Page 77 of Spinning Silver

I looked at that letter and then I understood why a tsar mattered.

It was magic like Miryem’s magic. That tsar, that terrible tsar, could give me this letter and now we were safe.

I did not have to be afraid anymore at all.

Nobody from town would look at that letter and try to hang Sergey or me.

They would look at the tsar’s name on that paper and be afraid of him, even if he was far away.

But we did not even have to go back to town at all.

We did not have to go back to our father’s house, where maybe he was still lying on the floor, and we did not have to go back to that farm where nothing much would grow and the tax collector came every year.

That letter said that we could go into the forest and take any land that we wanted.

It could be the best land we found. It could be full of big trees that we could cut down and sell for lots of money.

I knew a big tree was worth a lot because the year before my mother died, there was a tree on our neighbor’s property and one year it fell down and he worked very hard and cut it up quick before the boyar’s men came to take it, and he hid two big pieces of it in the woods.

Da saw it and came in and said at dinnertime what he saw and said sourly, “That’s a clever man, he will make ten kopeks off that wood. ”

But Mama shook her head and said, “It’s not his property, there will be trouble,” and he slapped her and said, “What do you know,” but the next day the boyar’s men came with a big wagon and they put the pieces of the tree in it, and there was a man with them who looked at those pieces and somehow knew that some of the tree was missing, and they beat our neighbor hard until he told them where he hid the pieces, and they put the pieces in the wagon and left him on the ground bloody.

He was sick for a long time because of it, and his wife had to try and sow the crops alone because he could not walk.

One day that winter she came to beg for food, and Mama gave her some.

Da beat her for it that night even though her belly was already getting big.

But nobody would beat us for cutting down trees, because in this letter the tsar said we could.

He said they were ours. He said all that land, as much land as we could take care of, would be ours.

We could have goats and chickens and we could plant rye.

And we did not even have to build a house.

We could go to the little house, the house that had saved us, where there was already a garden and a barn, and we could make a farm all around it.

This paper said that it was all right because there was no one living in it.

I thought we would go there and we would go into the house and promise to take care of it, and we would promise that if anyone who had ever lived there wanted to come back, we would give them the best bed, and all the food they wanted, and they could stay there with us as long as they wanted.

And then I thought, if anyone came to the house at all—if anyone came to the house who was hungry and in trouble—we would let them stay.

There would be food in our house for them, and we would be glad.

Like Panova Mandelstam. That is what that letter said.

We could make a house like her house and we could feed anyone who came.

I took the letter upstairs to Sergey and Stepon.

Sergey had helped with the horses and Stepon had helped him for a while also even though it was still very noisy, but then he had to go upstairs and he was still afraid, so Sergey went upstairs with him.

I went upstairs and I came into the room and I showed them the letter, and they did not know how to read the letters, but they saw the big red seal, and they touched the heavy soft paper, and I told them carefully out loud what it said, and then I asked them if they wanted to do what I wanted to do, I asked if they wanted to go to the little house in the woods and make a farm there, and let anyone come to us in trouble.

I did not say, We are going to do that, even though it was what I wanted. I asked them if they wanted it also.

Sergey carefully reached out and took the paper in his hands. I let him have it. He very lightly touched the shape of one of the letters on the paper with his finger just to see if it would come off. It did not come off even a little. “Yes,” he said softly. “Yes.”

Stepon said, “Can we ask them to come live with us?” He meant Miryem’s family. “Can we ask them to come? And I can plant the nut, and then Mama will be there too. Then it will be all of us together, and that would be the very best thing.”

When he said it, I started to cry because he was right, it would be the very best thing, it would be so good that I had not even been able to think of it.

Sergey put his arm around my shoulders, and he said to Stepon, “Yes. We will ask them to come,” and I wiped the tears away from my face, carefully, so I would not get any of them on the letter.

When I left my grandfather’s study, I went to my parents’ room.

They were sitting by the fire together, and Wanda and her brothers had come down to them; Wanda had brought the tsar’s letter, and had given it to my father, who was looking at it surprised.

“We can go and fetch the goats,” Wanda was saying, to him and my mother, “and the chickens. It is warm now. We can build more of the house by winter. We can cut down some trees. There will be room,” and as I came around and looked at the letter, where the tsar had signed himself Lord and Master of the Great Northern Forest, I understood: Irina was already stretching out her hand.

She had given Wanda a farm in exchange for taking her brothers and her strong arms into the forest to clear trees and plant crops and build a house and a barn, the first of many to come.

“Leave our house?” my mother said slowly.

“But we’ve lived there so long,” and then I understood also that Wanda was asking my parents to come and live with them, there on the farm the tsar had given them; she wanted them to leave our town, our house, our little narrow island in the river that was always in danger of being flooded.

“And what is there to stay for?” I said.

“It’s not ours. It’s the boyar’s. Everything we’ve ever done to improve it, we’ve done for him, for nothing; we’re not even allowed to buy it if we wanted to.

But with help in the house, Sergey and Wanda can clear more land and make the farm richer. Of course you should go.”

My mother stilled; they all looked at me and heard what I hadn’t said, and she reached for my hand. “Miryem!”

I swallowed hard. The words were on my lips: Go tomorrow, stay one day more, but I thought of Rebekah, thin as a sliver of blue ice. How long before she would melt away? “You should go now,” I said. “Today, before the sun goes down.”

“No,” my father said flatly, standing up: my kind, gentle father, angry at last. “Miryem, no. This Staryk—he was right! He deserves what has come to him! It is the reward of the wicked.”

“There’s a child,” I said, my throat choked and sore. My mother’s hand tightened on mine. “I gave her a name. Will I let a demon feast on her, because he was wicked?”

“Every winter they come from their kingdom of ice, to steal and murder among the innocent,” my father said after a moment, just as Irina had said, but then he asked me, as a plea: “Are there even ten righteous among them?”

I drew a breath, still afraid but half relieved, too: it made the answer so clear. “I know that there are three,” I said. I put my other hand around my mother’s and squeezed back. “I have to. You know I have to.”

I took the deformed golden crown to Isaac’s stall, where his younger brother was minding things for him, and he carefully melted the whole thing down for me into flat gold bars, and then I went out with them hidden in a sack, out to the great market in the center of the city.

One after another I traded them, not caring if I made a good bargain, so long as I made a quick one.

I traded for a cart, for two strong horses to pull it, for a crate full of chickens, for an axe, a saw, hammers, and nails.

I bought a plow and furrows and two sharp scythes, and sacks of seed for rye and beans.

Sergey and Wanda came with me; they loaded everything into the cart and piled it high.

And last at the end, I bought two long hooded cloaks, exactly the same, a dull grey: those were a good bargain, their price come down far from what they’d been yesterday, on a table full of others.

It took us a long time to drive the heaped cart back to my grandfather’s house: the streets were crammed full of traffic and moving almost not at all.

As we crawled along, Wanda said, “There is a wedding,” and looking down a side street towards the great cathedral I glimpsed a princess coming down the steps, wearing my Staryk dress of gold and white with a thin crown upon her head; she was smiling and triumphant, and her husband beside her equally so, among a crowd of splendid nobles.

The dress fit better there than it had in my grandfather’s house.

I looked for Irina: she was already at the foot of the stairs, with the tsar beside her, climbing into an open carriage.

The sunlight caught on her silver crown, and he only sat leaning on an elbow, looking irritated with boredom, and no sign of the demon lurking beneath his skin. I looked quickly away.