The mare’s ears went forward and back.
“I did not,” he said abruptly. “I cannot. Yet every time I go near her, the bond tightens. What immortal ever knew what it was like to number his days? Yet I can feel the hours passing when she is near.”
The mare nosed again at the deep snow. Morozko resumed his pacing.
Let her go, then, said the mare, quietly, from behind him. Let her find her own fate. You cannot love and be immortal. Do not let it come to that. You are not a man.
VASYA DID NOT LEAVE the space under the spruce-tree that day, although she meant to. “I am never going home,” she said to Solovey, around a lump in her throat. “I am well. Why tarry here?”
Because it was warm under the spruce—actually warm—with the fire snapping merrily, and all her limbs still felt slow and feeble. So Vasya stayed, and made porridge, then soup from the dried meat and salt in her saddlebag. She wished she had the energy to snare rabbits.
The fire burned on steadily, whether or not she added wood. She wondered how the snow above it did not melt, how she was not smoked out of her place beneath the spruce.
Magic, she thought restlessly. Perhaps I can learn magic. Then I would never go in fear of traps, or pursuit.
When the snow was blue-hollowed with the failing day, and the fire had grown a touch brighter than the world outside, Vasya looked up to find Morozko standing just inside the ring of light.
Vasya said, “I am not going home.”
“That,” he returned, “is obvious, despite my best efforts. Do you mean to set off straightaway and ride through the night?”
A chill wind shook the spruce-branches. “No,” she said.
He nodded once, curtly, and said, “Then I will build up the fire.”
This time she watched him carefully when he put a hand against the skin of the spruce, and bark and limb crumbled dry and dead into his waiting palm. But she still did not know exactly what he did. First there was living wood, then, between one blink and the next, it became kindling. Her eyes kept wanting to skitter away, at the strangeness of his almost-human hand, doing a thing a man could not.
When the fire was roaring, Morozko tossed Vasya a rabbit-skin bag, then went to tend the white mare. Vasya caught the bag by reflex, staggering; it was heavier than it looked. She undid the ties and discovered apples, chestnuts, cheese, and a loaf of dark bread. She almost yelled in childlike delight.
When Morozko slid back through the curtain of spruce, he found her smashing nuts with the flat of her belt-knife and scrabbling hungrily for the nut-meats with dirty fingers.
“Here,” he said, a wry note in his voice.
Her head jerked up. The carcass of a big rabbit, gutted and cleaned, hung incongruously from his elegant fingers.
“Thank you!” Vasya gasped with bare politeness. She seized the thing at once, spitted it, and set it over the fire. Solovey put his head curiously under the spruce, eyed the roasting flesh, shot her an offended look, and disappeared again. Vasya ignored him, busy toasting her bread, while she waited for the meat. The bread browned and she gobbled it steaming, with cheese running down the sides. Earlier she had not been hungry, dying as she was, but now her body reminded her that her hot meal in Chudovo was long ago, and the hard, cold days had reduced her flesh to bone and skin and strings. She was ravenous.
When at last Vasya came up for air, licking bread-crumbs from her fingers, the rabbit was almost done and Morozko was looking at her with a bemused expression. “The cold makes me hungry,” she explained unnecessarily, feeling more cheerful than she had in days.
“I know,” he returned.
“How did you take the rabbit?” she asked, turning the meat with deft, greasy hands. Nearly ready. “There was no mark on it.”
Twin flames danced in his crystalline eyes. “I froze its heart.”
Vasya shuddered and asked no more.
He did not speak while she ate the meat. At last she sat back and said “Thank you,” once more, although she couldn’t help adding with some resentment, “Although if you meant to save my life you could have done it before I was dying.”
“Do you still wish to be a traveler, Vasilisa Petrovna?” he returned, only.
Vasya thought of the archer, the whine of his arrow, the grime on her skin, the killing cold, the terror of being ill and alone in the wilderness. She thought of sunsets and golden towers and of a world no longer bounded by village and forest.
“Yes,” she said.
“Very well,” said Morozko, his face growing grim. “Come, are you fed?”