The Winter of the Witch (Winternight Trilogy 3)

To her left, the forest whispered, and watched. To her right lay the lake, summer-blue. Between the trees, she glimpsed a little sandy cove. Thirsty, Vasya strayed nearer the water, knelt, drank. The water was clear as air, so cold it made her teeth ache. Her bandages itched. The sponge-bath that morning had done nothing to ease her bone-deep sense of filth.

Abruptly, Vasya stood and began to strip. The domovaya would be cross with her for undoing all the careful wrapping, but Vasya couldn’t bring herself to care. Her hands were trembling with eagerness. As though the clean water could scour both the dirt from her skin and memory from her mind.

“What are you doing?” asked Ded Grib. He was staying well away from the sand and the rocks, hiding in the shade.

“I am going to swim,” said Vasya.

Ded Grib opened his mouth, closed it again.

Vasya paused. “Is there a reason why I shouldn’t?”

The mushroom-spirit shook his head, slowly, but he gave the water a nervous look. Perhaps he didn’t like water.

“Well,” said Vasya. She hesitated, but Mother of God, she wanted to peel off her own skin and become someone else; a plunge in the lake might at least quiet her mind. “I won’t go far. Perhaps you will look after my basket?”

* * *

SHE WADED IN. AT FIRST, she walked on rocks, wincing. Then the bottom became slick mud. She dove and came up yelling. The freezing lake closed her lungs and set her senses ablaze. She put her back to the shore and swam. The water delighted her, beneath the heat of the unaccustomed sun. But it was very cold. At last she halted, ready to turn back, scrub herself in the shallows, lie drying in the sun…

But when she turned, all she saw was water.

Vasya spun in a circle. Nothing. It was as though the whole world had sunk suddenly into the lake. For a few moments she treaded water, shocked, beginning to be afraid.

Perhaps she was not alone.

“I mean no harm,” said Vasya aloud, trying to ignore her chattering teeth.

Nothing happened. Vasya paddled in a circle again. Still nothing. Panic in this cold water and she was as good as dead. She must simply take her best guess and pray.

With a splash like a shout, a creature shot out of the water in front of her. Two slitted nostrils lay between its bulbous eyes; its teeth were the color of rock, hooked over a narrow jaw. When it exhaled, its breath steamed and oily liquid ran down its face.

“I am going to drown you,” it whispered, and lunged.

Vasya made no answer; instead her cupped hand came down on the water like a thunderclap. The chyert jerked back and Vasya snapped, “An immortal sorcerer could not kill me and neither could a priest with all Moscow at his beck—what makes you think you can?”

“You came into my lake,” returned the chyert, baring black teeth.

“To swim, not to die!”

“That is for me to decide.”

Vasya tried to ignore the goad of her aching ribs and to speak calmly. “For trespassing, I am guilty before you, but I do not owe you my life.”

The chyert breathed scalding steam onto Vasya’s face. “I am the bagiennik,” he growled. “And I tell you your life is forfeit.”

“Try and take it then,” snapped Vasya. “But I am not afraid of you.”

The chyert lowered his head, churning the blue water to froth. “Are you not? What did you mean that the immortal sorcerer could not kill you?”

Vasya’s legs were on the edge of cramping. “I killed Kaschei Bezsmertnii in Moscow on the last night of Maslenitsa.”

“Liar!” snapped the bagiennik, and lunged again, nearly swamping her.

Vasya didn’t flinch. Much of her concentration was taken with staying above water. “Liar I have been,” she said, “and I have paid for it. But about this I am telling the truth: I killed him.”

The bagiennik shut his mouth abruptly.

Vasya turned away, looking for the shore.

“I know you now,” murmured the bagiennik. “You have the look of your family. You took the road through Midnight.”

Vasya had no time for the bagiennik’s revelations. “I did,” she managed. “But my family is far away. As I said, I mean no harm. Where is the shore?”

“Far away? Near at hand too. You understand neither yourself nor the nature of this place.”

She was beginning to sink lower in the water. “Grandfather, the shore.”

The bagiennik’s black teeth shone with water. He slid nearer, moving like a water-snake. “Come, it will be quick. Drown, and I will live a thousand years on the memory of your blood.”

“No.”

“What use are you otherwise?” demanded the bagiennik, gliding nearer and nearer still. “Drown.”

Vasya was using the last of her strength just to keep her numb limbs churning. “What use am I? None. I have made more mistakes than I can count, and the world has no place for me. And yet, as I said before, I am still not going to die to please you.”

The bagiennik snapped his teeth right in her face, and Vasya, heedless of her wounds, caught him round the neck. He thrashed and almost threw her loose. But he didn’t. In her hands was the strength that had broken the bars of her cage in Moscow. “You will not threaten me,” Vasya added, into the chyert’s ear, and sucked in a breath, just as they plunged. When they surfaced, the girl still clung. Gasping, she said, “I may die tomorrow. Or live to sour old age. But you are only a wraith in a lake, and you will not command me.”

The bagiennik stilled and Vasya let go, coughing out water, feeling the strain in muscles along her broken side. Her nose and mouth were full of water. A few of her reopened cuts streamed blood. The bagiennik nosed at her bleeding skin. She didn’t move.

With surprising mildness, the bagiennik said, “Perhaps you are not useless after all. I have not felt such strength since—” He broke off. “I will bring you to shore.” He looked suddenly eager.

Vasya found herself clinging to a sinuous body, scorching hot. She shivered as life came back into her limbs. Warily, she said, “What did you mean, that I have the look of my family?”

Undulating through the water, the bagiennik said, “Don’t you know?” There was a strange undercurrent of eagerness in his voice. “Once the old woman and her twins lived in the house by the oak-tree and tended the horses that graze on the lake-shore.”

“What old woman? I have been to the house by the oak-tree and it is a ruin.”

“Because the sorcerer came,” said the bagiennik. “A man, young and fair. He said he wished to tame a horse, but it was Tamara, her mother’s heir, whom he won over. They swam together in the lake at Midsummer; he whispered his promises in the autumn twilight. In the end, for his sake, Tamara put a golden bridle on the golden mare: the Zhar Ptitsa.”