The Winter of the Witch

9. To Travel by Midnight

VASYA WOKE TO A DARKNESS so deep, she thought she had been struck blind. She lifted her head. Nothing. Her body had chilled and stiffened; moving sent a cascade of pain through neck and back. She wondered vaguely why she was not dead, wondered also why she was lying on bracken instead of snow. It was quiet, except for the faint creaking of branches overhead. Gingerly, she put a trembling hand to her eyes. One was swollen shut. The other seemed all right, except the lashes were gummed together. Gingerly, she pried it open.

It was still dark, but now she could see. A faint sickle moon cast wavering light over a strange forest. Snow lay only in patches; mist veiled the trees, luminous in the moonlight. Vasya smelled cold, wet earth. She stumbled to her feet, turning in a circle. Darkness all around. She tried to remember the last hours, but there was only a vague memory of terror and flight. What had she done? Where was she?

“Well,” said a voice, “you are not dead after all.”

The voice had come from above. Vasya wrenched instinctively back, even as she searched for the speaker, her good eye watering. Finally, on a limb overhead, she caught sight of star-pale hair and bright eyes. As her own eyes adjusted, Vasya began vaguely to make out the shape of the midnight-demon, perched on the branch of an oak-tree and leaning against the trunk.

A deeper patch of black stirred in the shadows below the tree. Vasya, squinting, could just make out a marvelous black horse, grazing by moonlight. He lifted his head to look at her. Vasya’s heart thumped once, loud in her ears, and memory came rushing back: blood sticky on her hands, Father Konstantin’s face, fire…

She stood perfectly still. If she moved, if she made a sound, she would flee, scream, go mad with memory, or the impossibility of this darkness, with Moscow nowhere in sight. What was real? This? Her horse dead, her life saved by magic? She shuddered, fell to her knees, pressing her hands into the icy, wet earth. Trying to understand was like grasping at rain. For a long time, all she could do was breathe, and feel her hands on the ground.

Then, with a terrible effort, she raised her head. The words came slowly. “Where am I?”

The demon let out a little sigh. “And in your right mind, too.” She sounded faintly surprised. “This is my realm. The country called Midnight.” The curve of her mouth was cold. “I bid you welcome.”

Vasya tried to slow her breathing. “Where is Moscow?”

“Who knows?” said Polunochnitsa. She slid from the limb of her tree, fell lightly to earth. “Not nearby. My realm is not made up of days or seasons, but of midnights. You can cross the world in an instant, so long as it is midnight where you are going. Or, more likely, you can die trying, or go mad.”

“I was told,” Vasya said thickly, remembering, “that I must find a lake. With an oak-tree growing on the shore.”

Polunochnitsa lifted a pale brow. “Which lake? My realm contains enough lakes to keep you searching for a thousand lives of men.”

Search? Vasya could barely stand. “Will you help me?”

The black horse flicked his ears.

“Help you?” answered Midnight. “I did help you. I have made you free of my realm. I even kept you here just now while you lay insensible. Must I do more?” Polunochnitsa’s hair fell like cold rain over the darkness of her skin. “You were discourteous at our last meeting.”

“Please,” said Vasya.

Midnight half-smiled and came closer still, whispered her answer as though it were a secret. “No,” she said. “Find it yourself. Or die here, die now. I will tell the old woman. She might even mourn, though I doubt it.”

“Old woman?” said Vasya. The darkness seemed to press around her, horribly. “Please,” she said again.

“I do not forget insults, Vasilisa Petrovna,” said Lady Midnight, and turned away, laid a hand on the withers of the black horse. Then she was astride, wheeling, gone into the trees without a backward glance.

Vasya was alone in the darkness.

SHE COULD LIE DOWN in the leaf-litter and wait for dawn. But how could there be dawn in a country made of midnights? She could walk, though her legs shook when she stood. But where was she to go? She wore only Varvara’s cloak and the bloody, reeking remains of her shift. Her feet were bare and torn. It hurt to draw breath, and she was shivering. This night was a little warmer than the night near Moscow, but not much.

Had she come through fire, defied the Bear, escaped Moscow by magic only to die in the darkness? Go to the lake, Varvara had said. You will be safe there. The lake with an oak-tree growing at its shore.

Well, if Varvara had thought she could find it, then perhaps she had a chance. Probably Varvara had thought Midnight would help her, as Vasya had no idea of direction. But at least she would die on her feet, in search of sanctuary. Gathering the last of her strength, Vasya walked into the darkness.

SHE DID NOT KNOW how long she walked. Beyond the uttermost end of her strength, yet still she stumbled on. The light never changed; the sun never rose. Vasya began to be desperate for light. Her feet left bloody footprints.

Polunochnitsa had spoken true. This was a country made of midnights. Vasya could not discern a pattern among them. One moment, she was walking on cold dead grass, with a half-moon overhead. Then she passed into tree-shadow and found with a cold shock that the moon had disappeared and muddy earth squelched under her feet. It was always early spring, more or less, but the place changed every few steps: a mad, patchwork country.

I am still here, Vasya told herself, over and over. I am still myself. I am still alive. Gripping hard to that thought, she walked on. Wolves cried in the distance, and she lifted her head to hear them; then the wind struck like icy water on her face. She saw new lights—firelights—on a hill in the distance, hurried toward them, only to have them vanish. Then she was walking under pale birch trees, white as dead fingers, beneath a scarlet moon.

It was like walking through a nightmare; she could not orient herself, did not know north from south. On she stumbled, gritting her teeth, but now the earth was sucking at her feet and she found that she had fallen into a bog. Mud everywhere; she could not muster the strength to break its grip. Tears of purest exhaustion leaked from her eyes.

Let go, she thought. Enough; let go. At least here there will be no mob laughing when I go to God.

The black, sucking mud of the bog seemed to agree, gurgling. There were wicked eyes, like green lamps, watching her from beneath the water. They belonged to a bolotnik, swamp-dweller, breathing out stinking plumes of marsh-gas. He could kill her quickly, if she let him. He could pull her down into the frigid dark and she wouldn’t have to walk again on her torn feet, or breathe against her broken ribs, or remember the last two days.

But Marya, Vasya thought dimly. Marya is in Moscow, and my brother and sister, defenseless against the Bear.

And so? What could she do? Sasha and the Grand Prince could…

Could they? They could not see. They did not understand.

My brother has traded his freedom for your life, the Bear had said. The carved nightingale was in the sleeve of her shift. Her filthy, groping hand closed tight around the wooden creature and it seemed a little warmth crept into her chilled limbs.

Winter-king, why would you do such a terrible thing?

He had a reason. Morozko was no fool. Shouldn’t she find out why, rather than allow his bargain to go for nothing? But she was so tired.

Solovey would have said she was being foolish; he would have made her get on his back and carried her along steadily to wherever they were going, ears flicking cheerfully back and forth.

Hot tears spilled from her eyes. On a surge of rage she yanked herself from the mud, scrambled up the bank. In desperation she put a hand into the water, and spoke in her choked, smoke-damaged voice. “Grandfather,” she said to the lurking swamp-demon, “I am looking for a lake, with an oak-tree growing on the shore. Can you tell me where it is?”

The bolotnik’s eyes had just breached the water; she could make out his scaly limbs churning below the surface. He looked almost surprised. “Alive still?” he whispered. His voice was the sucking sound of the swamp, his breath the smell of decay.

“Please,” said Vasya. With her fingers, she split one of the clotted cuts on her arm, and let her blood fall on the water.

The bolotnik’s tongue flicked, tasting, and his eyes glowed suddenly bright. “Well, you are a courteous maiden,” he said, licking his chops. “Look then.”

She followed the turn of his marsh-light eyes. A reddish flicker showed between the black trees. Not daylight. Perhaps fire? A rush of fear sent her to her feet, cloak heavy with mud.

But it was not fire. It was a living creature.

A tall mare, limned with light, stood hock-deep in the marsh. Sparks like fireflies tumbled from her mane and tail, molten white against the silver-gold of her coat. Head up, she watched Vasya, motionless except for her tail, which lashed her sides with arcs of light.

Vasya took an involuntary, stumbling step toward the mare, caught between wonder and rage. “I remember you,” she said to the horse. “In Moscow, I set you free.”

The mare said nothing, only flicked her great, golden ears.

“You could have just flown away,” Vasya said. Her voice cracked; her throat was raw. “But instead you dripped sparks over a city of wood and they—and they—” She could not say the words.

The golden mare pawed defiantly, splashing, and spoke, I would have killed them all, if I could, she returned. Killed all the men in the world. They dared trick me, bind me. Scars of saddle and spur marked the mare’s golden perfection, and her face was striped with white where the golden bridle had been. I would have killed the whole city.

Vasya said nothing. Grief was a frozen ball in her mouth; she could only stare with mute hatred at the mare.

The mare spun and galloped away.

“Follow her, fool,” hissed the swamp-demon. “Or if you prefer, stay here, and I will eat you.”

Vasya hated the mare. But she did not want to die. She began to make her way through the trees, stumbling on bloody feet. On and on she went, following the dot of golden light, until she was quite sure that she could not walk a step more.

But then she did not have to.

The trees ended; she found herself in a sloping meadow leading down to a vast, frozen lake. It was earliest spring. Stars cast a faint silver sheen on the long grass of an open field. All around she could discern the shapes of great trees, black against the silver sky. Snow lay on this field only in hollows and patches. Faintly she could hear the sound of water under the lake’s ice.

There were more horses grazing in the meadow. Three—six—a dozen. The night faded them all to gray except for the golden mare. Standing among them, she glittered like a fallen star, head up in challenge.

Vasya halted, full of agonized wonder. Part of her was half-convinced that her own horse must be here, among his kin, that in a moment he would gallop toward her, flinging snow from under his feet, and she wouldn’t be alone anymore. “Solovey,” she whispered. “Solovey.”

A dark head rose, then a paler one. All of a sudden, the horses were wheeling, fleeing. On four legs they fled from the sound of her voice, straight down toward the lake, but just before their hooves struck water, their hooves became wings. As birds they took to the air, and soared over the starlit water.

Vasya watched them go, tears of pure wonder in her eyes. They winged across the lake, no two alike. Owl and eagle and duck and smaller birds: purely, miraculously, strange. Last of all to leave the earth was the golden mare. Her wings swept wide, trailing smoke, and her plumed tail was every color of flame: gold and blue-violet and white. She flew after her kin, calling. In moments, they were all swallowed by the darkness.

Vasya stared at the place the horses had been. It was as though she’d dreamed them. Her vision swam with weariness. Her feet and her face were numb, and she had gone beyond shivering, cocooned icily in shock. Solovey, she wondered dimly. Why didn’t you fly away too?

Just at the edge of the lake stood a single vast oak-tree. Its branches stood out like blackened bones against the moon-white ice. To her right, nestled among the trees, was a squat, dark shape.

It was a house.

Or rather, a ruin. The house’s roof, sloped steeply to keep off the snow, had fallen in; no firelight showed behind window or door. There was only silence, the faint creaking of trees, the crack of thinning lake-ice. And yet this place, this clearing by the water, did not feel empty. It felt watchful.

The house had been built on a sturdy platform between two trees. The trees gave it a look of standing alertly on strong legs; the windows like black eyes, staring down. For an instant, the house didn’t seem dead at all. It seemed to be watching her.

Then the illusion of menace faded. It was only a ruin. The steps were rotten, crumbling. There would be dead leaves within, and mice and unrelieved dark.

But there might be a working stove, even a handful of grain from the house’s last occupant. At the very least, she could get out of the wind.

Only half-aware of what she was doing, Vasya crossed the meadow, stumbling on rocks, skidding on snow. Gritting her teeth, she crawled up the steps. The only sounds were the groaning of branches and her own hoarse breathing.

At the top of the stairs stood two posts, carved with figures starlit and fantastic: bears, suns, moons, small strange faces that might have been chyerti. Over the door was a lintel carved in the shape of two rearing horses.

The door hung askew on its hinges in a litter of slick, rotten leaves. Vasya paused to listen.

Silence. Of course, silence. Perhaps there were beasts denning here, but she was beyond caring. The half-fallen door gave with a squeal from rusted hinges. Vasya stumbled inside.

She found dust, old leaves, the smell of decay, and chill weary damp. It was no warmer than outside, though at least there was not the cold wind off the lake. Most of the house was taken up by a crumbling brick oven, its mouth a maw in the blackness. Across the room, where the icon-corner should be, there were no icons, only a big dark thing shoved against the wall.

Vasya groped her way cautiously to that corner and found a wooden chest: bronze-bound and securely locked.

She turned shivering back toward the oven. Mostly she just wanted to sink down on the floor in the dark and let unconsciousness take her; never mind the cold.

Gritting her teeth, she heaved herself atop the oven-bench and gingerly touched the rough brick, where a person might have breathed her last. But there was nothing; no blanket, certainly no bones. What tragedy had left this strange ruin deserted? The night outside cradled the house with a silent menace.

Her groping fingers found a few dusty sticks beside the oven. Enough for a fire, though she didn’t want fire. Her memory was full of flames, the choking smell of smoke. The heat would hurt her blistered face.

But it was certainly cold enough for a wounded girl wearing only a cloak and shift to freeze to death. She meant to live.

So, moved only by the cold embers of will, Vasya set about making a fire. Her lips and fingertips were quite numb. She bruised her shins on things she could not see, scrabbling for the sticks and pine-needles for kindling.

After a half-blind effort that left her trembling, she had made a heap of sticks that she could barely see in the mouth of the oven. She felt over the entire house for flint and steel and charred cloth, but there were none.

She could make a fire with a flat piece of wood and patience, and strength in the forearms. But both her strength and patience were at an end.

Well, do it, or freeze. She took the stick between her hands. When she was a child, in the autumn woods, it had been a game. The stick, the board, the swift strong movement. Deftly handled, the smoke would turn into fire, and Vasya still remembered her brother Alyosha’s grin of delight, the first time she did it unaided.

But this time, though she labored and sweated, not a single curl of smoke rose from the board between her knees; no ember glowed in the groove. At last Vasya let the stick fall, shivering, defeated. Useless. She was going to die after all, with only the dust of someone else’s life for company.

She did not know how long she sat in the sour-smelling silence, not crying, not feeling anything, just hovering on the edge of unconsciousness.

She never knew what spurred her to raise her head once more, teeth sunk in her lower lip. She must have fire. She must. In her head, in her heart, was the terrible presence of fire, memory as strong as anything in her life, as though her soul were full of flames. Ridiculous that fire burned so bright in hated memory but there was no scrap of light here, where it could do some good.

Why should it be only in her mind? She shut her eyes, and for an instant, memory was so strong that she forgot it wasn’t.

Vasya smelled smoke first, and her eyes opened, just as her sticks burst into flame.

Shocked, almost frightened of her success, Vasya hurried to add wood. The room filled with light; the shadows retreated.

The hut looked even worse by firelight: ankle-deep in leaves, crumbling, mildewed, thick with dust. But there was a little woodpile she hadn’t seen: a few dry logs. And it was warmer now. The fire drove back the night and the chill. She was going to live. Vasya stretched out trembling hands to the fire.

A hand shot out of the oven and grasped her wrist.

10. The Devil in the Oven

VASYA DREW A SINGLE, STARTLED breath, but she did not pull away. The hand was as small as a child’s, long-fingered, traced in red and gold from the firelight. It did not let her go. Instead, Vasya found herself pulling a tiny person into the room.

She was a woman no taller than Vasya’s knee, with eyes the color of earth. She was licking embers hungrily off the end of a stick, but she paused to look up at Vasilisa and say, “Well, I have overslept and no mistake. Who are you?” Then the chyert caught sight of the decay all around them and her voice rose in sudden alarm. “Where is my mistress? What are you doing here?”

Vasya sank down onto the crumbling oven-bench in exhausted surprise. Domoviye did not live in ruins; they did not live on in houses at all when their families had gone. “There is no one here,” Vasya said. “Only me. This place—it is dead. What are you doing here?”

The domovoi—no, a female—a domovaya—stared. “I do not understand. The house cannot be dead. I am the house, and I am alive. You must be lying. What have you done to them? What have you done to this place? Stand and answer me!” Her voice was shrill with fright.

“I cannot stand,” Vasya whispered. That was true. The fire had taken the last of her strength. “I am only a traveler. I thought only to make a fire and stay here for the night.”

“But you—” The domovoi—domovaya—peered again about the house, took in the extent of the rot. Her eyes widened in horror. “Overslept indeed! Just look at this filth. I cannot just let vagabonds stay without my mistress’s leave. You will have to go. I must set things to rights, against her return.”

“I do not think your mistress is coming back,” said Vasya. “This house is abandoned. I do not know how you managed to survive, in that cold oven.” Her voice broke. “Please. Please let me stay. I cannot bear any more.”

A small silence. Vasya could feel the domovaya’s narrow regard. “Very well then,” she said. “You will stay here tonight. Poor child. My mistress would want it.”

“Thank you,” Vasya whispered.

The domovaya, still muttering to herself, went at once to the chest shoved against the wall. She had a key hanging at her throat; she unlocked the iron hasp of the chest. It gave with a rusty click.

Before Vasya’s astonished eyes, the domovaya produced linen and a clay bowl, laid them on the hearth. Then she took a bucket and went outside for snow, which she set at once to heating, and a branch of young pine-needles, which she scattered in the water.

Vasya watched the steam rise through the hole in the roof, only half-aware of the domovaya’s deft movements as she peeled away the shift that had so nearly been Vasya’s shroud, briskly sponged off the worst of the fear-sweat, the soot, and the blood, washed away the scum about Vasya’s injured eye. The latter hurt, but when the crust was wiped away, Vasya could see through a slit. She was not blinded. She was too tired to care even for that.

From the chest in the corner, the domovaya produced a wool shirt. Vasya barely felt the domovaya put it on her, found herself lying atop the oven under rabbit-skin blankets with no idea how she’d gotten there. The brick was warm. The last thing she heard before oblivion claimed her was the small voice of the domovaya, saying, “A little rest will put you aright, but you are going to have a scar on your face.”

VASILISA PETROVNA NEVER KNEW how long she slept. She had dim memories of nightmares, of screaming for Solovey to run. She dreamed the midnight-demon’s voice—It must be done, Polunochnitsa said, send her forth, for all our sakes—and the domovaya’s voice raised in distress. But before Vasya could speak, darkness pulled her under once more.

Uncounted hours later, she opened her eyes to dawn: the light almost shocking after the long dark. It was as though she’d only dreamed the tangled roads of Midnight. Perhaps she had. Lying in the blurred gray light of early morning, she could have been anywhere, atop any oven. “Dunya?” she called, her childhood strong in her mind. It had always been her nurse who comforted her after nightmares.

Memory crashed in. She made an inarticulate sound of distress. A small head appeared at once beside her pallet, but Vasya barely saw the domovaya. Memory had her by the throat. She was shivering.

The domovaya watched, frowning.

