Marya picked at her nails. She knew the answer before she said it. “And if I end up there, you won’t come for me, either?”
Naganya the vintovnik looked away, her oily hair falling into her face.
“Well,” said Marya softly. “If I ever meet a man named Ivan I shall eat his heart before he can wish me a good morning.”
Nasha grinned, eager to skate over such uncomfortable subjects. “That’s on account of how you’re one of us, Mashenka! Spleen and sleeping, marrow and mind.
Now, there’s raskovnik to dig up, and not much time.”
“If we need a human, how can we ever get back to a city without Volchya-Yagoda and an armful of weeks to spare?”
“There’s border places. Places where the birches are thinner than paper, and you can tear through. Places where the Tsar of Life and the Tsar of Death fought so hard that their territories lie crushed right up to each other, on either side of a pebble, in the leaves and root of a turnip, on a cat’s tail and his tongue.”
“I should try to see him again, before we go. Baba Yaga can’t keep me out if he hears my voice. Surely he will wrap me up in his arms and tell me—”
“Don’t, Masha.” Naganya fidgeted. “The war is going badly.”
“The war is always going badly.”
* * *
Marya and Naganya took a young horse, green and fleet and hungry, and trotted down Skorohodnaya Road in the evening light, the vintovnik tucked in front of Marya herself, clutching the saddle horn with her wooden hands. Twilight drifted lazily, taking its time bringing down a violet-pink haze. The last rays of sun winked on their stallion’s ears.
“I make horses nervous,” Naganya fretted. The safety in her cheek cocked and uncocked sharply, echoing down the road. “Surely this one will rear and drop me! And then roll over on top of us both!”
“I chose a young one, who has not yet heard that you sometimes shoot people. It will be all right.” The horse snorted; snow bleated from his nose.
Naganya twisted in her seat as the road dwindled behind them and the wood rose up, dark and excited, icy and rustling. She grabbed her friend by the chin. “Marya, listen like your ears are bottomless! Border places are dangerous. Very disreputable things live there. You must be careful or Koschei will smelt me for losing you. If you see anyone you know, or someone with a silver star on their breast, you mustn’t talk to them, not even to curse them or ask their names. You mustn’t get off the horse. If your foot touches the ground, I won’t be able to help you. Even the enemy’s pebbles bite and are fierce. I shall find the old lady for you. I shall push her across the field.”
“Isn’t that cheating?”
“Tfu! She expects you to cheat! Masha, whom I love: These tasks do not test your strength or your wiliness; they test your ability to cheat, which is the truest measure of a devil. They are designed to be impossible if you play fair. What should you do instead? Walk into no-man’s-land unprotected and be lost forever?”
“Is that what the others did? Did you tell the Yelenas these things?”
“Yes! And they refused to listen because they were innocent maidens without a lie in their hearts or a smear on their souls. Don’t be innocent, Marya. Innocent means stupid. Follow your friend, who is a goblin and knows better, and we’ll have raskovnik salad before dawn.”
But if I am not innocent, are there lies in my heart? Smears on my soul? Am I a devil? What does it mean, to be one of them? Marya resolved to sort it all out when she had a moment to think through it, when Baba Yaga’s soup pot was not dangling over her head.
The forest deepened, the birches filling with crows, the underbrush with red, pointed hedgehog eyes. Overhead, violet seeped out of the sky and black crept up until only the sharp, cutting stars sliced through the night. Naganya’s body warmed against her own; she worked the trigger in her throat gently to keep her oils from freezing. Finally, the wood opened up into a wide glade where the snow flowed even and smooth as water. A dozen houses glowed and smoked and did the sorts of things village houses do in the dark of winter. Naganya whooped, her cry echoing through the owls like one of their own. An old woman crept out of one of the smallest houses and into the snow. Once she had passed the ring of light cast by all those windows, she squatted in the field, the hissing of her urine loud in the silent evening.
“We’ve luck like a mushroom hunter tonight, Marya! Look at her, all fat and full of juice!” Naganya hopped lightly off the horse, neither sinking in the snow nor leaving tracks, but dancing on it like a mayfly on a lake.
“Why is it safe for you and not for me?” whispered Marya Morevna.
“Because you’re still a girl.” The vintovnik grinned. “Girls have to obey rules. Chyerti break them.”
The rifle imp scampered off through the snow. Marya nudged her horse along to keep her friend in sight.
“Pssst, babushka!” Nasha hissed. “Old lazy slattern! How many babies have you got off your man, hm? Spend your life with your legs open, do you? Just leaves room for the devil to slip in!”
The old woman started and looked around her—right at Naganya—but saw nothing.
“Shame on you, baba! Haven’t even got the decency to get up to witchcraft in your old age! Just lie about, why don’t you? Screech at brats got from half your neighbors. Plump my pillows! Feed me cherries!”
The old woman shivered, peering hard into the dark.
“Babushka! Put your ankles together for once! What if Christ comes back tonight and the first things he sees are your saggy old bones pissing in the snow like a horse? Straight back to paradise with him, on the double quick, that’s what!”