After a few moments, Vasya raised her head and got control of herself. Could she do it? She couldn’t even have contemplated it, were her mind not full of the sight of her brother, bloody, surrounded by enemies. She tried to think of something else.

Anything.

She couldn’t.

So she concentrated on where she wished to go. That part was easy, and quick. Her blood knew the way; she scarcely needed to think of it.

After only few minutes of galloping, they burst out of the black woods into a familiar field, hissing with wheat half-harvested. The sky was a river of stars. Vasya sat up. Pozhar slowed, dancing, wild.

A small village stood on a little rise, beyond the cleared fields. It was indistinct against the stars, but Vasya knew its every fold and curve. Longing closed her throat. It was midnight, in the village where she’d been born. Somewhere near, in his own house, was her brother Alyosha, her sister Irina.

But she wasn’t there for them. One day, she might go back—bring Marya back to meet her people, to eat good bread sitting in warm summer grass. But now she could not look for comfort here. She was on another errand.

“Pozhar,” said Vasya. “Why did you come back?”

Ded Grib, said the mare. He’s been getting news from all the mushrooms in Rus’, as self-important as you could wish, telling everyone he is your greatest ally. Today he came to me saying you were in danger again and that I was a great lump for not helping. I went to find you only to silence him, but then I saw the fires you made. They were good fires. The mare sounded almost approving. Besides, you don’t weigh very much. You aren’t even uncomfortable.

“Thank you,” said Vasya. “Will you carry me farther?”

That depends, said the horse. Are we going to do anything interesting?

Vasya thought of Morozko, far away in the white silence of his winter world. There was a welcome for her there, she knew. But not help. She might pull him, a shadow, out once more from winter, but to what end? He could not fight off an army of Tatars as he was, and save her brother.

She could only think of one who might be able to.

She said grimly, “More interesting than you might wish.” Once more, she wondered if she was being fatally rash.

But then she thought of Midnight. What had she meant when she said, We hoped that you were different.

Vasya thought she knew.

At her touch, Pozhar wheeled and galloped back through the trees.

29.

Between Winter and Spring

THERE IS A CLEARING ON the border between winter and spring. Once Vasya would have said that the cusp of spring was a moment. But now she knew that it was also a place, at the edge of the lands of winter.

At the center of the clearing stood an oak-tree. Its trunk was vast as a peasant’s hut, its branches spread like the roof-beams of a house, like the bars of a prison.