The Bear and the Nightingale (Winternight Trilogy 1)

“You’re out of luck, I’m afraid, Vasochka,” said Alyosha with some asperity, “and have been for some time. Do we need to kidnap a peasant boy?”

Vasya assumed a righteous expression. “Where greater virtue fails, the lesser must do its poor best,” she informed him, and clambered first among the glittering graves.

In honesty, she doubted that virtue had much to do with it. The smell hung like evil rain over the graveyard, and it was not long before Vasya stopped, choking, in a familiar corner. She and Alyosha looked at each other, and her brother began to dig. The earth ought to have been stiff with frost, but it was moist and fresh-tumbled. As Alyosha cleared away the snow, the smell struck up with such force that he turned away, gagging. But, lips tight, he drove his shovel into the earth. In a surprisingly short time they had uncovered the head and torso of a figure, wrapped in a winding-sheet. Vasya drew out a small knife and cut the cloth away.

“Mother of God,” said Alyosha, and turned away.

Vasya said nothing. Little Agafya’s skin was the grayish-white of a corpse, but her lips were berry-red, full and tender, as they had never been in life. Her eyelashes cast lacy shadows on her wasted cheeks. She might have been asleep, at peace in a bed of earth.

“What do we do?” Alyosha asked, very pale and breathing as little as possible.

“A stake through the mouth,” said Vasya. “I made a stake this morning.”

Alyosha shuddered, but knelt. Vasya knelt beside him, hands trembling. The stake was crudely shaped but sharp, and she hefted a large rock to do the hammering.

“Well, brother,” said Vasya, “Will you hold its head or drive in the stake?”

He was white as the snowdrifts, but he said, “I’m stronger than you.”

“True enough,” said Vasya. She handed over stake and rock and pried open the thing’s jaws. The teeth, sharp as a cat’s, gleamed like bone needles.

The sight of them shook Alyosha out of his stupor. Gritting his teeth, he thrust the stake between the red lips and slammed the rock down. Blood spurted, welling out of the mouth and over the gray chin. The eyes flew open, huge and horrible, though the body did not stir. Alyosha’s hand jerked; he missed the stake and Vasya snatched her fingers away just in time. There was a nasty crunch as the stone shattered the right cheekbone. The thing let out a thin scream, though still it did not move.

To Vasya, it seemed that a roar of fury came faintly from the woods. “Hurry,” she said. “Hurry, hurry.”

Alyosha bit his tongue and resettled his grip. The rock had made a shapeless ruin of the face. He struck the stake again and again, sweating despite the cold. At last the tip of the stake grated against bone, and a final, ferocious strike sent the stake out through the other side of the skull. The light went out of the corpse’s open eyes, and the stone fell from Alyosha’s nerveless fingers. He flung himself away, gasping. Vasya’s hands dripped blood, and worse things, but she let go of Agafya almost absently. She was staring into the forest.

“Vasya, what is it?” Alyosha asked.

“I thought I saw something,” Vasya whispered. “Look there.” She was on her feet. A white horse and a dark rider were cantering away, swallowed almost instantly in the loom of the trees. Beyond them, it seemed she saw another figure, like a great shadow, watching.

“There is no one here but us, Vasya,” said Alyosha. “Here, help me bury her and smooth the snow. Hurry. The women will be looking for you.”

Vasya nodded and hefted the shovel. She was still frowning. “I have seen the horse before,” she said to herself. “And her rider, who wears a black cloak. He has blue eyes.”

VASYA DID NOT GO BACK to the house after the upyr was buried. She washed the earth and blood from her hands, went to the stable, and curled up in Mysh’s stall. Mysh nuzzled the top of her head. The vazila sat beside her.

Vasya sat there a long time and tried to cry. For Dunya’s face as she died, for the bloody ruin of Agafya. Even for Father Konstantin. But though she sat a long time, the tears would not come. There was only a hollow place inside her, and a great silence.

When the sun was westering, the girl joined the women in the bathhouse.

All the women turned on her together. Heedless, they said. Wild. Hard-hearted. Softer, she heard, Witch-woman. Like her mother.

“You’re an ungrateful little thing, Vasya,” gloated Anna Ivanovna. “But I expected nothing better.” That evening, she bent Vasya over a stool and plied her birch switch hard, though Vasya was too old for beatings. Only Irina was silent, but she looked at her sister with a red-eyed reproach that was worse than the women’s words.

Vasya bore it all, but she could not summon speech in her defense.

They buried Dunya at the close of day. The people whispered among themselves all through the quick, freezing funeral. Her father was haggard and gray; she had never seen him look so old.

“Dunya loved you like her daughter, Vasya,” he said, later. “Of all the days to play truant.”

Vasya did not speak, but she thought of her wounded hand, of the bitter, star-strewn night, of the jewel at her throat, of the upyr in the dark.

“FATHER,” SHE SAID THAT NIGHT. The peasants had gone back to their huts. She drew her stool up beside Pyotr’s. The flames in the oven leaped red, and there was an empty space at their hearth where Dunya had been. Pyotr was making a new hilt for a hunting-knife. He scraped away a little curl of wood and glanced at his daughter. In the firelight, her face was drawn. “Father,” she said. “I would not have disappeared without need.” She spoke so soft that in the crowded kitchen only they two heard.

“What need, then, Vasya?” Pyotr laid aside his knife.

He looked as though he feared her answer, Vasya realized; she bit back the jumbled confession quivering in her throat. The upyr is dead, she thought. I will not burden him more, not to salve my own pride. He must be strong for all of us.

“I—went to Mother’s grave,” she said hastily. “Dunya bid me go and pray for them both. She is with Mother now. It was—easier to pray there. In the silence.”

Her father looked wearier than she had ever seen him. “Very well, Vasya,” he said, turning back to his hunting-knife. “But it was ill-done, to go alone and with no word. It has made talk among the people.” There was a small silence. Vasya twisted her hands together. “I am sorry, child,” he added more gently. “I know Dunya was as a mother to you. Did she give you anything before she died? A token? A trinket?”

Vasya hesitated, caught. Dunya said I must not tell him. But it is his gift. She opened her mouth…

There came a great thundering knock on the door, and a man burst through and fell, half-frozen, at their feet. Pyotr was on his feet in an instant, and the moment was lost. The winter kitchen filled with cries of astonishment. The man’s beard rattled with the ice of his breathing; his eyes stared out over mottled cheeks. He lay shivering on the floor.

Pyotr knew him. “What is it?” he demanded, stooping and catching the shuddering man by the shoulder. “What has happened, Nikolai Matfeevich?”

The man said nothing; only lay curled on the floor. When they drew off his mittens, his frozen hands were like claws.