“Forgive me,” Vasya managed at length. She pushed her ragged hair back from her face. Her teeth chattered. The oven was warm, but there was still a hole in the roof, and memory was colder than the air. “I—I am called Vasilisa Petrovna. Thank you for your hospitality.”

The domovaya looked almost sad. “It is not hospitality,” she said. “I was asleep in the fire. You awoke me. You are my mistress now.”

“But this is not my house.”

The domovaya made no reply. Vasya sat up, wincing. The domovaya had done her best while Vasya slept. The dust and dead mice, the rotten leaves, were gone. “It is much more like home now,” Vasya said, cautiously. Now that it was daylight, she saw that most of the wood on the rooftree and table was carved like the lintel outside, worn to smoothness from use and care. The house had a dignity to match its hearth-spirit: an old, subtle beauty that time could not quite conceal.

The domovaya looked pleased. “You mustn’t lie abed. The water is hot. Your wounds must be cleaned again and bound afresh.” She disappeared; Vasya heard her adding wood to the fire.

Getting down to the floor left Vasya panting, as though she were new-recovered from fever. To add insult to injury, she was also hungry. “Is there—” croaked Vasya, swallowed, tried again. “Is there anything to eat?”

Lips pursed, the domovaya shook her head.

Why would there be? It was too much to suppose that the house’s long-vanished mistress would have conveniently left a loaf and cheese.

“Did you burn my shift?” Vasya asked.

“I did,” said the domovaya, shuddering. “It stank of fear.”

Well it might. Then Vasya stiffened. “There was a token—a carving—I was carrying in it. Did you—?”

“No,” said the domovaya. “It is here.”

Vasya seized the little carved nightingale as if it were a talisman. Perhaps it was. It was dirty but undamaged. She wiped it clean, thrust it again into her sleeve.

A bowl of snowmelt steamed on the hearth. The domovaya said briskly, “Take off that shirt; I am going to wash your wounds again.”

Vasya did not want to think about her wounds; she did not want to have flesh at all. Just below the surface of her mind lurked the most howling grief; the memory of death, of violation. She did not want to see those memories scribed on her skin.

The domovaya was not sympathetic. “Where is your courage? You do not want to die of a poisoned wound.”

That at least was true; a slow and horrible death. Before she could lose her nerve, Vasya, wordless, peeled the shirt over her head, stood up shivering in the light from the crumbling roof and looked down at her body.

Bruises of every color: red and black, purple and blue. Cuts latticed her torso; she was glad she could not see her own face. Two teeth were loose; her lips were split and sore. One eye was still half swollen shut. When she raised her hand to her face, she was met with a clotted gash on her cheek.

The domovaya had produced dusty-smelling herbs, honey for bandaging, lengths of clean linen from the chest in the corner. Vasya, staring, said, “Who leaves such things in a locked box in a ruin?”

“I hardly know,” said the domovaya shortly. “They were here, that’s all.”

“Surely you remember something.”

“I don’t!” The domovaya looked suddenly angry. “Why are you asking? Isn’t it enough that it was here, that it saved your life? Sit down. No, there.”

Vasya sat. “I am sorry,” she said. “I was only curious.”

“The more one knows, the sooner one grows old,” snapped the domovaya. “Hold still.”

Vasya tried. But it hurt. A few cuts had closed in their own blood; the domovaya left them alone. But many had been pulled open under the stresses of the night, and she had not got all of the soot and splinters, working by firelight.

But all were bound up and salved at last. “Thank you,” Vasya said, hearing her voice shake. Hurriedly she put on her shirt to shut away the sight of herself, and then rubbed a bit of her charred hair between two fingers. Foul. Tangled, fire-smelling; it would never be clean again.

“Will you cut my hair off? As short as you can,” said Vasya. “I have had enough of Vasilisa Petrovna.”

The domovaya had only a knife to cut with, but she took it up without a word. Hanks of black hair tumbled down, soundless as snow, to be swept out and flung away for the nesting birds. When it was done, the air seemed to whistle strangely past Vasya’s ears and down her neck. Not long ago, Vasya would have wept to lose her black hair. Now she was glad to have it gone. Her long, glossy plait belonged to another girl, in another life.

The domovaya, a little subdued, returned to the iron-bound chest. This time, boy’s clothes appeared: loose trousers and sash, kaftan, even boots—good leather sapogi. They were badly creased, yellowed with time, but unworn. Vasya frowned. Bits of herbs were one thing, but this? Sturdy garments, sewn with a competent hand, out of close-woven linen and thick wool?

They even fit.

“Did—” Vasya could scarce credit it. She peered down at herself. She was warm, clean, rested, alive, clothed. “Did someone know I was coming?” The question was ridiculous; the clothes were older than she was. And yet…

The domovaya shrugged.

“Who was your mistress?” Vasya asked. “Who had this house before?”

The domovaya only looked at her blankly. “Are you sure it’s not you? I almost remember you.”

“I’ve never been here before,” said Vasya. “Can’t you remember?”

“I remember existing,” returned the domovaya, a little affronted. “I remember these walls, my key. I remember names and shadows in the fire. Nothing more.” She looked distressed; Vasya, in courtesy, let the subject drop. With gritted teeth, she concentrated on getting woolen stockings and sapogi onto her torn and burned feet. Gingerly, she put her feet to the floor, then stood and winced. “Now if only I could float along like the devil that cannot touch the earth,” she said, trying a few limping steps.

The domovaya thrust an old reed basket into Vasya’s hands. “If you want supper, you will have to find it,” she said. There was a strange note in her voice. She pointed at the woods.

Vasya could hardly bear the thought of going gathering in her current state. But she knew it would only be worse the next day, as her bruises stiffened.

“Very well,” she said.

The domovaya looked suddenly anxious. “Beware the forest,” she added, following Vasya to the door. “It does not take kindly to strangers. Safer to come back by nightfall.”

“What happens at nightfall?” asked Vasya.

“The—the season will turn,” said the domovaya, twisting her hands together.

“What does that mean?”

“You cannot get back, if the season turns. Or you can, but by then it will be someplace different.”

“How—different?”

“Different!” cried the domovaya, and stamped her foot. “Now go!”

“Very well,” said Vasya, placating. “I will be back by nightfall.”

11. Of Mushrooms

FOOD IN THE FOREST IS at its scarcest at the end of winter, and Vasya could barely touch anything with her blistered hands. But she must try or starve, and so she let herself be urged out the door.

The cool morning, pale as pearl, threw tendrils of mist over the blue-gray ice. Ancient trees ringed the frozen water; their dark limbs seemed to hold up the sky. Frost silvered the earth, and all around was the whisper of water, breaking loose winter’s bonds. A thrush called from within the wood. There was no sign of the horses.

Vasya might have stood on the rotten steps until she froze, forgetting sorrow in the pure and untouched beauty. But her stomach reminded her. She must live. And to live, she must eat. Determinedly, she went into the forest.

In another life, Vasya had wandered the woods of Lesnaya Zemlya in all its seasons. In spring, she would walk in the wild places, sun in her hair, and sometimes call greetings to her friend the rusalka, coming awake from her long sleep. But Vasya was not soft-footed now. She limped. Every step seemed to uncover a new pain. Her father would have mourned, for his light-footed, lighthearted child was gone and would not return.

There were no people and, out of sight of the house, no sign that there ever had been. Walking in solitary silence loosened the chokehold of rage and terror and grief on Vasya’s soul. She began to consider the shape of the land and wonder where food might be had.

A breath of wind, incongruously warm, riffled her hair. She was well out of sight of the house now. A patch of dandelion was flowering in a sunlit gap between the trees. Startled, Vasya bent and plucked the leaves. So early? She ate one of the flowers as she walked, chewing gingerly with her sore jaw.

Another patch of dandelions. Wild onion. The sun was over the treetops now. There—young dock, leaves curling. And—wild strawberries? Vasya halted. “It is too early,” she murmured.

It was. And there—mushrooms? Beliye? The tops of their pale heads just showed above a heap of dead leaves. Her mouth watered. She went to cut them, then looked again. One had spots that seemed to glisten strangely in the sun.

Not spots. Eyes. The largest of the mushrooms peered up at her, eyes a livid scarlet. Not a mushroom at all, but a chyert, scarcely the length of her forearm. A mushroom-spirit, glaring, shook himself free of the leaf-litter. “Who are you?” His voice was shrill. “Why have you come into my woods?”

His woods? “Trespasser!” he squeaked, and Vasya realized he was frightened.

“I didn’t know they were your woods.” She showed the chyert empty hands, knelt stiffly so he could see her better. The cold moss soaked through the knees of her leggings. “I mean no harm. I am only looking for food.”

The mushroom-spirit blinked, said, “Not exactly my woods—” and then added, hastily, “But it doesn’t matter; you can’t be here.”

“Not even if I make an offering?” asked Vasya. She put a perfect dandelion down before the creature.

The chyert touched the flower with a grayish finger. His outline solidified; now he resembled a small person more than a mushroom. He looked down at himself, and back at her, in puzzlement.

Then he flung away the flower. “I don’t believe you!” he cried. “Do you think to make me do your bidding? You will not! I don’t care how many offerings you give me. The Bear is free. He says we are striking a blow for ourselves now. If we join him we will make men believe in us again. We will be worshipped again, and have no need to make bargains with witches.”

Vasya, rather than answer, got hurriedly to her feet. “How exactly are you striking a blow for yourselves?” Wary, she looked about her but nothing stirred. There were only birds, flitting, and strong, steady sunlight.

A pause. “We will do great and terrible deeds,” said the mushroom-spirit.

Vasya tried not to sound impatient. “What does that mean?”

The mushroom-spirit threw his head back proudly, but he didn’t actually answer. Perhaps he didn’t know.

Great and terrible deeds? Vasya kept an eye on the silent forest. In the midst of loss and injury and terror, she had not stopped to consider the implications of her last night in Moscow. What had Morozko set in motion by freeing the Bear? What did it mean, for herself, for her family, and for Rus’?

Why had he done it?

Some part of her whispered—He loves you and so gave his freedom. But that could not be the only reason. She was not so vain as to think the winter-king would risk all he had long defended for a mortal maiden.

More important than why, what was she going to do about it?

I must find the winter-king, she thought. The Bear must be bound once more. But she didn’t know how to do either of those things; she was wounded still, and hungry.

“What makes you think I want you to do my bidding?” Vasya inquired of the mushroom-spirit. He had subsided under a log while she thought; she could just see the gleam of his eyes peeping out. “Who told you that?”

The mushroom-spirit poked his head out, scowled. “No one. I am no fool. What else would a witch want? Why else would you have taken the road through Midnight?”

“Because I fled for my life,” said Vasya. “I only came into the forest because I am hungry.” To illustrate, she took a handful of spruce-tips from her basket and began determinedly chewing.

The mushroom-spirit, still suspicious, said, “I can show you where better food is growing. If, as you say, you are hungry.” He was watching her closely.

“I am,” said Vasya at once, getting to her feet. “I would be glad of a guide.”

“Well,” said the chyert, “follow me then.” He darted off at once into the undergrowth.

Vasya, after a moment’s thought, followed, but she kept the lake always in sight. She did not trust the forest’s hostile silence and she did not trust the little mushroom-spirit.

VASYA’S MISTRUST SOON MINGLED with amazement, for she found herself in a land of wonders. The spruce-tips were green and tender; dandelions nodded in the breeze off the lake. She ate and gathered and ate, and then she realized suddenly that there was a sprawl of blueberries at her feet, more strawberries hidden beneath the damp grass. Not spring anymore, but summer.

“What is this place?” Vasya asked the mushroom-spirit. In her mind, she had begun calling him Ded Grib: Grandfather Mushroom.

He gave her an odd look. “The land between noon and midnight. Between winter and spring. The lake lies at the center. All lands touch, here at the water, and you can step from one to the other.”

A country of magic, such as she had once dreamed of.

After an instant of awed silence, Vasya asked, “If I go far enough will I reach the country of winter?”

“Yes,” said the chyert, though he looked dubious. “It is far to walk.”

“Is the winter-king there?”

Ded Grib gave her another odd look. “How would I know? I cannot grow in the snow.”

Thinking, frowning, Vasya returned her attention to filling her basket and her belly. She found cresses and cowslips, blueberries and gooseberries and strawberries.

Deeper she went into the summertime forest. How happy Solovey would have been, she thought, while her feet bruised the tender grass. Perhaps together we could have gone to find his kin. Sorrow drained away her pleasure in the sun on her back, in the sun-ripened strawberry between her lips. But she kept gathering. The warm, green world quieted her wounded spirit. Ded Grib was sometimes visible, sometimes not; he liked to hide under logs. But always she could sense him watching: curious, untrusting.

When the sun was high overhead, she remembered caution, and her promise to the domovaya. She had not yet regained her strength, and that she would need, whatever came next. “I have all I need,” she said. “I must get back.”

Ded Grib popped out from behind a stump. “You haven’t come to the best part,” he protested, pointing to a distant flash of trees clad in scarlet and gold. As though autumn, like summer, was a place you could walk into. “A little farther.”

Vasya was intensely curious. She also thought hungrily of chestnuts and pine-nuts. But caution won. “I have learned the cost of being reckless,” she told Ded Grib. “I have enough, for one day.”

He looked disgruntled, but said nothing else. Reluctantly, Vasya turned back the way she had come. It was hot in this summer country. She was dressed for early spring, in wool shirt and stockings. Her laden basket swung from her arm. Her feet throbbed now; her ribs ached.

To her left, the forest whispered, and watched. To her right lay the lake, summer-blue. Between the trees, she glimpsed a little sandy cove. Thirsty, Vasya strayed nearer the water, knelt, drank. The water was clear as air, so cold it made her teeth ache. Her bandages itched. The sponge-bath that morning had done nothing to ease her bone-deep sense of filth.

Abruptly, Vasya stood and began to strip. The domovaya would be cross with her for undoing all the careful wrapping, but Vasya couldn’t bring herself to care. Her hands were trembling with eagerness. As though the clean water could scour both the dirt from her skin and memory from her mind.

“What are you doing?” asked Ded Grib. He was staying well away from the sand and the rocks, hiding in the shade.

“I am going to swim,” said Vasya.

Ded Grib opened his mouth, closed it again.

Vasya paused. “Is there a reason why I shouldn’t?”

The mushroom-spirit shook his head, slowly, but he gave the water a nervous look. Perhaps he didn’t like water.

“Well,” said Vasya. She hesitated, but Mother of God, she wanted to peel off her own skin and become someone else; a plunge in the lake might at least quiet her mind. “I won’t go far. Perhaps you will look after my basket?”

SHE WADED IN. AT FIRST, she walked on rocks, wincing. Then the bottom became slick mud. She dove and came up yelling. The freezing lake closed her lungs and set her senses ablaze. She put her back to the shore and swam. The water delighted her, beneath the heat of the unaccustomed sun. But it was very cold. At last she halted, ready to turn back, scrub herself in the shallows, lie drying in the sun…

But when she turned, all she saw was water.

Vasya spun in a circle. Nothing. It was as though the whole world had sunk suddenly into the lake. For a few moments she treaded water, shocked, beginning to be afraid.

Perhaps she was not alone.

“I mean no harm,” said Vasya aloud, trying to ignore her chattering teeth.

Nothing happened. Vasya paddled in a circle again. Still nothing. Panic in this cold water and she was as good as dead. She must simply take her best guess and pray.

With a splash like a shout, a creature shot out of the water in front of her. Two slitted nostrils lay between its bulbous eyes; its teeth were the color of rock, hooked over a narrow jaw. When it exhaled, its breath steamed and oily liquid ran down its face.

“I am going to drown you,” it whispered, and lunged.

Vasya made no answer; instead her cupped hand came down on the water like a thunderclap. The chyert jerked back and Vasya snapped, “An immortal sorcerer could not kill me and neither could a priest with all Moscow at his beck—what makes you think you can?”

“You came into my lake,” returned the chyert, baring black teeth.

“To swim, not to die!”

“That is for me to decide.”

Vasya tried to ignore the goad of her aching ribs and to speak calmly. “For trespassing, I am guilty before you, but I do not owe you my life.”

The chyert breathed scalding steam onto Vasya’s face. “I am the bagiennik,” he growled. “And I tell you your life is forfeit.”

“Try and take it then,” snapped Vasya. “But I am not afraid of you.”

The chyert lowered his head, churning the blue water to froth. “Are you not? What did you mean that the immortal sorcerer could not kill you?”

Vasya’s legs were on the edge of cramping. “I killed Kaschei Bezsmertnii in Moscow on the last night of Maslenitsa.”

“Liar!” snapped the bagiennik, and lunged again, nearly swamping her.

Vasya didn’t flinch. Much of her concentration was taken with staying above water. “Liar I have been,” she said, “and I have paid for it. But about this I am telling the truth: I killed him.”

The bagiennik shut his mouth abruptly.

Vasya turned away, looking for the shore.

“I know you now,” murmured the bagiennik. “You have the look of your family. You took the road through Midnight.”

Vasya had no time for the bagiennik’s revelations. “I did,” she managed. “But my family is far away. As I said, I mean no harm. Where is the shore?”

“Far away? Near at hand too. You understand neither yourself nor the nature of this place.”

She was beginning to sink lower in the water. “Grandfather, the shore.”

The bagiennik’s black teeth shone with water. He slid nearer, moving like a water-snake. “Come, it will be quick. Drown, and I will live a thousand years on the memory of your blood.”

“No.”

“What use are you otherwise?” demanded the bagiennik, gliding nearer and nearer still. “Drown.”

Vasya was using the last of her strength just to keep her numb limbs churning. “What use am I? None. I have made more mistakes than I can count, and the world has no place for me. And yet, as I said before, I am still not going to die to please you.”

The bagiennik snapped his teeth right in her face, and Vasya, heedless of her wounds, caught him round the neck. He thrashed and almost threw her loose. But he didn’t. In her hands was the strength that had broken the bars of her cage in Moscow. “You will not threaten me,” Vasya added, into the chyert’s ear, and sucked in a breath, just as they plunged. When they surfaced, the girl still clung. Gasping, she said, “I may die tomorrow. Or live to sour old age. But you are only a wraith in a lake, and you will not command me.”

The bagiennik stilled and Vasya let go, coughing out water, feeling the strain in muscles along her broken side. Her nose and mouth were full of water. A few of her reopened cuts streamed blood. The bagiennik nosed at her bleeding skin. She didn’t move.

With surprising mildness, the bagiennik said, “Perhaps you are not useless after all. I have not felt such strength since—” He broke off. “I will bring you to shore.” He looked suddenly eager.

Vasya found herself clinging to a sinuous body, scorching hot. She shivered as life came back into her limbs. Warily, she said, “What did you mean, that I have the look of my family?”

Undulating through the water, the bagiennik said, “Don’t you know?” There was a strange undercurrent of eagerness in his voice. “Once the old woman and her twins lived in the house by the oak-tree and tended the horses that graze on the lake-shore.”

“What old woman? I have been to the house by the oak-tree and it is a ruin.”

