Текст книги "The Collected Short Fiction of C.J. Cherryh "

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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The sun climbed higher still, until it passed noon. Andrei wrapped his scarf about his face to warm his breath, and omitted the eyeshields, for there was still haze in the heavens, and the snow lay white and thick everywhere. There were few tracks, no promise of good hunting; the snow had not been long enough to turn the beasts desperate and reckless . . nor was the day warm enough to tempt them out of hiding. He should have waited a day, but the thought of the dark loft and sitting before the fire with nothing to do oppressed him. In idleness he had evil memory for company. He came out to deny it, to laugh at it, to hunt and to win this time. He was afraid. He had never felt the like before. Even in the bright, clear daylight he felt what he had felt in that ride to the gates, with the wolves baying at his back. He was afraid of fear. . . for the hunt was his livelihood, and when he feared too much, he could not come outside the walls. He rose in his stirrups and looked back, settled forward again as he rode. They were long out of sight of the city's wooden walls; snowy hills and snowy fields stretched in all directions but the south, where forest stood thickly whited and iced. There was no sound but Umnik's regular moving, the creak of harness, and the whuff of breath.

Umnik moved more slowly now, having run out his first wind, wading almost knee-deep along the trail. And there was such beauty in the white snow that his fear grew less. He stopped the horse and turned and looked all about him, heard a rapid, doggish panting at his back. He spun, hauling at the reins, and Umnik shied in the deep drift, rose on hind legs, almost falling. Nothing was there. He steadied the horse and patted it, and nothing was there. The light grew; the clouds parted. He reached for the eyeshields as the snows gathered the sunflares, misted gold and rose and amber; Umnik stood still, and Andrei stopped with the eyeshields in his hand. . . feeling a fascination for that light—for light had concealed the Wolf. He looked to the far hills—and to the sky, into the sun. He had never looked up in his life, save a furtive glance to know the condition of the sky—but not to see it. It smote his heart. And he looked north. The wolf was there, standing watchfully on the surface of a new drift, and its eyes were like the sun, and its coat was touched with the subtle shifting colors.

He whipped Umnik and rode; he never remembered beginning. . . but he and Umnik skimmed the snows in terror, the white wolf never far.

At last the city was before them, and he took the horn from his side to blow, but the sound of it seemed dim. Umnik faltered, and he whipped the pony, drove him, up to the approach to the city, across the wooden bridge and to the southern gate, while white shapes leaped and plunged about him and voices howled, far and still, as if his hearing were dulled, and all the world was wrapped in cold. Umnik slowed as they came to the opening gates, but he whipped the pony harder, and rode upon the streets, hooves skidding on the snow, and startled citizens and children with a sled scurried from the horse's path. He stopped, looked about, and the gates were closing slowly. "The wolves," he cried, but Pyotr the gate warden looked strangely at him, continuing to heave at the gates.

Nothing had been there. The wolves were in his own eyes. He knew this suddenly, and the cold grew deeper in his heart.

"Are you all right, Andrei?" Pyotr asked.

He nodded, cold and shamed by the death he saw for himself. He reached vaguely for Umnik's reins, remembered how he had beaten the pony, and patted his neck as he led Umnik away down the street. Umnik shook himself, walked slowly and with head hanging, as if perhaps a bit of the coldness had come into his heart too, as if it had been driven there with blows. He did not go home. He went to the house of old Mischa the hunter, which huddled small and antlered and not so bright as others between the market stalls and the public baths. Snow had drifted heavily there, almost buried it to the eaves on one side. The stone head of a forgotten hero loomed up, peering out of the snow with only the dimmest impression of features. He walked upon the porch and tied Umnik to its rail, stamped his boots and opened the first door, walked across the inner porch and rapped at the second.

There was no answer, no forbidding. "Mischa," he called, "it's Andrei Gorodin." He walked in, sweltering already in the warmth within, redolent with the smell of boiling oils and burned grease and dried herbs that was Mischa's house; antlers were everywhere, and feathers and a clutter of oddments. And a huddle of blankets before the fire. . . that was Mischa himself, a wrinkled face and dark narrow eyes and a skein of grisled hair trailing from his hood. One hand held a bundle of herbs which he had been crumbling into a saucer; there was no left hand: a wolf had gotten that, when Mischa had been a hunter himself. . . but that was before Andrei had been born. Andrei crouched down and met Mischa's sightless eyes.

"So?" asked Mischa.

