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B E A S T
We are uncertain how many years it has been, or how
many centuries. To half of us the passage of time is tiny and measured, and
with no measuring devices it is impossible to track. To the other it is
infinite, immeasurable, a stream in which all things drown in the end. We
are at odds because of this and so many things, and when the sun fades and
the dark returns we mark it only as a change in the light.
The storm that comes tonight is not the change we felt
coming. But in the howl of the night wind and the blinding violet of the
snow, there is nothing else to be sensed. And so we retreat, to pace inside
our den, to remember sleep, to wait for another change in the light.
T W O
YEVA’S FATHER ASKED FOR the night to think of a plan,
so Yeva did not share with her sisters what she had overheard, nor
participate in their whispered speculation after they had blown out the
candle in the room they shared. She lay awake after her sisters had drifted
off to sleep, watching the ceiling and listening to the wind beyond the
window.
At dawn she rose sandy-eyed and stiff and crept down to
the kitchen, carrying her shoes so as not to wake her sisters. The kitchen
was cold and empty—Pechta had declined to make an appearance yet,
unsurprising after the previous evening’s excitement. Yeva stirred the fire
back up, checked on the bread rising in its nook in the hearth, and put the
kettle on over the flames. Then she slipped her icy feet into her shoes,
shivering and standing with her back to the kitchen fire.
After a time the household drifted to life again, the
servants waking and accepting mugs of tea, her sisters joining them once
the sunlight reached the edge of the window. The wind had tossed around the
snow but the storm had not brought much more of it, leaving the world newly
coated in a thin layer of white, with dark patches of frozen slush all up
and down the sides of the buildings and the windowpanes. The ice shattered
the light as it entered the house, sending it in knives and sunbursts
across the rugs and floorboards.
No one spoke of the previous night, neither the sisters
nor the servants. And yet there was an air of uneasy expectance, as if
everyone were waiting, but too fearful to ask what they were waiting for.
Eventually Yeva’s father appeared in the entryway to the
kitchen. His eyes were red-rimmed and tired, his face drooping and mouth
tight. He looked as if he’d gotten no more sleep than Yeva had.
“Girls,” he said, the sharp-cut sunlight outlining his
form in the doorway. “Staff. Would you all please come join me in the
parlor?”
Yeva poured a mug of tea, then followed the rest of the
assemblage out into the living room. Her father had relit the fire there,
but only moments before. The room was still freezing, and she pressed the
mug of tea into her father’s hand before huddling close to her sisters by
the fireplace.
He stood next to his chair and gazed at the floor near
Yeva’s feet for a time. He lifted his head. “A month ago,” he began, “I
sent out a caravan headed for Constantinople. If the venture were successful,
it would mean a new trade route, which would bring you girls—and the town,
and all the surrounding cities—countless luxuries. And perhaps the return
of the priests and of books, education, maps, life from beyond our borders.
The Mongols prevent us from making outside contacts, but I thought—” He
shook his head, as if at the folly of such a dream.
“It was a foolish risk. A gamble I should not have
taken.”
Yeva wanted to look at her sisters to see if they had
figured it out yet, if they were beginning to understand the meaning of the
visitor in the night. But she could not take her eyes off her father’s
weary face.
“Our entire fortune was tied up in the caravan, along
with investments from merchants and noblemen, vouchsafed by me. It is all
gone.”
The breath went out of the room. Yeva felt Lena go
stiff, and from across the room she heard one of the maidservants stifle a
gasp.
“I have thought all night on what to do, and spent some
time adding up what I owe to the investors. Our only option is to sell the house
and most of our possessions. For you, the staff, I will find positions with
the neighboring households. You will all have outstanding references. I
still own my hunting cabin in the north wood. The girls and I will move
there, and I will take up hunting again, and attempt to earn enough to pay
back our debts.”
Silence followed this announcement, as though everyone
in the room were waiting for him to continue. He stepped to the side and
sank down into his chair, doubled over with his elbows resting on his
knees, mug dangling between them from his fingertips.
Pechta began to wail, turning to one of the
maidservants and burying her face in her shoulder. It seemed this was the
cue for the entire household to break down—the two maidservants started to
sob, as Albe stood gawking in shocked silence and Yeva’s sisters put their
arms around each other. Yeva stood alone, watching her father. Amid the
chaos, he lifted his head to meet her eye.
