They used to beg, when I walked among men, Morozko had told her once. If they saw me, they would beg. Evil came of that; better I step softly, better only the dead and the dying can see me.
Well, she was cursed with sight; he could not hide from her. Now it was her turn to beg. Behind her, the women muttered, but his eyes were the only things she could see.
She crossed the room without thinking and put a hand in the center of his chest. “Please go.” For an instant, she might have been touching a shadow, but then his flesh was real, though cold. He drew away as though her hand hurt him.
“Vasya,” he said. Was that feeling, in his indifferent face? She reached for him again, pleading. When her hands found his, he stilled, looking troubled and less like a nightmare.
“I am here,” he told her. “I do not choose.”
“You can choose,” she returned, following him when he drew back. “Leave my sister alone. Let her live.”
Death’s shadow stretched nearly to where Olga sat, spent, on the bathhouse-bench, surrounded by sweating women. Vasya did not know what the others saw, or if they thought she was speaking to the darkness.
He loved Vasya’s mother, the people had said of her father. He loved that Marina Ivanovna. She died bringing Vasilisa forth, and Pyotr Vladimirovich put half his soul in the earth when they buried her.
Her sister wailed, a thin and bone-chilling cry. “Blood,” Vasya heard, from the crowd beside. “Blood—too much blood. Get the priest.”
“Please!” Vasya cried to Morozko. “Please!”
The noise of the bathhouse faded and the walls faded with it. Vasya found herself standing in an empty wood. Black trees cast gray shadows over the white snow, and Death stood before her.
He wore black. The frost-demon had eyes of palest blue, but this—his older, stranger self—had eyes like water: colorless, or nearly. He stood taller than she had ever seen him, and stiller.
A faint, gasping cry. Vasya let go his hands and turned. Olga crouched in the snow, translucent and bloody, naked, swallowing her anguished breathing.
Vasya stooped and gathered her sister up. Where were they? Was this what lay beyond life? A forest and a single figure, waiting…Somewhere beyond the trees she could smell the hot reek of the bathhouse. Olga’s skin was warm, but the smell and the heat were fading. The forest was so cold. Vasya held her sister tightly; tried to pour all the heat she had—her burning, furious life—into Olga. Her hands felt hot enough to scorch, but the jewel hung bitterly cold between her breasts.
“You cannot be here, Vasya,” the death-god said, and a hint of surprise threaded his uninflected voice.
“Cannot?” Vasya retorted. “You cannot have my sister.” She clung to Olga, looking for a way back. The bathhouse was still there—all around them—she could smell it. But she didn’t know which steps would take them there.
Olga hung slack in Vasya’s arms, her eyes glazed and milky. She turned her head and breathed a question at the death-god. “What of my baby? What of my son? Where is he?”
“It is a daughter, Olga Petrovna,” Morozko returned. He spoke without feeling and without judgment, low and clear and cold. “You cannot both live.”
His words struck Vasya like two fists and she clutched her sister. “No.”
With a terrible effort, Olga straightened up, her face drained of color and of beauty both. She put Vasya’s arms aside. “No?” she said to the frost-demon.
Morozko bowed. “The child cannot be born alive,” he said evenly. “The women may cut it from you, or you may live and let it smother and be born dead.”
“She,” said Olga, her voice no more than a thread. Vasya tried to speak and found she could not. “She. A daughter.”
“As you say, Olga Petrovna.”
“Well, then, let her live,” said Olga simply, and put out a hand.
Vasya could not bear it. “No!” she cried, and flung herself on Olga, struck the outstretched hand away, wrapped her sister in her arms. “Live, Olya,” she whispered. “Think of Marya and Daniil. Live, live.”
The death-god’s eyes narrowed.
“I will die for my child, Vasya,” Olga said. “I am not afraid.”
“No,” Vasya breathed. She thought she heard Morozko speak. But she did not care what he said. Such a current of love and rage and loss ran between her and her sister at that moment that all else was drowned and forgotten. Vasya put forth all her strength—and she dragged Olya by force back to the bathhouse.