But it was certainly cold enough for a wounded girl wearing only a cloak and shift to freeze to death. She meant to live.

So, moved only by the cold embers of will, Vasya set about making a fire. Her lips and fingertips were quite numb. She bruised her shins on things she could not see, scrabbling for the sticks and pine-needles for kindling.

After a half-blind effort that left her trembling, she had made a heap of sticks that she could barely see in the mouth of the oven. She felt over the entire house for flint and steel and charred cloth, but there were none.

She could make a fire with a flat piece of wood and patience, and strength in the forearms. But both her strength and patience were at an end.

Well, do it, or freeze. She took the stick between her hands. When she was a child, in the autumn woods, it had been a game. The stick, the board, the swift strong movement. Deftly handled, the smoke would turn into fire, and Vasya still remembered her brother Alyosha’s grin of delight, the first time she did it unaided.

But this time, though she labored and sweated, not a single curl of smoke rose from the board between her knees; no ember glowed in the groove. At last Vasya let the stick fall, shivering, defeated. Useless. She was going to die after all, with only the dust of someone else’s life for company.

She did not know how long she sat in the sour-smelling silence, not crying, not feeling anything, just hovering on the edge of unconsciousness.

She never knew what spurred her to raise her head once more, teeth sunk in her lower lip. She must have fire. She must. In her head, in her heart, was the terrible presence of fire, memory as strong as anything in her life, as though her soul were full of flames. Ridiculous that fire burned so bright in hated memory but there was no scrap of light here, where it could do some good.

Why should it be only in her mind? She shut her eyes, and for an instant, memory was so strong that she forgot it wasn’t.

Vasya smelled smoke first, and her eyes opened, just as her sticks burst into flame.

Shocked, almost frightened of her success, Vasya hurried to add wood. The room filled with light; the shadows retreated.

The hut looked even worse by firelight: ankle-deep in leaves, crumbling, mildewed, thick with dust. But there was a little woodpile she hadn’t seen: a few dry logs. And it was warmer now. The fire drove back the night and the chill. She was going to live. Vasya stretched out trembling hands to the fire.

A hand shot out of the oven and grasped her wrist.

10.

The Devil in the Oven

VASYA DREW A SINGLE, STARTLED breath, but she did not pull away. The hand was as small as a child’s, long-fingered, traced in red and gold from the firelight. It did not let her go. Instead, Vasya found herself pulling a tiny person into the room.