9.

Smoke

When Vasya awoke the next morning, Morozko and the mare were gone. He might never have been there; she might have thought it all a dream, but for two sets of hoofprints, and the glittering knife beside her restored saddle, her saddlebags newly bulging. The knife-blade did not look like ice now, but like some pale metal, sheathed in leather, bound in silver. Vasya sat up and glared at it all.

He says to practice with the knife, said Solovey, coming up to nose her hair. And that it will not stick in its sheath in the frost. And that those who carry weapons often die sooner, so please do not carry it openly.

Vasya thought of Morozko’s hands, correcting her grip on the dagger. She thought of his mouth. Her skin colored and suddenly she was furious, that he would kiss her, give her gifts, and leave her without a word.

Solovey had no sympathy for her anger; he was snorting and tossing his head, eager for the road. Scowling, Vasya found new bread and mead in her saddlebag and ate, threw snow on the fire (which went out quite meekly after lasting so long), fastened the saddlebags, and climbed into the saddle.

The versts passed untroubled, and Vasya had days of riding in which to regain her strength, to remember—and to try to forget. But one morning, when the sun was well over the treetops, Solovey threw up his head and shied.

Vasya, startled, said, “What!”—and then she saw the body.

He had been a big man, but now his beard bristled with frost, and his open eyes stared out, frozen and blank. He lay in a bloody stretch of trampled snow.

Vasya, reluctantly, slid to the ground. Swallowing back nausea, she saw what the man had died of: the stroke of a sword or an ax, in the notch where his neck met his shoulder, that had split him to the ribs. Her gorge rose; she forced it down.

Vasya touched his stiff hand. A single pair of bootprints had taken this man, running, to his end.

But where were the killers? Vasya bent to retrace the dead man’s steps. A dusting of new snow had left them blurry. Solovey followed her, blowing nervously.

Abruptly the trees ended, and they found themselves at the edge of cleared fields. In the middle of the fields lay a village, burned.

Vasya felt sick again. The burnt village was very like her own: izby and barns and bathhouses, a wooden palisade and stumpy wintertime fields. But these huts were smoldering ruins. The palisade lay on its side like a wounded deer. The smoke rolled out over the forest. Vasya bent her head to breathe through a fold of her cloak. She could hear the wailing.

They are gone, the ones who did this, said Solovey.

Not long gone, though, Vasya thought. Here and there little fires still dotted the landscape, that time or labor had not put out. Vasya vaulted to Solovey’s back. “Go closer,” she told the horse, and she hardly recognized her own voice.

They slipped out from between the trees beside the remains of the palisade. Solovey leaped it, nostrils showing red. The survivors in the village moved stiffly, as if ready to join the dead they were piling before the ruin of a little church. It was too cold for the bodies to smell. The blood had clotted on their wounds, and they stared open-mouthed at the brilliant sky.

The living did not raise their eyes.

In the shadow of one izba, a woman with two dark plaits knelt beside a dead man. Her hands curled into each other like dead leaves, and her body slumped, though she was not weeping.

Something about the line of the woman’s hair, black as gall against a slender back, caught at Vasya’s memory. She was off Solovey before she thought.

The woman stumbled upright, and of course she was not Vasya’s sister; she was no one Vasya knew. Only a peasant with too many cold days stamped on her face. The blood had been ground into her palms, where she must have tried to stanch a death-wound. A dirty knife appeared in her hand and she pressed her back to the wall of her house. Her voice came grating from her throat. “Your fellows came and went already,” she said to Vasya. “We have nothing else. One of us will die, boy, before you can touch me.”

“I—no,” said Vasya, stammering in her pity. “I am not one of the ones who did this; I am only a traveler.”

The woman did not lower her knife. “Who are you?”

“I—I am called Vasya,” said the girl cautiously, for Vasya could be a nickname for a boy, Vasilii, as well as a girl, Vasilisa. “Can you tell me what has happened here?”

The woman’s furious laughter shrilled in Vasya’s ears. “Where do you come from, that you do not know? The Tatars came.”

“You, there,” said a hard voice. “Who are you?”

