But then there was a big loud clanging noise like a church bell, only close by, just through the door, and we all stopped laughing. It was a bell that had started to ring midnight. The day was over and so was the song. The music had stopped. The wedding was finished, and the Staryk was still there. We had made the song despite him, but it hadn’t made him go away. He was standing in the middle of the room, and he was still holding Miryem’s hand.
He turned and said to her, “Come, my lady, the dancing is done.” When he spoke, everyone all moved away from him, as far as they could get in that room. Me and Sergey wanted to move away, too, but when we tried, we stopped, because Wanda pulled back on our hands and didn’t move away.
Panova Mandelstam still had Miryem’s other hand, and she was holding it tight, and she was not moving away. She stayed there with Miryem and wouldn’t let go, and Panov Mandelstam was holding her, and Miryem did not want to let go of them either. The Staryk looked at them and he was frowning with his whole face and his eyebrows were like sharp icicles glittering. He said, “Let go, mortals, let go. A night’s dancing alone did she buy of me. You shall not keep her. She is my lady now, and belongs no more to the sunlit world.”
But Panov Mandelstam didn’t let go and Panova Mandelstam didn’t. She was staring at the Staryk, and her face was white and sick, and she didn’t say anything; but she shook her head a little. He raised his hand, and Miryem cried out, “No!” and tried to pull her own hand free from Panova Mandelstam’s, but Panova Mandelstam still wouldn’t let go, and then the doors in the side of the room flew open again, so hard that everyone near them had to jump or run out of the way. They banged into the walls with a crash.
There was another king and queen standing in the doorway. Only the queen was wearing a crown, but I knew he was a king, because it was the tsar and tsarina that we had seen that same day in the sleigh, going in the gate before us after we had waited and waited. And the tsar looked into the room at the Staryk and he laughed out loud, a laugh like a fire makes, and the Staryk went very still.
“Irina, Irina,” the tsar said, “you have kept your promise and he is here! Give me the chain!”
The tsarina opened the box and took out a silver chain and gave it to him, and he came into the room grinning his teeth bare. None of us got in his way. We were all pressed up against the walls, as far away as we could be.
But the Staryk said suddenly, fiercely, “Do you think to catch me so easily, devourer? I have never seen your face before, but I know your name, Chernobog.” He jumped forward and took hold of the chain in the middle with both his hands. Ice went suddenly shooting along its length, long sharp points of icicles growing out of it like a whole blizzard happening at once, and the ice went all the way to the tsar’s hands and climbed over them. He howled and let go of the chain. The Staryk threw it to the floor behind him with a crash, and then he struck the tsar with the back of his hand.
Da would hit me sometimes like that, or Wanda or even Sergey, and Da was very big and strong, but even when he hit just me, I only just fell down on the floor. But when the Staryk hit the tsar, it was like he was hitting a straw doll. The tsar’s feet came off the ground and even after he landed hard on the floor his whole body went sliding all the way across the floor until he smashed into the stage and some of the instruments went over with a big awful twanging sound around him.
I thought he must be dead, when he was hit like that. When Da took the poker to hit Wanda, I thought he was going to kill her if he hit her with it, but he could not hit her hard enough even with the poker to make her whole body go across the room. But the tsar was not dead. He didn’t even just lie there on the ground being glad not to be dead and trying to hide from being hit again. Instead he got back on his feet. He didn’t just stand up, he came up in a strange twisting way, and there was blood coming from his mouth and red all over his teeth, and he hissed at the Staryk, and when he hissed, the blood started to smoke and burn out of his mouth, and his eyes were red.
“Get out!” the tsarina called suddenly. “Everyone, all of you, run, get out of the house!”
It was like she had let everybody loose. Everyone started to go out of the room. Some people ran past her and out the open doors into the courtyard and some people ran back through the door to the other room where the men had been dancing and some people ran out through the kitchen door. The bride and groom ran that way hand in hand. The children were being picked up and the old people were being helped. Everyone was going.
I thought we should go, too, but Wanda wouldn’t. Miryem was trying to make Panova Mandelstam go with everyone else, but she was not going either. She was holding on to Miryem’s hand with both her hands and she was not letting go.
“Father, please! Mama, he’ll kill you!” Miryem said.
“Better we should die!” Panova Mandelstam cried to her.
“You go, you run,” Panov Mandelstam was saying. He was trying to put his arm around her.
And Miryem shook her head and turned and cried out, “Wanda! Wanda, please, help me!”
