Chapter 14: The Banya

Morozko made his way to the luxurious banya adjunct to the inn.  It was empty.  Morozko peeled off his skin and hung it from the rafters between the dangling souls in the predbannik.  He spat sparks onto the stove in the washing room and entered the steam room, letting the heat soak into his bones.  Stripped of his skin, he was nothing but solidified, skeleton-shaped steam, a horror even Russian poets had not dreamed of, for no mortal had ever seen a bannik’s true form.  In the washing room Morozko drew a bucket of water and poured it over heated rocks in the stove.

The rocks steamed.  He drew a venik and beat himself, driving away the stink of the stables.

Finally satisfied, he entered the washing room and plunged into the cold water.  Morozko dissolved into steam at the icy liquid's touch, swirling in a cloud round the boiling room.  The wood walls creaked from the heat.  He seeped through the cracks in the banya, ou