Vasya’s head jerked around. An old muzhik was striding toward her, hard and broad and death-pale under his beard. His split knuckles bled around the bloody scythe clutched in his hand. Others appeared, stepping around the burning places. They all held rude weapons, axes and hunting-knives; most had blood on their faces. “Who are you?” The cry came from half a dozen throats, and then the villagers were closing round her. “Horseman,” said one. “A straggler. A boy. Kill him.”

Without thinking, Vasya threw herself onto Solovey. The stallion took a great galloping stride and leaped over the heads of the nearest villagers, who fell swearing into the bloody snow. The horse came down light as a leaf and would have kept running then, out of the wreckage and back into the forest, but Vasya ground her seat-bones into his back and forced him to a halt. Solovey stood still, barely, poised on the edge of flight.

Vasya found herself facing a ring of frightened, furious faces. “I mean you no harm,” she said, heart hammering. “I am no raider, only a traveler, alone.”

“Where did you come from?” called one villager.

“From the forest,” said Vasya, with half-truth. “What has happened here?”

An ugly pause, full of violent grief. Then the woman with black hair spoke. “Bandits. They brought fire and arrows and steel. They came for our girls.”

“Your girls? Did they take them?” demanded Vasya. “Where?”

“They took three,” said the man bitterly. “Three little ones. It has been so since the winter started, in every village in these parts. They come, they burn what they will, and then they take their pick of the children.” He gestured vaguely at the forest. “Girls—always girls. Rada there”—he gestured toward the black-haired woman—“had her daughter stolen, and her husband slain when he fought. She has no one now.”

“They took my Katya.” Rada’s bloody hands twisted together. “I told my husband not to fight, that I could not lose them both. But when they dragged our girl away, he couldn’t bear it…” Her voice strangled and fell silent.

Words filled Vasya’s mouth, but there was not one that would serve. “I am sorry,” she said at length. “I am—” She was trembling all over. Suddenly Vasya touched Solovey’s side; the horse wheeled and galloped away. Behind her she heard cries, but she did not look back. Solovey vaulted the damaged palisade and slipped in among the trees.

The horse knew her thought before she voiced it. We aren’t going on, are we?

“No.”

I wish you’d learn how to fight properly before you start getting into them, the horse said unhappily. A white ring showed around his eye. But he made no protest when she nudged him back to where the dead man lay in the wood.

“I’m going to try to help,” said Vasya. “Bogatyry ride the world, rescuing maidens. Why not I?” She spoke with more bravado than she felt. Her ice-dagger seemed a mighty responsibility, in its sheath along her spine. She thought also of her father, her mother, her nurse: the people she had not been able to save.

The horse did not reply. The wood was perfectly still, beneath a careless sun. The horse’s breathing and hers seemed loud in the silence. “No, I don’t mean to get into a fight,” she said. “I’d be killed, and then Morozko will have been right, and I can’t allow that. Sneaking, Solovey, we will sneak, as little girls who steal honeycakes do.” She tried for a tone of careless courage, but her gut was cold and shaking.

She slid to the ground beside the dead man and began to search in earnest for tracks. But she found nothing to show where the raiders had gone.

“Bandits are not ghosts,” Vasya said to Solovey in frustration. “What manner of men do not leave tracks?”

The horse switched his tail, uneasy, but made no answer.

Vasya was thinking hard. “Come on, then,” she said. “We have to go back to the village.”

The sun had passed its zenith. The trees nearest the palisade threw long shadows onto the ruined izby and hid a little of the horror. Solovey halted at the edge of the wood. “Wait for me here,” said Vasya.“If I call, you must come for me at once. Knock people down if you have to. I am not going to die because of their fear.”

The horse dropped his nose into her palm.

The village lay in ghostly silence. Its people had all gone to the church, where a pyre was building. Vasya, clinging to the shadows, crept past the palisade and flattened herself against the wall of Rada’s house. The woman was nowhere in sight, though there were drag marks where they had taken her husband away.

Vasya firmed her lips and slipped inside the hut. A pig in one corner squealed; her heart almost stopped. “Hush,” she told it.

The creature eyed her beadily.

Vasya went to the oven. Foolish chance, this, but she could think of nothing else. She had a little cold bread in her hand. “I see you,” she said softly, into the cold oven-mouth. “I am not of your people, but I have brought you bread.”

