“Did you lose it during the crash?”

He shook his head. “No, it was taken from me before that. When I was first captured. I guess Koschei likes his trinkets.”

“You know what?” Vanya perked up suddenly. “You’re right, Tsar.”

“About what?” Mikhail studied him warily. “You mean jumping in the pond?”

“No. That bread was like chewing on sawdust. Let’s see what I have here. I know it’s around here somewhere.”

Leaning forward, he scrounged through his pack. At last, he drew a colorful dented tin from the bottom of the sack and hoisted it victoriously. “Chocolates all the way from Svet! Annushka got two from a traveling merchant and gave me one as a gift.”

“I can’t believe you brought that on the trip with us instead of something useful,” Mikhail said.

“What? And leave it back home for the rats to eat?” He pried off the lid with the tip of his knife and groaned. “No. They’re all melted. Wait—” he popped one in his mouth “—they still taste good.”

A stifled chuckle came from the other side of the campfire. Mikhail caught himself before it could turn into a full-blown laugh, and he shook his head with a thin smile. “You’re such an idiot.”

“Luckily, it takes one to know one.” Vanya offered a chocolate to me, but I held my towel shut with one hand and had the other filled with bread. As I searched for a place to put my food, he laughed and raised the candy to my lips. “Here, just try it.”

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten chocolate. In my childhood among the living, it had been a precious delicacy only doled out on saint days. There had been nothing as sweet in the wilds, except for honey gained through smoke-charred lungs and throbbing bee stings, and the rare wild beet.

I held the chocolate in my mouth until it melted away, savoring its richness. Galina wouldn’t have been able to enjoy it, but she would have loved the tin’s ornate embossing. Maybe once we saved her, I would ask Vanya if she could have it.

“What do you think?” Vanya asked.

“Delicious.”

He took a piece of chocolate for himself and passed the tin to Mikhail.

“I’m not hungry—” Mikhail began, and Vanya chuckled.

“Don’t tell me you want me to feed you too?”

With a disgruntled look, Mikhail accepted the tin. “You know, I’m beginning to realize why you were going to be executed as a koldun.”

“If it hadn’t been witchcraft, it would have probably been my wonderful sense of humor. Some people just can’t appreciate it.”

We all laughed, but soon it died down into a calm, comfortable silence that even the memory of the vodyanoy couldn’t shake. I leaned against Vanya, not even thinking about it, watching the fire’s glow snake across his hands. And for the first time since leaving my home, I felt safe and warm.

17

Once our clothes had dried off enough to change back into them, we rode for another hour through darkness until the river was just a memory. We set up camp at the top of a low hill, but not before walking a perimeter around the area, alert for vodyanye and other wandering spirits.