The Bear and the Nightingale (Winternight Trilogy 1)

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.”

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.