The Staryk was standing over him holding his hands together and watching to see if he would get out of the fireplace. And then Panov Mandelstam ran at him and tried to throw the chain around him.
I didn’t see it because I stopped looking right when he started running. I thought the Staryk was going to kill him and I didn’t want to see after all. So I put my head down and wrapped my arms around it and then Panova Mandelstam cried out, “Josef!” and Miryem said, “No!” and I couldn’t keep from looking. Panov Mandelstam was lying on the floor and he was not moving. I thought he was dead, but then he moved, so he wasn’t dead, but the chain was not around the Staryk, either. It was on the floor far away from him. Panova Mandelstam had run to Panov Mandelstam and was kneeling next to him. Miryem had run to stand in front of the Staryk, and suddenly she took the crown off her head and threw it onto the ground with a big crash of metal, and she said very loud, “I’ll never go back with you if you hurt them! I’ll die first! I swear it!”
The Staryk had his hand up as if he was going to do something to Panov Mandelstam, but he stopped when she said that. He did not want to stop; he was angry. “You trouble me like summer rain!” he shouted at Miryem. “He came at me with a chain to bind me! Am I to make no answer?”
“You came first!” she shouted back. “You came first and took me!”
The Staryk was still angry, but after a moment he made a grumbling noise and he dropped his hand. “Oh, very well!” He said it as if he still did not like it very much, but maybe he would not bother to kill Panov Mandelstam, and then he put out his hand to Miryem. “Now come! The hour is late, and the time is done, and never again will I bring you hence, to be insulted by weak hands who dare think they can keep you from me!”
He waved his other hand at the doors. They opened again, and outside it was not the courtyard. It was that forest where we were dancing, but now there were no stars. There was only that grey sky and the sleigh with the monsters pulling it, waiting for them.
Miryem did not want to go with him. I would not want to go with him either, so I was sorry for her, but I still wanted her to go. I wanted her to take his hand because then he would take only her and go and not come back. Then Chernobog would be stuck in the fireplace and the Staryk would be gone and we would all be safe. Panov Mandelstam and Panova Mandelstam would not die. I wished and wished she would go.
She looked around at her parents so that I saw her face, and I felt a big swelling relief in me because I could see she was going to go. I felt sorry because she was crying, and it made my stomach go sick and knotted inside to think about what if it was me and Panova Mandelstam was my mother and I had to go away from her with the Staryk, but I was still glad. I was also afraid because what if she changed her mind, but she didn’t. She was only looking around for one last time to see them, and then she turned back to the Staryk, even though she was crying, and she took a step towards him.
“No!” Panova Mandelstam cried, but she was not holding Miryem’s hand anymore, she was kneeling on the floor with Panov Mandelstam’s head in her lap too far away. She reached out her hand anyway and called, “Miryem, Miryem!”
The Staryk made an angry noise. “And still you dare!” he hissed at Panova Mandelstam. “Think you to bind her? Victory has come to my hands this night, and the devourer is cast down! Now for a lifetime of men I will close the white road and keep my kingdom fast, until all who know my lady’s name have died, and I will leave you not even scraps of memory to try and catch her with!”
Then he reached out to grab Miryem’s hand, and pulled her away towards the door, and I was so glad that he was going that I didn’t even notice what Wanda was doing in time to be afraid or to look away, and so I was looking when she threw the chain around him.
I saw what he had done to get away from it last time because he almost did it again. He twisted to get out from under the chain, but this time when he did it, Miryem threw herself to the floor, and because he had her hand, she pulled him off his feet a little, and Wanda brought her arms down fast and kept the chain around him. So when he stood up again, he was still inside the chain. His face was so angry a white light came into it. He did not let go of Miryem’s hand, but he reached out with his other hand and grabbed the ends of the chain and pulled them.
He almost dragged Wanda off her feet, but Sergey ran to her across the room and grabbed the chain too. He grabbed one end of the chain and Wanda grabbed one end of the chain and then they were both holding tight with their feet hard like trying to pull a stump out of the ground, except the stump was pulling back at them, and it was about to pull them down instead of them pulling it up. And I was scared, I was so scared, but I thought, it was the same as the dancing, and I climbed out from under the table and I ran across the room and I grabbed hold of the knot of Wanda’s apron and the back of Sergey’s old rope belt and I made the circle with them.
When I did that, the Staryk made a shriek that was like the sound when the ice on the river broke at the end of winter. It was a terrible noise and it made my ears hurt, but I kept holding on and he stopped making it. He stood there and stamped his foot and said to Wanda angrily, “Very well, you have bound me! What will you have to let me go?”
