They fed him, set food into his hands; and he ate, hardly tasting it. At last Anna took his face between her Soft hands and kissed him on the brow; as mother Katya did. "What is wrongwith Andrei?" a child's voice asked. He would have explained to the child but someone else did: "He is ill. He is hurt. Go to bed, child."
"His hands are cold," said another; and Anna's voice: "Lock the doors. Oh, lock the doors, don't let him stray." Some did walk away to die, taken with the wasting, who sought the night, and frozen death.
"I shall not go," he said, great effort to speak; and no easier when he had done it. It cheered them all. They hugged him and chafed his hands.
"Perhaps," said Anna's still, faraway voice, "he only looked up a little moment. Perhaps he will get well."
"He will," someone vowed, but he was not sure who. Easier to retreat, back into that far place, but they gave him no peace.
"I will see him to bed," Hya said. "Go, sleep. I will take care of him. No, Anna—Anna, please go."
Someone kissed him, gently, sadly. The house fell then slowly into silence. He rested, staring at the fire, disturbed only when Ilya would reach to stir the embers. "Will you go upstairs?" Dya asked at last. "Dare you sleep?"
He roused himself out of kindness to them who loved him, rose, and rising, caught at the mantlepiece, stared fixedly at the face of Hya's carven wolf, which seemed starker and truer than all else in the room. He looked at the other work which Ilya had made, the carven mantle itself, ran his fingers over the writhing wooden vines and leaves, touched the carven flowers, traced the gaudy, garish colors.
"I have seen beauty," he said. "Hya, you do not know. It waits out there—"
"Andrei," Hya said.
"I have seen colors. . . you have never seen." Hya reached out and turned his face toward him, lightly slapped his cheek. There was a terrible pain in Hya's face, like Anna's pain. "Tell me," Ilya said. He thought of it, and would not.
"Andrei, if you go, Anna will follow. Do you understand? Anna loves you; and you will never go alone."
He thought of this too, and deep within, tainted by self and small, there was a kindness where love had been, that was the other pole which drew him. The death outside pulled at him, but within the walls there was a bond to living souls, so that at last he knew what he ought to choose, which was Mischa's way. He would not wish this torment on those who loved him. Not on Anna.
"Is there still sun?" he asked. "No," Ilya said softly. "The sun has gone."
"Tomorrow then."
"What, tomorrow?" Ilya asked. "What will be tomorrow?" It was hard to resist Hya, close to him—so long his friend. Brother. Other self. "There was a wolf," he said slowly, leaning there against the mantel, and fingering the carvings Hya's hand had made. "I hunted it. . . and it hunts me. I have talked with old Mischa, do you know, Ilya? And Mischa knows that beast. Mischa said I must appease it, and then I shall be free; and so I shall. You love beauty, Hya, and I hunted it, and I have seen it. . . out there, I have seen the sun, and the light, and the ice, and I am cold, Ilya. I shall look now by little stolen moments and sooner or later I will have to go outside the walls. Then it will be waiting there."
"Anna—would follow you. Do you understand that, Andrei? How much she loves you?" He nodded. "So," he said, still staring at the wolf, "so I shall not wish to go. I shall try not to, Hya."
"What. . . did you see?"
He looked into Hya's eyes, and saw there a touch of that same cold. Of furtive desire. "No," he said. "Let be. Don't stay near me. Let me be."
"So that you can go, and die?"
He shrugged. Ilya stared at him, distraught. He patted Ilya's shoulder, walked away to the ladder to the loft. Stopped, for he could hear the wind outside, calling him, to the wolf. "It's there," he said. "Just outside."
"I shall watch you," Ilya said. "I shall; Anna will, one and then the other of us. We will not let you go."
He looked toward the door, seeing beyond it, into the blue night. Hya took his arm, had a burning candle with him, to light them to the loft. "Come," Ilya bade him, and he climbed the wooden ladder that was carved with flowers, up among the painted columns and posts of the loft, quietly passed the roomful of sleeping children. There was their own nook; Dya shut the door, touched the candle to the night lamp and blew the wick out, small ordinary acts, done every night of their lives, comforting now. Andrei moved of lifelong habit, undid his belt and hung it on the bedpost on his side, took off his boots, crawled beneath the cold, heavy bedclothes. Ilya tucked him in when he had lain down, as once Katya had nightly climbed the stairs to do; and he feigned quick sleep. Ilya stood there a moment, walked around then with a creaking of the aged boards, climbed in the other side. The bed was like ice; it remained so, but Andrei did not shiver. He lay still, and listened to the wind, listened to footsteps around the door downstairs, soft, padding steps that would never print the snow. Listened to the blowing of flakes from off the rooftree, and the fall of those particles onto drifts. Timbers boomed, like lightning strikes, and he would jump, and lie still again.
At last he could resist it no more, and stirred, thrust a foot for the cold airand the floor.
"Andrei," Ilya said at once, turned, rose on an elbow, reached out to take his shoulder. "Are you all right, Andrei?"
He lay back. "Let me go," he said finally. "Ilya, the wolf is out there. It will always be."
"Hush, be still." And when he moved, hardly aware that he moved to rise, Ilya held him back. "It waits," he said, protesting. "It waits, Ilya, and the cold will spread, more than to me alone. You know that."
"Hush." Ilya quietly rolled from the bed, and went around to his side, sat down there. "I shall get no sleep," Ilya said. "I shall never know if you are not walking in yours. How shall I rest, Andrei?
I promised Anna I would watch you."
He did not want to listen to this, but it touched through the numbness that possessed him. "You should let me go," he said. "I shall go. . . tomorrow or the next day. It will never be far, just outside the door. Umnik and me—it will have us."
"Hush." Ilya wrapped his wrist in his belt, then attached it to the bedpost; this he allowed, because it was Ilya, and he knew how greatly Ilya grieved; it was not fair that Ilya should worry so. Ilya took great pains, with this and with the other one, sat there, straightened his hair, his hand very gentle. "Sleep now," Ilya said. "Go to sleep; you will not wander in your dreams. You are safe."
He shut his eyes, thinking that the day would come, and other nights, and when he shut his eyes, the wolf was there, no less than he had been before, eyes like the sun, a white wolf in blue night, invisible against the snow which lay thick in the yard. The horses whickered softly, disturbed. Goats bleated. . . no need of alarm for them. They were safe in their warm stable, where the cold would never come. . . and it was the cold which waited.
He felt Ilya draw back, heard the creak of boards, the door open, heard Ilya go down the ladder. He felt a little distress then and pulled to be free, but Ilya's knots were snug, and the vision drank him back again, the blue night, the pale snows. Somewhere he heard the softest of sounds, and he dreamed the wolf retreated, standing warily out by the fence. And others were there, white and gaunt with famine. A vision came to him, of the house door opening softly in the dark and a figure in his furs, who carried his bow and his shafts. Umnik nickered softly, came out from the stable on his own, and his ears were pricked up and his eyes were full of the moving curtains of light which leapt and danced and flowed across the blue heavens. . . . The aurora, uncommonly bright and strange. The horse walked forward, nuzzled an offered hand and the two of them stood together, man and pony, beneath the glory of the sky. Slowly the man looked up, his face to the light, and it was Ilya, whose eyes, angry, showed the least fatal quickness as they gazed at the heavens. . . curiosity, and openness.