Vasilisa—Vasya—opened her mouth, once more thought better of it, and stepped across the threshold, swaying like a foal.
The house resembled a stand of fir-trees that had decided to become a house for the night but gone about it badly. A livid darkness, as of clouds and fitful moonlight, filled the space near the rafters. The shadows of branches swooped back and forth across the floor, though the walls seemed solid enough.
But one thing was certain: the far end of the house held a vast Russian oven. Vasya stumbled toward it like a blind girl, stripped off her mittens, put her hands near the blaze, and shuddered at the heat on her cold fingers. Beside the oven stood a tall white mare, licking at some salt. This mare nuzzled Vasya briefly in greeting. Vasya, smiling, laid her cheek against the mare’s nose.
Vasilisa Petrovna was no beauty as her people counted it. Too tall, the women had said when she came of age. Far too tall. As for a figure, she has scarce more than a boy.
Mouth like a frog, her stepmother had added, with spite. What man would take a girl with that chin? And as for her eyes—
In truth, the stepmother could not find words for Vasya’s eyes—green and deep and set far apart—nor for her long black plait that strong sunlight would spark with red.
“No beauty, perhaps,” echoed Vasya’s nurse, who had loved her very much. “No beauty, my girl—but she draws the eye. Like her grandmother.” The old lady always crossed herself when she said it, for Vasya’s grandmother had not died happily.
Vasya’s stallion plowed his way into the house behind her and looked about with a proprietary air. The hours in the frozen forest had not quenched him. He went at once to the girl by the oven. The white mare, his dam, snorted softly at him.
Vasya smiled, scratching the stallion’s withers. He wore neither saddle nor bridle. “That was bravely done,” she murmured. “I wasn’t sure we’d ever find it.”
The horse shook his mane complacently.
Vasya, grateful for the horse’s buoyant strength, drew her belt-knife and bent to dig the balled-up ice from his hooves.
A spiteful winter gust slammed the door.
Vasya jerked upright; the stallion snorted. With the door shut, the storm was set at remove, and yet, somehow, tree-shadows still swung across the floor.
The master of the house stood an instant, facing the door, and then he turned. Snowflakes starred his hair. All around him was the same soundless force as that of the snow falling outside.
The stallion’s ears eased back.
“Doubtless you mean to tell me, Vasya,” said the man, “why you have risked your life a third time, running into the deep woods in winter.” He crossed the floor, light as smoke, until he stood in the light cast by the oven, and she could see his face.
Vasya swallowed. The master of the house looked like a man, but his eyes betrayed him. When he had first walked in that forest, the maidens called to him in a different tongue.
Vasya thought, If you start being afraid of him, you will never stop, straightened her back—and found that her reply would not come. Grief and weariness had driven words out, and she could only stand, throat working: an interloper in a house that was not there.
The frost-demon added drily, “Well? Were the flowers unsatisfactory? Are you looking for the firebird this time? The horse with the golden mane?”
“Why do you think I am here?” Vasya managed, stung into speech. She had bidden her brother and sister farewell that very night. Her father’s grave lay raw in the frozen earth, and her sister’s furious sobs had followed her into the forest. “I could not stay home. ‘Witch-woman,’ the people whispered. There are those who would burn me if they could. Father—” Her voice wavered. “Father is not there to check them.”
“Such a sad story,” the frost-demon replied, unmoved. “I have seen ten thousand sadder, yet you are the only one to come stumbling to my doorstep because of it.” He bent nearer. The firelight beat on his pale face. “Do you mean to stay with me now? Is that it? Be a snow-maiden in this forest that never changes?”
The question was half gibe, half invitation, and full of a tender mockery.
Vasya flushed and recoiled. “Never!” Her hands had begun to warm, but her lips felt stiff and clumsy. “What would I do in this house in the fir-grove? I am going away. That is why I left home—I am going far away. Solovey will take me to the ends of the earth. I will see palaces and cities and rivers in summer, and I will look at the sun on the sea.” She had unfastened her sheepskin hood, almost stammering in her eagerness. The fire threw flashes of red across her black hair.
His eyes darkened, seeing it, though Vasya did not notice. As though speaking had loosed a torrent, now she found her tongue. “You showed me there is more in this world than the church and the bathhouse and my father’s forests. I want to see it.” Her vivid gaze saw beyond him. “I want to see it all. There is nothing for me at Lesnaya Zemlya.”
The frost-demon might have been taken aback. Certainly he turned away from her and sank into a chair like a broken oak-stump, there by the fire, before he asked, “What are you doing here, then?” His pointed glance took in the shadows near the ceiling, the vast bed heaped like a snowdrift, the Russian oven, the hangings on the walls, the carven table. “I see no palaces and no cities, and certainly not the sun on the sea.”
It was her turn to pause. The color came to her face. “Once you offered me a dowry…” she began.
Indeed, the bundles still lay heaped in one corner: fine cloth and gems, strewn like a serpent’s hoard. His glance followed hers and he smiled, coldly. “You spurned it and ran away, as I recall.”
“Because I do not wish to marry,” Vasya finished. The words sounded strange even as she said them. A woman married. Or she became a nun. Or she died. That was what being a woman meant. What, then, was she? “But I do not want to beg my bread in churches. I came to ask— May I take a little of that gold with me, when I ride away?”
Startled silence. Then Morozko leaned forward, elbows on knees, and said, incredulity in his voice, “You have come here, where no one has ever come without my consent, to beg a little gold for your wanderings?”
No, she might have said. It is not that. Not entirely. I was afraid when I left home, and I wanted you. You know more than I, and you have been kind to me. But she could not bring herself to say it.
“Well,” said Morozko, sitting back. “All that is yours.” He jerked his chin at the heap of treasure. “You may go to the ends of the earth dressed as a princess, with gold to plait into Solovey’s mane.”
When she didn’t answer, he added, with elaborate courtesy, “Would you like a cart for it? Or will Solovey drag it all behind you, like beads on a string?”
She clung to her dignity. “No,” she said. “Only what can easily be carried and will not attract thieves.”
Morozko’s pale stare, unimpressed, swept her from tousled hair to booted feet. Vasya tried not to think how she must appear to him: a hollow-eyed child, her face pale and dirty. “And then what?” the frost-demon asked meditatively. “You stuff your pockets with gold, ride out tomorrow morning, and freeze to death at once? No? Or perhaps you will live a few days until someone kills you for your horse, or rapes you for your green eyes? You know nothing of this world, and now you mean to go out and die in it?”
“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.”