Panov Mandelstam didn’t say anything for a minute. The silence felt very long. Finally he said, “It is lucky this is a late snow. There will still be some fresh growth under. We must dig and get them some grass and whatever else we can find for them to eat.”
He was still kind, but I thought that he had not felt kind, and that was why he had been quiet. I thought that meant he must be very worried. So then I was very worried. I did my best to help to dig. Because Panova Mandelstam had given me the boots, I could kick away snow and get down to the ground. But it was mostly dry pine needles here under the big old tree.
We all went in different directions. “Do not go so far that you cannot see the big tree,” Panov Mandelstam told me. “The snow will cover your steps and you will not find the way back. Every ten steps turn around and look.”
The big tree was so big that I could see it for a long way. I counted and looked every ten steps until I came to a place that was open to the sky. There was a big dead tree under the snow making a lump. It had been here and then it had fallen over. Now there was an open place. I dug under the snow with my boots and a broken branch and I found some grass. It was dying because of the snow, but it was not all the way dead, and also there was old dry grass under it. I pulled up as much of it as I could get to. It did not seem like a lot, but even a little bit of food is very good when you are very hungry. I thought maybe it was the same for horses as people. When I had an armful I carried it back. Panova Mandelstam had stayed with the horses. She was petting their heads and singing to them softly. Their heads were hanging low. She had given them water at least. I didn’t know where she had found water that wasn’t snow, but then I saw she was shivering and then I knew. She had put snow into the water bucket and wrapped herself around it so it would melt for them.
I gave them each half of the grass I had found. They did not start to eat it right away, but Panova Mandelstam took it and gave it to them by hand. Then they ate, and they ate it all up very fast. Panov Mandelstam and Algis came back too. They had not found any grass, but Algis had brought some wood to try to make a fire with. It was wet and I didn’t think it would work to start a fire, though.
“There was more grass where I got this,” I said.
“I will go with him,” Algis said to Panov Mandelstam. He still did not look up. I think he was ashamed he had gotten lost and had not filled the grain bucket, and now he was trying to say he was sorry. I did not really want to listen to him saying sorry, but I couldn’t say I didn’t want him to come with me so we went back to the clearing. Algis spread his topcoat out on the snow, and we dug up more grass until we made a big heap on top of the coat, and then Algis took the heap back while I kept finding more grass until he came back to help again.
It was easier with Algis than if I was alone, because he was taller and stronger than me. But I wished Sergey and Wanda were with us instead. They were both taller than Algis and stronger than him, and they would get more grass, and also they would not forget to fill the grain bucket in the first place. Maybe they would not fill the grain bucket, but that would only be if there was no grain to put into it, they would not just forget. Also they would not be spies on us.
I was not feeling kind at all. I thought maybe we would all die of cold. I thought maybe if we did not die of cold, but the horses died of being worked so hard without enough food, and we were in the forest with no horses and not traveling, then it would be like we were making a house. Then maybe the Staryk would come after us. I did not like to think about what the Staryk had done to Sergey, but I could not help thinking about it sometimes at night. I was thinking about it now.
Finally Algis and I had gotten to all the grass we could find. Now when we kicked away the snow we only found places where we had already pulled up all the grass. We went back. The horses ate up all the grass, but their heads were hanging afterwards, and they were still hungry. They were cold too because there was no fire. Panov Mandelstam had tried, but the wood and kindling was too wet to make a spark. There was some food for us, because Panova Mandelstam had packed the basket. She would not forget to fill a grain bucket either. But she shared the food with Algis anyway, and she even gave him as big a portion as she gave to Panov Mandelstam.
After we finished eating one of the horses gave a very big sigh and slowly got down on the ground. It was very cold on the ground, but it was too tired to get up again even though Panov Mandelstam and Algis both tried to get it back up. Panova Mandelstam was holding the other one and trying to coax it to stay up, but after a little while it got down, too. Their heads were even lower. I thought maybe they would die. And then even if we did not die, in the morning we would be alone deep in the woods. Like Sergey and Wanda had been, but we were not as strong as Sergey and Wanda. They had left me behind because they could go for a long time in the woods and I could not. Unless maybe they had not gone on. Maybe they had stopped in the woods and died in the snow like we were going to.
