[Novik_Naomi]_Spinning_Silver__A_Novel(z-lib.org)

Chapter 25

S ergey and I went back to Pavys three weeks later, once Papa Mandelstam was all the way

better, and he and Stepon could look after the fruit trees while we were gone. All of them were
growing very well anyway. Sergey had gone back out to the road and got the farmer who had the barn
with the flowers to come and help him cut down some trees, for a share of the wood, and clear some
land. We took that wood to Vysnia and sold it in the market there and bought the seedling trees: apples
and plums and sour cherries. All of them were in flower.

While Papa Mandelstam was getting better, he wrote us many letters to take: one letter for
everyone who still owed him a debt. “We have been lucky,” he said, “so now let us be generous. It
was a hard winter for everyone.” I think he also thought that if we came with those letters, then
everyone in town would be happy more than they would want to hang us. We took the tsar’s letter
with us, too, but after all, the tsar was far away. We did not have to worry that they would come and
get us, because nobody was spending time on hunting for us: all the work that everyone would have
done in spring, they had to do now, in a big hurry, because it was already beginning to be summer.

But we were still surprised when we drove into town. Panova Lyudmila was standing in her yard
sweeping it and she called to us, “Hello, travelers! Do you need a meal on the road?” and we looked
at her and then she saw who we were and shrieked and threw up her hands and some men came
running, and they all stopped and stared at us and one of them said, “You aren’t dead!” as if he thought
we should have been.

“No,” I said, “we are not dead, and we have been pardoned by the tsar,” and I took out the letter
and opened it and showed it to them.

There was a big noise for a while. I was glad Stepon was not with us. The priest came and the tax
collector, who took the letter and read it out loud in a big voice, and everyone in town listened to it.
The tax collector handed the letter back to me and bowed and said, “Well, we must all have a toast to
your good fortune!” and they brought tables and chairs out of the inn and out of Panova Lyudmila’s
house and jugs of krupnik and cider, and everyone had a drink to our health. Kajus did not come, and
neither did his son.

I was very puzzled the whole time why they thought we were dead, but I did not want to ask.
Instead I brought out the letters from Panov Mandelstam and gave them to all the people who were
there, and the ones who were not, I gave to the priest, to give to them. Then everyone was really
happy, and they even drank a toast to Panov Mandelstam’s health.

After that we went to the Mandelstams’ house and packed everything into the cart. Panova Gavelyte
was the only one who was not happy to see us. I think she had planned to tell Panova Mandelstam that
the goats and the chickens were hers now and Panova Mandelstam could not have them back. But she
knew about the tsar’s letter like everyone by then so when me and Sergey came she only said, “Well,
those are theirs,” and pointed to some thin sickly goats.

But I looked in her face and said, “You should be ashamed.” Then I went and took all of the right
goats, ours and theirs, and we tied them to the end of the cart. I went and got all the chickens too, and
packed them into a box. We took the furniture and the things off the shelves and packed it all carefully,
and the ledger we put under the cart seat carefully covered with a blanket.

Then we were done and we could go back, but Sergey sat on the wagon seat silently and did not
start driving, and I looked at him, and he said, “Do you think anyone buried him?”

I did not say anything. I did not want to think about Da. But Sergey was already thinking about him,
and then I was thinking about him also. And I would keep thinking about him there, on the floor of the
house, not buried. And Stepon might start thinking about it too. So Da would always be there on the
floor, even once he was not anymore. “We’ll go,” I said finally.

We drove the cart out to our old house. The rye was growing. It was full of weeds because nobody
was taking care of it, but it was still tall and green. We stopped the cart in the field so the goats and
the horses could eat some of it, and then we went to the white tree. We put our hands on it together. It
was quiet. Mama was not there anymore, and the tree outside our house did not speak to us. But
Mama did not need to talk to us out of a tree anymore, because we had Mama Mandelstam now, and
she would talk for her.

There were silver flowers on the tree’s branches. We picked six of them and we put one on
Mama’s grave, and one for each of the babies. Then we went to the house. Nobody had buried Da, but
it was not that bad. Some animals had come, and it was only some bones and ripped clothes left, and
not a bad smell, because the door had been left open. We got a sack and we put all the bones into it.
Sergey got the shovel. We carried the sack back to the white tree and we dug a grave and we buried
Da there next to all the other graves, the ones he had dug, and I put a stone on top.

