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The priest kept that night’s vigil by the body. His gaunt face was set, and his lips moved in prayer. Vasya, who had returned in the small hours to keep her own vigil, could not help but admire his steady purpose, though the air had never echoed so with sobs and prayers as it had since his coming.
It was far too cold to linger over the boy’s tiny grave, hacked with much labor out of the iron-hard earth. As soon as decency permitted, the people scattered back to their huts, leaving the poor thing alone in his icy cradle, with Father Konstantin hindmost, half-dragging the bereaved mother.
People began cramming into fewer and fewer izby, with extended families sharing one oven to save firewood. But the wood disappeared so quickly—as though some ill wish made it burn. So they went into the woods regardless of paw prints, the women goaded by the sight of Timofei’s marble face and the dreadful look in his mother’s eyes. It was inevitable that someone would not come back.
Oleg’s son Danil was only bones when they found him, scattered widely over a stretch of trampled and bloody snow. His father brought the gnawed bone-ends to Pyotr and, wordless, laid them before him.
Pyotr looked down at them and said nothing.
“Pyotr Vladimirovich—” Oleg began, croaking, but Pyotr shook his head.
“Bury your son,” he said, his glance lingering on his own children. “I shall summon the men tomorrow.”
Alyosha spent the long night checking the haft of his boar-spear and sharpening his hunting-knife. A little color showed in his beardless cheeks. Vasya watched him work. Part of her itched to take up a spear herself, to go and brave dangers in the winter wood. The other part wanted to crack her brother over the head for his heedless excitement.
“I will bring you a wolfskin, Vasya,” Alyosha said, laying his weapons aside.
“Keep your wolfskin,” Vasya retorted, “if you can only promise to bring your own skin back without freezing your toes off.”
Her brother grinned, his eyes glittering. “Worried, little sister?”
The two sat apart from the mob near the oven, but Vasya still lowered her voice. “I don’t like this. Do you think I want to have to chop your frozen toes off? Or your fingers?”
“But there’s no help for it, Vasochka,” said Alyosha, putting down his boot. “Wood we must have. Better to go out and fight than freeze to death in our houses.”
Vasya pursed her lips but made no answer. She thought suddenly of the vazila, black-eyed with wrath. She thought of the crusts she brought him to quiet his anger. Is there another who is angry? Such a one could only be in the wood, where the cold winds blew and the wolves howled.
Don’t even think it, Vasya, said the sensible voice in her skull. But Vasya glanced at her family. She saw her father’s grim face, her brothers’ suppressed excitement.
Well, I can but try. If Alyosha is hurt tomorrow, I will hate myself forever if I did not try. Without pausing to think longer, Vasya went for her boots and winter cloak.
No one bothered asking where she was going. The truth would not have occurred to anyone.
Vasya climbed the palisade, hampered by her mittens. The stars were few and faint; the moon cast a blaze of light over the hard-frozen snow. Vasya passed the eave of the wood, from moonlight into darkness. She walked briskly. It was dreadfully cold. The snow squeaked under her feet. Somewhere, a wolf howled. Vasya tried not to think of the yellow eyes. Her teeth would surely rattle out of her head from shivering.
Suddenly Vasya stumbled to a halt. She thought she’d heard a voice. Slowing her breath, she listened. No—only the wind.
But what was that there? It looked like a great tree: one she half-remembered, with an odd sly memory, that slid in and out of her mind. No—it was only a shadow, cast by the moon.
A bone-chilling wind played in the branches high above.
Out of the hiss and clatter, Vasya suddenly thought she heard words. Are you warm, child? said the wind, half-laughing.
In fact, Vasya felt her bones would splinter like frost-killed branches, but she replied steadily, “Who are you? Are you sending the frost?”
There was a very long silence. Vasya wondered if she had imagined the voice. Then it seemed she heard, mockingly, And why not? I, too, am angry. The voice seemed to throw echoes, so that the whole wood took up the cry.
“That is no answer,” retorted the girl. The sensible part of her pointed out that perhaps a little meekness was in order when dealing with half-heard voices in the dead of night. But the cold was making her sleepy; she fought it with every scrap of will and had none left over for meekness.
I bring the frost, said the voice. Suddenly it was curling icy, loving fingers about her face and throat. A cold touch like fingertips slipped beneath her clothes and wrapped round her heart.
“Then will you stop?” Vasya whispered, fighting fear. Her heart beat as though against another’s hand. “I speak for my people; they are afraid; they are sorry. Soon it will be as it always was: our churches and our chyerti together and no more fear or talk of demons.”
It will be too late, said the wind, and the forest took it up: too late, too late. Then, Besides, it is not my frost you should fear, devushka. It is the fires. Tell me, do your fires burn too fast?
“It is only the cold that makes them burn so.”
Nay, it is the coming storm. The first sign is fear. The second is always fire. Your people are afraid, and now the fires burn.
“Turn the storm aside then, I beg you,” said Vasya. “Here, I brought a gift.” She put a hand into her sleeve.
It was nothing much, just a scrap of dry bread and a pinch of salt, but when she held it out, the wind died.
In the silence, Vasya heard the wolf howl again, very near now, and answered in a chorus. But in the same instant a white mare stepped out from between two trees, and Vasya forgot the wolves. The mare’s long mane fell like icicles, and her snorting breath made a plume in the night.
Vasya caught her breath. “Oh, you are beautiful,” she said, and even she could hear the longing in her voice. “Are you bringing the frost?”
Did the white mare have a rider? Vasya could not tell. One instant it seemed she did, and then the mare twitched her skin and the shape on her back was only a trick of the light.
The white horse put her small ears forward, toward the bread and salt. Vasya held out her hand. She felt the horse’s warm breath on her face and stared into her dark eye. Suddenly she felt warmer. Even the wind felt warmer where it twined around her face.
I bring the frost, said the voice. Vasya did not think it was the mare. It is my wrath and my warning. But you are brave, devushka, and I relent. For the sake of an offering. A small pause. But the fear is not mine, and neither are the fires. The storm is coming, and the frost will be as nothing beside it. Courage will save you. If your people are afraid, then they are lost.
“What storm?” whispered Vasya.
Beware the turning seasons, she thought the wind sighed. Beware…and the voice was gone. But the wind remained. Harder and harder it blew, wordless, flinging clouds across the moon, and the wind smelled, blessedly, of snow. The deep frost could not last while it snowed.
When Vasya stumbled back through the door of her own house, the flakes that covered her hood and caught in her eyelashes effectively silenced her family’s clamor. Alyosha seized her in speechless delight, and Irina went laughing outside to catch a handful of the falling whiteness.
