How could Morozko be here?

Vasya climbed the palisade and crept toward the great house.

She was quite near when the fresh-fallen snow of its dooryard quivered and a chyert emerged. Vasya halted abruptly. It was the dvorovoi, the dooryard-guardian, and he was not tiny, like all the other dvoroviye she had ever known. He was as tall as she, his eyes fierce.

Vasya bowed, with wary respect.

“Stranger, what are you doing here?” he growled.

Her mouth and throat were dry, but she managed, “Grandfather, I am here for the feasting.” Not quite a lie. She was hungry; Ded Grib’s camp-rations seemed an age ago.

Silence. Then the dvorovoi said, “You have come a long way, only for the feasting.”

“I am also here for the winter-king,” she admitted, low. It was difficult to deceive a house-spirit, and unwise to try.

The dvorovoi’s eyes measured her. She held her breath. “Go through the door then,” he said simply, and vanished once more into the snow.

Could it be so simple? Impossible. But Vasya walked toward the door. Once she had loved feasts. Now all she heard was too much noise, all she smelled was fire. With an odd detachment, she looked down at her hand, realized that it was shaking.

Gathering her courage, she went up the stairs, between bars of lamplight. A dog began to bark. Then another, a third, a whole chorus. Next moment, the door opened, creaking in the cold.

But it was not a man who came out, or, what Vasya had feared, several men, with blades. It was a woman, alone. She was accompanied by a torrent of warm, smoky air, rich with the smell of cooking.

Vasya stood still, her whole being bent on not fleeing into the shadows.

The woman’s hair was the color of good bronze. Her eyes were like amber beads; she was almost as tall as Vasya. The grivna on her throat was gold; gold there was too on her wrists and ears, set on her belt, plaited in her hair.

Vasya knew how she must look to this woman: wild-eyed after the long darkness, lips trembling with cold and terror, clothes crackling with frost. She tried to sound eminently sane when she said, “God be with you,” but her voice was hoarse and faint.

“The domovoi said we had a visitor,” the woman said. “Who are you, stranger?”

The domovoi? Can she hear—? “I am a traveler,” Vasya said. “I came to ask supper and a place for the night.”

“What is a maiden doing, traveling alone at Midwinter? And dressed so?”

So much for her boy’s clothes. Vasya said carefully, “The world is not kind to a maiden alone. Safer to dress as a boy.”

The frown between the woman’s eyes deepened. “You have no sling, no pack, no beast. You are not dressed to spend even one night out of doors. Where have you come from, girl?”

“From the forest,” Vasya improvised. “I fell into the river and lost all I had.”