The Winter of the Witch (Winternight Trilogy 3)

Now Vasya was listening closely. This was her own history, laid out casually by a lake-spirit in a country far away. Her grandmother’s name had been Tamara. Her grandmother had come from a distant land, riding a marvelous horse.

“The sorcerer took the golden mare and left the lands by the lake,” continued the bagiennik. “Tamara rode after him, weeping, swearing to recover the mare, swearing that she loved him in the same breath. But she never came back, and neither did the sorcerer. He made himself master of a great swath of the lands of men. No one ever knew what happened to Tamara. The old woman, in grief, shut and guarded every road to this place except the road through Midnight.”

There were a hundred questions darting through her head. Her tongue snatched up the first. “What happened to the other horses?” Vasya asked. “I saw a few of them last night and they were wild.”

The water-spirit swam in silence awhile; she did not think he would answer. Then the bagiennik said, his voice deep and savage, “The ones you saw are all that remain now. The sorcerer slew all that strayed away from the lake. Occasionally he caught a foal, but they never lasted long—they died or they escaped.”

“Mother of God,” Vasya whispered. “How? Why?”

“They are the most marvelous things in all the world, the horses of this land. The sorcerer couldn’t ride them. He couldn’t tame them or use them. So he killed them.” Almost too low to hear, the bagiennik added, “The ones that were left—the old woman kept them here, safe. But she is gone now, and there are fewer every year. The world has lost its wonder.”

Vasya didn’t speak. Her memory was a welter of flame, and Solovey’s lifeblood.

“Where did they come from?” she whispered. “The horses.”

“Who knows? The earth brought them forth; their very natures are magic. Of course men and chyerti want to tame them. Some of the horses take riders willingly,” added the bagiennik. “The swan, the dove, the owl, and the raven. And the nightingale—”

“I know what happened to the nightingale.” Vasya could barely say it. “He was my friend and he is dead.”

“The horses do not choose unwisely,” said the bagiennik.

Vasya said nothing at all.

After a long silence, lifting her head, she asked, “Can you tell me where the Bear has imprisoned the winter-king?”

“Beyond recall; long ago and far away and deep in the dark that does not change,” said the water-spirit. “Do you think the Bear would risk his twin winning free now?”

“No,” said Vasya. “No, I suppose he wouldn’t.” Suddenly she felt unutterably tired; the world was huge and strange and maddening; nothing seemed real. She neither knew what to do nor how to do it. She laid her head on the chyert’s warm back and did not speak again.

* * *

SHE DIDN’T NOTICE THE LIGHT change until she heard the murmur of water on pebbled cove.

In the time they’d been swimming, the sun had tilted west, cold and yellow-green. She was in summer twilight on the cusp of night. The golden day was gone, as though the lake itself had swallowed it. Vasya rolled with a splash into the shallows and stumbled onto the shore. The shadows of the trees stretched long and gray toward the water; her clothes were a cold heap in the shade.

The bagiennik was only a smudge of darkness, half-submerged in the lake. Vasya rounded on him in sudden fear. “What happened to the day?” She saw the bagiennik’s eyes beneath the water, shining rows of teeth. “Did you bring me into twilight on purpose? Why?”

“Because you killed the sorcerer. Because you did not let me kill you. Because word has gone out among the chyerti and we are all curious.” The bagiennik’s answer floated, disembodied, out of the shadows. “I advise you to make a fire. We will be watching.”

“Why?” Vasya demanded again, but the bagiennik had already sunk beneath the water and disappeared.

The girl stood still, furious, trying to ignore her fear. The day was rushing down around her as though the forest itself was determined to catch her at nightfall. Used to her own unthinking endurance, she now had to contend with the weakness of her battered flesh. She was half a day’s walking from the house by the oak-tree.

The season will turn, the domovaya had said. What did that mean? Could she risk it? Should she? She looked up at the gathering dark, and knew she couldn’t make it back before nightfall.

Stay then, she decided. And she would take the bagiennik’s poisonous advice, and use the last of the light to gather firewood. Whatever dangers haunted this place, better to meet them with a good fire, and a full belly.

She set about gathering firewood, angry at her own credulity. The forest of Lesnaya Zemlya had been kind to her, and that trust was still there, though this place had no cause for kindness. A brilliant sunset reddened the water; the wind whistled through the pines. The lake was perfectly still, golden with sunset.

Ded Grib reappeared as she was chopping up a deadfall. “Don’t you know you mustn’t pass the night beside the lake in a new season?” he asked. “Or you will never get the old season back. If you go back to the house by the oak-tree tomorrow, it will be summer and no spring at all for you.”

“The bagiennik kept me in the lake,” Vasya said grimly. The girl was recalling white, sparkling days in Morozko’s house in the fir-grove. You will return on the same night you left, he had told her. She had, even though she spent days—weeks—in his house. She had. And now—would the moon wax and wane in the wider world, while she passed a single night in this summer country? If you could spend a day in the lake in minutes, then what else was possible? The thought frightened her, as even the bagiennik’s threats had not. The patterns of day and dark, summer and winter, were as much a part of her as her own breath. Was there no pattern here at all?

“I didn’t think you’d come out of the lake at all,” the chyert confided. “I knew the great ones were planning something for you. Besides, the bagiennik hates people.”

Vasya had an armful of firewood; she flung it down in fury. “You might have told me!”

“Why?” asked Ded Grib. “I can’t interfere with the great ones’ plans. Besides, you let one of the horses die, didn’t you? Maybe it would have been justice, if the bagiennik had killed you, for he loves them.”

“Justice?” she demanded. All the rage and guilt and trapped helplessness of the last few days seemed to spill out. “Have I not had enough justice these last days? I only came here for food; I have done nothing to you, nothing to your forest. And still you—all of you—”

Words failed her. In bitter anger, she seized a stick and flung it down on the head of the little mushroom.