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.

Perhaps she was not alone.

“I mean no harm,” said Vasya aloud, trying to ignore her chattering teeth.

Nothing happened. Vasya paddled in a circle again. Still nothing.

Panic in this cold water and she was as good as dead. She must simply take her best guess and pray.

With a splash like a shout, a creature shot out of the water in front of her. Two slitted nostrils lay between its bulbous eyes; its teeth were the color of rock, hooked over a narrow jaw. When it exhaled, its breath steamed and oily liquid ran down its face.

“I am going to drown you,” it whispered, and lunged.

Vasya made no answer; instead her cupped hand came down on the water like a thunderclap. The chyert jerked back and Vasya snapped, “An immortal sorcerer could not kill me and neither could a priest with all Moscow at his beck—what makes you think you can?”

“You came into my lake,” returned the chyert, baring black teeth.

“To swim, not to die!”

“That is for me to decide.”

Vasya tried to ignore the goad of her aching ribs and to speak calmly. “For trespassing, I am guilty before you, but I do not owe you my life.”

The chyert breathed scalding steam onto Vasya’s face. “I am the bagiennik,” he growled. “And I tell you your life is forfeit.”

“Try and take it then,” snapped Vasya. “But I am not afraid of you.”

The chyert lowered his head, churning the blue water to froth. “Are you not? What did you mean that the immortal sorcerer could not kill you?”

Vasya’s legs were on the edge of cramping. “I killed Kaschei Bezsmertnii in Moscow on the last night of Maslenitsa.”

“Liar!” snapped the bagiennik, and lunged again, nearly swamping her.

Vasya didn’t flinch. Much of her concentration was taken with staying above water. “Liar I have been,” she said, “and I have paid for

it. But about this I am telling the truth: I killed him.”

The bagiennik shut his mouth abruptly.

Vasya turned away, looking for the shore.

“I know you now,” murmured the bagiennik. “You have the look of your family. You took the road through Midnight.”

Vasya had no time for the bagiennik’s revelations. “I did,” she managed. “But my family is far away. As I said, I mean no harm.

Where is the shore?”

“Far away? Near at hand too. You understand neither yourself nor the nature of this place.”

She was beginning to sink lower in the water. “Grandfather, the shore.”

The bagiennik’s black teeth shone with water. He slid nearer, moving like a water-snake. “Come, it will be quick. Drown, and I will live a thousand years on the memory of your blood.”

“No.”

“What use are you otherwise?” demanded the bagiennik, gliding nearer and nearer still. “Drown.”

Vasya was using the last of her strength just to keep her numb limbs churning. “What use am I? None. I have made more mistakes than I can count, and the world has no place for me. And yet, as I said before, I am still not going to die to please you .”

The bagiennik snapped his teeth right in her face, and Vasya, heedless of her wounds, caught him round the neck. He thrashed and almost threw her loose. But he didn’t. In her hands was the strength that had broken the bars of her cage in Moscow. “You will not threaten me,” Vasya added, into the chyert’s ear, and sucked in a breath, just as they plunged. When they surfaced, the girl still clung.

Gasping, she said, “I may die tomorrow. Or live to sour old age. But you are only a wraith in a lake, and you will not command me.”

The bagiennik stilled and Vasya let go, coughing out water, feeling the strain in muscles along her broken side. Her nose and mouth were full of water. A few of her reopened cuts streamed blood. The bagiennik nosed at her bleeding skin. She didn’t move.

With surprising mildness, the bagiennik said, “Perhaps you are not useless after all. I have not felt such strength since—” He broke off. “I will bring you to shore.” He looked suddenly eager.

Vasya found herself clinging to a sinuous body, scorching hot. She shivered as life came back into her limbs. Warily, she said, “What did you mean, that I have the look of my family?”

Undulating through the water, the bagiennik said, “Don’t you know?” There was a strange undercurrent of eagerness in his voice.

“Once the old woman and her twins lived in the house by the oak-tree and tended the horses that graze on the lake-shore.”

“What old woman? I have been to the house by the oak-tree and it is a ruin.”

“Because the sorcerer came,” said the bagiennik. “A man, young and fair. He said he wished to tame a horse, but it was Tamara, her mother’s heir, whom he won over. They swam together in the lake at Midsummer; he whispered his promises in the autumn twilight. In the end, for his sake, Tamara put a golden bridle on the golden mare: the Zhar Ptitsa.”

Now Vasya was listening closely. This was her own history, laid out casually by a lake-spirit in a country far away. Her grandmother’s name had been Tamara. Her grandmother had come from a distant land, riding a marvelous horse.

“The sorcerer took the golden mare and left the lands by the lake,”

continued the bagiennik. “Tamara rode after him, weeping, swearing to recover the mare, swearing that she loved him in the same breath.

But she never came back, and neither did the sorcerer. He made himself master of a great swath of the lands of men. No one ever knew what happened to Tamara. The old woman, in grief, shut and guarded every road to this place except the road through Midnight.”

There were a hundred questions darting through her head. Her tongue snatched up the first. “What happened to the other horses?”

Vasya asked. “I saw a few of them last night and they were wild.”

The water-spirit swam in silence awhile; she did not think he would answer. Then the bagiennik said, his voice deep and savage,

“The ones you saw are all that remain now. The sorcerer slew all that strayed away from the lake. Occasionally he caught a foal, but they never lasted long—they died or they escaped.”

“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.