Yeva had always longed for nothing more than to live at
her father’s hunting cabin, where she had spent so many happy days with him
as a child on their expeditions. This—this meant she was free of trips to
see the baronessa, free of figuring out how to deal with Solmir, how to
tell her sisters where his interest truly lay. But at what cost? Would
Radak still want to wed Lena if she had no wealth and connections to offer?
And the hunting cabin was leagues from the nearest town. There were no
eligible young men in the wilderness to speak for her and her sister, only
the trees and the wind and the beasts.
She had seen the spirit die in her father’s eyes. He
sat doubled over, looking up at her like a man of eighty. How long could he
continue to hunt? He had not had to provide for himself, much less a
family, solely by hunting in nearly twenty years.
A chunk of ice detached itself from the roof and slid
off, scraping loudly across the sniffles and sobs punctuating the quiet.
Winter was coming fast.
Yeva’s sisters watched their possessions and their
futures being auctioned off to the highest bidders with no tears and with
no outward signs of sorrow. Though in private Lena’s face was often drawn
with worry—for her fiancé, Radak, was away on business and would not hear
of what had befallen them until after they had gone—to the outside world,
she and Asenka were as sunny as ever. They cheerfully explained to
prospective buyers why this mirror was their favorite, that dress the most
stylish, this mother-of-pearl box the most beautiful. If Yeva had inherited
her father’s skill at hunting, they had inherited his ability to negotiate
a deal. They earned more from their possessions than their father had
calculated, but it still was not near enough to pay back the investors he
owed.
In his youth, Yeva’s father had been widely considered
the best hunter in the land. Though there were many hunters who took
advantage of the rich wilderness in the black wood, he was the only one who
ventured into its heart. Yeva’s father had told her stories when she was
little of the things he claimed to have seen: the life-sucking kudlak, the great bears
to the north who could change their fur to match the ice, the stuhac, who would steal
the ligaments from a man’s legs to make bindings for his own feet in the
snow. Soaring above them all was the story of the Firebird—Yeva’s favorite
for as long as she could remember. Despite the darkness and danger of the
black wood, the Firebird at its heart was a burning beacon. No hunter could
catch it— the only one who had ever come close was nothing more than a
legend of a hundred years or more. And he had only caught a single feather
from its tail.
Yeva used to dream of being the one to catch the
Firebird— she dreamed of it long after she stopped believing in the other
tales her father spun for her. But even without the kudlak, without the
monsters of the fairy tales she loved as a child, the depths of the wood
were dangerous, far more deadly than the more commonly hunted perimeters of
the wilderness.
Her father had once fearlessly ventured into the
deepest reaches of the wood, but how could he return to such a life now? He
had given up the danger of the hunt for love of Yeva’s mother, who could
not bear to see him disappear into the black wood day after day.
And what of his heart? He’d huddled in front of the
fire that night like a broken man. He was proud, as proud of his mercantile
empire as he’d been of his hunting abilities as a younger man. He could not
hope to earn enough simply from pelts and meat of deer and rabbit; he would
have to venture deep to bring back the heads and skins of trophy game. How
could he hope to be so bold and so strong now, with this humiliation and
ruin weighing on him like twenty extra years?
So Yeva’s sisters tried to earn as much as they could
from their treasures, parting with them readily. Yeva lacked their skill
with people and was more than happy to leave the sale of her own
possessions to them. She kept aside only a few of her plainest dresses to
bring with her to the cabin.
There was talk of selling the dogs as well, for they
were purebred and Yeva’s father could still hunt without them. Yeva’s heart
nearly broke at the idea, but she recalled her sisters cheerfully handing
over their cherished books and trinkets, and she agreed to meet a man who
had asked about purchasing them. Pelei was cautiously interested in the
prospective buyer, sniffing at his hand with great determination, but
Doe-Eyes— the gentlest dog Yeva had ever encountered—flung her ears right
back and growled when he approached, the fur standing up along her back in
a ridge.
Yeva’s father had shrugged after the buyer had left,
and said only, “I suppose we will have to build them a kennel to sleep in
at the cabin.”
With the dogs safe, Yeva turned her mind to packing the
family’s few remaining belongings. At her father’s instruction she had
placed three of their four servants with new families—only Albe remained.
He came to them one morning and dropped to the floor, knees striking wood
with a loud thud.
