26.

Fire

Vasya stumbled down the stairs, bleeding, dragging the child, who ran in her wake, speechless again and tearless.

The stairway was full of choking smoke. Marya began to cough. There were people on the stairs now: servants. The phantoms were gone. Vasya heard the shrieks of women up above, as though Kasyan had never been there: a young sorcerer with flame in his fist, or an old man, screaming.

They emerged into the dooryard. The gates were smashed; the yard full of people. Some lay unmoving in the bloodied and trampled snow. A few gasped, whimpered, called out. No more arrows flew. Chelubey was nowhere in sight. Dmitrii was calling orders, his face a mask of bloody soot. Most of the horses had been haltered and were being led hastily out through the gate—away from the fire. How near was it? What house had finally succumbed to the falling sparks? The barn-fire in the dooryard was dying down; Dmitrii’s army of servants must have been able to contain it. But Vasya could hear the whispering roar of a greater fire, and she knew they were not safe yet. The wind must be behind the flames, for her to taste the smoke. It was coming. It was coming, and it was her fault.

Sasha was still riding Solovey, she saw with relief. Her brother was speaking to a man on the ground.

Marya gave a cry of fear. Vasya turned her head.

The demon of midnight: moon-haired, star-eyed, night-skinned, had appeared on the stairs, as though born of the space between flames. No horse; just herself. The red light shone purple on the chyert’s cheek. Something like sorrow put out the starlight in her gaze. “Are they dead?” she asked.

Vasya was still stunned from the fight in the tower. “Who?”

“Tamara,” hissed the chyert impatiently. “Tamara and Kasyan. Are they dead?”

Vasya gathered her wits. “I—yes. Yes. How—?”

But Midnight only said wearily, over the roar, almost to herself, “Her mother will be glad.”

Vasya, much later, would wish she had grasped the significance of this. But at the moment she did not. She was bruised, shocked, and exhausted; Moscow was burning down around them and it was her fault. “They are dead,” she said. “But now the city is on fire. How can Moscow be saved?”

“I am witness to all the world’s midnights,” returned Midnight wearily. “I do not interfere.”

Vasya seized Midnight’s arm. “Interfere.”

The midnight-demon looked taken aback; she pulled, but Vasya hung on grimly, smearing the creature with her blood. She was strong with mortality—and something more. Midnight could not break her grip. “My blood can make your kind strong,” said Vasya coldly. “Perhaps, if I will it, my blood can also make you weak. Shall I try it?”

“There is no way,” breathed Midnight, looking a little uneasy now. “None.”

Vasya shook the chyert so her teeth rattled. “There must be a way!” she cried.

“That is”—Midnight gasped—“long ago, the winter-king might have quieted the flames. He is master of wind and snow.” The glossy eyelids veiled the shining eyes, and her glance turned malicious. “But you were a brave girl and drove Morozko off, broke his power in your hands.”

Vasya’s grip loosened. “Broke—?”

Polunochnitsa half-smiled, teeth gleaming red in the firelight. “Broke,” she said. “As you said, wise girl, your power works two ways.”

Vasya was silent. Midnight bent forward and whispered, “Shall I tell you a secret? With that sapphire, he bound your strength to him—but the magic did what he did not intend; it made him strong but it also pulled him closer and closer to mortality, so that he was hungry for life, more than a man and less than a demon.” Polunochnitsa paused, watching Vasya, and murmured, cruelly, “So that he loved you, and did not know what to do.”

“He is the winter-king; he cannot love.”

“Certainly not, now,” said Polunochnitsa. “For his power broke in your hands, as I said, and by your words, you banished him. Now he will only be seen in Moscow by the dying. So get out of the city, Vasilisa Petrovna; leave it to its fate. You can do nothing more.”

Midnight gave one final, furious wrench and tore herself from Vasya’s grip. In an instant, she was lost to sight in the pall of smoke that veiled the city.

NEXT MOMENT, VASYA HEARD Solovey’s ringing neigh, and then Sasha came splashing off the horse’s back into the half-melted snow. Her brother pulled both her and Marya into a tight embrace and Solovey snuffled gladly over all of them. Sasha smelled of blood and soot. Vasya hugged her brother, stroked Solovey’s nose, and then drew away, swaying on her feet. If she allowed herself weakness now, she knew she would never gather her strength again in time, and she was thinking furiously…

Sasha picked up Marya, set her on Solovey’s back, and turned back to Vasya.

“Little sister,” said Sasha. “We must go. Moscow is burning.”

Dmitrii came galloping up. He looked down at Vasya an instant, her long plait, her bruised face. Something chilled and darkened in his face. But all he said was, “Get them out, Sasha. There is no time.”

Vasya made no move to get onto Solovey’s back. “Olya?” she asked her brother.

“I will go find her,” said Sasha. “You must get on Solovey. Ride out of the city with Marya. There is no time. The fire is coming.”

