The hand on her arm continued to drag her along. “Come,” said that familiar voice. “Hurry.”
Vasya lifted her head, stared uncomprehending into Varvara’s grim, bruised face.
“How did you know?” she whispered.
“A message,” said Varvara jerkily, still dragging her.
She didn’t understand. “Marya,” Vasya managed. “Are Olga and Marya—”
“Alive,” said Varvara, and Vasya sagged in gratitude. “Unhurt.
Come.” She pulled Vasya on, half-carrying her through the retreating crowd. “You have to leave the city.”
“Leave?” Vasya whispered. “How? I have—I have not…”
Solovey. She could not form the word; grief would take the last of her strength.
“You do not need the horse,” said Varvara, voice hard. “Come.”
Vasya said nothing more; she was fighting a desperate battle to stay conscious. The ends of her ribs ground together. Her bare feet didn’t hurt anymore, numbed on the ice. But they didn’t work very well either, and so she stumbled and stumbled again, until Varvara’s arm was the only thing keeping her from falling.
The crowd churned behind them, scattering under the whips of Dmitrii’s men-at-arms. A voice called to Varvara, asking if the girl was sick, and Vasya felt a new bolt of terror.
Varvara returned a cool explanation, of a niece who’d fainted with the bloodletting, and all the while her hand made more bruises on Vasya’s arm as she dragged her up from the riverbank and into the darkness of the sapling woods that grew beside the posad. Vasya tried to understand what was happening.
Varvara halted abruptly near an oak-sapling, bare with the end of winter. “Polunochnitsa,” she said to the dark.
Vasya knew a person—a devil—called Polunochnitsa, Lady Midnight. But what could her sister’s body-servant know of—
The Bear loomed out of the shadows, firelight striping his face.
Vasya wrenched back. Varvara followed her gaze, her eyes darting into the dark like a blind woman’s. “Do you think I’d lose you in this?” the Bear demanded, half-angry, half-amused. “You reek of terror. I could follow that anywhere.”
Varvara could not see him, but her hand tightened convulsively on Vasya’s arm. Vasya realized that she had heard him. “Eater,” Varvara breathed. “Here? Midnight.” The voices of the dispersing mob filtered up from the river below.
The Bear shot Varvara a speculative look. “You’re the other one, aren’t you? I forgot the old woman had twins. How did you contrive to live so long?”
Vasya thought the words should make some kind of sense, but understanding slipped away before she could seize it. To Vasya, the Bear added, “She means to send you through Midnight. I wouldn’t, if I were you. You will die there, just as surely as in the fire.”
The voices of the crowd came closer as the people cut through the woods back to the posad. In moments, someone would see them, and then…Torches threw flickers of light through the scraggly trees. A man caught sight of the two women. “What are you doing, skulking there?”
“Girls!” said another voice. “Look at them, all alone. I could have a girl, after watching that…”
“You can die at their hands or you can come with me now,” the Bear said to Vasya. “It is all one to me; I will not ask again.”
One of Vasya’s eyes was swollen shut, the other blurred; perhaps that had made her slow to pick out a fourth person, watching from the shadows. This person had skin that was violet-black, and her hair was pale, blowing white across eyes like two stars. She was looking from the women to the Bear and said not a word.
This was the demon called Midnight.
“I do not understand,” Vasya whispered. She stood frozen between Varvara, who had kept secrets, and the Bear, who offered poisonous safety.
Beyond them, silent, stood Lady Midnight. At the demon’s back, the woods seemed to have changed. They grew thicker, wilder, darker.
Varvara said, low and fierce in Vasya’s ear, “What do you see?”
“The Bear,” Vasya breathed. “And the demon called Midnight. And
—a darkness. There is darkness behind her, such darkness.” She was shaking from head to foot.
“Run into the dark,” Varvara whispered to Vasya. “That was the message I had, and the promise. Touch the oak-sapling and run into the dark. That is the road, from here to the oak-tree by the lake. The road through Midnight opens every night to those with eyes to see.
There will be refuge for you by the lake. Hold it in your mind; a stretch of water, shining, with a great oak that grows at the bow-curve of its shore. Run into the dark, and be brave.”
Whom to trust? The voices of men were growing louder. Their crunching footsteps broke into a run. Her only choices were fire or
darkness or the devil in between.
“Go— go! ” shouted Varvara. She placed Vasya’s bloody palm on the bark and shoved. Vasya found herself stumbling forward. The darkness loomed up, and then the Bear’s hand closed about her arm, an instant before the night swallowed her. She was spun to face him, her numb feet clumsy and scraping on the snow. “Go into the darkness,” he breathed. “And you will die.”
She had no words, no courage, no defiance left. She made no answer at all. The only thing that drove her to gather all her strength and wrench away from him, fling herself into the night, was the desire to get away, from him, from the noise, from the smell of fire.
She broke his grip and hurled herself into the dark. Instantly, the lights and the noise of Moscow were swallowed up. She was in a forest all alone, beneath an unsullied sky. She took one step forward, and then another. And then she tripped, fell to her knees, and could not muster the strength to rise. The last thing she heard was a half-familiar voice. “Dead just like that? Well, perhaps the old woman was wrong.”
Behind her, somewhere, it seemed the Bear was laughing again.
And then Vasya lay still, unconscious.
