THE NEXT DAY DAWNED in a dazzle of blue and white. Pyotr ordered the horses saddled at first light. The men who would not ride laced snowshoes to their feet. The winter sun shone coldly down. Great white plumes curled from the horses’ nostrils like the breath of serpents, and icicles dangled from their whiskery chins. Pyotr took Buran’s rein from the servant. The horse stretched out his lip and shook his head, the ice rattling in his whiskers.
Kolya crouched in the snow, eye to eye with Seryozha. “Let me come with you, Father,” pleaded the child. His hair fell into his eyes. He had come out leading his brown pony and wearing every garment he possessed. “I am big enough.”
“You are not big enough,” said Kolya, looking harried.
Irina hurried out of the house. “Come,” she said, taking the child by the shoulder. “Your papa is going; come away.”
“You’re only a girl,” said Seryozha. “What do you know? Please, Papa.”
“Go back to the house,” said Kolya, stern now. “Put your pony away and listen to your aunt.”
But Seryozha did not; instead he howled and bolted, startling the horses, and disappeared behind the stable. Kolya rubbed his face. “He’ll come back when he’s hungry.” He heaved himself onto his own horse’s back.
“God be with you, brother,” said Irina.
“And you, sister,” said Kolya. He clasped her hand and turned away.
Cold leather creaked as the men put up the horses’ girths and checked the bindings of their snowshoes. Their steaming breath thickened the icy bristles in their beards. Alyosha stood at the edge of the dvor, a look of thunder on his good-natured face. “You must stay,” Pyotr had said to him. “Someone must look after your sisters.”
“You will need me, Father,” he had said.
Pyotr shook his head. “I will sleep easier if you are guarding my girls. Vasya is rash and Irina is fragile. And Lyoshka, you must keep Vasya at home. For her own sake. There is an ugly mood in the village. Please, my son.”
Alyosha shook his head, wordless. But he did not ask again.
“Father,” said Vasya. “Father.” She appeared at Buran’s head, face strained, her hair very black against the pale fur of her hood. “You must not go. Not now.”
“I must, Vasochka,” Pyotr said, wearily. She had begged the night before. “It is my place, and they are my people. Try to understand.”
“I understand,” she said. “But there is evil in the wood.”
“These are evil times,” said Pyotr. “But I am their lord.”
“There are dead things in the wood—the dead are walking. Father, the woods are dangerous.”
“Nonsense, Vasya,” snapped Pyotr. Mother of God. If she started spreading such stories about the village…
“Dead,” said Vasya again. “Father, you must not go.”
Pyotr seized her shoulder, hard enough to make her flinch. All about him, his men were clustered and waiting. “You are too old for fairy tales,” he growled, trying to make her see.
“Fairy tales!” said Vasya. It came out a strangled cry. Buran threw his head up. Pyotr got a better grip on the stallion’s rein and settled the horse. Vasya flung her father’s hand aside. “You saw Father Konstantin’s broken window,” she said “You cannot leave the village. Father, please.”
The men could not hear everything, but they heard enough. Their faces showed pale beneath the beards. They stared at Pyotr’s daughter. More than one glanced toward his wife or his children, standing small and valiant against the snow. There would be no ruling them, Pyotr thought, if his foolish daughter kept on. “You are not a child, Vasya, to take fright at tales,” Pyotr snapped. He spoke calmly and crisply, to reassure the men. “Alyosha, take your sister in hand. Do not be afraid, dochka,” he said, lower and more gently. “We shall win a brave victory; this winter will pass like the others. Kolya and I will come back to you. Be kind to Anna Ivanovna.”
“But, Father—”
Pyotr sprang to Buran’s back. Vasya’s hand closed on the horse’s headstall. Anyone else would have been yanked off his feet and trampled, but the stallion pricked his ears at the girl and stood.
“Let go, Vasya,” said Alyosha, coming up beside her. She didn’t move. He laid a hand on hers where it wrapped round the bridle, and bent to whisper in her ear: “Now is not the time. The men will break. They are afraid for their houses and they are afraid of demons. Besides, if Father heeds you, they will say he was ruled by his maiden daughter.”
Vasya sucked a breath between her teeth, but she let go of Buran’s bridle. “Better to believe me,” she muttered.
Released, the brave, aging stallion reared up. The subdued men fell in behind Pyotr. Kolya saluted his brother and sister as the party trotted out into the white world, leaving the two alone in the stable-yard.
THE VILLAGE SEEMED VERY QUIET when the riders had left. The icy sun shone gaily down. “I believe you, Vasya,” said Alyosha.
“You drove the stake in with your own hand; of course you believe me, fool.” Vasya paced like a wolf in a cage. “I should have told Father everything.”
“But we slew the upyr,” said Alyosha.
Vasya shook her head helplessly. She remembered the rusalka’s warning, and the leshy’s. “It is not over,” she said. “I was warned: beware the dead.”
“Who warned you, Vasya?”
Vasya halted in her pacing and saw her brother’s face cold with faint suspicion. She knew a twist of despair so strong she laughed. “You, too, Lyoshka?” she said. “True friends, old and wise, warned me. Do you believe the priest? Am I a witch?”
“You are my sister,” said Alyosha, very firmly. “And our mother’s daughter. But you should stay out of the village until Father returns.”
THE HOUSE FELL GRADUALLY silent that night, as though the hush crept in with the nighttime chill. Pyotr’s household huddled by the oven, to sew or carve or mend in the firelight.
“What is that sound?” said Vasya suddenly.
One by one, her family fell silent.
Someone outside was crying.
It was little more than a choked whimper, barely audible. But at length there could be no doubt—they heard the muffled sound of a woman weeping.
Vasya and Alyosha looked at each other. Vasya half-rose. “No,” Alyosha said. He went himself to the door, opened it, and looked long into the night. At last he came back, shaking his head. “There is nothing there.”
But the crying went on. Twice, and then three times, Alyosha went to the door. At last Vasya went herself. She thought she saw a white glimmer, flitting between the peasants’ huts. Then she blinked, and there was nothing.
Vasya went to the oven and peered into its shining maw. The domovoi was there, hiding in the hot ash. “She cannot get in,” he breathed in a crackle of flames. “I swear it, she cannot. I will not let her.”
“That is what you said before, but it got in then,” said Vasya, under her breath.
“The fearful man’s room is different,” whispered the domovoi. “That I cannot protect. He has denied me. But here, now—that one cannot get in.” The domovoi clenched his hands. “She will not get in.”
At length the moon set, and they all sought their beds. Vasya and Irina huddled close together, wrapped in furs, breathing the black dark.
Suddenly, the sound of crying came again, very near. Both girls froze.
There was a scratching at their window.
Vasya glanced at Irina, who lay open-eyed and rigid beside her. “It sounds like…”