The Shining Falcon

They'd been putting off the matter of the pig for as long as possible. «It's no good," said Danilo at last. «We can't carry him through the winter. And we need the meat.»

«Can't we just call in the butcher?» Vasilissa asked without thinking, then added softly, «Oh.» Her eyes widened at the thought; her face paled. And suddenly, hands over mouth, she was running out to their rickety outhouse.

«So much for Lissa as pig-slayer," Maria said.

Later, she regretted that feeling of smug superiority. Neither Danilo nor she had the vaguest idea of how to kill a pig. After a long and horrifying struggle, Danilo finally managed to brain the madly squealing beast with a club, and cut its throat. Maria grimly held a basin to catch the blood, telling herself it was precious food, thinking of blood puddings, sausages. She steeled herself to watch the full basin.

And then she too was hurrying off to be sick.

Still the winter came on, tearing the last leaves from the trees, leaving the trunks and branches dour and lonely in the long twilights and chill nights. Vasilissa cried out to find the water frozen in the washbasin one morning, and she and Maria went frantically over the garden one more time, trying to glean the last turnip from the freezing soil. At last Maria straightened, shivering through thick layers of clothing.

«That's it, Lissa. There's no more any of us can do now. Except wait.»

«And pray," her sister added softly.

The forest lay quietly under the snow, bearing about it an air of tranquility and deadliness, making Maria think of some alien creature well aware of the presence of three little humans, well able to destroy them, but simply not caring enough to make the effort. Stay out in cold sharp enough to shatter a knife, she told herself, and the creature would most certainly strike to kill.

There was nothing for the three of them to do now, save see to Brownie, secure and shaggy in his dense winter fur, and to those chickens weather-wise enough to stay huddled together, safe within their coop. The days grew short and crisp, with air that froze the lungs, long nights filled with distant wolf-song. And all at once there was time, too much time, long spans of huddling before the stove and staring blankly into the fire, or mending clothes that had been mended twenty times over, or checking and rechecking the stores that were already dwindling—they were get-ting heartily sick of turnips and smoked pork, and beginning to dream about fresh fish, sweet cakes, precious salt—and conversation.

For a while Maria tried to entertain the three of them with storytelling and the music of her sweet-stringed gusla. But words seemed out of place in the heavy winter silence, and music thin and unbearably lonely.

They'd long ago lost track of the calendar, making one half-hearted attempt to celebrate what they estimated must be Yuletide, but slowly they lost interest in measuring the count of days, resigned as any animals. As the painful time dragged on, day into night, night into day, Vasilissa shrank so much into herself that Maria had nightmares of her never being able to reenter the living world. Didn't her father see what was happening?

But Danilo, reacting in his own way to the boredom and the fear, was lost in the memory of the injustice done him. The firelight made his brooding face look alien, cruel. Maria shuddered, and deliberately picked fights with Vasilissa, as much to stir her sister's blood as to help Maria hold to her own sanity, and prayed for the winter to end. But no one seemed to hear her.

Chapter XI Awakenings

She lay full‑length and languorous in the warm spring meadow, the new grass soft and cool against her bare skin, her long hair shining golden in the sunlight, so attractive a contrast against the bright young green that she kept turning her head lazily from side to side to admire it. Birdsong and insect chirpings were dreamy and soft in the quiet air, and the sweet scents of growth were all about her. Ljuba laughed softly for sheer pleasure, and a falcon's chuckle answered her.

Finist. Finist had come swooping silently down to a landing, altering shape smoothly till he was man again, sprawled lazily beside her, his long, supple body as golden in the sunlight as her own.

«Ljuba…» Her name was a caress on his lips. «The winter was long and lonely.»

«You've forgiven me? Those candles—the enchantment‑I did it only because I love you.»

«Akh, my dear… What man could resist you? What man could fault you?»

«Finist…» She reached out an arm to encircle his neck,, pulling him, unresisting, down across her, welcoming his strength. His lips brushed her cheek, nibbled teasingly at an earlobe. But then, bewilderingly, he was murmuring:

«But there is still the little matter of Erema, and the knife.»

«I had nothing to do with any — "

«You killed him, didn't you? You destroyed him, mind and body.»

«Finist, no!»

«You killed him to get at me. You killed him to steal my throne.»

«No, oh, no!»