“What else am I to do?” Vasya retorted. Tears of bewildered exhaustion gathered, though she did not let them fall. “My own people will kill me if I go home. Shall I become a nun? No—I cannot bear it. Better to die on the road.”
“Many people say ‘Better to die’ until the time comes to do it,” Morozko returned. “Do you want to die alone in some forest hollow? Go back to Lesnaya Zemlya. Your people will forget, I swear it. All will be as it was. Go home and let your brother protect you.”
Sudden anger burned out Vasya’s gathering hurt. She pushed back her chair and stood again. “I am not a dog,” she snapped. “You may tell me to go home, but I may choose not to. Do you think that is all I want, in all my life—a royal dowry, and a man to force his children into me?”
Morozko was scarce taller than she, yet she had to hold herself to stillness before his pale, scathing stare. “You are talking like a child. Do you think that anyone, in all this world of yours, cares what you want? Even princes do not have what they want, and neither do maidens. There is no life for you on the road, nothing but death, soon or late.”
Vasya bit her lips. “Do you think that I—” she began hotly, but the stallion had lost patience, hearing the fierce anguish in her voice. He thrust his head over her shoulder and his teeth snapped a finger’s breadth from Morozko’s face.
“Solovey!” Vasya cried. “What are you—？” She tried shoving him out of the way, but he would not go.
I’ll bite him, the stallion said. His tail lashed his sides; one hoof scraped the wooden floor.
“He’d bleed water, and turn you into a snow horse,” said Vasya, still shoving. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Go away, you ox,” Morozko advised the stallion.
Solovey did not move for a moment, but then Vasya said, “Go on.” He met her eye, flicked his tongue in halfhearted apology, and turned away.
The tension had broken. Morozko sighed a little. “No, I should not have spoken so.” Some of the nasty edge had gone from his voice. He sank once more into his chair. Vasya did not move. “But—the house in the fir-grove is no place for you now, much less the road. You shouldn’t have been able to find the house anymore, even with Solovey, not after—” He met her eyes, broke off, resumed. “There, among your own kind, that is the world for you. I left you safely bestowed with your brother, the Bear asleep, the priest fled into the forest. Could you not have been satisfied with that?” His question was almost plaintive.
“No,” said Vasya. “I am going on. I will see the world beyond this forest, and I will not count the cost.”
A silence. Then he laughed, softly and unwillingly. “Well done, Vasilisa Petrovna. I have never been gainsaid in my own house before.”
It is high time, then, she thought, though she did not say it aloud. Had something changed about him since that night he flung her across his saddlebow to keep her from the Bear? What was it? Were his eyes bluer now? Some new clarity in the bones of his face?
Vasya felt suddenly shy. A fresh silence fell. In the pause, all her weariness seemed to strike, as though it had waited for her to let down her guard. She leaned hard against the table to steady herself.
He saw it and got to his feet. “Sleep here, tonight. Mornings are wiser than evenings.”
“I can’t sleep.” She meant it, though the table was the only thing keeping her upright. An edge of horror crept into her voice. “The Bear is waiting in my dreams, and Dunya, and Father. I’d rather stay awake.”
She could smell the winter night on his skin. “That at least I can give you,” he said. “A night of sleep untroubled.”
She hesitated, exhausted, untrusting. His hands could give sleep, of a kind. But it was a strange, thick sleep, a cousin to death. She could feel him watching her.
“No,” he said suddenly. “No.” The roughness in his voice startled her. “No, I will not touch you. Sleep as you may. I will see you in the morning.”
He turned away, spoke a soft word to his horse. She did not turn until she heard the sound of hoofbeats, and when she did, Morozko and his white mare were gone.
MOROZKO’S SERVANTS WERE NOT invisible—not exactly. Out of the corner of her eye, Vasya would sometimes catch a whisking movement, or a dark shape. If she were quick, she might turn and get the impression of a face: seamed as oak-bark or cherry-cheeked or mushroom-gray and scowling. But Vasya never saw them when she was looking for them. They moved between one breath and the next, between one blink and another.