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The mare made no answer. But suddenly Vasya understood her stillness, the golden head sunk low. “Do you fear being bound again? Because you are wounded? Do not be afraid. I killed the sorcerer. Tamara is dead too.” She could feel the old woman at her back, listening. “I have no rope here, let alone a golden bridle. I will not touch you without your leave; come to the fire.”
Vasya suited action to word, making her own way to the fire. The mare stood still, the set of her ears uncertain. The old woman was standing on the other side of the flames, waiting for Vasya. Her hair was white. But her face was a distorted mirror of the girl’s own.
Vasya stared, with shock, hunger, recognition.
The forest still seemed thick with eyes, watching. There was an instant of perfect silence. Then the woman said, “What is your name?”
“Vasilisa Petrovna,” said Vasya.
“What was your mother’s name?”
“Marina Ivanovna,” said Vasya. “Her mother was called Tamara, the girl who put a bridle on the firebird.”
The woman’s eyes roved over Vasya’s torn and bruised face, her cropped hair, her clothes, and perhaps more than anything the expression in the girl’s eyes. “I’m surprised you didn’t frighten the Bear off,” said the old woman, drily. “With your face so frightful. Or perhaps he liked it. Hard to know, with that one.” Her hands were trembling.
Vasya said nothing.
“Tamara and her sister were my daughters. Long ago, it would seem to you.”
Vasya knew that. “How are you alive?” she whispered.
“I’m not,” said the old woman. “I died before you were born. But this is Midnight.”
The golden mare broke their silence with splashing as she stepped out of the lake. As one, they turned to the horse. The firelight gleamed cruelly on the scars of whip and spur. “A pitiful pair you make,” said the old woman.
Vasya said, “Babushka, we are both in need of help.”
“Pozhar first,” said the old woman. “She is bleeding still.”
“Is that her name?”
A shrug. “What name would compass a creature like her? It is only what I call her.”
* * *
BUT HELPING THE MARE was not so easy. Pozhar laid back her ears if either of them tried to touch her. When she switched her tail, showers of sparks tumbled to the summer earth. One began to smolder; Vasya put it out with a booted foot. “Wounded or no, you are a menace.”
The old woman snorted. The mare glared. But Pozhar was exhausted, too. At last, when Vasya ran a hand from her shoulder to her knee, she only shuddered. “This is going to hurt,” said Vasya grimly. “You are not to kick.”
I am not promising anything, said the mare, ears pinned.
Between them, they convinced the mare to stand still long enough for the girl to sew up her leg, although Vasya had a few new bruises by the time it was done. After, when a shaken Pozhar had escaped, limping, to graze at a safe distance, Vasya sank to the earth beside the fire, pushing sweaty hair off her face. Her clothes had dried in the heat of the mare’s body. It was still blackest night, although it seemed hours since the Bear had come.
The woman had a pot in her basket, salt, some onions. When she thrust her hand in the lake, she withdrew fish, as naturally as a woman pulls bread from her own oven. She set about making soup, as though it were not midnight.
Vasya watched her. “Is it your house?” she asked. “The house by the oak-tree?”
The old woman was gutting the fish and didn’t look up. “It was, once.”
“The chest—did you leave it there? For me to find?”
“Yes,” said the woman, still not looking up.
“You knew that I—you are the witch of the wood then,” said Vasya. “Who tends the horses.” She thought of Marya and the old, dread name, the fairy-tale name, came to her lips unbidden. With a shiver, she said, “Baba Yaga. You are my great-grandmother.”
The old woman brayed a short laugh. The fish guts shone darkly between her fingers when she flung them back into the lake. “Near enough, I suppose. This witch and that were woven into a single fairy tale. Perhaps I am one of the witches.”
“How did you know I was here?”
“Polunochnitsa told me, of course,” returned the old woman. She was rummaging in the contents of Vasya’s basket now, adding greens to the pot. Her eyes gleamed in the dark, big and wild and reddened by the fire. “Although she almost waited until it was too late; she wanted you and the Bear to meet.”
“Why?”
“To see what you’d do.”
“Why?” Vasya asked again. She felt perilously close to breaking into a child’s whining complaint. Her feet ached, and her ribs, and the cut on her face. More than ever she felt as if she’d been thrust into a tale she hardly understood.
The old woman didn’t answer at once. She studied Vasya again. Finally she said, “Most of the chyerti do not want to strike a blow at the world of men. But they don’t want to fade either. They are torn.”
Vasya frowned. “Are they? What has that to do with me?”
“Why do you think Morozko went to such lengths to save your life? Yes, Polunochnitsa told me that, too.”
“I don’t know why,” said Vasya, and this time her voice rose a note despite her best efforts. “Do you think I wanted him to? It was utter madness.”
A quick, malicious gleam from beneath the old woman’s lids. “Was it? I suppose you’ll never know.”
“I would if you’d tell me.”
“That—no. It is something you must come to understand yourself, or not.” The old woman grinned, still with that edge of malice. She tossed salt in the soup. “Is it an easy road you’re after, child?”
“If it were, I’d not have left home,” retorted Vasya, holding hard to courtesy. “But I am tired of stumbling blind in the dark.”
The old woman was stirring the pot now; the firelight caught a strange expression on her face. “It is always dark here,” she said.
Vasya, still bursting with questions, found herself silenced, ashamed of herself. In a different voice, she said, “You are the one who sent Midnight to me, on the road to Moscow.”
“I am,” said the old woman. “I was curious, when I heard a girl-child of my blood had gone wandering, with a horse from the lake.”
Vasya flinched at the reminder of Solovey. The soup was ready; the witch ladled up a large bowl for herself, a meager one for Vasya. Vasya didn’t mind; she’d stuffed herself on fish earlier. But the broth was good; she drank it slowly.
