‘Isn’t it bright, Nikolay?’ said Sonya’s voice.
Nikolay glanced round at Sonya, and bent down to take a closer look at her face. It was a new face, quite delightful with its black moustaches and eyebrows that peeped up at him from her furs – so close and yet so distant in the moonlight.
‘That used to be Sonya,’ thought Nikolay. He looked closer still and gave her a smile.
‘What is it, Nikolay?’
‘Nothing,’ he said, turning back to his horses.
Once they were out on the well-travelled high road, smooth and shiny from sledge runners but lightly pitted by many a horseshoe-nail, with the marks visible in the moonlight, the horses needed no encouragement as they strained at the reins and quickened their pace. The left-hand trace-horse, bending his head down, jerked against his traces. The shaft-horse swayed from side to side, pricking up his ears as if to say, ‘Shall we go now, or wait a bit longer?’ Zakhar’s sledge was well in front but it stood out distinctly, black on white, and they could hear the disappearing echo of its deep-toned bell. Yells and laughter and the sound of people talking floated back from his sledge.
‘Right, my darlings!’ shouted Nikolay, heaving the reins to one side, and cracking the whip. It was only the sudden onrush of wind straight in their faces and the straining new gallop of the trace-horses that told them the sledge was now hurtling along. Nikolay glanced back. The whooping and yelling and cracking of whips told him the other sledges were coming up fast, with the shaft-horses under the lash. Their own shaft-horse was swinging steadily along under his shaft-bow, with no hint of falling back and every promise of giving more and more if asked to do so.
Nikolay caught up with the first sledge. They were charging downhill on to a wide, well-travelled road through a meadow down by the river.
‘Where are we now?’ Nikolay wondered. ‘Must be Kosoy meadow, I suppose. No, this is somewhere new. I’ve never seen this before. This isn’t Kosoy meadow and that’s not Dyomkin hill. Could be anywhere. It’s somewhere new. It’s a magical place. Who cares?’ And yelling to his horses, he began to overtake the first sledge. Zakhar held his horses back and turned his face to them, white to the eyebrows with hoar-frost.
Nikolay gave his horses their head. Zakhar, reaching forward with both arms, clicked his tongue and did the same, calling out, ‘Hold on, sir!’
The sledges flew along side by side, faster and faster, and the horses’ hooves were a galloping blur. Nikolay pulled slightly ahead. Zakhar, with his arms still straining forward, raised one hand holding the reins.
‘No chance, sir,’ he yelled, but Nikolay got the last out of his three galloping horses and managed to get past Zakhar. The horses sprayed all their faces with powdery snow, close by they heard the ringing of the bells, and the horses’ galloping legs blurred with the shadows of the sledge they were passing. Sounds came from all sides with the girls shrieking as the runners whistled over the snow.
Nikolay then brought his horses to a halt and looked around. Still the same enchanted plain all round them, bathed in moonlight, with a scattering of stars on its surface.
‘Zakhar’s shouting for me to turn left. Why should I?’ thought Nikolay. ‘Aren’t we supposed to be going to the Melyukovs’? This can’t be Melyukovka! We could be anywhere, and anything could be happening to us – and whatever
‘Look, his moustache and his eyelashes are all white,’ said one of the strange, pretty, exotic figures sitting there, sporting fine moustaches and eyebrows.
‘I think that person used to be Natasha,’ thought Nikolay; ‘and that was Madame Schoss, or maybe not. And that Circassian with the moustaches, I don’t know who he is, but I love her.’
‘Anybody feeling cold?’ he asked them. The only answer was laughter. Dimmler yelled across from the next sledge, probably something funny, but they couldn’t hear what he was shouting.
‘Yes, yes,’ other voices answered, raised in laughter.
But here they were in a kind of enchanted forest with shifting, black shadows and the glitter of diamonds, and a flight of marble steps, and the silvery roofs of enchanted buildings, and the yelp of wild animals. ‘And if this really is Melyukovka,’ thought Nikolay, ‘it’s a very funny thing that we’ve driven through a land that could have been anywhere and ended up here.’
It was indeed Melyukovka, and here came the footmen and maid-servants running out to meet them with lights and beaming faces.
‘Who is it?’ asked a voice from the entrance.
‘It’s the mummers from the count’s. I can tell by the horses,’ other voices answered.
CHAPTER 11
