTANTIN WENT among the people and listened to their woes. He blessed the dying and he blessed the newborn. He listened when spoken to, and when his deep voice rang out, the people fell silent to hear him. “Repent,” he told them, “lest you burn. The fire is very near. It is waiting for you and for your children, each time you lie down to sleep. Give your fruits to God and God alone. It is your only salvation.”

The people murmured together, and their murmurs grew more and more fearful.

Konstantin ate at Pyotr’s table every night. His voice set their honey-wine rippling and rattled their wooden spoons. Irina took to putting her spoon against her cup, giggling to hear them click together. Vasya abetted her in this; the child’s gaiety was a relief. Talk of damnation did not frighten Irina; she was too young.

But Vasya was frightened.

Not of the priest, and not of devils, nor of pits of fire. She had seen their devils. She saw them every day. Some were wicked, and some were kind, and some were mischievous. All were as human in their way as the folk they guarded.

No, Vasya was frightened of her own people. They did not joke on the way to church anymore; they listened to Father Konstantin in heavy, hungry silence. And even when they were not in church, the people made excuses to visit his room.

Konstantin had begged beeswax from Pyotr, which he would melt and mix with his pigments. When the daylight shone into his cell, he would take up brushes and open phials of crushed powders. And then he would paint. Saint Peter took form under his brush. The saint’s beard was curly, his robe yellow and umber, his strange, long-fingered hand raised in benediction.

Lesnaya Zemlya could talk of nothing else.

One Sunday, desperate, Vasya smuggled a handful of crickets into the church and dropped them among the worshippers. Their chirping made an amusing counterpoint to Father Konstantin’s deep voice. But no one laughed; they cringed and whispered of evil omens. Anna Ivanovna had not seen, but she did suspect who was behind it. After the service, she called Vasya to her.

Vasya came unwillingly to her stepmother’s chamber. A length of willow lay ready in Anna’s hand. The priest sat by the open window, grinding a scrap of blue stone to powder. He did not seem to listen while Anna questioned her stepdaughter, but Vasya knew the questions were for the priest’s benefit, to show her stepmother righteous and mistress in her own house.

The questioning went on and on.

“I would do it again,” snapped Vasya at last, exasperated beyond caution. “Did not God make all creatures? Why should we alone be allowed to raise our voices in praise? Crickets worship with songs as much as we.”

Konstantin’s blue glance flicked toward her, though she could not read his expression.

“Insolence!” shrieked Anna. “Sacrilege!”

Vasya, chin high, kept silence even as her stepmother’s willow switch whistled down. Konstantin watched, grave and inscrutable. Vasya met his eyes and refused to look away.

Anna saw the girl and the priest, their steady mutual regard, and her furious face turned redder than ever. She put all the strength of her arm into the sharp willow. Vasya stood still for it, biting her lip bloody. But the tears welled, despite her best efforts, and hurried down her cheeks.

Behind Anna, Konstantin watched, wordless.

Vasya cried out once toward the end, as much in humiliation as in pain. But then it was over; Alyosha, white-lipped, had gone to find their father. Pyotr saw the blood and his daughter’s white face and seized Anna’s arm.

Vasya said no word to her father or to anyone else; she stumbled away at once, though her brother tried to call her back, and hid in the wood like a wounded thing. If she wept, only the rusalka heard.

“That will teach her the price of sin,” said Anna proudly, when Pyotr reproved her for brutality. “Better she learn now than burn later, Pyotr Vladimirovich.”

Konstantin said nothing. What he thought he did not say.

After her cuts healed, Vasya walked more softly and held her tongue more readily. She spent more time with the horses, and concocted wild plans to dress as a boy and go to join Sasha in his monastery, or send a secret messenger to Olga.

Alyosha, though he did not tell her, began to mark her comings and goings, so that she was never alone with their stepmother.

All this while, Konstantin condemned the people’s offerings—bread or honey-wine—that they made to their hearth-spirits. “Give it to God,” he said. “Forget your demons, lest you burn.” The people listened. Even Dunya was half convinced; she muttered to herself, shook her old head, and picked the sun-symbols from aprons and kerchiefs.

Vasya did not see it; she hid in the wood or in the stable. But the domovoi regretted her absence more than anyone else, because for him now there was nothing but crumbs.

Chapter 13: Wolves

Fall came in a burst of glory that quickly faded to gray. The silence of the waning year lay like a haze over the lands of Pyotr Vladimirovich while the icons multiplied under Father Konstantin’s hand. The men of the village labored over a new icon-screen to hold them: Saint Peter and Saint Paul, the Virgin and the Christ. The people lingered about Konstantin’s room and gazed with awe at the finished icons, at their shapes and shining faces. Konstantin was making a whole iconostasis, one image at a time.

“You owe your salvation to God,” said Konstantin. “Look on His face and be saved.” They had never seen anything like his Christ’s great eyes, the pale flesh, and the long, thin hands. They looked and knelt and sometimes cried.

What is a domovoi, they said, but a tale for bad children? We are sorry, Batyushka, we repent.

Almost no one made offerings, even at the autumn equinox. The domovoi grew feeble and listless. The vazila grew thin and haggard and wild-eyed; the straw lay thick in his tangled beard. He stole rye and barley stored for the horses. The horses themselves began stamping in their stalls and shying at breezes. Tempers in the village grew short.

“WELL, IT WASN’T ME, boy, and it wasn’t a horse or a cat or a ghost,” snarled Pyotr to the stable boy one bitter morning. More barley had vanished in the night, and Pyotr, already on edge, was furious.

“I didn’t see!” cried the boy, sniffling. “I would never—”

The air smarted, those mornings in November, and the earth seemed to ring underfoot, brittle with frost. Pyotr stood nose to nose with the youth and answered his denials with a clenched fist. There was a thud and a howl of pain. “Never steal from me again,” Pyotr said.

Vasya, just slipping through the stable-door, frowned. Her father was never short-tempered. He never even beat Anna Ivanovna. What is happening to us? Vasya ducked out of sight and climbed into the hayloft. It took her a moment to locate the vazila, who was curled in on himself and half-buried in straw. She shivered at the look in his eyes.

“Why are you eating the barley?” she asked, gathering her courage.

“Because there have been no offerings.” The vazila’s eyes glowed disconcertingly black.

“Are you frightening the horses?”

“Their moods are mine and mine theirs.”

“You are very angry, then?” the girl whispered. “But my people do not mean it. They are only frightened. The priest will go away one day. Things will not always be so.”

The vazila’s eyes gleamed darkly, but Vasya thought she saw sorrow in them as well as anger.

“I am hungry,” he said.

Vasya felt a rush of sympathy. She had often been hungry. “I can bring you bread,” she said stoutly. “I am not frightened.”

The vazila’s eyelids flickered. “I need little,” he said. “Bread. Apples.”

Vasya tried not to think too hard about giving away part of her meals. Food was never plentiful after midwinter; soon she would be grudging every crumb. But— “I will bring them to you. I swear it,” she said, looking earnestly into the demon’s round, brown eyes.

“My thanks,” returned the vazila. “Keep your pledge and I will leave the grain alone.”

Vasya kept her pledge. It was never much. A withered apple. A gnawed crust. A drip of honey-wine, carried on her fingers, or in her mouth. But the vazila came for it eagerly, and when he ate, the horses quieted. The days darkened and drew in; the snow fell as though to seal them up in whiteness. But the vazila grew pink and content; the wintertime stable grew drowsy as of old.

Just as well. The season was a long one, and in January the cold deepened until even Dunya could remember nothing like it.

The remorseless winter dusk drove folk indoors. Pyotr had plenty of time to suffer the sight of his family’s pinched faces. They huddled by the fire, chewing at bread and strips of dried meat, taking turns adding wood to the blaze. Even by night, they did not dare let it burn low. The older folk murmured that their firewood burned too fast, that it took three logs to keep the flames high, where before they had needed one. Pyotr and Kolya decried that as nonsense. But their woodpiles dwindled.

Midwinter had come and gone; the days lengthened once more, but the cold only worsened. It killed sheep and rabbits and blackened the fingers of the unwary. Firewood they must have in such cold, come what may, and so as their stocks ran low, the people dared the silent forest under the glare of the winter sun. It was Vasya and Alyosha, out with a pony, a sledge, and short-hafted axes, who saw the paw prints in the snow.

“Ought we go after them, Father?” Kolya asked that night. “Kill some, take their skins, and drive the rest away?” He was mending a scythe, squinting in the oven-light. His son Seryozha, stiff and silent, huddled against his mother.

Vasya had given the enormous basket of sewing a dispirited look and seized her ax and a whetstone. Alyosha shot her an amused look over the haft of his own ax.

“See?” said Father Konstantin to Anna. “Look around you. In God’s grace is your deliverance.” Anna’s eyes were fastened on his face; her sewing lay forgotten on her lap.

Pyotr wondered at his wife. She had never seemed so much at ease, though this was the bitterest winter in memory.

“I think not,” said Pyotr, in answer to his son’s question. He was inspecting his boots; in winter, holes could cost a man a foot. He put one down near the fire and picked up the other. “They are bigger than boarhounds, the wolves from the high north; it has been twenty years since they came so near.” Pyotr reached down and caressed Pyos’s gaunt head; the dog gave him a dispirited lick. “That they do so now means they are desperate, that they would hunt children if they could, or slaughter sheep under our noses. The men together might take on a pack, but it is too cold for bows; it would be spear-work, and not everyone would come back. No, we must look to our children and our livestock, and only go into the forest in daylight.”

“We might set snares,” put in Vasya, over the scrape of her whetstone.

Anna gave her a dark look.

“No,” Pyotr said. “Wolves are not rabbits; they would smell you on the trap, and no one will risk the forest on such a small chance of gain.”

“Yes, Father,” Vasya said, meekly.

That night was deadly cold. They all huddled together on top of the oven, packed like salted fish and covered with every blanket they possessed. Vasya slept badly; her father snored, and Irina’s small, sharp knees dug into her back. She tossed and turned, tried not to kick Alyosha, and at last, near midnight, fell into a shallow sleep. She dreamed of wolves howling, of winter stars swallowed up by warm clouds, of a man with red hair, a woman on horseback, and last of a pale, heavy-jawed man with a look of hunger and malice, who leered and winked his single good eye. She woke up gasping, in the bitter hour before dawn, and saw a figure cross the room, outlined by the light of the banked oven-fire.

It is nothing, she thought: a dream, the kitchen cat. But then the figure paused, as though it sensed her regard. It turned a fraction. Vasya hardly dared to breathe, for she saw its face, a pale scrawl in the dim light. The eyes were the color of winter ice. She drew breath—to speak or to scream—but then the figure was gone. Daylight was filtering in round the kitchen door and from the village there came a wailing cry.

“It is Timofei,” said Pyotr, naming a village boy. Pyotr had risen before dawn to see to his stock. Now he came briskly through the door, stamping snow from his boots and brushing away the ice that had formed in his beard. He was hollow-eyed from cold and sleeplessness. “He died in the night.” The kitchen filled with exclamations. Vasya, half-awake on the oven, remembered the figure that had passed in the darkness. Dunya said nothing at all, but went about her baking, lips set. Her glance flicked often and worriedly from Vasya to Irina. Winter was cruel to the young.

At midmorning, the women gathered in the bathhouse to wrap his wasted body. Vasya, spilling into the hut behind her stepmother, caught a glimpse of Timofei’s face: he was glassy-eyed, the tears frozen on his thin cheeks. His mother clutched the stiffening body to her, whispering to him, ignoring her neighbors. Neither patience nor reason would draw the child from her, and when the women tugged him forcibly from her arms, she began to scream.

The room dissolved into chaos. The mother flew at her neighbors, crying for her son. Most of the women had children themselves; they quailed at the look in her eyes. The mother clawed blindly, scrabbling. The room was too small. Vasya thrust Irina out of harm’s way and seized the reaching arms. She was strong, but slender, and the mother was wild with grief. Vasya clung and tried to speak. “Let go of me, witch!” screamed the woman. “Let go!” Vasya, disconcerted, loosened her grip and an elbow caught her across the face. She saw stars, and her arms fell away.

In that moment, Father Konstantin appeared in the doorway. His nose was red, his face as raw as anyone’s, but he absorbed the scene in an instant, took two strides across the tiny hut, and caught the mother’s groping fingers. The woman gave one desperate wrench and then stilled, trembling.

“He is gone, Yasna,” Konstantin said, stern.

“No,” she croaked. “I held him in my arms, all last night I held him, as the fire burned low—he cannot, he will not leave if I hold him. Give him back to me!”

“He belongs to God,” said Konstantin. “As do we all.”

“He is my son! My only son. Mine—”

“Be still,” he said. “Sit down. This is unseemly. Come, the women will lay him before the fire and heat water for washing.” His deep voice was soft and even. Yasna allowed him to lead her to the oven and sank down beside it.

All that morning—indeed, all that brief dull winter day—Konstantin talked, and Yasna stared at him like a swimmer caught in a riptide, while the women stripped Timofei’s body, and washed it, and wrapped it in cold linen. The priest was still there when Vasya came back from another bitter day searching for firewood; she saw him standing before the door of the bathhouse, gulping the cold air as though it were water.

“Would you like some mead, Batyushka?” she said.

Konstantin jerked in surprise. Vasya made no noise walking, and her gray furs mingled with the falling night. But after a pause he said, “I would, Vasilisa Petrovna.” His beautiful voice was little more than a thread, the resonance gone. Gravely she handed him her little skin of honey-wine. He gulped it with desperate eagerness. Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he handed the skin back to her, only to find her studying him, a furrow between her brows.

“Will you keep vigil tonight?” she asked.

“It is my place,” he replied with a hint of hauteur; the question was impertinent.

She saw his annoyance and smiled; he frowned. “I honor you for it, Batyushka,” she said.

She turned toward the great house, melting into the shadows. Konstantin watched her go, lips pressed together. The taste of mead was heavy in his mouth.

The priest kept that night’s vigil by the body. His gaunt face was set, and his lips moved in prayer. Vasya, who had returned in the small hours to keep her own vigil, could not help but admire his steady purpose, though the air had never echoed so with sobs and prayers as it had since his coming.

It was far too cold to linger over the boy’s tiny grave, hacked with much labor out of the iron-hard earth. As soon as decency permitted, the people scattered back to their huts, leaving the poor thing alone in his icy cradle, with Father Konstantin hindmost, half-dragging the bereaved mother.

People began cramming into fewer and fewer izby, with extended families sharing one oven to save firewood. But the wood disappeared so quickly—as though some ill wish made it burn. So they went into the woods regardless of paw prints, the women goaded by the sight of Timofei’s marble face and the dreadful look in his mother’s eyes. It was inevitable that someone would not come back.

Oleg’s son Danil was only bones when they found him, scattered widely over a stretch of trampled and bloody snow. His father brought the gnawed bone-ends to Pyotr and, wordless, laid them before him.

Pyotr looked down at them and said nothing.

“Pyotr Vladimirovich—” Oleg began, croaking, but Pyotr shook his head.

“Bury your son,” he said, his glance lingering on his own children. “I shall summon the men tomorrow.”

Alyosha spent the long night checking the haft of his boar-spear and sharpening his hunting-knife. A little color showed in his beardless cheeks. Vasya watched him work. Part of her itched to take up a spear herself, to go and brave dangers in the winter wood. The other part wanted to crack her brother over the head for his heedless excitement.

“I will bring you a wolfskin, Vasya,” Alyosha said, laying his weapons aside.

“Keep your wolfskin,” Vasya retorted, “if you can only promise to bring your own skin back without freezing your toes off.”

Her brother grinned, his eyes glittering. “Worried, little sister?”

The two sat apart from the mob near the oven, but Vasya still lowered her voice. “I don’t like this. Do you think I want to have to chop your frozen toes off? Or your fingers?”

“But there’s no help for it, Vasochka,” said Alyosha, putting down his boot. “Wood we must have. Better to go out and fight than freeze to death in our houses.”

Vasya pursed her lips but made no answer. She thought suddenly of the vazila, black-eyed with wrath. She thought of the crusts she brought him to quiet his anger. Is there another who is angry? Such a one could only be in the wood, where the cold winds blew and the wolves howled.

Don’t even think it, Vasya, said the sensible voice in her skull. But Vasya glanced at her family. She saw her father’s grim face, her brothers’ suppressed excitement.

Well, I can but try. If Alyosha is hurt tomorrow, I will hate myself forever if I did not try. Without pausing to think longer, Vasya went for her boots and winter cloak.

No one bothered asking where she was going. The truth would not have occurred to anyone.

Vasya climbed the palisade, hampered by her mittens. The stars were few and faint; the moon cast a blaze of light over the hard-frozen snow. Vasya passed the eave of the wood, from moonlight into darkness. She walked briskly. It was dreadfully cold. The snow squeaked under her feet. Somewhere, a wolf howled. Vasya tried not to think of the yellow eyes. Her teeth would surely rattle out of her head from shivering.

Suddenly Vasya stumbled to a halt. She thought she’d heard a voice. Slowing her breath, she listened. No—only the wind.

But what was that there? It looked like a great tree: one she half-remembered, with an odd sly memory, that slid in and out of her mind. No—it was only a shadow, cast by the moon.

A bone-chilling wind played in the branches high above.

Out of the hiss and clatter, Vasya suddenly thought she heard words. Are you warm, child? said the wind, half-laughing.

In fact, Vasya felt her bones would splinter like frost-killed branches, but she replied steadily, “Who are you? Are you sending the frost?”

There was a very long silence. Vasya wondered if she had imagined the voice. Then it seemed she heard, mockingly, And why not? I, too, am angry. The voice seemed to throw echoes, so that the whole wood took up the cry.

“That is no answer,” retorted the girl. The sensible part of her pointed out that perhaps a little meekness was in order when dealing with half-heard voices in the dead of night. But the cold was making her sleepy; she fought it with every scrap of will and had none left over for meekness.

I bring the frost, said the voice. Suddenly it was curling icy, loving fingers about her face and throat. A cold touch like fingertips slipped beneath her clothes and wrapped round her heart.

“Then will you stop?” Vasya whispered, fighting fear. Her heart beat as though against another’s hand. “I speak for my people; they are afraid; they are sorry. Soon it will be as it always was: our churches and our chyerti together and no more fear or talk of demons.”

It will be too late, said the wind, and the forest took it up: too late, too late. Then, Besides, it is not my frost you should fear, devushka. It is the fires. Tell me, do your fires burn too fast?

“It is only the cold that makes them burn so.”

Nay, it is the coming storm. The first sign is fear. The second is always fire. Your people are afraid, and now the fires burn.

“Turn the storm aside then, I beg you,” said Vasya. “Here, I brought a gift.” She put a hand into her sleeve.

It was nothing much, just a scrap of dry bread and a pinch of salt, but when she held it out, the wind died.

In the silence, Vasya heard the wolf howl again, very near now, and answered in a chorus. But in the same instant a white mare stepped out from between two trees, and Vasya forgot the wolves. The mare’s long mane fell like icicles, and her snorting breath made a plume in the night.

Vasya caught her breath. “Oh, you are beautiful,” she said, and even she could hear the longing in her voice. “Are you bringing the frost?”

Did the white mare have a rider? Vasya could not tell. One instant it seemed she did, and then the mare twitched her skin and the shape on her back was only a trick of the light.

The white horse put her small ears forward, toward the bread and salt. Vasya held out her hand. She felt the horse’s warm breath on her face and stared into her dark eye. Suddenly she felt warmer. Even the wind felt warmer where it twined around her face.

I bring the frost, said the voice. Vasya did not think it was the mare. It is my wrath and my warning. But you are brave, devushka, and I relent. For the sake of an offering. A small pause. But the fear is not mine, and neither are the fires. The storm is coming, and the frost will be as nothing beside it. Courage will save you. If your people are afraid, then they are lost.

“What storm?” whispered Vasya.

Beware the turning seasons, she thought the wind sighed. Beware…and the voice was gone. But the wind remained. Harder and harder it blew, wordless, flinging clouds across the moon, and the wind smelled, blessedly, of snow. The deep frost could not last while it snowed.

When Vasya stumbled back through the door of her own house, the flakes that covered her hood and caught in her eyelashes effectively silenced her family’s clamor. Alyosha seized her in speechless delight, and Irina went laughing outside to catch a handful of the falling whiteness.

That night the cold indeed broke. It snowed for a week. When the snow finally stopped, it took them three more days to dig themselves out. By then the wolves had taken advantage of the relative warmth to feast on stringy rabbits and move deeper into the forest. No one ever saw them again. Only Alyosha seemed disappointed.

DUNYA SLEPT BADLY THOSE late-winter nights, and it was not only because of the cold and aching of her bones, nor yet her worry over Irina’s cough or Vasya’s pale face.

“It is time,” said the frost-demon.

There was no sledge in Dunya’s dream this time, no sunshine or crisp winter air. She stood in a gloomy and muttering forest. It seemed that a greater shadow lurked somewhere in the dark. Waiting. The winter-demon’s pale features were drawn fine as etching, his eyes drained of color. “It must be now,” he said. “She is a woman, and stronger than even she knows. I can perhaps keep evil from you, but I must have that girl.”

“She is a child,” protested Dunya. Demon, she thought. Tempter. Liar. “A child still—she teases me for honeycakes even when she knows there are none—and she has grown so pale this winter, all eyes and bones. How can I give her up now?”

The demon’s face was cold. “My brother is waking; every day his prison weakens. That child, all unknowing, has done what she can to protect you, with crusts and courage and the sight. But my brother laughs at such things; she must have the jewel.”

The dark seemed to press closer, hissing. The frost-demon spoke sharply, in words Dunya did not know. A bright wind filtered around the clearing, and the shadows drew back. The moon came out and set the snow to glowing.

“Please, winter-king,” Dunya said humbly, clenching her hands together. “Another year. One more sun-season; she will grow strong with rain and sunlight. I will not—I cannot—give my girl to Winter now.”

Laughter suddenly boomed from the undergrowth: old, slow laughter. Suddenly it seemed to Dunya that the moonlight shone through the frost-demon, that he was nothing but a trick of light and shadow.

But then he was a real man again, with weight and shape and form. His head was turned away, scanning the undergrowth. When he turned back to Dunya, his face was grim.

“You know her best,” he said. “I cannot take her unready; she will die. Another year, then. Against my judgment.”

Chapter 14: The Mouse and the Maiden

Anna Ivanovna suffered with the others that winter. Her hands swelled and stiffened; her teeth ached. She dreamed of cheese and eggs and cresses, all the while eating sour cabbage and black bread and smoked fish. Irina, never strong, faded to a listless shadow of herself, and Anna, terrified for her child, found a strange kinship with Dunya in coaxing broths and honey down the child’s throat and keeping her warm.

But at least she saw no demons. The little bearded creature did not creep about the house; the twiggy brown beggar did not creep about the dvor. Anna saw only men and women, and endured only the ordinary troubles of a crowded house in a bad winter. And Father Konstantin was there: a man like an angel, such as she had never imagined a man to be, with his shining voice and tender mouth and the blessed icons that took shape under his strong hands. She saw him every day that winter, when they were all cooped up indoors. It was meat and drink to her to bask in his presence, and she desired nothing more. Her mind was at ease; she could even bring herself to smile at her stepsons and endure Vasilisa.

But when the snow came and the cold broke, Anna’s peace was shattered.

A gray noontide, with little snow flurries out of a leaden sky, found Anna running to find Konstantin in his cell. “The demons are still here, Batyushka,” she cried. “They came back; they were only hiding before. They are sly; they are liars. How have I sinned? Father, what must I do?” She was weeping, shivering. Only that morning, the domovoi had crept, stubborn and smoldering, out of the oven and taken up Dunya’s basket of mending.

Konstantin did not answer at once. His fingers were blue and white where they gripped the brush—he had retreated to his room to paint. Anna had brought him soup. It sloshed in her trembling hands. Cabbage, Konstantin noted with disgust. He was mortally weary of cabbage. Anna put the bowl down beside him, but she did not go.

“Patience, Anna Ivanovna,” the priest replied, when it became clear she was waiting for him to speak. He did not turn around, nor slow his quick, dabbing brushstrokes. It was weeks since he had painted. “It is an infestation of long standing, fed by the straying of many. Only wait, and I will bring them back to God.”

“Yes, Batyushka,” Anna said. “But today I saw—”

He hissed between his teeth, “Anna Ivanovna, you will never be rid of devils if you creep around looking for them. What good Christian woman behaves so? You would do better to fear God and pass your time in prayer. Much prayer.” He glanced pointedly toward the door.

But Anna did not go. “You have done wonders already. I am—do not think me ungrateful, Batyushka.” She swayed toward him, trembling. Her hand dropped onto his shoulder.

Konstantin shot her an impatient glance. She jerked back as though burned, and a dull flush crept up her face. “Give thanks to God, Anna Ivanovna,” Konstantin said. “Leave me to my work.”

She stood a moment, wordless, and then fled.

Konstantin seized his soup and swallowed it at a gulp. He wiped his mouth and tried again to find the calm needful for painting. But the lady’s words scratched at him. Demons. Devils. How have I sinned? Konstantin’s mind wandered. He had filled these people with the fear of God, and they were on the path to salvation. They needed him—loved and feared him in equal measure. Rightly, for he was God’s messenger. They worshipped his icons. All that he could contrive with words and fierce looks, of obedience to God’s will and spirit of humility, he had done. He felt the effect.

And yet.

Unwillingly, Konstantin thought of Pyotr’s second daughter. He had watched her that winter, her childish grace, her laughter, her careless impudence, the secret sadness that sometimes crossed her face. He remembered how once she had emerged out of the dusk, at home in the cold and the falling night. He himself had taken mead from her hand, not thinking beyond his gratitude that he might slake his thirst.

She is not afraid, Konstantin thought dourly. She does not fear God; she fears nothing. He saw it in her silences, her fey glance, the long hours she spent in the forest. In any case, no good Christian maid ever had eyes like that, or walked with such grace in the dark.