There was a silence. The oven-mouth was still, a deadly hush lay upon that house, whose master was dead, whose child had been stolen.

Vasya ground her teeth. Why would a strange house’s domovoi come at her calling? Perhaps she was a fool.

Then movement came from deep in the oven, and a small, sooty creature, all covered in hair, poked its head out of the oven-mouth. Twiggy fingers splayed on the hearthstones, it shrilled, “Go away! This is my house.”

Vasya was glad to see this domovoi, and gladder still to see him a solid creature, unlike the cloudy bannik in that ill-fated bathhouse. She laid her bread carefully on the bricks before the oven. “A broken house now,” she said.

Sooty tears welled in the domovoi’s eyes, and it sat down in the oven-mouth with a puff of ash. “I tried to tell them,” it said. “ ‘Death,’ I cried, last night. ‘Death.’ But they only heard the wind.”

“I am going after Rada’s child,” said Vasya. “I mean to bring her back. But I do not know how to find her. There are no tracks in the snow.” She spoke with her head turned, listening hard for footsteps outside. “Master,” she said to the domovoi. “My nurse told me that if a family ever leaves its house, a domovoi may follow, if his people ask him rightly. The child cannot ask, but I am asking on her behalf. Do you know where this child has gone? Can you help me follow her?”

The domovoi said nothing, sucking its splintery fingers.

It was only a faint hope after all, Vasya thought.

“Take a coal,” said the domovoi, voice gone soft, like settling embers. “Take it, and follow the light. If you bring my Katya back, my kind will owe you a debt.”

Vasya drew a pleased breath, surprised at her success. “I will do my best.” She reached into the oven with her mittened hand and seized a lump of cold, charred wood. “There is no light,” she said, examining it doubtfully.

The domovoi said nothing; when she looked, it had disappeared back into the oven. The pig squealed again; faintly Vasya heard voices from the other end of the village, the crunch of feet in the snow. She ran to the door, stumbling on warped floorboards. Outside it was true evening now, full of concealing shadows.

On the other side of the village, the pyre caught and went up: a beacon in the fading light. The wailing rose with the smoke, as the people mourned their dead.

“God keep you all,” Vasya whispered, and then she was out the door and away, back into the clean forest, where Solovey waited beneath the trees.

The domovoi’s coal was still gray as the evening. Vasya mounted Solovey and peered down at it, dubiously. “We’ll try different directions and see what happens,” she said at length.

It was getting dark. The horse’s ears eased back in obvious disapproval of such slipshod proceedings, but he set out to circle the village.

Vasya watched the cold lump in her hand. Was that—? “Wait, Solovey.”

The horse halted. The wood in Vasya’s hand now had a faint red edge. She was sure of it. “That way,” she whispered.

Step. Another. Halt. The coal brightened, grew hotter. Vasya was glad of her heavy mitten. “Straight on,” Vasya said.

Slowly their pace increased, from walk to trot, to ground-skimming lope, as Vasya grew surer of her direction. It was a clear night, moon nearly full, but bitterly cold. Vasya refused to think of it. She blew on her hands, drew her cloak round her face, and followed the light determinedly.

She asked, “Can you carry me and three children?”

Solovey shook his mane dubiously. If they are none of them large, he replied. But even if I can carry them, what will you do then? These bandits will know where we’ve gone. What’s to prevent them from following?

“I don’t know,” Vasya admitted. “Let’s find them first.”

Brighter the coal glowed, as though to defy the darkness. It began to scorch her mitten, and Vasya was just thinking of scooping it into some snow to save her hand when Solovey skidded to a halt.

A fire twinkled between the trees.

Vasya swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry. She dropped the coal and put a hand on the stallion’s neck. “Quietly,” she whispered, hoping she sounded braver than she felt.

The horse’s ears moved forward and back.

Vasya left Solovey in a stand of trees. Moving with all a forest-child’s care, she crept to the edge of a ring of firelight. Twelve men sat in the circle, talking. At first Vasya thought there was something wrong with her hearing. Then she realized that they were speaking in a tongue she did not know: the first time in all her life she’d heard one.

