When the sun was high overhead, she remembered caution, and her promise to the domovaya. She had not yet regained her strength, and that she would need, whatever came next. “I have all I need,” she said. “I must get back.”

Ded Grib popped out from behind a stump. “You haven’t come to the best part,” he protested, pointing to a distant flash of trees clad in scarlet and gold. As though autumn, like summer, was a place you could walk into. “A little farther.”

Vasya was intensely curious. She also thought hungrily of chestnuts and pine-nuts. But caution won. “I have learned the cost of being reckless,” she told Ded Grib. “I have enough, for one day.”

He looked disgruntled, but said nothing else. Reluctantly, Vasya turned back the way she had come. It was hot in this summer country. She was dressed for early spring, in wool shirt and stockings. Her laden basket swung from her arm. Her feet throbbed now; her ribs ached.

To her left, the forest whispered, and watched. To her right lay the lake, summer-blue. Between the trees, she glimpsed a little sandy cove. Thirsty, Vasya strayed nearer the water, knelt, drank. The water was clear as air, so cold it made her teeth ache. Her bandages itched. The sponge-bath that morning had done nothing to ease her bone-deep sense of filth.

Abruptly, Vasya stood and began to strip. The domovaya would be cross with her for undoing all the careful wrapping, but Vasya couldn’t bring herself to care. Her hands were trembling with eagerness. As though the clean water could scour both the dirt from her skin and memory from her mind.

“What are you doing?” asked Ded Grib. He was staying well away from the sand and the rocks, hiding in the shade.

“I am going to swim,” said Vasya.

Ded Grib opened his mouth, closed it again.

Vasya paused. “Is there a reason why I shouldn’t?”

The mushroom-spirit shook his head, slowly, but he gave the water a nervous look. Perhaps he didn’t like water.

“Well,” said Vasya. She hesitated, but Mother of God, she wanted to peel off her own skin and become someone else; a plunge in the lake might at least quiet her mind. “I won’t go far. Perhaps you will look after my basket?”

SHE WADED IN. AT FIRST, she walked on rocks, wincing. Then the bottom became slick mud. She dove and came up yelling. The freezing lake closed her lungs and set her senses ablaze. She put her back to the shore and swam. The water delighted her, beneath the heat of the unaccustomed sun. But it was very cold. At last she halted, ready to turn back, scrub herself in the shallows, lie drying in the sun…

But when she turned, all she saw was water.

Vasya spun in a circle. Nothing. It was as though the whole world had sunk suddenly into the lake. For a few moments she treaded water, shocked, beginning to be afraid.