For her soul, and for the souls of all in this desolate place, thought Konstantin, he must have her humility. She must see what she was and fear it. Save her, and he would save them all. Failing that…Konstantin paid no mind to his fingers; he painted in a haze while his mind worried away at the problem. At last he swam back to consciousness and his eyes took in what he had painted.

Wild green eyes stared back at him, that he had meant to make only a gentle blue. The woman’s long veil could just as easily have been a curtain of red-black hair. She seemed to laugh at him, caught in the wood and forever free. Konstantin shouted and flung the board away. It thudded to the floor, splattering paint.

THAT SPRING WAS TOO WET, and too cold. Irina, who loved flowers, wept, for the snowdrops never bloomed. The fields were plowed under torrents of unseasonable rain, and for weeks nothing would dry, indoors or out. Vasya, in desperation, tried putting their stockings in the oven with the fire pushed to one corner. She withdrew them considerably warmer, but no drier. Half the village was coughing, and she looked her brother over frowningly as he came to dress.

“As your experiments go, this one could have been worse,” said Alyosha, eying his slightly charred stockings. His eyes were red, his voice hoarse. He made a face as he pulled the warm, damp wool over his foot.

“Yes,” said Vasya, drawing on her own stockings. “I could have cooked the lot.” She eyed him again. “There will be something hot for dinner tonight. Don’t die before the rain stops, little brother.”

“No promises, little sister,” said Alyosha darkly, coughing. He straightened his hat and slipped outside.

With the rain and the damp, Father Konstantin took to making his brushes and grinding his stone in the winter kitchen. It was considerably warmer and somewhat drier than his room, though much noisier, with dogs and children and the feeblest of their goats underfoot. Vasya regretted the change. He never once spoke to her, though he commended Irina and instructed Anna Ivanovna often enough. But, even in the uproar, Vasya could feel his eyes on her. While she joked with Dunya, kneaded their poor thin bread, and plied her distaff, Vasya was always aware of the priest’s steady stare.

Better to tell me my fault to my face, Batyushka.

She hid in the stable whenever she could. Her forays into the crowded house meant rounds of unremitting work while Anna screeched and prayed by turns. And always, there was the priest’s silence and his grave regard.

Vasya never told anyone where she’d gone that bitter night in January. Afterward, she sometimes thought she had dreamed it: the voice on the wind and the white horse. With Konstantin watching, she was careful to address no remarks to the domovoi. But the priest watched her all the same. It was, she thought, almost despairing, simply a matter of time before she got herself into trouble and he pounced. But the days ran together, and the priest kept his silence.

April came, and Vasya found herself in the horse-pasture stitching up Mysh, Sasha’s old horse, now a broodmare who had borne seven foals. Though no longer young, the mare was still strong and sound, and her wise old eyes missed nothing. The most valuable horses—Mysh among them—spent the winter in the stable and went out to pasture with the others as soon as the grass showed through the snow. Certain disagreements always arose in consequence, and Mysh had a hoof-shaped gash on her flank. Vasya plied her needle more deftly in flesh than she did in cloth. The scarlet slash grew steadily smaller. The horse stood still, only shivering from time to time.

“Summer summer summer,” sang Vasya. The sun shone warm again, and the rain had stopped long enough to give the barley a chance. Measuring herself against the horse, Vasya found she had grown even taller over the winter. Well, she thought ruefully, we can’t all be small as Irina.

Tiny Irina was already hailed as a beauty. Vasya tried not to think of it.

Mysh broke into the girl’s reverie. We would like to offer you a gift, she said. She put down her head to nibble at the new grass.

Vasya’s hands faltered. “A gift?”

You brought us bread this winter. We are in your debt.

“Us? But the vazila—”

Is all of us together, replied the mare. Something more as well, but mostly he is us.

“Oh,” said Vasya, perplexed. “Well, I thank you.”

Best not be grateful for the grass until you’ve eaten it, the mare said with a snort. Our gift is this: we wish to teach you to ride.

This time Vasya really did freeze, except the blood came rushing into her heart. She could ride—on a fat gray pony she shared with Irina—but…“Truly?” she whispered.

Yes, said the mare, though it may prove a mixed blessing. Such a gift could drive you apart from your people.

“My people,” said Vasya, very low. They wept before the icons while the domovoi starved. I do not know them. They have changed and I have not. Aloud she said, “I am not afraid.”

Good, said the mare. We shall begin when the mud dries.

VASYA HALF-FORGOT THE MARE’S promise in the weeks that followed. Spring meant weeks of numbing labor, and at each day’s close, Vasya ate the poor bread from the previous year’s barley, with soft white cheese and tender new herbs, then flung herself onto the oven and slept like a child.

But suddenly it was May, and the mud disappeared under new grass. Dandelions shone like stars amid the deep green. The horses threw long shadows and the sickle moon stood alone in the sky, on the day that Vasya, sweating, scratched and exhausted, stopped in the horse-pasture on her way back from the barley-field.

Come here, said Mysh. Get on my back.

Vasya was almost too tired to reply; she gazed stupidly at the horse and said, “I’ve no saddle.”

Mysh snorted. Nor will you. You must learn to manage without. I will carry you, but I am not your servant.

Vasya met the mare’s eye. A flicker of humor showed in the brown depths. “Does your leg not pain you?” she asked, feebly, nodding at the half-healed gash on the mare’s flank.

No, Mysh replied. Mount.

Vasya thought of her hot supper, of her stool by the oven. Then she gritted her teeth, backed up, ran, and flung herself belly-down onto the mare’s back. A bit of squirming, and Vasya settled herself uncomfortably just behind the hard withers.

The mare’s ears eased back at the scrabbling. You will need practice.

Vasya could never remember where they went that day. They rode, of necessity, deep in the woods. But the riding was painful; that, Vasya always remembered. They jogged along until Vasya’s back and legs trembled. Be still, said the mare. It is as if there are three of you instead of one. Vasya tried, slipping this way and that. At last, exasperated, Mysh pulled up sharply. Vasya rolled over the mare’s shoulder and landed, blinking, on the loamy forest floor.

Get up, said the horse. Be more careful.

When they returned to the pasture, Vasya was filthy, bruised, and certain that walking was beyond her. She had also missed her supper and earned a scolding. But the next evening she did it again. And again. It was not always with Mysh; the horses took turns teaching her to ride. She could not go every day. In spring she worked incessantly—they all did—to put the crops in the earth.

But Vasya went often enough, and slowly her back and thighs and stomach began to hurt less. Finally the day came when they did not hurt at all. And in the meantime, she learned to keep her balance, to vault to a horse’s back, to spin and start and stop and leap until she could no longer tell where the horse ended and she began.

The sky seemed bigger that midsummer, clouds scudding across it like swans. The barley rippled green in the fields, though it was stunted and Pyotr shook his head over it. Vasya, her basket over her arm, disappeared into the forest every day. Dunya would sometimes look askance at the girl’s offerings—birchbark, mostly, or buckthorn for making dye, and rarely in sufficient quantities. However, Vasya was golden and shining with happiness, so Dunya just harrumphed and said nothing.

But all the while, the heat deepened until it was honey-thick: too hot. For all the people’s prayers, fires broke out in the tinder-dry forest, and the barley grew but slowly.

A white-hot day in August saw Vasya making her way to the lake, trying not to limp. Buran had taken Vasya riding. The gray stallion—white now—was still the biggest of the riding horses, and he had the wickedest sense of humor. Vasya had bruises to prove it.

The lake dazzled in the sunlight. As Vasya drew nearer, she thought she heard rustling in the trees that fringed the water. But when she looked up, she saw no flash of green skin. After a few moments’ fruitless search, Vasya gave up, stripped, and slid into the lake. The water was purest snowmelt, cold even at midsummer. It drove the air from her lungs, and Vasya bit back a yelp. She dove at once, the icy water startling life from her weary limbs. She cavorted about underwater, peering here and there. But there was no rusalka. Vaguely uneasy, Vasya paddled to the bank, pulled her clothes into the water, and pounded them clean on rocks. Finally she hung them, dripping, on a nearby limb and climbed the tree herself, stretching catlike along a branch to dry in the sun.

Perhaps an hour later, Vasya roused herself from an exhausted stupor and eyed her half-dry clothes. The sun had passed its zenith and begun to tilt west, which meant, in the long days of midsummer, that the afternoon was well advanced. By now Anna would be seething, and even Dunya would give her a tight-lipped glare when she slunk in the door. Irina was no doubt crouched over the sweltering oven or wearing out her fingers with mending. Feeling guilty, Vasya crept down to a lower limb—and froze.

Father Konstantin was sitting in the grass. He might have been a handsome farmer and not a priest at all. He had traded his robe for a linen shirt and loose trousers, studded with bits of barley-stem, and his uncovered hair blazed in the afternoon sun. He was looking out at the lake. What is he doing here? Vasya was still screened by the tree’s foliage; she hooked her knees around the branch, let herself down, and snatched her clothes, quick as a squirrel. Perching awkwardly on an upper limb, trying not to fall and break an arm, she slipped into her shirt and leggings—stolen from Alyosha—and used her fingers to wrestle some order into her hair. Finally she flicked the end of a lumpy braid behind her, caught the tree-limb, and swung to the ground. Maybe if I creep away very quietly…

Then Vasya saw the rusalka. She was standing in the water. Her hair floated around her, half-masking her bare breasts. She smiled, just a little, at Father Konstantin. The priest, entranced, stood up and swayed toward her. Without thinking, Vasya darted at him and caught his hand. But he shoved her off, almost casually, stronger than he looked.

Vasya turned to the rusalka. “Leave him alone!”

“He will kill us all,” the rusalka replied, voice soft, eyes never leaving her prey. “Already it has begun. If he goes on as he has, all the guardians of the deep forest will disappear; the storm will come and the land will go undefended. Have you not seen it? Fear is first, then fire, then famine. He made your people afraid. And then the fires burned, and now the sun scorches. You will be hungry when the cold comes. The winter-king is weak, and his brother very near. He will come if the wards fail. Better anything than that.” Her voice shook with passion. “Better I take this one now.”

Father Konstantin took another step. The water welled up around his boots. He was on the very brink of the lake.

Vasya shook her head, trying to clear it. “You must not.”

“Why not? Is his life worth everyone else’s? And I say to you surely that if he lives now, many will die.”

Vasya hesitated a long moment. She remembered, unwillingly, the priest praying beside Timofei’s stiffening corpse, mouthing the words long after his voice had gone. She remembered him holding the boy’s mother upright when she would have fallen weeping to the snow. The girl set her teeth and shook her head.

The rusalka threw back her head and shrieked. And then she wasn’t there at all; there was only sun on the water, weeds, and tree-shadows. Vasya caught the priest’s hand and yanked him away from the edge. He looked down at her and awareness came back to his eyes.

KONSTANTIN’S FEET WERE COLD, and he felt strangely bereft. Cold because he was standing in six inches of water on the very brink of the lake, but he wondered at the stab of loneliness. He never felt lonely. A face was swimming into focus. Before he could put a name to it, the person caught his hand and dragged him stumbling back to dry land. The light glanced red off the black braid and suddenly he knew her. “Vasilisa Petrovna.”

She dropped his hand, turned and looked at him. “Batyushka.”

He felt his wet feet, remembered the woman in the lake, and felt the beginnings of fear. “What are you doing?” he demanded.

“Saving your life,” she replied. “The lake is a danger to you.”

“Demons…”

Vasya shrugged. “Or the guardian of the lake. Call her what you will.”

He made as though to turn back to the water, fumbling at his cross with one hand.

She reached forward and seized it, breaking the thong that held it around his neck. “Leave it, and her,” the girl said fiercely, holding the cross out of reach. “You’ve done enough damage; can you not let them be?”

“I want to save you, Vasilisa Petrovna,” he said. “I will save you all. There are dark forces that you do not understand.”

To his surprise, and perhaps to hers, she laughed. Amusement smoothed the angles of her face. Caught, he stared at her in unwilling admiration.

“It seems to me, Batyushka, that it is you who do not understand, as it was your life that needed saving. Go back to the work in the barley-fields and leave the lake alone.” She turned without waiting to see if he followed, feet noiseless on the moss and pine needles. Konstantin fell in beside her. She still held his wooden cross between her two fingers.

“Vasilisa Petrovna,” he tried again, cursing his clumsiness. Always he knew what to say. But this girl turned her clear gaze on him, and all his certainty grew vague and foolish. “You must leave your barbaric ways. You must return to God in fear and true repentance. You are the daughter of a good Christian lord. Your mother will run mad if we do not exorcise the demons from her hearth. Vasilisa Petrovna, turn. Repent.”

“I go to church, Father,” she replied. “Anna Ivanovna is not my mother, nor is her madness my business. Just as my soul is not yours. And it seems to me we did very well before you came; for if we prayed less, we also wept less.”

She had walked swiftly. Through the tree-trunks he could see the palisade of the village.

“Mark me, Batyushka,” she said. “Pray for the dead, comfort the sick, and comfort my stepmother. But leave me alone, or next time one of them comes for you, I shall not lift a finger to stop it.” She did not wait for a reply but thrust his cross back into his hand and strode off toward the village.

It was warm from her hand, and his fingers curled reluctantly around it.

Chapter 15: They Only Come for the Wild Maiden

The blinding afternoon sunlight gave way to honey-gold, and at last to amber and rust. A faint half moon showed just above a line of pale yellow sky. The heat of the day went with the light, and the men in the barley-field shivered in their cooling sweat. Konstantin put his scythe over his shoulder. Bloody blisters had blossomed beneath the hardened skin of his palms. He balanced the scythe with his fingertips and avoided Pyotr Vladimirovich. Longing closed his throat and wrath stole his voice. It was a demon. It was your imagination. You did not cast her out; you crawled toward her.

God, he wanted to go back to Moscow—or Kiev—or further yet. To eat bread hot and plentiful instead of starving half the year, to leave the plowing to farmers, to speak before thousands, and never lie awake, wondering.

No. God had given him a task. He could not lay it aside half-finished.

Oh, if I could but finish.

His jaw set. He would. He must. And before he died he would live again in a world where girls did not defy him and demons did not walk in Christian daylight.

Konstantin passed the mown barley and skirted the horse-pasture. The edge of the wood threw hungry shadows. He turned his face away, toward Pyotr’s herds grazing in the long twilight. A flash of brightness showed among the grays and chestnuts. Konstantin narrowed his eyes. One horse—Pyotr’s war-stallion—stood still, his head up. A slender figure stood at the beast’s shoulder, silhouetted against the sunset. Konstantin knew her at once. The stallion curved its wicked head around to nibble at her braid, and she laughed like a child.

Konstantin had never seen Vasya so. In the house, she was grave and wary, careless and charming by turn, all eyes and bones and soundless feet. But alone, under the sky, she was beautiful as a yearling filly, or a new-flown hawk.

Konstantin forced his face to coldness. Her people offered him beeswax and honey, begged him for counsel and prayers. They kissed his hand; their faces lit when they saw him. But that girl avoided his glance and his footstep, yet a horse—a dumb beast—could charm that light from her. The light should have been for him—for God—for him as God’s messenger. She was as Anna Ivanovna named her: hard-hearted, undutiful, unmaidenly. She conversed with demons and dared to boast that she’d saved his life.

But his fingers itched for wood and wax and brushes, to capture the love and loneliness, the pride and half-blossomed womanhood written in the lines of the girl’s body. She saved your life, Konstantin Nikonovich.

Savagely, he quelled both thought and impulse. Painting was for the glory of God, not to glorify the frailty of transient flesh. She summoned a devil; it was the finger of God that saved my life. But when he tore himself away, the scene was burned on the backs of his eyelids.

IT WAS VIOLET EVENTIDE when Vasya came into the kitchen, still flushed with the day’s sun. She seized her bowl and spoon, claimed a portion for herself, and took it to the window. The twilight greened her eyes. She tore into her food, pausing from time to time to glance out into the long summer dusk. With stiff, deliberate steps, Konstantin placed himself beside her. Her hair smelled of earth and sun and lake-water. She did not look away from the window. The village was starry with well-tended fires; a faint half moon soared in a cloud-fretted sky. The silence between them stretched out, amid the bustle of the crowded kitchen. It was the priest that broke it. “I am a man of God,” Konstantin said, low. “But I would have been sorry to die.”

Vasya gave him a swift, startled glance. A ghost of a smile showed in the corner of her mouth. “I don’t believe it, Batyushka,” she said. “Did I not rob you of your quick ascent to heaven?”

“I thank you for my life,” Konstantin went on, stiffly. “But God is not mocked.” His hand was suddenly warm on hers. The smile left her face. “Remember,” he said. He slipped an object between her fingers. His hand, roughened with the scythe, slid over her knuckles. He did not speak. Suddenly Vasya understood why the women all begged him for prayers; understood, too, that his warm hand, the strong bones of his face, were a weapon, to use where the weapons of speech had failed. He would get her obedience thus, with his rough hand, his beautiful eyes.

Am I as great a fool as Anna Ivanovna? Vasya threw her head back and pulled away. He let her go. She did not see his hand tremble. His shadow wavered on the wall when he walked away.

Anna was stitching linens on her stool by the hearth. The cloth slipped to her knees and, when she stood, fell unheeded to the floor. “What did he give you?” she hissed. “What was it?” Every spot and line stood out on her face.

Vasya had no idea, but she lifted the thing for her stepmother to see. It was his wooden cross, with the two reaching arms, carved of silky pine-wood. Vasya gazed at it in some wonder. What is this, priest? A warning? An apology? A challenge?

“A cross,” she said.

But Anna had seized it. “It’s mine,” she said. “He meant it for me. Get out!”

There were several things Vasya might have said, but she settled on the safest: “I am sure he did.” But she did not go; she took her bowl to the hearth, to charm more stew out of Dunya and steal a heel of bread from her unwary sister. In a few minutes Vasya was dabbing her bowl with the crust and laughing at Irina’s bewildered face.

Anna did not speak again, but neither did she take up her sewing. Vasya, for all her laughter, could feel her stepmother’s burning stare.

ANNA DID NOT SLEEP that night, but paced from her bed to the church. When a deep, clear dawn replaced the blue summer midnight, she went to her husband and shook him awake.

Never once, in nine years, had Anna come to Pyotr of her own will. Pyotr seized his wife in a very businesslike choke before he realized who it was. Anna’s hair straggled, gray-brown, about her face, and her kerchief hung askew. Her eyes were like two stones. “My love,” she said, gasping and massaging her throat.

“What is wrong?” Pyotr demanded. He slipped from his warm bed and hurried into his clothes. “Is it Irina?”

Anna smoothed her hair, straightened her kerchief. “No—no.”

Pyotr dragged a shirt over his head and did up his sash. “Then what?” he said in no very pleasant tones. She had startled him, badly.

Anna trembled, her eyelids downswept. “Have you noticed that your daughter Vasilisa is much grown since last summer?”

Pyotr’s movements faltered. The infant day threw lines of pale gold across his floor. Anna had never taken an interest in Vasya. “Has she?” he said, bewildered now.

“And that she is grown quite passably attractive?”

Pyotr blinked and frowned. “She is a child.”

“A woman,” snapped Anna. Pyotr was taken aback. She had never contradicted him before. “A hoyden, all arms and legs and eyes. But she will have a good dowry. Better to see her married now, husband. If she loses what looks she has, she might not marry at all.”

“She will not lose her looks in the next year,” said Pyotr curtly. “And certainly not in the next hour. Why rouse me, wife?” He left the room. The nutty tang of baking bread gladdened the house, and he was hungry.

“Your daughter Olga was married at fourteen.” Anna followed him breathlessly. Olga had prospered since her marriage; she was become a great lady, a fat matron with two children. Her husband was high in the Grand Prince’s favor.

Pyotr seized a new loaf and broke it open. “I will consider the matter,” he said, to silence her. He took a great ball of the steaming insides and filled his mouth. His teeth ached sometimes; the softness was not unwelcome. You are an old man, Pyotr thought. He shut his eyes and tried to drown his wife’s voice with the sound of chewing.

THE MEN WENT TO the barley-fields at daybreak. All morning, they scythed the rippling grass with great howling strokes, and then they spread the stalks to dry. Their rakes went to and fro with a monotonous hiss. The sun was a live thing, throwing its hot arms over their necks. Their feeble shadows hid at their feet, their faces glowed with sweat and sunburn. Pyotr and his sons worked alongside the peasants; everyone worked at harvest-time. Pyotr was jealous of every kernel. The barley had not grown so tall as it ought, and the heads were thin and poor.

Alyosha straightened his aching back and shielded his eyes with a dirty hand. His face lit. A rider was coming down from the village, galloping on a brown horse. “Finally,” he said. He put two fingers in his mouth. A long whistle split the midday stillness. All across the field, men put aside their rakes, rubbed grass-ends from their faces, and made for the river. The deep green banks and the chuckling water gave a little relief from the heat.

Pyotr leaned on his rake and pushed the wet, grizzled hair from his brow. But he did not leave the barley-field. The rider was coming nearer, galloping on a neat-footed mare. Pyotr squinted. He could make out his second daughter’s black braid, streaming behind her. But she was not riding her own quiet pony. Mysh’s white feet flashed in the dust. Vasya saw her father and swung an arm in salute. Pyotr waited, scowling, to reprove his daughter when she came nearer. She will break her neck one day, that mad thing.

But how well she sat the horse. The mare vaulted a ditch and came on at a gallop, her rider motionless except for the flying hair. The two came to a halt at the edge of the wood. Vasya had a reed basket balanced before her. In the bright sunlight, Pyotr could not make out her features, but it struck him how tall she had grown. “Are you not hungry, Father?” she called. The mare stood still, poised. And bridleless—she wore nothing at all, not so much as a rope halter. Vasya rode with both hands on her basket.

“I am coming, Vasya,” he said, feeling unaccountably grim. He set his rake on his shoulder.

The sun glanced off a golden head; Konstantin Nikonovich had not quit the barley-field, but stood watching the slender rider until the trees hid her. My daughter rides like a steppe boy. What must he think of her, our virtuous priest?

The men were flinging the cold water over their heads and drinking it in great handfuls. When Pyotr came to the creek, Vasya was off her horse and among them, passing a skin bag full of kvas. Dunya had made an enormous pasty in the oven, lumpy with grain and cheese and summer vegetables. The men gathered round and sawed off wedges. Grease mixed with the sweat on their faces.

It struck Pyotr how strange Vasya looked among the big, coarse men, with her long bones and her slenderness, her great eyes set so wide apart. I want a daughter like my mother was, Marina had said. Well, there she was, a falcon among cows.

The men did not speak to her; they ate their pie quickly, heads down, and went back to the scorching fields. Alyosha tugged his sister’s braid and grinned at her in passing. But Pyotr saw the men throwing her backward glances as they went. “Witch,” one of them murmured, though Pyotr did not hear. “She has charmed the horse. The priest says—”

The pasty was gone, and the men with it, but Vasya lingered. She set the skin of kvas aside and went to dip her hands in the stream. She walked like a child. Well, of course she does. She is a girl still: my little frog. And yet she had a wild thing’s heedless grace. Vasya left the stream and came toward him, gathering up her basket on the way. Pyotr had a shock when he looked her in the face, which is perhaps why he frowned so blackly. Her smile faded. “Here, Father,” she said, and handed him the skin of kvas.

Oh, savior, he thought. Perhaps Anna Ivanovna did not speak so wrong. If she is not a woman, she will be soon. Father Konstantin’s gaze, Pyotr saw, lingered again on his daughter.

“Vasya,” Pyotr said, rougher than he meant. “What is the meaning of this, taking the mare, and riding her so, without saddle or bridle? You’ll break an arm or your foolish neck.”

Vasya flushed. “Dunya bid me take the basket and make haste. Mysh was the nearest horse, and it was only a little way, too short to trouble with a saddle.”

“Or a halter, dochka?” said Pyotr with some asperity.

Vasya’s blush deepened. “I did not come to harm, Father.”

Pyotr looked her over in silence. If she’d been a boy, he’d have been applauding that display of horsemanship. But she was a girl, a hoydenish girl, on the cusp of womanhood. Pyotr remembered again the young priest’s stare.

“We’ll talk of this later,” said Pyotr. “Go home to Dunya. And do not ride so fast.”

“Yes, Father,” said Vasya meekly. But there was pride in the way she vaulted to the horse’s back, and pride also in the control with which she turned the mare and sent her cantering, neck arched, back in the direction of the house.

THE DAY WOUND ON to dusk and past, so that the only light was the pale glow of summer that lit the nights like morning. “Dunya,” said Pyotr. “How long has Vasya been a woman?” They sat alone in the summer kitchen. All around them the household slept. But for Pyotr, the daylit nights banished sleep, and the question of his daughter bit at him. Dunya’s limbs ached, and she was not eager to lie down on her hard pallet. She twirled her distaff, but slowly. It struck Pyotr how thin she was.

Dunya gave Pyotr a hard glance. “Half a year. It came on her near Easter.”

“She is a handsome girl,” said Pyotr. “Though a savage. She needs a husband; it would steady her.” But as he spoke, an image came to him of his wild girl wedded and bedded, sweating over an oven. The image filled him with a strange regret, and he shook it away.

Dunya put aside her distaff and said slowly, “She has not thought of love yet, Pyotr Vladimirovich.”

“And so? She will do as she is told.”

Dunya laughed. “Will she? Have you forgotten Vasya’s mother?”

Pyotr was silent.

“I would counsel you to wait,” said Dunya. “Except…”

All the summer, Dunya had watched Vasya disappear at dawn and return at twilight. She had watched the wildness grow in Marina’s daughter and a—remoteness—that was new, as though the girl was only half-living in her family’s world of crops and stock and mending. Dunya had watched and worried and struggled with herself. Now she made a decision. She plunged her hand into her pocket. When she withdrew it, the blue jewel lay nestled upon her palm, incongruous against the worn skin. “Do you remember, Pyotr Vladimirovich?”

“It was a gift for Vasya,” said Pyotr harshly. “Is this treachery? I bade you give it her.” He eyed the pendant as though it were a serpent.

“I have kept it for her,” replied Dunya. “I begged, and the winter-king said I might. It was too great a burden for a child.”

“Winter-king?” said Pyotr angrily. “Are you a child, to believe in fairy tales? There is no winter-king.”

