That surprised her. “You have already offered me my life. I didn’t take it; I saved myself. Why would I take anything less from you?”

The Bear did not answer directly. Instead, he looked up at the tree-fringed starlight, breathed deep of the summer night. She could see the stars reflected in his eye, as though he were drinking the sky after long darkness. She did not want to understand that joy. “I passed uncounted lives of men bound to a clearing at the edge of my brother’s lands,” said the Bear. “Do you think he was a good steward of the world while I slept?”

“At least Morozko did not leave destruction in his wake,” said Vasya. Beside her the mare was bleeding into the water. “What have

you been doing in Moscow?”

“Amusing myself,” said the Bear matter-of-factly. “My brother did the same once, although he likes to play the saint now. Once we were more alike. We are twins, after all.”

“If you are trying to make me trust you, it isn’t working.”

“But—” the Bear went on. “My brother thinks that men and chyerti can share this world. These same men that are spreading like sickness, rattling their church-bells, forgetting us. My brother is a fool. If men are unchecked, one day there will be no chyerti, no road through Midnight, no wonder in the world at all.”

Vasya did not wish to understand why the Bear raised his eyes in wonder to the night sky, and she did not want to agree with him now.

But it was true. All over Rus’, chyerti were faint as smoke. They guarded their waters and woods and households with hands that did not grasp, with minds that barely remembered. She said nothing.

“Men fear what they do not understand,” murmured the Bear.

“They hurt you. They beat you, spat on you, put you in the fire. Men will suck all the wildness out of the world, until there is no place for a witch-girl to hide. They will burn you and all your kind.” It was her deepest and most wretched fear. He must know that. “But it doesn’t have to be so,” the Bear continued. “We can save the chyerti, save the land between noon and midnight.”

“Can we?” asked Vasya. Her voice was not quite steady. “How?”

“Come with me to Moscow.” He was on his feet again, the unscarred half of his face ruddy in the firelight. “Help me throw down the bell-towers, break the grip of the princes. Be my ally and you will have vengeance on your enemies. No one will dare scorn you again.”

Medved was a spirit: no more made of flesh than Ded Grib, and yet in that clearing he seemed to pulse with raw life. “You killed my father,” Vasya said.

He spread his hands. “Your father threw himself upon my claws.

My brother got your allegiance with lies, didn’t he? With whispers

and half-truths in the dark and his two blue eyes, so tempting to maidens?”

She fought to keep all feeling from her face. The corner of his mouth curled before he continued. “But here I am, asking for your allegiance with nothing but the truth.”

“If you are here with the truth, then tell me what you want,” said Vasya. “With less art and more honesty.”

“I want an ally. Join me and take your vengeance. We, the old ones, will rule this land once more. That is what the chyerti want.

That is why the bagiennik brought you here. That is why they are all watching. For you to hear me, and agree.”

Was he lying?

She found herself, horribly, wondering how it would be, to agree, to let the rage inside her loose in a spasm of violence. She could feel the impulse echoed in the scarred figure before her. He understood her guilt, her sorrow, the fury that had come down on Ded Grib’s head.

“Yes,” he whispered. “We understand each other. We cannot make a new world without first breaking the old.”

“Breaking?” said Vasya. She hardly recognized her own voice.

“What will you break in the making of this new world?”

“Nothing that cannot be repaired. Think of it. Think of the girl-children that will not face the fire.”

She wanted to go to Moscow in power and throw the city down.

His wildness called to her, and the sorrow of his long imprisonment.

The golden mare stood very still.

“I would have my vengeance?” she murmured.

“Yes,” he said. “In full measure.”

“Would Konstantin Nikonovich die screaming?”

She thought he hesitated before answering. “He would die.”

“And who else would die, Medved?”

“Men and women die every day.”

“They die according to God’s will; they do not die for me,” said Vasya. The nails of her free hand tore into her palm. “Not one life lost is worth the price of my grief. Do you think that I’m a fool, that you can drip words like sweet poison in my ear? I am not your ally, monster, nor will I ever be.”

She thought that a murmur rose from the forest all around, but she couldn’t tell if it was a sound of delight or disappointment.

“Ah,” said the Bear. The regret in his voice seemed real. “So wise in some ways, little Vasilisa Petrovna, and yet so foolish in others. For of course if you do not join me, you cannot remain alive.”

“My life was the price of your freedom,” Vasya said. The lake was a cold presence at her back, the golden mare still stood warm and trembling beside her. “You cannot kill me.”

“I offered you your life,” said the Bear. “It is not my fault you are a stubborn fool and did not take it. My debt is paid. Besides, I am not going to kill you. You can join me alive. Or you can be my servant.”

His mouth quirked irrepressibly. “Less alive.”

VASYA HEARD A SOFT, shuffling footstep. Another. Vasya’s pulse sounded loud in her ears; in her mind echoed an old warning. The Bear is loose. Beware the dead.

“I am going to enjoy this,” said Medved. “Tell me what you decide.”

He stepped back. “Either way, I will give my brother your regrets.”

To her left, a dead man with red eyes and a filthy visage slunk into the light. To her right, a woman grinned, blood on her lips, a few locks of rotten hair still clinging to her bone-white skull. The dead things’ eyes were pits of hell: scarlet and black. When their mouths opened, the points of their teeth dazzled, sharp, in the last of the firelight. Vasya and the mare were surrounded by a shrinking half-circle.

The golden mare reared. For an instant, it seemed as though vast wings of flame flared from her back. But she came to earth, a horse still, and wounded. She couldn’t fly.

Vasya dropped her useless ax. Her soul was still full of remembered fire. She clenched her fists and forgot that the dead things were not burning.

It worked better than she could have hoped. Two went up like torches. The upyry screamed as they burned and blundered about, howling. She had to snatch up a branch and fend them off, her bare feet in the water. The golden mare backed up, striking out with frantic fore-hooves.