He shuddered his whole body over. The flame sank down low within him, and skin closed over his flesh again, the tsar’s face unrolling like a shroud over the horror beneath, even his beautiful clothes taking shape, of silk and velvet and lace. I covered my face so as not to look and huddled back against the couch as he turned away towards the door, until Irina let go of my shoulder. She said, sharply, “He is mine, too, Chernobog. You must leave him alone as well.”
I looked up in horror: she had put herself in his way. The demon stopped, glaring at her with red light still shining in the tsar’s jewel eyes. “No!” he spat. “No, I will not! He was given me by promise, by fair bargain made, and I need not give him to you!”
“But you already have,” Irina said, “when you made him marry me. A wife’s right comes before a mother’s,” and she pulled the silver ring from her hand, and reaching out caught the demon’s. He tried to jerk back, but she held him fast, and pushed the ring swiftly onto his finger down to the knuckle.
He stared down with red fury twisting his face, his mouth opening on another shriek, but it didn’t come out, and the demon’s whole body bent away like a curving bow. There was a glowing light deep in his belly, which began to move upwards: red light came shining before it like a candle coming from around a corner in the dark, growing brighter and brighter, and then the tsar suddenly convulsed forward and a single enormous glowing coal of fire came up out of his throat and was flung down onto the carpet before the fireplace. It burst up into a lump of curling orange flames, smoking and seething, that hissed and spat and crackled at us all with rage, a mouth of red opening to roar.
But even half crouching against the wall and her face still wide with alarm, the scullery-maid lurched at once instinctively for the iron bucket of sand and ashes and cinders beside the hearth. She poured it straight down onto the flames, smothering them, and clanged the bucket down on top of it all.
She left it there, stepping back hurriedly. Thin wisps of smoke leaked out from underneath it, a black smoldering ring darkening in the carpet around the base of the pail, but it did not go far. After a moment, even the smoke went out. She was staring at it, breathing hard, and then she looked over at me with her eyes wide, startled, and reached up to her cheek, where there was still the one small black smudge. But her hands were sooty, and once she touched her skin, you could not have told the one from the others.
I was trembling in all my body. I couldn’t look away from the pail, for terror, for a long time. Only after the last wisp of smoke was gone, then at last with a jerk I turned to look at my girl, my tsarina. The tsar was holding her hands against his chest, the ring on his finger gleaming pale silver like the tears running in silver lines down his cheeks; he was gazing down at her with eyes shining jewel-green, as though she were the most beautiful thing in the world.
CHAPTER 25
Sergey and I went back to Pavys three weeks later, once Papa Mandelstam was all the way better, and he and Stepon could look after the fruit trees while we were gone. All of them were growing very well anyway. Sergey had gone back out to the road and got the farmer who had the barn with the flowers to come and help him cut down some trees, for a share of the wood, and clear some land. We took that wood to Vysnia and sold it in the market there and bought the seedling trees: apples and plums and sour cherries. All of them were in flower.
While Papa Mandelstam was getting better, he wrote us many letters to take: one letter for everyone who still owed him a debt. “We have been lucky,” he said, “so now let us be generous. It was a hard winter for everyone.” I think he also thought that if we came with those letters, then everyone in town would be happy more than they would want to hang us. We took the tsar’s letter with us, too, but after all, the tsar was far away. We did not have to worry that they would come and get us, because nobody was spending time on hunting for us: all the work that everyone would have done in spring, they had to do now, in a big hurry, because it was already beginning to be summer.
But we were still surprised when we drove into town. Panova Lyudmila was standing in her yard sweeping it and she called to us, “Hello, travelers! Do you need a meal on the road?” and we looked at her and then she saw who we were and shrieked and threw up her hands and some men came running, and they all stopped and stared at us and one of them said, “You aren’t dead!” as if he thought we should have been.
“No,” I said, “we are not dead, and we have been pardoned by the tsar,” and I took out the letter and opened it and showed it to them.