“Fairy tales?” returned Dunya, an answering anger in her voice. “Am I so wicked that I would invent such a lie? I, too, am a Christian, Pyotr Vladimirovich, but I believe what I see. Whence came this jewel, fit for a khan, that you brought for your little daughter?”

Pyotr, throat working, was silent.

“Who gave it to you?” Dunya continued. “You brought it from Moscow, but I never asked further.”

“It is a necklace,” said Pyotr, but the anger had gone from his voice. Pyotr had tried to forget the pale-eyed man, the blood on Kolya’s throat, his men standing insensible. Was that he, the winter-king? Now he remembered how quickly he had agreed to give the stranger’s trinket to his daughter. Ancient magic, it seemed he heard Marina say. A daughter of my mother’s bloodline. And then, softer: Protect her, Petya. I chose her; she is important. Promise me.

“Not just a necklace,” said Dunya harshly. “It is a talisman, may God forgive me. I have seen the winter-king. The necklace is his, and he will come for her.”

“You have seen him?” Pyotr was on his feet.

Dunya nodded.

“Where did you see him? Where?”

“Dreaming,” said Dunya. “Only dreaming. But he sends the dreams and they are true. I am to give her the necklace, he says. He will come for her at midwinter. She is no longer a child. But he is deceitful—all his kind are.” The words came out in a rush. “I love Vasya like my own daughter. She is too brave for her own good. I am afraid for her.”

Pyotr paced toward the great window and turned back toward Dunya. “Are you telling me the truth, Avdotya Mikhailovna? On my wife’s head, do not lie to me.”

“I have seen him,” said Dunya again. “And you, I think, have seen him, too. He has black hair, curling. Pale eyes, paler than the sky at midwinter. He has no beard, and he is dressed all in blue.”

“I will not give my daughter to a demon. She is a Christian maid.” The raw fear in Pyotr’s voice was new, born of Konstantin’s sermons.

“Then she must have a husband,” said Dunya simply. “The sooner the better. Frost-demons have no interest in mortal girls wed to mortal men. In the stories, the bird-prince and the wicked sorcerer—they only come for the wild maiden.”

“VASYA?” SAID ALYOSHA. “MARRIED? That rabbit?” He laughed. The dry barley-stalks rustled; he was raking beside his father. There were straws in his brown curls. He had been singing to break the afternoon stillness. “She’s a girl still, Father; I knocked down a peasant that watched her overlong, but she noticed nothing. Not even when the oaf went about for a week with his face all bruised.” He had knocked down a peasant that called her witch-woman as well, but he did not tell his father that.

“She has not met a man that caught her fancy, that is all,” said Pyotr. “But I mean that to change.” Pyotr was brisk, his mind made up. “Kyril Artamonovich is my friend’s son; he has a great inheritance, and his father is dead. Vasya is young and healthy, and her dowry is very fine. She will be gone before the snow.” Pyotr bent once more to his raking.

Alyosha did not join him. “She will not take kindly to it, Father.”

“Kindly or not, she will do as she’s told,” said Pyotr.

Alyosha snorted. “Vasya?” he said. “I’d like to see it.”

“YOU ARE GOING TO BE MARRIED,” said Irina to Vasya, enviously. “And have a fine dowry and go live in a big wooden house and have many children.” She stood beside the rough post-and-rail fence but did not lean upon it, so as not to smudge her sarafan. Her long chestnut braid was wrapped in a bright kerchief and her small hand lay delicate on the wood. Vasya was trimming Buran’s hoof, muttering dire threats to the stallion should he choose to move. He looked as though he was debating which part of her to bite. Irina was rather frightened.

Vasya put the hoof down and glanced at her small sister. “I am not going to be married,” she said.

Irina’s mouth creased in half-envious disapproval when Vasya vaulted the fence. “Yes, you are,” she said. “A lord is coming; Kolya has gone to bring him. I heard Father say it to Mother.”

Vasya’s brow wrinkled. “Well—I suppose I must marry—someday,” she said. She tilted her sister a sideways grin. “But how am I to catch a man’s eye with you about, little bird?”

Irina smiled shyly. Already her beauty was talked of between the villages of their father’s domain. But then— “You will not go into the woods, Vasya? It is nearly suppertime. You are all-over filth.”

The rusalka was sitting above them, a green shadow along an oak-branch. She beckoned. The water dripped down her streaming hair. “I’ll be along presently,” said Vasya.

“But father says…”

Vasya leaped for a limb, one foot on the trunk, catching the branch overhead in her strong hands. She hooked a knee over it, dangling head-down. “I’ll not be late for supper. Don’t worry, Irinka.” The next instant she had disappeared among the leaves.

THE RUSALKA WAS GAUNT and shivering. “What are you doing?” Vasya said. “What is wrong?” The rusalka shivered harder than ever. “Are you cold?” It hardly seemed possible; the earth gave back the day’s heat, and the breeze was scant.

“No,” said the rusalka. Her lank hair hid her face. “Little girls get cold, not chyerti. What is that child saying, Vasilisa Petrovna? Will you leave the forest?”

It came to Vasya that the rusalka was afraid, though it was not easy to know; the inflections of her voice were not like a woman’s.

Vasya had never thought in those terms before. “One day I will,” she said slowly. “Someday. I must marry and go to my husband’s house. But I did not think it would be so soon.” How faint the rusalka was. The rustling leaves showed through her gaunt face.

“You cannot,” said the rusalka. Her lips peeled back from her green teeth. The hand that combed her hair jerked, so that the water falling down ran from her nose and chin. “We will not survive the winter. You did not let me kill the hungry man, and your wards are failing. You are only a child; your bits of bread and honey-wine cannot sustain the household-spirits. Not forever. The Bear is awake.”

“What bear?”

“The shadow on the wall,” said the rusalka, breathing quickly. “The voice in the dark.” Her face did not move like a human face, but the pupils of her eyes swelled black. “Beware the dead. You must heed me, Vasya, for I will not come again. Not as myself. He will call me, and I will answer; he will have my allegiance and I will turn against you. I cannot do otherwise. The leaves are falling. Do not leave the forest.”

“What do you mean, beware the dead? How will you turn against us?”

But the rusalka only reached out a hand, with such force that her damp, cloudy fingers felt like flesh, locked around Vasya’s arm. “The winter-king will help you as you can,” she said. “He promised. We all heard it. He is very old, and the enemy of your enemy. But you must not trust him.”

Questions crowded Vasya’s lips so fast they choked her silent. Her eyes met the rusalka’s. The water-sprite’s shining hair fell around her naked body. “I trust you,” Vasya managed. “You are my friend.”

“Be of good heart, Vasilisa Petrovna,” said the rusalka, sadly, and then there was only a tree, with stormy silver leaves. As though she’d never been. Perhaps I am mad, in truth, thought Vasya. She caught the limb beneath her and dropped to the ground. She was soft on her feet as she ran home through the glorious late-summer twilight. All around her the forest seemed to whisper. The shadow on the wall. You cannot trust him. Beware the dead. Beware the dead.

“MARRIED, FATHER?” THE CLEAR green dusk breathed coolness onto the parched and gasping earth, so that the oven-fire comforted and did not torment. At noon they had eaten bread only, with curds or pickled mushrooms, for there was no time to spare from the fields. But that night there was stew and pie, roasted fowl and green things dipped in a little precious salt.

“If anyone can be brought to have you,” said Pyotr, none too kindly, putting aside his bowl. Sapphires and pale eyes, threats and half-understood promises, thrashed unpleasantly in his skull. Vasya had come into the kitchen with a wet face, and there were distinct signs that she had tried to clean the dirt beneath her nails. But the water had only smeared the grime. She was dressed like a peasant girl in a thin dress of undyed linen, her black hair uncovered and curling. Her eyes were huge and wild and troubled. It would be much easier to see her married, Pyotr thought irritably, if she would contrive to look more like a woman and less like a peasant child—or a wood-sprite.

Pyotr watched the successive objections rise to her lips and fall away. All girls married, unless they became nuns. She knew that as well as anyone. “Married,” she said again, striving for words. “Now?”

Again, Pyotr knew a pang. He saw her heavy with child, bowed over an oven, sitting before a loom, the grace gone…

Don’t be a fool, Pyotr Vladimirovich. It is the lot of women. Pyotr remembered Marina warm and pliant in his arms. But he also remembered her slipping away into the forest, light as a ghost, that same wild look in her eyes.

“Who am I to marry, Father?”

My son was right, Pyotr thought. Vasya was indeed angry. Her pupils had swelled and her head was flung back like a filly that will not take the bit. He rubbed his face. Girls were happy to be married. Olga had glowed when her husband put a jewel on her finger and took her away. Maybe Vasya was jealous of her elder sister. But this daughter would never find a husband in Moscow. Might as well put a hawk in a dovecote.

“Kyril Artamonovich,” said Pyotr. “My friend Artamon was rich, and his only son inherited. They are great breeders of horses.”

Her eyes took up half her face. Pyotr scowled. It was a good match; she had no business looking stricken. “Where?” she whispered. “When?”

“A week to the east, on a good horse,” said Pyotr. “He will come after the harvest.”

Vasya’s face stilled and set; she turned away. Pyotr added, coaxing, “He is coming here himself. I have sent Kolya to him. He will make you a good husband and give you children.”

“Why such haste?” Vasya snapped.

The bitterness in her voice struck him raw. “Enough, Vasya,” he said coldly. “You are a woman and he is a rich man. If you wanted a prince like Olga, well, they like their women fatter and less insolent.”

He saw the quick stab of hurt before she masked it. “Olya promised she would send for me when I was grown,” she said. “She said we would live in a palace together.”

“Better you are married now, Vasya,” said Pyotr at once. “You can go to your sister after your first son is born.”

Vasya bit her lip and stalked away. Pyotr found himself wondering uneasily what Kyril Artamonovich would make of his daughter.

“He is not old, Vasya,” said Dunya, when Vasya flung herself down by the hearth. “He is renowned for his skill in the chase. He will give you strong children.”

“What is Father not telling me?” retorted Vasya. “It is too sudden. I could have waited a year. Olya promised to send for me.”

“Nonsense, Vasya,” said Dunya, perhaps over-briskly. “You are a woman; you are better off with a husband. I am sure Kyril Artamonovich will allow you to go visit your sister.”

The green eyes flew up, narrowed. “You know Father’s reason. Why this haste?”

“I—I cannot say, Vasya,” said Dunya. She looked suddenly small and shrunken.

Vasya said nothing. “It is for the best,” said her nurse. “Try to understand.” She sank onto the oven-bench as though her strength deserted her, and Vasya felt a pang of remorse.

“Yes,” she said. “I am sorry, Dunyashka.” She laid a hand on her nurse’s arm. But she did not speak again. When she had swallowed her porridge, she slipped away like a ghost through the door and out into the night.

THE MOON WAS LITTLE thicker than a crescent, the light a glitter of blue. Vasya ran, with a panic she could not understand. The life she led made her strong. She bolted and let the cool wind wash the taste of fear from her mouth. But she had not gone far; the firelight of her family’s hearth still beat upon her back when she heard someone call her name.

“Vasilisa Petrovna.”

She almost ran on and let the night swallow her. But where was there to go? She halted. The priest stood in the shadow of the church. It was dark; she would not have known him by his face. But she could not mistake the voice. She did not say anything. She tasted salt and realized there were tears drying on her lips.

Konstantin was just leaving the church. He had not seen Vasya leave the house, but he could not mistake her flying shadow. He called before he knew, and cursed himself when she stopped. But the sight of her face shook him. “What is it?” he said roughly. “Why are you crying?”

If his voice had been cool and commanding, Vasya would not have answered. But as it was, she said wearily, “I am going to be married.”

Konstantin frowned. He saw all at once, as Pyotr had seen, the wild thing brought indoors, busy and breathless, a woman like other women. Like Pyotr, he felt a strange sorrow and shook it away. He stepped closer without thinking, so that he might read her face, and saw with astonishment that she was afraid.

“And so?” he said. “Is he a cruel man?”

“No,” Vasya said. “No, I don’t think so.”

It is for the best was on the tip of the priest’s tongue. But he thought again of years, of childbearing and exhaustion. The wildness gone, the hawk’s grace chained up…He swallowed. It is for the best. The wildness was sinful.

But even though he knew the answer, he found himself asking, “Why are you frightened, Vasilisa Petrovna?”

“Do not you know, Batyushka?” she said. Her laugh was soft and desperate. “You were frightened when they sent you here. You felt the forest closing about you like a fist; I could see it in your eyes. But you may leave if you will. There is a whole wide world waiting for a man of God, and already you have drunk the water of Tsargrad and seen the sun on the sea. While I…” He could see the panic rising in her again, and so he strode forward and seized her arm.

“Hush,” he said. “Do not be a fool; you are making yourself frightened.”

She laughed again. “You are right,” she said. “I am foolish. I was born for a cage, after all: convent or house, what else is there?”

“You are a woman,” said Konstantin. He was still holding her arm; she stepped back and he let her go. “You will accept it in time,” he said. “You will be happy.” She could barely see his face, but there was a note in his voice that she did not understand. It sounded as though he was trying to convince himself.

“No,” Vasya said hoarsely. “Pray for me if you will, Batyushka, but I must…” And then she was running again, between the houses. Konstantin was left swallowing the urge to call her back. His palm burned where he had touched her.

It is for the best, he thought. It is for the best.

Chapter 16: The Devil by Candlelight

It was an autumn of gray skies and yellow leaves, of sudden rain and unexpected shafts of livid sunlight. The boyar’s son came with Kolya after their harvest had been put away safe, in cellars and lofts. Kolya sent a messenger ahead of them on the muddy track, and on the day of the lord’s coming, Vasya and Irina spent the morning in the bathhouse. The bannik, the bathhouse-spirit, was a potbellied creature with eyes like two currants. He leered good-naturedly at the girls. “Can’t you hide under a bench?” said Vasya, low, when Irina was in the outer room. “My stepmother will see you; she’ll scream.”

The bannik grinned. Steam drifted between his teeth. He was barely taller than her knee. “As you like. But do not forget me this winter, Vasilisa Petrovna. Every season I am less. I do not want to disappear. The old eater is waking; this would not be a good winter to lose your old bannik.”

Vasya hesitated, caught. But I am going to be married. I am going away. Beware the dead. Her lips firmed. “I will not forget.”

His smile widened. The steam wreathed his body until she could not tell mist from flesh. A red light heated the backs of his eyes, the color of hot stones. “A prophecy then, vedma.”

“Why do you call me that?” she whispered.

The bannik drifted up to the bench beside her. His beard was the curling steam. “Because you have your great-grandmother’s eyes. Now hear me. Before the end, you will pluck snowdrops at midwinter, die by your own choosing, and weep for a nightingale.”

Vasya felt cold despite the steam. “Why would I choose to die?”

“It is easy to die,” replied the bannik. “Harder to live. Do not forget me, Vasilisa Petrovna.” And there was only vapor where he had been. Holy Mother, Vasya thought, I’ve had enough of their mad warnings.

The two girls sat and sweated until they were flushed and shining, beat each other with birch-branches, and ladled cold water over their steaming heads. When they were clean, Dunya came with Anna to comb and braid their long hair. “It is a shame you are so like a boy, Vasya,” said Anna, running a comb of scented wood through Irina’s long chestnut curls. “I hope your husband will not be too disappointed.” She looked sideways at her stepdaughter. Vasya flushed and bit her tongue.

“But such hair,” said Dunya tartly. “The finest hair in Rus’, Vasochka.” And indeed it was longer and thicker than Irina’s, deep black with soft red lights.

Vasya managed a smile for her nurse. Irina had been told from babyhood that she was lovely as a princess. Vasya had been an ugly child, often and unfavorably compared with her delicate half sister. Recently, though, long hours on horseback—where her long limbs were useful—had put Vasya in better charity with herself, and in any case, she was not much given to contemplating her own reflection. The only mirror in the house was a bronze oval belonging to her stepmother.

Now though, every woman in the house seemed to be staring at her, assessing as though she were a goat fattening for market. It occurred to Vasya to wonder if there was something in being beautiful.

The two girls were dressed at last. Vasya’s head was wrapped in a maiden’s headdress, the silver wire hanging down to frame her face. Anna would never let Vasya outshine her own daughter, even if Vasya was the one being married, and so Irina’s headdress and sleeves were embroidered in seed pearls, her little sarafan of pale blue trimmed in white. Vasya wore green and deep blue, no pearls, and a bare hint of white embroidery. The plainness was her own fault; she had left much of the sewing to Dunya. But simplicity suited her. Anna’s face soured when she saw her stepdaughter dressed.

The two girls emerged into the dvor. The dooryard was mud to the ankles; rain misted gently down. Irina kept close to her mother. Pyotr waited in the dvor already, stiff in fine fur and embroidered boots. Kolya’s wife had come with her children; Vasya’s small nephew Seryozha ran around shouting. A great stain already marred his linen shirt. Father Konstantin stood by, silent.

“It is a strange time for a wedding,” said Alyosha low to Vasya, coming up beside her. “A dry summer and a small harvest.” His brown hair was clean, his short beard combed with scented oil. His blue-embroidered shirt matched the sash round his waist. “You are very lovely, Vasya.”

“Don’t make me laugh,” his sister rejoined. More seriously, she added, “Yes—and Father feels it.” Indeed, though Pyotr looked jovial, the line between his brows showed clear. “He looks like someone bound to an unpleasant duty. He must be quite desperate to send me away.”

She tried to make a joke of it, but Alyosha looked at her with quick understanding. “He is trying to keep you safe.”

“He loved our mother, and I killed her.”

Alyosha was silent a moment. “As you say. But, truly, Vasochka, he is trying to keep you safe. The horses have coats like duckdown, and the squirrels are still out, eating as though their lives depend on it. It will be a hard winter.”

A rider came through the palisade gate and galloped toward the house. The mud flew in great arcs from beneath his horse’s feet. He came to a skidding halt and sprang from the saddle: a man in his middle years, not tall but broadly built, weathered and brown-bearded. A hint of irrepressible youth lurked about his mouth. He had all his teeth, and his smile was bright as a boy’s. He bowed to Pyotr. “I am not late, I hope, Pyotr Vladimirovich?” he asked, laughing. The two men clasped forearms.

No wonder he outstripped Kolya, Vasya thought. Kyril Artamonovich was riding the most magnificent young horse she had ever seen. Even Buran, a prince among horses, looked rough-hewn next to the sinewy perfection of the roan stallion. She wanted to run her hands over the colt’s legs, feel the quality of his bone and muscle.

“I told Father this was a bad idea,” said Alyosha in her ear.

“What? And why?” said Vasya, preoccupied by the horse.

“To marry you off so soon. Because blushing maidens are supposed to look covetously upon the lords that vie for their hands, not upon the lords’ fine horses.”

Vasya laughed. Kyril was bowing to tiny Irina with exaggerated courtesy. “A rough setting, Pyotr Vladimirovich, to find such a jewel,” he said. “Little snowdrop, you ought to go south and bloom among our flowers.” He smiled, and Irina blushed. Anna looked at her daughter with some complacency.

Kyril turned toward Vasya, the easy smile still on his lips. It died away quite when he saw her. Vasya thought he must be displeased with her appearance; she raised her chin a defiant fraction. All the better. Find another wife if I displease you. But Alyosha understood his darkening eyes very well. Vasya looked you full in the face: she was more like a warrior unblooded than a house-bred girl, and Kyril was staring in fascination. He bowed to her, the smile once more playing about his lips, but it was not the smile he’d given Irina. “Vasilisa Petrovna,” he said. “Your brother said you were beautiful. You are not.” She stiffened, and his smile deepened. “You are magnificent.” His eyes swept her from headdress to slippered feet.

Beside her, Alyosha’s hand clenched into a fist. “Are you mad?” hissed Vasya. “He has the right; we are betrothed.”

Alyosha was eyeing Kyril very coldly. “This is my brother,” said Vasya hurriedly. “Aleksei Petrovich.”

“Well met,” said Kyril, looking amused. He was nearly ten years the elder. His eyes swept Vasya once more, leisurely. Her skin prickled under her clothes. She could hear Alyosha grinding his teeth.

At that moment there came a snort, a shriek, and a splash. They all spun around. Seryozha, Vasya’s nephew, had crept to the off-side of Kyril’s red stallion and tried to clamber into the saddle. Vasya could sympathize—already she wanted to ride the red colt—but the unexpected weight had left the young stallion rearing and wild-eyed. Kyril ran to seize his horse’s bridle. Pyotr heaved his grandson from the mud and clouted him across the ear. At that moment, Kolya came galloping into the dvor, and his arrival put a cap on the confusion. Seryozha’s mother carried the boy away, howling. Far down the road, the first wagon of the rest of the party appeared, vivid against the gray autumn forest. The women hastily went into the house to dish up the noon meal.

“It is only natural that he preferred Irina, Vasya,” said Anna, while they wrestled an immense stew-pot. “A mongrel dog will never equal a purebred. At least your mother is dead—all the easier to forget your unfortunate ancestry. You’re strong as a horse; that counts for something.”

The domovoi crept out of the oven, wavering but determined. Vasya had surreptitiously spilled some mead for him. “Look, stepmother,” said Vasya. “Is that the cat?”

Anna looked, and her face turned the color of clay. She swayed where she stood. The domovoi frowned at her, and she promptly swooned. Vasya dodged, clutching the scalding pot. She saved the stew. But the same could not be said for Anna Ivanovna. Her knees buckled and she hit the hearthstones with a satisfying crack.

“DID YOU LIKE HIM, VASYA?” asked Irina in bed that night.

Vasya was half-asleep; she and Irina had been up before the sun to ready themselves, and the feasting that night had gone late. Kyril Artamonovich had sat beside Vasya and drunk from her cup. Her betrothed had fleshy hands and a trick of laughing so that the walls seemed to shake. She liked the size of him, but not the insolence. “He is a goodly man,” Vasya said, but she wished to all the saints that he would disappear.

“He is handsome,” agreed Irina. “His smile is kind.”

Vasya rolled over, frowning. In Moscow, girls were not allowed to mingle with suitors, but things were freer in the north. “His smile might be kind,” she said, “but his horse is afraid of him.” When the feast wound down, she had slipped away to the barn. Kyril’s colt, Ogon, had been put in a stall; he could not be trusted in pasture.

Irina laughed. “How do you know what a horse thinks?”

“I know,” said Vasya. “Besides, he is old, little bird. Dunya says he is nearly thirty.”

“But he is rich; you will have jewels, and meat every day.”

“You marry him, then,” said Vasya tolerantly, poking her sister in the stomach. “And you will be as fat as a squirrel and sit all day sewing atop the oven.”

Irina giggled. “Maybe we will see each other when we are married. If our husbands do not live far apart.”

“I’m sure they won’t,” said Vasya. “You can save some of your fat meats for me, when I come begging with my beggar-husband while you are married to a great lord.”

Irina giggled again. “But it is you who are marrying a great lord, Vasya.”

Vasya did not answer; she did not speak again. At length, Irina gave up; she curled up against her sister and fell asleep. But Vasya lay long awake. He has charmed my family, but his horse fears his hand. Beware the dead. It will be a hard winter. You must not leave the forest. The thoughts raced like water, and she was borne on the current. But she was young and weary, and eventually she, too, rolled over and slept.

THE DAYS PASSED IN a round of games and feasting. Kyril Artamonovich filled Vasya’s bowl at supper and teased her through the kitchen door. His body gave off an animal heat. Vasya was angry to find herself blushing beneath his gaze. At night she lay awake, wondering how all that warmth would feel between her hands. But his laughter did not reach his eyes. Fear rose at odd moments to seize her by the throat.

The days wore by, and Vasya could not understand herself. You must marry, the women scolded. All girls marry. At least he is not old, and he is well-favored besides. Why then be afraid? But afraid she was, and she avoided her betrothed whenever she could, pacing back and forth, a bird in a shrinking cage.

“Why, Father?” said Alyosha to Pyotr, not for the first time, at the start of yet another raucous supper. The long, dim room reeked of furs and mead, roast meats, pottage, and sweating humanity. The kasha went round in a great bowl; the mead was dipped out and tossed back. Their neighbors packed the room. The house overflowed now, and visitors crammed the peasants’ huts.

“Three days until she is married; we must honor our guest,” said Pyotr.

“Why is she getting married now?” retorted his son. “Can she not wait a year? Why after a hard winter and a hard summer must we waste food and drink on these?” His gesture took in the long room where their guests busily demolished the fruit of a summer’s labor.

“Because it must be,” Pyotr snapped. “If you want to make yourself useful, convince your mad sister not to geld her husband on their wedding night.”

“He is a bull, that Kyril,” said Alyosha shortly. “He has got five children on peasant girls, and he thinks nothing of flirting with the farmers’ wives, while he stays in your house, no less. If my sister sees fit to geld her husband, Father, she would have reason, and I would not dissuade her.”

As if by some unspoken accord, they looked to where the couple in question sat side by side. Kyril was talking to Vasya, his gestures broad and imprecise. Vasya was eyeing him with an expression that made both Pyotr and Alyosha nervous. Kyril did not seem to notice.

“And there I was alone,” Kyril said to Vasya. He refilled their cup, sloshing a bit. His lips left a ring of grease round the rim. “My back was to a rock and the boar was charging. My men had scattered, save for the dead one, with the great red hole in him.”

This was not the first narrative featuring the heroics of Kyril Artamonovich. Vasya’s mind had begun to wander. Where is the priest? Father Konstantin had not come to the feast, and it was unlike him to keep to himself.

“The boar came for me,” said Kyril. “Its hooves shook the earth. I commended my soul to God—”

And died there with blood in your mouth, Vasya thought in disgust. I should have been so fortunate.

She laid a hand on his arm and looked up at him with an expression she hoped was piteous. “No more—I cannot bear it.”

Kyril eyed her, puzzled. Vasya shuddered all over. “I cannot bear to know the rest. I fear I will faint, Kyril Artamonovich.”

Kyril looked nonplussed.