“Because the sorcerer came,” said the bagiennik. “A man, young and fair. He said he wished to tame a horse, but it was Tamara, her mother’s heir, whom he won over. They swam together in the lake at Midsummer; he whispered his promises in the autumn twilight. In the end, for his sake, Tamara put a golden bridle on the golden mare: the Zhar Ptitsa.”

Now Vasya was listening closely. This was her own history, laid out casually by a lake-spirit in a country far away. Her grandmother’s name had been Tamara. Her grandmother had come from a distant land, riding a marvelous horse.

“The sorcerer took the golden mare and left the lands by the lake,” continued the bagiennik. “Tamara rode after him, weeping, swearing to recover the mare, swearing that she loved him in the same breath. But she never came back, and neither did the sorcerer. He made himself master of a great swath of the lands of men. No one ever knew what happened to Tamara. The old woman, in grief, shut and guarded every road to this place except the road through Midnight.”

There were a hundred questions darting through her head. Her tongue snatched up the first. “What happened to the other horses?” Vasya asked. “I saw a few of them last night and they were wild.”

The water-spirit swam in silence awhile; she did not think he would answer. Then the bagiennik said, his voice deep and savage, “The ones you saw are all that remain now. The sorcerer slew all that strayed away from the lake. Occasionally he caught a foal, but they never lasted long—they died or they escaped.”

“Mother of God,” Vasya whispered. “How? Why?”

“They are the most marvelous things in all the world, the horses of this land. The sorcerer couldn’t ride them. He couldn’t tame them or use them. So he killed them.” Almost too low to hear, the bagiennik added, “The ones that were left—the old woman kept them here, safe. But she is gone now, and there are fewer every year. The world has lost its wonder.”

Vasya didn’t speak. Her memory was a welter of flame, and Solovey’s lifeblood.

“Where did they come from?” she whispered. “The horses.”

“Who knows? The earth brought them forth; their very natures are magic. Of course men and chyerti want to tame them. Some of the horses take riders willingly,” added the bagiennik. “The swan, the dove, the owl, and the raven. And the nightingale—”

“I know what happened to the nightingale.” Vasya could barely say it. “He was my friend and he is dead.”

“The horses do not choose unwisely,” said the bagiennik.

Vasya said nothing at all.

After a long silence, lifting her head, she asked, “Can you tell me where the Bear has imprisoned the winter-king?”

“Beyond recall; long ago and far away and deep in the dark that does not change,” said the water-spirit. “Do you think the Bear would risk his twin winning free now?”

“No,” said Vasya. “No, I suppose he wouldn’t.” Suddenly she felt unutterably tired; the world was huge and strange and maddening; nothing seemed real. She neither knew what to do nor how to do it. She laid her head on the chyert’s warm back and did not speak again.

SHE DIDN’T NOTICE THE LIGHT change until she heard the murmur of water on pebbled cove.

In the time they’d been swimming, the sun had tilted west, cold and yellow-green. She was in summer twilight on the cusp of night. The golden day was gone, as though the lake itself had swallowed it. Vasya rolled with a splash into the shallows and stumbled onto the shore. The shadows of the trees stretched long and gray toward the water; her clothes were a cold heap in the shade.

The bagiennik was only a smudge of darkness, half-submerged in the lake. Vasya rounded on him in sudden fear. “What happened to the day?” She saw the bagiennik’s eyes beneath the water, shining rows of teeth. “Did you bring me into twilight on purpose? Why?”

“Because you killed the sorcerer. Because you did not let me kill you. Because word has gone out among the chyerti and we are all curious.” The bagiennik’s answer floated, disembodied, out of the shadows. “I advise you to make a fire. We will be watching.”

“Why?” Vasya demanded again, but the bagiennik had already sunk beneath the water and disappeared.

The girl stood still, furious, trying to ignore her fear. The day was rushing down around her as though the forest itself was determined to catch her at nightfall. Used to her own unthinking endurance, she now had to contend with the weakness of her battered flesh. She was half a day’s walking from the house by the oak-tree.

The season will turn, the domovaya had said. What did that mean? Could she risk it? Should she? She looked up at the gathering dark, and knew she couldn’t make it back before nightfall.

Stay then, she decided. And she would take the bagiennik’s poisonous advice, and use the last of the light to gather firewood. Whatever dangers haunted this place, better to meet them with a good fire, and a full belly.

She set about gathering firewood, angry at her own credulity. The forest of Lesnaya Zemlya had been kind to her, and that trust was still there, though this place had no cause for kindness. A brilliant sunset reddened the water; the wind whistled through the pines. The lake was perfectly still, golden with sunset.

Ded Grib reappeared as she was chopping up a deadfall. “Don’t you know you mustn’t pass the night beside the lake in a new season?” he asked. “Or you will never get the old season back. If you go back to the house by the oak-tree tomorrow, it will be summer and no spring at all for you.”

“The bagiennik kept me in the lake,” Vasya said grimly. The girl was recalling white, sparkling days in Morozko’s house in the fir-grove. You will return on the same night you left, he had told her. She had, even though she spent days—weeks—in his house. She had. And now—would the moon wax and wane in the wider world, while she passed a single night in this summer country? If you could spend a day in the lake in minutes, then what else was possible? The thought frightened her, as even the bagiennik’s threats had not. The patterns of day and dark, summer and winter, were as much a part of her as her own breath. Was there no pattern here at all?

“I didn’t think you’d come out of the lake at all,” the chyert confided. “I knew the great ones were planning something for you. Besides, the bagiennik hates people.”

Vasya had an armful of firewood; she flung it down in fury. “You might have told me!”

“Why?” asked Ded Grib. “I can’t interfere with the great ones’ plans. Besides, you let one of the horses die, didn’t you? Maybe it would have been justice, if the bagiennik had killed you, for he loves them.”

“Justice?” she demanded. All the rage and guilt and trapped helplessness of the last few days seemed to spill out. “Have I not had enough justice these last days? I only came here for food; I have done nothing to you, nothing to your forest. And still you—all of you—”

Words failed her. In bitter anger, she seized a stick and flung it down on the head of the little mushroom.

She wasn’t prepared for his reaction. The cloudy flesh of his head and shoulder sheared away. The chyert crumpled with a shriek of pain, and Vasya was left standing, appalled, while Ded Grib went bloodlessly from white to gray to brown. Like a mushroom kicked over by a careless child.

“No,” said Vasya in horror. “No, I didn’t mean it.” Without thinking she knelt, put her hand on his head. “I am sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I am sorry.”

He stopped turning gray. She realized she was crying. She hadn’t realized how deep the last days’ violence had gone inside her, hadn’t realized that it was still inside her, coiled up, ready to lash out in terror and rage. “Forgive me,” she said.

The chyert blinked his red eyes. He breathed. He was not dying. He looked more real than he had a moment ago. His broken body had knitted itself.

“Why did you do that?” asked the mushroom.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” said Vasya. She pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes. “I never meant to hurt anyone.” She was shaking in every limb. “But you’re right. I did—I did…”

“You—” The mushroom was examining his cloudy-gray arm with puzzlement. “You gave me your tears.”

Vasya shook her head, struggling to speak. “For my horse,” she managed. “For my sister. Even for Morozko.” She scrubbed at her eyes, tried to smile. “A little for you.”

Ded Grib stared at her solemnly. In silence, Vasya struggled to her feet and set about preparing for the night.

SHE WAS ARRANGING FIREWOOD on a bare patch of ground, when the mushroom-spirit spoke again, half-hidden in a leaf-pile. “For Morozko, you said. Are you looking for the winter-king?”

“Yes,” said Vasya at once. “I am. If you don’t know where he is, do you know who might?” The Bear’s words—his freedom for your life—beat at the back of her skull. Why had he done it? Why? And a deeper memory still, Morozko’s voice saying, As I could, I—

Her firewood was stacked in a neat open square, with kindling laid between the bigger branches. As she spoke, she was arranging pine-needles for tinder.

“Midnight knows,” said Ded Grib. “Her realm touches every midnight that ever was. But I doubt she’ll tell you. As to who else might know—” Ded Grib paused, obviously thinking hard.

“Are you helping me?” Vasya asked in surprise. She sat back on her heels.

Ded Grib said, “You gave me tears and a flower. I will follow you, and not the Bear. I am first.” He puffed out his chest.

“First to what?”

“To take your side.”

“My side in what?” asked Vasya.

“What do you think?” replied Ded Grib. “You denied both the winter-king and his brother, didn’t you? You made yourself a third power in their war.” He frowned. “Or are you going to find the winter-king to join his side?”

“I am not sure what difference it makes,” said Vasya. “All these questions of sides. I want to find the winter-king because I need his help.” That was not the entire reason, but she was not about to explain the rest of it to the mushroom-spirit.

Ded Grib waved this away. “Well, even if he does join your side, I will always have been first.”

Vasya frowned at her unlit fire. “If you don’t know how to find the winter-king, then how do you mean to help me?” she asked cautiously.

Ded Grib reflected. “I know all about mushrooms. I can make them grow, too.”

This pleased Vasya inordinately. “I love mushrooms,” she said. “Can you find me any lisichki?”

If Ded Grib answered, it went unheard, for the next moment she drew a sharp breath, and let her soul fill with the searing memory of fire. Her pile of sticks burst into flame. She added twigs with satisfaction.

Ded Grib’s mouth fell open. All around, a whispering rose, as if the trees were speaking to one another. “You should be careful,” said Ded Grib, when he could speak.

“Why?” said Vasya, still pleased with herself.

“Magic makes people mad,” said the mushroom. “You change reality so much you forget what is real. But perhaps a few more chyerti will follow you after all.”

As though to punctuate his words, two fish flopped out of the lake and lay gasping, red-silver in the light of Vasya’s campfire.

“Follow me where?” Vasya demanded in some exasperation, but she did go and take the fish. “Thank you,” she added grudgingly in the direction of the water. If the bagiennik heard, he didn’t answer, but she didn’t think he’d gone away. He was waiting.

For what, she didn’t know.

12. Bargaining

VASYA GUTTED THE FISH AND wrapped them in clay to roast in the coals of her fire. Ded Grib, true to his word, scampered off and brought her handfuls of mushrooms. Unfortunately, not only did he not know which were lisichki, he didn’t know which were edible. Vasya had to pick through alarming handfuls of toadstools. But the good ones she stuffed into her fish, along with herbs and wild onion, and when they were done, she burned her fingers eating them.

A full stomach was pleasant, but the night itself was not. The wind blew sharp off the lake, and Vasya could not shake the sense of being watched, of being measured by eyes she could not see. She felt like a girl hurled unwary into a tale she didn’t understand, with folk all around waiting for her to take up a part she didn’t know. Solovey’s absence was a gnawing misery that did not ease.

Eventually Vasya fell into a chilly doze, but even sleep was no respite. She dreamed of fists and enraged faces, of shouting for her horse to run. But instead he turned into a nightingale, and a man with a bow and arrow shot him out of the sky. Vasya jerked awake with her horse’s name on her lips, and heard somewhere in the darkness the thud of uneven hoofbeats.

SHE HAULED HERSELF UPRIGHT, stood barefoot in the cool summer bracken, painfully stiff. Her fire was down to a few red-edged coals. The moon hung low on the horizon. A light was coming through the trees. She thought of men with torches, and her first instinct was to flee.

But it wasn’t torches, she realized, squinting. It was the golden mare, alone. Her glow from the night before had dimmed; she was stumbling on a bad foreleg, her breast spattered with foam. Vasya thought she heard whispers in the wood beyond the horse. A foul smell gusted on the wind.

Swiftly, Vasya threw wood onto her little campfire. “Here,” she called.

The mare tried to run, tripped over nothing, turned her steps to Vasya. Her head hung low. In the newborn firelight, a gash in her foreleg was clearly visible.

Vasya picked up her ax and a flaming log. She couldn’t see what pursued the mare, though the smell of it thickened all around them, rotten-ripe, like carrion in the heat. Holding her pitiful weapons, she backed toward the water. Vasya had no love for the living spark that ignited Moscow. But—she had failed her own horse. She would not fail this one. “This way,” she said.

The mare had no words in reply, nothing but terror, communicated with her whole body. Still she came toward Vasya.

“Ded Grib,” Vasya called.

A patch of mushrooms, glowing sickly green in the darkness, quivered. “You had better survive this. What good will my being first be, otherwise? Everyone is watching.”

“What—?”

But if he answered she did not hear, for the Bear stepped softly out of the trees, into the moonlight beside the water.

IN MOSCOW, HE HAD looked like a man. He still did, but it was a man with sharp teeth, and wildness in his single eye; she could see the beast in him stretching out like a shadow at his back. He seemed stranger, older: at home in this impossible forest.

“I suppose this is why the bagiennik wanted me to spend the night in the forest,” she said, standing tense. Hoarse, snarling breaths sounded from the undergrowth. “He did want me dead, after all.”

The unscarred corner of the Bear’s mouth curled. “Perhaps. Or perhaps not. Stop puffing up like a cat. I didn’t come to kill you.”

The burning log had begun to scorch her hand. She flung it onto the ground in between them. “Hunting the firebird then?”

“Not even that. But my creatures will have their sport.” He hissed at the mare, grinning, and she shied back, her hind feet in the water.

“Leave her be!” Vasya snapped.

“Very well,” said the Bear, unexpectedly. He seated himself on a log beside her fire. “Won’t you sit with me?”

She didn’t move. His dog-teeth gleamed sharp and white in the gloom when he smiled. “Truly, I do not desire your life, Vasilisa Petrovna.” He opened his empty hands. “I wish to make you an offer.”

That surprised her. “You have already offered me my life. I didn’t take it; I saved myself. Why would I take anything less from you?”

The Bear did not answer directly. Instead, he looked up at the tree-fringed starlight, breathed deep of the summer night. She could see the stars reflected in his eye, as though he were drinking the sky after long darkness. She did not want to understand that joy. “I passed uncounted lives of men bound to a clearing at the edge of my brother’s lands,” said the Bear. “Do you think he was a good steward of the world while I slept?”

“At least Morozko did not leave destruction in his wake,” said Vasya. Beside her the mare was bleeding into the water. “What have you been doing in Moscow?”

“Amusing myself,” said the Bear matter-of-factly. “My brother did the same once, although he likes to play the saint now. Once we were more alike. We are twins, after all.”

“If you are trying to make me trust you, it isn’t working.”

“But—” the Bear went on. “My brother thinks that men and chyerti can share this world. These same men that are spreading like sickness, rattling their church-bells, forgetting us. My brother is a fool. If men are unchecked, one day there will be no chyerti, no road through Midnight, no wonder in the world at all.”

Vasya did not wish to understand why the Bear raised his eyes in wonder to the night sky, and she did not want to agree with him now. But it was true. All over Rus’, chyerti were faint as smoke. They guarded their waters and woods and households with hands that did not grasp, with minds that barely remembered. She said nothing.

“Men fear what they do not understand,” murmured the Bear. “They hurt you. They beat you, spat on you, put you in the fire. Men will suck all the wildness out of the world, until there is no place for a witch-girl to hide. They will burn you and all your kind.” It was her deepest and most wretched fear. He must know that. “But it doesn’t have to be so,” the Bear continued. “We can save the chyerti, save the land between noon and midnight.”

“Can we?” asked Vasya. Her voice was not quite steady. “How?”

“Come with me to Moscow.” He was on his feet again, the unscarred half of his face ruddy in the firelight. “Help me throw down the bell-towers, break the grip of the princes. Be my ally and you will have vengeance on your enemies. No one will dare scorn you again.”

Medved was a spirit: no more made of flesh than Ded Grib, and yet in that clearing he seemed to pulse with raw life. “You killed my father,” Vasya said.

He spread his hands. “Your father threw himself upon my claws. My brother got your allegiance with lies, didn’t he? With whispers and half-truths in the dark and his two blue eyes, so tempting to maidens?”

She fought to keep all feeling from her face. The corner of his mouth curled before he continued. “But here I am, asking for your allegiance with nothing but the truth.”

“If you are here with the truth, then tell me what you want,” said Vasya. “With less art and more honesty.”

“I want an ally. Join me and take your vengeance. We, the old ones, will rule this land once more. That is what the chyerti want. That is why the bagiennik brought you here. That is why they are all watching. For you to hear me, and agree.”

Was he lying?

She found herself, horribly, wondering how it would be, to agree, to let the rage inside her loose in a spasm of violence. She could feel the impulse echoed in the scarred figure before her. He understood her guilt, her sorrow, the fury that had come down on Ded Grib’s head.

“Yes,” he whispered. “We understand each other. We cannot make a new world without first breaking the old.”

“Breaking?” said Vasya. She hardly recognized her own voice. “What will you break in the making of this new world?”

“Nothing that cannot be repaired. Think of it. Think of the girl-children that will not face the fire.”

She wanted to go to Moscow in power and throw the city down. His wildness called to her, and the sorrow of his long imprisonment. The golden mare stood very still.

“I would have my vengeance?” she murmured.

“Yes,” he said. “In full measure.”

“Would Konstantin Nikonovich die screaming?”

She thought he hesitated before answering. “He would die.”

“And who else would die, Medved?”

“Men and women die every day.”

“They die according to God’s will; they do not die for me,” said Vasya. The nails of her free hand tore into her palm. “Not one life lost is worth the price of my grief. Do you think that I’m a fool, that you can drip words like sweet poison in my ear? I am not your ally, monster, nor will I ever be.”

She thought that a murmur rose from the forest all around, but she couldn’t tell if it was a sound of delight or disappointment.

“Ah,” said the Bear. The regret in his voice seemed real. “So wise in some ways, little Vasilisa Petrovna, and yet so foolish in others. For of course if you do not join me, you cannot remain alive.”

“My life was the price of your freedom,” Vasya said. The lake was a cold presence at her back, the golden mare still stood warm and trembling beside her. “You cannot kill me.”

“I offered you your life,” said the Bear. “It is not my fault you are a stubborn fool and did not take it. My debt is paid. Besides, I am not going to kill you. You can join me alive. Or you can be my servant.” His mouth quirked irrepressibly. “Less alive.”

VASYA HEARD A SOFT, shuffling footstep. Another. Vasya’s pulse sounded loud in her ears; in her mind echoed an old warning. The Bear is loose. Beware the dead.

“I am going to enjoy this,” said Medved. “Tell me what you decide.” He stepped back. “Either way, I will give my brother your regrets.”

To her left, a dead man with red eyes and a filthy visage slunk into the light. To her right, a woman grinned, blood on her lips, a few locks of rotten hair still clinging to her bone-white skull. The dead things’ eyes were pits of hell: scarlet and black. When their mouths opened, the points of their teeth dazzled, sharp, in the last of the firelight. Vasya and the mare were surrounded by a shrinking half-circle.

The golden mare reared. For an instant, it seemed as though vast wings of flame flared from her back. But she came to earth, a horse still, and wounded. She couldn’t fly.

Vasya dropped her useless ax. Her soul was still full of remembered fire. She clenched her fists and forgot that the dead things were not burning.