The question stopped behind his lips. And slowly Mischa's hand lifted, touched his face spiderwise, drifted to his chest as if it searched for something there as well.

"A visit with no questions, Andrei Vasilyevitch?"

"I have lost my luck, Mischa."

"So." Mischa dipped up water from the kettle, ladled it into the bowl, passed it to him. He took the bowl in gloved hands, inhaled the vapor, sipped the surface, for there was danger in heat so intense after the cold outside. He drank more after a moment, but the cold did not leave, nor the veil on the world dimmish.

"I see wolves," Andrei said.

The darkened eyes rested on his, wrinkle-girt as though they were set in cracked stone.

"A white wolf," Andrei said. "Snow white. Ice white." Old Mischa crumbled more herbs into yet another bowl, ladled in more water, drank, black eyes hooded.

"I shot at it," Andrei said. "But it was there again today. I've looked into the sun, Mischa." Mischa stared at him as if the eyes could see.

"What shall I do, old hunter?"

Mischa moved his left hand, showing the stump. "Appease it," he said. "That is all you can hope to do."

Andrei set down the bowl, wrapped his furred arms the tighter about him, gazed at the old hunter. Wizard. Seer of visions-who had had the white sickness—and lived.

"You have looked," the seer said. "You have talked to the wind and heard it answer; you have run ahead of the wolf. And the light has got into your eyes, as it did your father's, my old friend. It took all of him. I gave it part of me. And I am still alive, Andrei Vasilyevitch. Your mother birthed you and pined away; and so they both went. But I am still alive, friend's son." Andrei stumbled up and hurried for the door, looked back at the wizened face shrouded in gray hood, single hand cupping the bowl. He felt the cold even greater than before, on face and in heart, wherever the blind hunter's fingers had touched. "I will bring your fee," he said, "on my next hunt, a fat rabbit or two, Mischa."

"I take nothing," the old man said. "Not from you, until you see, Andrei Vasilyevitch." He fled the house, stamped outside and closed the outer door. Umnik waited. He walked down the step to the pony, and noticed for the first time how the paint was peeling on the house opposite, how all the colors of Moskva looked gaudy, how stained the snow and how disarrayed the people, bundled in mismatched furs.

Slowly, with a squinting of his eye and a turning of his shoulder, he looked up. Colors shifted in the sky, danced along the rooftops, ran the ridges, streaming glories of pink and gold. Thiswas beauty. About him was painted ugliness.

All his heart longed to go on looking, to go out to the ice and ride into the north, into the pure fair beauty.

But the Wolf was there. And the beauty killed.

He shuddered, took Umnik's reins and walked slowly into the street, walked down it among people who stared curiously and whispered behind their hands. This was the wasting. He knew now. . . what drank up the souls of those who took ill with the sickness. It was vision. It was looking on all that hands made and knowing that one had only to look up—and having looked, to yield to that blankness which would exist after all the world was done. To measure one's self and one's acts against that white sheet, and to find them small, and unlovely after all. Beauty waited, outside the walls, near as a look at the unguarded sky; beauty waited. . . and the Wolf did.

Appease it, the old hunter said, no longer a hunter, Mischa who saw no more sunrises, who had given a part of himself to the wolves. . . to the Wolf.

He went home. Ilya and Ivan Nikolaev ran outside to meet him, and the women and children too, concerned for him. Anna came, and Katya, each hugging him. Quietly he took the harness from Umnik and expected he should go away to his stable. . . but Umnik stood. "Take him," he bade little Ivan, and the boy led the pony away. Andrei looked after the plodding horse and shivered. He felt within his gloved hand another hand, felt a touch upon his arm. . . . He looked into Anna's loving eyes, into her face, saw flaws which he had never seen before, the length of nose, the breadth of cheek, the imperfection of her brow. On it was the tiny fleck of a scar, not centered, and her hair, which he had always thought bright as the sunset on snow, was dull, the braids lusterless against the snowflakes blowing upon them, tiny stars sticking in the loose hair. . . . This was beauty, recalling cold, and fear.

"Come in," Anna urged him, and he surrendered the harness to Ilya, walked with Anna's hand in his, before them all to the house and the inner porch. He shed his outdoor boots and furs, and greeted the children indoors with a touch of his hand and greeted the old ones by the hearth with a kiss, seeing everywhere mortality, man's short span, and smallness.

"Andrei?" Anna sat by him, near the fireside, taking his hand again. He kissed and held hers because it was kind, but love and hope were dried up in him. . . a hunter who could not go outside the walls again, who sat with his soul withering within him.

