She had seen the spirit die in her father’s eyes. He sat doubled over, looking up at her like a man of eighty. How long could he continue to hunt? He had not had to provide for himself, much less a family, solely by hunting in nearly twenty years.
A chunk of ice detached itself from the roof and slid off, scraping loudly across the sniffles and sobs punctuating the quiet. Winter was coming fast.
Yeva’s sisters watched their possessions and their futures being auctioned off to the highest bidders with no tears and with no outward signs of sorrow. Though in private Lena’s face was often drawn with worry—for her fiancé, Radak, was away on business and would not hear of what had befallen them until after they had gone—to the outside world, she and Asenka were as sunny as ever. They cheerfully explained to prospective buyers why this mirror was their favorite, that dress the most stylish, this mother-of-pearl box the most beautiful. If Yeva had inherited her father’s skill at hunting, they had inherited his ability to negotiate a deal. They earned more from their possessions than their father had calculated, but it still was not near enough to pay back the investors he owed.
In his youth, Yeva’s father had been widely considered the best hunter in the land. Though there were many hunters who took advantage of the rich wilderness in the black wood, he was the only one who ventured into its heart. Yeva’s father had told her stories when she was little of the things he claimed to have seen: the life-sucking kudlak, the great bears to the north who could change their fur to match the ice, the stuhac, who would steal the ligaments from a man’s legs to make bindings for his own feet in the snow. Soaring above them all was the story of the Firebird—Yeva’s favorite for as long as she could remember. Despite the darkness and danger of the black wood, the Firebird at its heart was a burning beacon. No hunter could catch it—the only one who had ever come close was nothing more than a legend of a hundred years or more. And he had only caught a single feather from its tail.
Yeva used to dream of being the one to catch the Firebird—she dreamed of it long after she stopped believing in the other tales her father spun for her. But even without the kudlak, without the monsters of the fairy tales she loved as a child, the depths of the wood were dangerous, far more deadly than the more commonly hunted perimeters of the wilderness.
Her father had once fearlessly ventured into the deepest reaches of the wood, but how could he return to such a life now? He had given up the danger of the hunt for love of Yeva’s mother, who could not bear to see him disappear into the black wood day after day.
And what of his heart? He’d huddled in front of the fire that night like a broken man. He was proud, as proud of his mercantile empire as he’d been of his hunting abilities as a younger man. He could not hope to earn enough simply from pelts and meat of deer and rabbit; he would have to venture deep to bring back the heads and skins of trophy game. How could he hope to be so bold and so strong now, with this humiliation and ruin weighing on him like twenty extra years?
So Yeva’s sisters tried to earn as much as they could from their treasures, parting with them readily. Yeva lacked their skill with people and was more than happy to leave the sale of her own possessions to them. She kept aside only a few of her plainest dresses to bring with her to the cabin.
There was talk of selling the dogs as well, for they were purebred and Yeva’s father could still hunt without them. Yeva’s heart nearly broke at the idea, but she recalled her sisters cheerfully handing over their cherished books and trinkets, and she agreed to meet a man who had asked about purchasing them. Pelei was cautiously interested in the prospective buyer, sniffing at his hand with great determination, but Doe-Eyes—the gentlest dog Yeva had ever encountered—flung her ears right back and growled when he approached, the fur standing up along her back in a ridge.
Yeva’s father had shrugged after the buyer had left, and said only, “I suppose we will have to build them a kennel to sleep in at the cabin.”
With the dogs safe, Yeva turned her mind to packing the family’s few remaining belongings. At her father’s instruction she had placed three of their four servants with new families—only Albe remained. He came to them one morning and dropped to the floor, knees striking wood with a loud thud.
“Please let me come, master, mistresses,” he begged, taking hold of Tvertko’s hand. “You know I’m no good, I’ll only be thrown out of another house. I break things and I forget. But for you I’ll be better. I can do a bit of cooking and cleaning and whatever you need, I’ll make it worth keeping me, I will.”
“But we can’t pay you,” Yeva said gently, as her father patted Albe’s hand and tried to get him to stand back up.
“Don’t care, miss,” he protested. “Where else would I go? Been here since me mother died, been with you since I was seven. Where else would I go?”
From then on Albe oversaw the packing, and would relieve Yeva of anything she tried to carry out to the wagon. He generally made a nuisance of himself, always underfoot and performing his tasks with such enthusiasm that he nearly knocked the sisters over. But his antics caused them to smile more often than shout at him, and so when the family finally departed the house, their spirits were not quite as low as they might have been otherwise.
With the men walking and the dogs trotting alongside, and the wagon pulled by the plow horse they’d borrowed from a neighbor in exchange for a rug, they set off on the road north.
It was a three-day journey from their house in town to their father’s hunting cabin. They stayed in inns along the way, an expense Yeva protested each night. But her father refused to allow his girls to spend the night in a barn, or worse, wrapped in their cloaks on the ground beside the road—they had not sunk that low, he said, in a too-calm voice that Yeva knew better than to question. On the third day the weather took a turn for the worse, the skies lowering and gathering gray until the air turned white with snow in the late afternoon.
As the day faded toward twilight Doe-Eyes began to stumble, her long legs shaking in the snow. Yeva hopped down in order to help lift the dog up into the back of the wagon, and joined her there. Doe-Eyes was built for speed, bred in a land far to the west, with a slim body and shorter fur; a summer dog, not bred for the winter hardships she’d face at the edge of the black wood.
Yeva rubbed and rubbed at the dog’s body and legs until the tremble left them. Doe-Eyes licked her wrist and curled herself into a nest Yeva made of her remaining few dresses. They’d be covered in hair and smell like dog, but what did Yeva care? Out here there would be no baronessa to notice. Yeva left the dog slumbering in her nest and rejoined her sisters atop the broad wagon.
Beside her she felt Lena tremble, and she glanced aside. Her sister’s face was turned resolutely out toward the passing trees, but Yeva saw her hands, folded so tightly in her lap that the knuckles shone white. They had sent word of their misfortunes to Lena’s fiancé, but they’d had no time to wait for a reply, especially since there was no guarantee the message would even find him. Radak would mostly likely return from his business trip to find Lena gone, and all reason for marrying her too. There was no good now to be had from an alliance with the family—to marry one of them would be to marry their debts, which could well cripple a young entrepreneur.