The Bear and the Nightingale (Winternight Trilogy 1)

A small boy crawled through the crowd. “Mother,” he cried. “Mother!” He flung himself on her, but she did not heed.

Irina was suddenly there, her small face grave. “She has fainted,” the child said seriously. “She needs air and water.”

“It is only a nightmare,” said Father Konstantin to Pyotr. “Best to leave her to the women.”

Pyotr might have replied, but no one heard, for Vasya cried out then in shock and sudden fury. The entire room convulsed in new fright.

Vasya was staring at the window.

Then—“No,” she said, visibly gathering herself. “Forgive me. I—nothing. It was nothing.” Pyotr frowned. The servants looked at her with open suspicion and murmured among themselves.

Dunya shuffled to Vasya, her breath rustling hollow in her chest. “Girls always have nightmares when the weather changes,” Dunya wheezed, loud enough for the room to hear. “Go on, child, fetch water and honey-wine.” She gave Vasya a hard look.

Vasya said nothing. Her glance strayed once more to the window. For an instant she could have sworn she’d seen a face. But it could not be, for it was the face out of her dream, blue-scarred and one-eyed. It had grinned and winked at her through the wavering ice.

AS SOON AS IT was light the next morning, Vasya went looking for the domovoi. She searched until the watery sun was high, and into the brief afternoon, shirking her work. The sun was tilting west when she managed to drag the creature surreptitiously out of the oven. His beard was smoldering around the edges. He was thin and bent, his clothes shabby, his manner defeated.

“Last night,” Vasya said without preamble, cradling a burnt hand, “I dreamed of a face and then I saw it at the window. It had one eye and it was smiling. Who was it?”

“Madness,” mumbled the domovoi. “Appetite. The sleeper, the eater. I could not keep it out.”

“You must try harder,” snapped Vasya.

But the domovoi’s gaze wandered, and his mouth drooped open. “I am weak,” he slurred. “And the wood-guard is weak. Our enemy has loosened his chain. Soon he will be free. I cannot keep him out.”

“Who is the enemy?”

“Appetite,” said the domovoi again. “Madness. Terror. He wants to eat the world.”

“How can I defeat it?” said Vasya urgently. “How may the house be protected?”

“Offerings,” muttered the domovoi. “Bread and milk will strengthen me—and perhaps blood. But you are only one girl alone, and I cannot take my life from you. I will fade. The eater will come again.”

Vasya seized the domovoi and shook him so that his jaws clacked together. His dull eyes cleared, and he looked momentarily astonished. “You will not fade,” Vasya snapped. “You can take your life from me. You will. The one-eyed man—the eater—he will not get in again. He will not.”

There was no milk, but Vasya stole bread and shoved it into the domovoi’s hand. She did it that night, and every night thereafter, scanting her own meals. She cut her hand and smeared the blood on sills and before the oven. She pressed her bloody hand to the domovoi’s mouth. Her ribs started through her skin, her eyes grew hollow, and nightmares dogged her sleeping. But the nights slipped past—one, two, a dozen—and no one else screamed at something that was not there. The wavering domovoi held, and she poured her strength into him.

But little Agafya never spoke sense again. Sometimes she would plead with things that no one could see: saints and angels and a one-eyed bear. Later she raved of a man and a white horse. One night she ran out of the house, collapsed blue-lipped in the snow, and died.

The women prepared the body with as much haste as was seemly. Father Konstantin kept vigil beside her, white to the lips, head bent, with a face no one could read. Though he knelt for hours at her side, he never once prayed aloud. The words seemed to catch in his straining throat.

They buried Agafya in the brief winter daylight while the forest groaned around them. In the swift-falling twilight, they hurried to huddle before their ovens. Agafya’s child cried for his mother; his wailing hung like mist over the silent village.

THE NIGHT AFTER THE FUNERAL, a dream seized Dunya like sickness, like the jaws of a hunting creature. She was standing in a dead forest strewn with the stumps of blackened trees. An oily smoke veiled the flinching stars; firelight flickered against the snow. The frost-demon’s face was a skull-mask with the skin drawn tight. His soft voice frightened Dunya worse than shouting.

“Why have you delayed?”

Dunya gathered all her force. “I love her,” she said. “She is like my own daughter. You are winter, Morozko. You are death; you are cold. You cannot have her. She will give her life to God.”

The frost-demon laughed bitterly. “She will die in the dark. Every day my brother’s power waxes. And she saw him when she should not have. Now he knows what she is. He will slay her if he can, and take her for his own. Then you well may talk of damnation.” Morozko’s voice softened, a very little. “I can save her,” he said. “I can save you all. But she must have that jewel. Otherwise…”

And Dunya saw that the flickering firelight was her own village burning. The forest filled with creeping things whose faces she knew. Greatest among them was a grinning one-eyed man, and beside him stood another shape, tall and slender, corpse-pale, lank-haired. “You let me die,” the specter said in Vasya’s voice, and her teeth gleamed between bloody lips.

Dunya found herself seizing the necklace and holding it out. It made a tiny scrap of brightness in a world formless and dark.

“I did not know,” Dunya stammered. She reached for the dead girl, the necklace swinging from her fist. “Vasya, take it. Vasya!” But the one-eyed man only laughed, and the girl made no sign.

Then the frost-demon put himself between her and horror, seized her shoulders with hard, icy hands. “You have no time, Avdotya Mikhailovna,” he said. “Next time you see me, I will beckon and you will follow.” His voice was the voice of the wood; it seemed to echo in her bones, vibrate in her throat. Dunya felt her guts twist with fear and with certainty. “But you can save her before you go,” he went on. “You must save her. Give her the necklace. Save them all.”

“I will,” whispered Dunya. “It will be as you say. I swear it. I swear…”

And then her own voice woke her.

But the chill of that burnt forest, of the frost-demon’s touch, lingered. Dunya’s bones shook until it seemed they would shake through her skin. All she could see was the frost-demon, intent and despairing, and the laughing face of his brother, the one-eyed creature. The two faces blurred into one. The blue stone in her pocket seemed to drip icy flame. Her skin cracked and blackened when her hand closed tight around it.

Vasya went to the horses every morning at first light during those clipped, metallic days, only a little after her father. They had a kinship in this, to fear so passionately for the animals. At night, the horses were put in the dvor, safe behind the palisade, and as many as would fit were sheltered in the sturdy stable. But during the day they were turned loose to fend for themselves, roaming the gray pastures and digging grass from beneath the snow.