“Many people say ‘Better to die’ until the time comes to do it,” Morozko returned. “Do you want to die alone in some forest hollow? Go back to Lesnaya Zemlya. Your people will forget, I swear it. All will be as it was. Go home and let your brother protect you.”
Sudden anger burned out Vasya’s gathering hurt. She pushed back her chair and stood again. “I am not a dog,” she snapped. “You may tell me to go home, but I may choose not to. Do you think that is all I want, in all my life—a royal dowry, and a man to force his children into me?”
Morozko was scarce taller than she, yet she had to hold herself to stillness before his pale, scathing stare. “You are talking like a child. Do you think that anyone, in all this world of yours, cares what you want? Even princes do not have what they want, and neither do maidens. There is no life for you on the road, nothing but death, soon or late.”
Vasya bit her lips. “Do you think that I—” she began hotly, but the stallion had lost patience, hearing the fierce anguish in her voice. He thrust his head over her shoulder and his teeth snapped a finger’s breadth from Morozko’s face.
“Solovey!” Vasya cried. “What are you—?” She tried shoving him out of the way, but he would not go.
I’ll bite him, the stallion said. His tail lashed his sides; one hoof scraped the wooden floor.
“He’d bleed water, and turn you into a snow horse,” said Vasya, still shoving. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Go away, you ox,” Morozko advised the stallion.
Solovey did not move for a moment, but then Vasya said, “Go on.” He met her eye, flicked his tongue in halfhearted apology, and turned away.
The tension had broken. Morozko sighed a little. “No, I should not have spoken so.” Some of the nasty edge had gone from his voice. He sank once more into his chair. Vasya did not move. “But—the house in the fir-grove is no place for you now, much less the road. You shouldn’t have been able to find the house anymore, even with Solovey, not after—” He met her eyes, broke off, resumed. “There, among your own kind, that is the world for you. I left you safely bestowed with your brother, the Bear asleep, the priest fled into the forest. Could you not have been satisfied with that?” His question was almost plaintive.
“No,” said Vasya. “I am going on. I will see the world beyond this forest, and I will not count the cost.”
A silence. Then he laughed, softly and unwillingly. “Well done, Vasilisa Petrovna. I have never been gainsaid in my own house before.”
It is high time, then, she thought, though she did not say it aloud. Had something changed about him since that night he flung her across his saddlebow to keep her from the Bear? What was it? Were his eyes bluer now? Some new clarity in the bones of his face?
Vasya felt suddenly shy. A fresh silence fell. In the pause, all her weariness seemed to strike, as though it had waited for her to let down her guard. She leaned hard against the table to steady herself.
He saw it and got to his feet. “Sleep here, tonight. Mornings are wiser than evenings.”
“I can’t sleep.” She meant it, though the table was the only thing keeping her upright. An edge of horror crept into her voice. “The Bear is waiting in my dreams, and Dunya, and Father. I’d rather stay awake.”
She could smell the winter night on his skin. “That at least I can give you,” he said. “A night of sleep untroubled.”
She hesitated, exhausted, untrusting. His hands could give sleep, of a kind. But it was a strange, thick sleep, a cousin to death. She could feel him watching her.
“No,” he said suddenly. “No.” The roughness in his voice startled her. “No, I will not touch you. Sleep as you may. I will see you in the morning.”
He turned away, spoke a soft word to his horse. She did not turn until she heard the sound of hoofbeats, and when she did, Morozko and his white mare were gone.
MOROZKO’S SERVANTS WERE NOT invisible—not exactly. Out of the corner of her eye, Vasya would sometimes catch a whisking movement, or a dark shape. If she were quick, she might turn and get the impression of a face: seamed as oak-bark or cherry-cheeked or mushroom-gray and scowling. But Vasya never saw them when she was looking for them. They moved between one breath and the next, between one blink and another.
After Morozko disappeared, these servants laid out food for her while she sat in a weary haze—rough bread and porridge, shriveled apples. A glorious bowl of wintergreen berries, wintergreen leaves. Honey-wine and beer and achingly cold water. “Thank you,” said Vasya to the listening air.
She ate what she could, in her weariness, and fed her bread-crusts to the gluttonous Solovey. When she finally pushed her bowl away, she found that the coals in the oven had been scraped out and that they had made a steam-bath for her.
Vasya stripped off her clammy clothes and crawled in at once, grinding the bones of her knees against the brick. Once inside, she turned over, with ash on her stomach, and lay looking up at nothing.
In winter it is almost impossible to be still. Even sitting by the fire, one is watching the coals, stirring the soup, fighting—always fighting—the eager frost. But in the singing heat, the soft breath of the steam, Vasya’s breath slowed, and slowed again, until she lay quiet in the darkness and the frigid knot of grief inside her loosened. She lay on her back, open-eyed, and the tears ran down her temples, to mingle with her sweat.
When Vasya could not bear it anymore she ran outside naked and flung herself, shrieking, into a snowbank. When she came back in, she quivered, fiercely, defiantly alive, and calmer than she’d been since the season turned.
Morozko’s unseen servants had left out a gown for her, long and loose and light. She put it on, crawled into the great bed, with its coverlets like blown snow, and was at once asleep.
AS SHE HAD FEARED, Vasya dreamed, and her dreams were not kind.
She did not dream of the Bear, or of her dead father, or her stepmother with her throat torn away. Instead she wandered lost, in a narrow darkened place, smelling dust and cold incense, the moonlight seeping in. She wandered a long time, tripping over her own dress, and always she heard a woman weeping just beyond her sight.
“Why are you crying?” Vasya called. “Where are you?”
There was no answer but weeping. Far ahead, Vasya thought she saw a white figure. She hurried toward it. “Wait—”
The white figure whirled.
Vasya recoiled before its bone-white flesh, the shriveled pits of its eyes, and the mouth too large, wide and black. The mouth gaped; the creature croaked, “Not you! Never—Go! Get out! Leave me alone—Leave me—”
Vasya fled, hands over her ears, and jolted, gasping, awake to find herself in the house in the fir-grove with the morning light filtering in. The pine-scented air of the winter morning chilled her face but could not pierce the snow-colored covers on the bed. Her strength had returned in the night. A dream, she thought, breath coming fast. Just a dream.
A hoof scraped on wood, and a large, whiskered nose thrust itself against hers.
“Go away,” Vasya said to Solovey, and pulled the blanket over her head. “Go away now. It is ridiculous for a creature of your size to act like a dog.”
Solovey, undeterred, threw his head up and down. He snorted his warm breath into her face. It is day, he informed her. Get up! He shook his mane and set his teeth to the covers and tugged. Vasya snatched, too late, yelped, and came upright laughing.
“Idiot,” she said. But she did get to her feet. Her hair had come loose of its plait and hung around her body; her head was clear, her body light. The ache of grief and anger and bad dreams lay muted in the back of her mind. She could shake away nightmares and smile at the beauty of the unmarked morning, the sunlight slanting in and stippling the floor.