“Dunya has much stronger nerves than I,” said Vasya. “I think you should finish the story in her hearing.” There was nothing wrong with Dunya’s ears (or Vasya’s nerves, for that matter); the old lady glanced resignedly heavenward and shot Vasya a warning look. But Vasya had the bit between her teeth, and even her father’s glare from down the table would not turn her. “Now”—Vasya rose with theatrical grace and seized a loaf from the table—“now, if you will forgive me, I must fulfill a pious duty.”

Kyril opened his mouth to protest, but Vasya made a hasty reverence, slipped the loaf into her sleeve, and bolted. Outside the packed hall, the house was cool and quiet. She stood in the dvor for a long moment, breathing.

Then she went and scratched upon the priest’s door.

“Come in,” said Konstantin, after a chilly pause. The whole room seemed to quiver with candlelight. He was painting by the glow. A rat had gnawed the crust that lay untouched beside him. The priest did not turn when Vasya opened the door.

“Father, bless,” she said. “I have brought you bread.”

Konstantin stiffened. “Vasilisa Petrovna.” He put down his brush and made the sign of the cross. “May the Lord bless you.”

“Are you ill, that you do not feast with us?” asked Vasya.

“I fast.”

“Better to eat. There will not be food like this all winter.”

Konstantin said nothing. Vasya replaced the gnawed crust with the new loaf. The silence stretched out, but she did not go.

“Why did you give me your cross?” asked Vasya abruptly. “After we met at the lake?”

His jaw set, but he did not at once reply. In truth, he hardly knew. Because she had moved him. Because he hoped the symbol could reach her when he could not. Because he had wanted to touch her hand and look her in the face, disquiet her, perhaps see her fidget and simper like other girls. Help him forget his wicked fascination.

Because he could never look at his cross again without seeing her hand around it.

“The Holy Cross will make your way straight,” said Konstantin at last.

“Will it?”

The priest was silent. At night now he dreamed of the woman in the lake. He could never make out her face. But in his dreams her hair was black; it snapped and slid against her naked flesh. Awake, Konstantin spent long hours in prayer, trying to carve the image from his mind. But he could not, for every time he saw Vasya, he knew the woman in his dream had her eyes. He was haunted, ashamed. Her fault for tempting him. But in three days she would be gone.

“Why are you here, Vasilisa Petrovna?” His voice came out loud and ragged, and he was angry with himself.

The storm is coming, Vasya thought. Beware the dead. Fear first, then fire, then famine. Your fault. We had faith in God before you came, and faith in our house-spirits also, and all was well.

If the priest left, then perhaps her people would be safe once more.

“Why do you stay here?” Vasya said. “You hate the fields and the forest and the silence. You hate our rude bare church. Yet you are still here. No one would fault you for going.”

A dull flush crept across Konstantin’s cheekbones. His hand fumbled among his paints. “I have a task, Vasilisa Petrovna. I must save you from yourselves. God has punishments for those who stray.”

“A self-appointed task,” said Vasya, “in service of your own pride. Why is it for you to say what God wants? The people would never revere you so, if you had not made them afraid.”

“You are an ignorant country maid; what do you know?” snapped Konstantin.

“I believe the evidence of my eyes,” Vasya said. “I have seen you speak. I have seen my people afraid. And you know what I say is true; you are shaking.” He had picked up a bowl of half-mixed color. The warm wax within shivered. Konstantin let it go abruptly.

She came nearer, and nearer yet. The candlelight brought out the flecks of gold in her eyes. His glance strayed to her mouth. Demon, get you gone. But her voice was a young girl’s, with a soft note of pleading. “Why not go back? To Moscow or Vladimir or Suzdal? Why linger here? The world is wide, and our corner so very small.”

“God gave me a task.” He bit off each word, almost spitting.

“We are men and women,” she retorted. “We are not a task. Go back to Moscow and save folk there.”

She was standing too near. His hand shot out; he struck her across the face. She stumbled back, cradling her cheek. He took two quick steps forward, so that he was looking down at her, but she stood her ground. His hand was raised to strike again, but he drew breath and forbore. It was beneath him to strike her. He wanted to seize her, kiss her, hurt her, he did not know what. Demon.

“Get out, Vasilisa Petrovna,” he said through gritted teeth. “Don’t presume to lecture me. And don’t come here again.”

She retreated to the door. But she turned back with one hand on the latch. Her braid followed the line of her throat. The scarlet handprint stood out livid on her cheek. “As you wish,” she said. “It is a cruel task, to frighten people in God’s name. I leave it to you.” She hesitated and added, very softly, “However, Batyushka, I am not afraid.”

AFTER SHE LEFT, KONSTANTIN paced to and fro. His shadow leaped before him, and the hand that had struck her burned. Fury closed his throat. She will be gone before the snow. Gone and long gone: my shame and my failure. But better than having her here.

The candle guttered where it stood before his icons, and the flame threw ragged shadows.

She will be gone. She must be gone.

The voice came from the earth, from the candlelight, from his own breast. It was soft and clear and shining. “Peace be with you,” it said. “Though I see you are troubled.”

Konstantin stopped dead. “Who is that?”

“—Wanting despite yourself, and hating where you love.” The voice sighed. “Oh, you are beautiful.”

“Who is speaking?” snapped Konstantin. “Do you mock me?”

“I do not mock,” came the ready reply. “I am a friend. A master. A savior.” The voice throbbed with compassion.

The priest spun, seeking. “Come out,” he said. He forced himself to stand still. “Show yourself.”

“What is this?” The voice held a hint now of anger. “Doubts, my servant? Don’t you know who I am?”

The room was bare, except for the bed and the icons, and the shadows collected in the corners. Konstantin stared into these, until his eyes smarted. There—what was that? A shadow that did not move with the firelight. No, that was just his own shadow, cast by the candle. There was no one outside, there was no one behind the door. Then who…?

Konstantin’s glance sought his icons. He looked deep into their strange solemn faces. His own face changed. “Father,” he whispered. “Lord. Angels. After all your silence, do you speak to me at last?” He shook in every limb. He strained all his senses, willing the voice to speak again.

“Can you doubt it, my child?” said the voice, gentle again. “You have always been my loyal servant.”

The priest began to weep, open-eyed, soundless. He fell to his knees.

“I have watched you long, Konstantin Nikonovich,” continued the voice. “You have labored bravely on my behalf. But now there is this girl who tempts and defies you.”

Konstantin clasped his hands together. “My shame,” he said feverishly. “I cannot save her alone. She is possessed; she is a she-devil. I pray that in your wisdom you will show her light.”

“She will learn many lessons,” replied the voice. “Many—many. Have no fear. I stand with you, and you will never again be alone. The world will fall to your feet, and know my wonders through your lips, because you have been loyal.”

It seemed that trumpets must play when that voice spoke. Konstantin shuddered with pleasure, the tears still falling. “Only never leave me, Lord,” he said. “I have always been faithful.” He clenched his fists so tightly his nails made furrows in the skin of his hands.

“Be faithful,” said the voice, “and I will never leave you.”

Chapter 17: A Horse Called Fire

Kyril Artamonovich loved above all to hunt the long-tusked northern boars, swifter than horses. The day before his wedding, he called for a boar-hunt. “It will while away the time,” he said to Pyotr, with a wink at Vasya, who said nothing. But Pyotr made no objection. Kyril Artamonovich was a famous hunter, and pig-meat in the autumn was a fine thing, fattened on chestnut-mast. A good haunch would grace the wedding-feast and bring color to his daughter’s pale face.

The whole household rose before dawn. The boar-spears lay already in a shining heap. The dogs had heard the sound of sharpening, and paced their kennels all night, whining.

Vasya was up before anyone else. She did not take food, but went to the stable, where the horses pawed anxiously at the noise from the dogs outside. Kyril’s young roan stallion trembled with each new sound. Vasya went to him and found the vazila there, perched on the colt’s back. Vasya smiled at the little creature. The stallion snorted at her and pinned his ears.

“You have bad manners,” Vasya told him. “But I suppose Kyril Artamonovich drags you around by the mouth.”

The colt put his ears forward. You do not look like a horse.

Vasya grinned. “Thank God. Do you not wish to go hunting?”

The horse considered. I like running. But the pig smells foul, and the man will strike me if I am afraid. I’d rather graze in a field. Vasya laid a comforting hand on the horse’s neck. Kyril was going to ruin the beautiful colt—little more than a foal—if he kept on. The colt bumped her chest with his nose. Water and greenish slime dribbled onto her dress.

“Now I’m more of a scarecrow than usual,” Vasya remarked, to no one in particular. “Anna Ivanovna will be delighted.”

“The pig won’t hurt you if you’re quick,” she added to Ogon. “And you are the quickest thing in the world, my beauty. You need not fear.”

The colt said nothing, but put his head in her arms. Vasya rubbed his silky ears and sighed. She would have liked nothing better than a wild ride through autumn forest, preferably on the long-legged Ogon, who looked as though he could outrun a hare in an open field. Instead, she was to go to the kitchen, knead bread, and listen to the gossip of a bevy of visiting women. All this while Irina showed off her many perfections and Vasya tried not to burn anything.

“Ordinarily I would curse a maid for a fool that got so near my horse,” said a voice from behind her. Ogon threw his head up, nearly breaking Vasya’s nose. “But you have a hand with beasts, Vasilisa Petrovna.” Kyril Artamonovich came toward them, smiling. He caught the colt by his rope halter.

“Hush, mad thing,” he said. The colt rolled his eyes but stood, shivering.

“You are abroad early, my lord,” said Vasya, recovering.

“As are you, Vasilisa Petrovna.” Their breath made clouds; the stable was chilly.

“There is much to do,” said Vasya. “The women will ride to meet you after the kill, if the day is fine. And tonight we are feasting.”

He grinned. “No need to excuse yourself, devushka. I think it a fine thing in a girl to rise early, and to interest herself in a man’s stock.” He had a dimple on one side of his mouth. “I’ll not tell your father that I found you here.”

Vasya regained her composure. “Tell him if you will,” she said.

He smiled. “I like your spirit.”

She shrugged.

“Your sister is prettier than you,” he added musingly. “She will be an easy wife in a few years’ time: a little flower. Not a girl to trouble a man’s nights. But you—” Kyril reached out, pulled her to him, and ran a hand down her back, in an assessing sort of way. “Too many bones,” he said, “but I like a strong girl. And you will not die in childbed.” He handled her confidently, with the expectation of being obeyed. “Will you like making me sons?” He kissed her before she knew, while she was still bewildered by the strength in his hands. His kiss was like his touch: firm, with a sort of proficient enjoyment. Vasya shoved at him, to little effect. He tilted her face up, digging his fingers into the soft place behind her jaw. Her head swam. He smelled of musk and mead and horses. His hand was very large, splayed against her back. His other hand slid over her shoulder and breast and hip.

Whatever he found seemed to please him. When he let her go, his chest heaved, and his nostrils flared like a stallion’s. Vasya stood still, swallowing her nausea. She looked up into his face. I am a mare to him, she thought suddenly and clearly. And if a mare will not yield to harness, well, he will break her.

Kyril’s smile slipped a fraction. She could not know how much he had seen of her pride and scorn. His eyes strayed again to her mouth, the shape of her body, and she knew he saw her fear as well. The brief unease left his face. He reached for her again, but Vasya was quicker. She struck his hand aside, ran from the stable, and did not look back. When she reached the kitchen, she was so pale that Dunya made her sit by the fire and drink hot wine until a little color came back into her face.

ALL THAT DAY, A COLD mist rose from the earth, winding itself about the trees. The hunt made a kill near midday. Vasya, wielding a bread paddle with grim competence, heard, faintly, the shriek of the dying animal. It matched her mood.

The women left the house at gray noontide, with men to lead the laden packhorses. Konstantin rode out with them, his face pale and exalted in the autumn light. Men and women watched him with reverence and furtive admiration. Vasya, avoiding the priest, stayed with Irina near the back of the cavalcade, shortening her mare’s long stride to match Irina’s pony.

The mist crept over the earth. The women complained of chill and drew their cloaks about them.

Suddenly Mysh reared. Even Irina’s placid beast shied, so that the child gave a stifled scream and clutched her reins. Vasya hastily brought the mare down and caught the pony’s bridle. She followed Mysh’s ears with her eyes. A white-skinned creature stood between two tall birch trunks. He was man-shaped and light-eyed. His hair was the tangled undergrowth of the forest. He cast no shadow. “It’s all right,” Vasya said to Mysh. “That does not eat horses. Only foolish travelers.”

The mare swiveled her ears but, hesitantly, began to walk again.

“Leshy, lesovik,” murmured Vasya as they rode past. She bowed from the waist. He was the wood-guard—the leshy—and he seldom came so close to men.

“I would speak with you, Vasilisa Petrovna.” The wood-guard’s voice was the whisper of branches at dawn.

“Presently,” she said, mastering her surprise.

Beside her, Irina squeaked, “Who are you talking to, Vasya?”

“No one,” said Vasya. “Myself.”

Irina was quiet. Vasya sighed inwardly—Irina would tell her mother.

They found the hunters a little way into the forest, taking their ease under a great tree. They had already hung the pig, a sow, by her hocks from a massive limb. Her slit throat drained blood into a bucket. The wood rang with laughter and boasting.

Seryozha, who considered himself quite grown, had only with difficulty been persuaded to ride with the women. Now he leaped from his pony and darted over to stare, round-eyed, at the hanging pig. Vasya slid from Mysh’s back and gave the reins into a servant’s hand.

“A fine beast we have taken, is it not, Vasilisa Petrovna?” The voice came from her elbow. She whirled round. The blood had caked in the lines of Kyril’s palms, but his boyish smile was undimmed.

“The meat will be welcome,” said Vasya.

“I will save the liver for you.” His glance was speculative. “You could use fattening.”

“You are generous,” said Vasya. She bowed her head and slipped away, like a maiden too modest for speech. The women were extracting a cold meal from laden bundles. Carefully, Vasya worked herself closer and closer to a little grove of birch, then slipped among the trees and disappeared.

She did not see Kyril smile to himself and follow.

LESHIYE WERE DANGEROUS. WHEN they wished, they could lead travelers in circles until they collapsed. Sometimes the travelers were wise enough to put their clothes on backward for protection—but not often; they mostly died.

Vasya found him at the center of a little copse of birch. The leshy looked down at her with glittering eyes.

“What news?” said Vasya.

The leshy made a grinding sound of displeasure. “Your people come with clamor to fright my woods and kill my creatures. They would have asked my leave once.”

“We ask your leave again,” said Vasya quickly. They had trouble enough without angering the wood-guard. She untied her embroidered kerchief and laid it in his hand. He turned it over in his long, twiggy fingers.

“Forgive us,” said Vasya. “And—do not forget me.”

“I would ask the same,” said the wood-guard, mollified. “We are fading, Vasilisa Petrovna. Even I, who watched these trees grow from saplings. Your people waver, and so the chyerti wither. If the Bear comes now you are unprotected. There will be a reckoning. Beware the dead.”

“What does it mean, ‘beware the dead’?”

The leshy bowed his hoary head. “Three signs, and the dead are fourth,” he said. Then he disappeared, and all she heard were the birds singing in the rustling wood.

“Enough of this,” Vasya muttered, not really expecting a reply. “Why can none of you speak plainly? What are you afraid of?”

Kyril Artamonovich emerged from between the trees.

Vasya stiffened her spine. “Are you lost, my lord?”

He snorted. “No more than you, Vasilisa Petrovna. I have never seen a girl walk so light in the woods. But you should not go unprotected.”

She said nothing.

“Walk with me,” he said.

There was no way to refuse. They walked side by side through the thick wet loam, while the leaves drifted down around them. “You will like my lands, Vasilisa Petrovna,” Kyril said. “The horses run across fields larger than the eye can tell, and merchants bring us jewels from Vladimir, the city of the Mother of God.”

A vision seized Vasya then, not of a lord’s fine house, but of herself on a galloping horse, in a land unbounded by forest. She stood a moment, frozen and far away. Kyril lifted and smoothed her long braid where it lay over her breast. Startled back to herself, she flicked it out of his grip. He caught her hair, smiling, in a fist, and drew her nearer. “Come, none of that.” She backed up, but he followed her, wrapping her braid round his hand. “I will teach you to want me.” His mouth sought hers.

A piercing shriek split the midafternoon silence.

Kyril let her go. There was a brown flash between the trees, and Vasya took off running, cursing her skirts. But even hampered, she was lighter than the big man behind her. She darted round a holly bush and skidded to a horrified halt. Seryozha was clinging to Mysh’s neck, and the brown mare bucked and spun like a yearling colt. A ring of white showed all around her frantic eye.

Vasya could not understand it; the boy had ridden the mare before, and Mysh was very sensible. But now she jumped as though three devils sat her back. Irina was pressed up against a tree at the edge of the clearing, both hands over her mouth. “I told him!” she wailed. “I told him he was being bad, but he said he was grown—that he could do as he liked. He wanted to race the horses. He wouldn’t listen.”

The alder clearing was full of shadows, too big for the noon light. One of them seemed to lurch forward. For a second, Vasya could have sworn she saw a madman’s grin, and a single, winking eye.

“Mysh, be still,” she said to the horse. The mare came plunging to a stop, ears pricked. There was a split second of stillness.

“Seryozha,” said Vasya. “Now—”

Kyril came crashing through the undergrowth. In the same instant, the shadows seemed to spring from three places at once. The mare’s nerve broke again; she wheeled and bolted. Her long legs dug into the forest track and she almost scraped her rider off in her wild career between tree-trunks. Seryozha screamed, but he was still in the saddle, clinging to the horse’s neck.

Somewhere, someone was laughing.

Vasya ran for the other horses, seizing her belt-knife. Kyril was behind her, but she was faster. She flashed past her astonished father and reached Ogon first. “What are you doing?” shouted Kyril. Vasya did not answer. The colt was tied, but a stroke split the rope, and a vault saw her settled onto his bare back, fingers wound into the red mane.

The horse bolted in pursuit. Kyril was left with his mouth hanging open. Vasya leaned forward, catching the stallion’s rhythm, feet locked around his barrel. She wished she’d had time to untangle her layers of skirt. They swept through the trees like a thunderstorm. Vasya bent low over the horse’s neck. A fallen log loomed in their way. Vasya took a deep breath. Ogon cleared the barrier, surefooted as a stag.

They burst out of the forest and into a muddy field scarce ten horse-lengths behind the runaway. Miraculously, Seryozha was still clinging to Mysh’s neck. He did not have much choice; a fall at speed would be fatal, the going made treacherous by hundreds of half-hidden stumps. Ogon gained steadily; he was much the faster horse, and the mare was racing in panicked zigzags, twisting in an effort to throw the child from her back. Vasya shouted at Mysh to stop, but the mare did not hear, or she did not heed. Vasya cried encouragement to Seryozha, but the wind snatched the words away. She and Ogon slowly closed the gap. Foam flew back from the horses’ lips. There was a ditch coming up at the far side of the field, dug to drain rainwater off the barley. Even if Mysh could jump it, Seryozha would never stay on her back. Vasya screamed at Ogon. A series of powerful leaps brought him level with the runaway. The ditch was coming up fast. Vasya reached out, one-armed, for her nephew.

“Let go, let go!” she shouted, grabbing a fistful of his shirt. Seryozha had time for one panic-stricken glance, then Vasya yanked him clear and slung him facedown over Ogon’s red withers. The boy had a handful of black mane clutched in each fist. Simultaneously, Vasya shifted her weight, urging the colt to turn before the looming edge. Somehow the stallion managed, gathering his hindquarters and lunging sideways on a course that took him parallel to the ditch. He came to a sliding, slithering halt a few paces later, trembling all over. Mysh was not so lucky; in her panic she blundered into the ditch and now lay thrashing at the bottom.

Vasya slid from Ogon’s back, staggering as her legs tried to buckle beneath her. She pulled her sobbing nephew down and looked him over quickly. His nose and lip were bloody from the stallion’s iron-hard shoulder. “Seryozha,” she said. “Sergei Nikolaevich. You’re all right. Hush.” Her nephew was sobbing and trembling and giggling all at once. Vasya slapped him across his bloody face. He shuddered and fell silent, and she hugged him tight. Behind them came the sound of a horse struggling.

“Ogon,” said Vasya. The stallion was behind her, flecked with foam. “Stay here.”

The horse twitched an assenting ear. Vasya let her nephew go and half-ran, half-slid to the bottom of the ditch. Mysh lay in a foot of water, but Vasya ignored it. She knelt beside the mare’s foam-streaked head. Miraculously, the horse’s legs weren’t broken. “You’re all right,” Vasya whispered. “You’re all right.” She matched the mare’s breathing once, and again. Suddenly Mysh lay quiet under her burning hand. Vasya stood up and drew away.

The mare collected herself, clumsy as a foal, and came spraddle-legged to her feet. Vasya, shaking now with reaction, wrapped her arms around the horse’s neck. “Fool,” she whispered. “What possessed you?”

I saw a shadow, said the mare. And it had teeth. There was no time for more. A confusion of voices came from the top of the ditch. A small avalanche of rocks heralded the appearance of Kyril Artamonovich. Mysh shied. Kyril was staring.

Vasya’s face burned. “The mare’s had a fright,” the girl said hurriedly, catching hold of Mysh’s bridle. “You smell of blood, Kyril Artamonovich; best you stay up there.”

Kyril had no intention of sliding down into the mud and water, but even so Vasya’s words did not sweeten him. “You stole my horse.”

Vasya had the grace to look abashed.

“Who taught you to ride like that?”

Vasya swallowed, measuring his horrified expression. “My father taught me,” she said.

Her betrothed looked gratifyingly shocked.

She scrambled out of the ditch. The mare followed her like a kitten. The girl paused at the top. Kyril gave her a stony stare. “Perhaps I can ride all your horses, when we are married,” Vasya said innocently.

Kyril did not answer.

Vasya shrugged—and only then realized how tired she was. Her legs were weak as reed-stems, and her left shoulder—the arm she had used to yank Seryozha over Ogon’s back—ached.

A cluster of riders was racing across the ragged field. Pyotr led them on sure-footed Buran. Vasya’s brothers rode at his heel. Kolya was first off his horse; he leaped down and ran to his son, who was weeping still. “Seryozha, are you all right?” he demanded. “Synok, what happened? Seryozha!” The child did not answer. Kolya turned on Vasya. “What happened?”

Vasya did not know what to say. She stammered something. Her father and Alyosha dismounted in Kolya’s wake. Pyotr’s urgent glance darted from her, to Seryozha, to Ogon and Mysh. “Are you all right, Vasya?” he said.

“Yes,” Vasya managed. She flushed. Their neighbors—all men—were galloping up now. They stared. Vasya was suddenly, flinchingly aware of her bare head and torn skirts, her dirty face. Her father stepped across to murmur a quiet word to Kolya, who was holding his weeping son.

Vasya had let fall her cloak in her wild charge; now Alyosha slid off his horse and put his own about her. “Come on, fool,” he said, while she fastened his cloak gratefully. “Best get you out of view.”

Vasya recalled her pride and lifted her chin a stubborn fraction. “I am not ashamed. Better to have done something than see Seryozha dead of a cracked skull.”

Pyotr heard her. “Go with your brother,” he growled, rounding on her unexpectedly. “Now, Vasya.”

Vasya stared at her father, and then, without a word, let Alyosha boost her into the saddle. Muttering swelled among their neighbors. They were all gazing avidly. Vasya clenched her fists, and refused to drop her eyes.

But their neighbors did not have much time to gape. Alyosha swung on behind her, spurred his beast and galloped away. “Are you ashamed, Lyoshka?” asked Vasya, with heavy scorn. “Will you lock me in the cellar now? Better our nephew dead than I bring shame on the family?”

“Don’t be an idiot,” said Alyosha shortly. “This will blow over faster if they don’t have your torn dress to stare at.”

Vasya said nothing.

More gently, her brother added, “I’m taking you to Dunya. You looked ready to fold up where you stood.”

“I won’t deny it.” Her voice had softened.

Alyosha hesitated. “Vasochka, what did you do? I knew you could ride, but…like that? On that mad red colt?”

“The horses taught me,” Vasya said, after a pause. “I used to take them out of the pasture.”

She didn’t elaborate. Her brother was silent a long time. “We would be bringing our nephew back dead or broken if you hadn’t rescued him,” he said, slowly. “I know it, and I am grateful for it. Father, too, surely.”

“Thank you,” Vasya whispered.

“But,” he added, in tones of light irony, “I fear you are for a hut in the woods, if you don’t want to take the veil or marry a farmer. Your warrior’s ways have quite put off our neighbor. Kyril was humiliated when you took his horse.”

Vasya laughed, but there was a hard note in it. “I am glad,” she said. “I am saved from running away before my wedding. I’d have married a peasant before that Kyril Artamonovich. But Father is angry.”

Just as the house came in sight, Pyotr rode up beside them. He looked grateful and exasperated and angry and something darker. It might have been worry. He cleared his throat. “You aren’t hurt, Vasochka?”

Vasya hadn’t heard that endearment from him since she was small. “No,” she said. “But I am sorry to have shamed you, Father.”

Pyotr shook his head, but did not speak. There was a long pause.

“Thank you,” Pyotr said at last. “For my grandson.”

Vasya smiled. “We should be grateful to Ogon,” she said, feeling more cheerful. “And that Seryozha had the presence of mind to hold on as long as he did.”

They rode home in silence. Vasya quickly took herself off to hide in the bathhouse and steam her aching limbs.

But Kyril went to Pyotr that evening at dinner. “I thought I was getting a well-bred maiden, not a wild creature.”

“Vasya is a good girl,” said Pyotr. “Headstrong, but that can be—”

Kyril snorted. “Black magic might have held that girl on my horse’s back, but no mortal art.”

“Strength only, and wildness,” said Pyotr, a little desperately. “She will give you strong sons.”

“At what price?” said Kyril Artamonovich, darkly. “I want a woman in my house, not a witch or a wood-sprite. Besides, she shamed me before all your company.”

And though Pyotr tried to reason with him, he would not be swayed.

Pyotr rarely beat his children. But when Kyril broke off his betrothal, he thrashed Vasya all the same, mostly to assuage his own fear for her. Can she not do as she’s told for once in her life?

