“We might set snares,” put in Vasya, over the scrape of her whetstone.
Anna gave her a dark look.
“No,” Pyotr said. “Wolves are not rabbits; they would smell you on the trap, and no one will risk the forest on such a small chance of gain.”
“Yes, Father,” Vasya said, meekly.
That night was deadly cold. They all huddled together on top of the oven, packed like salted fish and covered with every blanket they possessed. Vasya slept badly; her father snored, and Irina’s small, sharp knees dug into her back. She tossed and turned, tried not to kick Alyosha, and at last, near midnight, fell into a shallow sleep. She dreamed of wolves howling, of winter stars swallowed up by warm clouds, of a man with red hair, a woman on horseback, and last of a pale, heavy-jawed man with a look of hunger and malice, who leered and winked his single good eye. She woke up gasping, in the bitter hour before dawn, and saw a figure cross the room, outlined by the light of the banked oven-fire.
It is nothing, she thought: a dream, the kitchen cat. But then the figure paused, as though it sensed her regard. It turned a fraction. Vasya hardly dared to breathe, for she saw its face, a pale scrawl in the dim light. The eyes were the color of winter ice. She drew breath—to speak or to scream—but then the figure was gone. Daylight was filtering in round the kitchen door and from the village there came a wailing cry.
“It is Timofei,” said Pyotr, naming a village boy. Pyotr had risen before dawn to see to his stock. Now he came briskly through the door, stamping snow from his boots and brushing away the ice that had formed in his beard. He was hollow-eyed from cold and sleeplessness. “He died in the night.” The kitchen filled with exclamations. Vasya, half-awake on the oven, remembered the figure that had passed in the darkness. Dunya said nothing at all, but went about her baking, lips set. Her glance flicked often and worriedly from Vasya to Irina. Winter was cruel to the young.
At midmorning, the women gathered in the bathhouse to wrap his wasted body. Vasya, spilling into the hut behind her stepmother, caught a glimpse of Timofei’s face: he was glassy-eyed, the tears frozen on his thin cheeks. His mother clutched the stiffening body to her, whispering to him, ignoring her neighbors. Neither patience nor reason would draw the child from her, and when the women tugged him forcibly from her arms, she began to scream.
The room dissolved into chaos. The mother flew at her neighbors, crying for her son. Most of the women had children themselves; they quailed at the look in her eyes. The mother clawed blindly, scrabbling. The room was too small. Vasya thrust Irina out of harm’s way and seized the reaching arms. She was strong, but slender, and the mother was wild with grief. Vasya clung and tried to speak. “Let go of me, witch!” screamed the woman. “Let go!” Vasya, disconcerted, loosened her grip and an elbow caught her across the face. She saw stars, and her arms fell away.
In that moment, Father Konstantin appeared in the doorway. His nose was red, his face as raw as anyone’s, but he absorbed the scene in an instant, took two strides across the tiny hut, and caught the mother’s groping fingers. The woman gave one desperate wrench and then stilled, trembling.
“He is gone, Yasna,” Konstantin said, stern.
“No,” she croaked. “I held him in my arms, all last night I held him, as the fire burned low—he cannot, he will not leave if I hold him. Give him back to me!”
“He belongs to God,” said Konstantin. “As do we all.”
“He is my son! My only son. Mine—”
“Be still,” he said. “Sit down. This is unseemly. Come, the women will lay him before the fire and heat water for washing.” His deep voice was soft and even. Yasna allowed him to lead her to the oven and sank down beside it.
All that morning—indeed, all that brief dull winter day—Konstantin talked, and Yasna stared at him like a swimmer caught in a riptide, while the women stripped Timofei’s body, and washed it, and wrapped it in cold linen. The priest was still there when Vasya came back from another bitter day searching for firewood; she saw him standing before the door of the bathhouse, gulping the cold air as though it were water.
“Would you like some mead, Batyushka?” she said.
Konstantin jerked in surprise. Vasya made no noise walking, and her gray furs mingled with the falling night. But after a pause he said, “I would, Vasilisa Petrovna.” His beautiful voice was little more than a thread, the resonance gone. Gravely she handed him her little skin of honey-wine. He gulped it with desperate eagerness. Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he handed the skin back to her, only to find her studying him, a furrow between her brows.
“Will you keep vigil tonight?” she asked.
“It is my place,” he replied with a hint of hauteur; the question was impertinent.
She saw his annoyance and smiled; he frowned. “I honor you for it, Batyushka,” she said.
She turned toward the great house, melting into the shadows. Konstantin watched her go, lips pressed together. The taste of mead was heavy in his mouth.
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.”