The words seemed to run together in her mind; she couldn’t make sense of them. The wooden bird was carved, agonizingly, to look like a nightingale. She had seen the winter-king, the Bear’s brother, carving a bird once, beneath a spruce tree in the snow. Her hand closed about the carving even as she said, “You’re lying. You didn’t save my life.” She wished for a drink of water. She wished she could wake up.

“Not yet,” the Bear said and glanced up at the burning cage. The mockery vanished from his face. “But you will not escape the city, unless you come with me.” He caught her hand suddenly, grip sure. “The bargain was for your life. I have sworn it, Vasilisa Petrovna. Come. Now.”

Not a dream. Not a dream. He killed my father. She licked her lips, forced her voice to work. “If you are free, what will you do after you save my life?”

His scarred mouth quirked. “Stay with me and find out.”

“Never.”

“Very well. Then I will see you safe, as I promised, and the rest doesn’t concern you.”

He was a monster. But she didn’t think he was lying. Why would the winter-king do such a thing? Was she now to owe this monster her life? What would that make him? What would that make her?

With death all around her, Vasya hesitated. Shrieks rose suddenly from the crowd and she flinched, but they were not screaming at her. A mass of horsemen was beating a way through the mob. Eyes turned from the fire to the riders; even Medved glanced up.

Vasya jerked herself away and ran. She didn’t look back, for if she did, she would stop, would yield in her despair to her enemy’s promises or to the death still beating at her back. As she ran, she tried to be like a ghost, like a chyert herself. Magic is forgetting the world was ever other than as you willed it. And perhaps it worked. No one called out; no one so much as glanced in her direction.

“Fool,” said the Bear. His voice was in her ear, though a whole mass of people stood between them. His weary amusement was worse than rage. “I am telling you the truth. That is what frightens you.” Still she darted through the crowd, a fire-smelling ghost, trying not to hear that dry, metallic voice. “I will let them kill you,” said the Bear. “You can leave here with me, or you will not leave at all.”

That she believed. Still she ran, sinking herself deeper in the crowd, sick with terror, sick at the stink, expecting every instant to be seen, to be seized. The carved nightingale felt cold and solid in her sweaty fist: a promise she didn’t understand.

And then the Bear’s voice was raised up again, not directed at her. “Look! Look—what is that? A ghost—no—it is she the witch; she has escaped the fire! Magic! Black sorcery! She is there! She is there!”