The Bear and the Nightingale (Winternight Trilogy 1)

But how well she sat the horse. The mare vaulted a ditch and came on at a gallop, her rider motionless except for the flying hair. The two came to a halt at the edge of the wood. Vasya had a reed basket balanced before her. In the bright sunlight, Pyotr could not make out her features, but it struck him how tall she had grown. “Are you not hungry, Father?” she called. The mare stood still, poised. And bridleless—she wore nothing at all, not so much as a rope halter. Vasya rode with both hands on her basket.

“I am coming, Vasya,” he said, feeling unaccountably grim. He set his rake on his shoulder.

The sun glanced off a golden head; Konstantin Nikonovich had not quit the barley-field, but stood watching the slender rider until the trees hid her. My daughter rides like a steppe boy. What must he think of her, our virtuous priest?

The men were flinging the cold water over their heads and drinking it in great handfuls. When Pyotr came to the creek, Vasya was off her horse and among them, passing a skin bag full of kvas. Dunya had made an enormous pasty in the oven, lumpy with grain and cheese and summer vegetables. The men gathered round and sawed off wedges. Grease mixed with the sweat on their faces.

It struck Pyotr how strange Vasya looked among the big, coarse men, with her long bones and her slenderness, her great eyes set so wide apart. I want a daughter like my mother was, Marina had said. Well, there she was, a falcon among cows.

The men did not speak to her; they ate their pie quickly, heads down, and went back to the scorching fields. Alyosha tugged his sister’s braid and grinned at her in passing. But Pyotr saw the men throwing her backward glances as they went. “Witch,” one of them murmured, though Pyotr did not hear. “She has charmed the horse. The priest says—”

The pasty was gone, and the men with it, but Vasya lingered. She set the skin of kvas aside and went to dip her hands in the stream. She walked like a child. Well, of course she does. She is a girl still: my little frog. And yet she had a wild thing’s heedless grace. Vasya left the stream and came toward him, gathering up her basket on the way. Pyotr had a shock when he looked her in the face, which is perhaps why he frowned so blackly. Her smile faded. “Here, Father,” she said, and handed him the skin of kvas.

Oh, savior, he thought. Perhaps Anna Ivanovna did not speak so wrong. If she is not a woman, she will be soon. Father Konstantin’s gaze, Pyotr saw, lingered again on his daughter.

“Vasya,” Pyotr said, rougher than he meant. “What is the meaning of this, taking the mare, and riding her so, without saddle or bridle? You’ll break an arm or your foolish neck.”

Vasya flushed. “Dunya bid me take the basket and make haste. Mysh was the nearest horse, and it was only a little way, too short to trouble with a saddle.”

“Or a halter, dochka?” said Pyotr with some asperity.

Vasya’s blush deepened. “I did not come to harm, Father.”

Pyotr looked her over in silence. If she’d been a boy, he’d have been applauding that display of horsemanship. But she was a girl, a hoydenish girl, on the cusp of womanhood. Pyotr remembered again the young priest’s stare.

“We’ll talk of this later,” said Pyotr. “Go home to Dunya. And do not ride so fast.”

“Yes, Father,” said Vasya meekly. But there was pride in the way she vaulted to the horse’s back, and pride also in the control with which she turned the mare and sent her cantering, neck arched, back in the direction of the house.

THE DAY WOUND ON to dusk and past, so that the only light was the pale glow of summer that lit the nights like morning. “Dunya,” said Pyotr. “How long has Vasya been a woman?” They sat alone in the summer kitchen. All around them the household slept. But for Pyotr, the daylit nights banished sleep, and the question of his daughter bit at him. Dunya’s limbs ached, and she was not eager to lie down on her hard pallet. She twirled her distaff, but slowly. It struck Pyotr how thin she was.

Dunya gave Pyotr a hard glance. “Half a year. It came on her near Easter.”

“She is a handsome girl,” said Pyotr. “Though a savage. She needs a husband; it would steady her.” But as he spoke, an image came to him of his wild girl wedded and bedded, sweating over an oven. The image filled him with a strange regret, and he shook it away.

Dunya put aside her distaff and said slowly, “She has not thought of love yet, Pyotr Vladimirovich.”

“And so? She will do as she is told.”

Dunya laughed. “Will she? Have you forgotten Vasya’s mother?”

Pyotr was silent.

“I would counsel you to wait,” said Dunya. “Except…”

All the summer, Dunya had watched Vasya disappear at dawn and return at twilight. She had watched the wildness grow in Marina’s daughter and a—remoteness—that was new, as though the girl was only half-living in her family’s world of crops and stock and mending. Dunya had watched and worried and struggled with herself. Now she made a decision. She plunged her hand into her pocket. When she withdrew it, the blue jewel lay nestled upon her palm, incongruous against the worn skin. “Do you remember, Pyotr Vladimirovich?”

“It was a gift for Vasya,” said Pyotr harshly. “Is this treachery? I bade you give it her.” He eyed the pendant as though it were a serpent.

“I have kept it for her,” replied Dunya. “I begged, and the winter-king said I might. It was too great a burden for a child.”

“Winter-king?” said Pyotr angrily. “Are you a child, to believe in fairy tales? There is no winter-king.”

“Fairy tales?” returned Dunya, an answering anger in her voice. “Am I so wicked that I would invent such a lie? I, too, am a Christian, Pyotr Vladimirovich, but I believe what I see. Whence came this jewel, fit for a khan, that you brought for your little daughter?”

Pyotr, throat working, was silent.

“Who gave it to you?” Dunya continued. “You brought it from Moscow, but I never asked further.”

“It is a necklace,” said Pyotr, but the anger had gone from his voice. Pyotr had tried to forget the pale-eyed man, the blood on Kolya’s throat, his men standing insensible. Was that he, the winter-king? Now he remembered how quickly he had agreed to give the stranger’s trinket to his daughter. Ancient magic, it seemed he heard Marina say. A daughter of my mother’s bloodline. And then, softer: Protect her, Petya. I chose her; she is important. Promise me.

“Not just a necklace,” said Dunya harshly. “It is a talisman, may God forgive me. I have seen the winter-king. The necklace is his, and he will come for her.”

“You have seen him?” Pyotr was on his feet.

Dunya nodded.

“Where did you see him? Where?”

“Dreaming,” said Dunya. “Only dreaming. But he sends the dreams and they are true. I am to give her the necklace, he says. He will come for her at midwinter. She is no longer a child. But he is deceitful—all his kind are.” The words came out in a rush. “I love Vasya like my own daughter. She is too brave for her own good. I am afraid for her.”

Pyotr paced toward the great window and turned back toward Dunya. “Are you telling me the truth, Avdotya Mikhailovna? On my wife’s head, do not lie to me.”

“I have seen him,” said Dunya again. “And you, I think, have seen him, too. He has black hair, curling. Pale eyes, paler than the sky at midwinter. He has no beard, and he is dressed all in blue.”