There was nothing beautiful among men. There was only that beauty above and about Moskva. It would draw the mind from him, or cost the light of his eyes. He stared into the fire, and it was nothing to the brilliance of the sun on ice.

A silence settled about him, whether it was the silence of the house, that they knew there was something amiss with him, or the silence in his soul. He thought how easy it should be, how direly easy tomorrow noon, to walk outside, to stare at the sun until he had no more sight, but even then, there would be the memory.

He thought again and again of old Mischa, who had lost his eyes and lost his hand. . . appease it: but which had gone first, which availed against the Wolf? He should have asked.

"Andrei?" Hya took his arm. He heard someone weeping by him, perhaps Anna, or some other one who loved him. Perhaps it was himself. He saw Hya's face before his, much concerned, saw a hand pass before his eyes, heard them all discussing his plight, but he could not come back from that far place and argue with them. He had no desire in him.

They fed him, set food into his hands; and he ate, hardly tasting it. At last Anna took his face between her Soft hands and kissed him on the brow; as mother Katya did. "What is wrongwith Andrei?" a child's voice asked. He would have explained to the child but someone else did: "He is ill. He is hurt. Go to bed, child."

"His hands are cold," said another; and Anna's voice: "Lock the doors. Oh, lock the doors, don't let him stray." Some did walk away to die, taken with the wasting, who sought the night, and frozen death.

"I shall not go," he said, great effort to speak; and no easier when he had done it. It cheered them all. They hugged him and chafed his hands.

"Perhaps," said Anna's still, faraway voice, "he only looked up a little moment. Perhaps he will get well."

"He will," someone vowed, but he was not sure who. Easier to retreat, back into that far place, but they gave him no peace.

"I will see him to bed," Hya said. "Go, sleep. I will take care of him. No, Anna—Anna, please go."

Someone kissed him, gently, sadly. The house fell then slowly into silence. He rested, staring at the fire, disturbed only when Ilya would reach to stir the embers. "Will you go upstairs?" Dya asked at last. "Dare you sleep?"

He roused himself out of kindness to them who loved him, rose, and rising, caught at the mantlepiece, stared fixedly at the face of Hya's carven wolf, which seemed starker and truer than all else in the room. He looked at the other work which Ilya had made, the carven mantle itself, ran his fingers over the writhing wooden vines and leaves, touched the carven flowers, traced the gaudy, garish colors.

"I have seen beauty," he said. "Hya, you do not know. It waits out there—"

"Andrei," Hya said.

"I have seen colors. . . you have never seen." Hya reached out and turned his face toward him, lightly slapped his cheek. There was a terrible pain in Hya's face, like Anna's pain. "Tell me," Ilya said. He thought of it, and would not.

"Andrei, if you go, Anna will follow. Do you understand? Anna loves you; and you will never go alone."

He thought of this too, and deep within, tainted by self and small, there was a kindness where love had been, that was the other pole which drew him. The death outside pulled at him, but within the walls there was a bond to living souls, so that at last he knew what he ought to choose, which was Mischa's way. He would not wish this torment on those who loved him. Not on Anna.

"Is there still sun?" he asked. "No," Ilya said softly. "The sun has gone."

"Tomorrow then."

"What, tomorrow?" Ilya asked. "What will be tomorrow?" It was hard to resist Hya, close to him—so long his friend. Brother. Other self. "There was a wolf," he said slowly, leaning there against the mantel, and fingering the carvings Hya's hand had made. "I hunted it. . . and it hunts me. I have talked with old Mischa, do you know, Ilya? And Mischa knows that beast. Mischa said I must appease it, and then I shall be free; and so I shall. You love beauty, Hya, and I hunted it, and I have seen it. . . out there, I have seen the sun, and the light, and the ice, and I am cold, Ilya. I shall look now by little stolen moments and sooner or later I will have to go outside the walls. Then it will be waiting there."

"Anna—would follow you. Do you understand that, Andrei? How much she loves you?" He nodded. "So," he said, still staring at the wolf, "so I shall not wish to go. I shall try not to, Hya."

"What. . . did you see?"

He looked into Hya's eyes, and saw there a touch of that same cold. Of furtive desire. "No," he said. "Let be. Don't stay near me. Let me be."

"So that you can go, and die?"

He shrugged. Ilya stared at him, distraught. He patted Ilya's shoulder, walked away to the ladder to the loft. Stopped, for he could hear the wind outside, calling him, to the wolf. "It's there," he said. "Just outside."