So Sergey and I couldn’t go, because Wanda ran to her. Miryem pushed her mother towards Wanda and said, “Please, get her away!”
“No!” Panova Mandelstam said, still holding tight.
I could tell that Wanda did not know what to do. She wanted to do what Miryem wanted and she wanted to do what Panova Mandelstam wanted. She wanted to do both things so much that she couldn’t leave that room, and then I couldn’t leave either, because I couldn’t leave Wanda and Sergey in there.
All the time they were arguing, the tsar and the Staryk were fighting. But the tsar was not fighting like a tsar. I thought a tsar would fight with a sword. Sergey told me stories sometimes about knights that killed monsters that Mama had told him. Once a knight rode down our road. I was with the goats and I saw him coming from a long way off. I didn’t see him use his sword but I walked along the road as far as I could to keep seeing him. I could do it for a long time because he didn’t go very fast. He had a sword and he had armor and two boys that walked with him leading a spare horse and a mule with baggage. After I saw him and I knew what a knight was, sometimes I fought with a sword in the field when I was with the goats, except it was just a stick, except I pretended it was a sword.
I thought a tsar would be like a knight only his armor would be more splendid and his sword would be bigger, but the tsar did not have armor at all. He was wearing a coat of red velvet and it had been splendid but it was torn and wet and burned now. And he did not have a sword. He was fighting with his hands, trying to catch the Staryk, but he kept missing. I didn’t know how he was missing because the Staryk was right there, but he would grab and then the Staryk wouldn’t be where he had grabbed anymore. And if he grabbed a chair or a table that was in the way or put his hand on the floor, there was a smell of smoke, and when he took his hand away there was a burned mark in the shape of his hand left behind. There was something in his face that I couldn’t look at for too long or else it made me feel as if he was putting that burning hand on me, inside my head.
I thought, he was not really a tsar. He was Chernobog, that name the Staryk had said, and that was a name of something that was like the Staryk, just another monster. And I didn’t want the Staryk to win, but also I didn’t want Chernobog to win. I hoped maybe they would go on fighting forever, or at least long enough so we could all just get away. But I could see the Staryk was going to win. Chernobog was a monster, but he was still inside a person. Each time he missed, the Staryk hit him back, like taking turns, and the tsar was starting to be all bloody. His face was getting strange and swelled up, and it made me think of when the kasha came on Da’s face. I didn’t want to look at his face but I couldn’t stop. I was afraid if I hid my face the Staryk would win when I wasn’t looking. Then the Staryk would come and kill Panova Mandelstam and Panov Mandelstam. I didn’t think I could stop him from doing it by looking, and I didn’t want to watch if it happened, but I didn’t want to look back and see that it had happened, either.
The tsarina had run around the fighting to Miryem. “The silver chain!” she said. “We need a silver chain to bind him!”
So then Panov Mandelstam turned and got the silver chain from the floor. It was broken into two pieces and those pieces looked too short to go all around the Staryk. But the tsarina put her hands up around her neck and took off her necklace. It was made of silver and it was shining and beautiful like snowflakes going past a window. She put one end of it through the first half of the chain and then she put the other end of it through the second half of the chain, and then she clasped the necklace, and it was one long chain again, from start to finish. Then Panov Mandelstam took that chain from her.
The tsar went at the Staryk hissing again, even though his face was all red now with blood, and not just his face. Some of his fingers were the wrong way around, and his legs were sagging like a twig that was broken part of the way, but he still flung his arms forward. The Staryk darted out of his way like if you try and catch a fly and you think you have it, but you open your hand and it’s not there, and then it buzzes next to your ear again. But he was not a fly. He was standing by the fireplace. When they had started fighting they were all the way in the middle of that big room, but now they had moved all the way across it. The whole time they were fighting the Staryk had been making the tsar chase him closer and closer to the fireplace. He did all that on purpose and now they were there, and when the tsar missed him this time, the Staryk grabbed him.
A big hissing cloud of steam came off the Staryk’s hands, and he looked like it hurt him, but he still grabbed the tsar, and then he threw him down into the fireplace, and said, “Stay where you belong, Chernobog! By your name I command you!”
A horrible roaring crackling sound came out of the tsar’s mouth and where his mouth was open and his eyes were open there was fire inside them, but he went all limp everywhere else. The crackling sound made a voice and said, “Get up! Get up!” like he was talking to himself, but he didn’t listen to himself. He didn’t get up. He just lay there in the fireplace and didn’t move.