The rider fastened green eyes onto his face and froze. Sasha stopped as though he’d walked into a tree.
The last time he had seen that face, it had been eight years ago. But although the bones had grown bolder since then—the mouth full-lipped—nonetheless Sasha recognized her.
Had he stumbled onto a wood-sprite, he could not have been more astonished. The rider was staring at him, openmouthed. Then his—her—face lit. “Sasha!” she cried.
At the same time, he said, “Christ, Vasya, what are you doing here?”
6.
The Ends of the Earth
Some weeks earlier, a girl sat on a bay horse at the edge of a fir-grove. Snow slanted down, catching in her eyelashes and the horse’s mane. In the fir-grove stood a house, with an open doorway.
The figure of a man waited in the gap. The firelight behind emptied the man’s eyes and filled his face with shadows.
“Come in, Vasya,” he said. “It is cold.” Could the snow-laden night speak, it might have spoken with that voice.
The girl drew breath to reply, but the stallion had already started forward. Deeper in the fir-grove, the branches twined too thick for the girl to ride. Stiffly, she slid to the ground, and staggered as pain shot through her half-frozen feet. Only a fierce effort, clinging to the horse’s mane, kept her from falling. “Mother of God,” she muttered.
She tripped over a root, lurched to the threshold, stumbled again, and would have fallen, but the man in the doorway caught her. Close in, his eyes were no longer black, but the palest of blues: ice on a clear day. “Fool,” he said after a pause, holding her upright. “Thrice a fool, Vasilisa Petrovna. But come in.” He set her on her feet.
Vasilisa—Vasya—opened her mouth, once more thought better of it, and stepped across the threshold, swaying like a foal.
The house resembled a stand of fir-trees that had decided to become a house for the night but gone about it badly. A livid darkness, as of clouds and fitful moonlight, filled the space near the rafters. The shadows of branches swooped back and forth across the floor, though the walls seemed solid enough.
But one thing was certain: the far end of the house held a vast Russian oven. Vasya stumbled toward it like a blind girl, stripped off her mittens, put her hands near the blaze, and shuddered at the heat on her cold fingers. Beside the oven stood a tall white mare, licking at some salt. This mare nuzzled Vasya briefly in greeting. Vasya, smiling, laid her cheek against the mare’s nose.
Vasilisa Petrovna was no beauty as her people counted it. Too tall, the women had said when she came of age. Far too tall. As for a figure, she has scarce more than a boy.
Mouth like a frog, her stepmother had added, with spite. What man would take a girl with that chin? And as for her eyes—
In truth, the stepmother could not find words for Vasya’s eyes—green and deep and set far apart—nor for her long black plait that strong sunlight would spark with red.
“No beauty, perhaps,” echoed Vasya’s nurse, who had loved her very much. “No beauty, my girl—but she draws the eye. Like her grandmother.” The old lady always crossed herself when she said it, for Vasya’s grandmother had not died happily.
Vasya’s stallion plowed his way into the house behind her and looked about with a proprietary air. The hours in the frozen forest had not quenched him. He went at once to the girl by the oven. The white mare, his dam, snorted softly at him.
Vasya smiled, scratching the stallion’s withers. He wore neither saddle nor bridle. “That was bravely done,” she murmured. “I wasn’t sure we’d ever find it.”
The horse shook his mane complacently.
Vasya, grateful for the horse’s buoyant strength, drew her belt-knife and bent to dig the balled-up ice from his hooves.
A spiteful winter gust slammed the door.
Vasya jerked upright; the stallion snorted. With the door shut, the storm was set at remove, and yet, somehow, tree-shadows still swung across the floor.
The master of the house stood an instant, facing the door, and then he turned. Snowflakes starred his hair. All around him was the same soundless force as that of the snow falling outside.
The stallion’s ears eased back.
“Doubtless you mean to tell me, Vasya,” said the man, “why you have risked your life a third time, running into the deep woods in winter.” He crossed the floor, light as smoke, until he stood in the light cast by the oven, and she could see his face.
Vasya swallowed. The master of the house looked like a man, but his eyes betrayed him. When he had first walked in that forest, the maidens called to him in a different tongue.
Vasya thought, If you start being afraid of him, you will never stop, straightened her back—and found that her reply would not come. Grief and weariness had driven words out, and she could only stand, throat working: an interloper in a house that was not there.
The frost-demon added drily, “Well? Were the flowers unsatisfactory? Are you looking for the firebird this time? The horse with the golden mane?”
“Why do you think I am here?” Vasya managed, stung into speech. She had bidden her brother and sister farewell that very night. Her father’s grave lay raw in the frozen earth, and her sister’s furious sobs had followed her into the forest. “I could not stay home. ‘Witch-woman,’ the people whispered. There are those who would burn me if they could. Father—” Her voice wavered. “Father is not there to check them.”
“Such a sad story,” the frost-demon replied, unmoved. “I have seen ten thousand sadder, yet you are the only one to come stumbling to my doorstep because of it.” He bent nearer. The firelight beat on his pale face. “Do you mean to stay with me now? Is that it? Be a snow-maiden in this forest that never changes?”
The question was half gibe, half invitation, and full of a tender mockery.
Vasya flushed and recoiled. “Never!” Her hands had begun to warm, but her lips felt stiff and clumsy. “What would I do in this house in the fir-grove? I am going away. That is why I left home—I am going far away. Solovey will take me to the ends of the earth. I will see palaces and cities and rivers in summer, and I will look at the sun on the sea.” She had unfastened her sheepskin hood, almost stammering in her eagerness. The fire threw flashes of red across her black hair.
His eyes darkened, seeing it, though Vasya did not notice. As though speaking had loosed a torrent, now she found her tongue. “You showed me there is more in this world than the church and the bathhouse and my father’s forests. I want to see it.” Her vivid gaze saw beyond him. “I want to see it all. There is nothing for me at Lesnaya Zemlya.”