There was a big noise for a while. I was glad Stepon was not with us. The priest came and the tax collector, who took the letter and read it out loud in a big voice, and everyone in town listened to it. The tax collector handed the letter back to me and bowed and said, “Well, we must all have a toast to your good fortune!” and they brought tables and chairs out of the inn and out of Panova Lyudmila’s house and jugs of krupnik and cider, and everyone had a drink to our health. Kajus did not come, and neither did his son.
I was very puzzled the whole time why they thought we were dead, but I did not want to ask. Instead I brought out the letters from Panov Mandelstam and gave them to all the people who were there, and the ones who were not, I gave to the priest, to give to them. Then everyone was really happy, and they even drank a toast to Panov Mandelstam’s health.
After that we went to the Mandelstams’ house and packed everything into the cart. Panova Gavelyte was the only one who was not happy to see us. I think she had planned to tell Panova Mandelstam that the goats and the chickens were hers now and Panova Mandelstam could not have them back. But she knew about the tsar’s letter like everyone by then so when me and Sergey came she only said, “Well, those are theirs,” and pointed to some thin sickly goats.
But I looked in her face and said, “You should be ashamed.” Then I went and took all of the right goats, ours and theirs, and we tied them to the end of the cart. I went and got all the chickens too, and packed them into a box. We took the furniture and the things off the shelves and packed it all carefully, and the ledger we put under the cart seat carefully covered with a blanket.
Then we were done and we could go back, but Sergey sat on the wagon seat silently and did not start driving, and I looked at him, and he said, “Do you think anyone buried him?”
I did not say anything. I did not want to think about Da. But Sergey was already thinking about him, and then I was thinking about him also. And I would keep thinking about him there, on the floor of the house, not buried. And Stepon might start thinking about it too. So Da would always be there on the floor, even once he was not anymore. “We’ll go,” I said finally.
We drove the cart out to our old house. The rye was growing. It was full of weeds because nobody was taking care of it, but it was still tall and green. We stopped the cart in the field so the goats and the horses could eat some of it, and then we went to the white tree. We put our hands on it together. It was quiet. Mama was not there anymore, and the tree outside our house did not speak to us. But Mama did not need to talk to us out of a tree anymore, because we had Mama Mandelstam now, and she would talk for her.
There were silver flowers on the tree’s branches. We picked six of them and we put one on Mama’s grave, and one for each of the babies. Then we went to the house. Nobody had buried Da, but it was not that bad. Some animals had come, and it was only some bones and ripped clothes left, and not a bad smell, because the door had been left open. We got a sack and we put all the bones into it. Sergey got the shovel. We carried the sack back to the white tree and we dug a grave and we buried Da there next to all the other graves, the ones he had dug, and I put a stone on top.
We didn’t take anything else from our house. We went back to the cart and we drove all the way back to town. It was getting late then, but we decided we would keep going. We would stop for the night at the next town instead. It was ten miles to go, but the road was clear, and it was a very pleasant night. The sun was not all the way down yet. A
s we drove out of town, there was another cart coming, with one horse. It was empty so the driver pulled off to the side to let us go past because we had a big load, and as we came close and passed him, I saw it was that boy Algis, Oleg’s son, sitting there on the seat. We stopped a moment and looked at him, and he looked back at us. We did not say anything, but then we knew that he had not told anyone where we were. He had just gone home and he had not told anyone he had seen us at all. We nodded to him, and Sergey shook the reins, and we went on. We went home.
*
The walls of the glass mountain were secure now, but even so, inside them it had been a lean summer and fall: many of the pools down below had gone dry in Chernobog’s attack, and more of the vineyards and orchards had died. But we’d fed the children first, and then shared what there was left, and the Staryk king had told me, “They will fill again when the winter comes,” when we’d walked through the lower passageways together, to see what harm had been done.