Over the bustle in the Grand Prince’s dooryard, beyond his walls, Vasya heard the thick cries of people in the city as they gathered what they could and fled.

“Get her up,” said Dmitrii. “Get them out.” He rode off, calling more orders.

Into the shadows, Vasya whispered, “Can you hear me, Morozko?”

Silence.

Outside Dmitrii’s walls, the wind wrapped like a river around the city, whipping the flames higher. She remembered Morozko’s voice. Only if you are dying, he had said. Nothing could keep me from you then. I am Death, and I come to all when they die.

Before Vasya could think twice; before she could talk herself out of it, she pulled off her own cloak, reached up, and cast it around Marya’s drooping shoulders.

“Vasya,” said her brother. “Vasya, what are you—?”

She didn’t hear the rest. “Solovey,” she said to the horse. “Keep them safe.”

The horse bowed his great head. Let me go with you, Vasya, he said, but she only laid a cheek against his nose.

Then she was running out the ruined gate, and toward the burning.

THE STREETS WERE CHOKED with people, most of them going the opposite way. But Vasya was light in the snow, unencumbered with a cloak, and running downhill. She moved quickly.

Twice someone tried to tell her she was going in the wrong direction, and once a man seized her by the arm and tried to shout sense into her ear.

She wrenched herself loose and ran on.

The smoke thickened. The people in the streets grew more panicked. The fire loomed over them; it seemed to fill the world.

Vasya began to cough. Her head swam, her throat swelled. Her mouth was dust-dry. There, finally, was Olga’s palace, above her in the red darkness. Fire raged—one street beyond? Two? She couldn’t tell. Olga’s gates were open, and someone was shouting orders within. A stream of people poured out. Had her sister been carried away already? She breathed a prayer for Olga, then ran on past the palace, into the inferno.

Smoke. She breathed it in. It was her whole world. The streets were empty now. The heat was unbearable. She tried to run on, but found she had fallen to her knees, coughing. She couldn’t get enough air. Get up. She staggered on. Her face was blistering. What was she doing? Her ribs hurt.

Then she couldn’t run anymore. She fell into the slush. Blackness gathered before her eyes…

Moscow disappeared. She was in a nighttime forest: stars and trees, grayness and bitter dark.

Death stood before her.

“I found you,” she said, forcing the words past lips gone numb. She was kneeling there in the snow, in the forest beyond life, and found that she could not rise.

His mouth twisted. “You are dying.” His step did not mark the snow; the light, cold wind did not stir his hair. “You are a fool, Vasilisa Petrovna,” he added.

“Moscow is burning,” she whispered. Her lips and tongue would barely obey her. “It was my fault. I freed the firebird. But Midnight—Midnight said you could put the fire out.”

“Not any longer. I put too much of myself in the jewel, and that is destroyed.” He said this in a voice without feeling. But he drew her standing, roughly. Somewhere around her she sensed the fire; knew her skin was blistering, that she was nearly smothered from the smoke.

“Vasya,” he said. Was that despair in his voice? “This is foolish. I can do nothing. You must go back. You cannot be here. Go back. Run. Live.”

She could barely hear him. “Not alone,” she managed. “If I go back, you are coming with me. You are going to put the fire out.”

“Impossible,” she thought he said.

She wasn’t listening. Her strength was nearly gone. The heat, the burning city, were nearly gone. She was, she realized, about to die.

How had she dragged Olga back from this place? Love, rage, determination.

She wound both her bloody, weakening hands in his robe, breathing the smell of cold water and pine. Of freedom in the trackless moonlight. She thought of her father, whom she had not saved. She thought of others, whom she still could. “Midnight—” she began. She had to gasp between words. “Midnight said you loved me.”

“Love?” he retorted. “How? I am a demon and a nightmare; I die every spring, and I will live forever.”

She waited.

“But yes,” he said wearily. “As I could, I loved you. Now will you go? Live.”

“I, too,” she said. “In a childish way, as girls love heroes that come in the night, I loved you. So come back with me now, and end this.” She seized his hands and pulled with her last remaining strength—with all the passion and anger and love she had—and dragged them both back into the inferno that was Moscow.

They lay tangled on the ground in slush growing hot, and the fire was almost upon them. He blinked in the red light, perfectly still. In his face was pure shock.

“Call the snow,” Vasya shouted into his ear, over the roar. “You are here. Moscow is burning. Call the snow.”

He seemed hardly to hear her. He raised his eyes to the world about them, with wonder and a touch of fear. His hands were still on hers; they were colder than any living man’s.

Vasya wanted to scream, with fear and with urgency. She struck him hard across the face. “Hear me! You are the winter-king. Call the snow!” She reached a hand behind his head and kissed him, bit his lip, smeared her blood on his face, willing him to be real and alive and strong enough for magic.

“If these were ever your people,” she breathed into his ear, “save them.”

