The Winter of the Witch (Winternight Trilogy 3)

VASYA DREW A SINGLE, STARTLED breath, but she did not pull away. The hand was as small as a child’s, long-fingered, traced in red and gold from the firelight. It did not let her go. Instead, Vasya found herself pulling a tiny person into the room.

She was a woman no taller than Vasya’s knee, with eyes the color of earth. She was licking embers hungrily off the end of a stick, but she paused to look up at Vasilisa and say, “Well, I have overslept and no mistake. Who are you?” Then the chyert caught sight of the decay all around them and her voice rose in sudden alarm. “Where is my mistress? What are you doing here?”

Vasya sank down onto the crumbling oven-bench in exhausted surprise. Domoviye did not live in ruins; they did not live on in houses at all when their families had gone. “There is no one here,” Vasya said. “Only me. This place—it is dead. What are you doing here?”

The domovoi—no, a female—a domovaya—stared. “I do not understand. The house cannot be dead. I am the house, and I am alive. You must be lying. What have you done to them? What have you done to this place? Stand and answer me!” Her voice was shrill with fright.

“I cannot stand,” Vasya whispered. That was true. The fire had taken the last of her strength. “I am only a traveler. I thought only to make a fire and stay here for the night.”

“But you—” The domovoi—domovaya—peered again about the house, took in the extent of the rot. Her eyes widened in horror. “Overslept indeed! Just look at this filth. I cannot just let vagabonds stay without my mistress’s leave. You will have to go. I must set things to rights, against her return.”

“I do not think your mistress is coming back,” said Vasya. “This house is abandoned. I do not know how you managed to survive, in that cold oven.” Her voice broke. “Please. Please let me stay. I cannot bear any more.”

A small silence. Vasya could feel the domovaya’s narrow regard. “Very well then,” she said. “You will stay here tonight. Poor child. My mistress would want it.”

“Thank you,” Vasya whispered.

The domovaya, still muttering to herself, went at once to the chest shoved against the wall. She had a key hanging at her throat; she unlocked the iron hasp of the chest. It gave with a rusty click.

Before Vasya’s astonished eyes, the domovaya produced linen and a clay bowl, laid them on the hearth. Then she took a bucket and went outside for snow, which she set at once to heating, and a branch of young pine-needles, which she scattered in the water.

Vasya watched the steam rise through the hole in the roof, only half-aware of the domovaya’s deft movements as she peeled away the shift that had so nearly been Vasya’s shroud, briskly sponged off the worst of the fear-sweat, the soot, and the blood, washed away the scum about Vasya’s injured eye. The latter hurt, but when the crust was wiped away, Vasya could see through a slit. She was not blinded. She was too tired to care even for that.

From the chest in the corner, the domovaya produced a wool shirt. Vasya barely felt the domovaya put it on her, found herself lying atop the oven under rabbit-skin blankets with no idea how she’d gotten there. The brick was warm. The last thing she heard before oblivion claimed her was the small voice of the domovaya, saying, “A little rest will put you aright, but you are going to have a scar on your face.”

* * *

VASILISA PETROVNA NEVER KNEW how long she slept. She had dim memories of nightmares, of screaming for Solovey to run. She dreamed the midnight-demon’s voice—It must be done, Polunochnitsa said, send her forth, for all our sakes—and the domovaya’s voice raised in distress. But before Vasya could speak, darkness pulled her under once more.

Uncounted hours later, she opened her eyes to dawn: the light almost shocking after the long dark. It was as though she’d only dreamed the tangled roads of Midnight. Perhaps she had. Lying in the blurred gray light of early morning, she could have been anywhere, atop any oven. “Dunya?” she called, her childhood strong in her mind. It had always been her nurse who comforted her after nightmares.

Memory crashed in. She made an inarticulate sound of distress. A small head appeared at once beside her pallet, but Vasya barely saw the domovaya. Memory had her by the throat. She was shivering.

The domovaya watched, frowning.

“Forgive me,” Vasya managed at length. She pushed her ragged hair back from her face. Her teeth chattered. The oven was warm, but there was still a hole in the roof, and memory was colder than the air. “I—I am called Vasilisa Petrovna. Thank you for your hospitality.”

The domovaya looked almost sad. “It is not hospitality,” she said. “I was asleep in the fire. You awoke me. You are my mistress now.”

“But this is not my house.”

The domovaya made no reply. Vasya sat up, wincing. The domovaya had done her best while Vasya slept. The dust and dead mice, the rotten leaves, were gone. “It is much more like home now,” Vasya said, cautiously. Now that it was daylight, she saw that most of the wood on the rooftree and table was carved like the lintel outside, worn to smoothness from use and care. The house had a dignity to match its hearth-spirit: an old, subtle beauty that time could not quite conceal.

The domovaya looked pleased. “You mustn’t lie abed. The water is hot. Your wounds must be cleaned again and bound afresh.” She disappeared; Vasya heard her adding wood to the fire.

Getting down to the floor left Vasya panting, as though she were new-recovered from fever. To add insult to injury, she was also hungry. “Is there—” croaked Vasya, swallowed, tried again. “Is there anything to eat?”

Lips pursed, the domovaya shook her head.

Why would there be? It was too much to suppose that the house’s long-vanished mistress would have conveniently left a loaf and cheese.

“Did you burn my shift?” Vasya asked.

“I did,” said the domovaya, shuddering. “It stank of fear.”

Well it might. Then Vasya stiffened. “There was a token—a carving—I was carrying in it. Did you—?”

“No,” said the domovaya. “It is here.”

Vasya seized the little carved nightingale as if it were a talisman. Perhaps it was. It was dirty but undamaged. She wiped it clean, thrust it again into her sleeve.

A bowl of snowmelt steamed on the hearth. The domovaya said briskly, “Take off that shirt; I am going to wash your wounds again.”

Vasya did not want to think about her wounds; she did not want to have flesh at all. Just below the surface of her mind lurked the most howling grief; the memory of death, of violation. She did not want to see those memories scribed on her skin.

The domovaya was not sympathetic. “Where is your courage? You do not want to die of a poisoned wound.”