Their bound captives huddled in the middle. A stolen hen smoked and dripped over the flames, while a good-sized skin went back and forth. The men wore heavy quilted coats but had set aside their spiked helms. Leather caps lined in wool covered their heads; their well-kept weapons lay near to hand.

Vasya took a deep breath, thinking hard. They seemed like ordinary men, but what manner of bandit leaves no tracks? They might be even more dangerous than they looked.

It is hopeless, Vasya thought. There were too many of them. How had she ever imagined—? Her teeth sank into her lower lip.

The three children sat huddled together near the fire, dirty and frightened. The oldest was a girl of perhaps thirteen, the youngest little more than a baby, her cheeks tear-streaked. They were huddled close for warmth, but even from the undergrowth, Vasya could see them shiver.

Outside the ring of firelight, the trees swayed in the darkness. In the distance a wolf howled.

Vasya wriggled soundlessly away from the firelight and returned to Solovey. The stallion put his head around to nudge his nose against her chest. How to get the children away from the fire? Somewhere the wolves cried again. Solovey raised his head, hearing the distant yips, and Vasya was struck anew by the grace of his muscled neck, the lovely head and dark eye.

An idea came to her, wild and mad. Her breath caught, but she would not pause to think. “All right,” she said, breathless with terror and excitement. “I have a plan. Let’s go back to that yew tree.”

Solovey followed her to a great gnarled old yew they had passed near the trail. As he did, Vasya whispered into his ear.

THE MEN WERE EATING their stolen hen while the girls, spent, drooped against each other. Vasya had returned to her place in the undergrowth. She crouched in the snow, holding her breath.

Solovey, saddleless, stepped into the firelight. Muscle rippled in the stallion’s back and quarters; his barrel was deep as the vault of a church.

The men, as one, sprang to their feet.

The stallion slipped nearer the fire, ears pricked. Vasya hoped the bandits would think he was some boyar’s prize that had broken his rope and escaped.

Solovey tossed his head, playing the part. His ears swiveled toward the other horses. A mare neighed. He rumbled back.

One of the bandits had a little bread in his hand; he bent slowly, picked up a length of rope, and, making soothing noises, began walking toward the stallion. The other men fanned out to try to head the beast off.

Vasya bit back a laugh. The men were staring, enchanted as boys in springtime. Solovey was coy as any maiden. Twice a man got nearly close enough to lay a hand on the horse’s neck, but each time Solovey sidled away. Only a little way, though; never enough to make them give up hope.

Slowly, slowly the stallion was drawing the men away from the fire, from the captives, and from their horses.

Choosing her moment, Vasya crept noiselessly around to where the horses stood. She slipped among them, murmuring reassurance, hiding between their bodies. The eldest mare slanted a wary ear back at the newcomer.

“Wait,” Vasya whispered.

She bent with her knife and cut their picket. Two strokes, and the horses were all standing loose. Vasya darted back into the trees and loosed the long call of a hunting wolf.

Solovey reared with the others, shrilling in fright. In an instant the camp was a maelstrom of frightened beasts. Vasya yipped like a wolf-bitch and Solovey bolted. Most of the horses took off after him, and their fellows, reluctant to be left, followed. In an instant, they had all disappeared into the woods, and the camp was in an uproar. A man who was obviously the leader had to bellow to be heard over the din.

He roared out a word, and the shouting slowly died. Vasya lay flat in the snow, hidden in the bracken and the shadows, holding her breath. She had pulled the picket in that frantic moment of confusion, then ducked back into the woods. The horses’ hoofprints had obscured her footsteps. She was hoping no one would wonder how the horses had gotten loose so easily.

The leader snapped out a series of orders. The men murmured what sounded like assent, although one of them looked sour.

In five minutes, the camp was almost deserted, more easily than Vasya had been expecting. They are overconfident, she thought. Well they might be, since they leave no tracks.

One of the men—the sour one—had clearly been ordered to stay behind with the captives. He subsided sulkily onto a log.

Vasya wiped her sweating palms on her cloak and took a firmer grip on her dagger. Her stomach was a ball of ice. She had tried not to think about this part: what to do if there was a guard.

