The Bear and the Nightingale (Winternight Trilogy 1)

Vasya thought a moment. “If I promised to see Olya to her husband’s house, could I go, too?”

Sasha said nothing. She looked down at her feet, scraping a toe in the dust. “Anna Ivanovna would let me go,” she said all in a rush. “She wants me to go. She hates me. I am too small and too dirty.”

“Give her time,” said Sasha. “She is city-bred; she is not used to the woods.”

Vasya scowled. “She’s been here forever already. I wish she’d go back to Moscow.”

“Here, little sister,” said Sasha, looking at her pale face. “Come and ride.” Vasya, when she was smaller, had loved nothing more than riding on his saddlebow, her face in the wind, safe in the curve of his arm. Her face lit, and Sasha put her on the gelding. When they came into the dvor, he sprang up behind. Vasya leaned forward, breath quickening, and then they were off, galloping with a swift thunder of hooves.

Vasya leaned gleefully forward. “More, more!” she cried when Sasha eased off the horse and turned him for home. “Let’s go to Sarai, Sashka!” She turned to look at him. “Or Tsargrad, or Buyan, where the sea-king lives with his daughter the swan-maiden. It is not too far. East of the sun, west of the moon.” She squinted up as though to make sure of their direction.

“A bit far for a night’s gallop,” said Sasha. “You must be brave, little frog, and listen to Dunya. I’ll come back one day.”

“Will it be soon, Sasha?” whispered Vasya. “Soon?”

Sasha did not answer, but then he did not have to. They had ridden up to the house. He reined in the gelding and put his sister down in the stable-yard.

After Sasha and Olga went away, Dunya noticed a change in Vasya. For one thing, she disappeared more than ever. For another, she talked much less. And sometimes when she did talk, folk were startled. The girl was growing too big for childish babble, and yet…

“Dunya,” Vasya asked one day, not long after Olga’s wedding, when the heat lay like a hand over the woods and fields, “what lives in the river?” She was drinking sap; she took a great draught, eyed her nurse expectantly.

“Fish, Vasochka, and if you will only behave yourself until tomorrow, we shall have some caught fresh with new herbs and cream.”

Vasya loved fish, but she shook her head. “No, Dunya, what else lives in the river? Something with eyes like a frog and hair like waterweed and mud dripping down its nose.”

Dunya shot the child a sharp glance, but Vasya was occupied with the last bits of cabbage in the bottom of her bowl and did not see. “Have you been listening to peasants’ stories, Vasya?” asked Dunya. “That is the vodianoy, the river-king, who is always looking for little maidens to take to his castle under the riverbank.”

Vasya was scraping the bottom of her bowl with a distracted air. “Not a castle,” she said, licking broth off her fingers. “Just a hole in the riverbank. But I never knew what he was called before.”

“Vasya…” began Dunya, looking into the child’s bright eyes.

“Mmmm?” said Vasya, putting down her empty bowl and clambering to her feet. It was on the tip of Dunya’s tongue to warn her explicitly against—what? Talking of fairy tales? Dunya bit the words back and thrust a cloth-covered basket at Vasya.

“Here,” said Dunya. “Take this to Father Semyon; he’s been ill.”

Vasya nodded. The priest’s room was part of the house, but it could be entered through a separate door on the south wall. She seized a dumpling, stuffed it into her mouth before Dunya could object, and slipped out of the kitchen, humming loud and off-key, as her father was once wont to do.

Slowly, as though against her will, Dunya’s hand plunged into a pocket sewn inside her skirt. The star around the blue jewel gleamed, perfect as a snowflake, and the stone was icy cold to her touch, though she had labored over the oven all that sweltering morning.

“Not yet,” she whispered. “She’s still a little girl—oh, please, not yet.” The gem lay gleaming against her withered palm. Dunya thrust it angrily back into her pocket and turned to stir the soup with a vindictiveness most unlike her, so that the clear broth sloshed over the sides and hissed on the oven’s hot stones.

SOME TIME LATER, KOLYA saw his sister peering out from a clump of tall grass. He pursed his lips. No one in ten villages, he was sure, could contrive to be always underfoot, as Vasya was.

“Shouldn’t you be in the kitchen, Vasya?” he asked, an edge to his voice. The day was hot, his sweating wife irritable. His newborn son was teething and shrieked without pause. At last Kolya, gritting his teeth, had snatched line and basket and made for the river. But now here was his sister come to trouble his peace.

Vasya poked her head further out of the weeds but did not quite leave her hiding-place. “I could not help it, brother,” she said coaxingly. “Anna Ivanovna and Dunya were screeching at each other, and Irina was crying again.” Irina was their new baby half sister, born a little before Kolya’s own son. “I can’t sew when Anna Ivanovna’s about anyway. I forget how.”

Kolya snorted.

Vasya shifted in her hiding-place. “Can I help you fish?” she asked, hopefully.

“No.”

“Can I watch you fish?”

Kolya opened his mouth to refuse, and then reconsidered. If she was sitting on the riverbank, she wouldn’t be getting in trouble somewhere else. “Very well,” he said. “If you sit over there. Quietly. Don’t cast your shadow over the water.” Vasya crept meekly to the indicated spot. Kolya paid her no more attention, concentrating on the water and the feel of the line in his fingers.

An hour later, Vasya was still sitting as instructed, and Kolya had six fine fish in his basket. Perhaps his wife would forgive his disappearance, he thought, glancing at his sister and wondering how she’d managed to sit still for so long. She was looking at the water with a rapt expression that made him uneasy. What was she seeing to make her stare so? The water whispered over its bed as it always had, beds of cress swaying in the current on either bank.

There came a sharp tug on his line, and he forgot Vasya as he drew it in. But before the fish cleared the bank, the wooden hook snapped. Kolya swore. He coiled his line impatiently and replaced the hook. Preparing to cast again, he looked around. His basket was no longer in its place. He swore again, louder, and looked at Vasya. But she was sitting on a rock ten paces away.

“What happened?” she asked.

“My fish are gone! Some durak from the village must have come and…”

But Vasya was not listening. She had run to the very brink of the river.

“It’s not yours!” she shouted. “Give it back!” Kolya thought he heard an odd note in the splash of the water, as though it was making a reply. Vasya stamped her foot. “Now! Catch your own fish!” A deep groan came up from the depths, as of rocks grinding together, and then the basket came flying out of nowhere to hit Vasya in the chest and knock her backward. Instinctively, she clutched it, and turned a grin on her brother.

“Here they are!” she said. “The greedy old thing just wanted…” But she stopped short at the sight of her brother’s face. Wordless, she held out the basket.