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October 11 - October 16, 2024
She likes me because we both glow at night.”
“That is what we are fighting for,” said Sasha. “Not for Moscow, or even Dmitrii; not for the sake of any of her squabbling princes. But for the land that bore us; man and devil alike.”
Dmitrii looked cheerful, like a boy caught in mischief. His attendants, the ones Sasha could see, looked simultaneously anxious and exasperated.
“I have lived a long time, but I have never seen such a magic as this, to draw all our people into war as one.”
“Men create enough chaos without me,” said the Bear. “I am just going to enjoy it.
I will be at the lake when you return, she said. You may prepare a warm place for me on stormy nights, and comb my mane.
“I will guard it,” said Vasya. “And I will watch over my family. And I will ride the world, in between times, through the farthest countries of dark and day. It is enough for one life.”
But—I think that I would rather feel pain than not feel anything at all. Perhaps I am grown mortal, after all.”
Well, you have a realm in the winter forest, and I have mine, on the bow-curve of a lake. Perhaps we might forge one country in secret, a country of shadows, behind and beneath Dmitrii’s Russia. For there must always be a land for chyerti, for witches and for sorcerers, and for followers of the forest.”
“A future,” returned the frost-demon. “For men will say in later years that this was the battle that made Rus’ a nation of one people. And chyerti will live on, unfaded.”
The wild darkness of Midnight was all about them now. But somewhere ahead, a light shone through the trees.
But the concept of dvoeveriye, dual faith, persisted in Russia up until the Revolution. Orthodoxy coexisted with paganism in peace. Who is to say that wasn’t the work of a girl with strange gifts and green eyes? Who is to say, in the end, that the three guardians of Russia are not a witch, a frost-demon, and a chaos-spirit?
