The Winter of the Witch (Winternight Trilogy #3) - Katherine Arden Page 0,40

Vasya could barely say it. “He was my friend and he is dead.”

“The horses do not choose unwisely,” said the bagiennik.

Vasya said nothing at all.

After a long silence, lifting her head, she asked, “Can you tell me where the Bear has imprisoned the winter-king?”

“Beyond recall; long ago and far away and deep in the dark that does not change,” said the water-spirit. “Do you think the Bear would risk his twin winning free now?”

“No,” said Vasya. “No, I suppose he wouldn’t.” Suddenly she felt unutterably tired; the world was huge and strange and maddening; nothing seemed real. She neither knew what to do nor how to do it. She laid her head on the chyert’s warm back and did not speak again.

* * *

SHE DIDN’T NOTICE THE LIGHT change until she heard the murmur of water on pebbled cove.

In the time they’d been swimming, the sun had tilted west, cold and yellow-green. She was in summer twilight on the cusp of night. The golden day was gone, as though the lake itself had swallowed it. Vasya rolled with a splash into the shallows and stumbled onto the shore. The shadows of the trees stretched long and gray toward the water; her clothes were a cold heap in the shade.

The bagiennik was only a smudge of darkness, half-submerged in the lake. Vasya rounded on him in sudden fear. “What happened to the day?” She saw the bagiennik’s eyes beneath the water, shining rows of teeth. “Did you bring me into twilight on purpose? Why?”

“Because you killed the sorcerer. Because you did not let me kill you. Because word has gone out among the chyerti and we are all curious.” The bagiennik’s answer floated, disembodied, out of the shadows. “I advise you to make a fire. We will be watching.”

“Why?” Vasya demanded again, but the bagiennik had already sunk beneath the water and disappeared.

The girl stood still, furious, trying to ignore her fear. The day was rushing down around her as though the forest itself was determined to catch her at nightfall. Used to her own unthinking endurance, she now had to contend with the weakness of her battered flesh. She was half a day’s walking from the house by the oak-tree.

The season will turn, the domovaya had said. What did that mean? Could she risk it? Should she? She looked up at the gathering dark, and knew she couldn’t make it back before nightfall.

Stay then, she decided. And she would take the bagiennik’s poisonous advice, and use the last of the light to gather firewood. Whatever dangers haunted this place, better to meet them with a good fire, and a full belly.

She set about gathering firewood, angry at her own credulity. The forest of Lesnaya Zemlya had been kind to her, and that trust was still there, though this place had no cause for kindness. A brilliant sunset reddened the water; the wind whistled through the pines. The lake was perfectly still, golden with sunset.

Ded Grib reappeared as she was chopping up a deadfall. “Don’t you know you mustn’t pass the night beside the lake in a new season?” he asked. “Or you will never get the old season back. If you go back to the house by the oak-tree tomorrow, it will be summer and no spring at all for you.”

“The bagiennik kept me in the lake,” Vasya said grimly. The girl was recalling white, sparkling days in Morozko’s house in the fir-grove. You will return on the same night you left, he had told her. She had, even though she spent days—weeks—in his house. She had. And now—would the moon wax and wane in the wider world, while she passed a single night in this summer country? If you could spend a day in the lake in minutes, then what else was possible? The thought frightened her, as even the bagiennik’s threats had not. The patterns of day and dark, summer and winter, were as much a part of her as her own breath. Was there no pattern here at all?

“I didn’t think you’d come out of the lake at all,” the chyert confided. “I knew the great ones were planning something for you. Besides, the bagiennik hates people.”

Vasya had an armful of firewood; she flung it down in fury. “You might have told me!”

“Why?” asked Ded Grib. “I can’t interfere with the great ones’ plans. Besides, you let one of the horses die, didn’t you? Maybe it would have been justice, if the bagiennik had killed