Enchantment

5

Naked

Ivan stepped off the bridge onto the grassy meadow and his clothing disappeared.

Startled, he let go of Katerina's hand and tried to cover himself, then realized how pathetic he looked, clutching his genitals, and turned his back on her.

"What are you doing?" she asked. "Peeing?"

Since all his sphincters were firmly clamped down, that wasn't likely. "I'm naked," he said. "What happened to my clothing?"

"I don't know," said Katerina. "Your skin is very smooth. Like a baby's."

It bothered him that she didn't seem bothered by his nudity. He sidled toward the bridge. "Maybe if I cross over to the middle again, I'll get my clothes back."

"They'd just disappear again the minute you came back here," said Katerina impatiently.

If I come back, Ivan thought.

"Your skin is so smooth," she said again. "And white. Have you been sick?"

Her comment annoyed him. He was proud of having a decathlete's body. She was looking at him as if he were... what? Unmanly.

But there were worse things to worry about than her rude assessment of his body. The bridge was invisible again, and he couldn't remember quite where it had been.

"Take my hand again so I can see the bridge," he said.

"No," she said.

"I need my clothes."

"You can't have them," she said.

"I don't like being naked in front of you."

"I already saw," she said. "You don't have to hide your deformity."

Deformity?

It took him a moment to realize what she meant. In America practically everyone in the locker room had been circumcised. But to Katerina's people it would be rare. Nudity, however, must be common. Well, it wasn't common to him.

"I need to wear something," he said.

"I know, it's cold. Too bad you couldn't get the skin off that bear."

"Give me your..." He tried to think of the Old Church Slavonic word for hoose, but if he ever knew it, he didn't know it now. "Your clothing. Robe. Coat." That about exhausted the approximations he could think of.

No answer.

He looked over his shoulder at her. She was, finally, blushing.

"What, I can be naked and you can't part with one piece of clothing?"

"Are you trying to shame me?" she whispered.

"I'm trying not to shame us both," he said. "I can't walk into your parents' house naked."

"Better naked than wearing women's clothing," she said.

"I'm not going to wear it like a woman," he said. "Now give it to me before I freeze to death standing here."

Sullenly she dropped her hoose off her shoulders, then leaned down to pick it up from the ground. She looked away as she handed it to him.

True to his word, he didn't put it over his shoulders—since it was open-fronted, it would hardly have served his purpose that way. Instead he wrapped it around his waist and tucked it like a bath towel.

"Good," he said, facing her again. "I'm covered."

But she who had stared frankly at his nakedness would not look at him now.

"I'm wearing it like a soldier's kilt," he said.

"When people murmur that the husband of the queen once wore her clothing, I will be able to say, I never saw him wear any such thing, and I can swear to it by the Holy Virgin."

"Are you telling me that it's better for me to come to your parents' house naked?"

"It would be better for you to come to my parents' house dead than wearing women's clothing."

"Well, here's an idea. How about if I don't come to your parents' house at all? Give me your hand so I can see the bridge, and I'll be on my way."

She whirled around to face him, to clutch at his hands. "No, no, wear whatever you want. You can't leave, you must come to my house, you have to marry me or we lose it all. After everything, after you fought the bear, after you woke me, to leave now would be worse than if you had never come!"

He held her hands. "Listen, I understand that wearing women's clothing is a..." He struggled for a word for tabu. "A sin. When we get near the village, I'll wait in the woods until you can bring me men's clothing." Gingerly he removed the hoose and handed it back to her.

She looked at him with disgust, refusing to touch the garment. "Do you expect me to wear this now that it's been around your loins?"

"No," said Ivan. "No, I see that you can't wear it now." He reached out and dropped the hoose into the chasm. "It's gone."

Her disdain was undiminished. "Nothing is gone," she said. "You just gave the hoose to the Widow."

"I was just down there," he said. "She wasn't there."

"She makes the rules, not you," Katerina said. "I have to marry you, but you're a fool. She must have picked you out herself."

That really pissed him off. "Maybe you have to marry me, but I don't have to marry you."

"Naked in the woods, a deformed peasant who wears women's clothing and speaks like a stupid child, it's not as though you had a lot of choices."

Her taunt was so ridiculously myopic that he had to laugh. He thought of Ruth back in New York, waiting for him. All this magic, these dreams of childhood, the evil monster he had beaten, the princess he had kissed, what were they? Foolishness, he could see that now. He didn't belong here. The rules made no sense to him. Clearly she expected him to go through with a real marriage. Like the rules in a china shop: You break it, you bought it. Only in this case, you kiss her, you've married her.

Well, he didn't like the rules. He didn't like the idea of marrying someone who thought he was a deformed cross-dressing peon, and even less did he like the idea of getting caught up in some kind of struggle with a mythical witch from the nightmares of fifty generations of Russian children. He'd done his part. He woke her up and set her free. The prince didn't have to stay. Especially when he wasn't a prince.

"Look," he said.

"I've already seen enough," she said.

"I mean listen."

"If you mean listen, say listen," she said. "Why do you talk so funny? Twisting all the words around?"

"Because I'm not from here!" he said. "Your language isn't my language." To prove it, he burst into modern Russian. "You speak a language that is already dead, that is hinted at only in fragments of ancient manuscripts, so you're lucky I speak any language you can understand at all!"

She looked at him now with dread. "What kind of curse was that? You spoke of death. Did you curse me to die?"

"I didn't curse you," he said in Old Church Slavonic. "I spoke in my own language."

But then he wondered what language was his own. Russian was the language of his parents' home, but the language of his childhood was Ukrainian. But all these years of thinking, speaking, writing in English—didn't that make English his language, too? When he was married to Ruth, wouldn't English be the language of their children? For that matter, didn't Old Church Slavonic have as much claim to be one of his languages? However badly he might speak it, it had been the private language he and his father once shared. And now, could he really pass up the chance to learn a dialect of proto-Slavonic, the true spoken language, after all these years of knowing and using the shadow of it that had survived?

Yes, he could. He had a life, and this wasn't it. He had done what he came to do—he cleared away the leaves, defeated the beast, crossed the chasm, woke the princess. That was as far as the stories ever went. None of the stories included shivering naked between forest and pit, the princess scorning you as a peasant, sneering at the symbol of your childhood covenant with God and loathing you for daring to try to cover your nakedness.

Well, actually, that wasn't true. Western stories ended with getting married and living happily ever after. And Russian fairy tales went far beyond that—to betrayal, adultery, murder, all within that romantic marriage that the wanderer stumbled into. The old tale of Sleeping Beauty might end happily in French or English, but he was in Russia, and only a fool would want to live through the Russian version of any fairy tale.