It worked better than she could have hoped. Two went up like torches. The upyry screamed as they burned and blundered about, howling. She had to snatch up a branch and fend them off, her bare feet in the water. The golden mare backed up, striking out with frantic fore-hooves.

“Oh ho,” said the Bear, in a new voice. “Moscow put the fire in your soul, did it? Truly, you are half chaos-spirit; you would like being my ally. Won’t you reconsider?”

“Are you never silent?” Vasya demanded. Her body was streaming cold sweat. Another upyr burst into flames and reality began to waver. Now she understood. Magic makes men mad. They forget what is real because too much is possible.

But there were still four more; she had no choice. The dead things were advancing once more.

The Bear’s eye locked on hers, as though he could see the seed of insanity there. “Yes,” he breathed. “Lose your mind, wild girl. And you’ll be mine.”

She drew a deep breath and—

“Enough,” said a new voice.

The sound seemed to shake Vasya out of a dark dream. An old woman, big-handed and broad-shouldered, strode between the trees, took in the lurid scene, and said irritably, as though it were the most natural thing in the world, “Medved, you shouldn’t have tried it at midnight.”

At the same moment, a wave from the lake nearly swamped Vasya, and the bagiennik appeared, floating in the shallows, teeth bared. “Eater, you didn’t say anything about hurting the horses.”

The old woman might have been tall once, but she was crabbed with age, her clothes rough, her hands long-nailed, her legs bowed. There was a basket on her back.

Vasya, standing with her feet in the lake, reality gone pliant as mist, could see the Bear startled, wary. “You are dead,” he said to the old woman.

The old woman chortled. “At midnight? On my own lands? You should know better.”

Vasya, as though in a dream, thought she caught the gleam of the midnight-demon’s hair, her starry eyes, half-hidden in the trees, watching.

The Bear said, placating, “I should have known better. But why interfere? What care you for your traitorous family?”

“I care at least for the mare, you great hungry thing,” retorted the old woman. She stamped her foot. “Go back to terrorizing Muscovy.”

One of the upyry was creeping up behind the old woman. She didn’t look, didn’t even twitch, but the dead thing burst into white fire, and collapsed with a shriek.

“I suppose,” said the Bear, “I’d have to wait a long time for you to go mad.” There was respect in his voice. Vasya listened in astonishment.

“I have been mad for years,” said the old woman. When she laughed, every hair on Vasya’s body rose. “But at midnight, this is still my realm.”

“The girl won’t stay with you,” said the Bear, with a jerk of his chin at Vasya. “She won’t stay, however you try to persuade her. She’ll leave you just like the others. When she does, I’ll be waiting.” To Vasya, he added, “Your choice still stands. You are going to be my ally one way or the other. The chyerti will not have it otherwise.”

“Go away,” snapped the woman.

And, unbelievably, the Bear bowed to them both, and slunk away through the dark. His servants, shambling, the hell-light gone from their eyes, followed him.

13. Baba Yaga

THE SOUNDS OF THE NIGHT resumed. Vasya’s feet were numb in the water. The golden mare’s head hung low. The old woman pursed her lips, inspecting girl and horse.

“Babushka,” said Vasya cautiously. “Thank you for our lives.”

“If you want to stand in the lake until you grow fins, that is your affair,” the old woman replied. “Otherwise come to the fire.”

She stumped away, added sticks to the blaze. Vasya waded out of the lake. But the mare did not move. “You are bleeding,” Vasya said to her, trying to get a look at the gash on her foreleg.

The mare’s ears were still pinned to her head. Finally, she said, I ran, while the others flew, to lead the upyry away. But they were too fast, and then my leg was torn and I could not fly.

“I can help you,” Vasya volunteered.

The mare made no answer. But suddenly Vasya understood her stillness, the golden head sunk low. “Do you fear being bound again? Because you are wounded? Do not be afraid. I killed the sorcerer. Tamara is dead too.” She could feel the old woman at her back, listening. “I have no rope here, let alone a golden bridle. I will not touch you without your leave; come to the fire.”

Vasya suited action to word, making her own way to the fire. The mare stood still, the set of her ears uncertain. The old woman was standing on the other side of the flames, waiting for Vasya. Her hair was white. But her face was a distorted mirror of the girl’s own.

Vasya stared, with shock, hunger, recognition.

The forest still seemed thick with eyes, watching. There was an instant of perfect silence. Then the woman said, “What is your name?”

“Vasilisa Petrovna,” said Vasya.

“What was your mother’s name?”

“Marina Ivanovna,” said Vasya. “Her mother was called Tamara, the girl who put a bridle on the firebird.”

The woman’s eyes roved over Vasya’s torn and bruised face, her cropped hair, her clothes, and perhaps more than anything the expression in the girl’s eyes. “I’m surprised you didn’t frighten the Bear off,” said the old woman, drily. “With your face so frightful. Or perhaps he liked it. Hard to know, with that one.” Her hands were trembling.

Vasya said nothing.

“Tamara and her sister were my daughters. Long ago, it would seem to you.”

Vasya knew that. “How are you alive?” she whispered.

“I’m not,” said the old woman. “I died before you were born. But this is Midnight.”

The golden mare broke their silence with splashing as she stepped out of the lake. As one, they turned to the horse. The firelight gleamed cruelly on the scars of whip and spur. “A pitiful pair you make,” said the old woman.

Vasya said, “Babushka, we are both in need of help.”

“Pozhar first,” said the old woman. “She is bleeding still.”

“Is that her name?”

A shrug. “What name would compass a creature like her? It is only what I call her.”

BUT HELPING THE MARE was not so easy. Pozhar laid back her ears if either of them tried to touch her. When she switched her tail, showers of sparks tumbled to the summer earth. One began to smolder; Vasya put it out with a booted foot. “Wounded or no, you are a menace.”

The old woman snorted. The mare glared. But Pozhar was exhausted, too. At last, when Vasya ran a hand from her shoulder to her knee, she only shuddered. “This is going to hurt,” said Vasya grimly. “You are not to kick.”

I am not promising anything, said the mare, ears pinned.

Between them, they convinced the mare to stand still long enough for the girl to sew up her leg, although Vasya had a few new bruises by the time it was done. After, when a shaken Pozhar had escaped, limping, to graze at a safe distance, Vasya sank to the earth beside the fire, pushing sweaty hair off her face. Her clothes had dried in the heat of the mare’s body. It was still blackest night, although it seemed hours since the Bear had come.

The woman had a pot in her basket, salt, some onions. When she thrust her hand in the lake, she withdrew fish, as naturally as a woman pulls bread from her own oven. She set about making soup, as though it were not midnight.

Vasya watched her. “Is it your house?” she asked. “The house by the oak-tree?”

The old woman was gutting the fish and didn’t look up. “It was, once.”

“The chest—did you leave it there? For me to find?”

“Yes,” said the woman, still not looking up.

“You knew that I—you are the witch of the wood then,” said Vasya. “Who tends the horses.” She thought of Marya and the old, dread name, the fairy-tale name, came to her lips unbidden. With a shiver, she said, “Baba Yaga. You are my great-grandmother.”

The old woman brayed a short laugh. The fish guts shone darkly between her fingers when she flung them back into the lake. “Near enough, I suppose. This witch and that were woven into a single fairy tale. Perhaps I am one of the witches.”

“How did you know I was here?”

“Polunochnitsa told me, of course,” returned the old woman. She was rummaging in the contents of Vasya’s basket now, adding greens to the pot. Her eyes gleamed in the dark, big and wild and reddened by the fire. “Although she almost waited until it was too late; she wanted you and the Bear to meet.”

“Why?”

“To see what you’d do.”

“Why?” Vasya asked again. She felt perilously close to breaking into a child’s whining complaint. Her feet ached, and her ribs, and the cut on her face. More than ever she felt as if she’d been thrust into a tale she hardly understood.

The old woman didn’t answer at once. She studied Vasya again. Finally she said, “Most of the chyerti do not want to strike a blow at the world of men. But they don’t want to fade either. They are torn.”

Vasya frowned. “Are they? What has that to do with me?”

“Why do you think Morozko went to such lengths to save your life? Yes, Polunochnitsa told me that, too.”

“I don’t know why,” said Vasya, and this time her voice rose a note despite her best efforts. “Do you think I wanted him to? It was utter madness.”

A quick, malicious gleam from beneath the old woman’s lids. “Was it? I suppose you’ll never know.”

“I would if you’d tell me.”

“That—no. It is something you must come to understand yourself, or not.” The old woman grinned, still with that edge of malice. She tossed salt in the soup. “Is it an easy road you’re after, child?”

“If it were, I’d not have left home,” retorted Vasya, holding hard to courtesy. “But I am tired of stumbling blind in the dark.”

The old woman was stirring the pot now; the firelight caught a strange expression on her face. “It is always dark here,” she said.

Vasya, still bursting with questions, found herself silenced, ashamed of herself. In a different voice, she said, “You are the one who sent Midnight to me, on the road to Moscow.”

“I am,” said the old woman. “I was curious, when I heard a girl-child of my blood had gone wandering, with a horse from the lake.”

Vasya flinched at the reminder of Solovey. The soup was ready; the witch ladled up a large bowl for herself, a meager one for Vasya. Vasya didn’t mind; she’d stuffed herself on fish earlier. But the broth was good; she drank it slowly.

“Babushka,” she asked, “did you ever see your daughters, after they left this place?”

Baba Yaga’s old face grew still as carven stone. “No. They abandoned me.”

Vasya thought of Tamara’s withered ghost, wondered if this woman could have prevented that horror.

“My girl plotted with the sorcerer to take the firebird by force!” snapped the old woman, as though she could read Vasya’s thought. “I could not catch them. The mare is the fastest thing that runs. But at least my daughter was punished.”

Vasya said, “She was your child. Do you know what the sorcerer did to Tamara?”

“She did it to herself.”

“Shall I tell you what happened to her?” Vasya asked, growing angry. “About her courage and her despair? Of how she was trapped in the terem of Moscow until she died? And even after! You shut your lands and didn’t even try to help her?”

“She betrayed me,” retorted the witch. “She chose a man over her own kin; gave the golden mare into Kaschei’s keeping. My Varvara left me too. She tried first to take Tamara’s place, but she could not. Of course she could not; she had not the sight. So, she left, the coward.”

Vasya stilled, struck with sudden understanding.

“I didn’t need either of them,” the old woman went on. “I shut the way in. I shut every road but the Midnight-road and that road is mine, for Lady Midnight is my servant. I have kept my lands inviolate until a new heir should come.”

“Kept your lands inviolate?” Vasya demanded incredulously. “While your children were trapped in the world of men, while your daughter was abandoned by her lover?”

“Yes,” said the witch. “She deserved it.”

Vasya said nothing.

“But,” the old woman went on, her voice softening, “I have a new heir now. I knew you’d come, one day. You can speak to horses; you awakened the domovaya with fire, you survived the bagiennik. You will not betray me. You will live in the house by the oak-tree and I will come every midnight to teach you all I know. How to master chyerti. How to keep your own people safe. Don’t you want to know those things, poor little girl, with your burned face?”

“Yes,” said Vasya. “I do want to know those things.”

The woman sat back, looking satisfied.

“When there is time to learn,” Vasya continued. “But not yet. The Bear is free in Rus’.”

The old woman bristled. “What is Rus’ to you? They tried to burn you, didn’t they? They killed your horse.”

“Rus’ is my family. My brothers and sister. My niece, who sees as I do. Your grandchildren. Your great-grandchildren.”

The woman’s eyes began, disconcertingly, to gleam. “Another with the sight? And a girl-child? We will walk through Midnight and get her.”

“Steal her away, you mean? Take her from her mother, who loves her?” Vasya dragged in air. “You should think of what happened to your own children first.”

“No,” said the woman. “I didn’t need them, little serpents.” Her eyes were savage, and Vasya wondered if it were solitude or magic that had planted this deep seed of madness inside her, that she would reject her children so. “You will have my powers and my chyerti, great-granddaughter.”

Vasya got up and went and knelt at the old woman’s side. “You honor me,” she said, forcing her voice to calm. “At dusk I was a vagabond, and now I am someone’s great-grandchild.”

The old woman sat stiff, puzzled, watching Vasya with reluctant hope.

“But,” she finished, “it was for my sake that the Bear was freed; I must see him bound anew.”

“The Bear’s amusements do not concern you. He was long a prisoner; don’t you think he deserves a little sunlight?”

“He just tried to kill me,” said Vasya acidly. “That is one amusement that concerns me.”

“You cannot stand against him. You are too young, and you have seen the dangers of too much magic. He is the cleverest of the chyerti. If I had not come, you would have died.” One withered hand reached out and caught Vasya’s. “Stay here and learn, child.”

“I will,” said Vasya. “I will. If the Bear is bound then I will come back and be your heir and learn. But I must see my family safe. Can you help me?”

The old woman withdrew her hand. Hostility was winning out over the hope in her face. “I will not help you. I am steward of this lake, these woods; I care not for the world beyond.”

“Can you at least tell me where the winter-king is imprisoned?” asked Vasya.

The woman laughed. Really laughed, throwing her head back with a cackle. “Do you think his brother will have just left him lying, like a kitten he forgot to drown?” Her eyes narrowed. “Or are you just like Tamara? Choosing a man over your own kin?”

“No,” said Vasya. “But I need his help to bind the Bear again. Do you know where he is?” Despite her efforts at calm, a hard edge was creeping back into her own voice.

“Not on any of my lands.”

Lady Midnight was still standing in the shadows, listening intently. Baba Yaga has three servants, riders all: Day, Dusk, and Night, that was how the story went. “Nevertheless,” said Vasya, “I am going to find him.”

“You don’t know where to start.”

“I am going to start in Midnight,” said Vasya shortly, with another glance at the midnight-demon. “Surely if it includes every midnight that ever was, one of them contains Morozko in his prison.”

“It is a land so vast your mind cannot understand it.”

“Will you help me then?” Vasya asked again, looking into the face that was the mirror of her own. “Please. Babushka, I am sure there is a way.”

The woman’s mouth worked. She seemed to hesitate. Vasya’s heart leaped with sudden hope.

But then the witch turned stiffly away, jaw set. “You are as bad as Tamara, as bad as Varvara, as bad as either of those wicked girls. I will not help you, fool. You will only get yourself killed, and for nothing, after your precious winter-king went to such lengths to see you safe.” She was on her feet. Vasya was too.

“Wait,” she said. “Please.” Midnight stood motionless in the darkness.

Furiously the old woman said, “If you think better of your foolishness, come back and perhaps I will reconsider. If not—well, I let my own daughters go. A great-granddaughter should be even easier.”

Then she stepped into the darkness and was gone.

14. Vodianoy

VASYA WISHED SHE COULD CRY. Part of her soul yearned after her great-grandmother, as it yearned after the mother she’d never known, after her dead nurse, and the elder sister who’d gone away so young. But how could she live quietly in a land of magic while the Bear was loose, her family in danger, the winter-king left to rot?

“You are too alike,” said a familiar voice. Vasya raised her head. Midnight slipped out of the shadows. “Rash. Heedless.” The moonlight kindled the chyert’s pale hair to white fire. “So, you mean to seek the winter-king?”

“Why are you asking?”

“Curiosity,” said Midnight, lightly.

Vasya didn’t believe her. “Are you going to tell the Bear?” she asked.

“Why should I? He will only laugh. You cannot get Morozko out. You will only die trying.”

“Well,” said Vasya, “you would rather I died, it seems, judging by our last meeting. Why not tell me where he is, and I’ll be dead the sooner?”

Polunochnitsa looked amused. “It wouldn’t do any good if I did. Getting somewhere in Midnight is not so simple as knowing where you mean to go.”

“How do you travel by midnight then?”

Polunochnitsa said softly, “There is no north in Midnight, no south. No east or west; no here or there. You must only hold your destination in your mind and walk, and not falter in the darkness, for there is no telling how long it will take to get where you wish to go.”

“Is that all? Why did Varvara make me touch an oak-sapling then?”

Polunochnitsa snorted. “A little that one knows, but she does not understand. Affinity makes it easier to travel. Like calls to like. Blood calls to blood. It is easiest to go to your own kin. You couldn’t reach the tree by the lake alone because you used a weak affinity—oak-tree to oak-tree.” Her expression went sly. “Perhaps it won’t be hard for you to find the winter-king, little maiden. There is an affinity there, surely. After all, he loved you enough to yield up his freedom. Perhaps he is longing for you even now.”

Vasya had never heard anything more ridiculous. But all she said was, “How do I get into Midnight?”

“Every night, when the hour comes, my realm is there, for those with eyes to see.”

“Very well. How do I get out of Midnight again?”

“The easiest way? Go to sleep.” Midnight was watching her intently now. “And your sleeping mind will seek the dawn.”

Ded Grib popped out from under a log.

“Where were you in all this excitement?” Vasya asked him.

“Hiding,” said the mushroom-spirit succinctly. “I am glad you are not dead.” He gave Midnight a nervous glance. “Better not go looking for the winter-king, though. You’ll get killed, and after I have gone through so much trouble to be your ally.”

“I must,” said Vasya. “He sacrificed himself for me.”

She saw Midnight’s eyes narrow. She was deadly serious, but she’d not spoken in the tones of a lovelorn maiden.

“That was his choice, not yours,” said Ded Grib, looking more uneasy than ever.

Vasya, without another word, went to Pozhar, stopped a healthy distance away from where the mare was grazing. Pozhar liked to bite. “Lady, are you all kin? You and the other horses that are birds?”

Pozhar flicked her ears in annoyance. Of course we are, she said. Her leg already looked much better.

Vasya took a deep breath. “Then will you do me a kindness?”

Pozhar at once shied. You are not getting on my back, she said.

Vasya thought she heard Polunochnitsa laugh. “No,” Vasya said. “I would not ask it of you. I meant to ask—will you come through Midnight with me? Take me to Morozko’s white mare? Blood calls to blood, I learn.”

This last was for Polunochnitsa’s benefit. She could almost feel Polunochnitsa’s arrested stare.

Pozhar was still for a moment. Her great, golden ears flicked once, back and forth, uncertainly. I suppose I will try, said Pozhar irritably, and stamped. If that is all. But you are still not getting on my back.

“Just as well,” Vasya said. “I have a broken rib.”

Ded Grib was frowning. “Didn’t you just say—?”

“Will no one credit me with common sense?” Vasya demanded, stalking back to the fire. “Affinity guides one through the land of Midnight. Well and good, but I am not fool enough to trust the tie between Morozko and me, that was made up of lies and longing and half-truths. Especially since I suspect that the Bear might be expecting me to, and get myself killed in the process.”

Judging by Polunochnitsa’s face, that was the exact thing he was expecting. “Even if you do find him,” she said, recovering, “you won’t be able to get the winter-king out.”

“One task at a time,” said Vasya. She took a handful of strawberries from her basket, held them out. “Will you tell me something else, Lady Midnight?”