They only come for the wild maiden.

Vasya bore it dry-eyed and gave him only a look of reproach before she walked stiffly away. He did not see her weeping afterward, curled between Mysh’s forefeet.

But there was no wedding. At dawn, Kyril Artamonovich rode away.

Chapter 18: A Guest for the Waning Year

When Kyril had gone, Anna Ivanovna went again to her husband. Already the long nights hemmed in the autumn days; the household rose in the dark and supped by firelight. That night, Pyotr sat wakeful before the oven. His children had sought their beds, but sleep eluded him. The embers of the banked fire filled the room with red. Pyotr stared into the shimmering maw and thought of his daughter.

Anna had her mending on her lap, but she was not sewing. Pyotr never looked up, and so he did not see his wife’s face, hard and bloodless. “So Vasilisa will not marry,” she said.

Pyotr started. His wife spoke with authority; she reminded him, for the first time, of her father. And her words echoed his thought.

“No man of good birth will have her,” she continued. “Will you give her to a peasant?”

Pyotr was silent. He had been turning the question over in his mind. It went against his pride, to give his daughter to a baseborn man. But ever in his ear rang Dunya’s warning: Better anything than a frost-demon.

Marina, thought Pyotr. You left me this mad girl, and I love her well. She is braver and wilder than any of my sons. But what good is that in a woman? I swore I’d keep her safe, but how can I save her from herself?

“She must go to a convent,” Anna said. “The sooner the better. What other choice is there? No man of decent birth will have her. She is possessed. She steals horses, she made a horse go mad, she risked her nephew’s life for sport.”

Pyotr, staring in astonishment at his wife, found her almost beautiful in her steady purpose. “A convent?” said Pyotr. “Vasya?” He wondered, briefly, why he was so surprised. Unmarriageable daughters went to convents every day. But a more unlikely nun than Vasya he had never seen.

Anna clenched her hands. Her eyes seized and held him. “A life among holy sisters might save her immortal soul.”

Pyotr remembered again the face of the stranger in Moscow. Talisman or no, a frost-demon could not very well come for a girl vowed to God.

But still he hesitated. Vasya would never go willingly.

Father Konstantin sat in the shadows beside Anna. His face was drawn, his eyes dark as sloes.

“What say you, Batyushka?” Pyotr said. “My daughter has frightened her suitors. Shall I send her to a convent?”

“You have little choice, Pyotr Vladimirovich,” Konstantin said. His voice was slow and hoarse. “She will not fear God, and she will not listen to reason. The Ascension is a convent for highborn maidens within the walls of the Moscow kremlin. The sisters there would take her.”

Anna’s mouth tightened. Once, long ago, she had dreamed of entering that convent.

Pyotr hesitated.

“The walls of the kremlin are strong,” added Konstantin. “She would be safe and she would not go hungry.”

“Well, I will think on it,” said Pyotr, torn. She could go with the sledges, when he sent his tribute forth. But what man could he send to give warning of her coming? His daughter could not be delivered like an unwanted parcel, and it was late in the year for messengers.

Olya, he could send her to Olya, and she would arrange it. But no…Vasya must be wed or behind convent walls before midwinter. At midwinter he will come for her.

Vasya…Vasya in a convent? A veil over her black hair, a virgin until she died?

But her soul—above all there was her soul. She would have peace and plenty. She would pray for her family. And she would be safe from demons.

But she will not go willingly. It would grieve her so.

Konstantin watched Pyotr struggle, and was silent. He knew that God was on his side. Pyotr would be persuaded and means would be found. And indeed the priest was right.

Three nights later, Vasya brought home a wet and sneezing monk whom she had found lost in the woods.

SHE DRAGGED HIM IN a little before sundown, in the midst of a downpour. Dunya was telling a story. “Their father fell sick with longing,” she said. “So Prince Aleksei and Prince Dmitrii set out to find the bright-winged firebird. Long they rode, over three times nine kingdoms, until they came to a place where the road split. Beside the way lay a stone carved with words.”

The outer door thundered open and Vasya strode into the room, holding a big, young, bedraggled monk by the sleeve. “This is Brother Rodion,” she said. “He was lost in the forest. He is come from Moscow. Sasha sent him to us.”

Instantly the startled house sprang into motion. The monk must be dried and fed, a new robe found, mead put in his hand. Dunya, in all the hurry, still had time to make a protesting Vasya change her wet clothes and sit near the fire to dry her sopping hair. All the while, the monk was pelted with questions: of the weather in Moscow, the jewels the court women wore to church, the horses of Tatar warlords. Above all they asked him about the Princess of Serpukhov and Brother Aleksandr. The questions flew so thick the monk could hardly answer.

Pyotr intervened at last; he pushed his children aside. “Peace, all of you,” he said. “Let him eat.”

The kitchen slowly quieted. Dunya took up her distaff, Irina her needle. Brother Rodion applied himself single-mindedly to his supper. Vasya took up a mortar and pestle and began to pound dried herbs. Dunya resumed her story.

“Beside the way lay a stone carved with words.

“Who rides straight forward shall meet both hunger and cold.

Who rides to the right shall live though his horse shall die.

Who rides to the left shall die though his horse shall live.

“None of these sounded at all pleasant. So the two brothers turned aside, pitched their tents in a green wood, and whiled away the time, forgetting why they had come.”

Prince Ivan rode to the right, Vasya thought. She had heard the story a thousand times. The gray wolf killed his horse. He wept to see it slain. But the stories never say what awaited him had he gone straight. Or left.

Pyotr sat in close conversation with Brother Rodion on the other side of the kitchen. Vasya wished she could hear what they were saying, but the rain still thudded on the roof.

She had gone out foraging at first light. Anything, even a drenching, for a few hours in the clean air. The house oppressed her. Anna Ivanovna and Konstantin and even her father watched her with looks she could not read. The villagers muttered when she passed. No one had forgotten the incident with Kyril’s horse.

She had found the young monk riding in circles on his strong white mule.

Odd, Vasya thought, that she had found him alive. In her wandering, the girl had come across bones, but never a living man. The forest was perilous to travelers. The leshy would lead them in circles until they collapsed, or the vodianoy, peering with his cold fish-eyes, would pull them into the river. But this large, good-natured creature had blundered in, and yet he lived.

The rusalka’s warning sprang to Vasya’s mind. What are the chyerti afraid of?

“YOU ARE FORTUNATE THAT my foolhardy daughter went out foraging in such weather, and that she found you,” said Pyotr.

Brother Rodion, his first hunger satisfied, risked a quick glance at the hearth. The daughter in question was grinding herbs; the firelight limned her slim body in gold. At first sight, he had thought her ugly, and even now he did not think her beautiful. But the more he looked, the harder it was to look away.

“I am glad she did, Pyotr Vladimirovich,” Rodion said hastily, seeing Pyotr’s raised eyebrow. “I have a message from Brother Aleksandr.”

“Sasha?” asked Pyotr, sharply. “What news?”

“Brother Aleksandr is adviser to the Grand Prince,” returned the novice, with dignity. “He has earned fame for good deeds and defense of the small. He is renowned for his wisdom in judgment.”

“As if I wished to hear of prowess Sasha might have put to better use as master of his own lands,” said Pyotr. But Rodion heard the pride in his voice. “Get to the point. Such tidings would not bring you here so late in the year.”

Rodion looked Pyotr in the eye. “Has your tribute to the Khan gone forth yet, Pyotr Vladimirovich?”

“It will go with the snow,” growled Pyotr. The harvest had been scanty, the game thin. Pyotr grudged every grain and every pelt. They would slaughter what sheep they might, and his sons wore themselves to shadows hunting. The women went out foraging in all weathers.

“Pyotr Vladimirovich, what if you did not need to pay such tribute?” Rodion pursued.

Pyotr did not like leading questions, and said so.

“Very well,” said the young man steadily. “The prince and his councilors have asked themselves why we should pay tribute anymore, or bend the knee to a pagan king. The last Khan was murdered, and his heirs cannot sit a twelvemonth on their thrones before they, too, are slain. They are all in disarray. Why should they be masters of good Christians? Brother Aleksandr has gone to Sarai, to judge their quality, and he has sent me to ask your help, should the Grand Prince choose to fight.”

Vasya saw her father’s face change and wondered what the young monk had said.

“War,” said Pyotr.

“Freedom,” Rodion rejoined.

“We wear the yoke lightly, here in the north,” said Pyotr.

“And yet you wear it.”

“Better a yoke than the fist of the Golden Horde,” said Pyotr. “They need not meet us in open battle, only send men in the night. Ten fire-arrows would burn Moscow to the ground, and my house is also made of wood.”

“Pyotr Vladimirovich, Brother Aleksandr bid me say—”

“Forgive me,” said Pyotr, rising abruptly, “but I have heard enough. I hope you will forgive me.”

Rodion had perforce to nod, and turn his attention to his mead.

“WHY SHOULD WE NOT FIGHT, FATHER?” Kolya demanded. Two dead rabbits dangled by the ears from his fist. Father and son were taking advantage of a break in the downpour to walk a trapline.

“Because I foresee little good in it, and much harm,” Pyotr replied, not for the first time. Neither of his sons had given him any peace since the monk had turned their heads with stories of their brother’s renown. “Your sister lives in Moscow; would you have her caught in a city under siege? When the Tatars invest a city, they do not leave survivors.”

Kolya dismissed the possibility with a wave, the rabbits jerking grotesquely at the end of his arm. “Of course we would meet them in battle well before the gates of Moscow.”

Pyotr bent to check the next snare, which was empty.

“And think, Father,” Kolya went on, warming to his theme, “we might send goods south in trade, not tribute. My cousin would kneel to no one: a prince in truth. Your great-grandchildren might be Grand Princes themselves.”

“I’d rather my sons living, and my daughters safe, than a chance at glory for unborn descendants.” Seeing his son’s mouth open on another protest, Pyotr added, more gently, “Synok, you know that Sasha left sorely against my will. I will not stoop to tying my own son to the door-post; if you wish to fight, you may go as well, but I will not bless a fool’s war, and no scrap of cloth or silver or horseflesh will I give you. Sasha, you remember, might be rich in renown, but he must beg his bread and tend the herbs in his own garden.”

Whatever Kolya might have replied was drowned by an exclamation of satisfaction, for yet another rabbit hung in a snare, its mottled autumn coat streaked with dirt. While his son bent to extricate it, Pyotr raised his head and went suddenly still. The air smelled of new death. Pyos, Pyotr’s boarhound, shrank against his master’s shins, whining like a puppy.

“Kolya,” said Pyotr. Something in his father’s tone sent the young man to his feet, a flash in his black eyes.

“I smell it,” he said, after a moment’s pause. “What ails the dog?” For Pyos whined and trembled and looked eagerly back toward the village. Pyotr shook his head; he was casting from side to side, almost like a scenthound himself.

He said no word, but pointed: a splash of blood in the leaf-litter around their feet, not the rabbit’s. Pyotr gestured peremptorily at the dog; the boarhound whined and slunk forward. Kolya hung a little to the left, owl-silent as his father. They came cautiously round a stand of trees, into a small, scrubby clearing, grim with decaying leaves.

It had been a buck. A haunch lay almost at Pyotr’s feet, trailing blood and tendon. The main part of the carcass lay a little way off, the entrails burst and spreading, stinking even in the cold.

The gore gave neither man pause, though the buck’s horned head lolled near their feet, tongue dangling. But they exchanged a speaking glance, for nothing in those woods could so mutilate a creature. And what beast would kill a fat autumn buck but leave the meat?

Pyotr squatted in the mud, eyes skimming the ground.

“The buck ran and the hunter gave chase; the buck had been running hard, and was favoring a foreleg. He bounded into the clearing—here.” Pyotr was moving as he spoke, half-crouched, “One leap, two—and then a blow from the side struck him down.” Pyotr paused. Pyos crouched on his belly at the very edge of the clearing, never taking his eyes off his master.

“But what struck the blow?” he muttered.

Kolya had read a similar tale in the mud. “No tracks,” he said. His long knife hissed as it slid free of its scabbard. “None. Nor any signs that someone tried to sweep them away.”

“Look to the dog,” said Pyotr. Pyos had risen from his crouch and was staring at a gap between the trees. Every hair on his rough-coated spine stood on end, and he was growling low between bared teeth. As one, both men spun, Pyotr’s knife in his hand almost before he willed it. Briefly he thought he saw movement, a darker shadow in the gloom, but then it was gone. Pyos barked once, high and sharp: a sound of fearful defiance.

Pyotr snapped his fingers at his dog. Kolya turned with him. They crossed the blood-smeared leaf-mold and made for the village without a word.

A DAY LATER, WHEN Rodion knocked on Konstantin’s door, the priest was inspecting his paints by candlelight. The ends and dribbles of mixed color turned to mold in the damp. There was daylight outside, but the priest’s windows were small and the roar of the rain held back the sun. The room would have been dim if not for the candles. Too many candles, Rodion thought. A terrible waste.

“Father, bless,” said Rodion.

“God be with you,” said Konstantin. The room was cold; the priest had wrapped a blanket round his thin shoulders. He did not offer Rodion one.

“Pyotr Vladimirovich and his sons have gone hunting,” said Rodion. “But they will not speak of their quarry. Said they nothing in your hearing?”

“Not in my hearing, no,” replied Konstantin.

The rain poured down without.

Rodion frowned. “I cannot imagine what they would bring their boar-spears for, while leaving the dogs behind. And this is cruel weather for riding.”

Konstantin said nothing.

“Well, God grant them success, whatever it is,” Rodion persevered. “I must leave in two days, and I do not care to meet whatever put that look in Pyotr Vladimirovich’s eye.”

“I will pray for your safety on the road,” said Konstantin curtly.

“God keep you,” replied Rodion, ignoring the dismissal. “I know you do not like your reflections disturbed. But I would ask your counsel, Brother.”

“Ask,” said Konstantin.

“Pyotr Vladimirovich wishes his daughter to take vows,” said Rodion. “He has charged me, with words and money, that I might go to Moscow, to the Ascension, and prepare them for her coming. He says she will be sent with the tribute-goods, as soon as there is enough snow for sledges.”

“A pious duty, Brother,” said Konstantin. But he had looked up from his paints. “What need of counsel?”

“Because she is not a girl formed for convents,” said Rodion. “A blind man could see it.”

Konstantin set his jaw, and Rodion saw with surprise the priest’s face ablaze with anger. “She cannot marry,” said Konstantin. “Only sin awaits her in this world; better she retire. She will pray for her father’s soul. Pyotr Vladimirovich is an old man, he will be glad of her prayers when he goes to God.”

This was all very well. Nonetheless Rodion knew a pang of conscience. Pyotr’s second daughter reminded him of Brother Aleksandr. Though Sasha was a monk, he had never stayed long at the Lavra. He rode the breadth of Rus’ on his good war-horse, tricking and charming and fighting by turns. He wore a sword on his back and was adviser to princes. But such a life was not possible for a woman who took the veil.

“Well, I will do it,” said Rodion reluctantly. “Pyotr Vladimirovich has been my host, and I can hardly do less. But, Brother, I wish you would change his mind. Someone surely can be persuaded to marry Vasilisa Petrovna. I do not think she will last long in a convent. Wild birds die in cages.”

“And so?” snapped Konstantin. “Blessed are those who linger only a little in this mire of wickedness before going into the presence of God. I only hope her soul is prepared when the meeting comes. Now, Brother, I would like to pray.”

Without a word, Rodion crossed himself and slipped out the door, blinking in the feeble daylight. Well, I am sorry for the girl, he thought.

And then, uneasily, How thick the shadows lie in that room.

PYOTR AND KOLYA TOOK their men hunting not once but several times before the snow. The rain would not cease, though it grew steadily colder, and their strength faltered in the long, wet days. But try as they might, they never found so much as a trace of the thing that had torn the buck to pieces. The men began to mutter, and at last to protest. Weariness vied with loyalty, and no one was sorry when the frost put an end to the hunting.

But that was when the first dog disappeared.

She was a tall bitch: a good whelper and fearless before the boar, but they found her near the palisade, headless and bloody in the snow. The only tracks near her frozen body were her own running paw prints.

Folk took to going into the woods in twos, with axes in their belts.

But then a pony disappeared, while it stood tied to a sled for hauling firewood. Its owner’s son, returning with an armful of logs, saw the empty traces and a great swath of scarlet splashed across the muddy earth. He dropped his logs, even his ax, and ran for the village.

Dread settled over the village: a clinging, muttering dread, tenacious as cobwebs.

Chapter 19: Nightmares

November roared in with black leaves and gray snow. On a morning like dirty glass, Father Konstantin stood beside his window, tracing with his brush the slim foreleg of Saint George’s white stallion. His work absorbed him, and all was still. But somehow the silence listened. Konstantin found himself straining to hear. Lord, will you not speak to me?

When someone scratched at his door, Konstantin’s hand jerked and almost smeared the paint. “Come in,” he snarled, flinging his brush aside. Anna Ivanovna it was, surely, with baked milk and adoring, tedious eyes.

But it was not Anna Ivanovna.

“Father, bless,” said Agafya, the serving-girl.

Konstantin made the sign of the cross. “God be with you.” But he was angry.

“Do not take offense, Batyushka,” the girl whispered, wringing her work-hardened hands. She hovered at the doorway. “If I may have only a moment.”

The priest pressed his lips together. Before him, Saint George bestrode the world on an oaken panel. His steed had only three legs. The fourth, as yet unpainted, would be raised in an elegant curve to trample a serpent’s head.

“What do you wish to say to me?” Konstantin tried to make his voice gentle. He did not entirely succeed; she paled and shrank away. But she did not go.

“We have been true Christians, Batyushka,” she stammered. “We take the sacrament and venerate the icons. But it has never gone so hard with us. Our gardens drowned in the summer rain; we will be hungry before the season turns.”

She paused, and licked her lips.

“I wondered—I cannot help but wonder—have we offended the old ones? Chernobog, perhaps, who loves blood? My grandmother always said it would come to disaster, if ever he turned against us. And I fear now for my son.” She looked at him in mute supplication.

“Better to be afraid,” growled Konstantin. His fingers itched for his brush; he fought for patience. “It shows your true repentance. This is the time of trial, when God will know his loyal servants. You must hold fast, and you shall see kingdoms presently, the like of which you do not imagine. The things you speak of are false: illusions to tempt the unwary. Hold to truth and all will be well.”

He turned away, reaching for his paints. But her voice came again.

“But I don’t need a kingdom, Batyushka, just enough to feed my son through the winter. Marina Ivanovna kept the old ways and our children never starved.”

Konstantin’s face assumed an expression not unlike that of the spear-wielding saint before him. Agafya stumbled against the doorframe. “And now God will have his reckoning,” he hissed. His voice flowed like black water with a rime of ice. “Think you that just because it was delayed two years, or ten, that God was not wroth at such blasphemy? The wheel grinds slowly.”

Agafya quivered like a netted bird. “Please,” she whispered. She seized his hand, kissed the spattered fingers. “Will you beg forgiveness for us, then? Not for my own sake, but for my son.”

“As I can,” he said more gently, putting a hand on her bowed head. “But you must first ask it yourself.”

“Yes—yes, Batyushka,” she said, looking up with a face full of gratitude.

When at last she hurried out into the gray afternoon and the door clicked shut behind her, the shadows on the wall seemed to stretch like waking cats.

“Well done.” The voice echoed in Konstantin’s bones. The priest froze, every nerve alight. “Above all they must fear me, so that they can be saved.”

Konstantin flung his brush aside and knelt. “I wish only to please you, Lord.”

“I am pleased,” said the voice.

“I have tried to set these people on the path of righteousness,” said Konstantin. “I would only ask, Lord…That is, I have wanted to ask…”

The voice was infinitely gentle. “What would you ask?”

“Please,” said Konstantin, “let me see my task here finished. I would carry your word to the ends of the earth, if only you asked it. But the forest is so small.”

He bowed his head, waiting.

But the voice laughed in loving delight, so that Konstantin thought his soul would flee his body in joy. “Of course you shall go,” it said. “One more winter. Only sacrifice and be faithful. Then you shall show the world my glory, and I will be with you forever.”

“Only tell me what I must do,” said Konstantin. “I will be faithful.”

“I desire you to invoke my presence when you speak,” said the voice. Another man would have heard the eagerness in it. “And when you pray. Call me with every breath and call me by name. I am the bringer of storms. I would be present among you, and give you grace.”

“It shall be done,” said Konstantin fervently. “Just as you say, it shall be done. Only never leave me again.”

All the candles wavered with something very like a long sigh of satisfaction. “Obey me always,” returned the voice. “And I will never leave you.”

THE NEXT DAY THE SUN drowned in sodden clouds and cast ghostly light over a world stripped of color. It began to snow at daybreak. Pyotr’s household went shivering to the little church and huddled together inside. The church was dark except for the candles. Almost, thought Vasya, she could hear the snow outside, burying them until spring. It shut off the light, but the candles lit the priest. The bones of his face cast elegant shadows. He wore a look more remote than his icons, and he had never been so beautiful.

The icon-screen was finished. The risen Christ, the final icon, was enthroned above the door. He sat in judgment above a stormy earth with an expression that Vasya could not read. “I invoke Thee,” said Konstantin, low and clear. “God who has called me up to be his servant. The voice out of darkness, lover of storms. Be Thou present among us.”

And then, louder, he began the service. “Blessed be God,” Konstantin said. His eyes were great dark hollows, but his voice seemed to flicker with fire. The service went on and on. When he spoke, the people forgot the icy damp and the grinning specter of starvation. Earthly troubles were as nothing when that voice touched them. The Christ above the doors seemed to raise his hand in benediction.

“Listen,” said Konstantin. His voice dropped so that they had to strain to hear. “There is evil among us.” The congregation looked at each other. “It creeps into our souls in the night, in the silence. It is waiting for the unwary.” Irina crept closer to Vasya, and Vasya put an arm around her.

“Only faith,” Konstantin continued, “only prayer, only God, can save you.” His voice rose on each word. “Fear God, and repent. It is your only escape from damnation. Otherwise you will burn—you will burn!”

Anna screamed. Her scream echoed the length of the little church; her eyes bulged beneath the bluish lids. “No!” she screamed. “Oh, God, not here! Not here!”

Her voice seemed to split the walls and multiply so that there were a hundred women shrieking.

In the instant before the room fell into chaos, Vasya followed her stepmother’s pointing finger. The risen Christ over the door was smiling at them now, when before he had been solemn. His two dog-teeth dented his lower lip. But instead of his two eyes, he had only one. The other side of his face was seamed with blue scars, and the eye was a socket, crudely sewn.

Somewhere, Vasya thought, fighting the fear that closed her throat, she had seen that face before.

But she had no time to think. The folk on either side of her clapped their hands to their ears, flung themselves facedown, or shoved their way toward the safety of the narthex. Anna was left standing alone. She laughed and wept, clawing the air. No one would touch her. Her screams echoed off the walls. Konstantin shoved his way to her side and struck her across the face. She subsided, choking, but the noise seemed to echo on and on, as though the icons themselves were screaming.

Vasya seized Irina in the first moil of chaos, to keep her from being swept off her feet. An instant later, Alyosha appeared and wrapped strong arms around Dunya, who was small as a child, fragile as November leaves. The four clung together. The people milled and shouted. “I must go to Mother,” said Irina, squirming.

“Wait, little bird,” said Vasya. “You would only be trampled.”

“Mother of God,” Alyosha said. “If anyone learns Irina’s mother takes such fits, no one will ever marry her.”

“No one will know,” snapped Vasya. Her sister had turned very pale. She glared at her brother as the crowd pushed them against the wall. She and Alyosha shielded Dunya and Irina with their bodies.

Vasya looked again at the iconostasis. Now it was as it had always been. Christ sat in his throne above the world, his hand raised to bless. Had she imagined the other face? But if she had, why had Anna screamed?

“Silence!”

Konstantin’s voice rang like a dozen bells. Everyone froze. He stood before the iconostasis and raised a hand, a living echo of the image of Christ above his head. “Fools!” he thundered. “Are you children to be afraid of a woman screaming? Get up, all of you. Be silent. God will protect us.”

They crept together like chastened children. What Pyotr’s bellowing had not accomplished, the voice of the priest did. They swayed nearer him. Anna stood shuddering, weeping, ashen as the sky at dawn. The only face paler in that church belonged to the priest himself. The candlelight filled the nave with strange shadows. There—again—one flung across the iconostasis that was not the shadow of a man.

God, thought Vasya, when the service haltingly renewed. Here? Chyerti cannot come into churches; they are creatures of this world, and church is for the next.

Yet she had seen the shadow.

PYOTR LED HIS WIFE home as soon as could be managed. Her daughter undressed her and put her to bed. But Anna cried and retched and cried, and would not stop.

At last, Irina, desperate, went back to the church. She found Father Konstantin kneeling alone before the icon-screen. After the service that day, the people had kissed his hand and begged him to save them. He looked at peace then. Even triumphant. But now Irina thought he looked like the loneliest person in the world.

“Will you come to my mother?” she whispered.

Konstantin jerked to his knees, looked around.

“She is weeping,” said Irina. “She will not stop.”

Konstantin did not speak; he was straining all his senses. After the people left the church, God had come to him in the smoke of extinguished candles.

“Beautiful.” The whisper sent the smoke curling in little eddies along the floor. “They were so frightened.” The voice sounded almost gleeful. Konstantin was silent. For an instant he wondered if he was a madman and the voice had come crawling out of his own heart. But—no, of course not. It is only your wickedness that doubts, Konstantin Nikonovich.

“I am glad you came among us,” murmured Konstantin under his breath. “To lead your people in righteousness.”

But the voice had not answered, and now the church was still.

Louder, Konstantin said to Irina, “Yes, I will come.”

“HERE IS FATHER KONSTANTIN,” said Irina, drawing the priest into her mother’s room. “He will comfort you. I will get supper; Vasya is burning the milk already.” She ran out.

“The church, Batyushka?” sobbed Anna Ivanovna when the two were alone. She lay in her bed, wrapped in furs. “The church—never the church.”

