The Bear and the Nightingale (Winternight Trilogy 1)

The mare shook her mane and her ears eased back, but the frost-demon did not see. He strode into the fir trees, the girl in his arms. The mare sighed out a breath and followed.

Some hours later, Vasya opened her eyes to find herself lying in the loveliest bed anyone had ever dreamed of. The coverlets were white wool, heavy and soft as snow. Pale blues and yellows drifted through the weave, like a sunny day in January. The bed-frame and posts were carved to look like the trunks of living trees, and over it hung a great canopy of branches.

Vasya struggled to get her bearings. The last thing she remembered: flowers, she had been looking for flowers. Why? It was December. But she had to get flowers.

Gasping, Vasya heaved herself upright, floundering in the drifts of blanket.

She saw the room and fell back, shuddering.

The room—well, if the bed was magnificent, the room was simply strange. At first Vasya thought she was lying in a grove of great trees. High above hung a vault of pale sky. But the next moment, she seemed to be indoors, in a wooden house whose ceiling was painted a thin sky-blue. But she had no idea which was real, and trying to decide made her dizzy.

At last Vasya buried her face in a blanket and decided she would go back to sleep. Surely she’d wake up at home, with Dunya by her side asking if she’d had a nightmare. No, that was wrong—Dunya was dead. Dunya was wandering the woods wrapped in the cloth they’d buried her in.

Vasya’s brain whirled. But she couldn’t remember…and then she did. The men, the priest, the convent. The snow, the frost-demon, his fingers on her throat, the cold, a white horse. He had meant to kill her. He’d saved her life.

She struggled again to sit up, but only managed to kneel among the blankets. She squinted desperately, but failed to make the room stay still. Finally she shut her eyes, and discovered the edge of the bed by tumbling over it. Her shoulder struck the floor. She thought she felt a brush of wetness, as though she had fallen into a snowdrift. No—now the ground was smooth and warm, like well-planed wood near a hearth. She thought she heard a fire crackling. She stood up, unsteadily. Someone had taken off her boots and stockings. She had frozen her feet; she saw her toes white and bloodless.

She could not look at anything in the house. It was a room; it was a fir-grove under the open sky, and she could not decide which was which. She shut her eyes tight, stumbling on her injured feet.

“What do you see?” said a clear, strange voice.

Vasya turned toward the voice, not daring to open her eyes. “A house,” she croaked. “A fir-grove. Both together.”

“Very well,” said the voice. “Open your eyes.”

Flinching, Vasya did so. The cold man—the frost-demon—stood in the center of the room, and at least she could look at him. His dark, unruly hair hung to his shoulders. The sardonic face might have belonged to a youth of twenty or a warrior of fifty. Unlike every other man Vasya had ever seen, he was clean-shaven—perhaps that was what gave his face the odd note of youthfulness. Certainly his eyes were old. When she looked into them, she thought, I did not know anything could be that old and live. The thought made her afraid.

But stronger than fear was her resolve.

“Please,” she said. “I must go home.”

His pale stare swept her up and down. “They cast you out,” he said. “They will send you to a convent. And yet you will go home?”

She bit down hard on her lip. “The domovoi will disappear if I am not there. Perhaps my father has returned by now and I can make him understand.”

The frost-demon studied her a moment. “Perhaps,” he said at length. “But you are wounded. You are weary. Your presence will do the domovoi little good.”

“I must try. My family is in danger. How long was I asleep?”

He shook his head. A faint dry humor curled his mouth. “Here there is only today. No yesterday and no tomorrow. You may stay a year and be home just after you left. It does not matter how long you slept.”

Vasya was silent, absorbing this. At last she said, in a lower voice, “Where am I?”

The night in the snow had blurred in her memory, but she thought she remembered indifference in his face, a hint of malice and a hint of sorrow. Now he looked only amused. “My house,” he said. “As far as I have one.”

That is not helpful. Vasya bit back the words before they could escape, but they must have shown on her face.

“I fear,” he added gravely, though there was a glint in his eye, “that you are gifted—or cursed—with what your folk might call the second sight. My house is a fir-grove, and this fir-grove is my house, and you see both at once.”

“And what do I do about that?” Vasya hissed between clenched teeth, quite unable to strive for politeness—in another moment she would be sick on the floor at his feet.

“Look at me,” he said. His voice compelled her; it seemed to echo in her skull. “Look only at me.” She raised her eyes to his. “You are in my house. Believe it is so.”

Hesitantly, Vasya repeated this to herself. The walls seemed to solidify as she looked. She was in a rough, roomy dwelling, with worn carvings on its crosstrees, and a ceiling the color of the noon sky. A large oven at one end of the room radiated heat. The walls were hung with woven pictures: wolves in the snow, a hibernating bear, a dark-haired warrior driving a sledge.

She tore her eyes away. “Why did you bring me here?”

“My horse insisted.”

“You mock me.”

“Do I? You had been wandering in the forest too long; your feet and hands are frozen. Perhaps you should be honored; I don’t often have guests.”

“I am honored, then,” said Vasya. She could not think of anything else to say.

He studied her a moment more. “Are you hungry?”

Vasya heard the hesitation in his voice. “Did your horse suggest that as well?” she asked, before she could stop herself.

The man laughed, and she thought he looked a little surprised. “Yes, of course. She has had any number of foals. I yield to her judgment.”

Suddenly he tilted his head. The blue eyes burned. “My servants will tend to you,” he added abruptly. “I must be gone awhile.” There was nothing human in his face, and for a moment, Vasya could not see the man at all, and instead saw only a wind lashing the limbs of ancient trees, howling in triumph as it rose. She blinked away the vision.

“Farewell,” said the frost-demon, and was gone.

Vasya, taken aback by his departure, glanced cautiously about. The tapestries drew her. Vividly alive, the wolves and man and horses looked ready to leap to the floor in a swirl of cold air. She walked the room, examining them as she went. Eventually she fetched up in front of the oven and stretched out her frozen fingers.

The scrape of a hoof sent her whirling round. The white mare came toward her, bare of any harness. Her long mane foamed like a spring cascade. She seemed to have emerged from a door in the opposite wall, but it was closed. Vasya stared. The mare tossed her head. Vasya remembered her manners and bowed. “I thank you, lady. You saved my life.”

The mare twitched an ear. It was little enough.

“Not to me,” said Vasya, with a hint of asperity.