The Winter of the Witch (Winternight Trilogy #3) - Katherine Arden Page 0,54

vain as to think that the winter-king would let himself be imprisoned for eternity for my sake? He is not a half-witted fairy-tale prince, and heaven knows I am not Yelena the Beautiful. So he must have had a reason, known there was a way out. Which means I can free him.”

Midnight put her head to one side. “I thought you besotted, and that was why you were risking the depths of my realm for his sake. But it’s not that, is it?”

“No,” said Vasya.

Now the midnight-demon looked resigned. “Better put your boots on.” She eyed Vasya’s half-dry clothes critically. “You are going to be cold.”

* * *

IT DID GROW COLD. The first Vasya felt of it was frost-crystals breaking under her boots, as she stepped between midnights. The green smell of summer took on a wilder, earthy note; the stars grew sharp as sword-points, where they were not caught fast in racing clouds. The soft rustling of summer leaves became a dry rattle, and then nothing: only bare trees against the sky. And then between one midnight and another, Vasya’s feet broke through a crust of wet snow. Ded Grib halted abruptly. “I cannot go on; I will wither.” He eyed the white stuff with terror.

Vasya knelt before the little mushroom-spirit. “Can you go back to the lake alone? I have to go on.”

He looked miserable. His sickly green glow wavered. “I can always go back to the lake. But I promised.”

“You kept your promise. You found me food, you found me after the flood.” She touched his head, gave him another piece of bread from her basket. She said, on sudden inspiration, “Perhaps you could talk to the other chyerti for me. Tell them that I—that I—”

Ded Grib brightened. “I know what I will tell them,” he said.

That was somewhat worrying. She opened her mouth, thought better of it. “All right,” she said. “But—”

“Are you sure you won’t go back to the lake?” asked Ded Grib. He gave the snow a look of loathing. “It is dark and cold and the ground is hard.”

“I cannot. Not yet,” said Vasya. “But one day. When this is over. Perhaps you can show me where the lisichki grow.”

“Very well,” said Ded Grib sadly. “Mind you tell anyone who asks that I was first.” He disappeared, not without a few backward glances.

Vasya straightened, and peered ahead. Winter midnights spread out before them: cold copses, ice-choked streams, and perhaps dangers she couldn’t see, hidden in the darkness. A chill wind raced down over them, so that Pozhar, in her summer coat, switched her tail and flattened her ears.

“Are we deep in your country now?” Vasya asked Polunochnitsa.

“Yes,” she said. “These are the winter midnights, and we started in summer.”

“The domovaya said I couldn’t get back,” said Vasya. “If the season turned.”

“In the lands by the lake,” returned Polunochnitsa. “But this is Midnight. You can go anywhere you wish, in Midnight. Any place, any season. Except that, so far from where you began, you must not fall asleep.”

“Let’s go on then,” said Vasya, with a glance at the frozen sky.

They walked on in silence. Occasionally there would be a chink, as Pozhar’s hoof struck a rock beneath the snow. But that was all. They passed like ghosts over the silent earth.

One instant, they would be walking through cloud-torn darkness, but the next moment, the moon would beam down, almost too bright for Vasya’s night-adjusted eyes. Then a great gust of wind would tear at her hair. It was getting even colder as they walked, the land wilder. Snow stung her face.

Once Polunochnitsa said, abruptly, “If you had tried to use your own bond to the winter-king you would have died quickly, lost. You were right; it is too capricious, mortal to immortal, and there are too many half-truths between you. But I never—the Bear never—thought of the horses.”

Vasya said, “There is no bond at all now, between me and the winter-king. The necklace was destroyed.”

“None at all?” Midnight looked amused.

“Misplaced longing was all there ever was,” Vasya insisted. “I do not love him.”

To that Midnight made no answer.

Vasya wished they could linger, for she began to get glimpses of things far off; of cities in festival, on high hilltops, where the shrieks of revelers by torchlight came clearly to her ears.

“There are farther, stranger countries,” said Midnight. “Places you would have to journey long in the dark to get to. Places that you might never be able to get to, for your