Page 88 of Spinning Silver

When we finished, we all stood in silence.

Nothing happened at first, as far as we saw.

But then Stepon suddenly gave a cry and ran away from us towards the gate of the house, waving his hands to chase away a small bird that had just landed on the ground there to peck.

He stood staring down with his hands clenched until Wanda and Sergey and then all of us went and joined him.

A small white seedling was coming out of the earth, a little soft squirming worm just poking up.

We stared at it. I’d seen seeds pop before, beans come out of the dirt, but this one came quicker, an entire spring going before our eyes in moments: it straightened into a thin white seedling tree and began to lurch up like someone trying to climb a rope, stopping every so often to catch their breath before pulling themselves up a little farther.

A crown of tiny white leaves unfurled like flags at the top, ghostly pale, and they began to flap and stretch themselves urgently, pushing upwards.

When it was as tall as my knee, it began to put out thin branches that sprang open from its sides like tiny whips, and more of the white leaves opened.

We had to back away to give it room, and it was still growing; smoothly now, steadily and rising.

I turned and ran back to the Staryk. He didn’t wake or move; he lay against the house gone very thin and deep blue, as if some core of him were emerging from a shell of ice, and when I touched him my hands were wet, but Wanda came and helped me.

Together we pulled him over to the tree, and lay him down beneath it, and suddenly crackling frost was climbing all over the ground beneath him and up the white bark and over his own skin, the deep blue vanishing again under that frozen layer.

He breathed out winter air and opened his eyes and looked up at the spreading boughs of the tree, and he wept, although I almost couldn’t tell, because his tears froze into his face at once and there was only a shining coming out of him.

He stood up, and as he stood the tree was tall enough for him to stand beneath it, although it hadn’t seemed quite that large yet a moment before, and when he put both his hands on its trunk, it burst into flowers of silver shot through with gold.

He reached up and touched a blossom with his fingertips, looking at it bemused.

“It grew, it grew,” Stepon was saying; he was gulping with sobs himself, crying as if he didn’t know whether he was happy or sad, with my mother kneeling with her arms wrapped around his thin shoulders, stroking his head.

And then the Staryk turned away from it and put his hand on the gate, and when he swung it open, on the other side of it a white road was standing, a white road lined with other white trees, but it didn’t run on forever into winter anymore: there was a darkness at the other end, a cloud of smoke and burning.

He looked at it with his face set, and then he stepped through and walked a little way down the road, and a white stag came bounding out of the trees.

We had followed him to the gate, but my family all drew back away into the yard when it leapt out.

For a moment I saw it with their eyes, the sharp claws and monstrous fangs hanging over its top lip and the red tongue, but it was only one of the deer for me, now.

He went towards it, and as he mounted, his foot was no longer bare; a silver boot closed round it, and then he was all in silver, in armor and white fur, looking down.

Then he held his hand out to me, and said, “Chernobog is in my kingdom. As I have promised, so will I do: if he is cast out, and my people made safe, I will not bring back the winter. You asked for alliance to see it done: will you still come and lend your aid, though he is no more in your own world?”

I stared up at him, and wanted to demand, half indignant, what good he thought I would do against a demon of flame in outright battle.

There was dirt under my fingernails; my face ached and my cheek was still swollen and red where the soldier had struck me, and I was tired and only a mortal girl who’d bragged too much in his hearing.

But I looked at the white tree standing next to me, with its branches high and covered with flowers, and I knew there was no use asking him.

He would only shrug and look at me expectantly again, waiting for high magic: magic that came only when you made some larger version of yourself with words and promises, and then stepped inside and somehow grew to fill it.

“Yes,” I said. “I’ll come, and do what I can— if you’ll bring me back after!”

“My road still does not run under green trees, lady,” he said, “and you have already made me promise to lift the winter, if we are victorious. But summer will not last forever, even if I lift my hand, and this I much can offer you: on the first day the next snow falls, I will open my road hence, and return you to your family’s home. ”

I turned back: my mother and father were standing in the yard, and they weren’t alone.

Wanda and Sergey and Stepon were with them, and the house behind them with plenty of room, now.

They would be safe, they would all be safe, even if I never came back after a wild leap down a winter road; they had each other to love and live for, and to grieve with, and to help each other on their way.

They seemed somehow far away from me already, a few steps removed, and their faces looked almost dreamlike when they gazed at me.

But I ran to them quickly, and kissed them all, and I whispered to my mother, “Look for me on the first day of winter,” and her fingers trailed out of mine as I turned back and went through the gate, and took the Staryk king’s hand, for him to pull me up onto the back of his stag behind him.