We didn’t take anything else from our house. We went back to the cart and we drove all the way
back to town. It was getting late then, but we decided we would keep going. We would stop for the
night at the next town instead. It was ten miles to go, but the road was clear, and it was a very
pleasant night. The sun was not all the way down yet. As we drove out of town, there was another
cart coming, with one horse. It was empty so the driver pulled off to the side to let us go past because
we had a big load, and as we came close and passed him, I saw it was that boy Algis, Oleg’s son,
sitting there on the seat. We stopped a moment and looked at him, and he looked back at us. We did
not say anything, but then we knew that he had not told anyone where we were. He had just gone home
and he had not told anyone he had seen us at all. We nodded to him, and Sergey shook the reins, and
we went on. We went home.

The walls of the glass mountain were secure now, but even so, inside them it had been a lean summer
and fall: many of the pools down below had gone dry in Chernobog’s attack, and more of the
vineyards and orchards had died. But we’d fed the children first, and then shared what there was left,
and the Staryk king had told me, “They will fill again when the winter comes,” when we’d walked
through the lower passageways together, to see what harm had been done.

We’d buried the dead and treated the wounded, laying them in quiet rows beneath the white trees:
the king carefully took shavings of ice from the very wellspring of the stream, and laid them on their
wounds, and put his hands on either side and coaxed it to grow and merge with their bodies. Some of
the great caverns had closed themselves up like turtles pulling into their shells, and had to be opened
again, and in the fields below we cut back the dead vines and trees, and started cuttings from what
had lived, to make ready for a new planting.

At least now I was able to find my own way around. Either I’d learned the trick of it without
realizing, or the mountain itself was grateful to me, because when I went looking for some room or
cavern, the right doors and passages softly opened for me. And amid all the work, I found more than
enough to make a place for me. The Staryk didn’t know anything of keeping records: I suppose it was
only to be expected from people who didn’t take on debts and were used to entire chambers
wandering off and having to be called back like cats.

But with everything in disarray, we needed something better. I had to commandeer pen and paper
from their poets just to have something to keep track of all the fields and pools and what state they
were in, and how much we expected to have, to last us until the winter. I divided up the supplies and
measured out days, so none of us would go hungry before the end.

The tally of those days seemed a long one at the beginning, but every hour was filled. By the end,
they were sliding away so quickly that it took me by blank surprise the day I woke up and found the
trees outside the mountain frosted with the first new snow, and I knew the king’s road stood open once
again. And I missed my mother and my father, I ached for them to know I was well, but still I stood
there looking out for a long time before I rang the bell to call the servants to help me get ready.

It didn’t take me long. I’d taught Flek and Tsop how I kept my papers sorted, and my books were
clean; my grandfather wouldn’t have found any fault. I packed one small bundle, only a few things in
it but dear to me: a few pressed silver flowers, a pair of gloves sewn very badly that Rebekah had
made for me, and the dress I’d worn for the midsummer dancing. It wasn’t a grand gown; the
celebration had been a rejoicing for survival, a few weeks after we’d buried our dead, and there
hadn’t been time or strength for anything grand. It wasn’t much more than a simple shift, but of cool
silvery silk that ran through the fingers like water, and caught the light coming in through the mountain.
I’d worn it with my hair braided up in flowers, and danced in a circle holding hands with my friends,
the new ones and the old, who’d worked beside me, and at the end the king had come to me and
bowed, and together we’d led two lines through the grove, dancing beneath the white branches as they
shed their last flowers to rest until the snow.

He’d kept his own promises, of course; he’d made no more claims upon me, and down in the grove
the sleigh was waiting. I drew one final breath and turned and left my chamber, and went down the
narrow stair. The white trees had bloomed again this morning, full of leaves and flowers. There were
still a few gaps left in the circles, where some of them had died in Chernobog’s attack. But in each of
those spaces, one of the fallen knights had been buried with a silver fruit upon his breast, and thin
white saplings had come out of the ground when I called them with the blessing. They’d keep growing
here, even after I had gone. It made me glad to think of it, that I’d leave them living behind me.

