It was still dark, but now she could see. A faint sickle moon cast wavering light over a strange forest. Snow lay only in patches; mist veiled the trees, luminous in the moonlight. Vasya smelled cold, wet earth. She stumbled to her feet, turning in a circle. Darkness all around. She tried to remember the last hours, but there was only a vague memory of terror and flight. What had she done? Where was she?

“Well,” said a voice, “you are not dead after all.”

The voice had come from above. Vasya wrenched instinctively back, even as she searched for the speaker, her good eye watering. Finally, on a limb overhead, she caught sight of star-pale hair and bright eyes. As her own eyes adjusted, Vasya began vaguely to make out the shape of the midnight-demon, perched on the branch of an oak-tree and leaning against the trunk.

A deeper patch of black stirred in the shadows below the tree. Vasya, squinting, could just make out a marvelous black horse, grazing by moonlight. He lifted his head to look at her. Vasya’s heart thumped once, loud in her ears, and memory came rushing back: blood sticky on her hands, Father Konstantin’s face, fire…

She stood perfectly still. If she moved, if she made a sound, she would flee, scream, go mad with memory, or the impossibility of this darkness, with Moscow nowhere in sight. What was real? This? Her horse dead, her life saved by magic? She shuddered, fell to her knees, pressing her hands into the icy, wet earth. Trying to understand was like grasping at rain. For a long time, all she could do was breathe, and feel her hands on the ground.

Then, with a terrible effort, she raised her head. The words came slowly. “Where am I?”

The demon let out a little sigh. “And in your right mind, too.” She sounded faintly surprised. “This is my realm. The country called Midnight.” The curve of her mouth was cold. “I bid you welcome.”

Vasya tried to slow her breathing. “Where is Moscow?”

“Who knows?” said Polunochnitsa. She slid from the limb of her tree, fell lightly to earth. “Not nearby. My realm is not made up of days or seasons, but of midnights. You can cross the world in an instant, so long as it is midnight where you are going. Or, more likely, you can die trying, or go mad.”

“I was told,” Vasya said thickly, remembering, “that I must find a lake. With an oak-tree growing on the shore.”

Polunochnitsa lifted a pale brow. “Which lake? My realm contains enough lakes to keep you searching for a thousand lives of men.”

Search? Vasya could barely stand. “Will you help me?”

The black horse flicked his ears.

“Help you?” answered Midnight. “I did help you. I have made you free of my realm. I even kept you here just now while you lay insensible. Must I do more?” Polunochnitsa’s hair fell like cold rain over the darkness of her skin. “You were discourteous at our last meeting.”