We’d buried the dead and treated the wounded, laying them in quiet rows beneath the white trees: the king carefully took shavings of ice from the very wellspring of the stream, and laid them on their wounds, and put his hands on either side and coaxed it to grow and merge with their bodies. Some of the great caverns had closed themselves up like turtles pulling into their shells, and had to be opened again, and in the fields below we cut back the dead vines and trees, and started cuttings from what had lived, to make ready for a new planting.
At least now I was able to find my own way around. Either I’d learned the trick of it without realizing, or the mountain itself was grateful to me, because when I went looking for some room or cavern, the right doors and passages softly opened for me. And amid all the work, I found more than enough to make a place for me. The Staryk didn’t know anything of keeping records: I suppose it was only to be expected from people who didn’t take on debts and were used to entire chambers wandering off and having to be called back like cats.
But with everything in disarray, we needed something better. I had to commandeer pen and paper from their poets just to have something to keep track of all the fields and pools and what state they were in, and how much we expected to have, to last us until the winter. I divided up the supplies and measured out days, so none of us would go hungry before the end.
The tally of those days seemed a long one at the beginning, but every hour was filled. By the end, they were sliding away so quickly that it took me by blank surprise the day I woke up and found the trees outside the mountain frosted with the first new snow, and I knew the king’s road stood open once again. And I missed my mother and my father, I ached for them to know I was well, but still I stood there looking out for a long time before I rang the bell to call the servants to help me get ready.
It didn’t take me long. I’d taught Flek and Tsop how I kept my papers sorted, and my books were clean; my grandfather wouldn’t have found any fault. I packed one small bundle, only a few things in it but dear to me: a few pressed silver flowers, a pair of gloves sewn very badly that Rebekah had made for me, and the dress I’d worn for the midsummer dancing. It wasn’t a grand gown; the celebration had been a rejoicing for survival, a few weeks after we’d buried our dead, and there hadn’t been time or strength for anything grand. It wasn’t much more than a simple shift, but of cool silvery silk that ran through the fingers like water, and caught the light coming in through the mountain. I’d worn it with my hair braided up in flowers, and danced in a circle holding hands with my friends, the new ones and the old, who’d worked beside me, and at the end the king had come to me and bowed, and together we’d led two lines through the grove, dancing beneath the white branches as they shed their last flowers to rest until the snow.
He’d kept his own promises, of course; he’d made no more claims upon me, and down in the grove the sleigh was waiting. I drew one final breath and turned and left my chamber, and went down the narrow stair. The white trees had bloomed again this morning, full of leaves and flowers. There were still a few gaps left in the circles, where some of them had died in Chernobog’s attack. But in each of those spaces, one of the fallen knights had been buried with a silver fruit upon his breast, and thin white saplings had come out of the ground when I called them with the blessing. They’d keep growing here, even after I had gone. It made me glad to think of it, that I’d leave them living behind me.
But as I came low enough to see beneath the leaves, I paused, my eyes stinging: behind the sleigh, a full and dazzling company of the Staryk had assembled, mounted on the backs of sharp-antlered deer. The knights and nobles carried white hawks on jeweled gauntlets, and white hounds clustered around the hooves of their mounts, and silver and jewels gleamed on their pale leather: many of them I’d seen at the gates, or helped to tend beneath the trees. But it wasn’t only them; even some of the farmers were there, looking at once excited and afraid, plainly uneasy about going to the sunlit world but coming to see me off in their best finery, their hair strung with silver. And in the very front rank, just behind the sleigh, were Flek and Tsop and Shofer, with Rebekah there sitting nervous and wide-eyed in front of her mother, her long fingers wound into the braided reins.
All the beauty and danger of a winter’s night caught out in living shape, and when I came down and the Staryk king held his hand out to me and helped me into the sleigh, I stood in it a moment longer, holding on to his hand for balance, looking at all of them, and last at him, to have a picture to hold in my heart when the winter kingdom’s door had closed behind me.