“What foolishness you talk,” said Konstantin. “The church is protected by God. God alone makes his dwelling in the church, and his saints and his angels.”

“But I saw—”

“You saw nothing!” Konstantin laid a hand on her cheek. She shivered. His voice dropped lower, hypnotic. He touched her lips with a forefinger. “You saw nothing, Anna Ivanovna.”

She raised one trembling hand and touched his. “I will see nothing, if you tell me so, Batyushka.” She blushed like a girl. Her hair was dark with sweat.

“Then see nothing,” Konstantin said. He pulled his hand away.

“I see you,” she said. It was barely a breath. “You are all I see, sometimes. In this horrible place, with the cold and the monsters and the starving. You are a light to me.” She caught at his hand again; she propped herself on one elbow. Her eyes swam with tears. “Please, Batyushka,” she said. “I want only to be close.”

“You are mad,” he said. He pushed her hands down and drew away. She was soft and old, rotted with fear and disappointed hopes. “You are married. I have given myself to God.”

“Not that!” she cried in despair. “Never that. I want you to see me.” Her throat worked, and she stammered. “To see me. You see my stepdaughter. You watch her. As I have watched you—I watch you. Why not me? Why not me?” Her voice rose to a wail.

“Hush.” He laid a hand on the door. “I see you. But, Anna Ivanovna, there is little to see.”

The door was heavy. When closed, it muffled the sound of her weeping.

THAT DAY THE PEOPLE stayed near their ovens while the snow flurried down. But Vasya slipped away to see to the horses. He is coming, said Mysh, rolling a wild eye.

Vasya went to her father.

“We must bring the horses inside the palisade,” she said. “Tonight, before dusk.”

“Why are you here to burden us, Vasya?” snapped Pyotr. The snow was falling thickly, catching on their hats and shoulders. “You ought to have been gone. Long gone and safe. But you frightened your suitor and now you are here and it is winter.”

Vasya did not reply. Indeed she could not, for she saw suddenly and clearly that her father was afraid. She had never known her father afraid. She wanted to hide in the oven like a child. “Forgive me, Father,” she said, mastering herself. “This winter will pass, as others have passed. But I think that now, at night, we should bring the horses in.”

Pyotr drew a deep breath. “You are right, daughter,” he said. “You are right. Come, I will help you.”

The horses settled a little when the gate was shut behind them. Vasya took Mysh and Buran into the stable itself, while the less prized horses milled in the dooryard. The little vazila put his hand in hers. “Do not leave us, Vasya.”

“I must get my soup,” said Vasya. “Dunya is calling. But I will come back.”

She ate her soup curled in the back of Mysh’s narrow stall and fed the mare her bread. Afterward, Vasya wrapped herself in a horse-blanket and counted the shadows on the stable wall. The vazila sat beside her. “Do not go, Vasya,” he said. “When you stay, I remember my strength, and I remember that I am not afraid.”

So Vasya stayed, shivering despite the straw and her horse-blanket. The night was very cold. She thought she would never sleep.

But she must have, for after moonset she awoke, freezing. The stable was dark. Even Vasya, cat-eyed, could barely make out Mysh standing above her. For a moment all was still. Then, from without, came a soft chuckle. Mysh snorted and backed, tossing her head. The white showed in a ring around her eye.

Vasya rose in silence, letting her blanket fall. The cold air sank fangs into her flesh. She crept to the stable door. There was no moon, and fat clouds smothered the stars. The snow was still falling.

Creeping over the snow, silent as the flakes, was a man. He darted from shadow to shadow. When he let out his breath, he laughed deep in his throat. Vasya crept closer. She could not see a face, only ragged clothes and a thatch of coarse hair.

The man drew near the house and put a hand on the door. Vasya shouted aloud just as the man flung himself into the kitchen. There was no sound of flesh on wood; he passed through the door like smoke.

Vasya ran across the dvor. The yard glittered with virgin snow. The ragged man had left no footprints. The snow was thick and soft; Vasya’s limbs felt heavy. Still she ran, shouting, but before she could come to the house, the man had leaped back into the dooryard, landing animal-lithe on all fours. He was laughing. “Oh,” he said, “it has been so long. How sweet are the houses of men, and oh, how she screamed—”

He caught sight of Vasya then, and the girl stumbled. She knew the scars, the single gray eye. It was the face on the icon, the face…the face of the sleeper in the woods, years ago. How can that be?

“Well, what is this?” the man said. He paused. She saw memory cross his face. “I remember a little girl with your eyes. But now you are a woman.” His eye fastened on hers as though he meant to strip a secret from her soul. “You are the little witch who tempts my servant. But I did not see…” He came nearer and nearer.

Vasya tried to flee, but her feet would not obey. His breath reeked of hot blood, he blew it in waves over her face. She gathered her courage. “I am no one,” she said. “Get out, leave us be.”

His humid fingers flicked out and lifted her chin. “Who are you, girl?” And then, lower, “Look at me.” In his eye lay madness. Vasya would not look—knew she must not—but his fingers were like an iron trap and in a moment she would…

But then an icy hand seized her, pulled her away. She smelled cold water and crushed pine. Over her head a voice was speaking. “Not yet, brother,” it said. “Go back.”

Vasya could see nothing of the speaker except a curving line of black cloak, but she could see the other, the one-eyed man. He was grinning and cringing and laughing all at once.

“Not yet? But it is done, brother,” he said. “It is done.” He winked his good eye at Vasya and was gone. The black cloak around Vasya became the whole world. She was cold, and a horse was neighing, and far away someone was screaming.

Then Vasya awoke, stiff and shivering on the floor in the stable. Mysh pressed her warm nose to the girl’s face. But though Vasya was awake, the cry could still be heard. It went on and on. Vasya sprang to her feet, shaking away her nightmare. The horses in stalls whinnied and kicked, splintering the stable walls. The horses in the freezing dvor milled in panic. There was no ragged one-eyed figure. A dream, Vasya thought. Only a dream. She darted among the horses, dodging the heaving bodies.

The kitchen was churning like a nest of angry wasps. Her brothers bulled their way in, half-awake and armed; Irina and Anna Ivanovna crowded into the opposite doorway. The servants milled here and there, crossing themselves or praying or clutching one another.

And then her father came, big and steady, his sword in one hand. He forced his way, cursing, between clusters of terrified servants. “Hush,” he said to the milling people. Father Konstantin burst in on his heels.

It was little Agafya, the maidservant, who was screaming. She sat bolt upright on her pallet. Her white-knuckled hands clutched the wool of her blanket. She had bitten into her lower lip so that the blood bloomed on her chin, and a ring of white showed around her unblinking eyes. The screams sliced the air, like icicles falling from the eaves outside.

Vasya pushed her way through the frightened people. She seized the girl by the shoulders. “Agafya, listen to me,” she said. “Listen—it’s all right. You are safe. All is well. Hush now. Hush.” She held the girl tightly, and after a moment Agafya moaned and fell silent. Her wide eyes slowly focused on Vasya’s face. Her throat worked. She tried to speak. Vasya strained to hear. “He came for my sins,” she choked. “He…” She heaved for breath.

A small boy crawled through the crowd. “Mother,” he cried. “Mother!” He flung himself on her, but she did not heed.

Irina was suddenly there, her small face grave. “She has fainted,” the child said seriously. “She needs air and water.”

“It is only a nightmare,” said Father Konstantin to Pyotr. “Best to leave her to the women.”

Pyotr might have replied, but no one heard, for Vasya cried out then in shock and sudden fury. The entire room convulsed in new fright.

Vasya was staring at the window.

Then—“No,” she said, visibly gathering herself. “Forgive me. I—nothing. It was nothing.” Pyotr frowned. The servants looked at her with open suspicion and murmured among themselves.

Dunya shuffled to Vasya, her breath rustling hollow in her chest. “Girls always have nightmares when the weather changes,” Dunya wheezed, loud enough for the room to hear. “Go on, child, fetch water and honey-wine.” She gave Vasya a hard look.

Vasya said nothing. Her glance strayed once more to the window. For an instant she could have sworn she’d seen a face. But it could not be, for it was the face out of her dream, blue-scarred and one-eyed. It had grinned and winked at her through the wavering ice.

AS SOON AS IT was light the next morning, Vasya went looking for the domovoi. She searched until the watery sun was high, and into the brief afternoon, shirking her work. The sun was tilting west when she managed to drag the creature surreptitiously out of the oven. His beard was smoldering around the edges. He was thin and bent, his clothes shabby, his manner defeated.

“Last night,” Vasya said without preamble, cradling a burnt hand, “I dreamed of a face and then I saw it at the window. It had one eye and it was smiling. Who was it?”

“Madness,” mumbled the domovoi. “Appetite. The sleeper, the eater. I could not keep it out.”

“You must try harder,” snapped Vasya.

But the domovoi’s gaze wandered, and his mouth drooped open. “I am weak,” he slurred. “And the wood-guard is weak. Our enemy has loosened his chain. Soon he will be free. I cannot keep him out.”

“Who is the enemy?”

“Appetite,” said the domovoi again. “Madness. Terror. He wants to eat the world.”

“How can I defeat it?” said Vasya urgently. “How may the house be protected?”

“Offerings,” muttered the domovoi. “Bread and milk will strengthen me—and perhaps blood. But you are only one girl alone, and I cannot take my life from you. I will fade. The eater will come again.”

Vasya seized the domovoi and shook him so that his jaws clacked together. His dull eyes cleared, and he looked momentarily astonished. “You will not fade,” Vasya snapped. “You can take your life from me. You will. The one-eyed man—the eater—he will not get in again. He will not.”

There was no milk, but Vasya stole bread and shoved it into the domovoi’s hand. She did it that night, and every night thereafter, scanting her own meals. She cut her hand and smeared the blood on sills and before the oven. She pressed her bloody hand to the domovoi’s mouth. Her ribs started through her skin, her eyes grew hollow, and nightmares dogged her sleeping. But the nights slipped past—one, two, a dozen—and no one else screamed at something that was not there. The wavering domovoi held, and she poured her strength into him.

But little Agafya never spoke sense again. Sometimes she would plead with things that no one could see: saints and angels and a one-eyed bear. Later she raved of a man and a white horse. One night she ran out of the house, collapsed blue-lipped in the snow, and died.

The women prepared the body with as much haste as was seemly. Father Konstantin kept vigil beside her, white to the lips, head bent, with a face no one could read. Though he knelt for hours at her side, he never once prayed aloud. The words seemed to catch in his straining throat.

They buried Agafya in the brief winter daylight while the forest groaned around them. In the swift-falling twilight, they hurried to huddle before their ovens. Agafya’s child cried for his mother; his wailing hung like mist over the silent village.

THE NIGHT AFTER THE FUNERAL, a dream seized Dunya like sickness, like the jaws of a hunting creature. She was standing in a dead forest strewn with the stumps of blackened trees. An oily smoke veiled the flinching stars; firelight flickered against the snow. The frost-demon’s face was a skull-mask with the skin drawn tight. His soft voice frightened Dunya worse than shouting.

“Why have you delayed?”

Dunya gathered all her force. “I love her,” she said. “She is like my own daughter. You are winter, Morozko. You are death; you are cold. You cannot have her. She will give her life to God.”

The frost-demon laughed bitterly. “She will die in the dark. Every day my brother’s power waxes. And she saw him when she should not have. Now he knows what she is. He will slay her if he can, and take her for his own. Then you well may talk of damnation.” Morozko’s voice softened, a very little. “I can save her,” he said. “I can save you all. But she must have that jewel. Otherwise…”

And Dunya saw that the flickering firelight was her own village burning. The forest filled with creeping things whose faces she knew. Greatest among them was a grinning one-eyed man, and beside him stood another shape, tall and slender, corpse-pale, lank-haired. “You let me die,” the specter said in Vasya’s voice, and her teeth gleamed between bloody lips.

Dunya found herself seizing the necklace and holding it out. It made a tiny scrap of brightness in a world formless and dark.

“I did not know,” Dunya stammered. She reached for the dead girl, the necklace swinging from her fist. “Vasya, take it. Vasya!” But the one-eyed man only laughed, and the girl made no sign.

Then the frost-demon put himself between her and horror, seized her shoulders with hard, icy hands. “You have no time, Avdotya Mikhailovna,” he said. “Next time you see me, I will beckon and you will follow.” His voice was the voice of the wood; it seemed to echo in her bones, vibrate in her throat. Dunya felt her guts twist with fear and with certainty. “But you can save her before you go,” he went on. “You must save her. Give her the necklace. Save them all.”

“I will,” whispered Dunya. “It will be as you say. I swear it. I swear…”

And then her own voice woke her.

But the chill of that burnt forest, of the frost-demon’s touch, lingered. Dunya’s bones shook until it seemed they would shake through her skin. All she could see was the frost-demon, intent and despairing, and the laughing face of his brother, the one-eyed creature. The two faces blurred into one. The blue stone in her pocket seemed to drip icy flame. Her skin cracked and blackened when her hand closed tight around it.

Chapter 20: A Gift from a Stranger

Vasya went to the horses every morning at first light during those clipped, metallic days, only a little after her father. They had a kinship in this, to fear so passionately for the animals. At night, the horses were put in the dvor, safe behind the palisade, and as many as would fit were sheltered in the sturdy stable. But during the day they were turned loose to fend for themselves, roaming the gray pastures and digging grass from beneath the snow.

One bright, bitter morning, not long before midwinter, Vasya ran the horses into the field, whooping, riding the bareback Mysh. But once the horses were settled, the girl dismounted and looked the mare over frowning. Her ribs were beginning to show through her brown coat, not from want, but from waiting.

He will come again, the mare said. Can you smell it?

Vasya had not the nose of a horse, but she turned into the wind. For an instant, the smell of rotting leaves and pestilence closed her throat. “Yes,” she said grimly, coughing. “The dogs smell it, too. They whine when the men set them loose, and run for their kennels. But I will not let him hurt you.”

She began her round, going from horse to horse with withered apple cores, poultices, and soft words. Mysh followed her like a dog. At the edge of the herd, Buran scraped the ground with a forehoof and bugled a challenge to the waiting wood.

“Be easy,” said Vasya. She came alongside the stallion and put a hand on his hot crest.

He was furious as a stallion that sees a rival among his mares, and he almost kicked her before he got hold of himself. Let him come! He reared, lashing out with his forefeet. This time I will kill him.

Vasya dodged the flying hooves, pressing her body to his. “Wait,” she said into his ear.

The horse spun, snapping his teeth, but she clung close and he could not reach her. She kept her voice quiet. “Keep your strength.”

Stallions obey mares; Buran put his head down.

“You must be strong and calm when it comes,” said Vasya.

Your brother, said Mysh. Vasya turned to see Alyosha, hatless, running toward her out the palisade-gate.

In an instant, Vasya had her forearm behind Mysh’s withers, and then she was on the horse’s back. The mare galloped across the field, kicking up the frozen glaze. The sturdy pasture fence loomed, but Mysh cleared the barrier and ran on.

Vasya met Alyosha just outside the palisade. “It is Dunya,” said Alyosha “She will not wake. She is saying your name.”

“Come on,” said Vasya, and Alyosha sprang up behind her.

THE KITCHEN WAS HOT; the oven roared and gaped like a mouth. Dunya lay atop the oven, open-eyed and unseeing, still except for her twitching hands. She muttered to herself now and again. Her brittle skin stretched over her bones, so tight that Vasya thought she could see the ebbing blood. She climbed quickly atop the oven. “Dunya,” she said. “Dunya, wake up. It is I. It is Vasya.”

The open eyes blinked once, but that was all. Vasya felt a moment of panic; she forced it down. Irina and Anna knelt side by side before the icon-corner, praying. The tears slid down Irina’s face; she wasn’t pretty when she cried.

“Hot water,” snapped Vasya, turning round. “Irina, for God’s sake, praying will not keep her warm. Make soup.” Anna looked up with venomous eyes, but Irina, with surprising quickness, got to her feet and filled a pot.

All that day, Vasya sat at Dunya’s side, hunched atop the oven. She packed blankets around her nurse’s shriveled body and tried to coax broth down her throat. But the liquid dribbled out of her mouth, and she would not wake. All that long day the clouds drifted in, and the daylight darkened.

In the late afternoon, Dunya sucked in a breath as though she meant to swallow the world, and caught at Vasya’s hands. Vasya jerked back in surprise. The strength in her old nurse’s grip astonished her. “Dunya,” she said.

The old lady’s eyes wandered. “I did not know,” she whispered. “I did not see.”

“You will be all right,” said Vasya.

“He has one eye. No, he has blue eyes. They are the same. They are brothers. Vasya, remember…” And then her hand fell away and she lay still, mumbling to herself.

Vasya spooned more hot drinks down Dunya’s throat. Irina kept the fire roaring. But the old lady’s pulse faded with the daylight. She ceased to mutter and lay open-eyed. “Not yet,” she said to the empty corner, and sometimes she cried. “Please,” she said then. “Please.”

The feeble day flickered, and a hush fell over house and village. Alyosha went out for firewood; Irina went to tend to her peevish mother.

When Konstantin’s voice broke the silence, Vasya nearly leaped out of her skin.

“Does she live?” he said. The shadows lay across him like a woven mantle.

“Yes,” Vasya said.

“I will pray with her,” he said.

“You will not,” snapped Vasya, too weary and frightened for courtesy. “She is not going to die.”

Konstantin came nearer. “I can ease her pain.”

“No,” Vasya repeated. She was going to cry. “She is not going to die. As you love God, I beg you, go.”

“She is dying, Vasilisa Petrovna. This is my place.”

“She is not!” Vasya’s voice came wrenching from her throat. “She is not dying. I am going to save her.”

“She will be dead by morning.”

“You want my people to love you, so you made them afraid.” Vasya was pale with fury. “I will not have Dunya afraid. Get out.”

Konstantin opened his mouth, then closed it again. Abruptly he turned and left the kitchen.

Vasya forgot him at once. Dunya had not wakened. She lay still, her pulse a thread, her breathing barely felt on Vasya’s unsteady hand.

Night fell. Alyosha and Irina returned; the kitchen filled briefly with a subdued bustle as the evening meal was served. Vasya could not eat. The hour drew on and the kitchen emptied once more until it was only they four, Dunya and Vasya, Irina and Alyosha. The latter two dozed on the oven. Vasya was nodding herself.

“Vasya,” said Dunya.

Vasya jerked awake with a sob. Dunya’s voice was feeble, but lucid. “You’re all right, Dunyashka. I knew you would be.”

Dunya smiled toothlessly. “Yes,” she said. “He is waiting.”

“Who is waiting?”

Dunya did not answer. She was struggling for breath. “Vasochka,” she said. “I have something your father gave me to keep for you. I must give it to you now.”

“Later, Dunyashka,” said Vasya. “You must rest now.”

But Dunya was already fumbling for her skirt pocket with one stiff hand. Vasya opened the pocket for her and withdrew something hard, wrapped in a scrap of soft cloth.

“Open it,” whispered Dunya. Vasya obeyed. The necklace was made of some pale, glittering metal, brighter than silver, and shaped like a snowflake, or a many-rayed star. A jewel of silver-blue burned in the center. Anna had no jewels to equal it; Vasya had never seen anything so fine. “But what is it?” she asked, bewildered.

“A talisman,” said Dunya, struggling for breath. “There is power in it. Keep it hidden. Do not speak of it. If your father asks, tell him you know nothing of it.”

Madness. A line formed between Vasya’s brows, but she slipped the chain over her head. It swung between her breasts, invisible under her clothes. Suddenly Dunya went rigid, her dry fingers scrabbling at Vasya’s arm. “His brother,” she hissed. “He is angry that you have the jewel. Vasya, Vasya, you must…” She choked and fell silent.

From without, there came a long, savage chuckle.

Vasya froze, heart hammering. Again? Last time, I was dreaming. Then came a scrape: the soft sound of a dragging foot. Another and another. Vasya swallowed. Noiseless, she slid off the oven. The domovoi was crouching at the oven-mouth, frail and intent. “It cannot get in,” said the domovoi, fierce. “I will not let it. I will not.”

Vasya laid a hand on his head and crept to the door. In winter, nothing smells of rot outdoors, but on the threshold, she caught a whiff of decay that turned her empty stomach. There came a flare of burning cold where the jewel lay over her breastbone. She made a low sound of pain. Wake Alyosha? Wake the house? But what was it? The domovoi says he will not let it in.

I will go and see, Vasya thought. I am not afraid. She slipped out the kitchen door.

“No,” breathed Dunya from the oven. “Vasya, no.” She turned her head a little. “Save her,” she whispered to the empty air. “Save her, and I care not if your brother comes for me.”

WHATEVER IT WAS, IT stank like nothing else: death and pestilence and hot metal. Vasya followed the track of the dragging footsteps. There—a quick movement, in the shadow of the house. She saw a thing like a woman, hunched down small, wearing a white wrapper that trailed in the snow. It moved crabwise, as though it had too many joints.

Vasya gathered her courage and crept nearer. The thing darted from window to window, pausing at each, sometimes reaching out a flinching hand, never touching the sill. But at the last window—that of the priest—it went taut. Its eyes gleamed red.

Vasya ran forward. The domovoi said it could not get in. But a swipe of a bloodless fist ripped the ice from its mooring in the window-frame. Vasya saw a flash of gray skin in the moonlight. The trailing white garment was a winding-sheet, and the creature was naked beneath.

Dead, Vasya thought. That thing is dead.

The grayish, weeping hands seized the high sill of Konstantin’s window, and it—she, for Vasya caught a glimpse of long, matted hair—flung itself into the room. Vasya paused beneath the window, then followed the thing up and over. She pulled herself through with brute strength. It was pitch-black inside. The thing crouched, snarling, over a thrashing figure on the bed.

The shadows on the wall seemed to swell, as though they would burst out of the wood. Vasya thought she heard a voice. The girl! Leave him—he’s mine already. Take the girl, take her…

A pain in her breastbone goaded her; the jewel was burning with a fiery cold. Without thinking, Vasya raised a hand and shouted. The creature on the bed whirled, face black with blood.

Take her! snarled the shadow-voice again. The dead thing’s white teeth caught the moonlight as it gathered itself to spring.

Suddenly Vasya realized that there was someone else beside her—not a dead woman nor a voice made of shadows, but a man in a dark cloak. She could not see his face in the darkness. Whoever this other was, he seized her hand and dug his fingers into her palm. Vasya swallowed a cry.

You are dead, said the newcomer to the creature. And I am still master. Go. His voice was like snow at midnight.

The dead thing on the bed cowered back, wailing. The shadows on the wall seemed to rise up in clamorous fury, growling, No, ignore him; he is nothing. I am master. Take her, take—

Vasya felt the skin of her hand split and blood drip to the floor. She knew a fierce exultation. “Go,” she said to the dead thing, as though she had always known the words. “By my blood you are barred from this place.” She curled her hand round the hand that held hers, felt it slick with her blood. For an instant the other hand felt real, cold and hard. She shuddered and turned to look, but there was no one there.

The shadows on the wall seemed suddenly to shrink, quivering, crying out, and the dead creature’s lips writhed back over long, thin teeth. It shrieked at Vasya, turned, and made for the window. It gained the sill, dropped into the snow, and bounded for the woods, faster than a running horse, the tangled, filthy hair streaming out behind.

Vasya did not see it go. She was already at the bed, pulling away the filthy blankets, looking for the wound on the priest’s naked throat.

THE VOICE OF GOD had not spoken to Konstantin Nikonovich that evening. The priest had prayed alone, hour after hour. But his thoughts would not settle on the well-worn words. Vasilisa is wrong, Konstantin had thought. What is a little fear if it saves their souls?

He’d almost gone back to the kitchen to tell her so. But he was weary and stayed in his room, kneeling, even after it grew too dark to see the peeling gold on the icon.

Just before moonrise, he went to bed and dreamed.

In his dream, the gentle-eyed virgin stepped down from her wooden panel. An unearthly light was in her face. She smiled. More than anything, he wanted to feel her hand on his face, to have her blessing. She bent over him, but it was not her hand he felt. Her mouth grazed his forehead, touched his eyes. Then she put a finger under his chin, and her mouth found his. She kissed him again and again. Even dreaming, shame warred with desire; feebly, he tried to push her away. But the blue robes were heavy; her body was like a coal against his. At last he yielded, turning his face to hers with a groan of despair. She smiled against his mouth, as though his anguish pleased her. Her mouth darted down to his throat with the speed of a stooping hawk.

Then she shrieked and Konstantin jerked awake, pinned beneath a quivering weight.

The priest took a full breath and gagged. The woman hissed and rolled off him. He caught a glimpse of matted hair that half-hid eyes like rubies. The creature made for the window. He saw two other figures in his room, one limned in blue, the other dark. The blue shape reached for him. Weakly, Konstantin groped for the cross about his neck. But the blue-lit face was Vasilisa Petrovna’s: an icon in itself, all hard angles and huge eyes. Their eyes met for a moment, his wide with shock, and then her hands went to his throat and he fainted.

HE WAS NOT HURT; his throat and arm and breast were unmarked. So much Vasya felt, groping in the dark, and then a hammering came on the door. Vasya sprang for the window and half-fell into the dvor. The moon shone over the snowy yard. She dropped to earth and crouched in the shadow of the house, shaking with cold and the aftermath of terror.

She heard men burst into the room and pull up short. Clinging with both hands, Vasya was just tall enough to peer over Konstantin’s sill. The room stank of decay. The priest sat bolt upright, clutching his neck. Vasya’s father stood over him holding a lantern.

“Are you all right, Batyushka?” Pyotr said. “We heard a cry.”

“Yes,” replied Konstantin, faltering, wild-eyed. “Yes, forgive me. I must have cried out in my sleep.” The men in the doorway looked at each other. “The ice broke,” said Konstantin. He climbed out of bed and staggered as he found his feet. “The cold gave me bad dreams.”

Vasya ducked hastily as their pale faces turned toward her hiding-place. She crouched in the shadow of the house beneath the window, trying not to breathe.

