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.