Page 70 of Spinning Silver

Then he reached out to grab Miryem’s hand, and pulled her away towards the door, and I was so glad that he was going that I didn’t even notice what Wanda was doing in time to be afraid or to look away, and so I was looking when she threw the chain around him.

I saw what he had done to get away from it last time because he almost did it again.

He twisted to get out from under the chain, but this time when he did it, Miryem threw herself to the floor, and because he had her hand, she pulled him off his feet a little, and Wanda brought her arms down fast and kept the chain around him.

So when he stood up again, he was still inside the chain.

His face was so angry a white light came into it.

He did not let go of Miryem’s hand, but he reached out with his other hand and grabbed the ends of the chain and pulled them.

He almost dragged Wanda off her feet, but Sergey ran to her across the room and grabbed the chain too.

He grabbed one end of the chain and Wanda grabbed one end of the chain and then they were both holding tight with their feet hard like trying to pull a stump out of the ground, except the stump was pulling back at them, and it was about to pull them down instead of them pulling it up.

And I was scared, I was so scared, but I thought, it was the same as the dancing, and I climbed out from under the table and I ran across the room and I grabbed hold of the knot of Wanda’s apron and the back of Sergey’s old rope belt and I made the circle with them.

When I did that, the Staryk made a shriek that was like the sound when the ice on the river broke at the end of winter.

It was a terrible noise and it made my ears hurt, but I kept holding on and he stopped making it.

He stood there and stamped his foot and said to Wanda angrily, “Very well, you have bound me! What will you have to let me go?”

We stood there and then Wanda said, “Leave Miryem and go!” Miryem was still on the floor trying to pull free from him, but he was still holding her hand.

The Staryk glared back at her, glittering. “No! You have caught me with silver, but your arms have not the strength to hold me. I will not surrender my lady!”

Then he threw himself against the chains again, and tried to break our hands loose.

But it was not just us holding anymore: Panov Mandelstam had climbed up from the ground and he had come and grabbed the chain with Wanda, and Panova Mandelstam was pulling on Sergey’s side, and she and Panov Mandelstam were holding hands behind my back to help me be strong.

We were all pulling tight, and he nearly dragged loose anyway, but he didn’t, and then he stopped and was angry again, and he said to Wanda, “What will you have to loose your bond? Ask for something else, or fear what I shall do when you tire!”

But Wanda shook her head and said, “Let Miryem go!” and he shrieked that awful ice-breaking noise again and hissed, “Never! I will not leave you, my queen, my golden lady; once I was a fool, twice I will not be!” and he fought again, so hard he pulled us across the floor, all of us with our feet sliding and almost falling.

I thought, I thought, we could not hold him for much longer.

I could see that Wanda’s hands and Sergey’s hands were slipping on the chain.

They had put their fingers into the links, but their hands were getting sweaty and the chain had slid through one link at a time and they could not risk letting go of it long enough to grab it higher again, or else he would pull free at once.

But this one more time we held on to him, and he stopped.

He breathed hard, three times. Big clouds of frost streamed away from his lips when he panted.

Then he stood up very tall, and ice started to grow on him.

It crept out from his edges in a thin layer that you could see through and then a little more crept over it and then there was another thin edge poking out but the first one was thicker, and that kept happening over and over and the ice was getting sharp and prickly and I could feel the terrible cold of it on my face.

Sergey and Wanda were both leaning away from it, and it was climbing down the chain towards their fingers.

The Staryk did not shriek at Wanda again.

When he spoke this time, he sounded soft instead, like when deep snow has stopped falling and you go outside and everything is very quiet.

“Let go, mortal, let go, and ask a different boon of me,” he said.

“I will give you a treasure of jewels or elixir of long life; I will even give you back the spring, in fair return for holding fast. But you reach too far, and dare too high, when you ask me for my queen. Try me thus once again, and know I will lay winter in your flesh and flay your hearts open to freeze in red blood upon that snow: you have no high powers, no gift of magic true, and love alone cannot give you strength to hold me.”

When he said that, I knew he was not lying. We all knew it. And Miryem got up on her feet again. She had stopped pulling on his hand where it was around her wrist. She said, “Wanda,” and she meant that we should let the Staryk go.

But Wanda looked at Miryem and she said, “No,” and it was the no she had said to our father, in our house, when he wanted to eat her up.

I didn’t mean to say no to him that day.

I had never said no to him before, because I knew if we did he would hurt us, and he hurt us anyway already, and so I knew he would hurt us even worse if we said no.

I would not have even thought of saying no to him no matter what he did, because he could always do something worse.

And when Wanda said no to him, I said no too, but I didn’t really decide to say no, I just said it.

But now, I thought, I had said it because there wasn’t anything worse he could do to me than hit Wanda with that poker over and over and make her dead while I was there just watching.

If he was going to do that then I could be dead too, and that would not be as bad as just standing there.

Now Wanda was saying no because there wasn’t anything worse that the Staryk could do to her but take Miryem away.

And I wasn’t sure if I thought so myself, but then I thought, I could not let go without making Panova Mandelstam and Panov Mandelstam let go too, because their arms were around me.

And being dead would not be as bad as having to look at Panova Mandelstam after I did that to her.

But the Staryk was not lying either. It was not like with Da where there was Sergey to come in and be stronger than him and push him into the fire.

Sergey was already helping as much as he could, and none of us were as big and strong as the Staryk.

So we were going to all be dead. There was nothing we could do about it except let go. And we were not going to let go.

And then a hoarse awful wet voice said, “A chain of silver to bind him tight, a ring of fire to quench his might,” and all around us twelve great candles lit in flame.

I looked around and the tsar was standing again: the tsarina had put those candles in a big circle all around us, while we were trying to hold the Staryk, and then she had gone to the tsar and helped him stand up in the fireplace.

She was holding him up, and he had said those words out of his broken mouth even though they came out in popping red bubbles of blood.

He was pointing his hand out: it was shaking and the fingers were bent in terrible ways, but with one finger he was pointing, and all the candles burst into tall hot flames almost as long as the candles were tall.

Inside the chain, the Staryk gave a choking gasp, and the armor of ice around him broke off in great chunks and fell to the ground with small tinkling sounds.

He went white all the way through. And then the tsar laughed aloud, except it was not the tsar laughing, it was Chernobog, it was the monster.

It was a terrible sound like fire crackling up, and then he took a dragging step out of the fireplace, and when he did, a few of those fingers that were bent all wrong straightened out.

When he took another step, his shoulder that was turned in a bad way jerked itself right, and then his nose that was broken fixed itself too, and little by little as he came closer all of him went right again, until his face was perfect and even his torn red coat was smooth and not even wet anymore.

But he wasn’t right at all, there was nothing right about anything in him, and he was coming towards us.

He reached up and spun his hand in the air, and the chain pulled itself out of Wanda and Sergey’s hands and wrapped tight around the Staryk, pulling his arms against his sides.

Miryem pulled her hand out of his grip and jumped back from him, and then we all scrambled back, as fast as we could, to get away from Chernobog.

But he wasn’t paying any attention to us.

He was going to stand in front of the Staryk and smiling at him.

The last link of the chain on the left side opened up like a jaw and closed itself around a link far along on the other, and the last link of the chain on the right side bound itself to a link on that side, and it was tight and tight around him.