And as the children wakened and shivered downstairs, and the women stirred about, and there was no more lying abed, Ilya stirred out, quickly pulling his boots on, and so did Andrei, hearing the great town bell ringing, muted and soft in the storm which lapped the morning. He and Ilya and Anna and the other Nikolaevs and Orlovs with strength to help dressed in their warmest clothing and ventured out into a town gone white. Drifts lay man-high in the streets; they hitched up the ponies, and worked. . . like ghosts, moving through the pale driving snow; worked until backs ached, cleared paths, braced roofs, braced the wall itself. The market opened, very quickly empty, and the winds kept a fury which sang through the air, and carried the snow back as swiftly as they could move it. They surrendered at last and returned to their homes, to warm meals and warm fires and patient cheer.
But within the house the silence gained yet a deeper hold, as snow piled about the walls and the windsong grew more distant. It was that manner of storm which could set in and last for days; in which the white loneliness settled close about the town. Andrei tied a rope about himself and went out in the last of day, fearing for Umnik's safety and that of the other beasts; but he found them well, snug in their stable and warm with the snow about. He started back again, into the white drifts, following the rope which he had tied about him, which vanished into white. Not even the shadow of the house was visible in the storm; and when he looked back, he could not see the stable.
White. All was white. He looked all about, suddenly dreading the slinking form that might be within that whiteness, itself immaculate and swift as the northwind. He imagined that he might see suddenly two strange darknesses staring at him, wolfish slanted; pink lolling tongue, and white, white teeth.
He looked behind him, turning with a start. With haste he seized hard upon the rope and followed it, pushed through a wall of blowing snow, stumbled against the buried porch and climbed to the door, found it frozen shut. His nape prickled, and he would not look back. Something breathed there, in the silence of the howling wind, and he would not turn to see. He rapped at the door, called those inside, refusing panic. But the silence grew, and he could hardly move from the chill in his bones when the door opened and Anna and Ilya snatched him inside.
"Oh, he is cold," Anna said, and they hastened him to the fire in the inmost hall, sitting him there to strip off his furs; they heated blankets before the fire and wrapped him in them, then brought him tea. All the house gathered, murmuring at some vast distance, and the children came and touched his cold hands, as did Anna and Dya's mother, who hugged him and chafed his fingers and kissed his brow, greatly concerned. But from the mantle above the fire Itya's wolf stared back at him.
They danced that night, and drank and sang; he drank much and laughed and yet—the silence was there.
He lay in bed that night and dreamed of blue nights and still snows, and that white shape which ran with the wind, amid moon-twinkling snowflakes and over drifts, never leaving a mark upon them.
The next day dawned clear and bright.
The whole of Moskva seemed to smile in the day, colored eaves peeking out from the deep drifts which lay between the houses, children and elders bundled like thick-limbed and thickly mittened dolls out breaking through the drifts to walk the streets and visit kin and friends. The Orlov children squealed with delight, breaking up the drifts to the stables, and breaking icicles off the eaves of the porch. Some children had sleds out on the streets, and the children clamored for their own.
But Andrei met the morning with less cheer, quietly put on his outdoor boots - and his warm furs, took his gear out and saddled Umnik, who was restive and full of argument. He said no word to Anna or her parents, none to Ilya, only smiled bleakly at the children who grew quieter looking at him, and, stopping their sledding, stood like a row of huddled birds by the fence as he rode through the gate and passed down the street.
"Good morning," the neighbors said cheerfully, pausing in their snow-shoveling. "A good morning to you, Andrei Vasilyevitch." He nodded absently and kept going. "Good morning," said white-bearded Pyotr by the gatehouse, and he forgot to return the greeting, but got down off Umnik and helped the gate wardens heave the gates inward, got up again on Umnik's back. The pony tossed his shaggy head and advanced on the drift which barred their way, lurched through it and onto smoother going, toward the bridge and the open land, snuffing the cold crisp air with red-veined nostils and pricking up his ears as he thumped across the bridge and jogged toward the hills.
The sun climbed higher still, until it passed noon. Andrei wrapped his scarf about his face to warm his breath, and omitted the eyeshields, for there was still haze in the heavens, and the snow lay white and thick everywhere. There were few tracks, no promise of good hunting; the snow had not been long enough to turn the beasts desperate and reckless . . nor was the day warm enough to tempt them out of hiding. He should have waited a day, but the thought of the dark loft and sitting before the fire with nothing to do oppressed him. In idleness he had evil memory for company. He came out to deny it, to laugh at it, to hunt and to win this time. He was afraid. He had never felt the like before. Even in the bright, clear daylight he felt what he had felt in that ride to the gates, with the wolves baying at his back. He was afraid of fear. . . for the hunt was his livelihood, and when he feared too much, he could not come outside the walls. He rose in his stirrups and looked back, settled forward again as he rode. They were long out of sight of the city's wooden walls; snowy hills and snowy fields stretched in all directions but the south, where forest stood thickly whited and iced. There was no sound but Umnik's regular moving, the creak of harness, and the whuff of breath.
Umnik moved more slowly now, having run out his first wind, wading almost knee-deep along the trail. And there was such beauty in the white snow that his fear grew less. He stopped the horse and turned and looked all about him, heard a rapid, doggish panting at his back. He spun, hauling at the reins, and Umnik shied in the deep drift, rose on hind legs, almost falling. Nothing was there. He steadied the horse and patted it, and nothing was there. The light grew; the clouds parted. He reached for the eyeshields as the snows gathered the sunflares, misted gold and rose and amber; Umnik stood still, and Andrei stopped with the eyeshields in his hand. . . feeling a fascination for that light—for light had concealed the Wolf. He looked to the far hills—and to the sky, into the sun. He had never looked up in his life, save a furtive glance to know the condition of the sky—but not to see it. It smote his heart. And he looked north. The wolf was there, standing watchfully on the surface of a new drift, and its eyes were like the sun, and its coat was touched with the subtle shifting colors.
He whipped Umnik and rode; he never remembered beginning. . . but he and Umnik skimmed the snows in terror, the white wolf never far.
At last the city was before them, and he took the horn from his side to blow, but the sound of it seemed dim. Umnik faltered, and he whipped the pony, drove him, up to the approach to the city, across the wooden bridge and to the southern gate, while white shapes leaped and plunged about him and voices howled, far and still, as if his hearing were dulled, and all the world was wrapped in cold. Umnik slowed as they came to the opening gates, but he whipped the pony harder, and rode upon the streets, hooves skidding on the snow, and startled citizens and children with a sled scurried from the horse's path. He stopped, looked about, and the gates were closing slowly. "The wolves," he cried, but Pyotr the gate warden looked strangely at him, continuing to heave at the gates.