There was nothing I could do. I was not even tall enough to pull up on the horses’ reins. When the others gave up, Panova Mandelstam had me sit down next to her up against the side of one horse, and we covered ourselves with a blanket and a fur cape. The horse’s body blocked the wind, and the tree blocked it some too. It was still cold, but that was all we could do. Panov Mandelstam and Algis sat next to the other horse the same way. I put my hands in my pockets and huddled next to Panova Mandelstam. The nut was still in my pocket and I wrapped my fingers around it and held it tight.
* * *
After the Staryk king left me, I got up and went back to the big storeroom to see how the work was going. I didn’t have enormous hope—there was so much silver. It was just a little better than no hope, and also had the benefit of being an annoyance to my husband, even if he disposed of me, too.
But Tsop and Flek and Shofer had done more than I’d expected. It certainly went quicker to throw money away than to make it, and Staryk strength made light of the work: they’d already opened a large circle in the middle of the room, and the sledge was half full again. They’d gotten almost all the sacks out, and only loose coin was left. There was a great deal of loose coin, however. They all straightened up when I came in; magical strength or not, they looked tired, too. I didn’t feel badly for throwing away my lord’s silver, but I was making them slave away to do it, and to have any chance at all I’d need them to keep at it for me to the very end. All through this night and the coming day, and then another night and day after, every last hour I could eke out before the dancing had ended. Luckily Basia’s wedding wouldn’t begin until late, since she was a city girl. Without sleep or rest, for them as much as me, except I’d gotten myself into the mess, and why should they care?
“I need something to eat and drink,” I said. “Bring something for yourselves, too. And if I’m alive at the end of this,” I added, “you’ll bring me all the silver you own yourselves, or can borrow, and I’ll make it gold for you in thanks for the work you’re doing.”
They all three went perfectly silent and still. After a moment, they looked at one another—making certain I’d said it?—and then Tsop burst out, “We are servants.”
“I’d rather you had a better reason than that to help me,” I said, warily. It didn’t help. They still looked as uneasy as if I’d invited them to walk through a room full of snakes. Flek had her hands twisting together before her, staring down at them.
Then Shofer abruptly said to me, “Open-Handed,” saying it like a name, “though you know not what you do, I accept your promise, and will return myself for it as fair measure, if you will accept the exchange.” He clenched his fist to his collarbone, and bowed to me. Tsop swallowed and said, “And I too,” and bowed as well. She looked at Flek, whose face was wrenched and unhappy. After a moment, Flek whispered, barely audible, “I will as well,” and clasping both her hands against her chest bowed, too.
Well, Shofer wasn’t wrong, I didn’t know what I’d done, but I’d certainly done something, and it had been worth doing. “Yes,” I said at once, and Flek ran out of the room to go and bring us food, and in the meantime Tsop and Shofer began to hurl the last sacks into the sleigh as if their own lives depended on it now, and not just mine. Perhaps they did, for all I knew. It didn’t seem that gold would be enough of a reward for that, but if they thought it was, I wasn’t going to complain.
“I must change the deer,” Shofer told me when Flek came back, and I joined them in the big storeroom to eat. I nodded. We all wolfed down a few bites, and I took a drink of the cold water and went back to work in the second storeroom alone.
I think I did fall asleep once or twice during that night, but not for long; I only drowsed off drooping as I sat, and jerked back awake a little bit later when I heard the clattering of hooves in the room beyond, another load being taken away to dump into the tunnel. My eyes were burning and tired, my back and my shoulders ached, and I finished sweeping my hand over the coins on the cloth, and spilled them away again.
The hours dragged away at once too slowly and too quickly. It was an agony that I only wanted to be over, except when the line of sunrise appeared in the mirror, my heart started pounding. I’d gotten quicker once I’d mastered the trick of doing them two deep: I was a good way into the third rack. But there were three more left: I’d have to keep working this fast all the way to the end, to manage it. I had to stop and eat: Tsop brought me some food on a plate and a cup of water, and my hands shook so that the water nearly slopped up over the sides. I swallowed everything she’d brought me without tasting it, and went back to the endless grinding terrible work.
My husband appeared again just as the sunset vanished out of my mirror. I sat back on my heels and wiped my arm across my forehead. I wasn’t sweating, but I felt as though I should have been. He looked around the room with cold displeasure, measuring how much I had left to do. I’d nearly finished the fourth rack by then, but there was only one night and day left, and as far as he knew, there was that monstrous third room still to do.