Ivan dropped to his knees in the grass and crawled along the edge of the chasm, reaching out with his left arm to try to feel the invisible bridge.

"What are you doing?" she said.

"Going home," he said.

She sighed. "You won't find it."

He stopped probing for the bridge. "Yes I will."

"You've already put your hand through it several times," she said. "It isn't there for you."

"You mean it only exists when you're holding my hand?"

"It exists all the time," she said. "For me."

"So I can't get back home without your help."

"Why would you want to leave, anyway?" she said. "When you marry me, you'll be a prince. Heir to the throne. Someday you'll be king of Taina."

"I've never even heard of Taina," he said. "I don't want to be king of anything. I want a doctorate and tenure at a university and a wife and children who love me." Of course he used the modern Russian words for doctorate and university and the English word for tenure, since he'd never had to say it in Russian and wasn't sure how.

She was baffled by the strange vocabulary, of course, but tried to make sense of it. "So you're on a quest?" she said. "To find this... tenure?"

"Yes, exactly," said Ivan. "So if you'll be so kind as to help me back over the bridge, I'll find my own way home from there."

"No," she said.

"Listen, you owe me. I woke you up."

"Yes," she said, "and because of that there's no one else I can marry. After the wedding you can go search for your tenure."

"Listen," he said. "I'm betrothed to someone else."

"No you're not," she said coldly.

"I assure you that I am," he said.

"You are betrothed to me," she said. "If you were betrothed to someone else, I would not have woken up when you kissed me. The bear would not have gone away when I agreed to marry you."

"And how would the bear know?"

"The bear didn't know. The spell knew. The universe knows when an oath is being made, and when an oath is broken."

"Well, the universe just slipped up, because I was engaged to Ruth before I—" He heard his own words and stopped.

Before? What did before mean now? He was in her world—had been in her world since he reached the pedestal in the middle of the chasm. And by her clothing and her speech he was pretty sure her world was medieval, maybe 900 C.E., maybe earlier. So at the moment in time when he kissed her, he and Ruth hadn't even been born yet.

But that was ludicrous. Because he was there, as a man in his twenties who had definitely given his word, earlier in his life, to marry Ruth. Therefore it was a betrothed man who kissed the princess.

But he kissed her centuries before his betrothal.

Round and round it went. What good were the rules of time when the rules of magic contradicted them?

Mother had told him that there was something wrong, some impediment to his marriage with Ruth. Was it this? Even though he hadn't yet come here and fought his way to the princess, had this moment already happened centuries before? Did objective time—the flow of centuries—override subjective time, the flow of his own life?

There was no way he could even begin to discuss such concepts with Katerina. Even if he had enough Old Church Slavonic to speak these thoughts, he doubted she'd have the philosophical background to understand them. Just as he didn't have the background to grasp the way things worked here. Bridges that existed for one person and not for another. Bears that lived for centuries in leaf-filled pits. Witches who put spells on princesses. It was great to read about these things, but living with them wasn't half so entertaining. And he had a feeling that before he was done with all this, he'd like it even less.

"So I'm trapped," he said.

"Yes," she said coldly. "Poor you, a peasant boy trapped into marrying a princess so you can become a king."

"I don't want to be a king," he said. "And I'm not a peasant. Or a boy."

"You're certainly not a knight."

"I must be a knight," he said. "Or else how could I get past the bear?"

"You're too weak and soft and young to be a knight."

No one had ever called him weak and soft, and he was older than she was. Almost by reflex he tensed his muscles, feeling them bulge and move under his skin. "How can you call me weak?"

In reply she took hold of his right forearm between her hands. Her fingers overlapped considerably. "This arm has never raised a sword." She gripped his left upper arm. "Could this arm hold a shield for more than five minutes?"

"I've never needed to," said Ivan. "But I'm hardly a..." He struggled to think of a word that would mean weakling.

"Smridu," she said. Peasant.

"I'm not a smridu. I've never farmed in my life. I don't even know what farmers do."

"No, I can see that," she said. "You have the manners of a peasant, but those thighs would never get you through a plowing season. They'd break like twigs."

Her cold assessment of his naked body infuriated and shamed him. He had never tried to bulk up like a Schwarzenegger, he had tried for genuine all-around athleticism. Her scorn was so unfair, so culturally myopic—and yet he knew it would be pathetic to defend himself. "In my country I'm considered strong enough."

"Then your country will soon be conquered, when real men see their opportunity. What are you, a merchant?" She glanced down at his crotch, continuing her assessment of his body. And then, suddenly, her eyes grew wide.

"What?" he said, fighting the urge to cover himself or turn away.

"I heard about this. The Jews do this."

"Yes, that's right," he said. "I'm a Jew."

Her gaze grew stony and she muttered an epithet that he didn't understand.

Great, that was all he needed. Anti-Semitism, too.

"If you think you can sell the daughter of a king into slavery, think again," she said. "My father will ransom me, and then he'll come and hunt you down and kill you anyway."

"Slavery!" he cried. "What does my being a Jew have to do with slavery?"

Her fear eased. "If you're not a peasant and you're not a knight, then I thought you might be a trader, and then I thought of the Jews who traffic in slaves, carrying people west to sell them to the Franks."

Ivan remembered his history. In this era all the traders dealt in slaves.

"Traders don't steal slaves, they buy them. War captives. Debtors."

"But the bishop says that—"

Of course. No sooner are these people converted to Christianity than the Church starts in with the calumnies against Jews. "The only thing the bishop knows about Jews is the lies the Christians made up about us."

Her face flushed. "How dare you say that Christians are liars. I'm a Christian and I never lie."

"Well, I'm a Jew and I never captured a slave in my life. Or bought or sold one either. And I never met a Jew who did."

She glared at him. "What a lie," she said. "I have watched my father buy slaves from Jews himself!"

"Well, if you buy the slaves, what right do you have to criticize a Jew for selling them?"

"In my father's kingdom, Christian slaves earn their freedom by fifteen years of work."

"Oh, but Jewish slaves would stay slaves forever?"

"All our slaves convert to Christianity."

"Of course they do!" cried Ivan, exasperated. "If Christians are the only ones you set free!"

"But Jews sell Christians into slavery," she said.

"And who do you think they sell them to?" he demanded. "Christians like your father. I can't believe we're even having this conversation. Dealing in slaves is evil when Jews do it, but perfectly all right when Christians do it, is that the rule?"

"Why should I argue with a boy?" she said.

