Sergei stood there for a few moments, gazing at the place where they had been. This was serious magic here. Not like the spells and curses that were commonplace in the village, and which didn't work half the time anyway. To make two people disappear in the moonlight—it made Sergei wonder. If I had magic power like this, it wouldn't matter that I have a crippled foot. And for a moment he imagined himself standing before Baba Yaga, the two of them on a great stone between two mighty armies, facing each other, five feet apart. She would raise her hand and cast a spell at him, chanting unspeakable words, and he would laugh, wave off her pathetic powers, and utter a single word of power. No, not a word, even. He would trace the shape of a rune in the air, and she would turn into a goose and rise honking into the air, terrified, confused, filled with a sudden inexplicable longing to fly south forever...

Just a dream, and a foolish one at that. Sergei was God's servant now, with no powers of his own, only the power to obey. But for a few moments he had been part of great events. Grand adventures. None of the boys who had grown up with him, with their two equal feet, their smooth walk, their level stance, none of them had been trusted to stand here with the princess and her husband. None of them had been given the task of writing down all the old stories, so they could live on in another time and place.

The future will be full of men like Ivan. Someday, a thousand years from now, that's what Ivan said. A world where men can live by reading and writing, by talking and thinking. A world where a man like me could be something other than a slops boy for a foreign priest.

He turned and walked away from the pit, back along the path he had taken. The night was chilly, and he was tired. When he got back there would be questions. There would be no concealing his own involvement in the escape—Ivan had been wearing his clothes, and now Sergei was returning with those same clothes on his back. But Dimitri would not lift a hand against him. There was no honor in hitting a cripple. And Sergei was not his own man. What could he do but obey? There would be no blame for him. And some would think him something of a hero, in his own small way. He was the one that Ivan and Katerina had trusted to see them fly away into another world.

Baba Yaga

She came home in a foul temper. Bear had expected it, so he knew to be away for the first few hours. When he finally figured it was safe—the howling had stopped, the birds were flying normally, and the wolves weren't whimpering anymore—he shambled back into the castle and on into his wife's fine warm house, which was all the warmer now, since she had broken up a considerable amount of furniture and thrown it on the fire.

"That's very wasteful," he said.

"Shut up."

"You were an old woman today and started a fire, and you were a little girl and started a manhunt in the forest, and it all came to nothing."

"She's gone!" cried Baba Yaga. "Out of my power! What did those bitches do to my curse? They left a bridge to his world. They left a bridge behind, and she crossed over!"

"So what will you do? She's gone. What's stopping you now from having Taina?"

"She's not dead, that's what's stopping me. She's not dead and everyone knows she's not dead. They'll go off and make a baby where I can't reach them, and come home with an heir, and then if I attack the whole Kievan league will come down on me and you will betray me and it's not fair!"

Baba Yaga always said that it wasn't fair, but to Bear it looked like things had worked out pretty evenly. Nobody had what they wanted. Baba Yaga didn't have Taina, but neither did Katerina. Equality of suffering—what could be more fair than that?

"Well, they can't get away from me that easily," said Baba Yaga.

"Oh?"

"I'll follow them. I'll go into wherever the hell he came from, and I'll tear it apart till I find them."

"Be careful," said Bear. "You don't know what wizards might be waiting for you there."

"If he's a sample of what they've got in that world, then I have nothing to fear."

"If you can get there."

"If those meddling do-gooders can make a pathway to his world, so can I. It will take a little research, but I'll find my way. Besides, I know her scent. I can follow her anywhere. Through time and space, wherever she is—I have the taste of her in my mouth. I'll eat the little bitch for breakfast."

Bear yawned. He had heard all this before.

"I will! Don't think I won't!"

"Whatever," said Bear. "Unfortunately, I'll no doubt be here when you get back."

"It won't take me long," she muttered. "I'll figure out where they went, I'll find a way to get there, and I'll have her back here in a week. Then you can feast on womanflesh! How's that, my beautiful Bear?"

"Fish are better. But I never interfere with my wife in the kitchen."

"Very funny," said Baba Yaga. "As if I cooked."

"As if I would ever trust anything you gave me to eat," said Bear.

"Sometimes you do," she said.

"You always poison me, though."

"If I poisoned you, you'd never know it, because you'd be dead."

"Just a little poison. Every damn time, it's some new potion or powder. I never know if it's going to be dysentery or a headache or impotence or priapism."

"You sound as if I did nothing but abuse you."

"What else?" said the Bear. "You think I don't know why you haven't killed me? Why I'm still around for you to do these things to? Making me run around that pit for a thousand years, for instance! Losing an eye, for instance!"

"He did that. I'll serve him for your supper, too."

"The only reason you didn't kill me long ago is because you can't."

"It's because I love you. And my enchantment of you isn't all bad. You like having the power of speech well enough."

"Gods don't need to speak. They only need to desire, and they have it."

"You wish."

"You've harnessed me and you're using my power somehow and I can't even hate you for it, because whenever I think of how much rage I ought to feel, my whole being is suffused with warmth and passion and lust for your miserable wizened old body."

"You should be a poet, the way you bandy words of love."

"I just thought you'd be interested to know that I've figured it all out."

"It took you long enough, but you are a bear, after all."

"I think I've figured it out before, and then you give me something to make me forget."

"Memory is so fickle," said Baba Yaga. "Just keep loving me, my pet."

"Oh, I do," said Bear. "With all my bitter heart, I love you."

"And you promise that you'll miss me when I'm gone to that place where Ivan and Katerina are hiding from me?"

"I'll smell your scent on the bedclothes and go mad from missing you."

"Give me a kiss then. And come to bed with me. You notice I didn't burn the bed. So you see I do love you."

Bear shook his great head back and forth. "Bed's not burnt, no."

"Then let's burn it now. A bonfire of passion. Many a woman has had her triumphs under the bedclothes, but I... I have tamed a bear! I have slept with Winter and I have made him warm!"

Bear growled a little, but he did as he was bidden.