“Oh, is it bribery now?” But Polunochnitsa took the fruit, bent her head to the sweetness. “Tell you what?”

“Will the Bear or his servants follow me, if I go into Midnight after Morozko?”

Midnight hesitated. “No,” she said. “He has enough to do in Moscow. If you want to throw your life away on a prison that cannot be breached, then that is your affair.” She smelled the strawberries again. “But I will give you a last warning. The midnights nearest you only cross distance. You can go into and out of them as you will. But the farther midnights—those cross years. If you fall asleep there, and lose the Midnight-road, then you will vanish like the dew, or your flesh fall at once to dust.”

Vasya shuddered. “How will I know which is near and which is far?”

“It doesn’t matter. If you wish to find the winter-king, you must not sleep until you do.”

She took a deep breath. “Then I will not fall asleep.”

VASYA WENT TO THE LAKE to take a long drink, and found the bagiennik writhing, furious, in the shallows. “The firebird has come back!” snarled the bagiennik. “Against all hope, to live again by the water. And perhaps there will be a great herd again, to fly over the lake at dawn. Now you are taking her away on your own foolish errand.”

“I am not forcing her to come with me,” said Vasya gently.

The bagiennik beat his tail against the water, wordlessly miserable.

Vasya said, “When Pozhar wishes to come back, she may. And—if I survive this, then I will come and live by the lake and learn, seek out all the scattered horses and tend them. In memory of my own, whom I loved very much. Will that content you?”

The bagiennik said nothing.

She turned away.

From behind the bagiennik said in a new voice, “I will hold you to your word.”

VASYA COLLECTED HER BASKET, the remains of her fish. From the grass, Ded Grib piped, “Are you leaving me behind?” He was sitting on a stump now, glowing an unpleasant green in the darkness.

Vasya said, dubiously, “I may go far from the lake.”

Ded Grib looked small and determined. “I am going with you anyway,” he said. “I am on your side, remember? Besides, I can’t fall to dust.”

“How comforting for you,” said Vasya coolly. “Why be on my side?”

“The Bear can make chyerti angry, stronger with wrath. But you can make us more real. I understand now. So does the bagiennik.” Ded Grib looked proud. “I am on your side and I am going with you. You would be lost without me.”

“Perhaps I would,” Vasya said, smiling. Then a note of doubt crept into her voice. “Are you going to walk?” He was very small.

“Yes,” said Ded Grib and marched off.

Pozhar shook her mane. Hurry up, she said to Vasya.

THE GOLDEN MARE WALKED into the night, taking mouthfuls of grass as she went. Sometimes if she found a good patch, she would put her head down to graze in earnest. Vasya did not hurry her, not wanting to irritate the gash in Pozhar’s foreleg, but she was anxiously wondering when she would start to get sleepy, wondering how many hours it would take…

No point in thinking of it. She had decided. Either she would succeed or she wouldn’t.

“I have never left the lake,” Ded Grib confided to Vasya as they walked. “Not since there were villages of men there and the children dreamed me alive, when they went mushrooming in autumn.”

“Villages?” asked Vasya. “By the lake?” By then they were walking in a strange glade, with rough grass and mud under her feet. The stars were low and warm in the generous sky: summertime stars.

“Yes,” said Ded Grib. “There used to be villages of men on the borders of the magic country. Sometimes if they were brave, men and women would go in, seeking adventure.”

“Perhaps men and women might be persuaded to do so again,” said Vasya, fired with the idea. “And they could live in peace with chyerti, safe from the evils of this world.”

Ded Grib looked doubtful, and Vasya sighed.

On they went, walk and halt and walk again. Now the night was cooler, now warmer. Now they were walking on rock, with wind whistling past Pozhar’s ears, now they were skirting a pond, with a full moon lying like a pearl in the center. All was still, all was silent. Vasya was weary, but nerves and her long sleep in the house by the lake kept her moving.

She was barefoot, her boots tied to her basket. Though her feet were sore, the ground felt good on her skin. Pozhar was a silver-gold glimmer between the trees, a little short on her wounded foreleg. Ded Grib was a fainter presence still, creeping from stump to rock to tree.

Vasya hoped that Midnight had been right about the Bear not following her. But she looked often over her shoulder and once or twice had to stop herself from telling the mare to hurry.

Walking through a wooded hollow, with tall pines on all sides, she found herself thinking for the first time how pleasant it would be to make a bed of boughs and sleep until first light.

Hurriedly seeking a distraction, Vasya realized that it had been a while since she’d seen the mushroom-spirit’s green glow. She peered into the darkness, searching. “Ded Grib!” She scarcely dared to speak above a whisper, not knowing what dangers stalked this place. “Ded Grib!”

The mushroom-spirit popped out of the loam at her feet, sending Pozhar skittering backward. Even Vasya jumped. “Where have you been?” she asked him, sharp with fright.

“Helping!” said Ded Grib. He thrust something into her hands. Vasya realized that it was a sack of food. Not wild food, like her strawberries and dandelions, but flat camp-bread, smoked fish, a skin of mead. “Oh!” said Vasya. She tore off a piece of flatbread, gave it to him, gave another to the offended Pozhar, and tore off a third for herself. “Where did you get this?” she asked him, gnawing.

“There are men over there,” said Ded Grib. Vasya looked up and saw the faint glow of fires between the trees. Pozhar backed, nostrils flared uneasily. “But you shouldn’t go any nearer,” the mushroom-spirit added.

“Why not?” asked Vasya, puzzled.

“They are encamped near a river,” said Ded Grib matter-of-factly. “And the vodianoy there means to kill them.”

“Kill them?” said Vasya. “How? Why?”

“With water and fear I suppose,” said Ded Grib. “How else would he kill anyone? As to why, well, the Bear probably told him to. Most water-creatures are his, and he is putting forth his power all through Rus’ now. Let’s get away.”

Vasya hesitated. It was not pity for men drowned asleep that decided her; it was wondering why the Bear would want to kill these men in particular. You travel by midnight through affinity. What affinity would have drawn her here? Now? She peered again through the trees. Many fires; the camp was not a small one.

Then Vasya heard a faint, familiar rumbling, as though horses were coming near at a gallop over stones. But it was not horses.

The sound decided her. She thrust her basket at Ded Grib. “Stay here, both of you,” she said to the mare and to the mushroom-spirit. Barefoot, she dashed toward the glow of the low-burning fires, raising her voice to shout through the dark, “You! The camp! Wake up! Wake up! The river is rising!”

She half-ran, half-slid down the steep sides of the gully where they had made camp. The horses were picketed and jerking at their lines; they knew what was happening. Vasya cut their pickets and the beasts bolted for higher ground.

A heavy hand fell on Vasya’s shoulder. “Horse-thieving, boy?” asked a man, his hand pinching, smelling of garlic and rotten teeth.

Vasya wrenched away. She might otherwise have been afraid of him, for the touch and the reek brought back raw memories. But now she had more pressing concerns. “Do I look like I am hiding a horse in my hat? I have saved your horses for you. Listen. The river is rising.”

The man turned his head to look, just as a wall of black water exploded from downstream, came racing past them. The hollow where the band had made camp was instantly awash. Men, half-asleep, were running everywhere in the darkness, shouting. The water was rising unnaturally fast, throwing men off their feet and frightening them by its very strangeness.

One man began calling orders. “First the silver!” he shouted. “Then the horses!”

But the water was rising faster and faster. A man was pulled down by the flood, then another. Many of the men made it to higher ground. But the one who’d been calling orders was still floundering in the wash.

As Vasya watched, the vodianoy, the river-king, shot out of the water directly in front of him.

The man couldn’t see the chyert. But he jerked back anyway, on some instinct older than sight, and nearly went under.

“Prince?” said the vodianoy. His laugh was the grinding of rocks in the flood. “I was king here when princes groveled in the mud of my river and threw in their daughters to ensure my favor. Now—drown.”

The black water surged and knocked the man off his feet.

Vasya had taken refuge in a tree, while the current raged below. Now she dove from a limb straight into the torrent. The water snatched at her with astonishing force, and she could feel the vodianoy’s rage in it.

In her veins was the same strength that had broken the bars of her cage in Moscow. She wasn’t sleepy now.

The leader of the camp came up for air, gasping. Men were shouting to him from above, cursing each other. Vasya swam three strokes, cutting across the current. The leader was a big man, but fortunately he could swim a little. She seized him under the arms, and on a last burst of strength, heaved him to shore. A stab of pain ran down her half-knitted ribs.

The man just lay in the mud, gaping at her. She could hear men converging on all sides, but she didn’t speak, just whirled and dove back into the water, leaving the man clinging to the shore and staring after her.

SHE LET HERSELF BE SWEPT downstream until she caught a rock in the middle and clung there, gasping.

“River-king!” she shouted. “I want to talk to you.”

The water rushed along, with broken trees borne on its flood. She had to clamber higher on her rock to avoid a huge limb spinning toward her in the current.

The vodianoy popped out of the water scarce an arm’s length away. His grinning mouth was filled with needle-sharp teeth, his skin thick with slime and river muck. Water ran like diamonds down his warty skin and foamed and boiled around him. He opened his spine-toothed mouth and roared at her.

This is when I’m supposed to scream, Vasya thought. Then he laughs—and I cry out in despair, believing in my own death, and that is when he sinks his teeth into me and drags me down.

That was how chyerti killed people, by making them believe they were doomed.

Vasya spoke as composedly as one could, clinging to a rock in a current. “Forgive my intrusion.”

It is not easy to startle the river-king. His gaping mouth closed abruptly. “Who are you?”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Vasya. “Why were you trying to kill these men?” The water surged, struck her in the face. She spat it out, wiped water from her eyes, hitched herself a little higher.

She only knew where the river-king was by his black bulk against the sky, the shine of his eyes. “I wasn’t,” he said.

Her arms had begun to shake. She cursed her lingering weakness. “No?” she demanded, breathless.

“The silver,” he said. “I was to drown the silver.”

“Silver? Why?”

“The Bear desired it of me.”

“What do chyerti care for men’s silver?” she panted.

“I know not. I only know the Bear bid me to do it.”

“Very well,” said Vasya. “It is done now. Will you quiet the water, river-king?”

The vodianoy rumbled with displeasure. “Why? Those men with their dust and their horses and their filth fouled my river. They left no offering, no acknowledgment. Better they drown with their silver.”

“No,” she said. “Men and chyerti can share this world.”

“We cannot!” snapped the vodianoy. “They will not stop—the bells will not stop, the cutting of trees and the fouling of water, and the forgetting will not stop until there are none of us left.”

“We can,” she insisted. “I see you. You will not fade.”

“You are not enough.” The black lips had pulled back again, revealing the needles of his teeth. “And the Bear is stronger than you.”

“The Bear is not here,” said Vasya. “I am here and you will not kill these men. Quiet the water!”

The vodianoy only hissed, mouth opening wide. Vasya did not recoil, but reached out a scraped hand and touched his warty face. She said, “Listen to me and be at peace, river-king.” The vodianoy felt like living water, cold and silken and alive under her hand. She committed the texture of his skin to memory.

He shrank away. His mouth closed. “Must it be so?” he asked her, in a different voice. He sounded suddenly afraid. But beneath it was a thread of agonized hope. Vasya thought of what her great-grandmother had said, that the chyerti didn’t really wish to fight, at all.

Vasya took a deep breath. “Yes,” she said. “It must.”

“Then I will remember,” said the vodianoy. The raging force of the current slacked. Vasya drew a relieved breath. “You must also remember—sea-maiden.” The vodianoy sank gurgling beneath the water and vanished before she could ask him why he called her that.

The level of the river began to drop. By the time Vasya dragged herself ashore, it was only muddy creek again.

The man that she had rescued was standing on the bank when she came wading out. She was bedraggled, panting and shivering, but at least she wasn’t sleepy. She jerked to a halt when she saw him waiting, quelled a startled impulse to flee.

He raised his hands. “Do not be afraid, boy. You saved my life.”

Vasya didn’t speak. She didn’t trust him. But the water was at her back, the night, the forest, the Midnight-road. All promised refuge. She was afraid of the man with an instinctive fear, but it wasn’t like Moscow, where walls hemmed her in. So she stood fast and said, “If you are grateful, Gospodin, then tell me your name and your purpose here.”

He stared. Vasya realized belatedly that he had thought she was a peasant boy but that she didn’t sound like one.

“I suppose it is of no matter now,” he said after a grim silence. “I am called Vladimir Andreevich, the Prince of Serpukhov. I, with my men, was to take a tribute of silver to Sarai, to the puppet-khan and his temnik Mamai. For Mamai has mustered an army and will not disperse it until he has his tax. But now the silver is gone.”

Her brother-in-law, sent by Dmitrii on an errand meant to avert a war, now thwarted. Vasya understood why affinity had brought her here; knew also why the Bear had wanted to drown the silver. Why bring down Dmitrii himself when he could get Tatars to do it?

Perhaps the silver could be found. But not in darkness. Could she force the vodianoy to retrieve it? She hesitated between the forest and the water.

Vladimir was considering her, narrow-eyed. “Who are you?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” she assured him with perfect honesty.

His sharp gray eyes took in the fading cuts and bruises on her face. “I mean you no harm,” he said. “Wherever you ran away from—I won’t send you back. Would you like something to eat?”

The unexpected kindness almost drove tears from her; she realized how bewildered and frightened she had been, and still was. But she had no time for tears.

“No,” she said. “I thank you.” She had decided. To end the Bear’s mischief once and for all, she needed the winter-king.

So she fled, a wraith in the darkness.

15. Farther, Stranger Countries

THE MOON WAS HANGING NEAR the horizon and it was still endless, sapping night. Vasya was barefoot, and now she was cold.

Ded Grib popped out from behind a stump, clutching Vasya’s basket. He looked outraged. “You are wet,” he said. “And you are lucky I kept you in sight. What if you and I and the horse had all gone into different midnights? You would have been lost.”

Vasya’s teeth were chattering. “I didn’t think of it,” she said to her little ally. “You are so wise.”

Ded Grib looked a little mollified.

“I am going to have to find somewhere to dry my clothes,” Vasya managed. “Where is Pozhar?”

“There,” said Ded Grib, pointing to a glimmer in the darkness. “I kept you both in sight.”

Vasya, in gratitude, bowed deeply and sincerely before him, and then she said, “Can you find a place where no one will see if I build a fire?”

Grumbling, he did. She laid a fire and then hesitated, looking at the wood, feeling the rage and terror—and flame—in her soul just waiting to be let out.

The sticks went up in a shower of sparks, almost before she thought of it, and reality at once yawed at her feet. The infinite darkness of this place already weighed on her; now it felt a hundred times worse.

Her shaking hand crept to the lump in her clothes, where the domovaya had sewn the wooden nightingale. Her hand closed around it. It felt like an anchor.

A light gleamed through the thick trees. Pozhar came out of the dark, mincing in the bracken. She shook her mane. Stop making magic, foolish girl. You will be as mad as the old woman. It is easier than you’d think, to lose yourself in Midnight. Her ears flicked. If you go mad, I am leaving you here.

“Please don’t. I will try not to go mad,” Vasya said hoarsely, and the mare snorted. Then she went to graze. Vasya stripped and began the tedious process of drying her clothes.

How she wanted to sleep now, and wake up in light. But she couldn’t. So, she stood and paced naked, pinching her arms, going away from the fire so that the chill drove her to alertness.

She was standing, wondering if her clothes were dry enough to keep her from freezing, when she heard a squeal from Pozhar. She turned to see Midnight’s black horse, almost indistinguishable from the night, step into the firelight.

“Have you brought your rider here to offer more advice?” Vasya asked the horse, not very kindly.

Don’t be silly, said Pozhar to Vasya. I called him. Voron. She gave the black horse a wicked look, and the stallion licked his lips submissively. The Swan is farther off than I thought, and Voron knows better than I how to get to her—he is more used to the ways of this place. I am getting tired of wandering about, especially when you make it hard for me to keep you in sight. At this speed, we aren’t going to make it before you have to sleep. She fixed Vasya with both ears. Twice you have saved me: in Moscow and by the water. Now I will have saved you twice too, and there will be no more debt between us.

“None,” said Vasya with a surge of gratitude, and bowed.

The midnight-demon stalked into the firelight behind her horse, looking sour. Vasya knew that look. She had worn it herself, when Solovey badgered her into something. She almost laughed.

“Pozhar,” said Midnight. “I have business far from here, and I cannot be—”

“Delayed because your horse is ignoring you?” interrupted Vasya.

Midnight gave her a venomous look.

“Well, then help me now,” said Vasya. “And you can go about your business the sooner.” The black horse twitched his heavy ears. Pozhar looked impatient. Come on, she said. It was amusing at first, but I am tired of this darkness.

A little reluctant humor came into Midnight’s face. “What do you hope to do, Vasilisa Petrovna? He is trapped beyond recall, trapped in memory, in place, and in time: all three.”

Vasya was frankly incredulous. “Am I so vain as to think that the winter-king would let himself be imprisoned for eternity for my sake? He is not a half-witted fairy-tale prince, and heaven knows I am not Yelena the Beautiful. So he must have had a reason, known there was a way out. Which means I can free him.”

Midnight put her head to one side. “I thought you besotted, and that was why you were risking the depths of my realm for his sake. But it’s not that, is it?”

“No,” said Vasya.

Now the midnight-demon looked resigned. “Better put your boots on.” She eyed Vasya’s half-dry clothes critically. “You are going to be cold.”

IT DID GROW COLD. The first Vasya felt of it was frost-crystals breaking under her boots, as she stepped between midnights. The green smell of summer took on a wilder, earthy note; the stars grew sharp as sword-points, where they were not caught fast in racing clouds. The soft rustling of summer leaves became a dry rattle, and then nothing: only bare trees against the sky. And then between one midnight and another, Vasya’s feet broke through a crust of wet snow. Ded Grib halted abruptly. “I cannot go on; I will wither.” He eyed the white stuff with terror.

Vasya knelt before the little mushroom-spirit. “Can you go back to the lake alone? I have to go on.”

He looked miserable. His sickly green glow wavered. “I can always go back to the lake. But I promised.”

“You kept your promise. You found me food, you found me after the flood.” She touched his head, gave him another piece of bread from her basket. She said, on sudden inspiration, “Perhaps you could talk to the other chyerti for me. Tell them that I—that I—”

Ded Grib brightened. “I know what I will tell them,” he said.

That was somewhat worrying. She opened her mouth, thought better of it. “All right,” she said. “But—”

“Are you sure you won’t go back to the lake?” asked Ded Grib. He gave the snow a look of loathing. “It is dark and cold and the ground is hard.”

“I cannot. Not yet,” said Vasya. “But one day. When this is over. Perhaps you can show me where the lisichki grow.”

“Very well,” said Ded Grib sadly. “Mind you tell anyone who asks that I was first.” He disappeared, not without a few backward glances.