She heard her father grunt and stride across to the broken casement, where the whole block of ice had fallen away. The shadow of his head and shoulders fell over her as he leaned warily into the dvor. Blessedly, he did not look down. Nothing moved in the dooryard. Then Pyotr drew the shutters closed and placed a wedge between.

But Vasya did not hear it. The instant the shutters closed, she was sprinting silently for the winter kitchen.

THE KITCHEN WAS WARM and dark, womblike. Vasya slipped softly through the door. She ached in every limb.

“Vasya?” Alyosha said.

Vasya clambered atop the oven. Alyosha knelt up beside her. “It’s all right, Dunya,” said Vasya, taking her nurse’s hands. “You will be all right now. We are safe.”

Dunya opened her eyes. A smile touched her shrunken mouth. “Marina will be proud, my Vasochka,” she said. “I will tell her when I see her.”

“You will do nothing of the kind,” said Vasya. She tried to smile, though her eyes blurred with tears. “You are going to get well again.”

At that, the old lady lifted a cold hand and, with surprising firmness, pushed Vasya away. “No, I am not,” she said, with a little of her old tartness. “I have lived to see all of my little ones grown, and I want nothing more than to die with my last three children on either side.” Irina was awake now, too, and Dunya’s other hand reached out and found hers.

Alyosha laid his hand over them all. He spoke up before Vasya could protest. “Vasya, she’s right,” he said. “You must let her go. It will be a cruel winter, and she is weary.”

Vasya shook her head, but her hand wavered.

“Please, my darling,” whispered the old lady. “I am so tired.”

Vasya hesitated for a frozen moment, then tipped her head in a tiny nod.

The old lady laboriously freed her other hand and clasped Vasya’s in both of hers. “Your mother blessed you at her parting, and now I do the same. Be at peace.” She paused as though listening. “You must remember the old stories. Make a stake of rowan-wood. Vasya, be wary. Be brave.”

Her hand fell away and she lay silent. Irina and Alyosha and Vasya were left to pick up her cold hands, straining to hear the sound of her breathing. Finally Dunya roused herself and spoke again, so low that they had to lean close to catch the words.

“Lyoshka,” she whispered. “Will you sing for me?”

“Of course,” whispered Alyosha. He hesitated, then drew a deep breath.

There was a time, not long ago

When flowers grew all year

When days were long

And nights star-strewn

And men lived free from fear

Dunya smiled. Her eyes glowed like a child’s, and in her smile, Vasya saw the shadow of the girl she had been.

But seasons turn and seasons change

The wind blows from the south

The fires come, the storms, the spears

The sorrow and the dark

A wind was rising without, the cold wind that portends snow. But the three atop the oven sat insensible. Dunya listened, open-eyed, her gaze fixed on something that even Vasya could not see.

But far away there is a place

Where yellow flowers grow

Where rising sun

Lights stony shore

And gilds the flying foam

Where all must end

And all—

Alyosha was cut off. The wind slammed the kitchen door open and tore shrieking through the room. Irina gave a little scream. With the wind came a black-cloaked figure, though no one saw it but Vasya. The girl caught her breath. She had seen it before. The figure gave her a single lingering look, then reached out to lay long fingers on Dunya’s throat.

The old lady smiled. “I am not afraid anymore,” she said.

Next moment, the shadow came. It fell between the black-cloaked figure and Dunya as an ax cleaves wood.

“Oh, brother,” said the shadow-voice. “So unwary?” The shadow smiled, a great black gaping smile, and seemed to reach out and seize Dunya with two vast arms. The peace on Dunya’s face turned to terror. Her eyes started from her head, bulging, and her face turned scarlet. Vasya found herself on her knees, frightened, bewildered, shuddering with sobs. “What are you doing?” she shouted. “No—let her go!” The wind roared again through the room, first a wind of winter, and then the humid crackling wind that runs before a summer storm.

But the wind died quick as it had risen, taking with it both the shadow and the black-cloaked man.

“Vasya,” said Alyosha into the silence. “Vasya.” Pyotr and Konstantin rushed in, the men of the household on their heels. Pyotr was flushed with cold; he had not gone to bed after the incident in the priest’s room but set his men to patrol the sleeping village. They had all heard Vasya shouting.

Vasya looked down at Dunya. Dunya was dead. Blood suffused her face and a little foam flecked the corners of her mouth. Her eyes bulged, the dark swimming in pools of red.

“She died afraid,” Vasya said, very softly, shaking. “She died afraid.”

“Come on, Vasochka,” said Alyosha. “Come down.” He had tried to close Dunya’s eyes, but they bulged too much. The last thing Vasya saw before she climbed off the oven was the look of horror on Dunya’s dead face.

Chapter 21: The Hard-Hearted Child

They laid Dunya in the bathhouse, and at dawn the women came loud as hens cackling. They bathed Dunya’s withered body; they wrapped her in linen and sat vigil beside her. Irina knelt weeping, her head in her mother’s lap. Father Konstantin knelt, too, but it did not seem that he prayed. His face was white as the linen. Again and again, his trembling hand felt at his unmarked throat.

Vasya was not there. When the women looked for her, she was not to be found.

“She has always been a hoyden,” muttered one to another. “But I never thought her so bad as this.”

Her friend nodded darkly, mouth pinched small. Dunya had been as a mother to Vasilisa when Marina Ivanovna died. “It is in the blood,” she said. “You can see it in her face. She has a witch’s eyes.”

AT FIRST LIGHT, VASYA crept outside, a shovel over her shoulder. Her face was set. She made a few preparations, then went to find her brother. Alyosha was chopping firewood. His ax whistled down so hard that the logs burst apart and lay strewn in the snow at his feet.

“Lyoshka,” said Vasya. “I need your help.”

Alyosha blinked at his sister. He had been weeping; the ice-crystals glinted in his brown beard. It was very cold. “What, Vasya?”

“Dunya gave us a task.”

The young man’s jaw tightened. “This is hardly the time,” he said. “Why are you here? The women are keeping vigil; you should be with them.”

“Last night,” said Vasya urgently. “There was a dead thing. In the house. An upyr, like in Dunya’s stories. It came as she was dying.”

Alyosha was silent. Vasya met his gaze. His knuckles showed white when he drove the ax down again. “Ran the monster off, did you?” he said with some sarcasm, between chops. “My little sister, all by herself?”

“Dunya told me,” Vasya said. “She said to remember the stories. Make a stake of birch-wood, she said. Remember? Please, brother.”

Alyosha paused in his chopping. “What are you suggesting?”

“We must get rid of it.” Vasya took a deep breath. “We need to look for disturbed graves.”

Alyosha frowned. Vasya was white to the lips, her eyes great dark holes. “Well, we will see,” Alyosha said, with the barest edge of irony. “Let’s go dig up the cemetery. Truly, it has been too long since Father beat me.”

He stacked his wood and hoisted his ax.

It had snowed in the hour before dawn. There was nothing to be seen in the graveyard but vague hummocks beneath the sparkling drifts. Alyosha glanced at his sister. “What now?”

Vasya’s mouth twitched despite herself. “Dunya always said that male virgins are best for finding the undead. You walk in circles until you trip over the right grave. Care to lead, brother?”

“You’re out of luck, I’m afraid, Vasochka,” said Alyosha with some asperity, “and have been for some time. Do we need to kidnap a peasant boy?”

Vasya assumed a righteous expression. “Where greater virtue fails, the lesser must do its poor best,” she informed him, and clambered first among the glittering graves.

In honesty, she doubted that virtue had much to do with it. The smell hung like evil rain over the graveyard, and it was not long before Vasya stopped, choking, in a familiar corner. She and Alyosha looked at each other, and her brother began to dig. The earth ought to have been stiff with frost, but it was moist and fresh-tumbled. As Alyosha cleared away the snow, the smell struck up with such force that he turned away, gagging. But, lips tight, he drove his shovel into the earth. In a surprisingly short time they had uncovered the head and torso of a figure, wrapped in a winding-sheet. Vasya drew out a small knife and cut the cloth away.

“Mother of God,” said Alyosha, and turned away.

Vasya said nothing. Little Agafya’s skin was the grayish-white of a corpse, but her lips were berry-red, full and tender, as they had never been in life. Her eyelashes cast lacy shadows on her wasted cheeks. She might have been asleep, at peace in a bed of earth.

“What do we do?” Alyosha asked, very pale and breathing as little as possible.

“A stake through the mouth,” said Vasya. “I made a stake this morning.”

Alyosha shuddered, but knelt. Vasya knelt beside him, hands trembling. The stake was crudely shaped but sharp, and she hefted a large rock to do the hammering.

“Well, brother,” said Vasya, “Will you hold its head or drive in the stake?”

He was white as the snowdrifts, but he said, “I’m stronger than you.”

“True enough,” said Vasya. She handed over stake and rock and pried open the thing’s jaws. The teeth, sharp as a cat’s, gleamed like bone needles.

The sight of them shook Alyosha out of his stupor. Gritting his teeth, he thrust the stake between the red lips and slammed the rock down. Blood spurted, welling out of the mouth and over the gray chin. The eyes flew open, huge and horrible, though the body did not stir. Alyosha’s hand jerked; he missed the stake and Vasya snatched her fingers away just in time. There was a nasty crunch as the stone shattered the right cheekbone. The thing let out a thin scream, though still it did not move.

To Vasya, it seemed that a roar of fury came faintly from the woods. “Hurry,” she said. “Hurry, hurry.”

Alyosha bit his tongue and resettled his grip. The rock had made a shapeless ruin of the face. He struck the stake again and again, sweating despite the cold. At last the tip of the stake grated against bone, and a final, ferocious strike sent the stake out through the other side of the skull. The light went out of the corpse’s open eyes, and the stone fell from Alyosha’s nerveless fingers. He flung himself away, gasping. Vasya’s hands dripped blood, and worse things, but she let go of Agafya almost absently. She was staring into the forest.

“Vasya, what is it?” Alyosha asked.

“I thought I saw something,” Vasya whispered. “Look there.” She was on her feet. A white horse and a dark rider were cantering away, swallowed almost instantly in the loom of the trees. Beyond them, it seemed she saw another figure, like a great shadow, watching.

“There is no one here but us, Vasya,” said Alyosha. “Here, help me bury her and smooth the snow. Hurry. The women will be looking for you.”

Vasya nodded and hefted the shovel. She was still frowning. “I have seen the horse before,” she said to herself. “And her rider, who wears a black cloak. He has blue eyes.”

VASYA DID NOT GO BACK to the house after the upyr was buried. She washed the earth and blood from her hands, went to the stable, and curled up in Mysh’s stall. Mysh nuzzled the top of her head. The vazila sat beside her.

Vasya sat there a long time and tried to cry. For Dunya’s face as she died, for the bloody ruin of Agafya. Even for Father Konstantin. But though she sat a long time, the tears would not come. There was only a hollow place inside her, and a great silence.

When the sun was westering, the girl joined the women in the bathhouse.

All the women turned on her together. Heedless, they said. Wild. Hard-hearted. Softer, she heard, Witch-woman. Like her mother.

“You’re an ungrateful little thing, Vasya,” gloated Anna Ivanovna. “But I expected nothing better.” That evening, she bent Vasya over a stool and plied her birch switch hard, though Vasya was too old for beatings. Only Irina was silent, but she looked at her sister with a red-eyed reproach that was worse than the women’s words.

Vasya bore it all, but she could not summon speech in her defense.

They buried Dunya at the close of day. The people whispered among themselves all through the quick, freezing funeral. Her father was haggard and gray; she had never seen him look so old.

“Dunya loved you like her daughter, Vasya,” he said, later. “Of all the days to play truant.”

Vasya did not speak, but she thought of her wounded hand, of the bitter, star-strewn night, of the jewel at her throat, of the upyr in the dark.

“FATHER,” SHE SAID THAT NIGHT. The peasants had gone back to their huts. She drew her stool up beside Pyotr’s. The flames in the oven leaped red, and there was an empty space at their hearth where Dunya had been. Pyotr was making a new hilt for a hunting-knife. He scraped away a little curl of wood and glanced at his daughter. In the firelight, her face was drawn. “Father,” she said. “I would not have disappeared without need.” She spoke so soft that in the crowded kitchen only they two heard.

“What need, then, Vasya?” Pyotr laid aside his knife.

He looked as though he feared her answer, Vasya realized; she bit back the jumbled confession quivering in her throat. The upyr is dead, she thought. I will not burden him more, not to salve my own pride. He must be strong for all of us.

“I—went to Mother’s grave,” she said hastily. “Dunya bid me go and pray for them both. She is with Mother now. It was—easier to pray there. In the silence.”

Her father looked wearier than she had ever seen him. “Very well, Vasya,” he said, turning back to his hunting-knife. “But it was ill-done, to go alone and with no word. It has made talk among the people.” There was a small silence. Vasya twisted her hands together. “I am sorry, child,” he added more gently. “I know Dunya was as a mother to you. Did she give you anything before she died? A token? A trinket?”

Vasya hesitated, caught. Dunya said I must not tell him. But it is his gift. She opened her mouth…

There came a great thundering knock on the door, and a man burst through and fell, half-frozen, at their feet. Pyotr was on his feet in an instant, and the moment was lost. The winter kitchen filled with cries of astonishment. The man’s beard rattled with the ice of his breathing; his eyes stared out over mottled cheeks. He lay shivering on the floor.

Pyotr knew him. “What is it?” he demanded, stooping and catching the shuddering man by the shoulder. “What has happened, Nikolai Matfeevich?”

The man said nothing; only lay curled on the floor. When they drew off his mittens, his frozen hands were like claws.

“We’ll need hot water,” Vasya said.

“Get him to speak as soon as you can,” said Pyotr. “His village is two days distant. I cannot think what disaster would bring him here at midwinter.”

Vasya and Irina spent an hour rubbing the man’s hands and feet and pouring hot broth down his throat. Even when his strength returned, all he would do was huddle by the oven, gasping. Finally he took food, gulping it down scalding-hot. Pyotr bit back his impatience. At last the messenger wiped his mouth and looked fearfully at his liege lord.

“What brings you here, Nikolai Matfeevich?” demanded Pyotr.

“Pyotr Vladimirovich,” the man whispered, “we are going to die.”

Pyotr’s face darkened.

“Two nights since, our village caught fire,” said Nikolai. “There is nothing left. If you do not take pity, we are all going to die. Many of us have died already.”

“Fire?” said Alyosha.

“Yes,” said Nikolai. “A spark fell from an oven, and the whole village went up. An ill wind was blowing, and such a wind—too warm for midwinter. We could do nothing. I left as soon as we had dug the living from the ashes. I heard them scream when the snow touched their skin—better perhaps if they had died. I walked all day and all night—such a night—with terrible voices in the wood. It seemed the screams followed me. I did not dare to stop, for fear of the frost.”

“It was bravely done,” said Pyotr.

“Will you help us, Pyotr Vladimirovich?”

There was a long silence. He cannot go, thought Vasya. Not now. But she knew what her father would say. These were his lands, and he was their lord.

“My son and I will ride back with you tomorrow,” said Pyotr heavily, “with such men and beasts as can be spared.”

The messenger nodded. His eyes were far away. “Thank you, Pyotr Vladimirovich.”

THE NEXT DAY DAWNED in a dazzle of blue and white. Pyotr ordered the horses saddled at first light. The men who would not ride laced snowshoes to their feet. The winter sun shone coldly down. Great white plumes curled from the horses’ nostrils like the breath of serpents, and icicles dangled from their whiskery chins. Pyotr took Buran’s rein from the servant. The horse stretched out his lip and shook his head, the ice rattling in his whiskers.

Kolya crouched in the snow, eye to eye with Seryozha. “Let me come with you, Father,” pleaded the child. His hair fell into his eyes. He had come out leading his brown pony and wearing every garment he possessed. “I am big enough.”

“You are not big enough,” said Kolya, looking harried.

Irina hurried out of the house. “Come,” she said, taking the child by the shoulder. “Your papa is going; come away.”

“You’re only a girl,” said Seryozha. “What do you know? Please, Papa.”

“Go back to the house,” said Kolya, stern now. “Put your pony away and listen to your aunt.”

But Seryozha did not; instead he howled and bolted, startling the horses, and disappeared behind the stable. Kolya rubbed his face. “He’ll come back when he’s hungry.” He heaved himself onto his own horse’s back.

“God be with you, brother,” said Irina.

“And you, sister,” said Kolya. He clasped her hand and turned away.

Cold leather creaked as the men put up the horses’ girths and checked the bindings of their snowshoes. Their steaming breath thickened the icy bristles in their beards. Alyosha stood at the edge of the dvor, a look of thunder on his good-natured face. “You must stay,” Pyotr had said to him. “Someone must look after your sisters.”

“You will need me, Father,” he had said.

Pyotr shook his head. “I will sleep easier if you are guarding my girls. Vasya is rash and Irina is fragile. And Lyoshka, you must keep Vasya at home. For her own sake. There is an ugly mood in the village. Please, my son.”

Alyosha shook his head, wordless. But he did not ask again.

“Father,” said Vasya. “Father.” She appeared at Buran’s head, face strained, her hair very black against the pale fur of her hood. “You must not go. Not now.”

“I must, Vasochka,” Pyotr said, wearily. She had begged the night before. “It is my place, and they are my people. Try to understand.”

“I understand,” she said. “But there is evil in the wood.”

“These are evil times,” said Pyotr. “But I am their lord.”

“There are dead things in the wood—the dead are walking. Father, the woods are dangerous.”

“Nonsense, Vasya,” snapped Pyotr. Mother of God. If she started spreading such stories about the village…

“Dead,” said Vasya again. “Father, you must not go.”

Pyotr seized her shoulder, hard enough to make her flinch. All about him, his men were clustered and waiting. “You are too old for fairy tales,” he growled, trying to make her see.

“Fairy tales!” said Vasya. It came out a strangled cry. Buran threw his head up. Pyotr got a better grip on the stallion’s rein and settled the horse. Vasya flung her father’s hand aside. “You saw Father Konstantin’s broken window,” she said “You cannot leave the village. Father, please.”

The men could not hear everything, but they heard enough. Their faces showed pale beneath the beards. They stared at Pyotr’s daughter. More than one glanced toward his wife or his children, standing small and valiant against the snow. There would be no ruling them, Pyotr thought, if his foolish daughter kept on. “You are not a child, Vasya, to take fright at tales,” Pyotr snapped. He spoke calmly and crisply, to reassure the men. “Alyosha, take your sister in hand. Do not be afraid, dochka,” he said, lower and more gently. “We shall win a brave victory; this winter will pass like the others. Kolya and I will come back to you. Be kind to Anna Ivanovna.”

“But, Father—”

Pyotr sprang to Buran’s back. Vasya’s hand closed on the horse’s headstall. Anyone else would have been yanked off his feet and trampled, but the stallion pricked his ears at the girl and stood.

“Let go, Vasya,” said Alyosha, coming up beside her. She didn’t move. He laid a hand on hers where it wrapped round the bridle, and bent to whisper in her ear: “Now is not the time. The men will break. They are afraid for their houses and they are afraid of demons. Besides, if Father heeds you, they will say he was ruled by his maiden daughter.”

Vasya sucked a breath between her teeth, but she let go of Buran’s bridle. “Better to believe me,” she muttered.

Released, the brave, aging stallion reared up. The subdued men fell in behind Pyotr. Kolya saluted his brother and sister as the party trotted out into the white world, leaving the two alone in the stable-yard.

THE VILLAGE SEEMED VERY QUIET when the riders had left. The icy sun shone gaily down. “I believe you, Vasya,” said Alyosha.

“You drove the stake in with your own hand; of course you believe me, fool.” Vasya paced like a wolf in a cage. “I should have told Father everything.”

“But we slew the upyr,” said Alyosha.

Vasya shook her head helplessly. She remembered the rusalka’s warning, and the leshy’s. “It is not over,” she said. “I was warned: beware the dead.”

“Who warned you, Vasya?”

Vasya halted in her pacing and saw her brother’s face cold with faint suspicion. She knew a twist of despair so strong she laughed. “You, too, Lyoshka?” she said. “True friends, old and wise, warned me. Do you believe the priest? Am I a witch?”

“You are my sister,” said Alyosha, very firmly. “And our mother’s daughter. But you should stay out of the village until Father returns.”

THE HOUSE FELL GRADUALLY silent that night, as though the hush crept in with the nighttime chill. Pyotr’s household huddled by the oven, to sew or carve or mend in the firelight.

“What is that sound?” said Vasya suddenly.

One by one, her family fell silent.

Someone outside was crying.

It was little more than a choked whimper, barely audible. But at length there could be no doubt—they heard the muffled sound of a woman weeping.

Vasya and Alyosha looked at each other. Vasya half-rose. “No,” Alyosha said. He went himself to the door, opened it, and looked long into the night. At last he came back, shaking his head. “There is nothing there.”

But the crying went on. Twice, and then three times, Alyosha went to the door. At last Vasya went herself. She thought she saw a white glimmer, flitting between the peasants’ huts. Then she blinked, and there was nothing.

Vasya went to the oven and peered into its shining maw. The domovoi was there, hiding in the hot ash. “She cannot get in,” he breathed in a crackle of flames. “I swear it, she cannot. I will not let her.”

“That is what you said before, but it got in then,” said Vasya, under her breath.

“The fearful man’s room is different,” whispered the domovoi. “That I cannot protect. He has denied me. But here, now—that one cannot get in.” The domovoi clenched his hands. “She will not get in.”

At length the moon set, and they all sought their beds. Vasya and Irina huddled close together, wrapped in furs, breathing the black dark.

Suddenly, the sound of crying came again, very near. Both girls froze.

There was a scratching at their window.

Vasya glanced at Irina, who lay open-eyed and rigid beside her. “It sounds like…”

“Oh, don’t say it,” pleaded Irina. “Don’t.”

Vasya rolled out of bed. Unconsciously, her hand sought the pendant between her breasts. The cold of it burned her flinching hand. The window was set high in the wall; Vasya clambered up and wrestled with the shutters. The ice in the window distorted her view of the dvor.

But there was a face behind the ice. Vasya saw the eyes and mouth—great dark holes—and a bony hand pressed to the frozen pane. The thing was sobbing. “Let me in,” it gasped. There was a thin screeching noise, nails on ice.

Irina whimpered.

“Let me in,” hissed the thing. “I am cold.”

Vasya lost her hold on the windowsill, fell, and landed sprawling. “No. No…” She scrambled to regain the window. But all was empty now and still; the moon shone untroubled over the empty dvor.

“What was it?” whispered Irina.

“Nothing, Irinka,” snapped Vasya. “Go to sleep.”

She had begun to cry, but Irina could not see her.

Vasya crawled back into bed and wound her arms around her sister. Irina did not speak again but lay long awake shivering. At last she drifted off, and Vasya put aside her sister’s arms. Her tears had dried; her face was set. She went to the kitchen.

“I think we will all die if you are gone,” she said to the domovoi. “The dead are walking.”

The domovoi put his weary head out of the oven. “I will hold them off as long as I can,” he said. “Watch with me tonight. When you are here, I am stronger.”

FOR THREE NIGHTS PYOTR did not come back, and Vasya stayed in the house and kept watch with the domovoi. On the first night, she thought she heard weeping, but nothing came near the house. On the second night, there was perfect silence, and Vasya thought she would die of wishing to sleep.

On the third day she resolved to ask Alyosha to watch with her. That evening a bloody dusk flamed up and died, leaving blue shadows and silence.

The family lingered in the kitchen—the bedchambers seemed very cold and remote. Alyosha sharpened his boar-spear by oven-light. The leaf-shaped blade threw little dazzles onto the hearth.

The fire had burned low, and the kitchen was full of red shade, when a long, low wail sounded without. Irina huddled beside the oven. Anna knitted, but all could see she was clammy and shivering. Father Konstantin’s eyes were so wide that the white showed in a ring; he whispered prayers under his breath.

There came the sound of dragging footsteps. Nearer they came, nearer. Then a voice rattled the window.

“It is dark,” said the voice. “I am cold. Open the door. Open it.” Then—Tap. Tap. Tap on the door.

Vasya rose to her feet.

Alyosha’s hands locked around the haft of his spear.

Vasya went to the door. Her heart hammered in her throat. The domovoi was at her side, teeth clenched.

“No,” Vasya managed, though her lips were numb. She dug her fingers into the wound on her hand and laid her bloody palm flat against the door. “I am sorry. The house is for the living.”

The thing on the other side wailed. Irina buried her face in her mother’s lap. Alyosha stumbled to his feet, spear in hand. But the shuffling footsteps started up, faded into nothing. They all drew breath and looked at each other.

Then came the squealing of terrified horses.

Without thinking, Vasya wrenched open the door, even as four voices cried out.

“Demon!” shrieked Anna. “She will let it in!”

Vasya had already run out into the night. A white shape darted among the horses, scattering them like chaff. But one horse was slower than the others. The white shape attached itself to the animal’s throat and bore it down. Vasya shouted, running, forgetting fear. The dead thing looked up, hissing, and a bar of moonlight fell across its face.

“No,” said Vasya, stumbling to a halt. “Oh, no, please. Dunya. Dunya…”

“Vasya,” lisped the thing. The voice was a corpse’s cracked wheeze, but it was Dunya’s voice. “Vasya.”

It was she, and it was not. The bones were there; the shape and form and grave-clothes. But the nose drooped; the lips had fallen in. The eyes were blazing holes, the mouth a blackened pit. Blood caked in the lines of chin and nose and cheeks.

Vasya wrenched together her courage. The necklace burned coldly against her breast and she wrapped her free hand round it. The night smelled of hot blood and grave-mold. She thought a dark figure stood beside her, but she did not look round to see.

“Dunya,” Vasya said. She fought to keep her voice steady. “Get you gone. You have done enough evil here.”

Dunya pressed a hand to her mouth. The tears sprang to her empty eyes even as she bared her teeth. She swayed, quivered, chewed her lip. Almost it seemed she wished to speak. She started forward, snarling, and Vasya backed up, already feeling the teeth in her throat. And then the upyr screeched, flung herself backward, and ran like a dog toward the woods.

Vasya watched her until she was lost in the moonlight.

