Already he knew a dozen such sayings. The women knew hundreds of them – homely riddles, word games, proverbs – likening light to spilt milk, the wind to a stallion. In these countless sayings the simple folk delighted in the gentle wordplay of their Slavic tongue.
In a moment she would let him go. He longed to run to the door. Would the cub be there?
She quickly examined his teeth. He had lost two milk teeth but grown two new ones. One more felt loose, but at present none was missing.
‘Two little perches, full of white hens,’ she murmured happily. Then she let him go.
He ran to the doorway, into the passage and to the outer door.
There was a vegetable patch opposite the hut from which, the day before, he had helped his mother pull a large turnip. To the right of it, a man was loading farm implements on to an old wooden wagon with sturdy wheels each carved from a single block of wood. To the left, a little further off beside the river, was a small bath house. It had been built only three years before and was not for the present members of the village, who had a bigger one of their own, but for the ancestors. After all, Kiy knew, the dead liked to take their steam bath, just like the living, even if you did not actually see them. And as everyone in his young life had told him, the ancestors became very angry if one left them out of anything.
‘You wouldn’t want people to forget about you, after you’ve gone, would you?’ one of his father’s other wives had asked him; and he had thought no, he would not like to be forgotten, cut off from the warm company of the village.
He knew that the dead were there, watching him, just as he knew that in the ground under a corner of the barn in front of the elder’s house, lived the tiny wrinkled figure of the village domovoi – his own father’s grandfather – whose spirit presided over all that passed in the community.
He stepped outside. Nothing. He looked right and left. The bath houses, the huts, all looked the same: there was no sign of the bear cub. The little fellow’s face fell; he could not believe it – hadn’t he seen Mal and the old man slip by in the night?
The man by the cart, who was a brother of one of his stepmothers, turned and looked at him.
‘What are you looking for, little boy?’
‘Nothing, Uncle.’ He knew he must not say anything.
The pit of his stomach became cold and the bright morning sky seemed suddenly grey. He wanted warm tears to bring relief but, since Mal had sworn him to secrecy, he bit his lip instead and sadly turned back into the hut.
Inside, his grandmother was scolding the women about something, but he was used to that. He noticed his mother’s tambourine hanging in one corner: it was coloured red. He loved the colour red; to him it was warm and friendly. Indeed, it was natural that he should think so, for in the Slav tongue the words ‘red’ and ‘beautiful’ were one and the same. He gazed at his grandmother’s heavy face: how large her cheeks were – they reminded him of two lumps of lard. She noticed his gaze and stared at him balefully, pausing to indicate to his mother that he constituted an interruption.
‘Go outside, Little Kiy,’ his mother said tactfully.
As he came out, he saw Mal.
It had not been a good night for Mal. Together with one of the older hunters he had set a trap for the bear cub in the woods, and they had nearly been successful. He’d have had the cub now if he hadn’t lost his head at the last moment, made a false move, and been chased away by an infuriated mother bear. It made him blush just to think of it.
He had been planning to help the men get the hay in that day – attract the attention of the elder with his hard work and avoid embarrassing conversations with Kiy.
It did not occur to the little boy that his uncle was hurrying by the hut in order to avoid him. He ran over to him and stood looking up at him expectantly.
Mal glanced guiltily right and left. Fortunately the cart was unattended now and they were alone.
‘Did you bring him? Where is he?’ Kiy cried. The sight of his uncle had raised all his hopes again.
Mal hesitated.
‘He’s in the forest,’ he prevaricated.
‘When are you bringing him here? Today?’ The little fellow’s eyes were sparkling with excitement now.
‘Soon. When winter comes.’
The boy’s face clouded with puzzlement and disappointment. Winter? Winter seemed half a lifetime away.
‘Why?’
Mal thought for a moment. ‘I had him. He was walking beside me with a rope round his neck, Little Kiy; but then the wind took him away. There was nothing I could do.’
‘The wind?’ His face fell. He knew that the wind was the oldest of all the gods. His uncle had often told him: ‘The sun god is great, Kiy, but the wind is older and greater.’ The wind blew by day, and also by night when the sun had departed. The wind blew whenever it wished, over the endless plain.
‘Where is he now?’
‘Far away, in the forest.’
The child looked heartbroken.
‘But the snow maidens will bring him back,’ his uncle went on. ‘You’ll see.’
Why did he have to lie? He gazed down at his trusting little nephew and knew very well. It was for the same reason that he lived with the two old men and defied the village elder. It was because they all despised him and because, worse, he was ashamed of himself. That was why he could not admit the truth to the eager child. I am foolish and useless, he thought. Yes, and he was lazy too. He had planned to work hard in the field that day, but now he felt like fleeing into the forest again to escape the ugly truth about his character. He could feel his resolution slipping away from him.
Yet perhaps there was still hope.
‘I know where the wind is hiding him though,’ he said.
‘You do? You do?’ Kiy’s face lit up. ‘Tell me.’
‘Deep in the forest, in the land of Three-times-Nine.’
‘Can you get there?’
‘Only if you know the way.’
‘And you know the way?’ Surely a fine hunter like his uncle would know the way even to magic lands. ‘Which way is it?’ he demanded.
Mal grinned.
‘To the east. Far to the east. But I can be there in a day,’ he boasted. And for a moment, he almost believed it himself.
‘Will you fetch him then?’ the little boy pleaded.
‘Perhaps I will. One day.’ Mal looked serious. ‘But that’s our secret. Not a word to anyone.’
The boy nodded.
Mal walked on, glad to have escaped from his embarrassment. Maybe in a few days he would think of another trap for the bear cub. He did not want to disappoint the little boy, who trusted him. He would find a way.
He felt better. He would work in the field that day.
Kiy watched him go sadly. He was thoughtful. He had heard the women laugh at his Uncle Mal, and the men curse him. He knew they called him Lazy-bones. Was it true after all that he could not be trusted? He looked up at the huge, vacant morning sky, and wondered what to do.
The line of women spread out across the golden field in a broad V, like a flight of swallows in the summer sky.
In the centre, with the line of women sweeping behind her to right and left, moved the large form of Lebed’s mother-in-law. The wife of the elder had died that past winter, and she was the senior woman of the village now.
It was a hot day. They had already been working for several hours and now it was nearing noon. For this work, the women wore only simple linen-like shifts, and shapeless bast shoes of woven birch bark. Each carried a sickle.
As they inched their way up the long field of barley, they sang. First the senior woman led with a single line, then the rest would chime in behind her, singing in a high, nasal tone that sounded sometimes harsh, sometimes mournful.