“Please let me come, master, mistresses,” he begged,
taking hold of Tvertko’s hand. “You know I’m no good, I’ll only be thrown
out of another house. I break things and I forget. But for you I’ll be
better. I can do a bit of cooking and cleaning and whatever you need, I’ll
make it worth keeping me, I will.”
“But we can’t pay you,” Yeva said gently, as her father
patted Albe’s hand and tried to get him to stand back up.
“Don’t care, miss,” he protested. “Where else would I
go? Been here since me mother died, been with you since I was seven. Where
else would I go?”
From then on Albe oversaw the packing, and would
relieve Yeva of anything she tried to carry out to the wagon. He generally
made a nuisance of himself, always underfoot and performing his tasks with
such enthusiasm that he nearly knocked the sisters over. But his antics
caused them to smile more often than shout at him, and so when the family
finally departed the house, their spirits were not quite as low as they
might have been otherwise.
With the men walking and the dogs trotting alongside,
and the wagon pulled by the plow horse they’d borrowed from a neighbor in
exchange for a rug, they set off on the road north.
It was a three-day journey from their house in town to
their father’s hunting cabin. They stayed in inns along the way, an expense
Yeva protested each night. But her father refused to allow his girls to
spend the night in a barn, or worse, wrapped in their cloaks on the ground
beside the road—they had not sunk that low, he said, in a too-calm voice that
Yeva knew better than to question. On the third day the weather took a turn
for the worse, the skies lowering and gathering gray until the air turned
white with snow in the late afternoon.
As the day faded toward twilight Doe-Eyes began to
stumble, her long legs shaking in the snow. Yeva hopped down in order to
help lift the dog up into the back of the wagon, and joined her there.
Doe-Eyes was built for speed, bred in a land far to the west, with a slim
body and shorter fur; a summer dog, not bred for the winter hardships she’d
face at the edge of the black wood.
Yeva rubbed and rubbed at the dog’s body and legs until
the tremble left them. Doe-Eyes licked her wrist and curled herself into a
nest Yeva made of her remaining few dresses. They’d be covered in hair and
smell like dog, but what did Yeva care? Out here there would be no
baronessa to notice. Yeva left the dog slumbering in her nest and rejoined
her sisters atop the broad wagon.
Beside her she felt Lena tremble, and she glanced
aside. Her sister’s face was turned resolutely out toward the passing
trees, but Yeva saw her hands, folded so tightly in her lap that the
knuckles shone white. They had sent word of their misfortunes to Lena’s
fiancé, but they’d had no time to wait for a reply, especially since there
was no guarantee the message would even find him. Radak would mostly likely
return from his business trip to find Lena gone, and all reason for
marrying her too. There was no good now to be had from an alliance with the
family—to marry one of them would be to marry their debts, which could well
cripple a young entrepreneur.
Yeva folded her hands over her sister’s. They were
nearly as cold as hers were, but they relaxed under her touch and after a
time, both Yeva’s hands and Lena’s warmed to the company.
The weather worsened as they turned from the high road
onto a smaller path into the woods, and they had to break their own trail
through the snow, for no one had come this way since the storm had begun.
Albe called out, suggesting they turn back and make for the inn several
leagues behind. Yeva’s father said something in reply that she could not
hear, but Albe quieted, tugging his coat more closely about his shoulders.
She jumped down from the wagon, landing calf-deep in snow, and shouted over
the wind, “Take my seat awhile, Albe.”
He protested, face flushing beet red, but she shook her
head. “Please—I’d like to speak to my father in private.”
Reluctantly Albe let her give him a leg up onto the
wagon as it groaned along through the snow. Yeva stepped over to her father
and linked her arm through his, for warmth as much as companionship.
“That was kindly done,” he said, patting her hand.
“Right now, Albe is our only friend in the world.”
Her father’s hand stilled against hers, head bowing
against the biting cold. For a time there was only the jingle of the
horse’s harness and the groaning of the wagon, the dull thud of hoof on
snow, the occasional distant thump as a branch gave way and dropped its
heavy burden to the forest floor.
“I was a fool.” Her father’s voice was a whisper, but
the quiet of the snow did little to hide it. “Such a fool.”
Yeva had never had to comfort her father before. Her
heart squeezed with the kind of fear she never felt outside of nightmares,
the kind of fear that made her blood pound. “It isn’t your fault,” she said
finally, searching for any words that might ease the tension in the arm
linked through hers.
Her father exhaled a grunt of a laugh, the mist of it
hanging in front of his lips like a ghost. “We had enough. More than enough.
