The Bear and the Nightingale (Winternight Trilogy 1)

“Are you a devil?”

There was a small pause.

“I don’t know. Maybe. What is a devil?” The little creature had a voice like the whicker of a kindly horse.

Vasya reflected. “A great black creature with a beard of flame and a forked tail that wishes to possess my soul and drag me off to be tortured in a pit of fire.”

She eyed the little man again.

Whatever he was, he did not seem to fit this description. His beard was quite reassuringly white and solid and he was turning round and examining the seat of his trousers as though to confirm the absence of a tail.

“No,” he answered at length. “I do not think that I am a devil.”

“Are you really here?” Vasya asked.

“Sometimes,” answered the little man tranquilly.

Vasya was not greatly reassured, but after a moment’s reflection she decided that “sometimes” was preferable to “never.” “Oh,” she said, mollified. “What are you, then?”

“I look after the horses.”

Vasya nodded wisely. If there was a little creature to look after the house, well, then, there should be another for the stables. But the girl had learned caution.

“Can—can everyone see you? Do they know you’re here?”

“The grooms know I’m here; at least, they leave offerings on cold nights. But no, no one can see me. Except you. And the one other, but she never comes.” He sketched a small bow in her direction.

Vasya eyed him in growing consternation. “And the domovoi? No one can see him either, can they?”

“I do not know what is a domovoi,” the little creature replied equably. “I am of the stables and of the beasts that live here. I do not venture outside except to exercise the horses.”

Vasya opened her mouth to ask how he did so. He was no taller than she, and all of the horses had backs several handspans above her head. But at that moment she became aware of Dunya’s cracked voice calling. She jumped up.

“I must go,” she said. “Will I see you again?”

“If you like,” the other returned. “I have never talked with anyone before.”

“I am called Vasilisa Petrovna. What is your name?”

The little creature thought for a moment. “I have never had to name myself before,” he said. He thought again.

“I am—the vazila, the spirit of horses,” he said finally. “I suppose that you may call me so.”

Vasya nodded once, respectfully.

“Thank you,” she said. Then she rolled over and scurried for the hayloft ladder, trailing straw from her hair.

THE DAYS WORE AWAY, and the seasons. Vasya grew older, and she learned caution. She made sure never to speak to anyone but other people unless she was alone. She determined to shout less, run less, worry Dunya less, and above all, avoid Anna Ivanovna.

She even succeeded somewhat, for almost seven years passed in peace. If Vasya heard voices on the wind, or saw faces in the leaves, she ignored them. Mostly. The vazila became the exception.

He was a very simple creature. Like all household-spirits, he said, he had come into being when the stables were built and remembered nothing before. But he had the generous simplicity of horses, and under her impishness Vasilisa had a steadiness that—though she did not know it—appealed to the little stable-spirit.

Whenever she could, Vasya disappeared into the barn. She could watch the vazila for hours. His movements were inhumanly light and deft, and he would clamber all over the horses’ backs like a squirrel. Even Buran stood like a stone while he did so. After a while, it seemed only natural that Vasya take up knife and comb and assist him.

At first the vazila’s lessons were in craft only: in grooming, and doctoring, and mending. But Vasya was very eager, and soon enough he was teaching her stranger things.

He taught her to talk to horses.

It was a language of eye and body, sound and gesture. Vasya was young enough to learn quickly. Soon enough she was creeping into the barn not only for the comfort of hay and warm bodies, but for the horses’ talk. She would sit in the stalls by the hour, listening.

The grooms might have sent her out had they caught her, but they managed to find her surprisingly seldom. Sometimes it worried Vasya that they never found her. All she had to do was flatten herself against the side of a stall and then duck around the horse and flee, and the groom would never even look up.

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.