Vasya straightened, and peered ahead. Winter midnights spread out before them: cold copses, ice-choked streams, and perhaps dangers she couldn’t see, hidden in the darkness. A chill wind raced down over them, so that Pozhar, in her summer coat, switched her tail and flattened her ears.

“Are we deep in your country now?” Vasya asked Polunochnitsa.

“Yes,” she said. “These are the winter midnights, and we started in summer.”

“The domovaya said I couldn’t get back,” said Vasya. “If the season turned.”

“In the lands by the lake,” returned Polunochnitsa. “But this is Midnight. You can go anywhere you wish, in Midnight. Any place, any season. Except that, so far from where you began, you must not fall asleep.”

“Let’s go on then,” said Vasya, with a glance at the frozen sky.

They walked on in silence. Occasionally there would be a chink, as Pozhar’s hoof struck a rock beneath the snow. But that was all. They passed like ghosts over the silent earth.

One instant, they would be walking through cloud-torn darkness, but the next moment, the moon would beam down, almost too bright for Vasya’s night-adjusted eyes. Then a great gust of wind would tear at her hair. It was getting even colder as they walked, the land wilder. Snow stung her face.

Once Polunochnitsa said, abruptly, “If you had tried to use your own bond to the winter-king you would have died quickly, lost. You were right; it is too capricious, mortal to immortal, and there are too many half-truths between you. But I never—the Bear never—thought of the horses.”

Vasya said, “There is no bond at all now, between me and the winter-king. The necklace was destroyed.”

“None at all?” Midnight looked amused.

“Misplaced longing was all there ever was,” Vasya insisted. “I do not love him.”

To that Midnight made no answer.

Vasya wished they could linger, for she began to get glimpses of things far off; of cities in festival, on high hilltops, where the shrieks of revelers by torchlight came clearly to her ears.

“There are farther, stranger countries,” said Midnight. “Places you would have to journey long in the dark to get to. Places that you might never be able to get to, for your soul could not comprehend them. Places that are not a part of your lifetime of midnights; they are from when your earliest ancestor was born, or when your furthest grandchildren will die. Even I cannot get to all of them. By that I know that one day I will cease to exist, and not every midnight in the life of the world will know my hand.”

Vasya felt a little thrill, deep inside her. “I would like to see the far reaches of your country,” she said. “To feast in strange cities, break midnight bread in a bathhouse before a wedding, or see the moon on the sea.”

Midnight glanced sideways at her. “You are a strange girl, to want that danger. And you have much to do before you can think of journeying, in Midnight or anywhere.”

“And yet, I will think of the future,” Vasya retorted. “To remind me that the present is not forever. One day I may see my brother Alyosha again, and my sister Irina. I might have a home of my own, a place and a purpose, a victory. What is the present without the future?”

“I do not know,” said Midnight. “Immortals have no future: only now. It is our blessing and great curse.”

It was growing steadily colder. Vasya began to shiver. Big, frosty stars showed overhead; the sky was clear through the leafless trees. Now her feet broke through deep snow with every step. Vasya began to stumble, dazed with tiredness. Only fear kept her awake.

Finally, Voron and Pozhar stopped. A slim creek, blue with ice, lay before them. Beyond that stood a small, palisaded village. It was a perfectly clear winter night. The stars lay overhead thickly as water slopped from a careless bucket.

The houses had holes for the smoke, not chimneys. The places under the eaves were carved but not painted, and the palisade was low and simple; designed to keep cows and children in, not marauders out. Strangest of all: there was no church. Vasya, in all her life, had never seen a community without a church; it was like seeing a person with no head. “Where are we?” she asked.

“The place you sought.”

16. The Chains of the Winter-King

“MOROZKO IS HERE?” VASYA ASKED. “This is a prison for a frost-demon?”

“Yes,” said Midnight.

Vasya eyed the village. What here could keep the winter-king imprisoned? “The white mare—the swan—is she close?” she asked Pozhar.

The mare lifted her golden head. Yes, she said. But she is afraid. She has been waiting for him a long time in the dark. I am going to find her. She needs me.

“Very well,” said Vasya. She laid a hand on Pozhar’s neck. The mare didn’t even bite. “Thank you. When you see the white mare, tell her I am going to try and save him.”

Pozhar stamped. I will tell her. She wheeled and galloped away, skimming the snow and melting it, the cut on her leg almost mended already.

“Thank you,” said Vasya to Polunochnitsa.

“You are going to your death, Vasilisa Petrovna,” said Midnight. But there was doubt now in her voice. Her black stallion arched his neck and blew softly; she scratched his withers, frowning.

“Even then,” said Vasya. “Thank you.” She began to make her painstaking way toward the village. She could feel Midnight watching her go. Just before she was out of earshot, Midnight called, as though she could not help it, “Go to the great house. But tell no one who you are.”

Vasya glanced back, nodded, and walked on.

She would have expected Morozko’s prison to look something like the Bear’s clearing. Or perhaps a locked and guarded tower and he confined, like a princess, at the top of it. At least, she would have expected it to be a summer place: one where he was faint, powerless. But this was just a village. In winter. Gardens slept under snow; beasts drowsed in their warm stables. A single house in the very center streamed noise and light. Smoke poured from a hole in the roof. She could smell meat roasting.

How could Morozko be here?

Vasya climbed the palisade and crept toward the great house.

She was quite near when the fresh-fallen snow of its dooryard quivered and a chyert emerged. Vasya halted abruptly. It was the dvorovoi, the dooryard-guardian, and he was not tiny, like all the other dvoroviye she had ever known. He was as tall as she, his eyes fierce.

Vasya bowed, with wary respect.

“Stranger, what are you doing here?” he growled.

Her mouth and throat were dry, but she managed, “Grandfather, I am here for the feasting.” Not quite a lie. She was hungry; Ded Grib’s camp-rations seemed an age ago.

Silence. Then the dvorovoi said, “You have come a long way, only for the feasting.”

“I am also here for the winter-king,” she admitted, low. It was difficult to deceive a house-spirit, and unwise to try.

The dvorovoi’s eyes measured her. She held her breath. “Go through the door then,” he said simply, and vanished once more into the snow.

Could it be so simple? Impossible. But Vasya walked toward the door. Once she had loved feasts. Now all she heard was too much noise, all she smelled was fire. With an odd detachment, she looked down at her hand, realized that it was shaking.

Gathering her courage, she went up the stairs, between bars of lamplight. A dog began to bark. Then another, a third, a whole chorus. Next moment, the door opened, creaking in the cold.

But it was not a man who came out, or, what Vasya had feared, several men, with blades. It was a woman, alone. She was accompanied by a torrent of warm, smoky air, rich with the smell of cooking.

Vasya stood still, her whole being bent on not fleeing into the shadows.

The woman’s hair was the color of good bronze. Her eyes were like amber beads; she was almost as tall as Vasya. The grivna on her throat was gold; gold there was too on her wrists and ears, set on her belt, plaited in her hair.

Vasya knew how she must look to this woman: wild-eyed after the long darkness, lips trembling with cold and terror, clothes crackling with frost. She tried to sound eminently sane when she said, “God be with you,” but her voice was hoarse and faint.

“The domovoi said we had a visitor,” the woman said. “Who are you, stranger?”

The domovoi? Can she hear—? “I am a traveler,” Vasya said. “I came to ask supper and a place for the night.”

“What is a maiden doing, traveling alone at Midwinter? And dressed so?”

So much for her boy’s clothes. Vasya said carefully, “The world is not kind to a maiden alone. Safer to dress as a boy.”

The frown between the woman’s eyes deepened. “You have no sling, no pack, no beast. You are not dressed to spend even one night out of doors. Where have you come from, girl?”

“From the forest,” Vasya improvised. “I fell into the river and lost all I had.”

It was almost the truth. The woman’s brows drew together. “Then why—” She paused. “Can you see?” she asked in a different voice. She looked suddenly half-afraid, half-eager.

Vasya knew what she meant. Tell no one who you are. “No,” she said at once.

The eager light faded from the woman’s eyes. She sighed. “Well, it was too much to hope for. Come, there are lords visiting from all about, and their servants; you will not be noticed. You may eat in the hall, and have a warm place to sleep.”

“Thank you,” said Vasya.

The tawny woman opened the door. “I am Yelena Tomislavna,” she said. “The lord is my brother. Come.”

Vasya, heart beating very fast, followed her in. She could feel the dvorovoi at her back. Watching.

YELENA CAUGHT THE SHOULDER of a servant. A few words passed between them. All Vasya heard was “get back to our guest” from Yelena. A strange expression of sympathy crossed the face of the old servant.

Then the servant bustled Vasya into a cellar full of chests, bundles, and barrels. Muttering to herself, she began to rummage. “No harm will come to you here, poor maiden,” she said. “Take off those clothes; I will find you something proper.”

Vasya debated arguing, realized that it might get her thrown out. “As you say, babushka,” she said and began to strip. “But I would like to keep my old clothes.”

“Well, of course,” said the old servant kindly. “Never fling away wantonly.” Eyeing Vasya’s bruises, she clucked and said, “Husband or father’s handiwork, I care not. Bold girl, to dress as a boy and run away.” She turned Vasya’s cut face to the light, frowned dubiously. “Perhaps, if you stay here and work hard, the lord will give you a little dowry, and you may find a new husband.”

Vasya wasn’t sure whether to laugh or be vexed. The servant thrust a coarse linen shift over Vasya’s head. Over that went a length of cloth, hanging loose front and back, then belted. Bast shoes for her feet. The servant patted Vasya’s cropped black head and produced a kerchief. “What were you thinking, child, to cut your hair?”

“I was traveling as a boy,” Vasya reminded her. “Safer.” She slipped the wooden nightingale into the sleeve of her shift. The clothes smelled of onion and their previous owner, but they were warm.

“Come into the hall,” the servant said, after a pitying silence. “I will find you some supper.”

THE SMELL OF THE FEAST hit her first: of sweat and honey-wine and fat meat roasted in a great pit of coals at the center of a long hall. The room was packed with people, richly dressed; their ornaments gleamed copper and gold in the smoke-haze. The heat went up, making the air dance, to a hole in the center of the roof. A single star gleamed in the blackness, swallowed by the rising smoke. Servants bore in baskets of fresh bread, dusted with snow. Vasya, trying to peer in every direction at once, nearly tripped over a bitch-hound that had retired, growling, to a corner with her litter and a bone.

The serving-woman pushed Vasya down onto a bench. “Stay here,” she said, intercepting a loaf and a cup. “Sup at your leisure, and see what you can of the great folk. There will be feasting until dawn.” She seemed to mark the girl’s nerves, and added kindly, “No harm will come to you. You’ll be put to work soon enough.” With that she was gone. Vasya was left alone with her meal and a head full of questions.

“It is the lord’s sister herself he wants,” said one man to another, hurrying past, stepping on one of the bitch-hound’s nursing puppies.

“Nonsense,” said his fellow, with a heavy, measured sort of voice. “She is to marry; he will not give her up even to the winter-king.”

“He will not have a choice,” said the first voice, significantly.

Vasya thought, Morozko is here then. Frowning, she tucked the bread into her sleeve and got to her feet. The food made a small, comforting weight in her stomach. Wine heated her limbs and loosened them.

No one marked her rising; no one even glanced her way. Why should they?

Just then, the crowd parted, and gave her a look at the folk around the fire-pit.

Morozko was there.

Her breath stilled in her throat.

She thought, That is no prisoner.

He sat in the best place, near the fire. The flames gilded his face, cast dazzles of gold on the curling darkness of his hair. He was dressed like a prince: jacket and shirt both stiff with embroidery; fur about cuffs and collar.

Their eyes met.

But his face did not change; he showed no sign of recognition. He turned his head away to speak to someone sitting beside him. Then the gap in the crowd closed quick as it had opened. Vasya was left shaken, craning her head in vain.

What keeps him here, if not force?

Had he truly not known her?

The bitch on the floor growled. Vasya, whom the crowd was pushing nearer and nearer the wall, found herself trying not to step on the creature. “Could you not nurse in a quieter spot?” she asked the dog, and then a man stumbled into her, drunk.

Vasya lurched into the wall, sending the bitch up snapping. The man pinned her against the smoke-darkened wood. Clumsy with drink, he ran a hand down Vasya’s body. “Well, you’ve eyes like green pools at twilight,” he said, slurring. “But doesn’t your mistress feed you at all?”

He poked a clumsy forefinger against the side of her breast, as though bent on finding out for himself. His open mouth descended on hers.

Vasya felt her heartbeat quick and furious against the man’s chest. Without a word, she threw all her weight at him, heedless of the strain on her still-sore ribs, and slipped out from between man and wall.

He nearly went over. She tried to disappear into the crowd, but the man recovered, seized her arm and wrenched her back around. A look of injured pride had replaced his smile. All about them, heads turned. “Treat me like that?” he said. “On Midwinter night, too! What man would want you, frog-mouthed little weasel?” He looked crafty. “Get you gone. They will be wanting mead there at the high table.”

Vasya didn’t speak but reached for the memory of fire. The flames in the fire-pit blazed up, crackling. Those nearest drew back from the heat; the whole crowd heaved. Thrown off balance, the man’s grip loosened. Vasya pulled away from him, melted into the crowd. The heat and the reek of tight-packed people sickened her; blindly she made for the door and stumbled out into the night.

For long moments, she stood in the snow, heaving for breath. The night was pure and cold; eventually she calmed.

She didn’t want to go back in.

But Morozko was there, somehow imprisoned. She must get closer; she must discover the nature of his chain.

Then she thought, perhaps the man was right. What better way to go near the winter-king unremarked than as a servant bearing wine?

She took one last breath of the icy night. The scent of winter seemed to linger about her, like a promise.

She plunged back into the maelstrom inside. She was dressed as a servant; it was not difficult to acquire a wineskin. Carrying it carefully, feeling the strain of the weight in her battered body, Vasya slipped through the masses of people in the hall and came to the central fire-pit.

The winter-king sat nearest the flames.

The breath stilled in Vasya’s throat.

Morozko’s head was bare; the fire gilded the blackness of his hair. His eyes were a depthless and beautiful blue. But when their eyes met, there was still no recognition in his.

His eyes were—young?

Young?

Vasya had last seen him, frail as a snowflake, his gaze impossibly old, in the inferno of burning Moscow. Call the snow, she had begged him. Call the snow. He had, and then faded away with the dawn.

His last words, a reluctant confession. As I could, I loved you. She would never forget how he’d looked then. His expression, the impress of his hands, were seared into her memory.

But not in his memory. The years had disappeared from his gaze. She did not know how great the weight of them had been, until she could see them gone.

His idle glance found Vasya’s, strayed away, lit on the woman beside him. Yelena wore an expression caught between fear and—something else. She was beautiful. The gold on her wrists and throat gleamed dully in the firelight. As Vasya watched, Morozko bent his wild, dark head to murmur into Yelena’s ear, and she leaned nearer to hear him.

What could imprison a frost-demon? Vasya thought, suddenly angry. Love? Lust? Is that why he was here, when all Rus’ was in peril? A woman with golden hair? He was so obviously here because he wished to be.

And yet, Rus’ was in peril because Morozko had yielded up his freedom to save her from the fire. Why did he do that? Why? And how can he have forgotten?

Then she thought, If I wanted to imprison someone until the end of days, would it not be best to use a prison that he has no desire to escape? Here in this place, this midnight, humankind can see him; they fear him and they love him in equal measure. What more can he want? What more has he ever wanted in all the years of his life?

All these thoughts passed swiftly through her brain, and then Vasya collected herself and approached the place where the winter-king sat beside the lord’s sister. She held the wineskin before her like a shield.

The frost-demon bent again to the woman, breathing more words into her ear.

A sudden movement drew Vasya’s eye. Another man was watching the pair from the other side of the fire-pit. His embroidery and his ornaments indicated rank; his eyes were great and dark with pain. The sudden movement had been the involuntary dart of his hand to his sword-hilt. As Vasya watched, he let it go again, finger by finger.

Vasya did not know what to make of it.

Her feet carried her nearer the winter-king and the tawny woman beside him. She supposed that she was meant to drop her eyes, fill the cups, and scurry away. But instead she walked forward without affectation, her eyes on the eyes of the frost-demon.

He glanced up, and then, looking amused, watched her come forward.

At the last second, Vasya lowered her gaze and tipped her skin to fill the cups.

A thin, cold, familiar hand closed on her wrist. Vasya jerked back, splashing mead over them all.

Yelena managed to turn, keeping the wine from her gown. Then she recognized Vasya. “Go back,” she said to Vasya. “It is not your task to serve us, girl.” It seemed to Vasya that she was conveying a warning behind the words: Morozko, proud, young, death in his long hands, was dangerous.

He had not tried to retain her wrist when she jerked away from him. She was sure now that he did not know her. Whatever bond they’d shared—hunger, reluctant passion—that was gone.

“Forgive me,” Vasya said to the woman. “I only wished to repay your hospitality.”

Her eyes did not leave the eyes of the frost-demon. His glance, without hurry and without admiration, traced her cropped hair, her thin face, her body. She felt her color rise.

“I do not know you,” Morozko said.

“I know that you don’t,” said Vasya. Yelena stiffened, either at Vasya’s words or the tone of them. Morozko glanced at Vasya’s arm. She looked too, saw the skin marked white where he’d touched her. “Have you come to ask a favor of me?” he asked.

“Do you mean to grant me one?” asked Vasya.

Yelena said sharply, “Little fool, go away.”

Still no flicker of recognition in the frost-demon’s eyes, but he put out a single finger and touched the inner part of her wrist. Vasya felt her heartbeat quicken under his fingers, though only a little. The tread of her heart had looked upon life and death and things in between without yet faltering.

Morozko’s glance was quite cold. “Ask,” he said.

“Come away with me,” said Vasya. “My people have need of you.”

Horror, shock, on Yelena’s face.

He only laughed. “My people are here.”

“Yes,” she said. “And elsewhere too. You have forgotten.”

The cold fingers released her abruptly. “I forget nothing.”

Vasya said, “If I am lying, winter-king, then why would I risk my life to come before you in this hall at Midwinter?”

“Why are you not afraid of me?” He did not try to touch her again, but an icy wind stirred the hall, blueing the firelight and dampening the talk.

Yelena wrapped her arms about herself; a hush rippled through the raucous crowd. Vasya almost laughed. Was that supposed to make her afraid? Blue fire? After everything else?

“I am not afraid to die,” she said. She wasn’t. She had walked down that road. There was nothing in its cold stillness, the great sweep of stars, that could frighten her. Suffering was for the living. “Why should I fear you?”

His eyes narrowed. Vasya realized what a stillness had gathered about the fire, like the birds when a hawk comes soaring. “Why indeed?” Morozko said, holding her gaze. “Fools are often brave, for they do not understand. Leave us, girl, as your mistress bids. I will honor your courage, and forget your foolishness.” He turned away.

Yelena sagged; she looked caught between disappointment and relief.

Not knowing what to do, Vasya slipped back into the crowd, her hand sticky with mead, her wrist tingling where his hand had lingered. How could she make him remember?