"You shouldn't argue. You should listen and learn the truth. I'm a Jew and I'm not a prince and I don't want to marry you, I want to go home and marry Ruth. According to you I also wore women's clothing. Nobody's going to want me to be king, so let's forget the whole thing. Let me go back across that bridge."

She was adamant. "The man who kissed me is the man I have to marry," she said, "or the Widow rules over the people of Taina."

"So you'd even marry a slave-stealing Jew?" he said.

"Now you admit it!" she cried triumphantly.

"No, I don't admit it!" he shouted back. "The only thing I admit is that I don't want to marry you!"

"You gave your word!"

"There was a bear!"

She squared on him like a trapped badger. "And there will be another bear, or worse. I will marry you for the sake of the people. Maybe you don't care about them, maybe you have no people, maybe you come from a land where other people's suffering means nothing. But in my land, even a peasant would die for his people, would stand against Hun or Saxon if it would save the life of even one child. Because in my land, even the peasants are men."

He looked at her, and remembered how she had looked to him before he kissed her, the ethereal beauty, the perfection of her. Well, that was gone. But there was a different kind of beauty now. Or perhaps it wasn't beauty at all. Nobility. She made him ashamed.

"They're not my people," he murmured.

"But they're my people, and if I'm to save them, I have to marry you, even a man who wears women's clothing and lies to my face."

"Is the Widow so terrible?" he asked.

"Terrible enough to choose you as the one she let past the bear to wake me."

"Hey," he said. "Nobody let me past that bear! I beat him."

"You hit him with a rock," she said scornfully.

"I set you free of that spell."

"Someone else would have eventually."

"When? It was already more than a thousand years from your time to mine." The language she spoke was at least that old.

She gasped. "A thousand years! But... in a thousand years... my people..."

She turned from him, gathered her skirt, and plunged into the woods.

He ran after her, which worked fine on the grass but immediately became quite uncomfortable in the forest, with harder ground and nuts and stones among the fallen leaves. "Wait!" he called out.

"They're all dead by now!" she cried.

"You don't know that!" he called after her. "In all the stories, the king and his people slept while the princess did!"

She heard him; she slowed, but not enough.

"Slow down, you have to wait for me! I don't know the way!"

She stopped and watched him pick his way gingerly along the broken ground. "You walk as if the ground were on fire."

"I usually wear shoes," he said. "My feet aren't used to this."

Another scornful look from her.

"Excuse me for not living up to your image of manhood."

"Jesus Christ is my image of manhood," she said coldly.

He realized that he had used the word for icon, for that was the word he and his father had adapted to mean image or concept. But to her it would still have only religious connotations. She had no idea of who he was and what his world was like. It was childish of him to be angry at her for her ignorance. He at least had studied her world; she could not possibly imagine his.

"The land I come from," he said, "leaves me ill-prepared to live in yours. I need your help."

Her expression softened. She was beautiful again. "I'll help you. Will you help me?"

"I'll do what you need," he said. "I've come this far. I might as well see it through."

The English idiom became a meaningless phrase in Old Church Slavonic. Ivan and his father had done a lot of that, translating idioms word for word as they developed their own version of the dead language. It began as an anachronistic joke, but then became a habit of speech that he would find hard to break.

"I don't understand you," she said.

"Nor do I understand you," he answered. "But I'll do my best to help you save your people from the witch. After that, I can't promise anything."

"After that," she said, "it doesn't matter what you do."

"You'll take me back here and let me go home?" he said.

"I'll lead you across the bridge," she said. "You have my word on it."

In the bottom of the chasm, the hoose rose from the ground as if a woman's body filled it, though it was empty. It turned around and around. Dancing. Then the spinning grew faster, faster. The skirt of the hoose spread wider, until the hoose lay flat in the air, rotating like a helicopter's blades. Leaves began to drift into the chasm, then get caught up in the whirling of the hoose, until a tornado of leaves rose up from the pit.

It lasted for a few moments, then dissipated, the leaves settling back down in the meadow around the chasm.

And down in the pit the hoose clung to the outside wall, hanging from a dozen knives that stabbed through the fabric into the earth. From each knifepoint a black oily liquid flowed. And out from behind the fabric, first one, then dozens of spiders scurried, spreading across the face of the wall.

The most important thing that Katerina had to figure out was whether this boy was her rescuer or just another vile trick from Baba Yaga. There was plenty of evidence for the latter. The strange clothing he was wearing when he kissed her—pantaloons like a rider from the deepest steppe, boots so low and flimsy he couldn't wade through a stream; yet a fine, tight weave and astonishingly expensive colors. His strange language—intelligible yet accented, and laced with new and foreign words whose meaning she couldn't begin to guess at; how could she tell conversation from incantation and spell casting? The chopped-up body of a Jew, though his head was uncovered. The smooth, white skin of a boy who had never worked or fought in his life, and yet a posture of utter boldness, as if he had never met an equal, let alone a superior. His face had the peace of someone who had never known hunger or fear, and though he hadn't the forearms of a warrior or the thighs of a plowman, he wasn't scrawny, either. And he was so strangely clean and odorless, except for the tang of sweat from his recent exertion. There was a beauty to him that for just a moment had stirred in her a kind of recognition, perhaps a desire; the thought passed through her mind, Is this how angels look, beneath their robes, shed of their wings? Certainly in the proud, commanding tone of his voice there might be the authority of an angel; it was plain he considered himself as regal as she. And yet he was so oblivious to shame that he would take clothing from her body and put it around his own.

It was possible to imagine him touching her, his clean young body possessing hers, yes, even with that strange maiming of a Jew. She would not shudder at that part of her wifely duty. But it was impossible to imagine such a man being king.

But he was just the kind of strange, perverse seducer Baba Yaga might try to force upon the kingdom of Taina.

Was he sent by the witch Baba Yaga? It seemed so unlikely, for hers was not the only power, or even the greatest one, in this shifting high-stakes chess game. If there were no governance upon her, Baba Yaga would simply have killed Father long ago—and Katerina, too, no doubt—or, failing simple assassination, she would have brought her army to Taina where her brutal slaves and vicious mercenaries would no doubt have brushed aside Father's army of ardent but relatively unskilled farmer-soldiers.

No, the witch was still bound by rules, such as they were. Some said that Mikola Mozhaiski still watched over the land and people of Taina, though he had not been seen in years, and that he would not permit Baba Yaga to violate the deep, underlying law. The person of the king was still sacred, and no magical spell could take a royal life or sever the kingdom from its rightful ruler unless he acted in such a way as to lose the right to rule. And since her father, King Matfei, had always acted honorably as king, taking nothing from his people but what he needed to bring about their own good, and giving to them all that was required for their safety and sustenance, his right to the crown was unassailable. Baba Yaga could not brush aside the natural order of the universe. Not yet, at least, although they said that she had harnessed to her will the terrible power of a god.