But as I came low enough to see beneath the leaves, I paused, my eyes stinging: behind the sleigh, a
full and dazzling company of the Staryk had assembled, mounted on the backs of sharp-antlered deer.
The knights and nobles carried white hawks on jeweled gauntlets, and white hounds clustered around

the hooves of their mounts, and silver and jewels gleamed on their pale leather: many of them I’d seen
at the gates, or helped to tend beneath the trees. But it wasn’t only them; even some of the farmers
were there, looking at once excited and afraid, plainly uneasy about going to the sunlit world but
coming to see me off in their best finery, their hair strung with silver. And in the very front rank, just
behind the sleigh, were Flek and Tsop and Shofer, with Rebekah there sitting nervous and wide-eyed
in front of her mother, her long fingers wound into the braided reins.

All the beauty and danger of a winter’s night caught out in living shape, and when I came down and
the Staryk king held his hand out to me and helped me into the sleigh, I stood in it a moment longer,
holding on to his hand for balance, looking at all of them, and last at him, to have a picture to hold in
my heart when the winter kingdom’s door had closed behind me.

I sat down blinking away tears, and he sat beside me, and the sleigh leapt off over the snow.
Almost at once when we came out of the mountain, the white trees unfurled to either side of the
shining road before us, icicle drops of silver hanging overhead. We flew down it with cold wind
rushing into our faces and the great assembled hunt coming on behind us, blowing the faint high horns
that sang clear as a winter bird’s song. The people of Lithvas wouldn’t have to fear that music
anymore. The Staryk wouldn’t come among them again as anything other than a whisper beneath the
snowy trees that they’d only half remember. Perhaps I’d have a daughter of my own one day, and
when I heard that wistful sound through the window on a winter’s night, I’d tell her stories of a
mountain of shining glass, and the people who lived within it, and how I’d stood against a demon with
their king.

I looked at him sitting beside me. These last months he’d more often worn clothes as rough as any
laborer’s, even if they were still of purest white, while he’d worked to reopen deepest chambers and
tunnels that had collapsed, healing the mountain’s wounds as he’d healed his people. But he was as
splendid today as all the rest of them, and he sat proud and glittering with his hand tight on the railing
of the sleigh. He didn’t hold back at all; the journey was over too quickly. It felt as though we’d
barely left when a wind bright and fresh with pine came into my face, and the white trees opened
wider into a grove where one single tree stood, still only a young tree but beautiful and full of pale
white leaves, behind a wooden gate, with a house gently blanketed in snow behind it.

I couldn’t help smiling as soon as I saw it: they’d done so much with it already. My eyes were wet,
blurring the thin slivers of golden light shining out around the cracks of the windows and the door.
Friendly plumes of smoke wound from three chimneys, fireplaces in the rooms on either side, and the
shed was attached to the side of a proper barn now. I saw a large coop of chickens, boxes for grain; a
few goats were wandering the yard. Just behind the house, orchard ranks of small fruit trees were
standing, and a lantern hung from a post by the door, spilling light onto a welcoming walkway of
swept-clean stones coming all the way up to the gate.

The sleigh stopped before the gate, just by the tree. The Staryk stepped out of it, and gave me his
hand to help me. The hunt was still gathered behind us, but Flek and Tsop and Shofer had climbed
down; one of the others was holding the reins of their mounts. They all bowed to me. I drew a deep
breath and went to each of them and kissed them on their cheeks, and I reached up and took off the
necklace of gold I was wearing, and I put it around Rebekah’s neck. She looked up from it on her
palm and said, “Thank you, Open-Handed,” a little softly and tentatively, and Flek twitched a little as
if in uncertain alarm; but I bent and kissed her forehead and said, “You’re welcome, little snowflake,”

and then I turned and walked to the gate, and put my hand on it.

It swung open at my touch, and one of the goats, who had been browsing under the light snow at the
posts, startled and made a loud complaining baa-ing and fled away towards the barn, probably
unhappy to have a mysterious stranger erupt out of nowhere into his comfortable yard. The door of the
house opened at once, and my mother was standing there, a shawl clutched around her shoulders and
hope in her face, as if she’d been waiting by it; she gave a cry and ran towards me down the path with
the shawl flying off behind her red onto the snow, and I ran to her and fell into her arms laughing and
crying, so glad it drove out regrets. My father was right behind her, and Wanda and Sergey and Stepon
piling out after them; they all came around me: my parents, my sister, and my brothers, and there was
even a thick-coated sheepdog jumping around us in excitement that I’d never seen, trying to lick all of
us at once, and then it planted its feet and barked loudly twice and then yelped and ran back to
Sergey’s feet and peered from around him instead.