“Did she displease you, lord?” Vasya heard Yelena ask, with curiosity and censure mingled.

“No,” said the frost-demon. She could feel him watching her go. “But I have never met anyone who was not afraid.”

The people drew away from Vasya when she came among them, as though she were stricken with some sickness. The old serving-woman hustled up behind her, seized her elbow, relieved her of the wineskin and growled in her ear, “Mad thing, what possessed you to approach the winter-king so? It is the lady who gives him mead. She takes his gaze upon herself; that is her task. Do you not know what happens to girls that catch his eye?”

Vasya, feeling suddenly cold, asked, “What happens?”

“He might have chosen you, you know,” muttered the woman just as Yelena rose to her feet. She was pale, but composed.

A deadly hush fell.

The blood began to beat in Vasya’s ears. In the fairy tale, a father took his daughters into the forest and left them there, first one, then the other: brides of the king of winter. The winter-king sent one home with her dowry.

He killed the other.

Once they strangled maidens in the snow, Morozko had said. To court my blessing.

Once? Or now? Which midnight is this? Vasya had heard the fairy tale, but she had never imagined it: a woman separated from her people, the frost-demon vanished into the forest.

Vanished, but not alone.

Once he’d been nourished on sacrifices.

Morozko and Medved were alike once, she thought, her lips cold. In the winter-king’s face was a clear and unthinking joy, the hawk’s hunger when he tears the rabbit to pieces. He got to his feet, took the woman’s hand.

All around, a new tension began to build.

Into the silence came a single sound; the ringing chime of a drawn sword. Heads turned; it was the man with dark eyes, who had not been able to keep his hand from his sword-hilt. His face was naked with agony.

“No,” he said, “take another; you shall not have her.” Many hands tried to hold him back, but he broke their grip, hurled himself forward, and swung his sword at the winter-king in a single, blind stroke.

Morozko held no weapon. But it didn’t matter. With his bare hand, he caught the blade as it fell. A wrench and a twist and the sword clattered to the floor, sheathed with frost. The tawny woman cried out; the dark-eyed man blanched.

Morozko’s hand streamed water like blood, but only for a moment. Frost crept over the cut place and sealed it.

The winter-king said softly, “You dare.”

Yelena fell to her knees. “Please,” she begged. “Do not hurt him.”

“Do not take her,” pleaded the man, facing the winter-king with empty hands. “We need her. I need her.”

Deathly silence.

Morozko, a line between his brows, might have hesitated.

In that moment, Vasya strode out into the open space herself. Her kerchief had fallen from her hair. All heads swiveled toward her.

She said, “Let them go, winter-king.”

She was remembering Moscow, walking through the slush toward her own death. It was bitter memory that put the rage in her voice when she said, “Is this your power? Taking women from their fathers’ halls at Midwinter? Killing their lovers too, when they try to prevent you?”

Her voice rang through the hall. Cries of anger rose. But none dared break into the ritual space nearest the fire-pit.

Yelena’s hand crept out and took hold of the man’s. Their knuckles were bone-white. “My lord,” she breathed. “That is only a foolish girl, a mad girl, who came a beggar out of the snow on Midwinter night. Never mind her; I am the sacrifice for my people.” But she did not let go of the man’s hand.

Morozko was watching Vasya. “This girl doesn’t think so,” he said.

“No, I do not,” snapped Vasya. “Choose me. Then take your sacrifice, if you can.”

Everyone in the hall recoiled. But Morozko laughed; free and wild and so like the Bear that she flinched despite herself. In his eyes was a blaze of heedless joy. “Come here then,” he said.

She did not move.

His eyes locked on hers. “Do you mean to fight, little maiden?”

“Yes,” said Vasya. “If you want my blood, take it.”

“Why should I, when there is another, fairer than you, waiting for me?”

Vasya smiled. Something of his unthinking joy—in challenge, in battle—echoed in her soul. “What pleasure in that, winter-king?”

“Very well,” he said, drew a knife and lunged. When he moved, the knife caught the light with a wavering spark, as though the blade were made of ice.

Vasya backed up, her eyes on the weapon. Morozko had given Vasya her first knife and taught her how to use it. The way he moved was imprinted on her consciousness, but that patient teaching was a far cry from—

She seized a knife from the belt of one of the watchers. The man gaped at her, wordless. The knife was short-hafted: plain mortal iron against the winter-king’s shimmering ice.

Vasya ducked Morozko’s strike, and came up on the opposite side of the fire, cursing her rough shoes. She kicked them off, the floor icy on her feet.

The crowd fell silent, watching.

“Why come to me?” he asked her. “Are you so eager to die?”

“Judge for yourself,” Vasya whispered.

“No—” he said. “Then why?”

“Because I thought I knew you.”

His face hardened. He moved again, faster. She parried, but badly; his blade broke her guard and scoured her shoulder. Her sleeve tore, and blood ran down her arm. She could not match him. But she didn’t need to. She only needed to make him remember. Somehow.

All about her, the crowd stood silent, watching like the wolf-ring when the hart is brought to bay.

The hot smell of her blood drove home to Vasya that this playacting was real to them. It had felt like a fairy tale to her, a game in a far-off country. Perhaps he would never remember her. Perhaps he would kill her. Midnight had known this would happen. Well, Vasya thought grimly, I am the sacrifice after all.

Not yet. Fury filled her; she drove suddenly beneath his guard, and dragged her knife in turn across his ribs. Cold water poured from the wound; a sound of hushed wonder came from the crowd.

He fell back. “Who are you?”

“I am a witch,” said Vasya. Blood was running down her hand now, spoiling her grip. “I have plucked snowdrops at Midwinter, died at my own choosing, and wept for a nightingale. Now I am beyond prophecy.” She caught his knife on the crosspiece of hers, hilt to hilt. “I have crossed three times nine realms to find you, my lord. And I find you at play, forgetful.”

She felt him hesitate. Something deeper than memory ran through his eyes. It might have been fear.

“Remember me,” said Vasya. “Once you bid me remember you.”

“I am the winter-king,” he said, and savagely, “What need have I for a girl’s remembrance?” He moved again, not playing now. He forced her blade down, broke her guard; his knife cut through the tendons of her wrist. “I do not know you.” He was immovable as winter, long before the thaw. In his words, she heard the echo of her failure.

And yet, his eyes were on her face. The blood ran off her fingertips. She forgot that the fire was not blue, and in an instant, it burst into brilliant gold. All the people cried out.

“You could remember me,” she said. “If you tried.” She touched him with her bloody hand.

He hesitated. She could have sworn he hesitated. But that was all. Her hand fell away. The Bear had won.

Tendrils of black mist crept around the edges of her vision. Her wrist was cut deeply, her hand useless, blood sliding down to bless the boards of this house.

“I came to find you,” she said. “But if you do not remember me, then I have failed.” There was a roaring in her ears. “If you ever see your horse again, tell her what happened to me.” She swayed and fell, on the edge of consciousness.

He caught her before she fell. In his cold grip, she remembered a road from which there was no turning back, a road in a forest full of stars. She could have sworn he cursed, under his breath. Then she could feel his arm beneath her knees, beneath her shoulders, and he picked her up.

Carrying her, he strode out of the great feasting-hall.

17. Memory

SHE WASN’T UNCONSCIOUS, EXACTLY, BUT the world had gone gray and still. She smelled smoke-tinged night and pine. When she tipped her head back she saw stars—a whole world of stars—as though she flew between heaven and earth, like that wandering devil. The frost-demon’s feet did not groan in the snow, his breath made no plume in the cold night. She heard the creak of cold-stiffened hinges. New smells—fresh birch and fire and rot. She was deposited unceremoniously onto something hard, and hissed when the shock of it jarred both her bones and her bruises. She lifted her arm, and saw her hand sticky with blood, the wrist cut deep.

Then she remembered. “Midnight,” she gasped. “Is it still midnight?”

“It is still midnight.” Candles flared suddenly: waxen lumps in niches in the wall. Her gaze flew up and found the frost-demon watching her.

The air was hot and close. To her surprise, she saw they were in a bathhouse. She tried to sit up, but she was bleeding too fast; it was a struggle to stay conscious. Gritting her teeth, she reached to tear a strip of her skirt, found that she could not with one hand useless.

Raising her head, she snapped at him, “Did you bring me here to watch me bleed to death? You are going to be disappointed. I am getting used to spiting people by surviving.”

“I can imagine,” he returned mildly. He was standing over her. His gaze, sardonic, still curious, took in her damaged face, dropped to her bloody wrist. She was holding it in an iron grip, trying to halt the flow of blood. Her blood was on his cheek, on his robe, his white hands. He wore his power like another skin.

“Why a bathhouse?” she asked him, trying to control her breathing. “Only witches or wicked sorcerers go to a bathhouse at midnight.”

“Appropriate then,” he said, his voice dry. “And you are still not afraid? With your blood pouring out of you? Where have you come from, wanderer?”

“My secrets are my own,” said Vasya, between gritted teeth.

“Yet you asked me for my help.”

“I did,” she said. “And you cut my wrist open.”

“You knew that was going to happen the instant you challenged me.”

“Very well,” she said. “Wondering who I am? Then help me. Otherwise you will never know.”

He did not answer, and when he moved she did not hear him, only felt a breath of cold air, strange in the heat of the room. He knelt before her. Their eyes met. She saw a flicker of unease run through him, as though some crack—some small crack—had opened in the wall of ice in his mind. Without a word, he cupped his hand; water pooled in the palm. He let the water fall into the wound on her wrist.

Where the water touched her raw flesh, pain blazed up. She bit the inside of her cheek to keep from screaming. The pain died as fast as it had risen, leaving her shaken, a little sick. The cut on her wrist was gone, and only a line of white remained, catching the light, as though ice were embedded in the scar.

“You are healed,” he said. “Now tell me—” He fell silent. Vasya followed his gaze. There was another scar on her palm, where he had wounded her—and healed her—once before.

“I did not lie,” said Vasya. “You know me.”

He did not speak.

“You once tore my hand with yours,” she went on. “Smeared your fingers in my blood. Later, you healed the mark you’d made. Can’t you remember? Remember the dark, the dead thing, the night I went into the forest for snowdrops?”

He got to his feet. “Tell me who you are.”

Vasya forced herself to stand as well, though she was still light-headed. He took a step back. “I am called Vasilisa Petrovna. Do you believe now that I know you? I think you do. You are afraid.”

“Of a wounded maiden?” He was scornful.

Sweat rolled down the hollow of her spine. A fire in the inner room snapped fingers of flame, and even there in the outer room, it was hot. “If you do not mean to kill me,” said Vasya, “and you do not remember me, then why are we here? What can the lord of winter have to say to a servant-girl?”

“You are no more a servant-girl than I am.”

“At least I am not a prisoner in this village,” said Vasya. She was near enough to catch his gaze and hold it.

“I am a king,” he said. “They make a feast in my honor; they give me sacrifices.”

“Prisons are not always made of walls and chains. Do you mean to spend eternity feasting, lord?”

His expression was cold. “A single night only.”

“Eternity,” she said. “You have forgotten that too.”

“If I cannot remember, then it is not eternity to me.” He was getting angry. “What matter? They are my people. You are only a madwoman, come to plague good people on Midwinter night.”

“At least I wasn’t planning to kill any of them!”

He did not reply, but cold air rushed through the bathhouse, setting the candle-flames to swaying. There was little space in that outer room; they were almost shouting in each other’s faces. The crack in his defenses widened. She could not reason away whatever magic kept him forgetful. But emotion dragged his memory a little nearer the surface. So did her touch. So did her blood. The feeling between them was still there. He did not need to remember; he felt it, just as she did.

And he had brought her here. Despite all he’d said, he had brought her here.

Her skin felt thin, as though a breath would bruise it. Vasya had always been reckless in battle; that same recklessness had her in its grip now. Deeper than memory, she thought. Mother of God, forgive me.

She reached out. Her hand with its white scars paused a breath from his cheek; his hand shot up, his fingers closed on her wrist. For a second they stood motionless. Then his grip slackened, and she touched his face, the fine, ageless bones. He didn’t move.

Low, Vasya said, “If I may defer my death an hour, winter-king, I am going to bathe. Since you have brought me to a bathhouse.”

He did not react, but his stillness was answer enough.

THE INNER ROOM WAS utterly dark, save for the glow of the hot stones in its oven. Vasya left him standing behind her. She was shaken by her own temerity. In a life littered with questionable decisions, she wondered if she was doing the most foolish thing she’d ever done.

Determinedly, she stripped off her clothes, laid them in a corner. She ladled water on the rocks and sat, arms wrapped about her knees. But the blissful languor of the heat could not overtake her. She did not know if she was more afraid that he would go away or that he wouldn’t.

He slipped through the door. She could barely see him in the dark; only knew his presence by the shift of the steam as he moved through it.

She lifted her chin, to hide sudden fright, and said, “Won’t you melt?”

He looked affronted. But then, unexpectedly, he laughed. “I will try not.” He sank with undiminished grace onto the bench opposite her, leaned on his knees, his hands laced together. Her glance lingered on his long fingers.

His skin was paler than hers; he made nothing of nakedness. His stare was cool and frank. “You had a long road,” he said. She could not see his eyes in the shadows, but felt his gaze like a hand. Whatever he had not seen of her skin before, he was seeing it now.

“And it is not over,” she said. With unsteady fingers, she touched the scab on her cheek, raised her eyes to his, wondered if she was hideous, wondered if it mattered. Still he didn’t move. The faint light lit him in pieces: a shoulder, a hollow beneath the ribs. She realized that she was considering him, throat to feet, and that he was watching her do so. She blushed.

“Will you not tell me your secret?” he asked.

“What secret?” retorted Vasya, laboring to keep her voice steady. His hands were motionless, but his glance still traced the lines of her body. “I already told you. My people have need of you.”

He shook his head, raised his eyes to hers. “No, there is something more. Something there in your face every time you look at me.”

As I could, I loved you.

“My secrets are mine, Gosudar,” said Vasya sharply. “We sacrifices may take things to the grave as well as anyone else.”

He lifted a brow. “I have never met a maiden who looked less like she meant to die.”

“I don’t,” said Vasya. Still short of breath, she added, “I did want a bath, though, and I am getting one; that is something.”

He laughed again, and their eyes caught.

Him too, Vasya thought. He is afraid too. For he knows no more than I where this will end.

Yet he brought me here, he stayed. He wounded me and healed me. He remembers, and he doesn’t.

Before she could lose her nerve, Vasya slipped off the bench and knelt between his knees. His skin had not warmed with the steam. Even in the smoke-smelling bathhouse, the scent of pine, of cold water hung about him. His face did not change, but his breathing quickened. Vasya realized she was trembling. Once again, she reached up, touched her palm to his face.

A second time, he caught her wrist. But this time, his mouth grazed the scar in the hollow of her hand.

They looked at each other.

Her stepmother had liked to frighten her and Irina with tales of wedding-night horrors; Dunya had assured her that it was not quite so.

It felt like the wildness would burn her up from the inside out.

He traced her lower lip with his thumb. She could not read his expression. “Please,” she said, or thought she said, just as he closed the distance between them and kissed her.

The fire was barely embers in the stove, but they didn’t need the light. His skin was cool under her hands; her sweat streaked them both. She was shivering all over; she didn’t know what to do with her hands. It was too much: skin and spirit, hunger and her desperate loneliness, and the rising tide of feeling between them.

Perhaps he felt the uncertainty beneath the desire, for he broke off, looking at her. The only sound was their breathing, his as harsh as hers.

“Afraid now?” he whispered. He had pulled her with him onto the wooden bench; she was sitting crosswise in his lap, one of his arms about her waist. His free hand drew lines of cool fire on her skin, from ear to shoulder, followed her collarbone, dipped between her breasts. She could not control her breathing.

“I’m supposed to be frightened,” Vasya snapped, sharper than was warranted because she was, in fact, frightened, and angry too because she could barely think, let alone speak, while his hand came up again, and this time slid down her spine, curved lightly around her ribs, found her breast and lingered there. “I am a maiden. And you—” She trailed off.

The light hand stilled. “Afraid I will hurt you?”

“Do you mean to?” she asked. They both heard the tremor in her voice. Naked in his arms, she was more vulnerable than she’d ever been.

But he was afraid too. She felt it in the restrained tension of his touch, could see it now in his black-shadowed eyes.

Again, they looked at each other.

Then he half-smiled, and Vasya realized suddenly what the other feeling was, beneath the fear and desire rising between them.

It was mad joy.

His hand shaped the curve of her waist. He drew her mouth down to his again. His answer was more breath than word, breathed into her ear.

“No, I will not hurt you,” he said.

“VASYA,” HE SAID INTO the darkness.

They had made it into the outer room, in the end. When he’d drawn her down to the floor, it was onto a mound of heaped blankets that smelled like the winter forest. They were beyond speech by then, but it didn’t matter. She didn’t need words to call him back to her. Only the slide of her fingers, the heat of her bruised skin. His hands remembered her, when his mind did not. It was in his touch, easing over her half-healed wounds; it was in his grip, and the look in his eyes, before the candles burned low.

Afterward, lying half-drowsing in the dark, she could still feel the pulse of his body in hers, and taste the pine on her lips.

Then she jerked upright. “Is it still—?”

“Midnight,” he said. He sounded weary. “Yes, it is midnight. I will not let you lose it.”

His voice had changed. He’d said her name.

She rose on one elbow, felt herself blushing. “You remembered.”

He said nothing.

“You set the Bear loose to save my life. Why?”

Still he said nothing.

“I came to find you,” she said. “I learned to do magic. I got the help of the firebird, you didn’t kill me—stop looking at me like that.”

“I did not mean—” he began, and just like that she was angry, to mask a gathering hurt.

He sat up, drew away from her, the line of his spine stiff in the near-dark.

“I wanted it,” she said to his back, trying not to think of every notion of decency she had ever been taught. Chastity, patience, lie with men only for the bearing of children, and above all do not enjoy it. “I thought—I thought you did too. And you—” She couldn’t say it; instead she said, “You remembered. A small enough price, for that.” It didn’t feel small.

He turned so she could see his face; he didn’t look as though he believed her. Vasya wished now she were not sitting naked, a handsbreadth away from him.

He said, “I thank you.”

Thank you? The words struck coldly, after the last hours’ heat. Maybe you wish you did not remember, she thought. Part of you was happy here, feared and beloved, in this prison. She didn’t say it.

“The Bear is free in Rus’,” said Vasya instead. “He has set the dead to walking. We must help my cousin, help my brother. I came to get your help.”

Still Morozko said nothing. He had not drawn further away from her, but his glance had turned inward, remote, unreadable.

She added with sudden anger, “You owe us your help; you are the reason that the Bear is free in the first place. You didn’t need to bargain with him. I walked out of the pyre myself.”

A little light came into his face. “I wondered if you would. But it was still worth it. When you drew me back to Moscow, I knew then.”

“Knew what?”

