Here Marya interrupted. “Could they talk? Like you can talk to Solovey? Can you really talk to Solovey? Does he talk to people? Like the Baba Yaga’s horses?”

“He can talk,” said Vasya, putting a hand up to stem the flow of questions. “If you know how to listen. Now hush, let me finish.”

But Marya was already asking her next question. “How did you learn how to listen?”

“I—the man in the stable taught me,” said Vasya. “The vazila. When I was a child.”

“Could I learn?” said Marya. “The man in the stable never talks to me.”

“Yours is not strong,” said Vasya. “They are not strong in Moscow. But—I think you could learn. Your grandmother—my mother—knew a little magic, they say. I have heard a tale that your great-grandmother rode into Moscow on a magnificent horse, gray as the morning. Perhaps she saw chyerti just as you and I do. Perhaps there are other horses, somewhere, just like Solovey. Perhaps we all—”

She was interrupted by a decisive step in the aisle between the stalls. “Perhaps we all,” said Varvara’s dry voice, “are in need of supper. Your sister trusted you to go and get her daughter, and here I find you two rolling in the straw like a couple of peasant boys.”

Marya scrambled to her feet; Vasya followed painfully, trying not to favor her injured side. Solovey stood up with a heave, his ears pricked toward Varvara. The woman gave him a strange look. For an instant, there was a kind of remote longing in her face, as a woman looks upon something she coveted long ago. Then, ignoring the stallion, she said, “Come on, Masha. Vasya can finish your story later. The soup will be cold.”

THE STABLE HAD FILLED UP with shadows in the time Vasya and Marya had been talking. Solovey stood still, ears pricked. “What is it?” Vasya asked the horse.

Can you hear that?

“What?” said Varvara, and Vasya looked at her strangely. Surely she hadn’t…

Marya looked suddenly frightened. “Does Solovey hear someone coming? Someone bad?”

Vasya took the girl’s hand. “I said you are safe and I meant it. If there is any danger, Solovey will take us all galloping far away.”

“All right,” said Marya in a small voice. But she held tight to Vasya’s hand.

They walked out into the blued evening. Solovey went with them, huffing uneasily, his nose at Vasya’s shoulder. The blood-colored sunset had diminished to a faint smear in the west, and the air was still and strange. Outside the thick walls of the stable, Vasya could hear what Solovey had heard: the rush and tramp of many feet and a muted rumble of voices.

“You are right; something is wrong,” said Vasya to the horse, low. “And, curse it, Sasha is not here.” Aloud, she added, “Do not worry, Masha, we are safe here behind the gates.”

“Come on,” said Varvara, and made for the outer door, the anteroom and the stair that would lead them back up to the terem.