I turned round: they hadn’t vanished yet, that glittering hunt, and the Staryk king had come into the
yard behind me, a winter’s fairy-tale standing there half unreal in the warm lamplight, only made
possible by the cool blue gleam of the snow behind him. My mother and father tightened their grip on
me a little, looking at him warily, but I had his word and I wasn’t afraid. I swallowed and made
myself raise my head and smile at him. “Will you let me thank you, this once, for bringing me home?”

He shook his head and said, “Lady, I would scorn to bind you with such a trick,” and then turning,
beckoned, and Flek and Tsop and Shofer each of them came into the yard, carrying a chest, and
Rebekah followed them, holding a small box. They put them down on the ground and opened them:
two full of silver, one of gold, and the little box full of clear jewels, and the Staryk turned to my
parents, and said as they stared at him, “You have a daughter of your house unwed, whose hand I
would seek; I am the lord of the white forest and the mountain of glass, and hither I have come with
my people assembled for witness to declare to you my intent, with these gifts for your house to make
proof of my worth, to ask your consent that I may court her.”

My parents both looked at me in alarm. I couldn’t say a word. I was too busy glaring at him: six
months, and he hadn’t so much as said a word to me; because now he was determined to do it all
exactly by whatever mad rules undoubtedly governed the formal courting of a lady by a Staryk king. I
imagined dragon-slaying and immortal quests were meant to be involved, and possibly a war or two.
No, thank you.

“If you really wanted to court me,” I said, “you’d have to do it by my family’s laws, and you’d
have to marry me the same way. Save your time!”

He paused and looked at me, and his eyes kindled with light suddenly; he took a step towards me,
and held out his hand, and said urgently, “And if so? Whatever they are, I will venture them, if you
will give me hope.”

“Oh, will you,” I said, and folded my arms, knowing that would be the end of it, of course. And I
wasn’t sorry; I wouldn’t be. I wouldn’t regret any man who wouldn’t do that, no matter what else he
was or offered me; that much had lived in my heart all my life, a promise between me and my people,
that my children would still be Israel no matter where they lived. Even if in some sneaking corner of
my mind I might have thought, once or twice, for only a moment, that it would be worth something to
have a husband who’d sooner slit his own throat than ever lie to you or cheat you. But not if he didn’t
value you at least as high as his pride. I wouldn’t hold myself that cheap, to marry a man who’d love

me less than everything else he had, even if what he had was a winter kingdom.

So I told him, without sorrow, and when I finished, he was silent a moment looking at me, and then
my mother said, “And a way for her to come home, whenever she wants to visit her family!” I stared
at her: she was holding my hand tight and glaring at him fiercely.

He turned to her and said, “My road opens only in winter, but while it does, I will bring her at her
will: does that content you?”

“So long as winter doesn’t up and vanish whenever you don’t want her to go!” my mother said
tartly. I wanted all of a sudden to burst into tears, and cling to her, and at the same time I was so
happy I could have started to sing aloud, and when he looked back at me again, I reached out to him
and took his hand with mine.

We were married two weeks later: a small wedding only in that little house, but my grandfather and
grandmother came from Vysnia with the rabbi in the duke’s own carriage, and they brought with them
a gift, a tall silver mirror in a golden frame, that had been sent from Koron. And my husband held my
hands under the canopy, and drank the wine with me, and broke the glass.

And on the wedding contract, before me and my parents and the rabbi, and Wanda and Sergey for
our witnesses, in silver ink he signed his name.

But I won’t ever tell you what it is.

BY NAOMI NOVIK

Uprooted
Spinning Silver

THE TEMERAIRE SERIES

His Majesty’s Dragon
Throne of Jade

Black Powder War
Empire of Ivory
Victory of Eagles

Tongues of Serpents
Crucible of Gold
Blood of Tyrants
League of Dragons

About the Author

NAOMI NOVIK is the acclaimed author of the Temeraire series and the Nebula-winning novel Uprooted, a fantasy influenced by the
Polish fairy tales of her childhood. She is a founder of the Organization for Transformative Works and the Archive of Our Own. She
lives in New York City with her family and six computers.

naominovik.com
Facebook.com/naominovik

Twitter: @naominovik



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