Father, however, was convinced that it was not Mikola Mozhaiski who kept Baba Yaga in check, but rather his conversion to Christianity and his ordination as king by Father Lukas. "The same authority by which the Great Imperator sits upon the throne of Constantinople," he often told her. She never spoke disrespectfully to her father, and so her answer remained unspoken: If Christian ordination had the power to keep a throne attached to a man's buttocks, so many Great Imperators would not have been deposed or killed in years past.

The Holy Trinity created the heavens and the earth, she believed this absolutely; but she knew that it was Mikola Mozhaiski to whom the power had been given to protect sailors from the dangers of voyaging and kings from the dangers of politics. And unlike God, you couldn't pray to Mikola Mozhaiski, you couldn't curry favor with him, he asked of you neither baptism nor mass. You either kept to the rules or you didn't. If you did, even a witch like Baba Yaga had no power to destroy you, and if you didn't, he had no help for you.

So if it wasn't Baba Yaga's little trick, how did Katerina end up with this naked bumbler crashing barefoot through the woods behind her? He had already managed to lose the path several times even with her leading the way—he had no sense of the forest at all. How did he survive childhood without falling in a pit or getting bitten by a snake? Why didn't some merciful wolf run across him as a lost child—he must surely have spent half his childhood hopelessly lost—and send him on to heaven? Well, not heaven. He was a Jew.

How in the world did a man like this get past the bear?

She asked him.

"I jumped across," he said.

Jumped across. A chasm that wide and deep?

That gave her pause. A magical bear was sure to stop an ordinary knight. But a man so light that his body was like a boy's, and yet so strong that he could leap over the bear's head, fly across the chasm like a bird, like an angel...

Was his very boyishness the reason he was chosen? In that case, was it not a virtue to be admired, and not a failing to be despised?

She stopped and looked at him again. After a few moments of pushing branches away so they wouldn't scrape him as he passed, he finally looked ahead and noticed that she wasn't moving. That she was looking at him.

He became shy again at once, turning his body sideways, as if that would hide his genitals instead of displaying them in profile. A biting fly distracted him—he slapped himself. The movement was very quick. The man was agile. His body was so tightly muscled that no part of him, not even his buttocks, quivered after the sudden movement. This was the only sort of body that could have overleapt the bear and woken her with a kiss. And in the marriage bed, wouldn't he lie more lightly upon her than any of the hulking knights who had looked at her with covert desire?

"What? "he said.

"I was waiting for you to catch up," she said. "We're almost there."

The main village—Taina itself—was unchanged. It surprised her a little. No new lands had been cleared because the old soil was worn out. Even the houses were all in the same places, with only a few new ones for couples who had been married since she pricked her finger on the spindle and fell into the dream in which the bear chased and chased her until she could run no more and fell exhausted on the stone, to lie there watching as the earth all around her collapsed and the bear leapt into the chasm, and then to sleep. A dream in which she fell asleep. And yet it was no dream, was it? For there was the chasm when she woke again, and there the bear. And here was the kingdom of her father, the land that she lived to serve.

She stood at the edge of the wood, surveying the familiar scene, when her newly promised bridegroom finally came to stand beside her. His baby-tender skin was scratched and raw from pushing through bushes and brambles. He could have used the protection that a length of cloth might have given him. She felt a pang of guilt for having shamed him into casting away the hoose—though such feelings were irrational, she knew. Better to have a thousand scratches than to offend God.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

"A thousand years have passed, you said," she said scornfully. "But it's been no more than a few months. The same fields are still being planted, no new ones have been cleared. And so few new houses—Dimitri, Pashka, Yarosz—they were all betrothed when the Widow's curse caught up with me. And none of the old ones abandoned or burned."

"Those are houses?" asked the oaf.

"What do you think they are, hayricks?" How stupid was he?

"I just mean they're—small."

"Not everybody is as tall as you," she said. "I don't imagine you could even lie down straight in a regular house. Not without sticking your head out the door and your ass in the fire."

"You have such a pretty way of talking," he said. "Like a princess."

"Of course I talk like a princess," she said, baffled that he would say such an obvious thing. "Since I am one, however I talk is the way a princess talks."

He raised his eyebrows in obvious mockery. What right did he have to be so hateful? She couldn't help thinking back over the conversation to see what he could possibly have thought was unprincesslike in her words. Was it because she had spoken of a man lying down? She hadn't said anything about lying down with somebody, had she? Wherever he came from, they must be such prudes, to be so fussy about a man's nakedness and take offense at mere words.

She felt the warmth of exertion radiating from his body. His bare skin was so close to her, and yet he hardly smelled at all. And he was taller than she had realized. She was uncommonly tall for a woman, and she didn't even come up to his shoulder. In fact, she was almost eye-to-eye with the nipples on his chest. Which, she noticed, were shriveled with the cold. The breeze was picking up, too, and his skin was mottled and seemed to have a bluish cast. Again she thought of the clothing she had denied him.

She reached down, took hold of his hand, and started leading him into the village.

At once he pulled back, fighting her like a donkey that didn't want to carry its burden.

"What?" she demanded.

"I'm naked!" he said.

"Yes, you stone-skulled ninny, that's why I'm taking you to my father's house, so you can get out of the wind!"

"Can't you go fetch clothes for me?"

"Am I your servant? You're my betrothed—would you leave me to enter the village alone, with you cowering in the woods, not even seriously injured?" She yanked his arm and began dragging him on. She glanced over her shoulder and saw, to her shame, that he was cupping his genitals with his other hand like a toddler who had just learned to play with himself. Was he really that determined to make himself utterly ridiculous?

"Stop that!" she hissed at him. "Stop handling yourself!"

He rolled his eyes in obvious exasperation, but he obeyed and uncupped himself. But he also pulled his hand away from hers, and walked beside her, refusing to follow her or to be dragged along. Good—he was asserting his right as her husband to walk beside her, without claiming to be her lord and walk ahead.

As soon as she was recognized, women began coming out of their houses and children began to gather in the lane, shouting and cheering and jumping up and down. Some of the more eager boys and girls ran on ahead to her father's house, so her father was waiting for her at the door when she arrived.

Tears streaming down his face, King Matfei embraced and kissed her. Only after many such hugs and kisses did he finally give any notice to the naked man beside her.

"King Matfei, my father, here is the man who crossed the chasm and blinded the bear and kissed me to waken me from the spell."

