Sasha and Olga looked at each other. “Masha—” Olga began.

There was an abrupt movement in the doorway. They all jumped; Sasha spun, one dirty hand on the hilt of his sword.

“It is I,” said Varvara. Her fair plait straggled; there was soot and blood on her clothes.

Olga stared. “Where have you been?”

Without ceremony, Varvara said, “Vasya is alive. Or was when I left her. They were going to burn her. But she broke the bars of the cage and leaped down unseen. I got her out of the city.”

Sasha had hoped. But he hadn’t really thought how…“Unseen?” Then he thought of more important things. “Where? Was she wounded? Where is she? I must—”

“Yes, she is wounded; she was beaten by a mob,” said Varvara acidly. “She was also near mad with magic; it came on her suddenly, in desperation. But she is alive and her wounds aren’t mortal. She escaped.”

“Where is she now?” asked Olga sharply.

“She took the road through Midnight,” said Varvara. There was the strangest combination of wonder and resentment in her face. “Perhaps she will even reach the lake. I did all I could.”

“I must go to her,” said Sasha. “Where is this road through Midnight?”

“Nowhere,” said Varvara. “And everywhere. But only at midnight. It is no longer midnight now. In any case, you have not the sight: the power to take the Midnight-road alone. She has gone beyond your reach.”

Olga looked, frowning between Marya and Varvara.

Incredulously, Sasha said, “You expect me to take your word for it? To abandon my sister?”

   “There is no question of abandonment; her fate is out of your hands.” Varvara sank onto a stool as though she weren’t a servant at all. Something had changed, subtly, in her bearing. Her eyes were intent and troubled. “The Eater is loose,” she said. “The creature that men call Medved. The Bear.”

Even after Vasya had told them the truth, in the hours after Moscow had caught fire and been saved by snow, Sasha had hardly believed his sister’s tale of devils. He was about to demand again that Varvara tell him properly where Vasya was, when Olga broke in: “What does that mean, that the Bear is loose? Who is the Bear? Loose to do what?”

“I do not know,” said Varvara. “The Bear is among the greatest of chyerti, a master of the unclean forces of the earth.” She spoke slowly, as though remembering a lesson long forgotten. “His chief skill is knowing the minds of men and women, and bending them to his will. Above all he loves destruction and chaos, and will seek to sow it as he can.” She shook her head, and suddenly she was the body-servant Varvara again, clever and practical. “It must wait until morning; we are all mortally weary. Come, the wild girl is alive and beyond reach of friend or foe. Will you all sleep?”

There was a silence. Then, grimly, Sasha said, “No—if I can’t go to her, then at least I am going to pray. For my sister, for this mad city.”

“The city isn’t mad,” Marya protested. She had been following their conversation, her black eyes ferocious, and then had turned her head to listen to that unseen voice near the floor. “It was a man with golden hair—he made them do it. He spoke to them, he made them angry.” She had begun to shake. “He was the one who came last night, who made me come with him. People listen when he talks. His voice is very beautiful. And he hates Aunt Vasya.”

Olga gathered her daughter into her arms. Marya had begun weeping again, slow exhausted sobs. “Hush, sweet,” she said to her daughter. Sasha felt his face settling into bleakness. “The priest with golden hair,” he said. “Konstantin Nikonovich.”

“Our father sheltered him. You brought him to Moscow. I succored him here,” said Olga. Her habitual composure could not hide the look in her eyes.

“I am going to pray now,” said Sasha. “If a devil has come to this city, all I can do against it is pray. But tomorrow I will go to Dmitrii Ivanovich. I will see this priest tried and justice done.”

   “You must kill him with your sword, Uncle Sasha,” said Marya. “For I think he is very wicked.”

Sasha kissed them both and departed in silence.

“Thank you for saving our sister’s life,” Olga said to Varvara, when Sasha had gone.

Varvara said nothing, but the two women clasped hands. They had known each other a long time.

“Now tell me more of this demon that has come to Moscow,” Olga added. “If it concerns the safety of my family, it cannot wait until morning.”

7.

   Monster

IN ANOTHER PART OF MOSCOW, in the black and frigid hour before dawn, a peasant man and his wife lay awake atop his brother’s oven. They had lost their izba, their possessions, and their firstborn in the fires of the night before, and neither of them had slept since.

A light, insistent tapping came from the window.

Tap. Tap.

Below them, on the floor, the brother’s family stirred. The knocking went on, steady, monotonous, first at the window, then at the door. “Who could that be?” muttered the husband.

“Someone in need perhaps,” said his wife, voice hoarse from the tears she had shed that day. “Answer it.”

Her husband reluctantly slid down from the oven. He stumbled to the door, over the complaining bodies of his brother’s family. He opened the inner door, unbarred the outer door.

His wife heard him give a single, sobbing gasp, and then nothing. She hurried up behind him.

A small figure stood in the doorway. Its skin was blackened and flaking away; you could see hints of white bone through rents in his clothing. “Mother?” it whispered.

The dead child’s mother screamed, a scream to wake the dead—but the dead were already awake—a scream to awaken their neighbors, sleeping uneasily with the memory of fire. People opened their shutters, opened their doors.

   This child did not go into the house. Instead he turned away and began walking up the street. He walked drunkenly, lurching from side to side. His eyes, in the moonlight, were bewildered and afraid and intent all at once. “Mother?” he said again.

Above, on either side, the awakened neighbors stared and pointed. “Mother of God.”

“Who is that?”

“What is that?”

“A child?”

“Which child?”

“Nay—God defend us—that is little Andryusha—but he is dead…”