“Don’t they?” she asked, choosing a very sturdy bit of wool, so strong it might have borne any weight at all. “I never see them once they leave this room.”
Every question the sorcerer asked, Vasilka would reply with a query of her own, until he grew frustrated and angry, his patience wearing away to nothing.
“Come live with me and be my bride,” demanded the sorcerer at last. “I will teach you all the ways that you can use your gift and we will reign over every lesser creature. Refuse me and I will shove you from this tower. You can ask your foolish questions as you fall to your death.”
But all the time the sorcerer had been talking, he had not bothered to understand just what Vasilka had been weaving—a grand pair of wings. All he could do was stare as she slipped them onto her arms and leapt from the tower. She soared away on golden feathers that caught the light in their glowing threads and seemed to set the last scraps of afternoon sun ablaze.
She is said to have become the first firebird and is the patron saint of unwed women.
SANKT NIKOLAI
A captain took his crew to sea, and because of his good leadership and the talent of his sailors, his ship came to be known as the fastest and most profitable on the ocean. It darted in and out of coves and ports, slipping past rocks and glaciers, a dancer on the waves. But the captain grew prideful and his crew greedy, and they began to ignore both sense and caution.
“What wind would dare cut down this ship?” the captain shouted to the sky.
A young boy was on the crew, a gifted sailor despite his age, who had learned to work the nets and lines and scaled the rigging fearlessly. He worried that the captain’s pride would offend the Saints. But as it happened, the captain was right: It wasn’t the wind that claimed his ship. It was the ice.
In the treacherous waters of the Bone Road, the captain piloted his sleek craft to pockets of fish no one else had dared seek so far north. Though it was late in the year, he insisted they could make one last run to fill their nets with cod before the winter set in. The ship made its way easily through the waters, the winds so favorable they seemed to serve the captain’s whims. Later the sailors would wonder if the weather had been luring them north.
They put in at a cove with a black rock shore, and settled in for the night, prepared to haul up their catch at first light and then head home. But in the morning, the sailors woke to see the world had turned white. The sea had frozen around their ship, leaving them ice-locked. The winds blew, the sails filled, but the ship did not budge.
“Someone must scout the land to see if food or shelter can be found,” said the captain. The crew knew that they were too far north to find aid, that to leave the ship was certainly folly and might very well mean death. So they sent the boy—the smallest and the youngest among them—out into the snow.
The boy’s name was Nikolai, and he had always loved the sea and the Saints. Since the sea had stranded him, he hoped the Saints would protect him, and as he marched over the cold land, he sang his prayers like a shanty. Eventually he came to a high gray outcropping of rock that looked like a serpent asleep in the sun, though there was no sun to be seen. There, he found a reindeer waiting. Breath pluming in the air, the creature stomped its hooves and lowered its big head, and after a moment’s hesitation, Nikolai climbed onto its back.
The beast carried him deep into a forest where the very trees seemed made of ice and the silver leaves on the silver branches tinkled like glasses clinking at a fine dinner party, and though the wind blew hard, Nikolai held tight to the reindeer’s neck and felt only warm.
In time, they came to a clearing in the wood, and there the boy found a feast had been set beside a roaring fire. There was a small shelter and inside it, next to a high pile of thick blankets, Nikolai discovered a pair of fur-lined boots and a pair of woolen gloves. He put them on and found they fit perfectly.
Wishing to be polite, he waited to see if his host would appear. But time wore on, and his belly growled, and the only sound was the fire crackling and the reindeer snorting in the cold air.
Nikolai began by sipping from a hot ladle of spicy soup, rich with chunks of fish. He ate from a platter laden with juicy slices of roasted meat, buttery dumplings heaped with sour cream, stewed apples and candied plums that sparkled like fat amethysts. He drank warm wine and then, his belly full, fell deeply asleep.
The next morning, he made a sack from one of the blankets and packed it with all the leftover food he could manage. He climbed onto the reindeer’s back and it carried him many miles to the serpent stone, where Nikolai dismounted, thanked the creature, and walked back to the ship.
The captain and the crew were shocked to see the little figure with the golden hair tramping toward them across the ice. They’d thought he must be dead, for who could survive the night in such a wilderness? As he drew nearer, they expected to find him hollow-eyed and ragged with hunger and cold. Instead his cheeks were pink, his stride even, his eyes bright.
The boy told them the wonderful story of what had happened in the night, but when he opened the sack to offer them food, all he found were rocks and ash. The sailors beat the boy for lying, took his fine gloves and boots for themselves, and the next morning, they shoved him back out onto the ice.
Again Nikolai walked to the serpent stone, and again, the reindeer was waiting. He rode the animal into the white forest and on to the clearing, where the fire crackled and a merry feast had been laid out once more. A red wool coat lined in lush fur lay neatly folded on the heap of blankets, another pair of boots, another pair of gloves. The boy did not know what to think of it, but the food was as real as he remembered. This time he ate goose glazed in honey and dressed in berries tart enough to sting his tongue as the juice ran down his chin. He bundled into the warm clothes and slept soundly through the night.
But when Nikolai returned to the ship the next day, the sack he carried was once more filled with rocks and ash. The crew beat him soundly and sent him onto the ice again.
It went on like this, and as time wore away, the men starved and the boy grew sturdier and stronger. With every day, the sailors’ eyes grew wilder, and hunger became less a need than a madness. One morning, the sailors tried to follow Nikolai, but as soon as they spotted the serpent-shaped rock, a snowstorm overtook them. They wandered in circles all the day and night and returned to the ship even hungrier and angrier than before.
Soon an idea was whispered from one man to the next: What if they ate the boy? Who would know? He was fat and healthy, his cheeks rosy; he could feed them all for a week, maybe more, long enough for rescue to come or for the cold to break.
The boy heard these whispers and shivered in his bunk. As soon as dawn arrived, he raced out into the snow. This time when he met the reindeer, he whispered in its ear of all his fear and worry. But the reindeer had nothing to say.
Again, the boy sat by the fire, though he hadn’t much appetite for the fine meal set out for him. He ate a bit of quail egg pie and a single sugared plum and prayed that the Saints would protect him, because he did not want to be eaten.
The next day, when the boy woke, he found he was sweating in his blankets. The sun beat heavy and hot on his neck as the reindeer carried him back to the serpent stone. And sure enough, as soon as he set foot upon the ship, the ice sighed and cracked. The boat rocked, the wind filled the sails, and the ship broke free.