If Father noticed that she had used the word mozhu instead of vitez—man instead of knight—he gave no sign of it. He simply took the cloak from his own back and placed it over the man's shoulders.

Naturally, the oaf began shivering almost at once. Naked, he doesn't shiver; put a warm cloak on him, and he acts like it's snowing. Was he determined to look like a fool?

"Come inside, come inside," said the king. "The man who brings me my daughter from the Widow's power will always be honored in my house. But you must tell me your name before you come inside."

The man hesitated, as if he didn't even know his own name, before finally saying, "Ivan."

Ivan, the name of the Fourth Evangelist, the one beloved of the Lord. What was a Jew doing with a name like that?

"Ivan," said Father, "you have brought joy to my house and hope to my people here today. Come inside, for this is now your house and your kingdom; as God is my witness, you shall have nothing but good from me and mine."

"Thank you, sir," he said. Did he not know a guest-pledge was expected from him in return?

But Father paid no heed to the lapse in courtesy, and led the man inside.

Katerina paused for a moment at the threshold of her father's house, and turned to face the gathered crowd. "Soon I will have a husband," she said to them, "and then Taina will be safe from the Pretender."

A momentary hush fell over the crowd. Of course she had not said the name of Baba Yaga, but they all knew whom she meant.

Then they erupted in cheers. King Matfei and his daughter Katerina would keep them safe from the baby-eating monster who turned all men into slaves and was married to a bear. The witch's curse had been overcome. All was right with the world.

You get used to being naked, that's the first thing Ivan discovered. Crashing through thick brush with branches snagging at your bare skin, you stop worrying about who's looking and spend your time trying to keep yourself from being flayed alive. He got shy again when they entered the village, but once he decided simply to let the gawkers gawk, he found himself much more interested in what he was seeing than in what they were.

He hadn't realized it till now, but he came to this village with two sets of expectations. As a scholar, he had a very clear idea of what a medieval Russian village should look like, and what he saw was pretty much what he expected. The houses of skilled tradesmen attached to the king's household were bunched up like a town, close to each other and close to their work sheds. There were stables and pigpens with all the smells that one might expect. And just beyond the king's town the forest opened up into many stump-dotted fields, each with its little hut for the family that fanned there. Other plots were fallow, going back to woodland, with saplings rising among the ancient stumps, all trace of farming subsumed in the grasses being grazed by sheep and cows.

What Ivan hadn't expected was the sheer numbers. A village like this was supposed to have only a tenth of the population that this land obviously sustained. Ivan remembered the professor who scornfully dismissed the stories of vast armies ranged together for battle: "The whole population of Europe at that time could not have assembled an army that large." Well, if Taina was any guide, it was the medieval writer and not the modern professor who knew what he was talking about. The fields went on and on, and other villages and manor houses could be seen, or at least guessed at from the smoke rising from unseen cook fires. Taina was no Paris or London, but then, there were more students at Mohegan University than there were citizens of either Paris or London in the 800s C.E.

The king of Taina was no tribal chieftain. This was a settled land, and the king could field a sizeable army if he needed to—many dozens of knights, if each manor house supplied one or two, and hundreds of armed villagers for infantry. No wonder Baba Yaga was resorting to subterfuge instead of conquest. And with the land so bountiful, feeding such a large population, it was no wonder Baba Yaga coveted it. Ivan wondered if this land was so productive and well-populated even today.

Yet even as he recognized and admired the medieval village he had expected, Ivan had to wrestle with a completely different set of expectations, courtesy of Walt Disney. Wasn't it Sleeping Beauty he had kissed? Then where was the magnificent palace? Never mind that Disney's movie version of the story was set in some weird combination of the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries—Ivan couldn't help being let down at seeing—and hearing, and smelling—such a coarse reality instead of a magical dream.

The king didn't live in a palace at all, or even a castle. His house was made of timbers instead of sticks, and was large enough to enclose a banquet hall and many rooms, but it was all one story in height, thatch-roofed and completely unfortified.

For defense, there was a nearby hill-fort of pre-Roman design—earthworks with a palisade of wooden stakes at the top, designed with plenty of gaps for bowmen to shoot through. And in the middle of the fort, a tall watch tower arose, allowing several villagers to stand and watch out over the whole surrounding forest—but also allowing an approaching enemy an easily visible landmark to march for.

No palace, no castle, no stoneworks of any kind. Everything was built of wood, easily susceptible to fire. But why not? There were plenty of trees to rebuild anything that might burn. And defense came from the strength of arms and, Ivan supposed, whatever magic the local people might know how to wield. And since magic worked here, perhaps they could count on the protection of their gods.

Gods? Only at that thought did Ivan notice what he should have spotted first of all. Just down the slope from the king's house was a wooden chapel with an Orthodox cross above the door.

That's right, Katerina had spoken of Christ. Yet this land was so far north and west—there was no record of a missionary journey that resulted in the conversion of this kingdom in the foothills of the Carpathians.

The reason was obvious, of course. Such a missionary journey would only have been recorded if the kingdom itself had survived. The very fact that Ivan had never heard of the conversion of Taina—indeed, had never heard of Taina at all—suggested that it got swallowed up in a kingdom that was not Christian, its identity lost, its brief flirtation with Christianity forgotten. Whatever cultural influence the Byzantine priests might exercise here would amount to nothing. This place was doomed—the cross on the chapel was a sure indicator of that.

With that doleful thought in mind, Ivan stood behind Katerina as she embraced her weeping father and then introduced him, in all his splendid nudity, shivering from the cold and bleeding from a hundred scratches. When the king took the cloak from his own shoulders and wrapped it around Ivan, he was moved by more than the graciousness of the gesture. This man will lose his kingdom, Ivan was thinking. The story of the sleeping princess will survive and spread all over Europe, but the witch will have her way with this kingdom after all, and waking the princess from her slumber would turn out to be no blessing to these people. Ivan thought of this place in flames, and shivered, even though now, with the cloak around him, he was not so cold.

When King Matfei asked his name, Ivan almost blurted out "Itzak Shlomo." What was he thinking? It took a moment even to think of his Russian name. And then to decide against the familiar Vanya and use the formal Ivan. And then to remember to pronounce it the Russian way, instead of like an American. "Ivan," he finally said. He decided against giving a surname, since family surnames were not in use at this time, except for royal dynasties. Besides, Ivan was in a fairy tale now, wasn't he? And in the fairy tales, Ivan was always Ivan, just as in the English tales Jack was always Jack.