"I shall watch you," Ilya said. "I shall; Anna will, one and then the other of us. We will not let you go."

He looked toward the door, seeing beyond it, into the blue night. Hya took his arm, had a burning candle with him, to light them to the loft. "Come," Ilya bade him, and he climbed the wooden ladder that was carved with flowers, up among the painted columns and posts of the loft, quietly passed the roomful of sleeping children. There was their own nook; Dya shut the door, touched the candle to the night lamp and blew the wick out, small ordinary acts, done every night of their lives, comforting now. Andrei moved of lifelong habit, undid his belt and hung it on the bedpost on his side, took off his boots, crawled beneath the cold, heavy bedclothes. Ilya tucked him in when he had lain down, as once Katya had nightly climbed the stairs to do; and he feigned quick sleep. Ilya stood there a moment, walked around then with a creaking of the aged boards, climbed in the other side. The bed was like ice; it remained so, but Andrei did not shiver. He lay still, and listened to the wind, listened to footsteps around the door downstairs, soft, padding steps that would never print the snow. Listened to the blowing of flakes from off the rooftree, and the fall of those particles onto drifts. Timbers boomed, like lightning strikes, and he would jump, and lie still again.

At last he could resist it no more, and stirred, thrust a foot for the cold airand the floor.

"Andrei," Ilya said at once, turned, rose on an elbow, reached out to take his shoulder. "Are you all right, Andrei?"

He lay back. "Let me go," he said finally. "Ilya, the wolf is out there. It will always be."

"Hush, be still." And when he moved, hardly aware that he moved to rise, Ilya held him back. "It waits," he said, protesting. "It waits, Ilya, and the cold will spread, more than to me alone. You know that."

"Hush." Ilya quietly rolled from the bed, and went around to his side, sat down there. "I shall get no sleep," Ilya said. "I shall never know if you are not walking in yours. How shall I rest, Andrei?

I promised Anna I would watch you."

He did not want to listen to this, but it touched through the numbness that possessed him. "You should let me go," he said. "I shall go. . . tomorrow or the next day. It will never be far, just outside the door. Umnik and me—it will have us."

"Hush." Ilya wrapped his wrist in his belt, then attached it to the bedpost; this he allowed, because it was Ilya, and he knew how greatly Ilya grieved; it was not fair that Ilya should worry so. Ilya took great pains, with this and with the other one, sat there, straightened his hair, his hand very gentle. "Sleep now," Ilya said. "Go to sleep; you will not wander in your dreams. You are safe."

He shut his eyes, thinking that the day would come, and other nights, and when he shut his eyes, the wolf was there, no less than he had been before, eyes like the sun, a white wolf in blue night, invisible against the snow which lay thick in the yard. The horses whickered softly, disturbed. Goats bleated. . . no need of alarm for them. They were safe in their warm stable, where the cold would never come. . . and it was the cold which waited.

He felt Ilya draw back, heard the creak of boards, the door open, heard Ilya go down the ladder. He felt a little distress then and pulled to be free, but Ilya's knots were snug, and the vision drank him back again, the blue night, the pale snows. Somewhere he heard the softest of sounds, and he dreamed the wolf retreated, standing warily out by the fence. And others were there, white and gaunt with famine. A vision came to him, of the house door opening softly in the dark and a figure in his furs, who carried his bow and his shafts. Umnik nickered softly, came out from the stable on his own, and his ears were pricked up and his eyes were full of the moving curtains of light which leapt and danced and flowed across the blue heavens. . . . The aurora, uncommonly bright and strange. The horse walked forward, nuzzled an offered hand and the two of them stood together, man and pony, beneath the glory of the sky. Slowly the man looked up, his face to the light, and it was Ilya, whose eyes, angry, showed the least fatal quickness as they gazed at the heavens. . . curiosity, and openness.

"There," Ilya said, tugging at Umnik's long mane, whispering and stretching out the bow like a wand toward the northern sky. "We shall hunt it, we two; we shall try at the least, shall we not?" And he opened the gate, swung up to Umnik's bare back, and the bridleless horse started to move, with eyes as fixed as Hya's, down trampled streets, past shuttered, eyeless buildings. And the wolves fled, like the wind, which swept over the eaves and the roofs and went its way, leaving a gate banging dully.