Rada’s face, hollow with grief, swam up before her eyes. Vasya set her jaw.

The lone bandit sat on a log with his back to her, throwing fir-cones into the fire. Vasya crept toward him.

The eldest of the captives saw her. The girl’s eyes widened, but Vasya had her finger on her lips and the girl bit back her cry. Three more steps, two— Not giving herself time to think, Vasya plunged the razor-sharp blade into the hollow at the base of the sentry’s skull.

Here, Morozko had said, putting an icy fingertip on her neck. Easier than cutting the throat, if you have a good blade.

It was easy. Her dagger slipped in like a sigh. The raider jerked once and then crumpled, blood leaking from the hole in his neck. Vasya pulled her dagger free and let him fall, a hand pressed to her mouth. She trembled in every limb. It was easy, she thought. It was…

For an instant a black-cloaked shadow seemed to pounce upon the corpse, but when she blinked it was gone, and there was only a body in the snow, and three terrified children gaping up at her. Her knife-hand was bloody; Vasya turned away and vomited, crouched in the trampled snow. She gave herself four breaths, then wiped her mouth and stood up, tasting bile. It was easy.

“It’s all right,” Vasya told the children, hearing her own voice ragged. “I’ll take you home. Just a moment.”

The men had left their bows by the fire. Vasya blessed her little ax, for it split their weapons like kindling. She spoiled everything she could see, then ripped their bundles open and flung the contents deep into the woods. Finally she threw snow on the fire and plunged the clearing into darkness.

She knelt by the huddled children. The smallest girl was weeping. Vasya could only imagine what her own face looked like, hooded in the moonlight. The girls moaned when they saw Vasya’s bloody knife.

“No,” said Vasya, trying not to frighten them. “I am going to use my knife to cut these ropes”—she reached for the tied hands of the oldest girl; the cord parted easily—“and then my horse and I are going to take you home. Are you Katya?” she added to the elder girl. “Your mother is waiting for you.”

Katya hesitated. Then she said to the smallest, without taking her eyes from Vasya, “It’s all right, Anyushka. I think he means to help us.”

The child said nothing, but she kept very still when Vasya cut the cord from her tiny wrists. Once they were all freed, Vasya stood up and sheathed her dagger.

“Come on,” she said. “My horse is waiting.”

Without a word, Katya picked up Anyushka. Vasya bent and scooped up the other child. They all slipped into the woods. The girls were clumsy with fatigue. From deeper in the forest came the sounds of the bandits shouting for their horses.

The path to the yew tree was longer than Vasya remembered. They could not move fast in the heavy snow. Her nerves stretched thinner and thinner waiting for a man to burst out of the undergrowth or stumble back into camp and raise the alarm.

The steps ticked by, the breaths and the heartbeats. Had they missed their way? Vasya’s arms ached. The moon dipped nearer the treetops, and monstrous shadows striped the snow.

Suddenly they heard a crashing in the snow-crusted bracken. The girls huddled in the deepest dark they could find.

Great, crunching steps. Now even Katya was gasping out sobs.

“Hush,” said Vasya. “Be still.”

When an enormous creature tore itself from the undergrowth, they all screamed.

“No,” said Vasya, relieved. “No, that is my horse; that is Solovey.” She went at once to the stallion’s side, pulled off a mitten, and buried her shaking fingers in his mane.

“He is the horse that came into camp,” said Katya slowly.

“Yes,” said Vasya, stroking Solovey’s neck. “Our trick to win your freedom.” A little warmth crept back into her hands, buried beneath his mane.

Tiny Anyushka, who stood barely higher than Solovey’s knee, teetered suddenly forward, though Katya tried to grab her back. “The magic horse is silver-gold,” Anyushka informed Vasya unexpectedly, hands on hips. She looked Solovey up and down. “This one can’t be a magic horse.”

“No?” Vasya asked the child, gently.

“No,” returned Anyushka. But then she stretched out a small, trembling hand.

“Anyushka!” gasped Katya. “That beast will—”

Solovey lowered his head, ears pricked in a friendly way.