With a gracious speech and promise of hospitality, the king brought Ivan inside. Behind him, he heard Katerina address the crowd, but did not linger to listen to what she said. He was more interested in the room surrounding him. It was smoky from the large fire in the center; the hole in the center of the roof drew most of the smoke upward, but left enough behind that Ivan's eyes stung. A deer's carcass was sizzling and spitting over the fire as a servant lazily turned the spit.

King Matfei sat, not on a throne, but on a large chair at the head of the banquet table, while Ivan was shown to a seat at his right hand—the place of honor. Still, except for the cloak, no clothing had been offered to him, but as Ivan's eyes got used to the interior darkness he realized that he was not the only naked or nearly-naked man here. A goldsmith working at a second fire in one corner of the great room wore nothing but his apron, and now Ivan realized that most of the smoke that was irritating his eyes came from the goldsmith's hearth. It took only a moment for Ivan to understand why this craftsman was laboring in the king's house instead of his own work shed—this was the king's gold the man was working with, and it didn't leave the king's house. There were also two boys of perhaps eight or ten years who wore nothing at all as one of them swept the floor of old straw and the other strewed new straw behind him. Slaves—that's who went naked here.

The king had shouted instructions to his servants from the moment he entered the house, and Ivan was no sooner seated than bread and cheese and mead were set out in front of him. Moments later, a steaming bowl of borscht was added, and, lacking a spoon, he picked up the bowl and drank from it eagerly. It was a rich broth, beety and strong.

The crowd was cheering outside and shouting the names of Katerina and Matfei, as Katerina herself made her way into the great room and took her place at the king's left.

"So," said King Matfei. "You saved my daughter!"

"Yes, sir," said Ivan. He drank again from the soup bowl. Borscht dribbled from the sides of his mouth, down his chin and onto his chest. The bright red dripping broth would look for all the world as if he had bitten into the raw, warm heart of a fresh kill in the forest and let the hot blood run. For a moment he felt like a savage indeed, who had triumphantly brought back the prize from the teeth of the bear.

"He wants you to tell him the story," said Katerina. Her tone of voice added an unspoken epithet: idiot.

"It was nothing," said Ivan. "Really."

Matfei and Katerina looked at him as if he had just peed on the table.

"Saving my daughter was nothing?" asked King Matfei.

"No, no, Father," said Katerina, glaring at Ivan. "My beloved Ivan is merely waiting until your other knights have gathered, to tell the glorious tale of his triumph over the Widow's fiendish and hideous bear."

Ivan realized his mistake at once. He knew this from his studies. Modesty wasn't valued in this culture. A man boasted about his exploits and won extra points if he told the story well. What else was he forgetting?

Ivan tried to cover his faux pas by taking another draught of borscht, draining the bowl entirely.

"Then let's gather them all," said King Matfei. He called out to the naked boys who were sweeping and strawing. "Run and summon my boyars!"

The boys dropped broom and straw where they might fall, and took off for the door.

"Won't they be cold?" asked Ivan.

Katerina rolled her eyes. "You see how compassionate my rescuer is?" she said to her father. "He even cares for the comfort of slave boys, as if he were forgetting they would stay warm by running."

"You talk funny," said King Matfei to Ivan. "Are you a foreigner, or are you simple in the head?"

"Simple in the head," said Ivan at once.

Katerina glared at him. "He jokes."

"On the contrary," said Ivan. "Your daughter has made a great effort to tell me just how stupid I am."

King Matfei turned to face the princess, and for a moment she seemed to wither under his gaze. Then he laughed and smiled and hugged her close to him. "How can I think for a moment you would be ungracious to your rescuer!" he cried. "The man is jesting!"

"You'd be amazed at all the funny things he does," said Katerina. Her smile could freeze steam.

"I speak differently," Ivan explained to the king, "because I learned another dialect of your language as a child, and there are many words I don't know. I promise to learn as quickly as I can."

"Katerina will help you," said King Matfei. "She knows all the words!" With that he roared with laughter, and hugged Katerina even tighter.

She smiled and hugged her father back. Such a happy family, thought Ivan. What the hell am I doing here?

This is the first day of happily ever after, that's what I'm doing.

And, when he made the effort to see past his own fear and his resentment at the way Katerina had disdained him, he had to admit that Katerina and her father really did seem happy. King Matfei teased her, but treated her as someone to be proud of, someone to like as a person, not just as a property to be married off. Apparently women were not so oppressed as they would become in later centuries.

"I was so afraid for you, my daughter!" said the king. "I thought I might never see you again. All my boyars went in search of you, and found no track or trace or rumor. The dogs found no scent, and the prayers of Father Lukas went unanswered. I was going to set them all again to searching—or praying—but here you are, rescued, betrothed, and sooner than I could have hoped."

"I was enchanted only a few months," said Katerina. "Though Ivan thinks it was a thousand years."

"How could it be a thousand years?" asked King Matfei of Ivan.

"To you it seems only a few months," said Ivan, "but I assure you that in my land we know of a thousand years of history that passed while she slept. I think that your boyars couldn't find the princess Katerina because the Widow did not merely hide her in the forest, but hid her in the centuries as well."

"It makes no sense to me."

"Such are the ways of witches," said Ivan.

"I know nothing of the ways of witches," said King Matfei, "except they are of Satan and must be resisted with all our power."

"I am even more ignorant of them than you are," said Ivan, "for up till the day I fought the bear and freed your daughter, I did not believe that they existed."

"Well, that was stupid of you," said King Matfei.

"Yes," said Ivan. "I see that now."

"You weren't joking, then, when you said you were simple in the head."

"There are many things I don't understand," said Ivan. "I hope that you'll give me time to learn."

"Are you so clumsy that no one gave you any work to do?" asked the king. "Look at your arms and shoulders—I don't know if you could lift a basket of flowers."

"I lifted the stone that blinded the bear," said Ivan, getting a little annoyed.

Katerina looked concerned, "My father is teasing you," she said.

Ways of showing humor must have changed a lot over the centuries, then. It sounded to Ivan like he was being insulting.

"In my land," said Ivan, "I'm regarded as a..." He had no idea how to say athlete in Old Church Slavonic. It wasn't a concept likely to be useful in the liturgy or histories. "As a good runner."

The king's face went white. "They say this to your face? That you run?"

Ivan had to think frantically to guess at what he had said wrong. Then it dawned on him. "Not running from battle," he said. "Running races. Two men side by side, then they run and run and see who arrives first."

"We have slaves carry our messages," said the king.

"Then I suppose no one but the slaves will run races with me," Ivan said, chuckling. But he found himself chuckling alone. So much for humorous banter. Apparently the jokes would only go one way around here.

