So Ivan sets the table and I keep holding Satu, while her mother spoons porridge into earthenware bowls and then pours us all tea.
We sit down and the wife takes Satu, settling her in her lap. Before I can say anything about retracting my request, Ivan lays out a map, weighing it down with his teacup, and begins explaining our route.
“We’ll leave the village here,” he says, pointing, “and follow the northeast track down the mountain. From there we should be able to head due north. I’ve enough supplies to last us three weeks, which ought to get us to a frozen lake or river. We can do some ice fishing.”
Satu almost dunks her whole face in the porridge and the wife laughs as she scoots the bowl out of her reach just in time. Ivan laughs, too, and I can’t help but smile.
“There will be glaciers,” Ivan continues, “frozen streams, wide expanses of tundra. No forests for shelter.”
Ivan sounds more knowledgeable than I’d hoped for. I swallow, studying the map. It ends not very far north of the mountain village. “How long …” I glance up at Ivan, the question plain in my face.
“Two months, three. It’s hard to know.”
“And if it’s longer than three months?”
He looks determined, but his wife bows her head over the baby, and once more my heart constricts. “We will go until we cannot continue. We will know when we come to it.”
“I can’t ask you to do this. I can’t ask you to leave for so long.”
“Isidor and Satu will be well taken care of.” Ivan moves one hand to his wife’s shoulder. “Provisions are laid by, there is money enough.”
“But you know I can’t pay you.”
“You promised me the story. That is enough.”
Isidor looks up at me. Her eyes gleam with moisture, but the same determination lines her face as does Ivan’s. “You must find your wolf. You must find your Hal and bring him home again.”
I have to fight to keep back the tears. I am suddenly, terribly afraid that the Wolf Queen will bring harm to Isidor and Satu, to punish Ivan for helping me.
But their minds are made up. And without Ivan, I know I won’t get much farther. I need him to get to Hal. So I push my fear, and my guilt, down.
After breakfast, we prepare for our journey.
Ivan has bought new boots for me, a reindeer-skin coat with a hood lined with fur, wool socks, and men’s trousers—also made of reindeer-skin. Isidor tsks when he pulls out the trousers, but Ivan just laughs at her. “She isn’t going to a ball, my lovely, a gown wouldn’t do.”
He has snowshoes for the both of us, packs stuffed with food and furs, matches and a tinderbox for when the matches run out. There’s also a tent, folded and bound tight, that he’ll strap to one of the ponies. He’s acquired two, both sturdy, stocky beasts: one is black and the other gray.
Isidor helps me dress in one corner, when Ivan has gone out to ready the ponies. The trousers and shirt hang loose on my frame, grown thin from my weeks of traveling, but I belt them tight. The coat is quite warm, and I don’t button it closed yet.
She gives me a kerchief for my hair: it’s blue, and embroidered with exquisite gold firebirds. I tie it at the nape of my neck, then sit down to pull on socks and boots. When I’ve finished, I yank the emerald off my finger and hold it out to her. “I want you to have it. Take it as surety that I will send Ivan back to you.”
She shakes her head, closes my hand back around the ring. “I do not need it, little lamb. Ivan always comes back. It will be luck for your journey.”
“Isidor, please take it.”
But then Ivan comes back in, trailing snow, and the moment is lost. “We are ready,” he says.
“Thank you for everything,” I tell Isidor.
She pulls me into a hug and kisses my head, and I have a sudden longing for my father. “Godspeed on your journey.”
I kiss Satu and then step out of the tent, leaving Ivan and Isidor to say their farewells in private.
He comes out a few minutes later with Isidor hovering by the entrance to their home, the baby held fast in her arms.
Ivan claps me on the shoulder, and I follow him to where the ponies wait, laden with our packs. I button my coat. The sky is heavy but it’s not snowing yet. Still, the wind bites sharp. I climb up onto the black pony and close my fingers around his reins.
Ivan lifts his hand in farewell, then nudges his pony off down the road.
I glance back once at Isidor and Satu, and have to quickly look away. I pray to God that Ivan will come home again, safe and soon. And that the Wolf Queen will not harm them while he is gone.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
THE FIRST DAY IS MOSTLY JUST riding, winding down and down the mountain, then crossing a wide expanse of snowy fields. The clouds break away late in the afternoon, and on the distant horizon a high mountain range stretches into the sky.
Ivan is a quiet traveling companion, but even though I can’t shake away the guilt of forcing him to leave Isidor and Satu, I’m glad to have him.
It doesn’t snow that first day, and the heat of the pony radiates through my legs and up my spine so I stay quite warm, though my nose tingles in the sharp air. I’m glad for the mittens, keeping my fingers from frostbite.
We walk awhile, to give the ponies some relief, leading them behind us in the white crust of yesterday’s snow. The sky ahead begins to redden, and Ivan calls back to me that we should make camp for the night.
We have made it almost to the shadow of the mountain range, and Ivan unfolds the tent from its bundle. I help him set it up, holding the poles while he adjusts the skins and drives stakes into the hard ground. Then he makes a fire, a little away from the tent, and I unpack salted meat, traveler’s bread, and tea.
The fire crackles red, warming our faces as we sit and eat in companionable silence. The ponies eat nosebags of grain. I feel weary and anxious, but glad I am finally on my way to Hal, on my way to atone for my mistake.
“It won’t be as easy, from here.” Ivan sips tea from a tin cup. “It is a long, hard road. I want to be sure you are ready to face it. I would not speak so in front of Isidor, but no mortal who has traveled more than a day or two north of the village has ever returned. Are you certain you want to walk this road?”
I don’t even have to shut my eyes to see Hal standing in the snow, his face tight with terror. “I am certain.”
Ivan doesn’t ask me again.
We sleep in the tent, on either side of the center pole. I wear my coat, and burrow beneath the other furs. I dream of Hal sobbing in the dark, of Mokosh with a crown in her hair. Of a forest of thorns, growing up around the reindeer tent, trapping Satu and Isidor inside. The Wolf Queen laughs. “I told you to turn back, but you did not listen.”
Hal marries Mokosh in the wood. They sit together on silver thrones, and the trees bend to their will.
But his eyes are empty.
WE REACH THE MOUNTAINS, AND climb them. The trails we blaze through rocks and ice and snow are too steep for the ponies to navigate with us on their backs. So we lead them, Ivan first with his pony, me after with mine. The wind bites sharp, spitting ice into our faces, and it’s only the climb that keeps me warm.
Ivan sings as he ascends the mountain, and snatches of his music come back to me with the ice on the wind. It’s a beautiful melody, haunting and sad, and I wonder that he has the breath to spare for it. I don’t want him to ever stop—it drowns out the sound of the Wolf Queen’s ever-present laughter.
We camp at the top of the peak in a little half-cave formed of jumbled rocks. There is enough space to light a fire, the smoke curling through a crack at the top, and we do not have to set up our tent.