The Winter of the Witch (Winternight Trilogy 3)

It was. And there—mushrooms? Beliye? The tops of their pale heads just showed above a heap of dead leaves. Her mouth watered. She went to cut them, then looked again. One had spots that seemed to glisten strangely in the sun.

Not spots. Eyes. The largest of the mushrooms peered up at her, eyes a livid scarlet. Not a mushroom at all, but a chyert, scarcely the length of her forearm. A mushroom-spirit, glaring, shook himself free of the leaf-litter. “Who are you?” His voice was shrill. “Why have you come into my woods?”

His woods? “Trespasser!” he squeaked, and Vasya realized he was frightened.

“I didn’t know they were your woods.” She showed the chyert empty hands, knelt stiffly so he could see her better. The cold moss soaked through the knees of her leggings. “I mean no harm. I am only looking for food.”

The mushroom-spirit blinked, said, “Not exactly my woods—” and then added, hastily, “But it doesn’t matter; you can’t be here.”

“Not even if I make an offering?” asked Vasya. She put a perfect dandelion down before the creature.

The chyert touched the flower with a grayish finger. His outline solidified; now he resembled a small person more than a mushroom. He looked down at himself, and back at her, in puzzlement.

Then he flung away the flower. “I don’t believe you!” he cried. “Do you think to make me do your bidding? You will not! I don’t care how many offerings you give me. The Bear is free. He says we are striking a blow for ourselves now. If we join him we will make men believe in us again. We will be worshipped again, and have no need to make bargains with witches.”

Vasya, rather than answer, got hurriedly to her feet. “How exactly are you striking a blow for yourselves?” Wary, she looked about her but nothing stirred. There were only birds, flitting, and strong, steady sunlight.

A pause. “We will do great and terrible deeds,” said the mushroom-spirit.

Vasya tried not to sound impatient. “What does that mean?”

The mushroom-spirit threw his head back proudly, but he didn’t actually answer. Perhaps he didn’t know.

Great and terrible deeds? Vasya kept an eye on the silent forest. In the midst of loss and injury and terror, she had not stopped to consider the implications of her last night in Moscow. What had Morozko set in motion by freeing the Bear? What did it mean, for herself, for her family, and for Rus’?

Why had he done it?

Some part of her whispered—He loves you and so gave his freedom. But that could not be the only reason. She was not so vain as to think the winter-king would risk all he had long defended for a mortal maiden.

More important than why, what was she going to do about it?

I must find the winter-king, she thought. The Bear must be bound once more. But she didn’t know how to do either of those things; she was wounded still, and hungry.

“What makes you think I want you to do my bidding?” Vasya inquired of the mushroom-spirit. He had subsided under a log while she thought; she could just see the gleam of his eyes peeping out. “Who told you that?”

The mushroom-spirit poked his head out, scowled. “No one. I am no fool. What else would a witch want? Why else would you have taken the road through Midnight?”

“Because I fled for my life,” said Vasya. “I only came into the forest because I am hungry.” To illustrate, she took a handful of spruce-tips from her basket and began determinedly chewing.

The mushroom-spirit, still suspicious, said, “I can show you where better food is growing. If, as you say, you are hungry.” He was watching her closely.

“I am,” said Vasya at once, getting to her feet. “I would be glad of a guide.”

“Well,” said the chyert, “follow me then.” He darted off at once into the undergrowth.

Vasya, after a moment’s thought, followed, but she kept the lake always in sight. She did not trust the forest’s hostile silence and she did not trust the little mushroom-spirit.

* * *

VASYA’S MISTRUST SOON MINGLED with amazement, for she found herself in a land of wonders. The spruce-tips were green and tender; dandelions nodded in the breeze off the lake. She ate and gathered and ate, and then she realized suddenly that there was a sprawl of blueberries at her feet, more strawberries hidden beneath the damp grass. Not spring anymore, but summer.

“What is this place?” Vasya asked the mushroom-spirit. In her mind, she had begun calling him Ded Grib: Grandfather Mushroom.

He gave her an odd look. “The land between noon and midnight. Between winter and spring. The lake lies at the center. All lands touch, here at the water, and you can step from one to the other.”

A country of magic, such as she had once dreamed of.

After an instant of awed silence, Vasya asked, “If I go far enough will I reach the country of winter?”

“Yes,” said the chyert, though he looked dubious. “It is far to walk.”

“Is the winter-king there?”

Ded Grib gave her another odd look. “How would I know? I cannot grow in the snow.”

Thinking, frowning, Vasya returned her attention to filling her basket and her belly. She found cresses and cowslips, blueberries and gooseberries and strawberries.

Deeper she went into the summertime forest. How happy Solovey would have been, she thought, while her feet bruised the tender grass. Perhaps together we could have gone to find his kin. Sorrow drained away her pleasure in the sun on her back, in the sun-ripened strawberry between her lips. But she kept gathering. The warm, green world quieted her wounded spirit. Ded Grib was sometimes visible, sometimes not; he liked to hide under logs. But always she could sense him watching: curious, untrusting.

When the sun was high overhead, she remembered caution, and her promise to the domovaya. She had not yet regained her strength, and that she would need, whatever came next. “I have all I need,” she said. “I must get back.”

Ded Grib popped out from behind a stump. “You haven’t come to the best part,” he protested, pointing to a distant flash of trees clad in scarlet and gold. As though autumn, like summer, was a place you could walk into. “A little farther.”

Vasya was intensely curious. She also thought hungrily of chestnuts and pine-nuts. But caution won. “I have learned the cost of being reckless,” she told Ded Grib. “I have enough, for one day.”

He looked disgruntled, but said nothing else. Reluctantly, Vasya turned back the way she had come. It was hot in this summer country. She was dressed for early spring, in wool shirt and stockings. Her laden basket swung from her arm. Her feet throbbed now; her ribs ached.