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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?”