"No," Andrei cried, but that was in his dream; and tugged at the knots, but they were sound, and the strength was gone from him, his soul fled away with the winds, where he watched all the town spread beneath him, all of Moskva embracing her knot of rivers, frozen and cracked and frozen again nigh to the bottom. He saw the gates, through a dust of blowing snow, saw old Pyotr and young Fedor's house shut up tight and the lights out. There Umnik paused, and Ilya dropped down, unbarred the gates and dragged one valve back in the obstructing snow until there was room enough for pony and rider to pass through. He climbed again to Umnik's bare back and Umnik tossed his shaggy head and jogged away in the skirl of blown snow and the glory of the northern lights. "Come back," Andrei wailed, but he spoke with the wind's voice, and the wind carried him, powerless. . . . He skimmed the surface of the snows as if his soul were a flitting bird, racing along before horse and rider, growing small again as wind swept him up. The wolves ran beside, pale movement on pale snow. . . . "They are there," he tried to shout. "Ilya, they are there."

But Ilya was no hunter to understand the bow, had not so much as strung it. Andrei swept nearer, horror in his heart, and saw Ilya's face, the image of Anna's, saw fair hair astream in the wind, snow-dusted, saw his hands. . . Ilya's delicate hands, which were his life and livelihood, bare of gloves despite the cold. And Ilya's eyes, heedless of the wolves, roved the horizon and the sky where the curtaining lights streamed and touched the snows.

Ilya rode north, and north still, with the lights ever receding to the horizon, with the wolves coursing the drifts beside, waiting their time. And the bow at last tumbled from his hand, to lie in the snow, and he never seemed to notice. The quiver slid after. "He is caught," Andrei thought, and the drawing grew dimmer and dimmer within himself, like ice melting away. Pain came back. He dreamed, helpless now, and hurting, saw Ilya slide down from Umnik's back, saw his bare hands caress the shaggy piebald coat as if in farewell, but when Ilya began to walk alone, Umnik followed after. "O go with him," Andrei wished the pony, which was part of him as Ilya had almost stopped being. "Do not let him go alone out there." And Umnik tossed his head as if, after all, he heard, and followed patiently, soundlessly in the powder snow and in the glory of the lights which played across the skies. Horror walked beside, four-footed, tongues lolling, sun-filled eyes glinting slantwise in the night, out of white, triangular faces, and teeth like shards of clear ice. Umnik threw his head and blew a frosty breath, and his eyes slowly took on that strangeness too, a sunflare gleaming, as if he were no longer one with man; and now an unsuspected enemy trod at Ilya's back.

"Ah," Andrei thought, "let me see his face," and sought in his dream to come round before him, to warn him, to tell him, to know if that same change was yet worked on him. Ilya, he thought with all the strength left in him. Ilya, I am here; look at me.

Ilya stopped, and turned, his face only vaguely troubled, as if he had heard some strange far voice.

Ilya, o my friend.

"Andrei?" he asked, his pale lips scarcely moving, and put out his hand as if he could see him standing there. "Is it this you saw? I have never been outside the walls; I was always too sickly. But it is beautiful, Andrei."

He had no answer. The beauty which he had seen in the sky was gone; it was all dulled in his eyes, save what he saw reflected in Ilya's.

"I thought," Hya said, "that I knew what beauty was. . . . I make beauty, Andrei, at least I thought that I made beauty; but I have never seen it until now. I should fear it, I think, but I do not. Only to kill it—Andrei, how can I? How could you?"

"Do not," he whispered. "Come back. Set me free, Hya. Come home. Let me go."

"I have gone too far," Ilya said. "Don't look, Andrei, go back to your bed; you are dreaming. Go back."

So a dream might speak to him, his own mind's reasoning in a phantom's mouth. It made him disbelieve for a moment, and in that moment Ilya turned and walked on, toward the north.

"Wait," he cried, and followed, finding it harder and harder to go, for the wind no longer carried him. "Ilya, wait."

A second time the face turned to him, still Ilya's eyes, though unnaturally calm. And now the wolves ranged themselves upon a low ridge, slitted eyes agleam. "Come back from them," Andrei pleaded. "Do you not see them?"

Ilya looked on him with that look which he must once have turned on those who loved him, which reckoned him very distantly, and dismissed him, finding all the flaws in him.

"The wolves," he wept. "Ilya, do you not see them?"

"No," Ilya said slowly and considerately, looked about at them, and turned back. "There's nothing there. Go back. I've done this so you couldgo back, don't you understand?"

"I'll hunt them," he vowed. "I'll hunt them every one."

