Spinning Silver

Irina arranges the marriage of Princess Vassilia in a shrewd political maneuver. She also arranges her husband’s death; he is to be bound by chains and burned at the stake like his mother. She feels some guilt, pitying the Staryk children and believing Mirnatius to be innocent in the grand scheme of things, his soul fallen prey to a demon even before his birth. But the world she desires isn’t the world she lives in, and she notes, “if I would do nothing until I could repair every terrible thing at once, I would do nothing forever” (404). And so she remains committed to her plan for the good of Lithvas, no matter the cost to her own soul.

Miryem finds her husband in the tunnel and tells him he owes her three answers. He agrees. She asks if he will promise not to bring back the winter, to leave the people of Lithvas alone and not starve them if she frees him. He answers that he will not. Shocked, she says that he would rather die to kill her people than save his own. He replies:

“To save my people? Do you think I have spent my strength, spent the treasure of my kingdom to the last coin, and given my hand to as I thought an unworthy mortal for any lesser cause than that? […] after all this that I have done, now you come and ask me a coward’s question, if I will buy my life, with a promise to stand aside and let him take them all instead? Never” (409).

He claims that this danger is her people’s fault for crowning Chernobog. Miryem answers that they did not know they had done so. She reminds him that they have no magic and could not have known better. Finally, she asks if he will promise to help overthrow Chernobog and stop the winter once he has been dethroned. He agrees, but the promise is not binding until Chernobog is defeated and the Staryk’s people are safe. She asks if he will promise for himself and all the Staryk to leave her and all the people of Lithvas alone, unmolested by raids and rape. He agrees that if she frees him, they will “seek no harm in mortal blood and take no treasure, not even sun-warmed gold, save in just vengeance for equal harm given first, and we shall take no woman unwilling who has refused her hand” (411). She confirms that the last part of his promise applies even to her as his wife. He agrees. Miryem desperately tries to free him, but the magic binding him is strong, and Chernobog is approaching. He tells her to kill him with a nearby shovel to protect his people. Sickened by the prospect, she resolves herself to do so, but at the last moment she turns Irina’s necklace—which has been holding the silver chain together—to gold. The Staryk breaks free, and Chernobog flees.

With the Staryk king unbound and winter returned, Irina fears Lithvas will starve. She instinctively knows that Miryem is responsible and that Chernobog will soon come for her, burning and angry. Magreta pleads for her to flee, but Irina insists that if nothing else, her crown means she must stay and fight for her people’s lives. When Chernobog returns, he is furious, blaming her for the Staryk’s escape. She declares it is not her fault, and when he moves to eat her since he considers their deal broken, she offers to take him to the Staryk lands instead. Irina thinks her options over but ultimately decides to risk the lives of the Staryk before her own and her people’s. She takes Chernobog through the mirror so he can feast on the Staryk in their own lands.

Miryem and her husband escape the tunnels only to be attacked by a guardsman, who runs the Staryk king through with his sword and turns to do the same to Miryem. Fortunately, Sergey springs into action and buys them time. As he begins to lose the fight, the Staryk—less dead than initially thought—kills the guardsman. Irritated at being rescued and carried by Sergey, Miryem convinces her husband to bargain. Sergey receives the promise that his crops will not frost over, that his animals will not be lost in blizzards, and that he may hunt the white animals that belong to the Staryk in exchange for his help. After carrying the Staryk through the dark, they find their families with the cart. They bring the Staryk king to the witch’s house, and Miryem makes the same bargain as Sergey for all who help the Staryk that night. He agrees and falls unconscious. Miryem is frustrated that he seems to be dying now that she does not want him to. More than that, she struggles with her growing guilt and sense of comradery with her husband, as he sacrificed himself for his people just as she had saved him for them. She respects that “he’d bent that iron pride of his and married a mortal, not to store up treasure for himself or to conquer, but to save his people from a terrible enemy” (428).

Irina laments that she is causing the deaths of innocent Staryk, but she remains firm on her decision, assuring herself that “it didn’t matter that I cared, that I was sorry; what mattered was what I had done, what I would do” (429). She plans to go back and prepare for her husband’s impending burning at the stake, as Chernobog will return once he has devoured all the Staryk. When she puts her hand through the reflection, it comes away wet with the nut Stepon received from his mother’s tree. She is compelled to plant it in the Staryk lands. She digs a hole for it under the snow, covering it in earth, then returns home.

