The Winter of the Witch (Winternight Trilogy 3)

There were more horses grazing in the meadow. Three—six—a dozen. The night faded them all to gray except for the golden mare. Standing among them, she glittered like a fallen star, head up in challenge.

Vasya halted, full of agonized wonder. Part of her was half-convinced that her own horse must be here, among his kin, that in a moment he would gallop toward her, flinging snow from under his feet, and she wouldn’t be alone anymore. “Solovey,” she whispered. “Solovey.”

A dark head rose, then a paler one. All of a sudden, the horses were wheeling, fleeing. On four legs they fled from the sound of her voice, straight down toward the lake, but just before their hooves struck water, their hooves became wings. As birds they took to the air, and soared over the starlit water.

Vasya watched them go, tears of pure wonder in her eyes. They winged across the lake, no two alike. Owl and eagle and duck and smaller birds: purely, miraculously, strange. Last of all to leave the earth was the golden mare. Her wings swept wide, trailing smoke, and her plumed tail was every color of flame: gold and blue-violet and white. She flew after her kin, calling. In moments, they were all swallowed by the darkness.

Vasya stared at the place the horses had been. It was as though she’d dreamed them. Her vision swam with weariness. Her feet and her face were numb, and she had gone beyond shivering, cocooned icily in shock. Solovey, she wondered dimly. Why didn’t you fly away too?

Just at the edge of the lake stood a single vast oak-tree. Its branches stood out like blackened bones against the moon-white ice. To her right, nestled among the trees, was a squat, dark shape.

It was a house.

Or rather, a ruin. The house’s roof, sloped steeply to keep off the snow, had fallen in; no firelight showed behind window or door. There was only silence, the faint creaking of trees, the crack of thinning lake-ice. And yet this place, this clearing by the water, did not feel empty. It felt watchful.

The house had been built on a sturdy platform between two trees. The trees gave it a look of standing alertly on strong legs; the windows like black eyes, staring down. For an instant, the house didn’t seem dead at all. It seemed to be watching her.

Then the illusion of menace faded. It was only a ruin. The steps were rotten, crumbling. There would be dead leaves within, and mice and unrelieved dark.

But there might be a working stove, even a handful of grain from the house’s last occupant. At the very least, she could get out of the wind.

Only half-aware of what she was doing, Vasya crossed the meadow, stumbling on rocks, skidding on snow. Gritting her teeth, she crawled up the steps. The only sounds were the groaning of branches and her own hoarse breathing.

At the top of the stairs stood two posts, carved with figures starlit and fantastic: bears, suns, moons, small strange faces that might have been chyerti. Over the door was a lintel carved in the shape of two rearing horses.

The door hung askew on its hinges in a litter of slick, rotten leaves. Vasya paused to listen.

Silence. Of course, silence. Perhaps there were beasts denning here, but she was beyond caring. The half-fallen door gave with a squeal from rusted hinges. Vasya stumbled inside.

She found dust, old leaves, the smell of decay, and chill weary damp. It was no warmer than outside, though at least there was not the cold wind off the lake. Most of the house was taken up by a crumbling brick oven, its mouth a maw in the blackness. Across the room, where the icon-corner should be, there were no icons, only a big dark thing shoved against the wall.

Vasya groped her way cautiously to that corner and found a wooden chest: bronze-bound and securely locked.

She turned shivering back toward the oven. Mostly she just wanted to sink down on the floor in the dark and let unconsciousness take her; never mind the cold.

Gritting her teeth, she heaved herself atop the oven-bench and gingerly touched the rough brick, where a person might have breathed her last. But there was nothing; no blanket, certainly no bones. What tragedy had left this strange ruin deserted? The night outside cradled the house with a silent menace.

Her groping fingers found a few dusty sticks beside the oven. Enough for a fire, though she didn’t want fire. Her memory was full of flames, the choking smell of smoke. The heat would hurt her blistered face.

But it was certainly cold enough for a wounded girl wearing only a cloak and shift to freeze to death. She meant to live.

So, moved only by the cold embers of will, Vasya set about making a fire. Her lips and fingertips were quite numb. She bruised her shins on things she could not see, scrabbling for the sticks and pine-needles for kindling.

After a half-blind effort that left her trembling, she had made a heap of sticks that she could barely see in the mouth of the oven. She felt over the entire house for flint and steel and charred cloth, but there were none.

She could make a fire with a flat piece of wood and patience, and strength in the forearms. But both her strength and patience were at an end.

Well, do it, or freeze. She took the stick between her hands. When she was a child, in the autumn woods, it had been a game. The stick, the board, the swift strong movement. Deftly handled, the smoke would turn into fire, and Vasya still remembered her brother Alyosha’s grin of delight, the first time she did it unaided.

But this time, though she labored and sweated, not a single curl of smoke rose from the board between her knees; no ember glowed in the groove. At last Vasya let the stick fall, shivering, defeated. Useless. She was going to die after all, with only the dust of someone else’s life for company.

She did not know how long she sat in the sour-smelling silence, not crying, not feeling anything, just hovering on the edge of unconsciousness.

She never knew what spurred her to raise her head once more, teeth sunk in her lower lip. She must have fire. She must. In her head, in her heart, was the terrible presence of fire, memory as strong as anything in her life, as though her soul were full of flames. Ridiculous that fire burned so bright in hated memory but there was no scrap of light here, where it could do some good.

Why should it be only in her mind? She shut her eyes, and for an instant, memory was so strong that she forgot it wasn’t.

Vasya smelled smoke first, and her eyes opened, just as her sticks burst into flame.

Shocked, almost frightened of her success, Vasya hurried to add wood. The room filled with light; the shadows retreated.

The hut looked even worse by firelight: ankle-deep in leaves, crumbling, mildewed, thick with dust. But there was a little woodpile she hadn’t seen: a few dry logs. And it was warmer now. The fire drove back the night and the chill. She was going to live. Vasya stretched out trembling hands to the fire.

A hand shot out of the oven and grasped her wrist.

10.

The Devil in the Oven