"No," Ilya said softly, and behind him stood the pony with eyes full of the sun; indeed the sun was rising, a thin line and bead, with glimmerings and streamings across the ice, ribbons and shafts of light which swept the snowy plain with rose and lavenders and opal odors. Ilya looked toward that sudden brilliance, turning his back. A shape was there, one with the light, robed in light, white like the snows.

"Ilya," Andrei murmured, but Ilya walked away. Andrei caught Umnik by the mane, but no more could he hold the pony. . . Umnik walked too. The wolves glided and flowed to that shape, becoming one with it, which was woman or man, and intolerably bright. "Ilya," it whispered, and opened its arms.

Andrei caught at Hya's sleeve, and received another distant look, turned him, hugged him, to keep his face from that shape, which became woman, and chill, and ineffably beautiful. "It is your Wolf," he said, holding Hya's face between his hands. "No more real than mine."

"As real," Ilya said. "Never less real than yours." Ilya hugged him, slightly, and without love, with only the memory of it. "You gave it what you give to beauty, Andrei; and so do I. And so do I." He walked away, and Andrei stood, as if there were a bond holding him that had yielded all it could: he could not go further. He watched Ilya and the pony, one after the other, reach that light, saw the semblance of arms reach from it, and enfold Ilya, so that for a moment they seemed two lovers entwined; saw Umnik blurred likewise into that streaming beauty, and saw it spread with coming morning.

Of a sudden as the light came Umnik was coming back, with a rider on his back, out of the sun which streamed about him and shot rays where his hooves touched the drifts. His rider was a like vision, in the moving of his hair and the lifting of his hand as the pony stopped. . . a fair cold face which had been Hya's, the hair drifting in the winds, and the eyes, the eyes ablaze with opal gold, like lamps making his glowing face dark.

"Come," Ilya whispered. "O my friend."

Andrei turned and fled, raced with the retreating night, fled with other shadows, mounted the winds, naked and alone. He crossed the rivers, and saw the bridge, saw Moskva embracing the frozen ice with its wooden walls, and staining the purity of the world with its dark buildings. He found the open gate and whisked in, skimmed the well-trodden street, found the least chink in the wall of the house and gained entry, into warmth and stillness, into the loft, where he rested, trapped as before.

He woke, turned his head, found the place by him empty.

" Ilya!" he cried, and woke the house.

They found him by the gate, by the corner of the front-yard fence, partly covered by the blowing snow, frozen and with tiny ice crystals clinging to clothes and face. . . not terrible, as some of the dead were which the cold killed, but rather as one gazing into some fair dream, and smiling. Andrei touched his face as Anna held him, shedding tears which melted ice upon his cheek; and suddenly in his agony he sprang up and ran to the stable, with the others calling out after him. Umnik lay there, quite stiff and dead. The other pony looked at him reproachfully, and the goats bleated, and he turned away, walked back to the others, gathered Anna into his arms. The spring was then not long in coming; the winds shifted and the snows shrank and the rivers began to groan with breaking ice.

Andrei rode the other pony in the trodden street, the bay, the younger, a beast which would never be what Umnik had been. The drifts within the city yielded up the white wind-blasted pillars which had been statues, turned up small and pitiful discoveries, small animals which had been frozen the winter long; and an old woman had been found near the Moskva river. But such tragedies came with every winter; and spring came and the white retreated. He passed the gates and the bridge, and neglected his eye-shields as he rode along. He had a new bow and quiver. . . the old ones, from Ilya's dead hand, had seemed unlucky to him. . . and he rode out along the edge of the retreating woods, where trees shed their burdens of snow, where the tracks of deer were visible.

He and Anna had begun their living together before the spring; he wore work of her stitchery, and she swelled with child, and the dull scar of winter past seemed bearable. He had taken a free gift to the old wizard, Mischa, who had now lived yet another winter—a parr of fat hares, paying for truth he had gotten, and bearing no resentments.

The bay pony's hooves broke melting snow, cracked ice, and there was a glistening on it from the sun, but the day was still overcast. He shielded his eyes with a gloved hand and looked at the drifts of gray-centered cloud, shivered somewhat later as the cloud blew athwart the sun, and a chill came into the air.

There were only ordinary days, forever. He saw the places in Moskva where the paint peeled, saw cracks in the images of Moskva; the patterns which Anna made to clothe him seemed garish and far less lovely than once they had; he had seen beauty once, and aimed at it and wounded it. Now he saw truth.