"I'll bet you're not Christian, either," said the king.

"No, sir," said Ivan. Was there any defect that he lacked? Whether he could father children had not yet been tested.

"He's a Jew," said Katerina. Trust the princess to come up with another flaw—though to her credit her lip didn't curl and her tone didn't curdle when she said it.

"Never mind," said King Matfei loudly. "Father Lukas will teach you of Christ and you can be baptized in plenty of time to marry my daughter."

"I'll be glad to speak with Father Lukas," said Ivan. "But if there's some way around this marriage idea—"

"What he means," said Katerina, "is that all of this is new to him and he will learn everything that is required of him." Her eyes made it clear to Ivan that this was not a good time to throw the marriage into question.

King Matfei whispered to his daughter again. He apparently believed that no one but she could hear him, though of course his harsh whisper was audible in every corner of the room. "How did somebody as stupid as this defeat the Pretender's bear?" And then, in a voice even softer, though still clearly audible: "Are you sure he isn't sent by her as a trick?"

"For the answer to that," said Katerina softly, "you'll have to ask Mikola Mozhaiski."

"Yes, well, he hasn't been by here in years. Not since you were little. I don't know if he even remembers I exist. After all, I'm only a king." Looking up into the beams of the thatched roof above his head, Matfei bellowed, "Does Mikola Mozhaiski talk to anyone but the gods?"

Ivan thought he was joking, and smiled a little. Matfei saw his expression and twisted in his chair to face him square on. "Is that funny to you?"

"I've never met Mikola Mozhaiski," said Ivan. "I don't know anybody here."

"You know my daughter," he said. It sounded like he wasn't pleased about it.

"She doesn't like me," Ivan said, determined that some of the truth, at least, would come out.

The king roared with laughter. "What does it matter if she likes you! She's going to marry you! You're getting more than any other man will have!"

It was in that moment of surpassing banality, sitting at the dining table, surrounded by the stink and noise of a medieval hall, the king himself showing complete disregard for the fact that his daughter might not like the man who was supposed to marry her, when it dawned on Ivan that he wasn't going to be able to beg off the way he might have done back in Tantalus, politely turning down an invitation to have dinner with a new acquaintance or attend the Mormon pageant at Palmyra. If the king decided Ivan was going to marry his daughter, turning him down was going to be a little tricky. And as for getting baptized, well, history was littered with the bodies of people who didn't find quite the right way of saying no thanks to a fervent evangelist with a sword.

It was like the moment when a war correspondent realizes for the first time that the bullets whistling around him don't notice or care that he is a noncombatant with a notebook or a tape recorder or a steadycam. And, like that imaginary war correspondent, Ivan wanted nothing more than to hug the ground and shout to someone in a hovering chopper, "Get me out of here!"

But Ivan kept his poise and showed no sign of his moment of panic. He must concentrate on the details of the moment. Whatever else happened, he was still a scholar getting field experience like no other grad student in history. He must live in the moment and forget the future. He spread lard on his bread and ate it, smiling at the king. He didn't insist that he was already engaged to someone else. He didn't mention his disinclination to become a Christian. He didn't burst into tears and call for his mother. He just chewed and swallowed, hoping that the knot in his stomach wouldn't cause him to throw up.

He wasn't getting out of here without Katerina's help, which she wasn't likely to give. There'd be no ticket home. He wasn't even on standby.

Was this going to be his life? To marry this beautiful barbarian woman and spend his life eating pork and crossing himself? Sure, until the day he had to face some knight in combat using a sword he probably couldn't even lift. Or until the day Baba Yaga sent an extremely resentful one-eyed bear to do the job right this time.

Death was the least of his worries. Looking around, he realized that long before someone got around to killing him, he would have to deal with a thousand much more tedious afflictions. He was bound to be infested with fleas—he could almost see them hopping around in the straw on the floor. And what of the unsanitary water? He would definitely stick to alcoholic beverages here, trying to strike some balance between drunkenness and dysentery. And what would happen to him, living on a diet from the era before refrigeration and flavor? Already he was wishing for a simple chocolate-vanilla swirl from TCBY, with just one scoop of chocolate sprinkles.

Never again.

The boyars were gathering, and the knights of King Matfei's druzhina. There were women present, too, wives or relatives of these men of high station. The slaves brought out more and more food, and the guests ate with gusto. This was the king's table, and what he had to provide for the lords and knights who were loyal to him was a free lunch.

Of course their table manners were shocking—slabs of bread were their plates, knives and fingers their only utensils. The women ate with as much gusto—and as much splashing and dripping and dropping—as the men. Ivan noticed that even though they all conversed with each other, few could look at anything but him, sizing him up, wondering why he was naked except for the robe over his shoulders. No doubt they were as disappointed in his physique as Katerina and her father had been. If only he knew the local idiom for "beggars can't be choosers."

The king had been conversing with some of the boyars seated nearby, but now turned again to Ivan. "My future son seems distracted," said the king. "You can't be drunk on the little bit of mead you've had."

"I'm sorry," said Ivan. "I don't always understand what you're saying."

"Believe me, we don't always understand you, either!" said the king with a laugh.

But at that moment Ivan realized that one of the women on the other side of the room might be choking. She sat rigidly, her eyes wide with fright yet also glazing over, her fingers scrabbling at the table's surface as if she were trying to get a grip on it. No one around her noticed.

Ivan rose to his feet, toppling his stool, and would have rushed to her around the outside of the tables except that too many slaves and diners were crowded there. So he stepped up onto the table and jumped off the other side, the robe falling from his shoulders as he did. He strode through the open space in the midst of the tables until he stood opposite the choking woman. She didn't even see him, she was so far gone in her silent agony. He swung himself over the table, upsetting several cups. Ignoring the protests of those whose mead he had spilled, Ivan squatted down, reached his arms around the woman's waist and clasped his hands just under her sternum. There was no rigid underwear to interfere with the Heimlich maneuver, so he dragged her to her feet, held her body close to him, and gave one swift inward jab with his hands.

A piece of half-chewed meat flew out of her mouth and out into the middle of the floor. The woman gasped and sobbed for breath, leaning over the table as Ivan let go of her.

At once several rough hands seized her, and Ivan was surrounded by shouting men, one of whom gripped him by one arm, tore him away from the others, and flung him against the wall. His head spinning, vaguely aware of splinters in his face and his naked shoulder, Ivan had no idea who had attacked him or why, but it was clear from the iron grip on his arm that the business wasn't finished yet.

It would have ended badly if the king himself had not roared a command. "Stop, you fool! What are you doing to your future king!"

