“Mother of God,” Vasya whispered. “How? Why?”

“They are the most marvelous things in all the world, the horses of this land. The sorcerer couldn’t ride them. He couldn’t tame them or use them. So he killed them.” Almost too low to hear, the bagiennik added, “The ones that were left—the old woman kept them here, safe. But she is gone now, and there are fewer every year. The world has lost its wonder.”

Vasya didn’t speak. Her memory was a welter of flame, and Solovey’s lifeblood.

“Where did they come from?” she whispered. “The horses.”

“Who knows? The earth brought them forth; their very natures are magic. Of course men and chyerti want to tame them. Some of the horses take riders willingly,” added the bagiennik. “The swan, the dove, the owl, and the raven. And the nightingale—”

“I know what happened to the nightingale.” Vasya could barely say it. “He was my friend and he is dead.”

“The horses do not choose unwisely,” said the bagiennik.

Vasya said nothing at all.

After a long silence, lifting her head, she asked, “Can you tell me where the Bear has imprisoned the winter-king?”

“Beyond recall; long ago and far away and deep in the dark that does not change,” said the water-spirit. “Do you think the Bear would risk his twin winning free now?”

“No,” said Vasya. “No, I suppose he wouldn’t.” Suddenly she felt unutterably tired; the world was huge and strange and maddening; nothing seemed real. She neither knew what to do nor how to do it. She laid her head on the chyert’s warm back and did not speak again.

SHE DIDN’T NOTICE THE LIGHT change until she heard the murmur of water on pebbled cove.

In the time they’d been swimming, the sun had tilted west, cold and yellow-green. She was in summer twilight on the cusp of night. The golden day was gone, as though the lake itself had swallowed it. Vasya rolled with a splash into the shallows and stumbled onto the shore. The shadows of the trees stretched long and gray toward the water; her clothes were a cold heap in the shade.

The bagiennik was only a smudge of darkness, half-submerged in the lake. Vasya rounded on him in sudden fear. “What happened to the day?” She saw the bagiennik’s eyes beneath the water, shining rows of teeth. “Did you bring me into twilight on purpose? Why?”

“Because you killed the sorcerer. Because you did not let me kill you. Because word has gone out among the chyerti and we are all curious.” The bagiennik’s answer floated, disembodied, out of the shadows. “I advise you to make a fire. We will be watching.”

“Why?” Vasya demanded again, but the bagiennik had already sunk beneath the water and disappeared.

The girl stood still, furious, trying to ignore her fear. The day was rushing down around her as though the forest itself was determined to catch her at nightfall. Used to her own unthinking endurance, she now had to contend with the weakness of her battered flesh. She was half a day’s walking from the house by the oak-tree.