There came a rasping breath from the horse at Vasya’s feet. He was Mysh’s youngest, little more than a foal. She fell to her knees beside him. The colt’s throat was laid open. Vasya pressed her hands to the torn place, but the black tide ran carelessly away. She felt the death as a sinking in her belly. From the stable, she heard the vazila’s anguished cry.

“No,” Vasya said. “Please.”

But the colt lay still. The black tide slowed and stopped.

A white mare stepped out of the darkness and laid her nose very gently against the dead horse. Vasya felt the mare’s warm breath against her neck, but when she turned to look, there was only a little trickle of starlight.

Despair and weariness were a black tide, like the horse’s blood on her hands, and they swallowed Vasya whole. She held the stiffening, blood-streaked head in her arms and wept.

THE HOUR HAD GROWN OLD, and they should have long since gone to bed, when Alyosha came back into the winter kitchen. He was gray-faced, his clothes all spattered with blood. “One of the horses is dead,” he said heavily. “Its throat was torn away. Vasya is staying in the stable tonight. She will not be dissuaded.”

“But she will freeze. She will die!” cried Irina.

Alyosha smiled faintly. “Not Vasya. You try arguing with her, Irinka.”

Irina pressed her lips together, laid aside her mending, and went to heat a clay pot in the oven. No one was quite sure what she was about until she dished up milk, baked hard, with old porridge, picked it up, and made for the door.

“Irinka, come back!” cried Anna.

Irina, to Alyosha’s certain knowledge, had never in her life defied her mother. But this time, the girl disappeared over the threshold without a word. Alyosha cursed and went after her. Father was right, he thought darkly. My sisters cannot be left alone.

It was very cold, and the dvor smelled of blood. The colt lay where he had fallen. The corpse would freeze overnight, and tomorrow was soon enough to bring the men to butcher it. The stable seemed empty when Alyosha and Irina went inside. “Vasya,” called Alyosha. Sudden fear seized him. What if…?

“Here, Lyoshka,” said Vasya. She emerged from Mysh’s stall, soft-footed as a cat. Irina squeaked and nearly dropped her pot. “Are you all right, Vasochka?” she managed, tremulously.

They could not see Vasya’s face, only a pale blur beneath the darkness of her hair. “Well enough, little bird,” she replied, hoarse.

“Lyoshka says you are staying in the stable tonight,” said Irina.

“Yes,” said Vasya, visibly gathering herself. “I must—the vazila is afraid.” Her hands were black with blood.

“If you must,” said Irina, very gently, as though to a beloved lunatic. “I brought you porridge.” Clumsily, she thrust the pot at her sister. Vasya took it. The weight and the warmth seemed to steady her. “You would do better to come in and eat it by the fire, though,” said Irina. “The people will talk if you stay here.”

Vasya shook her head. “It doesn’t matter now.”

Irina’s lips firmed. “Come along,” she said. “This way is better.”

Alyosha watched in astonishment as Vasya let herself be led back to the house, put into her own place by the oven, and fed.

“Go to bed, Irinka,” said Vasya at last. A little color had come back into her face. “Sleep on the oven; Alyosha and I will watch tonight.” The priest had gone. Anna was already snoring in her own chamber. Irina, who was drooping heavily, did not hesitate long.

When Irina was asleep, Vasya and Alyosha looked at each other. Vasya was white as salt, with circles beneath her eyes. Her dress was streaked with the horse’s blood. But food and fire had steadied her.

“What now?” said Alyosha, low.

“We must watch tonight,” said Vasya. “And we must try the cemetery at dawn, and do what we can in daylight. May God be merciful.”

KONSTANTIN WENT TO THE CHURCH at sunrise. He dashed across the dvor as though the angel of death followed, barred the door to the nave, and flung himself down before the icon-screen. When the sun rose and sent gray light crawling across the floor, he did not heed it. He prayed for forgiveness. He prayed the voice would come back and remove all his doubting. But all that long day the silence held perfect.

It was only in the sad twilight, when there was more shadow than light on the floor of the church, that there came a voice.

“Fallen so far, my poor creature?” it said. “Twice now the she-demons have come for you, Konstantin Nikonovich. They break your window; they knock at the door.”

“Yes,” groaned Konstantin. Waking and sleeping now he saw the she-demon’s face, felt her teeth in his throat. “They know I am fallen, and so they pursue me. Have mercy. Save me, I beg. Forgive me. Take this sin from me.” Konstantin’s hands clenched together and he bowed his face to the floor.

“Very well,” said the voice mildly. “Such a little thing to ask of me, man of God. See, I am merciful. I will save you. You need not weep.”

Konstantin pressed his hands to his wet face.

“But,” said the voice, “I would ask something in return.”

Konstantin looked up. “Anything,” he said. “I am your poor servant.”

“The girl,” said the voice. “The witch. All this is her fault. The people know it. They whisper among themselves. They see your eyes follow her. They say she has tempted you from grace.”

Konstantin said nothing. Her fault. Her fault.

“I desire greatly,” said the voice, “that she retire from the world. It must be sooner, not later. She has brought evil upon this house, and there can be no remedy while she is here.”

“She will go south with the sledges,” said Konstantin. “She will go before midwinter. Pyotr Vladimirovich has said it.”

“Sooner,” said the voice. “It must be sooner. There are fires and torments in store for this place. But send her away and you can save yourself, Konstantin Nikonovich. Send her away, and you can save them all.”

Konstantin hesitated. The dark seemed to breathe out a long soft sigh.

“It will be as you say,” whispered Konstantin. “I swear it.”

Then the voice was gone. Konstantin was left empty, rapturous and cold, alone on the church floor.

THAT VERY AFTERNOON, KONSTANTIN went to Anna Ivanovna. She had taken to her bed, and her daughter brought her broth.

“You must send Vasya away now,” said Konstantin. There was sweat on his brow; his hands trembled. “Pyotr Vladimirovich is too soft-hearted; perhaps she will sway him. But for all our sakes, the girl must go. The demons come because of her. Did you see how she ran out into the night? She summoned them; she is not afraid. It may be that your own daughter, the little Irina, will be the next to die. Demons have appetite for more than horses.”

“Irina?” Anna whispered. “You think Irina is in danger?” She quivered with love and fear.

“I know it,” said Konstantin.

“Give Vasya to the people,” said Anna at once. “They will stone her if you ask it. Pyotr Vladimirovich is not here to stop them.”

“Better she go to a convent,” said Konstantin after the briefest hesitation. “I would not have her meet God without the chance of repentance.”

Anna pursed her lips. “The sledges are not ready. Better she dies. I will not see my Irina hurt.”

“The first two sledges are ready,” replied Konstantin. “There are men enough. A few would be more than willing to take her away from here. I will arrange it. Pyotr can go see his daughter, if he wishes, after she is safe in Moscow. He will not be angry when he knows the whole of it. All will be well. Do you be quiet and pray.”

“You know best, Batyushka,” said Anna peevishly. Such care, she thought. And all for that green-eyed demon’s spawn. But he is wise; he knows she cannot stay, corrupting good Christians. “You are merciful. But I will see the girl dead before my Irina is put in danger.”

IT WAS ALL ARRANGED. Oleg, rough and old, would drive the sledge, and Timofei’s parents, their hearths empty without their dead son, would be Vasya’s servants and guards.

“Of course we will do it, Batyushka,” said Yasna, Timofei’s mother. “God has turned his face from us, and that demon-child is the reason. If she had been sent away sooner, I would never have lost my child.”

“Here is rope,” said Konstantin. “Bind her hands lest she forget herself.”

In his mind he saw the hart brought down in the hunt, feet tied, the eye bewildered, trailing blood in the snow. He knew a twist of lust and shame and satisfied pride. Tomorrow. On the morrow she would go, half a moon’s turning before midwinter.

Chapter 22: Snowdrops

That night Anna Ivanovna called Vasya to her.

“Vasochka!” Anna shrilled, making the girl jump. “Vasochka, come here!”

Vasya glanced up, haggard in the firelight. She and Alyosha had gone to the cemetery at sunrise. But when they dug flinchingly into Dunya’s grave, they found it empty. They had stared at each other across the bare cold earth, Alyosha shocked, Vasya grimly unsurprised.

“This cannot be,” said Alyosha.

Vasya had taken a deep breath. “But it is,” she said. “Come. We must protect the house.”

Cold and exhausted, they smoothed the snow, and came home. The women cut up the colt to stew his flesh in their ovens and eat it with withered carrots, and Vasya hid herself, vomiting until there was nothing left in her stomach. Now it was the cusp of night, and Dunya would come again to torment them with sobbing. Father was still gone, and Vasya was sick with dread.

She went reluctantly to where Anna sat. A small wooden chest bound with strips of bronze sat beside her. “Open it,” Anna urged.

Vasya looked a question at her brother. Alyosha shrugged. She knelt before the chest and lifted the lid. Inside lay—fabric. A great folded length of handsome undyed linen.

“Linen,” said Vasya, bewildered. “Linen enough for a dozen shirts. Do you intend for me to sew all winter, Anna Ivanovna?”

Anna smiled despite herself. “Of course not. It is an altar cloth; you will hem it and present it to your abbess.” Seeing Vasya still puzzled, she added, smiling more widely still, “You are going south to a convent in the morning.”

For a moment Vasya was light-headed, and blackness darted before her eyes. She stumbled to her feet. “Does Father know?”

“Oh, yes,” said Anna. “You were to be sent away with the tribute-goods. But we have had enough of you summoning devils. You will go at dawn. The men are ready, and a woman to see to your virtue.” Anna smirked. “Pyotr Vladimirovich would have it so. Perhaps the holy sisters can make you obey where I could not.”

Irina looked troubled and said nothing.

Vasya was trembling all over. “Stepmother, no.”

Anna’s smile slipped. “Defy me? It is done, and you will be bound with ropes if you do not care to walk.”

“Come,” Alyosha broke in. “What madness is this? Father is from home and he would never countenance—”

“Would he not?” said Konstantin. Now, as ever, his soft, deep voice caught and held the room. It filled the walls and the dark space near the rafters. Everyone fell silent. Vasya saw the domovoi cowering, deep in the oven. “He has given it his countenance. A life among holy sisters might save her soul. She is not safe in this village where she has wronged so many. They call you witch, Vasilisa Petrovna, don’t you know? They call you demon. You will be stoned before this evil winter ends, if you do not go.”

Even Alyosha was silent.

But Vasya spoke, hoarse as a raven. “No,” she said. “Not now and not ever. I have wronged no one. I will never set foot in a convent. Not if I have to live in the forest, and beg work from Baba Yaga.”

“This is not a fairy tale, Vasya,” Anna broke in, shrilly. “No one is asking your opinion. It is for your own good.”

Vasya thought of the wavering domovoi, of the dead things creeping about the house, of disaster narrowly averted. “But what have I done?” she demanded. She was horrified to find tears in her eyes. “I have hurt no one. I have tried to save you! Father—” she turned to Konstantin “—I saved you from the rusalka, when she would have had you by the lake. I drove off the dead, or I tried…” She stopped, choking, fighting for air.

“You?” breathed Anna. “Drive them off? You invited your demon cohort in! You have brought all our misfortunes upon us. You think I haven’t seen?”

Alyosha opened his mouth, but Vasya was before him: “If I am sent away this winter, you will all die.”

Anna drew in a gasping breath. “How dare you threaten us?”

“I do not threaten,” said Vasya desperately. “It is the truth.”

“Truth? Truth, you little liar, there is no truth in you!”

“I will not go,” said Vasya, and so fierce was her voice that even the crackling fire seemed to waver.

“Will you not?” said Anna. Her eyes were wild, but something in her bearing reminded Vasya that her father was a Grand Prince. “Very well, Vasilisa Petrovna. I will give you a choice.” Her eyes darted around the room and fastened on the white flowers adorning Irina’s kerchief. “My daughter, my true, fair, and obedient daughter, is weary in all this snow for the sight of green things. You, ugly witch of a girl, will do her a service. Go out into the woods and bring her back a basket of snowdrops. If you do, you will be free to do as you like hereafter.”

Irina gaped. Konstantin had his mouth open in alarmed protest.

Vasya stared blankly at her stepmother. “Anna Ivanovna, it is midwinter.”

“Go!” screeched Anna, laughing wildly. “Out of my sight! Bring me flowers or go to the convent! Now get you gone!”

Vasya looked from face to face: Anna triumphant, Irina frightened, Alyosha furious, Konstantin inscrutable. The walls seemed to shrink again; the fire burned up all the air, so that no matter how her lungs heaved, she could not draw breath. Terror overtook her, the terror of the wild thing in the trap. She turned and ran from the kitchen.

Alyosha caught her at the outer door. She had yanked on her boots and mittens, wrapped a cloak about her and a shawl about her head. He seized her with both hands, turned her around.

“Have you gone mad, Vasya?”

“Let me go! You heard Anna Ivanovna. I’d rather take my chances in the forest than be locked up forever.” She was shaking, wild-eyed.

“All that is nonsense. Wait for Father to return.”

“Father has agreed to it!” Vasya swallowed back the tears, but still they crept down her cheeks. “Anna would not have dared otherwise. People say our misfortunes are my fault. Do you think I have not heard? I will be stoned as a witch if I stay. Perhaps Father is trying to protect me. But I’d rather die in the forest than in a convent.” Her voice broke. “I will never be a nun—do you hear me? Never!” She yanked away from him, but Alyosha held her tightly.

“I will guard you until Father returns. I will make him see sense.”

“You cannot protect me if every man of the village turns on us. Do you think I have not heard their whispers, brother?”

“So you mean to go into the woods and die?” snapped Alyosha. “A noble sacrifice? How will that help anyone?”

“I have helped all I can, and earned the people’s hatred,” retorted Vasya. “If this is the last decision I can ever make, at least it is my decision. Let me go, Alyosha. I am not afraid.”

“But I am, you stupid girl! Do you think I want to lose you to this folly? I won’t let you go.” Surely he would leave fingermarks on her shoulders where he held her.

“You as well, brother?” said Vasya furiously. “Am I a child? Always someone else must decide for me. But this I will decide for myself.”

“If Father or Kolya went mad, I wouldn’t let him decide things for himself, either.”

“Let me go, Alyosha.”

He shook his head.

Her voice softened. “Perhaps there is magic in the forest, enough for me to defy Anna Ivanovna; did you think of that?”

Alyosha laughed shortly. “You are too old for fairy tales.”

“Am I?” said Vasya. She smiled at him, though her lips trembled.

Alyosha remembered suddenly all the times her eyes had moved, following things that he could not see. His arms fell away. They looked at each other.

“Vasya—promise me I will see you again.”

“Give bread to the domovoi,” said Vasya. “Watch by the oven at night. Courage might save you. I have done what I can. Farewell, brother. I—I will try to come back.”

“Vasya—”

But she had slipped out the kitchen door.

Father Konstantin was waiting for her beside the door of the church. “Are you mad, Vasilisa Petrovna?”

Her green eyes flew up to his, mocking now. The tears had dried; she was cold and steady. “But Batyushka, I must obey my stepmother.”

“Then go take your vows.”

Vasya laughed. “She will see me gone; dead, or vowed; she doesn’t care. Well, I will please myself and her as well.”

“Forget your mad folly. You will be vowed. It will be as God wills, and he has willed it so.”

“Has he?” said Vasya. “And you are the voice of God, I presume. Well, I was given a choice and I am taking it.” She turned toward the wood.

“You are not,” said Konstantin, and something in his voice had Vasya spinning round. Two men stepped out of the shadows.

“Put her in the church tonight, and bind her hands,” said Konstantin, never taking his eyes from Vasya. “She will leave at dawn.”

Vasya was already running. But she had only three strides’ head start and they were very strong. One of them reached out, and his hand snagged on the hem of her cloak. She tripped and sprawled, rolling, striking out, panicked. The man flung himself on her, held her down. The snow was cold on her neck. She felt the scrape of icy rope on her wrists.

She forced herself to go limp, as though she had fainted in her fright. The man was more used to tying dead beasts for carrying; his grip relaxed while he fumbled with the rope. Vasya heard the footsteps as the priest and the other man approached.

Then she flung herself up, shrieking a wordless cry, jabbing her fingers at her captor’s eyes. He recoiled; she wrenched sideways, rolled to her feet, and ran as she had never run in her life. Behind her she heard shouts, panting, footsteps. But she would not be caught again. Never.

She ran on and did not stop until she was swallowed by the shadow of the trees.

THE CLEAR NIGHT LIT the snow, which lay firm underfoot. Vasya ran into the woods, bruised and panting. Her loosened cloak flapped about her. She heard shouting from the village. Her tracks showed clear in the virgin snow, so that her only hope was speed. She darted headlong from shadow to shadow, until the shouting grew fainter and at last died away. They dare not follow, thought Vasya. They fear the forest after dark. And then, darkly: They are wise.

Her breathing slowed. She walked deeper into the wood, pushing loss and fear into the back of her mind. She listened; she called aloud. But all was still. The leshy did not answer. The rusalka slept, dreaming of summertime. The wind did not stir the trees.

Time passed; she was not sure how much. The wood thickened and blotted out the stars. The moon rose higher and cast shadows, then the clouds came and threw the forest into darkness. Vasya walked until she began to grow sleepy, and then the terror of sleep forced her awake again. She turned north and east and south again.

The night drew on, and Vasya shivered as she walked. Her teeth clacked together. Her toes grew numb despite her heavy boots. A small part of her had thought—hoped—that there would be some help in the woods. Some destiny—some magic. She had hoped the firebird would come, or the Horse with the Golden Mane, or the raven who was really a prince…foolish girl to believe in fairy tales. The winter wood was indifferent to men and women; the chyerti slept in winter, and there was no such thing as a raven-prince.

Well, die then. It is better than a convent.

But Vasya could not quite believe it. She was young; her blood ran hot. She could not bring herself to lie down in the snow.

On she stumbled, but she was growing weaker. She feared her flagging strength; she feared her stiffening hands, her cold lips.

In the blackest part of the night, Vasya stopped and looked back. Anna Ivanovna would mock her if she returned. She would be bound like a hart, locked in the church, and sent to a convent. But she did not want to die, and she was very cold.

Then Vasya took in the trees on either side and realized that she did not know where she was.

No matter. She could follow her own trail back the way she had come. She looked behind again.

Her tracks were gone.

Vasya quelled a surge of panic. She was not lost. She could not be lost. She turned north. Her weary feet crunched dully in the snow. Once more, the ground began to look inviting. Surely she could lie down. Just for a moment…

A dark shape loomed before her: a tree, all twisted, bigger than any tree Vasya knew. Memory stirred, breaking through her fog. She remembered a lost child, a great oak, a sleeper with one eye. She remembered an old nightmare. The tree filled her sight. Go nearer? Run away? She was too cold to turn back.

Then she heard the sound of weeping.

Vasya halted, scarcely breathing. When she stopped, the sound stopped as well. But when she moved again, the sound followed her. The sickly moon came out and made strange patterns on the snow.

There—a white flicker—between two trees. Vasya walked faster, clumsy on her numb feet. There was no house to run back to, no vazila to offer her strength. Her courage flickered like a guttering candle. The tree seemed to fill the world. Come here, breathed a soft, snarling voice. Closer.

Crunch. Behind her, a step that was not hers. Vasya spun. Nothing. But when she walked, the other feet kept pace.

She was twenty paces from the twisted oak. The footsteps drew nearer. It grew difficult to think. The tree seemed to fill the world. Closer. Like a child in a nightmare, Vasya did not dare look back.

The feet behind broke into a run, and there came a shrill, desiccated scream. Vasya ran as well, spending her last strength. A ragged figure appeared before her, standing beneath the tree, a hand outstretched. Its single eye gleamed with greedy triumph. I have found you first.

Then Vasya heard a new sound: the smack of galloping hooves. The figure by the tree cried to her furiously: Faster! The tree was before her, the wheezing creature behind—but to her left a white mare came galloping, swift as fire. Blind, terrified, Vasya turned toward the horse. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the upyr lunge, teeth shining in the old, dead face.

In that instant, the white mare came up alongside. The horse’s rider reached out a hand. Vasya seized it and was flung bodily across the mare’s withers. The upyr landed in the snow where she’d been. The horse tore away. Behind them came twin cries: one of pain and one of fury.

The mare’s rider did not speak. Vasya, panting, had only a moment to be grateful for the reprieve. She hung head-down over the mare’s withers, and so they rode. The girl felt as though her guts would come through her skin with each strike of the mare’s hooves, yet on and on they galloped. She couldn’t feel her face or her feet. The strong hand that had seized her out of the snow held her still, but the rider did not speak. The mare smelled unlike any horse Vasya had ever known, like strange flowers and warm stone, incongruous in the bitter night.

They ran until Vasya could not stand the pain or the cold anymore. “Please,” she gasped. “Please.”

Abruptly, bone-jarringly, they came to a halt. Vasya slid backward off the horse and fell, doubled over in the snow, numb, retching, clinging to her bruised ribs. The mare stood still. Vasya did not hear the mare’s rider dismount, but suddenly he was standing in the snow. Vasya stumbled upright on feet she could no longer feel. Her head was bare to the night. It was snowing; the snowflakes tangled in her braid. She had gone beyond shivering; she felt heavy and dull.

The man looked down at her, and she up at him.

His eyes were pale as water, or winter ice.

“Please,” whispered Vasya. “I am cold.”

“Everything is cold here,” he replied.

“Where am I?”

He shrugged. “Back of the north wind. The end of the world. Nowhere at all.”

Vasya swayed suddenly and would have fallen, but the man caught her. “Tell me your name, devushka.” His voice raised strange echoes in the wood around them.

Vasya shook her head. His flesh was icy. She pulled away, stumbling. “Who are you?”

The snowflakes caught in his dark curls; his head was bare as hers. He smiled and said nothing.

“I have seen you before,” she said.

“I come with the snow,” he said. “I come when men are dying.”

She knew him. She had known him the instant his hand seized hers. “Am I dying?”

“Perhaps.” He put a cold hand beneath her jaw. Vasya felt her heart throbbing against his fingers. Then, all at once, pain struck. Her breath came short; she sank to her knees. Shards of crystal seemed to form in her blood. He knelt with her. Karachun, Vasya thought. Morozko the frost-demon. Death, this is death. They will find me frozen in the snow, like the girl in the story.

She took a breath and felt that the frost had spread to her lungs. “Let go,” she whispered. Her lips and tongue were too cold to obey. “You would not have saved me at the tree if you meant to kill me.”

The demon’s hand dropped. She fell back into the snow, gasping, doubled over.

He got to his feet. “Would I not, fool?” he said, his voice thin with anger. “What madness brought you into the forest tonight?”

Vasya forced herself to stand. “I am not here by choice.” The white mare came up behind her, blew warm breath on her cheek. Vasya buried her cold fingers in the long mane. “My stepmother was going to send me to a convent.”

His voice was alive with scorn. “And so you ran? Easier to escape a convent than the Bear.”

Vasya met his eyes. “I did not run. Well, I did run, but only…”

She could manage no more. She clung to the horse, at the end of her strength. Her head swam. The horse curved her neck around. The smell of stone and flowers revived Vasya a little; she straightened and firmed her lips.

The frost-demon came nearer. Vasya put out one hand, instinctively, to keep him back. But he caught her mittened hand in both of his. “Come then,” he said. “Look at me.” He pulled the mitten away and set his palm to hers.

Her whole body tensed, dreading the pain, but it did not come. His hand was hard and cool as river ice; it was even gentle, against her frozen fingers.

“Tell me who you are.” His voice sent a shiver of bitter air across her face.

“I…am Vasilisa Petrovna,” she said.

His eyes seemed to bore into her skull. She bit her tongue and did not look away.

“Well met, then,” said the demon. He let go and stepped back. His blue eyes threw sparks. Vasya thought she had imagined the look of triumph on his face. “Now tell me again, Vasilisa Petrovna,” he added, half-mockingly, “what are you doing wandering the black forest? This is my hour and mine alone.”

“I was to be sent to the convent at dawn,” said Vasya. “But my stepmother said I needn’t go if I brought her the white flowers of spring, the podsnezhniki.”

The frost-demon stared, and then he laughed. Vasya gazed at him in astonishment, then continued, “The men tried to stop me. But I got away. I ran into the forest. I was so frightened I couldn’t think. I meant to turn back, but I got lost. I saw the twisted oak-tree. And then I heard footsteps.”

“Folly,” the frost-demon said drily. “I am not the only power in these woods. You should not have left your hearth.”

“I had to,” Vasya rejoined. Blackness darted suddenly before her eyes. Her brief flare of strength was fading fast. “They were going to send me to a convent. I decided I would rather freeze in a snowbank.” Her skin shivered all over. “Well, that was before I began to freeze in a snowbank. It hurts.”

“Yes,” said Morozko. “Yes, it does.”

“The dead are walking,” Vasya whispered. “The domovoi will disappear if I am gone. My family will die if they send me away. I don’t know what to do.”

The frost-demon said nothing.

“I must go home now,” Vasya managed. “But I do not know where it is.”

The white mare stamped and shook her mane. Vasya’s legs suddenly buckled, as though she were a newborn foal.

“East of the sun, west of the moon,” said Morozko. “Beyond the next tree.”

Vasya did not answer. Her eyelids fluttered closed.

“Come, then,” Morozko added. “It is cold.” He caught Vasya as she was falling. Beside them stood a grove of old firs with interlaced branches. He picked the girl up. Her head and hand hung limp; her heart stirred feebly.

That was a near-run thing, said the mare to her rider, blowing a cloud of steaming breath into the girl’s face.

“Yes,” replied Morozko. “She is stronger than I dared hope. Another would have died.”

The mare snorted. You did not need to test her. The Bear has done that already. Another instant and he’d have had her first.

“Well, he did not, and we must be grateful.”

Will you tell her? asked the mare.

“Everything?” the demon said. “Of bears and sorcerers, spells made of sapphire and a witch that lost her daughter? No, of course not. I shall tell her as little as possible. And hope that it is enough.”

The mare shook her mane and her ears eased back, but the frost-demon did not see. He strode into the fir trees, the girl in his arms. The mare sighed out a breath and followed.