We stood there and then Wanda said, “Leave Miryem and go!” Miryem was still on the floor trying to pull free from him, but he was still holding her hand.
The Staryk glared back at her, glittering. “No! You have caught me with silver, but your arms have not the strength to hold me. I will not surrender my lady!”
Then he threw himself against the chains again, and tried to break our hands loose. But it was not just us holding anymore: Panov Mandelstam had climbed up from the ground and he had come and grabbed the chain with Wanda, and Panova Mandelstam was pulling on Sergey’s side, and she and Panov Mandelstam were holding hands behind my back to help me be strong. We were all pulling tight, and he nearly dragged loose anyway, but he didn’t, and then he stopped and was angry again, and he said to Wanda, “What will you have to loose your bond? Ask for something else, or fear what I shall do when you tire!”
But Wanda shook her head and said, “Let Miryem go!” and he shrieked that awful ice-breaking noise again and hissed, “Never! I will not leave you, my queen, my golden lady; once I was a fool, twice I will not be!” and he fought again, so hard he pulled us across the floor, all of us with our feet sliding and almost falling. I thought, I thought, we could not hold him for much longer. I could see that Wanda’s hands and Sergey’s hands were slipping on the chain. They had put their fingers into the links, but their hands were getting sweaty and the chain had slid through one link at a time and they could not risk letting go of it long enough to grab it higher again, or else he would pull free at once.
But this one more time we held on to him, and he stopped. He breathed hard, three times. Big clouds of frost streamed away from his lips when he panted. Then he stood up very tall, and ice started to grow on him. It crept out from his edges in a thin layer that you could see through and then a little more crept over it and then there was another thin edge poking out but the first one was thicker, and that kept happening over and over and the ice was getting sharp and prickly and I could feel the terrible cold of it on my face. Sergey and Wanda were both leaning away from it, and it was climbing down the chain towards their fingers.
The Staryk did not shriek at Wanda again. When he spoke this time, he sounded soft instead, like when deep snow has stopped falling and you go outside and everything is very quiet. “Let go, mortal, let go, and ask a different boon of me,” he said. “I will give you a treasure of jewels or elixir of long life; I will even give you back the spring, in fair return for holding fast. But you reach too far, and dare too high, when you ask me for my queen. Try me thus once again, and know I will lay winter in your flesh and flay your hearts open to freeze in red blood upon that snow: you have no high powers, no gift of magic true, and love alone cannot give you strength to hold me.”
When he said that, I knew he was not lying. We all knew it. And Miryem got up on her feet again. She had stopped pulling on his hand where it was around her wrist. She said, “Wanda,” and she meant that we should let the Staryk go.
But Wanda looked at Miryem and she said, “No,” and it was the no she had said to our father, in our house, when he wanted to eat her up.
I didn’t mean to say no to him that day. I had never said no to him before, because I knew if we did he would hurt us, and he hurt us anyway already, and so I knew he would hurt us even worse if we said no. I would not have even thought of saying no to him no matter what he did, because he could always do something worse. And when Wanda said no to him, I said no too, but I didn’t really decide to say no, I just said it. But now, I thought, I had said it because there wasn’t anything worse he could do to me than hit Wanda with that poker over and over and make her dead while I was there just watching. If he was going to do that then I could be dead too, and that would not be as bad as just standing there.
Now Wanda was saying no because there wasn’t anything worse that the Staryk could do to her but take Miryem away. And I wasn’t sure if I thought so myself, but then I thought, I could not let go without making Panova Mandelstam and Panov Mandelstam let go too, because their arms were around me. And being dead would not be as bad as having to look at Panova Mandelstam after I did that to her.
But the Staryk was not lying either. It was not like with Da where there was Sergey to come in and be stronger than him and push him into the fire. Sergey was already helping as much as he could, and none of us were as big and strong as the Staryk. So we were going to all be dead. There was nothing we could do about it except let go. And we were not going to let go.
And then a hoarse awful wet voice said, “A chain of silver to bind him tight, a ring of fire to quench his might,” and all around us twelve great candles lit in flame. I looked around and the tsar was standing again: the tsarina had put those candles in a big circle all around us, while we were trying to hold the Staryk, and then she had gone to the tsar and helped him stand up in the fireplace. She was holding him up, and he had said those words out of his broken mouth even though they came out in popping red bubbles of blood. He was pointing his hand out: it was shaking and the fingers were bent in terrible ways, but with one finger he was pointing, and all the candles burst into tall hot flames almost as long as the candles were tall.