Miryem realizes the witch’s house they are staying in is the same as the one in the Staryk kingdom. When she tells her husband and asks if they can go to the Staryk lands through it, he says that he sealed it up, leaving only cracks. He begins searching a newly appeared cupboard and tells the others to search the house for something of the Staryk world. As he grows more frantic, realizing Chernobog is on his lands already, they cannot find anything until Stepon holds out the nut. Shocked, the Staryk demands to know how he got it. Wanda explains that it came from their mother in the tree, and that it is Stepon’s. The king explains that one life would not be enough to bring the tree to flower and asks how they did it. Wanda answers that her five brothers and mother were buried there, and that their mother gave it to Stepon. The Staryk agrees the nut is Stepon’s, resigned that no bargain would equal the pain of its production. Stepon holds it out to the king. He only stares in response, unable to take it; Miryem takes it and asks what to do with it. He insists it is not his, but says that if it were, he would plant it, call it forth, and open his road under it; since he has “no claim on the seed,” he cannot do so, nor can the tree take root in the spring (437). They try to plant it under frost made by the Staryk, but he is too weak. Thinking quickly, Miryem remembers it is winter in the Staryk forest and plunges her hand into the washtub—it does not stop but reaches through until it touches another hand. She presses the nut into Irina’s hand and retreats.

Miryem runs to tell her husband the good news and ask what is next. He says she must call the tree forth from the seed. Miryem does not know how until her father suggests they say the Jewish blessing for fruit trees in bloom. A small, white seedling pushes through the earth and grows into its full height. When they bring the unconscious Staryk to it, he is healed and rejuvenated. He opens his road, and a stag comes to carry him. He surprises Miryem by asking if she will help him fight Chernobog, even though the demon is no longer in her own world. Wondering what she could possibly do to help, she looks at the white tree newly grown beside her. She realizes that there’s no use asking, as he’d only expect high magic, which “came only when you made some larger version of yourself with words and promises, and then stepped inside and somehow grew to fill it” (441-42).

Miryem agrees to help on the condition that he will return her to her family afterward. He reminds her that he has already promised to lift winter and ensure his road does not run under green trees; if she comes, he will not be able to return her until the first day of winter in Lithvas. Seeing that her parents are safe with Wanda, Sergey, and Stepon, she agrees. She kisses them goodbye, and the king pulls her up onto his stag.

Chernobog wreaks havoc upon the Staryk land and its people, no longer bound by the size of his human host. The Staryk land is under the oppression of Chernobog’s heat, which melts the icy skin of the defenseless Staryk. While the Staryk king and his warriors attempt to fight Chernobog, they are outmatched. As he drinks of the waterfall bursting out of the once impenetrable glass mountain, he grows in size and power as the Staryk power wanes, “draining them even as they were trying to fight him” (448).

Miryem bravely makes her way through the tunnels that lead to the mountain’s weakness. As she approaches it, she finds not only the jagged hole in the mountain face and a new river flowing through the tunnels, but also the silver coins she had her bondsmen move into the tunnels to empty the storerooms. She boldly shouts to get Chernobog’s attention and swears to him on high magic that she will seal the mountain away, making him unable to drink from its power ever again. Enraged, he crawls up the side of the mountain and through the hole in its face. As his massive, magma-like form chases her through the tunnel, the silver coins stick to his skin. Miryem remembers that as the Staryk can be bound by silver, Chernobog can be bound by gold. Using her power, Miryem transforms all the remaining silver into gold at once, using the sunlight trapped within it to fight Chernobog. He weeps and moans, and the tunnels fill with light “brighter than full noon—a hundred years of summer sun paid back all at once, coruscating through the depths of the mountain and coming back again, and he was shrinking with every moment” (449).

As Chernobog retreats, pieces of his body and the melted gold that injured him are left behind. Between the molten gold and the ice, the damage to the mountain begins to heal. The Staryk king kneels before his wife and acknowledges her victory and its importance to his people: “Lady, though you choose a home in the sunlit world, you are a Staryk queen indeed” (450).

