The Bear and the Nightingale (Winternight Trilogy 1)

All the icons in the corner came alive and screeched their approbation. The shadow opened its mouth to laugh, too, and then it was not a shadow at all, but a bear—a great bear with famine between its teeth. It roared out flame—and then the wall was burning; her house was burning. Somewhere she heard Irina screaming.

A grinning face showed between the flames, mottled blue, with a great dark hole where an eye should have been. “Come,” it said. “You will be with them, and you will live forever.” Her dead brother and sister stood beside this apparition and seemed to beckon from behind the flames.

Something hard struck Vasya across the face, but she did not heed.

She reached out a hand. “Alyosha,” she said. “Lyoshka!”

But a quick pain came, sharper than before. Vasya was yanked out of the dream, strangling on a sound between a sob and a scream. Solovey was butting her anxiously with his nose; he had bitten her upper arm. She seized his warm mane. Her hands were like two lumps of ice; her teeth chattered. She buried her face in his coat. Her head was full of screaming, and that laughing voice. Come, or you will never see them again. Then she heard another voice, felt a rush of frigid air.

“Get back, you great ox.” There was a squeal of indignation from Solovey, and then there were cold hands on Vasya’s face. When she tried to look, all she could see was her father’s house burning, and a one-eyed man that beckoned.

Forget him, said the one-eyed man. Come here.

Morozko struck her across the face. “Vasya,” he said. “Vasilisa Petrovna, look at me.”

It was like dragging herself across a great distance, but his eyes came into focus at last. She could not see the house in the woods. All she saw were fir-trees, snow, horses, and the night sky. The air curled frigid about her. Vasya tried to quiet her panicked breaths.

Morozko hissed out something she did not understand. Then, “Here,” he said. “Drink.”

There was mead at her lips; she smelled the honey. She swallowed, choked, and drank. When she raised her head, the cup was empty and her breathing had slowed. She could see the walls of the house again, though they wavered at the edges. Solovey was thrusting his great head down to hers, lipping at her hair and face. She laughed weakly. “I’m all right,” she began, but her laughter became tears, and she was seized with a storm of weeping. She covered her face.

Morozko watched her, narrow-eyed. She could still feel the imprint of his hands, and one cheek throbbed where he had struck her.

At length her tears slowed. “I had a nightmare,” she said. She would not look at him. She hunched on her chair, cold and embarrassed, sticky with tears.

“Do not look so,” Morozko said. “It was more than a nightmare; it was my own mistake.” Seeing her shiver, he made a sound of impatience. “Come here to me, Vasya.”

When she hesitated, he added shortly, “I will not hurt you, child, and it will quiet you. Come here.”

Bewildered, she uncurled and stood, fighting back fresh tears. He put a cloak round her. She did not know where he had gotten it from—perhaps conjured from midair. He picked her up and sank onto the warm oven-bench with her in his arms. He was gentle. His breath was the winter wind, but his flesh was warm, and his heart beat under her hand. She wanted to pull away, to glare at him with all her pride, but she was cold and frightened. Her pulse throbbed in her ears. Clumsily she settled her head in the curve of his shoulder. He ran his fingers through her loosened hair. Slowly, her trembling eased. “I’m all right now,” she said, after a time, a little unsteady. “What did you mean, your own mistake?”

She felt rather than heard him laugh. “Medved is a master of nightmares. Anger and fear are as meat and drink to him, and so he captures the minds of men. Forgive me, Vasya.”

Vasya said nothing.

After a moment, he said, “Tell me your dream.”

Vasya told him. She was shaking again when she had done, and he held her and was silent.

“You were right,” said Vasya at length. “What do I know of ancient magic, or ancient rivalries, or anything else? But I must go home. I can protect my family, at least for a time. Father and Alyosha will understand when I have explained.”

The image of her dead brother tore at her.

“Very well,” said Morozko. She was not looking at him, and so she did not see his face grim.

“May I take Solovey with me?” said Vasya hesitantly. “If he wishes to come?”

Solovey heard and shook his mane. He put his head down to look at Vasya out of one eye. Where you go, I go, said the stallion.

“Thank you,” Vasya whispered, and stroked his nose.

“Tomorrow you will go,” Morozko broke in. “Sleep the rest of the night.”

“Why?” said Vasya, pulling away to look at him. “If the Bear is waiting in my dreams, I certainly will not sleep.”

Morozko smiled crookedly. “But I will be here this time. Even in your dreams, Medved would not have dared my house, if I had not been away.”

“How did you know I was dreaming?” asked Vasya. “How did you come back in time?”

Morozko raised an eyebrow. “I knew. And I came back in time because there is nothing beneath these stars that runs faster than the white mare.”

Vasya opened her mouth on another question, but exhaustion hit her like a wave. She yanked back from the brink of sleep, suddenly frightened. “No,” she whispered. “Don’t—I could not bear it again.”

“He will not come back,” returned Morozko. His voice was steady against her ear. She felt the years in him, and the strength. “All will be well.”

“Don’t go,” she whispered.

Something crossed his face that she could not read. “I will not,” he said. And then it did not matter. Sleep was a great dark wave, and it washed over her and through her. Her eyelids fluttered closed.

“Sleep is cousin to death, Vasya,” he murmured over her head. “And both are mine.”

HE WAS STILL THERE when she woke, as he had promised. She crawled from her bed and went to the fire. He sat very still, staring into the flames. It was as though he hadn’t moved at all. If Vasya looked hard, she could see the forest around him, and he a great white silence, formless, in the middle. But then she sank onto her own stool, and he looked round and some of the remoteness left his face.

“Where did you go yesterday?” she asked him. “Where were you, when the Bear knew you were far away?”

“Here and there,” replied Morozko. “I brought gifts for you.”

A heap of bundles lay beside the fire. Vasya glanced at them. He lifted an eyebrow in invitation, and she was child enough to go immediately to the first bundle and pull it open, heart beating quickly. It contained a green dress trimmed in scarlet, and a sable-lined cloak. There were boots made of felt and fur, embroidered with crimson berries. There were headdresses for her hair, and jewels for her fingers: many jewels. Vasya hefted them in her hand. There was gold and silver, in saddlebags of heavy leather. There was cloth of silver and a rich soft cloth that she did not know.

Vasya looked them all over. I am the girl in the story, she thought. This is the prince’s ransom. Now he will take me back to my father’s house, covered with gifts.