His eyes found hers and a little awareness came back into his face. He got to his feet, but slowly, as though moving underwater. He was holding tight to her hand. She had the idea that her grip was the only thing keeping him there.

The fire seemed to fill the world. The air was burning up, leaving only poison behind. She couldn’t breathe. “Please,” she whispered.

Morozko drew breath, harshly, as though the smoke hurt him, too. But when he breathed out, the wind rose. A wind like water, a wind of winter at her back, so strong that she staggered. But he caught her before she fell.

The wind rose and rose, pushing the flames away from them—driving the fire back on itself.

“Close your eyes,” he said into her ear. “Come with me.”

She did so, and suddenly she saw what he saw. She was the wind, the clouds gathering in the smoky sky, the thick snow of deep winter. She was nothing. She was everything.

The power gathered somewhere in the space between them, between her flickers of awareness. There is no magic. Things are. Or they are not. She was beyond wanting anything. She didn’t care whether she lived or died. She could only feel; the gathering storm, the breath of the wind. Morozko there beside her.

Was that a flake? Another? She could not tell snow from ash, but some quality had changed in the fire’s noise. No—that was snow, and suddenly it was falling as thick as the fiercest of winter blizzards. Faster and faster it fell until all she could see was white, overhead and all around. The flakes cooled her blistered face. Smothered the flames.

She opened her eyes and found herself back in her own skin.

Morozko’s arms fell away from her. The snow blurred his features, but she thought he looked—tentative now, his face full of fearful wonder.

She found she had no words.

So instead she simply leaned back against him, and watched the snow fall. Her scorched throat ached. He did not speak. But he stood still, as though he understood.

For a long time they stood, as the snow fell and fell. Vasya watched the mad beauty of the snowstorm, the dying fire, and Morozko stood as silent as she, as though he was waiting.

“I am sorry,” she said at length, though she didn’t know, quite, what she was sorry for.

“Why, Vasya?” He stirred then, behind her, and one fingertip just touched the base of her throat, where the talisman had lain. “For that? Better the jewel was destroyed. Frost-demons are not meant to live, and the time of my power is over.”

The snow was thinning. She found, when she turned to look at him, that she could see him clearly. “Did you make the jewel, just as Kaschei did?” she asked. “To put your life in mine?”

“Yes,” he said.

“And you wanted me to love you?” she asked. “So that my love would help you live?”

“Yes,” he said. “That love of maidens for monsters, that does not fade with time.” He looked weary. “But the rest—I did not count on that.”

“Count on what?”

The pale eyes found hers, inscrutable. “I think you know.”

They measured each other in wary silence. Then Vasya said, “What do you know of Kasyan and of Tamara?”

He sighed a little. “Kasyan was the prince of a far country, gifted with sight, who wished to shape the world to his will. But there were some things even he could not control. He loved a woman, and when she died—he begged me for her life.” Morozko paused, and in the instant of chill silence, Vasya knew what had happened to Kasyan next. She felt unwilling pity.

“That was long ago,” Morozko went on. “I do not know what happened then, for he found a way to set his life apart from his flesh, to keep my hand from him. Forgot—somehow—that he could die, and so did not. Tamara lived with her mother, alone. It is said that Kasyan came to her house one day to buy a horse. Kasyan and Tamara fell in love and fled together. Then they disappeared. Until Tamara appeared alone in Moscow.”

“Where did Tamara come from?” Vasya asked urgently. “Who is she?”

He meant to answer. She could see it in his face. She often wondered, afterward, how her path might have been different, if he had. But at that moment, the monastery bell rang.

The sound seemed to strike Morozko like fists, as though they would break him into snowflakes and send him whirling away. He shook; he did not answer.

“What is happening?” Vasya asked.

The talisman is destroyed, he might have told her. And frost-demons are not meant to love. But he did not say that. “Dawn,” Morozko managed. “I cannot exist anymore under the sun, in Moscow, not after midwinter, when the bells are ringing. Vasya, Tamara—”

The bell rang again, his voice died away.

“No. You cannot fade; you are immortal.” Vasya reached for him, caught his shoulders between her hands. On swift impulse, she reached up and kissed him. “Live,” she said. “You said you loved me. Live.”

She had surprised him. He stared into her eyes, old as winter, young as new-fallen snow, and then suddenly he bent his head and kissed her back. Color came into his face and color washed his eyes until they were the blue of the noonday sky. “I cannot live,” he murmured into her ear. “One cannot be alive and be immortal. But when the wind blows, and storm hangs heavy upon the world, when men die, I will be there. It is enough.”

“That is not enough,” she said.

He said nothing. He was not a man: only a creature of cold rain and black trees and blue frost, growing fainter and fainter in her arms. But he bent his head and kissed her once more, as though the sweetness of it struck a spark of something long since gone dim. But even as he did, he faded.

She tried to call him back. But day was breaking, and a finger of light crept through the clouds to illuminate the char and reek of the half-burnt city.

Then Vasya stood alone.