Anyushka sprang back, wide-eyed. Solovey’s head was nearly bigger than she was. Then, tentatively, when Solovey did not move again, she raised clumsy fingers to pat his velvet nose. “Look, Katya,” she whispered. “He likes me. Even if he isn’t a magic horse.”

Vasya knelt beside the girl. “In the tale of Vasilisa the Beautiful, there is a magic black horse—night’s guardian—that serves Baba Yaga,” she said. “Perhaps mine is a magic horse, or perhaps not. Would you like to ride him?”

Anyushka made no answer, but the other girls, emboldened, crept out into the moonlight. Vasya located her saddle and saddlebags and began rigging out Solovey.

But now they heard another creature moving in the undergrowth, this one two-footed. No—more than one, and those were the sounds of horses. The hairs on the back of Vasya’s neck rose. It was very dark now, except for a little fitful moonlight. Hurry, Vasya, Solovey said.

Vasya fumbled for the girth. The girls clustered around the horse, as though they could hide in his shadow. Vasya did up the girth not an instant too soon; the sounds of men shouting drew nearer and nearer.

For an instant Vasya’s throat seized in panic, remembering her last desperate flight. With trembling hands, she boosted the two littlest up onto Solovey’s withers. Nearer the voices came. She sprang up behind the children and reached an arm down for Katya. “Get up behind me,” Vasya said. “Hurry! And hold on.”

Katya took the proffered hand and half leaped, half scrambled up behind Vasya. Katya was still lying belly-down on the stallion’s haunch when the captain of the bandits loomed out of the dark, face gray in the moonlight, riding a tall mare bareback.

Under other circumstances Vasya would have laughed at the shock and outrage on his face.

The Tatar did not bother with words, but drove his mare forward, curved sword in one hand, teeth bared in startled rage. As he came, he shouted. Cries all around answered him. The captain’s sword caught the moonlight.

Solovey spun like a snapping wolf and launched himself away, just missing the downstroke of the sword. Vasya had a death-grip on the children; she leaned forward and trusted the horse. A second man loomed up, but the horse ran him down without slowing. Then they raced away into the darkness.

Vasya had often had cause to bless Solovey’s sure feet, but she had more cause than ever that night. The horse galloped into tree-filled darkness without swerve or hesitation. The sounds of pursuit fell behind. Vasya breathed again.

She drew the horse to a walk for a moment, to let them all breathe. “Get beneath my cloak, Katyusha,” Vasya said to the eldest girl. “You mustn’t freeze.”

Katya burrowed beneath Vasya’s wolfskin and clung, shivering.

Where to go? Where to go? Vasya had no notion now which way the village lay. Clouds had rolled in, cutting off the stars, and their headlong flight in the thick dark had confused even her. She asked the girls, but none of them had ever been so far from home.

“All right,” Vasya said. “We are going to have to go on—fast—for a few more hours, so that they can’t catch us. Then I will stop and build a fire. We’ll find your village tomorrow.”

None of the children objected; their teeth were chattering. Vasya unrolled her bedroll, wrapped the two smaller girls in it, and held them upright against her body. It wasn’t comfortable, for her or for Solovey, but it might keep them from freezing.

She gave them draughts of her precious honey-wine, a little bread, and some smoked fish. As they were eating, heavy hoofbeats sounded from the undergrowth, surprisingly near. “Solovey!” Vasya gasped.

Before the stallion could move, a black horse came out of the trees, bearing a pale-haired, star-eyed creature.

“You,” said Vasya, too taken aback to be polite. “Now?”

“Well met,” returned Midnight, as composedly as if they had met by chance at market. “This forest at midnight is no place for little girls. What have you been doing?”

Katya’s arms shook around Vasya’s waist. “Who are you talking to?” she whispered.

“Don’t be afraid,” Vasya murmured back, hoping she was telling the truth. “We are fleeing pursuit,” she added to Midnight, coldly. “Perhaps you noticed.”

Midnight was smiling. “Has the world run dry of warriors?” she asked. “All out of brave lords? Are they sending out maidens these days to do the work of heroes?”

“There were no heroes,” said Vasya between her teeth. “There was only me. And Solovey.” Her heart was beating like a rabbit’s; she strained to hear sounds of pursuit.