That caravan—I was a fool to put everything we had into such a fragile
venture. But I wanted more for you, for my girls—I wanted—”
His voice cracked, and with it Yeva’s heart. For
decades their town, along with a vast stretch of the country, had been cut
off from other parts of the world by marauders who intercepted travelers
and convoys alike. The books her father owned all came from a time before
the Mongols; the priests who had blessed Yeva at her naming ceremony were
some of the last to make it through on their pilgrimages.
“You wanted the world for us,” Yeva whispered, hugging
her father’s arm close against her body. “There’s no shame in that.” Still,
her heart stirred uneasily. Had she not been berating herself the same way
for wanting more than the life a husband like Solmir could offer her?
“I had the world,” her father replied, his pace
faltering for a few steps until Yeva stopped too. Her father’s red-rimmed
eyes met hers, the snow melting on his cheeks and trickling into his beard.
“I was just too blind to see it.”
Yeva swallowed hard. “You have us,” she said softly.
“We have you. That’s all we need. Come, Father—you’ll get stiff if you stop
moving.”
As they continued, Yeva found movement warmed her, and
that walking was much more preferable to riding on the wagon— but she had
not been walking for three days through ankle-deep snow. After just half an
hour she found that little-used muscles had begun to ache and protest the
exercise.
As dusk fell the cabin came into view, the same white
and black with snow and wood as the forest. The huddled occupants on the
wagon leaped down, Albe unhitching the horse as soon as the wagon pulled
into the lee of the house. Exhaustion made them all slow and stupid, even
those who had ridden on the wagon, for the cold and the swaying, jouncing
movement were nearly as wearying as walking. Asenka could barely move, her
bad leg was so stiff, and Lena helped her through the snow with some
difficulty. Yeva collected Doe-Eyes from her sleepy warm nest and whistled
for Pelei, who had roamed too far, dancing around the trees, sniffing and
shivering with excitement at their new surroundings. Albe put the horse in
a dilapidated shed to be tended later, and everyone made their way to the
house. It had lain unoccupied for the better part of a decade, and with a
long breath their father shoved the door open for the first time since Yeva
had been a child.
It was covered in dust and dirt, half the window
shutters broken, drifts of fallen leaves and snow filling the corners.
Something rustled in the back, its nest disturbed by the human arrivals.
The only light came from behind the broken shutters and from a hole in the
roof, plugged mostly with snow, allowing only for the cold blue glow of
twilight through the ice. Flakes drifted down from the hole, glinting in
the shaft of light.
This was not the cozy home Yeva had remembered from her
childhood. She found herself wishing her father had listened to Albe back
on the road—if he had, they would be warm and fed in an inn by now. But
then, her father’s too-thin purse would be several coins leaner.
They all stood inside the doorway, dripping snow and
ice onto the floor, surveying the dank interior of the cabin in silence.
Asenka spoke first, taking a limping step forward. “Albe,” she said softly,
“if you will be so good as to use the shovel there at the hearth and remove
the snow from inside, I will lay a fire.”
Lena, as if shaking herself from a dream, stumbled
forward to take her older sister’s arm and help her to the hearth. The two
set to clearing leaves from the fireplace as Albe took the ash shovel and
began hauling the snow out the windows. Yeva knelt and whispered to Pelei,
one hand on his quivering shoulder, “Go on, I know you smell them. Remind
them that this is our house.” When she straightened and pulled her hand
away, Pelei was off to the far corner of the cabin like a bolt from a
crossbow, sending frantic rustles throughout the leaves there as the
house’s previous occupants fled before him. Yeva located the broad, sturdy
table amid the debris and, with Albe’s assistance, set it on its legs and
then smoothed her hands over its top to wipe off the worst of the dust.
Yeva’s father remained in the doorway, unmoving,
watching his family get to work. When Yeva turned toward him he inhaled
sharply through his nose, passing his hand over his face. “My girls,” he
said hoarsely, pressing his lips together. After a silence he shook himself
and cocked his head toward Yeva with a smile. “I will go excavate the tea.”
And he left to begin bringing things in from the wagon.
Over the next few days the cabin slowly became
habitable. Albe was put to work felling a few nearby trees and hewing rough
timber to repair the worst holes and shore up the loft space to make it
safe. There was one bedroom at the back of the house and two pallets in the
loft. Tvertko and Albe took the beds in the loft, for Asenka could not
manage the ladder—she and Lena took the bed at the back of the house, the
one that had been their father’s when he still used this as a hunting
cabin.
