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.”

The frost-demon might have been taken aback. Certainly he turned away from her and sank into a chair like a broken oak-stump, there by the fire, before he asked, “What are you doing here, then?” His pointed glance took in the shadows near the ceiling, the vast bed heaped like a snowdrift, the Russian oven, the hangings on the walls, the carven table. “I see no palaces and no cities, and certainly not the sun on the sea.”

It was her turn to pause. The color came to her face. “Once you offered me a dowry…” she began.

Indeed, the bundles still lay heaped in one corner: fine cloth and gems, strewn like a serpent’s hoard. His glance followed hers and he smiled, coldly. “You spurned it and ran away, as I recall.”

“Because I do not wish to marry,” Vasya finished. The words sounded strange even as she said them. A woman married. Or she became a nun. Or she died. That was what being a woman meant. What, then, was she? “But I do not want to beg my bread in churches. I came to ask— May I take a little of that gold with me, when I ride away?”

Startled silence. Then Morozko leaned forward, elbows on knees, and said, incredulity in his voice, “You have come here, where no one has ever come without my consent, to beg a little gold for your wanderings?”

No, she might have said. It is not that. Not entirely. I was afraid when I left home, and I wanted you. You know more than I, and you have been kind to me. But she could not bring herself to say it.

“Well,” said Morozko, sitting back. “All that is yours.” He jerked his chin at the heap of treasure. “You may go to the ends of the earth dressed as a princess, with gold to plait into Solovey’s mane.”

When she didn’t answer, he added, with elaborate courtesy, “Would you like a cart for it? Or will Solovey drag it all behind you, like beads on a string?”

She clung to her dignity. “No,” she said. “Only what can easily be carried and will not attract thieves.”

Morozko’s pale stare, unimpressed, swept her from tousled hair to booted feet. Vasya tried not to think how she must appear to him: a hollow-eyed child, her face pale and dirty. “And then what?” the frost-demon asked meditatively. “You stuff your pockets with gold, ride out tomorrow morning, and freeze to death at once? No? Or perhaps you will live a few days until someone kills you for your horse, or rapes you for your green eyes? You know nothing of this world, and now you mean to go out and die in it?”

“What else am I to do?” Vasya retorted. Tears of bewildered exhaustion gathered, though she did not let them fall. “My own people will kill me if I go home. Shall I become a nun? No—I cannot bear it. Better to die on the road.”

“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.

Solovey, recalling his dignity, sauntered back to the oven. Vasya’s gaze followed him. A little of the laughter died in her throat. Morozko and the white mare had returned in the dark before dawn.

The mare stood quietly, chewing at her hay. Morozko was staring into the fire and did not turn his head when she rose. Vasya thought of the long featureless years of his life, wondered how many nights he sat alone by a fire, or if he wandered the wild instead and made his dwelling seem to have a roof and walls and a fire only to please her.

She went to the stove. Morozko looked round then, and a little of the remoteness left his face.

She flushed suddenly. Her hair was a witchy mass, her feet bare. Perhaps he saw it, for his glance withdrew abruptly. “Nightmares?” he asked.

Vasya bristled, and shyness vanished in indignation. “No,” she replied, with dignity. “I slept perfectly well.”

He lifted a brow.

“Have you a comb?” she asked, to divert him.

He looked taken aback. She supposed he wasn’t used to guests at all, much less the sort whose hair tangled, who got hungry or had bad dreams. But then he half-smiled and reached a hand for the floor.

The floor was wood. Of course it was—wood smooth-planed and dark. But when he straightened, Morozko nonetheless held a handful of snow. He breathed on it once, and the snow became ice.

Vasya bent nearer, fascinated. His long, thin fingers shaped the ice as though it were clay. In his face was an odd light, the joy of creation. After a few minutes, he held a comb that looked as though it had been carved from diamonds. The back of it was shaped like a horse, long mane streaming along its straining neck.

