The Bear and the Nightingale (Winternight Trilogy 1)

Dunya looked more puzzled than ever, but she took the cold blue thing and squinted at it.

Pyotr frowned more terribly than ever; he reached out as though to take it back. But his fist closed on itself, and the motion died unfinished. Abruptly he turned on his heel and sought his bed. Dunya, alone in the dim kitchen, stared down at the pendant. She turned it this way and that, muttering to herself.

“Well, Pyotr Vladimirovich,” she murmured, “and where in Moscow does a man get such a jewel?” Shaking her head, Dunya slipped it into her pocket, resolving to keep it safe until the little girl was old enough to be trusted with the glittering thing.

Three nights later, the old nurse dreamed.

In her dream she was a maiden again, walking alone in the winter woods. The bright sound of sleigh bells rang out on the road. She loved sledging, and spun to see a white horse trotting toward her. Its driver was a man with black hair. He did not slow when he came up alongside, but caught her arm and pulled her roughly onto the sledge. His gaze did not leave the white road. Air like the iciest of January blasts eddied around him despite the winter sunshine.

Dunya was suddenly afraid.

“You have taken something that was not given to you,” he said. Dunya shuddered at the whine of storm winds in his voice. “Why?” Her teeth were chattering so hard she could barely form words, and the man whirled on her in a blaze of thin winter light. “That necklace was not meant for you,” he hissed. “Why have you taken it?”

“Her father brought it for Vasilisa, but she is only a child. I saw it and I knew it was a talisman,” stammered Dunya. “I have not stolen it, I have not…but I am afraid for the girl. Please, she is too young—too young for sorcery or the favor of the old gods.”

The man laughed. Dunya heard a grinding bitterness in the sound. “Gods? There is but one God now, child, and I am no more than a wind through bare branches.” He was silent, and Dunya, trembling, tasted blood where she’d bitten into her lip.

At last he nodded. “Very well, keep it for her, then, until she is grown—but no longer. I think I need not tell you what will happen if you play me false.”

Dunya found herself nodding vigorously, shaking harder than ever. The man cracked his whip. The horse raced off, running ever faster over the snow. Dunya felt her grip on the seat slipping; frantically she clutched at it but she was falling, falling over backward…

She woke with a gasp, on her own pallet in the kitchen. She lay in the dark, shivering, and it was a long time before she could get warm.

ANNA CAME RELUCTANTLY AWAKE, blinking dreams from her eyes. It had been a pleasant dream, the last; there had been warm bread in it and someone with a soft voice. But even as she reached for it, the dream slipped away, and she was left empty, clutching blankets around her to ward off the dawn chill.

She heard a rustling and craned her head around. A demon sat on her own stool, mending one of Pyotr’s shirts. The gray light of a winter morning threw bars of shadow over the gnarled thing. She shuddered. Her husband snored beside her, oblivious, and Anna tried to ignore the specter, as she had every day in the seven since she first awoke in this horrible place. She turned away and burrowed into the coverlet. But she could not get warm. Her husband had thrown off the blanket, but she was always cold here. When she asked that the fire be built up, the serving-women just stared at her, politely perplexed. She thought about creeping closer, to share her husband’s warmth, but he might decide he wanted her again. Though he tried to be gentle, he was insistent, and most of the time she wanted to be left alone.

She risked a look back at the stool. The thing was staring straight at her.

Anna could stand it no more. She slipped to the floor, pulled on garments at random, and wrapped a scarf round her half-raveled braids. Darting through the kitchen and out the kitchen door, she earned a startled look from Dunya, who always rose early to set the bread baking. The gray morning light was giving way to rose; the ground glittered as though gem-studded, but Anna didn’t notice the snow. All she saw was the little wooden church not twenty paces from the house. Heedless, she ran toward it, yanked open the door, and slid inside. She wanted to weep, but she clenched her teeth and her fists and silenced her tears. She did altogether too much weeping.

Her madness was worse here in the north—far, far worse. Pyotr’s house was alive with devils. A creature with eyes like coals hid in the oven. A little man in the bathhouse winked at her through the steam. A demon like a heap of sticks slouched around the dooryard.

In Moscow, her devils had never looked at her, never spared her a glance, but here they were always staring. Some even came quite close, as though they would speak, and each time Anna had to flee, hating the puzzled stares of her husband and stepchildren. She saw them all the time, everywhere—except here in the church.

The blessed, quiet church. It was nothing, really, compared to the churches in Moscow. There was no gold or gilt, and only one priest to give service. The icons were small and ill-painted. But here she saw nothing but floor and walls and icons and candles. There were no faces in the shadows.

She stayed and stayed, by turns praying and staring into space. It was well past dawn when she crept back to the house. The kitchen was crowded, the fire roaring. The baking and stewing and cleaning and drying went on without cease, from dark to dark. The women did not react when Anna crept in; no one so much as turned her head. Anna took that, above all, as a comment on her weakness.

Olga looked up first. “Would you like some bread, Anna Ivanovna?” she asked. Olga could not like the poor creature that had taken her mother’s place, though she was a kind girl and pitied her.

Anna was hungry, but there was a tiny, grizzled creature sitting just inside the mouth of the oven. Its beard glowed with the heat as it gnawed a blackened crust.

Anna Ivanovna’s mouth worked, but she could make no answer. The little creature looked up from its bread and cocked its head. There was curiosity in its bright eyes. “No,” Anna whispered. “No—I don’t want any bread.” She turned and fled to the dubious safety of her own room, while the women in the kitchen looked at each other and slowly shook their heads.

The following autumn, Kolya was married to the daughter of a neighboring boyar. She was a fat, strapping, yellow-haired girl, and Pyotr built them a little house of their own, with a good clay oven.

But it was the great wedding the people awaited, when Olga Petrovna would become the Princess of Serpukhov. That had taken almost a year to negotiate. The gifts began coming from Moscow before the mud closed the roads, but the details took longer. The way from Lesnaya Zemlya to Moscow was a hard one; messengers were delayed or disappeared; they broke their skulls, were robbed, or lamed their horses. But it was settled at last. The young Prince of Serpukhov was to come himself, with his retinue, to marry Olga and take her back to his house in Moscow.

“It is better for her to be married before she travels,” said the messenger. “She will not be so frightened.” And, the messenger might have added, Aleksei, Metropolitan of Moscow, wanted the marriage accomplished and consummated before Olga came to the city.

The prince arrived just as pale spring became dazzling summer, with a tender, capricious sky and the fading flowers buried in a wash of summer grass. A year had ripened him. The spots had faded, though he was still no beauty; and he hid his shyness with boisterous good temper.