“In a certain princedom,” the old lady repeated, with dignity, “there lived a peasant who had a beautiful daughter.” “Hush,” said Marina, and handed him the end of her braid again to play with. She paused and fixed a quelling eye upon Alyosha, who was squealing like a bat and bouncing in his mother’s arms. In Dunya’s rich, precise voice it could not fail to delight. None of the others made any protest, though the story of Frost was an old tale, and they had all heard it many times before. Marina smiled sardonically and untangled her son’s hands. “I shall tell the story of Morozko, of his kindness and his cruelty.” She put a slight emphasis on this name: the safe name that could not bring them ill luck. “Very well,” said Dunya after a moment’s hesitation. Alyosha squirmed and tugged his mother’s braid. It was an ill-omened word, and unlucky to speak it while he still held the land in his grip. Under that name, he was king of black midwinter who came for bad children and froze them in the night. But long ago, the people called him Karachun, the death-god. In Russian, Frost was called Morozko, the demon of winter. He is abroad tonight, and angry at the thaw.”ĭunya hesitated. Tell us of the frost-demon, the winter-king Karachun. Her tone was light, but her eyes were dark. “I’ll have a story,” said Marina at once. She had been Marina’s nurse, too, long ago. “If we might have quiet,” said the old lady tartly. “Otherwise I fear we shall never see your father again. “Pray the wretched ewe delivers tonight,” she said. She trembled, though it was not obvious under her heavy clothes. Alyosha, still clasped in her arms, wound both fists around her braid. Marina Ivanovna sank onto her stool, drawing it nearer the blaze. She stooped and seized Alyosha in her arms. Her deep-set eyes threw back the firelight. Her face glowed with the chill, but she was thinner than even her children the fire cast shadows in the hollows of cheek and throat and temple. A woman appeared in the doorway, shaking the wet from her long hair. Little Alyosha stood on his stool and waved his arms, the better to be heard over his bigger siblings, and Pyotr’s boarhound raised its big, scarred head at the commotion.īut before Dunya could answer, the outer door clattered open and there came a roar from the storm without. The others set up a clamor on hearing Dunya’s question: Sasha had thrust his head out-of-doors, gotten a faceful of wet, and retired, vanquished, to a stool a little apart from the others, where he sat affecting an expression of pious indifference. But the church was cold, the sleet outside unrelenting. They all loved stories, even the second son, Sasha, who was a self-consciously devout child, and would have insisted-had anyone asked him-that he preferred to pass the evening in prayer. Pyotr’s children sat before her, perched on stools. “What tale will you have tonight?” Dunya inquired, enjoying the fire at her back. The flat top served as a sleeping platform its innards cooked their food, heated their kitchen, and made steam-baths for the sick. This oven was a massive affair built of fired clay, taller than a man and large enough that all four of Pyotr Vladimirovich’s children could have fit easily inside. That evening, the old lady sat in the best place for talking: in the kitchen, on the wooden bench beside the oven. But no one was thinking of chilblains or runny noses, or even, wistfully, of porridge and roast meats, for Dunya was to tell a story. The brilliant February landscape had given way to the dreary gray of March, and the household of Pyotr Vladimirovich were all sniffling from the damp and thin from six weeks’ fasting on black bread and fermented cabbage. It was late winter in northern Rus’, the air sullen with wet that was neither rain nor snow.
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