The last freeze had broken like a fever. The first buds were blooming in the trees, and spring wasn't far behind. Everything was thawing, but Ivan's house had never been frozen in the first place. So why were there trails of water on the floor?
Ivan walked into the main room, rubbing sleep from his eyes. He frowned slightly when he saw watery trails all over the clay tiles.
"Aleks?" he called into the hallway from which he'd come. The innkeeper didn't respond. The poor man was probably still asleep after all the mead he had drunk the night before.
Anyway, it wasn't like Aleks to track water into the house. And Ivan himself obviously hadn't done it. That meant it could only be...
"Winter. Have you come to say goodbye for the year?"
Ivan turned around as he spoke, and found the spirit hovering behind his left shoulder. It had changed greatly since Ivan had first seen it in that blizzard. The figure had fleshed out, had become a thin ghostly man with skin as white as a corpse's. Winter wore a white fur coat, and his eyes burned blue with a frightening intensity. But on that particular day, he wasn't looking very well. His mustache drooped, his eyes were dull, and drops of icy water fell from his indistinct fingertips. Winter was on its way out.
Despite his condition, Winter smirked at Ivan. "I will be back again before you can blink I will ravage your land again and again and-"
"Just go," interrupted Ivan. "Go wherever seasons disappear to when their time is over."
Winter bristled. "I do not disappear," he said haughtily. "I merely visit other places. There are lands in the world that you could never even conceive of..."
Ivan forced a yawn, putting on a show of indifference. Then he put his thumb between two fingers of his right hand, giving Winter the fig. Briefly, he wondered if he had gone too far with the rude gesture.
"Brave boy, taunting Winter," hissed the spirit, confirming Ivan's suspicions. "Next year, I will save my wrath just for you."
Ivan was actually about to apologize, but Winter had already blown past him out the door.
He was drying the floor with a cloth when Aleks came out of his room. He greeted Ivan in usual manner; casual but friendly. "Nice to see you up so early," the man remarked. "What have you been up to?"
"I couldn't sleep," lied Ivan. "So I went outside to check on the weather. Guess I brought some water back with me..."
"That's all right," said Aleks. "Just one thing... I could swear I heard you talking to someone earlier."
"You must have dreamt it," Ivan said, still drying the floor. "There was no one here at all."
Aleks didn't know anything. At least, nothing about Ivan or his origins. He thought the boy was an orphan, and that was technically true. Ivan's mother was a hundred years dead, and he had never, to his own knowledge, had a father.
Ivan had come to Aleks the winter of the year before. He just showed up at the inn, dripping wet after a visit to Southern lands that had not yet frozen. He needed a place to rest for the night, and the inn was as good as any. By then, Ivan was used to thinking of himself of an adult, but to Aleks he seemed like a lost little boy. To the innkeeper, Ivan was a pitiful and bewildering sight.
But Aleks was a kind man, and he had given Ivan a room for the night. Ivan liked the inn, liked the man who owned it. He decided to settle down and just... relax for a while. He knew an opportunity when he saw it, so he played up the lost-and-alone bit, pretending he had lost his memory.
So far, the ruse had worked. But it had been more than a year already, and Ivan knew he would have to leave soon. After all, people would notice a boy who never grew older, never aged or changed.
"You." Aleks spoke gruffly, but not unkindly. "Get me some bread from the market. If a guest comes now, we'll have nothing to feed him."
Ivan nodded and redirected his feet toward the door. He blinked for a moment in the morning sunlight, then started off toward the market in the center of the residential district. He was proud of the way things in this city were situated, proud even though he'd had no part in its planning or construction. Though the Kievan Rus had no official capital, Ivan considered Novgorod to be his personal center.
Ivan reached the market a little later than usual. He went straight to the largest bread stall, which in earlier generations had sold cut stalks of wheat and would probably become a full-blown bakery in a few more decades. He greeted the old vendor, making sure to wear the innocent expression of a child. The baker smiled when he saw Ivan, and asked for several more coins than he should have. As usual, Ivan pretended not to notice.
He made his way back with a steaming loaf in his arms. The sky above him was a deep brilliant blue, with the exception of one tiny black cloud that seemed determined to cross the horizon. Ivan took his time coming home, not thinking much of the weather until he felt the first raindrop on his cheek. Two more followed in the next second. They quickly gave birth to twenty and two hundred and, within a minute, Ivan was soaked to the skin in a sudden downpour.
He cursed Perun, the god of lightning and thunder, and kept the bread under his arm in an attempt to keep it dry. The rain passed as quickly as it had come, but it was too late for the soggy lump Ivan held in his hands. He couldn't go back to the market; he had been conned out of the bit of money that may have been enough to buy more. Next time, he resolved, he would let the mask of innocence slip just enough to correct the baker's 'mistake'.
But at the moment, there was nothing Ivan could do. He returned to the inn, still wet, and knocked on the door. When Aleks came to open it, a strange look came into his eyes.
"Now, look at this," he said. "Not a cloud in the sky, but my boy here comes back soaking wet. Well, at least it's not the dead of winter," he said, alluding to the first time they had met.
Ivan apologized. "It was just this tiny cloud, but it followed me like it had a mind of its own."
Aleks' brow furrowed in thought, emphasizing the wrinkles that had started to form on his face. "Perhaps it was some kind of message from Perun. I don't know what he would want with a boy, but this is the second time he has left an unusual mark on you. Are you sure you don't remember what happened to you a year ago?"
Ivan gave him a blank look, but Aleks continued. "You know, before you showed up at my doorstep?"
Ivan's eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly. "Don't you want me to get another loaf of bread?"