Yeva herself made a pallet by the hearth. In the
evenings it was warm from the day’s fire, and as night grew thicker, the
dogs curled up on either side, and she was as cozy as any in the house. Her
father protested the arrangement, and her sisters too, but when Lena
offered to take it in turns with her sleeping on the floor, Yeva turned her
down.
“They are my dogs,” she pointed out with a smile, “and
you’ll only complain in the mornings of their smell.” Yeva was usually the
first in the family to wake anyway, and so it became her habit to stir the
fire at dawn so that the water was just beginning to boil for tea when Albe
came down the ladder rubbing his eyes.
Yeva’s father began making forays into the surrounding
forest, learning the woods again. He’d taught Yeva that the key to being a
good hunter was not to track a creature through the forest but to know the
forest so well it was like tracking your prey through your own home. He rarely
came back with much those early days, but he made imminent plans for trips
deeper into the woods.
Yeva begged him to let her come along.
“You’re not a child anymore,” said her father with a
sigh. “When I’ve paid my debts we’ll move back to town. By that time, I
fear, you’ll have gone so wild that the confines of civilization will break
your heart.”
“Please,” was all Yeva could think of to say. She had
no argument against it—even years after the last time they had been hunting
together, she still longed for the dark, cold cathedral of the wood.
He shook his head. “I won’t be persuaded on this,
Yeva.” She still flinched to hear the use of her proper name from her
father. “Besides, if you come with me, Doe-Eyes will try to follow, and you
know she can’t weather this cold.”
And so he left her behind, traveling deeper and deeper
into the forest each time with Pelei at his side. Sometimes he was gone two
or three days, leaving Yeva and her sisters, and Albe, alone in the house.
Yeva kept to her bed by the fireplace. Doe-Eyes would have whined and cried
all night, unable to climb the ladder to the loft, had Yeva taken over her
father’s room in his absence.
It was during one of her father’s excursions that they
received their first visitor to the cabin, on an afternoon full of pale,
cold sunlight. Yeva and Lena were blocking up the gaps in the timbers of
the floor and the walls with clay, while Asenka sat by the hearth, mending
one of their father’s shirts. Doe-Eyes was executing a circuit around the
house, as she did every hour or so, alert for Pelei’s return. But instead
of the perk of her ears and frantic lash of her tail that heralded his
arrival, she went rigid, nose pointed toward the door and tail unmoving.
Yeva paused, her eyes on the dog. “Albe, is someone outside?”
The servant’s head peeked out from the edge of the
loft, where he was tidying. “I don’t hear anyone, miss.”
Yeva put a hand on Doe-Eyes’s shoulder and found the
muscles there solid as rock. “Could you please check?”
Albe slid down the ladder to land with a solid thunk on
the floor. He opened the door a crack, peering out across the gleaming
snow. “There is someone coming, miss,” he said, surprised.
Lena dropped her bowl of mud, sloshing some of it on
the floor. “Radak,” she whispered, glancing first at Yeva and then over at
Asenka, who had stopped mending and was staring back at her sister. “It has
to be. Oh, what if he’s come to break our engagement?”
“He hasn’t,” said Yeva firmly. “He wouldn’t. And if
that was his intention, he would hardly travel three days for it, he would
just never come at all.”
“It isn’t your young man, miss,” said Albe. Yeva
regretted having spoken—now each day that Radak didn’t come, Lena would be
more convinced he never would.
Albe stepped into the gap of the door, straightening
his shoulders. “Welcome, sir. May I help you?” He spoke to someone Yeva
couldn’t see, his form silhouetted by the blinding light off the snow
behind him.
“Is this Tvertko’s new house?” asked the visitor. “I’ve
come to see him—and his daughter.”
Albe stepped back, allowing the man inside. As soon as
the door closed behind him and shut out the daylight, his features became
clear. It was a young man, perhaps five or six years Yeva’s senior, with
dark hair and an easy smile. He had friendly hazel eyes that cast over the
room, going first to Asenka at the fireplace and then to Lena by the wall,
and then to Yeva. And there his eyes stayed. There was a gasp from the
hearth, and Yeva turned to see that Asenka had gone white, staring at the
man in the doorway.
It was Solmir.
Copyright © 2017 by Meagan Spooner
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