The horse said nothing, shaking his black mane. Then—I will carry you. My dam says it grows easier in time. He sounded skeptical. Well, enough of this. Let us see what we can do. And he bolted. Vasya, taken by surprise, threw her weight forward and wrapped her legs around his belly. The stallion careened between the trees. Vasya found herself whooping aloud. He was graceful as a hunting-cat and made about as much noise. At speed, they were one. The horse ran like water and all the white world was theirs.
“We must go back,” said Vasya at length, flushed and panting and laughing. Solovey slowed to a trot, his head up, his nostrils showing red. He bucked with sheer high spirits, and Vasya, clinging, hoped he would not have her off. “I am tired.”
The horse pointed an ear at her in a dissatisfied way. He was hardly winded. But he heaved a sigh and turned. In a surprisingly short time, the fir-grove lay before them. Vasya slid to the ground. Her feet struck the earth with a great jolt of pain, and she sank, gasping, to the snow. Her healed toes were numb, and some hours’ ride had not improved her weakness. “But where is the house?” she said, gritting her teeth and heaving herself to her feet. All she saw was fir-trees. Day’s end mantled the wood in starry violet.
It cannot be found by searching, said Solovey. You must look away just a little. Vasya did, and there, in a quick flash at the edge of her vision, was the hut among the trees. The horse walked beside her, and she was a little ashamed that she needed the support of his warm shoulder. He nudged her through the door.
Morozko had not come back. But there was food on the blazing hearth, laid by invisible hands, and something hot and spicy to drink. She dried Solovey with cloths, brushed his bay coat, and combed the long mane. He had never been groomed before, either.
Foolishness, said the horse, when she began. You are tired. It makes not the slightest difference whether I am brushed or not. But he looked vastly pleased with himself regardless, when she took extra care over his tail. He nuzzled her cheek when she had done, and he spent the whole meal inspecting her hair and face and dinner, as if suspecting she’d kept something back.
“Where do you come from?” Vasya asked, when she could hold no more and was feeding the insatiable horse bits of bread. “Where were you foaled?” Solovey did not reply. He stretched his neck out and crunched an apple in his yellow teeth. “Who is your sire?” Vasya persisted. Still Solovey said nothing. He stole the remainder of her bread and ambled away, chewing. Vasya sighed and gave up.
VASYA AND SOLOVEY WENT out riding together every day for three days. Each day, the horse bore her more easily, and, slowly, Vasya’s strength returned.
When they returned to the house on the third night, Morozko and the white mare were waiting for them. Vasya limped across the threshold, pleased that she could manage it on her own two feet, and stopped short, seeing them.
The mare stood by the fire, licking idly at a chunk of salt. Morozko sat on the other side of the blaze. Vasya slipped off her cloak and approached the oven. Solovey went to his accustomed place and stood expectantly. For a horse that had never been groomed, he adapted very fast.
“Good evening, Vasilisa Petrovna,” said Morozko.
“Good evening,” said Vasya. To her surprise, the frost-demon was holding a knife, whittling a block of fine-grained wood. Something like a wooden flower was taking shape under his deft fingers. He laid his knife aside, and the blue eyes touched her here and there. She wondered what he saw.
“Have my servants been kind to you?” said Morozko.
“Yes,” said Vasya. “Very. I thank you for your hospitality.”
“You are welcome.”
He was silent while she groomed Solovey, though she felt him watching. She rubbed the horse down and combed the snarls from his mane. When she had washed her face and the table was laid, she tore into the food like a young wolf. The table groaned with good things: strange fruits and spiky nuts, cheese and bread and curds. When at last Vasya sat up and slowed down, she caught Morozko’s sardonic look. “I was hungry,” she said apologetically. “We do not eat so well at home.”
“I can well believe it,” came the reply. “You looked like a wraith at midwinter.”
“Did I?” said Vasya, disgruntled.
“More or less.”
Vasya was silent. The fire fell in on its core and the light in the room went from gold to red. “Where do you go when you are not here?” she asked.
“Where I like,” he said. “It is winter in the world of men.”
“Do you sleep?”
He shook his head. “Not as you would think of it, no.”
Vasya glanced involuntarily at the great bed, with its black frame and blankets heaped like a snowdrift. She bit back the question, but Morozko caught her thought. He raised a delicate eyebrow.
Vasya blushed scarlet and took a great draught to hide her burning face. When she looked back at him, he was laughing.
“You need not make that prim face at me, Vasilisa Petrovna,” he said. “That bed was made for you by my servants.”
“And you—” Vasya began. She blushed harder. “You never…”
He had taken up his carving again. He flicked another chip off the wooden flower. “Often, when the world was young,” he said mildly. “They would leave me maidens in the snow.” Vasya shuddered. “Sometimes they died,” he said. “Sometimes they were stubborn, or brave, and—they did not.”
“What happened to them?” said Vasya.
“They went home with a king’s ransom,” said Morozko, drily. “Have you not heard the tales?”
Vasya, still blushing, opened her mouth and closed it again. Several dozen things she might say rushed through her brain.
“Why?” she managed. “Why did you save my life?”
“It amused me,” said Morozko, though he did not look up from his carving. The flower was crudely finished; he laid aside his knife, picked up a bit of glass—or ice—and began to smooth it.
Vasya’s hand stole up to her face where the frostbite had been. “Did it?”
He said nothing, but his eyes met hers beyond the fire. She swallowed.
“Why did you save my life and then try to kill me?”
“The brave live,” replied Morozko. “The cowards die in the snow. I did not know which you were.” He put down the flower and reached out a hand. His long fingers brushed the place where the wound had been, on her cheek and jaw. When his thumb found her mouth, the breath shivered in her throat. “Blood is one thing. The sight is another. But courage—that is rarest of all, Vasilisa Petrovna.”
The blood flung itself out to Vasya’s skin until she could feel every stirring in the air.
“You ask too many questions,” said Morozko abruptly, and his hand dropped.
Vasya stared at him, huge-eyed in the firelight. “It was cruel,” she said.
“You will walk a long road,” said Morozko. “If you have not the courage to meet it, better—far better—for you to die quiet in the snow. Perhaps I meant you a kindness.”
“Not quiet,” said Vasya. “And not kind. You hurt me.”
He shook his head. He had taken up the carving again. “That is because you fought,” he said. “It does not have to hurt.”
She turned away, leaning against Solovey. There was a long silence.
Then he said, very low, “Forgive me, Vasya. Do not be afraid.”
She met his eyes squarely. “I am not.”
ON THE FIFTH DAY, Vasya said to Solovey, “Tonight I am going to plait your mane.”