BUT HELPING THE MARE was not so easy. Pozhar laid back her ears if either of them tried to touch her. When she switched her tail, showers of sparks tumbled to the summer earth. One began to smolder; Vasya put it out with a booted foot. “Wounded or no, you are a menace.”

The old woman snorted. The mare glared. But Pozhar was exhausted, too. At last, when Vasya ran a hand from her shoulder to her knee, she only shuddered. “This is going to hurt,” said Vasya grimly. “You are not to kick.”

I am not promising anything, said the mare, ears pinned.

Between them, they convinced the mare to stand still long enough for the girl to sew up her leg, although Vasya had a few new bruises by the time it was done. After, when a shaken Pozhar had escaped, limping, to graze at a safe distance, Vasya sank to the earth beside the fire, pushing sweaty hair off her face. Her clothes had dried in the heat of the mare’s body. It was still blackest night, although it seemed hours since the Bear had come.

The woman had a pot in her basket, salt, some onions. When she thrust her hand in the lake, she withdrew fish, as naturally as a woman pulls bread from her own oven. She set about making soup, as though it were not midnight.

Vasya watched her. “Is it your house?” she asked. “The house by the oak-tree?”

The old woman was gutting the fish and didn’t look up. “It was, once.”

“The chest—did you leave it there? For me to find?”

“Yes,” said the woman, still not looking up.

“You knew that I—you are the witch of the wood then,” said Vasya.

“Who tends the horses.” She thought of Marya and the old, dread name, the fairy-tale name, came to her lips unbidden. With a shiver, she said, “Baba Yaga. You are my great-grandmother.”

The old woman brayed a short laugh. The fish guts shone darkly between her fingers when she flung them back into the lake. “Near enough, I suppose. This witch and that were woven into a single fairy tale. Perhaps I am one of the witches.”

“How did you know I was here?”

“Polunochnitsa told me, of course,” returned the old woman. She was rummaging in the contents of Vasya’s basket now, adding greens to the pot. Her eyes gleamed in the dark, big and wild and reddened by the fire. “Although she almost waited until it was too late; she wanted you and the Bear to meet.”

“Why?”

“To see what you’d do.”

“Why?” Vasya asked again. She felt perilously close to breaking into a child’s whining complaint. Her feet ached, and her ribs, and the cut on her face. More than ever she felt as if she’d been thrust into a tale she hardly understood.

The old woman didn’t answer at once. She studied Vasya again.

Finally she said, “Most of the chyerti do not want to strike a blow at the world of men. But they don’t want to fade either. They are torn.”

Vasya frowned. “Are they? What has that to do with me?”

“Why do you think Morozko went to such lengths to save your life?

Yes, Polunochnitsa told me that, too.”

“I don’t know why,” said Vasya, and this time her voice rose a note despite her best efforts. “Do you think I wanted him to? It was utter madness.”

A quick, malicious gleam from beneath the old woman’s lids. “Was it? I suppose you’ll never know.”

“I would if you’d tell me.”

“That—no. It is something you must come to understand yourself, or not.” The old woman grinned, still with that edge of malice. She tossed salt in the soup. “Is it an easy road you’re after, child?”

“If it were, I’d not have left home,” retorted Vasya, holding hard to courtesy. “But I am tired of stumbling blind in the dark.”

The old woman was stirring the pot now; the firelight caught a strange expression on her face. “It is always dark here,” she said.

Vasya, still bursting with questions, found herself silenced, ashamed of herself. In a different voice, she said, “You are the one who sent Midnight to me, on the road to Moscow.”

“I am,” said the old woman. “I was curious, when I heard a girl-child of my blood had gone wandering, with a horse from the lake.”

Vasya flinched at the reminder of Solovey. The soup was ready; the witch ladled up a large bowl for herself, a meager one for Vasya.

Vasya didn’t mind; she’d stuffed herself on fish earlier. But the broth was good; she drank it slowly.

“Babushka,” she asked, “did you ever see your daughters, after they left this place?”

Baba Yaga’s old face grew still as carven stone. “No. They abandoned me.”

Vasya thought of Tamara’s withered ghost, wondered if this woman could have prevented that horror.

“My girl plotted with the sorcerer to take the firebird by force!”

snapped the old woman, as though she could read Vasya’s thought. “I could not catch them. The mare is the fastest thing that runs. But at least my daughter was punished.”

Vasya said, “She was your child. Do you know what the sorcerer did to Tamara?”

“She did it to herself.”

“Shall I tell you what happened to her?” Vasya asked, growing angry. “About her courage and her despair? Of how she was trapped in the terem of Moscow until she died? And even after! You shut your lands and didn’t even try to help her?”

“She betrayed me, ” retorted the witch. “She chose a man over her own kin; gave the golden mare into Kaschei’s keeping. My Varvara left me too. She tried first to take Tamara’s place, but she could not.

Of course she could not; she had not the sight. So, she left, the coward.”

Vasya stilled, struck with sudden understanding.

“I didn’t need either of them,” the old woman went on. “I shut the way in. I shut every road but the Midnight-road and that road is mine, for Lady Midnight is my servant. I have kept my lands inviolate until a new heir should come.”

“Kept your lands inviolate?” Vasya demanded incredulously.

“While your children were trapped in the world of men, while your daughter was abandoned by her lover?”

“Yes,” said the witch. “She deserved it.”

Vasya said nothing.

“But,” the old woman went on, her voice softening, “I have a new heir now. I knew you’d come, one day. You can speak to horses; you awakened the domovaya with fire, you survived the bagiennik. You will not betray me. You will live in the house by the oak-tree and I will come every midnight to teach you all I know. How to master chyerti. How to keep your own people safe. Don’t you want to know those things, poor little girl, with your burned face?”

“Yes,” said Vasya. “I do want to know those things.”