Morozko handed it to Vasya. The coarse hair of the beast’s back, done in ice-crystals, scraped on her calloused fingertips.

She turned the lovely thing over and over in her fingers. “Will it break?” It lay cool as stone and perfect in her hand.

He sat back. “No.”

Tentatively, she began to work at the snarls. The comb slid like water down the whorls of her hair, pulling them smooth. She thought he might be watching her, though whenever she looked, his glance was fixed on the fire. At the end, when her hair was smooth-plaited, wound with a little strip of leather, Vasya said, “Thank you,” and the comb melted to water in her hand.

She was still staring at the place where it had lain when he said, “It is little enough. Eat, Vasya.”

She had not seen his servants come, but now the table held porridge, golden with honey and yellow with butter, and a wooden bowl. She sat down, heaped the bowl with steaming porridge, and tore into it, making up for the night before.

“Where do you mean to go?” he asked her as she ate.

Vasya blinked. Away. She had not thought further than away.

“South,” she said slowly. As she spoke, she knew her answer. Her heart leaped. “I wish to see the churches of Tsargrad, and look upon the sea.”

“South, then,” he said, oddly agreeable. “It is a long way. Do not press Solovey too hard. He is stronger than a mortal horse, but he is young.”

Vasya glanced at him in some surprise, but his face revealed nothing. She turned toward the horses. Morozko’s white mare stood composedly. Solovey had already eaten his hay, with a good measure of barley, and was now edging back to the table, one eye fixed on her porridge. She began eating rapidly, to forestall him.

Not looking at Morozko, she asked, “Will you ride with me, a little way?” Her question came out in a rush, and she regretted it as soon as she voiced it.

“Ride at your side, nurse you with pap, and keep the snow off at night?” he asked, sounding amused. “No. Even if I had not other things to do, I would not. Go out into the world, traveler. See what the long nights and hard days feel like, after a week of them.”

“Perhaps I will like them,” Vasya retorted, with spirit.

“I sincerely hope not.”

She would not dignify that with an answer. Vasya put a little more porridge in the bowl and let Solovey lick it up.

“You will have him fat as a broodmare at this rate,” Morozko remarked.

Solovey’s ears eased back, but he did not relinquish the porridge.

“He needs filling out,” Vasya protested. “Besides, he’ll work it off, on the road.”

Morozko said, “Well, if you are set on this, then I have a gift for you.”

She followed his glance. Two bulging saddlebags lay on the floor beneath the table. She did not reach for them. “Why? My great dowry is lying in that corner, and surely a little gold will buy all that is needful.”

“Naturally you can use the gold of your dowry,” Morozko returned coolly. “If you intend to ride into a city you do not know, where you can purchase things you have never seen, riding your war-stallion and dressed as a Russian princess. You may wear the white furs and scarlet if you like, so that no thief in Rus’ will be the poorer.”

Vasya lifted her chin. “I prefer green to scarlet,” she said coldly. “But perhaps you are right.” She put a hand to the saddlebags—then paused. “You saved my life in the forest,” she said. “You offered me a dowry; you came when I asked you to rid us of the priest. Now this. What do you want of me in return, Morozko?”

He seemed to hesitate, just an instant. “Think of me sometimes,” he returned. “When the snowdrops have bloomed and the snow has melted.”

“Is that all?” she asked, and then added, with wry honesty, “How could I forget?”

“It is easier than you would think. Also—” He reached out.

Startled, Vasya kept perfectly still, though her traitorous blood rushed out to her skin when his hand brushed her collarbone. A silver-backed sapphire hung round her neck; Morozko hooked a finger beneath its chain and drew it forth. This jewel had been a gift from her father, given to her by her nurse before she died. Of all Vasya’s possessions, the sapphire was her most prized.

Morozko held the jewel up between them. It threw pale icicle-light across his fingers. “You will promise me,” he said, “to wear this always, no matter the circumstances.” He let the necklace fall.

