The Bear and the Nightingale (Winternight Trilogy 1)

Then Vasya heard a new sound: the smack of galloping hooves. The figure by the tree cried to her furiously: Faster! The tree was before her, the wheezing creature behind—but to her left a white mare came galloping, swift as fire. Blind, terrified, Vasya turned toward the horse. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the upyr lunge, teeth shining in the old, dead face.

In that instant, the white mare came up alongside. The horse’s rider reached out a hand. Vasya seized it and was flung bodily across the mare’s withers. The upyr landed in the snow where she’d been. The horse tore away. Behind them came twin cries: one of pain and one of fury.

The mare’s rider did not speak. Vasya, panting, had only a moment to be grateful for the reprieve. She hung head-down over the mare’s withers, and so they rode. The girl felt as though her guts would come through her skin with each strike of the mare’s hooves, yet on and on they galloped. She couldn’t feel her face or her feet. The strong hand that had seized her out of the snow held her still, but the rider did not speak. The mare smelled unlike any horse Vasya had ever known, like strange flowers and warm stone, incongruous in the bitter night.

They ran until Vasya could not stand the pain or the cold anymore. “Please,” she gasped. “Please.”

Abruptly, bone-jarringly, they came to a halt. Vasya slid backward off the horse and fell, doubled over in the snow, numb, retching, clinging to her bruised ribs. The mare stood still. Vasya did not hear the mare’s rider dismount, but suddenly he was standing in the snow. Vasya stumbled upright on feet she could no longer feel. Her head was bare to the night. It was snowing; the snowflakes tangled in her braid. She had gone beyond shivering; she felt heavy and dull.

The man looked down at her, and she up at him.

His eyes were pale as water, or winter ice.

“Please,” whispered Vasya. “I am cold.”

“Everything is cold here,” he replied.

“Where am I?”

He shrugged. “Back of the north wind. The end of the world. Nowhere at all.”

Vasya swayed suddenly and would have fallen, but the man caught her. “Tell me your name, devushka.” His voice raised strange echoes in the wood around them.

Vasya shook her head. His flesh was icy. She pulled away, stumbling. “Who are you?”

The snowflakes caught in his dark curls; his head was bare as hers. He smiled and said nothing.

“I have seen you before,” she said.

“I come with the snow,” he said. “I come when men are dying.”

She knew him. She had known him the instant his hand seized hers. “Am I dying?”

“Perhaps.” He put a cold hand beneath her jaw. Vasya felt her heart throbbing against his fingers. Then, all at once, pain struck. Her breath came short; she sank to her knees. Shards of crystal seemed to form in her blood. He knelt with her. Karachun, Vasya thought. Morozko the frost-demon. Death, this is death. They will find me frozen in the snow, like the girl in the story.

She took a breath and felt that the frost had spread to her lungs. “Let go,” she whispered. Her lips and tongue were too cold to obey. “You would not have saved me at the tree if you meant to kill me.”

The demon’s hand dropped. She fell back into the snow, gasping, doubled over.

He got to his feet. “Would I not, fool?” he said, his voice thin with anger. “What madness brought you into the forest tonight?”

Vasya forced herself to stand. “I am not here by choice.” The white mare came up behind her, blew warm breath on her cheek. Vasya buried her cold fingers in the long mane. “My stepmother was going to send me to a convent.”

His voice was alive with scorn. “And so you ran? Easier to escape a convent than the Bear.”

Vasya met his eyes. “I did not run. Well, I did run, but only…”

She could manage no more. She clung to the horse, at the end of her strength. Her head swam. The horse curved her neck around. The smell of stone and flowers revived Vasya a little; she straightened and firmed her lips.

The frost-demon came nearer. Vasya put out one hand, instinctively, to keep him back. But he caught her mittened hand in both of his. “Come then,” he said. “Look at me.” He pulled the mitten away and set his palm to hers.

Her whole body tensed, dreading the pain, but it did not come. His hand was hard and cool as river ice; it was even gentle, against her frozen fingers.

“Tell me who you are.” His voice sent a shiver of bitter air across her face.

“I…am Vasilisa Petrovna,” she said.

His eyes seemed to bore into her skull. She bit her tongue and did not look away.

“Well met, then,” said the demon. He let go and stepped back. His blue eyes threw sparks. Vasya thought she had imagined the look of triumph on his face. “Now tell me again, Vasilisa Petrovna,” he added, half-mockingly, “what are you doing wandering the black forest? This is my hour and mine alone.”

“I was to be sent to the convent at dawn,” said Vasya. “But my stepmother said I needn’t go if I brought her the white flowers of spring, the podsnezhniki.”

The frost-demon stared, and then he laughed. Vasya gazed at him in astonishment, then continued, “The men tried to stop me. But I got away. I ran into the forest. I was so frightened I couldn’t think. I meant to turn back, but I got lost. I saw the twisted oak-tree. And then I heard footsteps.”

“Folly,” the frost-demon said drily. “I am not the only power in these woods. You should not have left your hearth.”

“I had to,” Vasya rejoined. Blackness darted suddenly before her eyes. Her brief flare of strength was fading fast. “They were going to send me to a convent. I decided I would rather freeze in a snowbank.” Her skin shivered all over. “Well, that was before I began to freeze in a snowbank. It hurts.”

“Yes,” said Morozko. “Yes, it does.”

“The dead are walking,” Vasya whispered. “The domovoi will disappear if I am gone. My family will die if they send me away. I don’t know what to do.”

The frost-demon said nothing.

“I must go home now,” Vasya managed. “But I do not know where it is.”

The white mare stamped and shook her mane. Vasya’s legs suddenly buckled, as though she were a newborn foal.

“East of the sun, west of the moon,” said Morozko. “Beyond the next tree.”

Vasya did not answer. Her eyelids fluttered closed.

“Come, then,” Morozko added. “It is cold.” He caught Vasya as she was falling. Beside them stood a grove of old firs with interlaced branches. He picked the girl up. Her head and hand hung limp; her heart stirred feebly.

That was a near-run thing, said the mare to her rider, blowing a cloud of steaming breath into the girl’s face.

“Yes,” replied Morozko. “She is stronger than I dared hope. Another would have died.”

The mare snorted. You did not need to test her. The Bear has done that already. Another instant and he’d have had her first.

“Well, he did not, and we must be grateful.”

Will you tell her? asked the mare.

“Everything?” the demon said. “Of bears and sorcerers, spells made of sapphire and a witch that lost her daughter? No, of course not. I shall tell her as little as possible. And hope that it is enough.”