Morozko was on the shadow-side of Saint Petersburg, in Buyan’s reflection of the metropolis.  He rode the train aimlessly, smoking cigarette after cigarette.  All of his searching had turned up ash.  Dirt.  Nothing.  There was no sign of where Kosti had disappeared to, and the fear of what had happened to Anya was a bird freezing in its cage in his snowy ribs, where his heart would have been, if Anya was in his arms.  Instead, she had flown away, because he had been foolish enough to make his wish on a firebird girl.Morozko caught his reflection in the dark window.  There were his lips, a dark blue, and his cheeks sunken in like a junkie’s.  His hair was hardened with ice.  He could barely smoke cigarettes now: the cold of his mouth put them out.  He cursed his new form under his breath.Morozko touched the window’s glass and traced Anya’s face in the oily smudge.  Just her eyes, really, a

Morozko and Ivan did not encounter any other ghosts.  Morozko suspected Maria Morevna held her spectral sisters at bay, already having claimed Ivan as her own.  He wondered if Ivan’s deaths each night at Maria’s hands was the tithe they were paying to enter the deathless lands, for everything here had a price.  Food was scarce, game nearly nonexistent, and they often went hungry.The morning of the summer solstice came, and they arrived at a steep rim of mountains that ringed the deathless lands.  A great lair of a cave lay atop the tallest mountains: the domain of Zmei Gorynych. Greyback made quick work of the scree with Ivan on his back, and Morozko rose as a winter storm to the mountain’s peak.  Still, the summit was tall, and it took them half a day to scale it.  In the interim, the sun sang her solstice song, luring Zmei out of his cave.  The dragon took wing and courted his celestial love with a radiant d

“I missed you too.  You do not, um, mind that I look like this now, do you?  I thought, in order to save you, that I had to become something else.  Someone I am not.”Anya avoided stepping on a mushroom.  “Well, your skin is cold, but you are still you.  You put on Ded Moroz’s crown for me.  If you can accept me as I am now, as a – as Bilobog, or whatever, then I can still love you.”Morozko stopped, taking both of her hands into his.  “Anya, I would not care if you became a hag.  I would still adore you.  Remember?  I am your sidekick.  All I want is your happiness.”Anya leaned into him.  “Thanks, Kolya.  You mean the world to me, too.”Their lips met.Aym coughed up a hairball.  It landed square on Morozko’s cheek, interrupting their kiss.  Aym purred with laughter as Morozko wiped the matted fur from his f

The problem with gods is that often, they like to stay hidden.  And the most sacred place in all Buyan, the World Tree, where Perun nested in the branches and Veles snaked round the roots, was not really a tree, but a woman. Mother Mokosh, whose name Russian peasants centuries ago would swear on by taking dirt into their mouths – Mokosh’s body - and spitting it out, like the Greeks making an oath on the River Styx, echoed a tradition that may as well have been Neolithic. To swear on Mother Mokosh was to swear on the vitality of the land, summoning the very magic that bound Buyan together.  But that magic was failing, reckless, with vines choking forests, greenery growing like mad beyond even the leshys’ control.  Dmitri’s forest was nearly unnavigable, and the tsar went out each day, pruning and plucking, trying to put a stopper on the wilderness.Anya and Morozko stowed what little they had in the oversized bac