The brush of his hand seemed to linger, raw on her skin. Vasya ignored it angrily. He was not real, after all. He was alone, unknowable, a creature of black wood and pale sky. What had he said?

“Why?” she asked. “My nurse gave it me. A gift from my father.”

“It is a talisman, that thing,” Morozko said. He spoke as though he were choosing his words. “It may be some protection.”

“Protection from what?” she asked. “And why do you care?”

“Contrary to what you believe, I do not want to come for you, dead in some hollow,” he returned coldly. A breeze, soft and bone-chilling, filtered through the room. “Will you deny me this?”

“No,” said Vasya. “I meant to wear it anyway.” She bit her lip and turned away a little too quickly to untie the flap of the first saddlebag.

It held clothing: a wolfskin cloak, a leather hood, a rabbit-fur cap, felt-and-fur boots, trousers lined with fleece. The other held food: dried fish and bread baked hard, a skin of honey-wine, a knife, and a pot for water. Everything she would need for hard travel in a cold country. Vasya stared down at these things with a delight she had never felt for the gold or gems of her dowry. These things were freedom; Vasilisa Petrovna, Pyotr’s highborn daughter, would never have owned such things. They belonged to someone else, someone more capable and more strange. She looked up at Morozko, face alight. Perhaps he understood her better than she’d thought.

“Thank you,” Vasya said. “I—thank you.”

He inclined his head but did not speak.

She didn’t care. With the skins came a saddle of no kind that she had ever seen before, little more than a padded cloth. Vasya leaped up eagerly, already calling to Solovey, the saddle in one hand.

BUT SADDLING THE HORSE was not so easy. Solovey had never worn a saddle—even this skin that passed for one—and did not like it much.

“You need it!” Vasya finally burst out, exasperated, after a good deal of fruitless sidling about the fir-grove. So much for the brave and self-sufficient wanderer, she thought. Solovey was no nearer to being saddled than when they began. Morozko was watching from the doorway. His amused glance bored into her back.

“What will happen if we are going all day for weeks on end?” Vasya demanded of Solovey. “We’ll both be chafed raw, and besides, how will we hang the saddlebags? There is grain for you in there, too. Do you want to live on pine-needles?”

Solovey snorted and shot a covert glance at the saddlebags.

“Fine,” Vasya said through gritted teeth. “You can just go back to wherever you came from, and I’ll walk.” She started toward the house.

Solovey lunged and blocked her way.

Vasya gave him a glare and a shove, which had precisely no effect on the great oak-colored bulk. She crossed her arms and scowled. “Well, then,” she said, “what do you suggest?”

Solovey looked at her, then the saddlebags. His head drooped. Oh, very well, he said, without much grace.

Vasya carefully did not look at Morozko as she finished making ready.

SHE LEFT THAT SAME MORNING, under a sun that burned away the mist and set diamonds in the fresh-fallen snow. The world outside the fir-grove seemed large and formless, faintly menacing. “I don’t feel like a traveler now,” Vasya admitted, low, to Morozko. They stood together outside the fir-grove. Solovey waited, neatly saddled, with an expression caught between eagerness and irritation, disliking the saddlebags on his back.

“Neither do travelers, often enough,” the frost-demon returned. Unexpectedly, he put both hands on her fur-clad shoulders. Their eyes met. “Stay in the forest. That is safest. Avoid the dwellings of men, and keep your fires small. If you speak to anyone, say you are a boy. The world is not kind to girls alone.”

Vasya nodded. Words trembled on her lips. She could not read his expression.

He sighed. “May you have joy in your wanderings. Now go, Vasya.”

He boosted her into the saddle, and then she was looking down at him. Suddenly he seemed less a man than a man-shaped confluence of shadows. There was something in his face she did not understand.

She opened her mouth to speak again.

“Go!” he said, and slapped Solovey’s quarters. The horse snorted and spun and they were away over the snow.