“Irina, what is it?” I whispered.
“Fire,” she said. “The fire is coming back. Magreta, go quickly—”
But it was too late. A hand came out of the glass, terribly, like a fish surfacing out of still water, and it caught the edge of the mirror’s frame with its fingertips. It looked like a low-burning log, grey with ash and scorched soot-black beneath, with a core of glowing flame. A second came out also and together they pulled the demon’s head and shoulders out all at once. I could not move. I was a rabbit, a deer, halted in the trees, trying to be small and still and unseen; I was hiding in a dark cellar behind a secret door, hoping not to be heard. My voice was locked in my throat.
The demon came out so quickly, uncovered by any illusion of being a man. It crawled with dreadful speed out of the mirror and onto the floor, smoke rising in curls from its back, its legs dragging and dark behind it, and caught with a thrashing hand at the table nearby to pull itself up, the table where the magical crown stood. “Irina, Irina sweet, what betrayal you have wrought against me!” it hissed at her, even as it came. “Never again can I feast in the winter halls! He came, he came, the winter king; the queen closed the mountain against me! They banished me forth, they carved my strength, she stole my flame to mend their wall!”
It turned and with a great sweep of its smoking arm it struck away the mirror and the table over; the glass shattered everywhere, and the crown rolled over the floor beneath the bed. Irina moved for me; she pushed me away towards the door, but the demon went darting quicker than we could, in a sudden violent rush over the floor despite its dragging feet, and blocked our way. It stamped on the floor heavily, and a little of the flame glowed red again in its thighs and down to a few spark-flickers deep in its feet, hot coals being stirred to wake a fire. “I am so thirsty, I am so parched!” the demon said, a complaining crackle. “I must drink deep again! I wanted to linger, Irina, on you! How long I would have savored your taste! But at least weep for me once, Irina sweet, and give me a measure of pain.”
I was weeping, I was afraid; but Irina stood in front of me straight and said, cold as ice, even in the face of the demon, “I brought the Staryk to you, Chernobog, as I promised, and I let you into the Staryk realm. And I have wept already once, for what you would have done. I have given you all you have asked for. I will give you nothing more.”
He snarled at her and came upon us. I sank in terror as my legs gave way beneath me, falling back upon the couch; I could not even look away as he thrust himself across the room and seized Irina by her arms, his hot breath a wind in our faces, horror—and then he recoiled with a howling as if he was the one burned, and jumped back cradling both his hands.
They looked like cold coals fresh from the scuttle that had never seen a fire. He moaned and hissed and wailed over his hands, opening and closing them as though they pained him after a day of long work. Gouts of steam came rising as he stretched them until a crackle of flame burst out through the surface and they were glowing furnace-red again. Then he looked up from them at Irina in wide burning fury and shrieked in rage, “No! No! You are mine! My feast!” and stamped, and then he turned—turned upon me, and I screamed at last, my throat opened, as he lunged to seize me instead.
For a moment only I felt the touch of his dreadful fingers on my face: heat like a fever beneath them, sweating and sick. But it was a fever in someone else’s body, and it did not come into mine; instead the demon sprang back from me with another crackling wail, those fingertips gone dull-cold once more. He stared down at me with an open mouth of rage, flames of hell leaping within like a deep furnace. Irina put her hand on my shoulder. “Me and mine,” she said slowly. “You must leave me and mine alone, Chernobog; you gave your word, and I have had nothing else of you.”
He was staring at her when the door of the room opened. A scullery-maid looked in timidly, as if she’d heard my scream and come to see what was wrong. She stared at the demon and her mouth opened, but it was too much wrong; she too went animal-still in horror. The demon turned and saw her; it went lunging at her, though it paused for a moment, gone wary, and reached down with one finger only to touch her soft young cheek as she turned her face cringing away in terror, her hands held up to ward.
I covered my mouth with my hands; I almost screamed again, but next to me Irina did not even move. She stood still, tall and proud, looking across the room at the demon with her cold, clear eyes, and there was no surprise in her face when the demon pulled its finger away with a snarling noise and twisted back and came towards us again, enraged. But he was not so wild as to try to put his hands on us again, though he wanted to: he stopped short and stamped furiously. “No!” he shrieked. “No! I promised safety only to you and yours!”
“Yes,” Irina said. “And she also is mine. All of them are mine, my people; every last soul in Lithvas. And you will touch none of them again.”
The demon stood there staring at her, his shoulders heaving, the flame burning low in the sockets of his skull and his teeth dull coals. He ground them together and spat, “Liar! Cheat! You have denied me my feasting! You have stolen my throne! But this will not be my end. I will find a new kingdom, I will find a new hearth, I will find a way to feed again!”
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.