“Well, you are brave enough at least,” said Midnight. Her starry eyes looked Vasya up and down, two lights in the shadow of her skin. “What do you mean to do now? They are cleverer riders than you think, the lord Chelubey’s people, and there are many of them.”

Lord—? “Ride fast until moonset, find shelter, build a fire, wait until morning, and double back toward their village,” said Vasya. “Do you have any better ideas? And why are you here, truly?”

Midnight’s smile took on a hard edge. “I was sent, as I said, and I am bound to obey.” A wicked gleam came into her eyes. “But, against my orders, I will give you some advice. Ride straight until dawn, always into the west—” She pointed. “There you will find succor.”

Vasya considered the wide smile. The chyert tossed back hair like clouds that cross the moon, and bore the regard easily.

“Can I trust you?” Vasya asked.

“Not really,” said Midnight. “But I do not see you getting better counsel.” She said that rather loudly, a hint of malice in her voice, as though she were expecting the forest to answer.

All was quiet except for the girls’ frightened breaths.

Vasya gathered her manners and bowed, a little perfunctorily. “Then I thank you.”

“Ride fast,” said Midnight. “Don’t look back.”

She and the black horse were gone, and the four girls were alone.

“What was that?” Katya whispered. “Why were you speaking to the night?”

“I don’t know,” said Vasya with grim honesty.

SO ON THEY RODE, west by the stars, as Midnight had bidden them, and Vasya prayed it was not all folly. Dunya’s tales had little good to say of the midnight-demon.

The night wore on, cruelly cold, despite the clouds rolling in. Vasya found herself shouting at the children, to keep them talking, moving, kicking, anything to keep them from freezing to death there on Solovey’s back.

She was sure the day would never come. I should have built a fire, she thought. I should have—

Dawn broke when she had almost given it up: a paling sky, snow-filled, but it brought, impossibly, the sound of hoofbeats. One young immortal horse, carrying four, it appeared, was not quite a match for skilled men who had ridden all night. Solovey leaped forward when he heard the hooves, ears against his head, but even he was beginning to tire. Vasya held the girls in a death-grip, and urged the horse on, but she almost despaired.

The tops of the black trees showed sharply against the dawn-lit sky, and suddenly Solovey said, I smell smoke.

Another burnt village, Vasya thought first. Or perhaps…A tidy gray spiral, almost invisible against the sky—that was not the black and reeking stuff of destruction. Sanctuary? Maybe. Katya lolled against her shoulder, beyond cold. Vasya knew that she must take the chance.

“That way,” she said to the horse.

Solovey lengthened his stride. Was that a bell-tower, over the trees? The little girls slumped in her grip. Vasya felt Katya behind her beginning to slip.

“Hold on,” she told them. They came to the edge of the trees. A bell-tower indeed, and a great bell tolling to shatter the winter morning. A walled monastery, with guards over the gate. Vasya hesitated, with the shadow of the forest falling on her back. But one of the children whimpered, like a kitten in the cold, and that decided her. She closed her legs about Solovey and the horse sprang forward.

“The gate! Let us in! They are coming!” she cried.

“Who are you, stranger?” returned a hooded head, poking over the monastery wall.

“Never mind that now!” Vasya shouted. “I went into their camp and brought these away”—she pointed at the girls—“and now they are behind me in a boiling fury. If you will not let me in, at least take these girls. Or are you not men of God?”

A second head, this one fair-haired, with no tonsure, poked up beside the first. “Let them in,” this man said, after a pause.

The gate-hinges wailed; Vasya gathered her courage and set her horse at the gap. She found herself in a wide-open space, with a chapel on her right, a scattering of outbuildings, and a great many people.

Solovey skidded to a halt. Vasya handed the girls down and then slid down the horse’s shoulder. “The children are freezing,” she said urgently. “They are frightened. They must be taken to the bathhouse at once—or the oven. They must be fed.”

“Never mind that,” said a new monk, striding forward. “Have you seen these bandits? Where—”

But then he stopped as though he’d walked into a wall. Next moment, Vasya felt the light coming to her face, and a jolt of pure joy. “Sasha!” she cried, but he interrupted.

“Mother of God, Vasya,” he said in tones of horror that brought her up short. “What are you doing here?”