From the man who gripped his arm Ivan heard an answering growl. "No man, naked, may lay his hands upon my brother's wife in such a way as that!"

"He saved her life, you blithering fool!" cried the king. "Are you blind? She was choking, didn't you see it? And whatever he did—look, out in the middle of the floor, the bit of meat that was going to be your sister's death!"

The grip on Ivan's arm did not relax.

The woman, finally recovered enough to speak, turned around to face her brother. "Don't hurt the man, Dimitri," she said. "He held me only around the waist, as if we were dancing. And then he—popped the food out, and I could breathe again."

"But he's naked," said Dimitri.

Dizzy and frightened as he was, Ivan couldn't help but notice the irony that this was the first person who seemed to agree with him that his being naked was a very bad idea.

"He saved my life. While you, brother Dimitri, sat beside me making jokes. You would have kept joking until I dropped dead on the floor!"

"Why didn't you tell me you needed help?"

"Because I was choking, my wise brother!"

By now the king had made his way through the throng to stand beside Ivan. "Dimitri," said the king, "instead of ripping my guest's arm from its socket, would you please let go of him and thank him for saving your sister's life?"

It was couched as a request, but Dimitri interpreted it, correctly, as a command. "Sire," said the knight. "I serve you always." He let go of Ivan's arm—the blood rushed painfully through the too-long-constricted veins—and now Ivan could turn to see the man who had seized him and tossed him so easily into the wall. Dimitri was built like... like Popeye. Like Alley Oop. His forearms were unbelievably muscular, his shoulders as massive as a bull's. Was this what Katerina had been comparing him to? Was this what a "man" was to her? Ivan was taller than Dimitri, but in no physical way would he be a match for him. For the first time in his adult life, Ivan felt downright frail.

This man could snap my bones like twigs.

And it was clear that despite the king's words, Dimitri wasn't really mollified. His apology, while it sounded sincere enough—the king was watching, after all—clearly wasn't what he wanted to say. "O guest of the king, I'm sorry I threw you against the wall. I'm also sorry you laid hands upon my sister. If you had told me she was choking, I would have saved her."

Oh, sure, I'll bet you would, the Heimlich maneuver was done all the time in the ninth century or whenever this is.

But Ivan decided that it was best to pretend to accept the apology and avoid antagonizing this man any further. "Sir, I would have told you, but I'm a stranger here and I don't speak your language very well. I did not know how to say that she was choking. I only learned the word when it was said just now. So instead of speaking, as I should have, I thought it was better to act."

"Of course it was better," said King Matfei. "And you were fast—over the tables and across the room faster than a stooping hawk." He turned and addressed the whole company. "Have you ever seen a man bound over a table like that? By the Bear, if I only had a hound that could leap like you!" Then the king realized what he had said. "That is, not by the Bear, of course, but by the Lord's wounds."

"Amen," said a few of the more pious.

Katerina approached now, holding the robe she had picked up from where it fell. Not taking her eyes from Ivan's face until she moved behind him, she placed the robe onto his shoulders. Gratefully he gathered the cloth around his waist. Katerina took her place beside him. "Do you see what a man the Lord has brought to me? Two women he has saved this day, Lybed and me, but I am the fortunate one who will have him as my husband."

The hall rang with cheering.

"Lucky for you the princess got your promise first," said Dimitri's sister, Lybed, her eyes alight with something more than mead. "For I'm a widow, and I would gladly have thanked you well enough to wear you down to a stump."

The company whooped at the ribald boast, King Matfei among them. Even Katerina smiled.

But Dimitri did not smile. Instead he took his sister by the arm and pulled her away. "We've eaten enough," he said. "I'm taking you back to your children before you're too drunk to walk."

"I'm not drunk," Lybed protested, but allowed herself to be led away.

"Well, now," said the king. "We've seen with our own eyes that you're a worthy champion, even if you do seem a mere lad. What you lack in strength you'll make up for in liveliness, I'll swear! So come back to table and have whatever you want!"

Ivan saw the opportunity and took it. "King Matfei, forgive me, but what I want most is a bed. I ran with a bear all morning."

The king could take a hint. "What kind of host am I! The man rescues my daughter and brings her home, my kingdom will be saved from the great Bitch, he even saves the sister of my master-at-arms, and I don't even think to give the man a bed! In fact, I'll give him my bed!"

"No, no, please!" Ivan protested. "How could I sleep, lying in the bed of a king?"

King Matfei laughed. "So what? When you marry my daughter, you'll be sleeping in the bed of a princess."

Ivan glanced at Katerina. She showed no sign of noticing her father's reference to the presumed consummation of their marriage. But this was a woman who knew how to speak her mind. About the marriage, she had nothing to say. She would do her duty, but she didn't have to relish it.

He had always thought that he would marry for love. Instead, it looked like his bride was going to take him out of grim duty.

Please, yes, let me go to bed. If I sleep, perhaps I'll wake up back in Cousin Marek's house, or in Kiev, or back in Tantalus in my own room. That's how these mad dreams end, isn't it?

The bed, when they led him there, offered no redolence of home. It was clearly a place of honor, a bedstead a full three feet off the ground. But the mattress was straw in a tick, the room was cold and stank of old sweat and urine, and it wouldn't get him any closer to home. There might be magic in this world, but none of it was in this room, and none of it was Ivan's to command.

It took Esther a day of shopping, but she found it in a mall in Syracuse: a clay basin, made in Spain, plain dark blue inside, brightly decorated on the outside. She bought it and brought it home, arriving after dark. Piotr asked her where she had been, but she answered him in one-word sentences that let him know this was not a good night for chat.

Out in the back yard, she set up the basin on a lawn table, out in the open where moonlight fell directly on it. Then she took the garden hose and filled it to the brim with water. Using blades of grass and twigs from the lawn as shims, she finally got the bowl exactly level and perfectly full, so that the water in the basin was poised to brim over, held in place all the way around by surface tension alone. The last few drops she added with an eyedropper.

The water trembled from the last drop, shimmering for a long time as if to the echo of a distant drumbeat. She sat and watched, cupping her hand over her mouth and nose lest her breath disturb the water. The night was still, but she did not trust it. She murmured words to keep breezes away from this spot, ancient words in a language she didn't really understand, and for good measure included the incantation that would keep the eager insects of spring from seeking out this pool of water for egg-laying.

At last the water was perfectly still. Carefully, she rose to her feet. Holding her clothing close to her body, so nothing would touch the basin and disturb the water, she looked directly down into the deep dark blue of the pool, the water as expressionless as night, and whispered, over and over, the true name of her only child.