She finished and fell silent. Sasha was frowning. She answered his look, not his words. “No, Father would not have been out looking in the forest, had I not been there,” she whispered. “I did it; it was I, brother.”
“Is that why you ran away?” Sasha asked. His voice （beloved, half-remembered） was uninflected, his face composed, so that she had no idea what he was thinking. “Because you killed Father?”
She flinched, then bowed her head. “Yes. That. And the people—the people feared I was a witch. The priest had told them to fear witches, and they listened. Father was no longer there to protect me, so I ran.”
Sasha was silent. She could not see his face, and at last she burst out, “For God’s sake, say something!”
He sighed. “Are you a witch, Vasya?”
Her tongue felt thick; the vibration of men’s deaths still rang through her body. There were no more lies left in her, and no more half-truths.
“I do not know, little brother,” she said. “I do not know what a witch is, not really. But I have never meant anyone ill.”
At length he said, “I do not think you did right, Vasya. It is sin for a woman to dress so, and it was wrong of you to defy Father.”
Then he fell silent again. Vasya wondered if he was thinking of how he, too, had defied their father.
“But,” he added slowly, “you have been brave, to get this far. I do not blame you, child. I do not.”
The tears came to her throat again, but she swallowed them back.
“Come on, then,” Sasha said, stiffly. “Try to go to sleep now, Vasya. You will come with us to Moscow. Olya will know what to do with you.”
Olya, Vasya thought, her heart lifting. She was going to see Olya again. Her earliest memories—of kind hands and of laughter—were of her sister.
Vasya was sitting opposite her brother, on a cot beside the clay stove. Sasha had built a fire, and the room was slowly warming. Suddenly all Vasya wanted was to pull the furs over her head and sleep.
But she had one last question. “Father loved you. He wished you would come home. You promised me you’d come back. Why didn’t you?”
No answer. He had busied himself with the fire; perhaps he had not heard. But to Vasya, the silence seemed to thicken suddenly with regrets that her brother would not utter.
SLEEP SHE DID: a sleep like winter, a sleep like sickness. In her sleep the men all died again, stoic or screaming, their guts like dark jewels in the snow. The black-cloaked figure stood by, calm and knowing, to mark each death.
But this time a terrible, familiar voice spoke also in her ear. “See him, poor winter-king, trying to keep order. But the battlefield is my realm, and he only comes to pick over my leavings.”
Vasya whirled to find the Bear at her shoulder, one-eyed, lazily smiling. “Hello,” he said. “Does my work please you?”
“No,” she gasped, “no—”
Then she fled, slipping frantic over the snow, tripping on nothing, falling into a pit of endless white. She did not know if she was screaming or not. “Vasya,” said a voice.
An arm caught her, stopped her fall. She knew the shape and turn of the long-fingered hand, the deft and grasping fingers. She thought, He has come for me now; it is my turn, and began to thrash in earnest.
“Vasya,” said his voice in her ear. “Vasya.” Cruelty in that voice—and winter wind and old moonlight. Even a rough note of tenderness.
No, she thought. No, you greedy thing, do not be kind to me.
But even as she thought it, all the fight went out of her. Not knowing if she were awake or still dreaming, she pressed her face into his shoulder, and broke into a storm of violent weeping.
In her dream, the arm went hesitantly round her and his hand cradled her head. Her tears lanced some of the poisoned wound of memory; at last she fell silent and looked up.
They stood together in a little moonlit space, while trees slept all around. No Bear—the Bear was bound, far away. Frost fretted the air like silver-gilt. Was she dreaming? Morozko was a part of the night, his feet incongruously bare, his pale eyes troubled. The living world of bells and icons and changing seasons seemed the dream then, and the frost-demon the only thing real.
“Am I dreaming?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said.
“Are you really here?”
He said nothing.
“Today—today I saw—” she stammered. “And you—”
When he sighed, the trees stirred. “I know what you saw,” he said.
Her hands clenched and unclenched. “You were there? Were you only there for the dead?”