I sat down blinking away tears, and he sat beside me, and the sleigh leapt off over the snow. Almost at once when we came out of the mountain, the white trees unfurled to either side of the shining road before us, icicle drops of silver hanging overhead. We flew down it with cold wind rushing into our faces and the great assembled hunt coming on behind us, blowing the faint high horns that sang clear as a winter bird’s song. The people of Lithvas wouldn’t have to fear that music anymore. The Staryk wouldn’t come among them again as anything other than a whisper beneath the snowy trees that they’d only half remember. Perhaps I’d have a daughter of my own one day, and when I heard that wistful sound through the window on a winter’s night, I’d tell her stories of a mountain of shining glass, and the people who lived within it, and how I’d stood against a demon with their king.
I looked at him sitting beside me. These last months he’d more often worn clothes as rough as any laborer’s, even if they were still of purest white, while he’d worked to reopen deepest chambers and tunnels that had collapsed, healing the mountain’s wounds as he’d healed his people. But he was as splendid today as all the rest of them, and he sat proud and glittering with his hand tight on the railing of the sleigh. He didn’t hold back at all; the journey was over too quickly. It felt as though we’d barely left when a wind bright and fresh with pine came into my face, and the white trees opened wider into a grove where one single tree stood, still only a young tree but beautiful and full of pale white leaves, behind a wooden gate, with a house gently blanketed in snow behind it.
I couldn’t help smiling as soon as I saw it: they’d done so much with it already. My eyes were wet, blurring the thin slivers of golden light shining out around the cracks of the windows and the door. Friendly plumes of smoke wound from three chimneys, fireplaces in the rooms on either side, and the shed was attached to the side of a proper barn now. I saw a large coop of chickens, boxes for grain; a few goats were wandering the yard. Just behind the house, orchard ranks of small fruit trees were standing, and a lantern hung from a post by the door, spilling light onto a welcoming walkway of swept-clean stones coming all the way up to the gate.
The sleigh stopped before the gate, just by the tree. The Staryk stepped out of it, and gave me his hand to help me. The hunt was still gathered behind us, but Flek and Tsop and Shofer had climbed down; one of the others was holding the reins of their mounts. They all bowed to me. I drew a deep breath and went to each of them and kissed
them on their cheeks, and I reached up and took off the necklace of gold I was wearing, and I put it around Rebekah’s neck. She looked up from it on her palm and said, “Thank you, Open-Handed,” a little softly and tentatively, and Flek twitched a little as if in uncertain alarm; but I bent and kissed her forehead and said, “You’re welcome, little snowflake,” and then I turned and walked to the gate, and put my hand on it.
It swung open at my touch, and one of the goats, who had been browsing under the light snow at the posts, startled and made a loud complaining baa-ing and fled away towards the barn, probably unhappy to have a mysterious stranger erupt out of nowhere into his comfortable yard. The door of the house opened at once, and my mother was standing there, a shawl clutched around her shoulders and hope in her face, as if she’d been waiting by it; she gave a cry and ran towards me down the path with the shawl flying off behind her red onto the snow, and I ran to her and fell into her arms laughing and crying, so glad it drove out regrets. My father was right behind her, and Wanda and Sergey and Stepon piling out after them; they all came around me: my parents, my sister, and my brothers, and there was even a thick-coated sheepdog jumping around us in excitement that I’d never seen, trying to lick all of us at once, and then it planted its feet and barked loudly twice and then yelped and ran back to Sergey’s feet and peered from around him instead.
I turned round: they hadn’t vanished yet, that glittering hunt, and the Staryk king had come into the yard behind me, a winter’s fairy-tale standing there half unreal in the warm lamplight, only made possible by the cool blue gleam of the snow behind him. My mother and father tightened their grip on me a little, looking at him warily, but I had his word and I wasn’t afraid. I swallowed and made myself raise my head and smile at him. “Will you let me thank you, this once, for bringing me home?”