Defeated, Chernobog slinks back to Lithvas to be met by the tsarina. He is furious at his failure and tries to lash out violently at Irina and Magreta, only to be stopped by the magic of his vow that no harm would come to Irina. She reminds him, “Me and mine. You must leave me and mine alone, Chernobog; you gave your word, and I have had nothing else of you” (453). Enraged, he tries to attack a servant only to find that the vow still holds. Irina explains that, as the tsarina, all of Lithvas is hers, and by the words of the vow Chernobog cannot harm any of its inhabitants. Furious, Chernobog declares that he will find a new kingdom and feed again. Irina goes on to say that Mirnatius is also hers by marriage, and as she puts her silver Staryk ring on his finger, Chernobog is forced out of the tsar. The hot coal flings itself out of Mirnatius’s mouth and onto the carpet. The servant quickly pours the “iron bucket of sand and ashes and cinders” onto it, smothering the flames and trapping it within the bucket (455). Soon enough, even the smoke stops. Chernobog is gone. Free for the first time in his entire life, Mirnatius looks at Irina as if “she was the most beautiful thing in the world” (455).

The Mandelstams forgive the remaining debts as they go to live with Wanda, Sergey, and Stepon in the witch’s house. Wanda and Sergey return to their former home and find their father’s bones left were they had fallen. Their mother is no longer in the tree, “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” (458). After placing six silver flowers from the tree’s branches on their mother’s grave, they bury their father’s bones next to her.

With the glass mountain’s face repaired, other challenges persist—pools dried and orchards and vineyards died as a result of Chernobog’s attack. The Staryk king carefully heals the injured but has no useful records. With her accounting skills, Miryem quickly takes inventory of the fields, pools, supplies, and expectations of what’s needed to last until winter. With her measures and rationing, they survive to winter successfully. Despite her longing for her family, Miryem finds herself reluctant to leave the Staryk lands. She is slightly appeased in that she has left a legacy—the fallen Staryk knights were buried with silver fruit, and Miryem had called them forth into saplings with her blessing. It pleases her to know that “they’d keep growing here, even after I had gone. […] that I’d leave them living behind me” (461).

To Miryem’s surprise, “a full and dazzling company of the Staryk” made of nobles, bondsmen, and peasants alike waits to escort her home in all their finery (461). She finds herself fighting tears at the thought of leaving the Staryk—and their king—forever. She kisses her bondsmen and gives Rebekah bat Flek her gold necklace in farewell before her tearful reunion with her family, including Wanda, Sergey, and Stepon. When she turns around, she notices that the Staryk have not left but actually followed her into the yard. When Miryem asks if she can thank the king for returning her to her family, he surprises her by saying he would not bind her in such a way. Instead, the bondsmen bring forth chests and boxes of silver, gold, and jewels as the Staryk king respectfully asks Miryem’s family for permission to court her: “I have come with my people assembled for witness to declare you my intent, with these gifts for your house to make proof of my worth, to ask your consent that I may court her” (464).

Stunned that he would do such a thing—especially without mentioning his intention over the past six months, Miryem considers that whatever formal courtship means to the Staryk would likely be complicated and potentially dangerous. She answers by stating that if he really wants to court her, he will have to court and marry her in accordance with her people’s laws, expecting him to decline. Instead, he states that he will—“whatever they are, I will venture them, if you will give me hope” (465). Miryem details what it would take for her to marry him in accordance with Jewish tradition, expecting that he will refuse but certain of her choice all the same. She asserts, “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” (465). Rakhel chimes in that in addition to these demands, the Staryk would have to provide a way for Miryem to visit her family. The Staryk agrees to take her for visits whenever his road, which appears in winter, is able to do so.

Two weeks later, her grandparents arrive in the Duke of Vysnia’s carriage with “a tall silver mirror in a golden frame,” sent from Irina in Koron. Miryem Mandelstam marries the Staryk king in a traditional Jewish ceremony. On the marriage contract, in view of Miryem’s entire family, “in silver ink, he signed his name. But I won’t ever tell you what it is” (466).