“That you could be a bridge between men and chyerti. Keep us from fading, keep men from forgetting. That we weren’t doomed after all, if you lived, if you came into your power. And I had no other way to save you. I—deemed it worth the risk, whatever came after.”

“You might have trusted me to save myself.”

“You meant to die. I saw it in you.”

She flinched. “Yes,” she said softly. “I suppose I did mean to die. Solovey had fallen; he died under my hands, and—” She broke off. “But my horse would have called me foolish to give up. So, I changed my mind.”

The wild simplicity of the night was fading into endless complications. She had never imagined that he’d set his realm and his freedom at hazard purely for love of her. Part of her had wondered anyway, but of course he was king of a hidden kingdom, and he could not make his decision so. It was the power in her blood he’d wanted.

She was tired and cold and she ached.

She felt more alone than before.

Then she was angry at her own self-pity. For cold there was a remedy, and damn this new awkwardness between them. She slid again beneath the heavy, heaped-up blankets, turned her back to him. He did not move. She balled her body up on itself, trying to get warm alone.

A hand, light as a snowflake, brushed her shoulder. Tears had gathered in her eyes; she tried to blink them away. It was too much: his presence, cold and quiet, the reasonable and practical explanations, to contrast with the overwhelming memory of passion.

“No,” he said. “Do not grieve tonight, Vasya.”

“You would never have done it,” she said, not looking at him. “This—” A vague gesture took in the bathhouse, them. “If you had been able to remember who I was. You would never have saved my life if I hadn’t been—if I hadn’t been—”

His hand left her shoulder. “I tried to let you go,” he said. “Again and again I tried. Because every time I touched you—even looked at you—it drew me nearer to mortality. I was afraid. And yet, I could not.” He broke off, continued. “Perhaps if you hadn’t been what you are, I would have found it in myself to let you die. But—I heard you scream. Through all the mists of my weakness, after the fire in Moscow, I heard you. I told myself I was being practical, I told myself you were our last hope. I told myself that. But I thought of you in the fire.”

Vasya turned to face him. He shut his lips tight, as though he’d said more than he wished.

“And now?” she asked.

“We are here,” he said simply.

“I am sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know how else to bring you back.”

“There was no other way. Why do you think my brother had such faith in his prison? He knew of no tie strong enough to draw me back to myself. Nor did I.”

Morozko didn’t sound happy about it. It occurred to Vasya that he might feel just as she did: raw. She put out a hand. He did not look at her, but his fingers closed about hers.

“I am still afraid,” he said. It was a truth, baldly offered. “I am glad you are alive. I am glad to see you again, against all hope. But I do not know what to do.”

“I am afraid too,” she said.

His fingertips found her wrist, where the blood surged against her skin. “Are you cold?”

She was. But…

“I think,” he said wryly, “all things considered, we should be able to share the same blankets a few hours more.”

“We must go,” said Vasya. “There is too much to do; there is not time.”

“An hour or three won’t make a great difference, in this country of Midnight,” said Morozko. “You are all worn to shadows, Vasya.”

“It will make a difference,” she said. “I can’t fall asleep, here.”

“You can now,” he said. “I will keep you in Midnight.”

To sleep—to really sleep…Mother of God, she was weary. She was already beneath the blankets; after a moment, he slid beneath them too. Her breath came short; she clenched her fists on an impulse to touch him.

They watched each other, warily. He moved first. His hand stole up to her face, traced the sharp line of her jaw, brushed the thick line of the scab from the stone. She shut her eyes.

“I can heal this for you,” he said.

She nodded once, vain enough to be glad that at least there would be only a white scar instead of a scarlet one. He cupped his hand, trickled water onto her cheek, while she set her teeth against the flare of agony.

“Tell me,” he said, after.

“It is a long story.”

“I assure you,” he said. “I will not grow old in the telling of it.”

She told him. She started with the moment he’d left her in the snowstorm in Moscow and finished with Pozhar, Vladimir, her journey into Midnight. She was wrung out at the end, but calmer too. As though she’d laid the skeins of her life out neatly, and there was less of a tangle in her soul.

When she fell silent, he sighed. “I am sorry,” he said. “For Solovey. I could only watch.”

“And send me your mad brother,” she pointed out. “And a token. I could have done without your brother, but the carving—comforted me.”

“Did you keep it?”

“Yes,” she said. “It brings him back when I—” She trailed off; it was too fresh, still.

He tucked a short curl behind her ear, but said nothing.

“Why are you afraid?” she asked him.

His hand dropped. She did not think he would answer. When he did, it was so low she barely caught the words. “Love is for those who know the griefs of time, for it goes hand in hand with loss. An eternity, so burdened, would be a torment. And yet—” He broke off, drew breath. “Yet what else to call it, this terror and this joy?”

It was harder this time, to move close to him. Before, it was—uncomplicated, reckless, joyful. But now emotion freighted the air between them.

His skin had warmed with hers, beneath the blankets; he might have been a man except for his eyes, ancient and troubled. It was her turn to push his hair back where it fell over his brow; it curled coarse and cold beneath her fingers. She touched the warm place behind his jaw, and the hollow of his throat, laid her spread fingers on his chest.

He covered her hand with his, traced her fingers, her arm, then her shoulder, slid his hand from spine to waist, as though he meant to learn her body by touch.

She made a sound in her throat. The coolness of his breathing touched her lips. She did not know if he had moved, or if she had, to bring them close together. And still his hand moved, gently, coaxing suppleness from her. She couldn’t breathe. Now that they were no longer talking, she could feel the tension gathering in him—shoulder to hand—where his fingers dug into her skin.

One thing to take the wild stranger to herself. Another to look into the face of an adversary-ally-friend and…

She wound her fingers in his hair. “Come here,” she said. “No—closer.”

He smiled then: the slow, unknowable smile of the winter-king. But there was a hint of laughter in it she’d never seen. “Be patient,” he murmured into her mouth.

But she could not, not an instant more; rather than answer, she caught him by the shoulders and rolled him over. She felt the strength in her body then, saw the shift and play of muscle in the faint candlelight: hers and his. She bent forward to breathe into his ear: “Never give me orders.”

“Command me, then,” he whispered back. The words went through her like wine.

Her body knew what to do then, even if her mind did not quite, and she took him into herself, snow and cold and power and years and that elusive fragility. He said her name once, and she barely heard, lost as she was. But after, when she lay pliant, curved into his body, she whispered, “You are not alone, anymore.”

“I know,” he whispered. “Neither are you.”

And then, finally, she slept.

18. On the Backs of Magic Horses

HE ROSE FROM THE TANGLED heap of snow-colored furs some unmarked hours later. She did not hear him go, but felt his absence. It was still midnight. She opened her eyes, shivering, and sat up. For an instant, she did not know where she was. Then she remembered and lurched to her feet, afraid. He was gone, he had vanished into the night, she had dreamed it all…

She seized hold of herself; would he really vanish without a word?

She didn’t know. The madness had gone from her; she was only cold now, teeth set against a rush of shame. The voices of her upbringing sounded loud in her ears, all of them accusing.

Teeth sunk into her lower lip, she went to retrieve her clothes. Damn this shame, and damn the darkness. She turned her head, and light flared all at once from the candle in the wall-niche. Lighting it shook her not at all, as though her mind had accepted at last a world where she could make things burn.

Groping, she found her shift, drew it over her head. She was standing in the doorway between rooms, undecided and chilly, when the outer door opened.

The candlelight highlighted the bones of him, and filled his face with shadows. He had the bundle of her boy’s clothes in his hands. She caught the sound of voices and crunching footsteps outside the bathhouse.

Fear filled her, unbidden. “What is happening outside?”

He looked rueful. “I think that between us we have sealed the murky reputation of bathhouses.”

Vasya said nothing. In her mind, she was hearing again the sound of the mob in Moscow.

She saw him understand. “You were alone then, Vasya,” he said. “Now you are not.” She had both hands on the inner doorframe, as if men were coming in to drag her out. “Even then, you still walked out of the fire.”

“It cost me,” she said, but the gnarled hand of fear loosened its grip on her throat.

“The village isn’t angry,” Morozko said. “They are delighted. There is power in this night.” She felt a blush creeping along her cheekbones. “Do you wish to stay? It is hard for me to linger, now.”

She paused. It must be like coming to a place that had been home, but wasn’t anymore. Like trying to fit back into a skin already shed.

“Do your lands border my great-grandmother’s?” Vasya asked him suddenly.

“They do,” said Morozko. “How do you think my table once had strawberries for you, and pears and snowdrops?”

“So you knew the story?” she pressed. “Of the witch and her twin girls? You knew Tamara was my grandmother?”

“I did,” he said. He looked wary now. “And before you ask, no, I never meant to tell you. Not until the night of the snowstorm in Moscow, and by then it was too late. The witch herself was either dead or lost in Midnight. No one knew what had become of the twins, and I could remember nothing of the sorcerer, who had made magic to set himself apart from death. All these things I learned later.”

“And you thought me only a child, a tool to your purposes.”

“Yes,” he said. Whatever he thought or felt or hoped was buried deep, and locked tight. I am not a child anymore, she might have said, but the truth of that was written in his eyes on her. “Never lie to me again,” she said instead.

“I will not.”

“Will the Bear know you are free?”

“No,” he said. “Unless Midnight tells him.”

“I don’t think she will meddle so,” said Vasya. “She watches.”

In his silence this time she could hear a thought unspoken.

“Tell me,” she said.

“You needn’t go back to Moscow,” he said. “You’ve seen enough horror, and caused enough pain. The Bear will do his best to see you slain now: the worst death he can devise, especially if he finds out I remembered. He knows I would grieve.”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “It is our fault he is free. He must be bound again.”

“With what?” Morozko demanded. The candle leaped up with a violet flame. His eyes were the color of the fire; his outlines seemed to fade, until he was wind and night made flesh. Then he shook off the mantle of power and said, “I am winter; do you think I will have any power in summertime Moscow?”

“You needn’t make it cold in here to score a point,” said Vasya, resentfully. “We have to do something.” She took her own clothes from his hands. “Thank you for these,” she added, and went to the inner room to dress. At the threshold, she called back, “Can you even go out into the summertime world, winter-king?”

His voice behind her was reluctant. “I don’t know. Perhaps. For a little time. If we are together. The necklace is destroyed but—”

“But we don’t need it anymore,” she finished, realizing. The tie between them now—layers of passion and anger, fear and fragile hope—was stronger than any magical jewel.

Dressed, she returned to the doorway. Morozko was standing where she’d left him. “We could perhaps get to Moscow, but to what end?” he said. “If the Bear finds out we are coming, he will delight in setting a trap, so that I must watch, helpless, while you are slain. Or perhaps one where you must watch while your family suffers.”

“We will just have to be clever,” said Vasya. “We got Muscovy into this; we are going to get her out.”

“We ought to return to my own lands, come to him in winter when I am stronger. Then we’d have a chance of victory.”

“He surely knows that,” Vasya returned. “Which means that whatever he is planning, he must do it this summer.”

“It might be your undoing.”

She shook her head. “It might. But I am not going to abandon my family. Will you come with me?”

“I have said you are not alone, Vasya, and I meant it,” he said. But he sounded unhappy.

She managed the ghost of a smile. “You are not alone either. By all means, let us continue repeating it until one of us believes it.” Briskly, she managed to say without tremor, “If I go out there, will the village try to kill me?”

“No,” said Morozko, and then he smiled. “But a legend might be born.”

She flushed. But when he extended a hand, she took it.

The village had indeed gathered outside the bathhouse. They drew back when the door opened. Their eyes roved from Vasya to Morozko, hand-fast, disheveled.

Yelena stood at the front of the crowd, shoulder to shoulder with the man who had tried to save her. She flinched when Morozko turned to her. It was to Yelena that the frost-demon spoke, although the whole village heard. “Forgive me,” he said.

She looked shocked. Then she gathered her dignity and bowed. “It was your right. But—” She looked more closely at his face. “You are not the same,” she whispered.

Just as Vasya had seen the years gone from his eyes, this woman could sense the weight of their return. “No,” said Morozko. “I have been saved from forgetfulness.” He glanced at Vasya and spoke so that the whole village heard. “I loved her, and a curse made me forget. But she came for me and broke the curse and now I must go. My blessing on you all, this winter.”

Whispers of wonder, even joy. Yelena smiled. “We are doubly blessed,” she said to Vasya. “Sister.” She had a gift in her hands: a magnificent long cloak, wolf without, rabbit within. She gave it to Vasya, embraced her. “Thank you,” she whispered. “May I have your blessing on my firstborn?”

“Health and long life,” said Vasya, a little awkwardly. “For your child, joy in love, and a brave death, a long time from now.”

Zimnyaya Koroleva, they said. The winter-queen. It frightened her. She tried to compose her features.

Morozko stood beside her, deceptively calm, but she could sense the feeling rushing between him and his people: a pull like a current. His eyes were a deep and astonishing blue. Perhaps he wished even now to go back, to take his place in the feasting, to feed forever on this worship.

But if he doubted his course, he did not let it show on his face.

Vasya was relieved when all the people turned at the sound of hoofbeats. Delight bloomed on a dozen faces. Two horses came flowing over the palisade, one white and one gold. They cut through the crowd, and trotted up to the two of them. Morozko, without a word, leaned his forehead against the neck of the white mare. The horse put her head around and lipped at his sleeve. Pain shot through Vasya, seeing it. “I forgot you too,” he said to the mare, low. “Forgive me.”

The white mare shoved him with her head, ears back. I don’t know why any of us waited for you. It was very dark.

Pozhar scraped a hoof in the snow in obvious agreement.

“You waited as well,” Vasya said to her, surprised.

Pozhar bit Vasya on the arm and stamped. I am not waiting again.

Vasya said, rubbing the new bruise, “I am glad to see you, lady.”

Morozko said, in some wonder, “She has never taken a rider willingly in all the years of her life.”

“She has not taken one now,” said Vasya hastily. “But she helped to guide me here. I am grateful.” She scratched Pozhar’s withers. Pozhar, despite herself, leaned into the scratches. You took too long, said the mare again, just to show she didn’t in any way enjoy being coddled, and stamped again.

Vasya’s new cloak lay heavy on her shoulders. “Farewell,” she said to the people. They were round-eyed with wonder. “They think they see a miracle,” Vasya said, low, to Morozko. “It doesn’t feel like one.”

“And yet,” he replied, “a girl alone rescued the winter-king from forgetfulness and stole him away with magic horses. That is miracle enough for one Midwinter.” Vasya found herself smiling as he vaulted to the white mare’s back.

Before he could offer—or not offer—to take her up before him, she said firmly, “I am going to walk. I came here on my own feet, after all.” Walking had been a slogging nightmare of deep snow without snowshoes, but she didn’t say that.

The pale eyes considered her. Vasya wished he wouldn’t. He so obviously saw past her pride—not wanting to be carried away across his saddlebow—to the deeper emotion. The shock of Solovey breaking, falling, was still too raw in memory. It felt wrong now to ride away in triumph.

“Very well,” he said, and surprised her by dismounting.

“You needn’t,” she said. The two horses’ bodies shielded them from the crowd. “You can’t mean to march out of the village like a cowherd? It is beneath your dignity.”

“I have seen uncounted dead,” he returned coolly. “Touched them, sent them on. But I have never done anything to remember them. I can walk now with you, because you cannot ride Solovey beside me. Because he was brave, and he is gone.”

She hadn’t wept for Solovey. Not properly. She had dreamed of him, waked screaming for him to run, felt his absence as a dull, poisonous ache. But she hadn’t wept, except for a few quelled tears after she nearly slew the mushroom-spirit. Now she felt the tears starting, stinging. Lightly, Morozko touched his finger to the first, as it ran down to her jaw. It froze at his touch, fell away.

Somehow the act of walking out of that midnight village, while the horses paced beside them, drove home Solovey’s loss in a way that none of the last days’ shocks had. When they had passed the palisade and gone back into the winter forest, Vasya buried her face in the white mare’s mane and she cried all the dammed-up tears that one night in Moscow had left inside her.

The mare stood patiently, blowing warm air onto her hands, and Morozko waited, silent, except that once, he laid cool fingers on the back of her neck.

When at last her tears quieted, she shook her head, wiped her running nose, and tried to think clearly. “We have to go back to Moscow.” Her voice was hoarse.

“As you say,” he said. He still didn’t look happy about it. But he didn’t object again.

If we are going all the way back to Moscow, the white mare put in unexpectedly, then Vasya must get on my back. I can carry both of you. It will be quicker.

Vasya had her lips open in a refusal, but then she noticed Morozko’s expression. “She will not let you say no,” he said mildly. “And she is right. You will only exhaust yourself, walking. It is you who must hold Moscow in your mind; if I guide us, it will be winter when we arrive.”

At least they were out of sight of the village now. Vasya vaulted to the mare’s back and Morozko got on behind her. The white mare was more finely built than Solovey, but the way she moved reminded her— Trying not to think of the bay stallion, Vasya looked down at Morozko’s hand, lying relaxed on his knee, remembered instead his hands on her skin, his hair coarse and cold, tumbled dark across her breasts.

She shivered at the memory and pushed it away too. They had stolen those hours in Midnight; now they must think only of outmaneuvering a clever and implacable enemy.

But— For distraction, she forced herself to ask a question whose answer she feared. “To bind the Bear—must I sacrifice myself as my father did?”

Morozko did not immediately say no. Vasya began to feel a little sick to her stomach. The mare set off lightly through the snow; more snow drifted down from the sky. Vasya wondered if he called it down in his distress, if it were involuntary, like the beat of a heart. “You promised you’d not lie to me again,” said Vasya.

“I will not,” said Morozko. “It is not so simple as exchanging your life for his binding, the two things interchangeable. Your life is not tied to the Bear’s liberty; you are not just a—token in our war.”

She waited.

“But I gave him power over me,” said Morozko, “when I yielded up my freedom. My twin and I will not be equals in a fight, now.” The words came out gratingly. “Summer is his season. I do not know how to bind him, except with the power of a life freely given, or a trick—”

Pozhar said suddenly, What about the golden thing? The mare had drifted close enough to catch their conversation.

Vasya blinked. “What golden thing?”

The mare threw her head up and down. The golden thing the sorcerer made! When I wore it, I couldn’t fly. I had to do what he said. It is powerful, that thing.

Vasya and Morozko looked at each other. “Kaschei’s golden bridle,” said Vasya, slowly. “If it bound her—might it bind your brother?”

“Perhaps,” said the winter-king, brows drawn together.

“It was in Moscow,” said Vasya, speaking faster and faster in her excitement. “In the stable, Dmitrii Ivanovich’s stable. I pulled it off her head and threw it down, the night Moscow burned. Is it still in the palace? Perhaps it melted in the fire.”

“It would not have melted,” Morozko said. “There is a chance.” She could not see his face, but his hand on his knee closed slowly into a fist.

Vasya, without thinking, leaned over and scratched Pozhar’s neck with delight. “Thank you,” she said. The mare tolerated it a moment before she sidled away.