"No,” he said.

The boatman had collected his fee; he knew he had no right to ask for more. But his curiosity had gotten the best of him. He let the pole trail in the black water behind the stern. “What happened to the child?” he asked Yakov.

"What child?” he whispered.

"Don't play with me,” the boatman said. “You know what I've taken.” The memories he extracted were not gone; they just lost the emotional meaning, but the facts, their empty exoskeletons, remained.

"I don't have to tell you anything,” Yakov said, petulant. “Leave me alone."

The boatman returned to the contemplation of his new memory. It was unlike any other, so small and yet so distorted and twisted. He ran through its labyrinth, untwisting every snag and dead end, every turn and hidden corner. He was good at it-he had been feeding on their memories ever since they first started coming here, and he could not remember what he used to do before then; the memories taken from others had subsumed his own.

He thought of the American dancer, her memories swathed in unfamiliar language; he only recognized the images of her surrounded by several children (her own? Someone else's?) trembling in the snowy night, by the black pier in some strange port, where the dark sea water was fringed with ice, and floes rubbed against each other with a slow, grating sound. He remembered the stage and the tense faces of the audience, and the red drapes, swirling in her field of vision as she swirled, arms outstretched, for eternity. She remembered the face of a yellow-haired man, once handsome but now wrecked by hard drink and late nights, and the same face later a smoldering ruin shattered by a pistol shot. These images stood as signifiers of mystery, unexplained but precious all the same.

The boatman wondered if it was a sickness, this compulsion for the taste of other people's memories. He wondered if he could take something else as his payment, perhaps food or money, or if he should just take them across for free. He did not enjoy inflicting pain; in fact, he used to believe that he was helping them, taking away the emotional torment and intensity of unfulfilled desires. He used to think that he was doing good.

No matter how much their memories tormented them, they suffered even more when these memories were removed-like wounds left by splinters, they festered and grew inflamed, and one had to wonder if they were better off with all their splinters and warts. They became a part of them, developed from foreign bodies into integral parts of the souls. He could never understand that, but he could not stop either, compelled into removing and absorbing every painful nugget, so it could become a part of him, so he could feel real just for a little while longer.

The boat touched the opposite bank, as deserted and stony and black as the one they had just left-it felt like ages ago to Yakov, though he knew that only a few minutes had passed. He climbed onto the bank on awkward wooden legs, and stretched. Galina stood by him, silent but exuding sympathy and guilt. “It's all right,” he told her. “It's not your fault."

Zemun clambered out of the boat, her hooves sliding on the wet rocks of the embankment. Koschey and Timur-Bey followed, both avoiding stepping into the black water.

Ahead of them there was a forest-Berendey's forest, and Yakov immediately guessed that this was where Father Frost spent his days. The trees and branches were covered in snow, festooned with icicles, gleaming with rime. Berendey's Forest had real trees for a change-Yakov recognized white and black-speckled trunks of birches, the slender branches of willows, the tall high-strung groups of quaking aspens. There were sturdy oaks and grey-barked ashes, red maples that swept upward with the grace of dancing girls, dense green paws of spruces, the haughty grandeur of pines… he didn't realize how much he had missed them.

"It's winter here,” Galina whispered. “Do you think it's winter on the surface?"

"Don't be silly, we've been here just three days,” Yakov answered.

"What if time passes differently here?"

"Then there isn't much we can do about it, is there?” he said with rising irritation.

"I guess not,” she said, and fell back, next to Zemun.

They entered the forest, and despite Yakov's current upset he felt like a kid who had stumbled into a real fairytale. Despite the frozen trees, the air was only slightly cooler than elsewhere underground, and the ghost of the sun shone above, lighting the hoarfrost on every surface with a prismatic glitter of blues, reds and yellows. The delicate tracery of the frost formed flowers and fantastic animals and they wound like magical canvas around every trunk.

Carefully tended paths meandered between the trees, and Yakov realized with a sting of embarrassment that he was looking for woodland creatures that usually hung out in Berendey's Forest, at least according to the movies. He noticed a white hare darting away among the trees and the heavy horned head of a moose peering between the spruce branches.

"Can I borrow your rook for a sec?” Yakov asked Koschey.

"Knock yourself out,” Koschey answered, and extracted the rook Sergey from his pocket. “Just don't let him get away."

"Where do you think I'm gonna go?” Sergey said, and fluffed his feathers. “God, it's cold here."

"It's not bad,” Yakov said, and carefully placed Sergey on his shoulder. “Does it look like you would expect?"

The rook blinked in the bright light and looked around with his red eyes. “It looks like a movie set."

"Except that it's real."

"Or so you think."

Yakov briefly considered stuffing the rook into his pocket, but decided to give him another chance. “Do you remember how to find Berendey?"

"Find him? I've only seen him in the movies. There's a scene change, a cutaway, and then he appears. I guess we wait for a cutaway."

Yakov just shook his head.

"He's right, actually,” Zemun said behind him. “Berendey knows what happens in his forest, and if there are any trespassers he won't be long."

They continued walking along the paths because it was pleasant, and the forest was so pretty it seemed a shame to leave it unexplored while one had a chance.

"How old are you?” Yakov asked Sergey.

"Twenty-five,” he answered. “You?"

"Thirty. I was just thinking… what was your favorite ice-cream when you were a kid?"

The rook squawked a laugh. “Remember the one in wafer cones, with a crème rose on top?"

"That was my favorite too. Remember those little chocolate-covered cheesecakes they used to have? I could live on that stuff."

"Me too,” Sergey agreed. “Funny how good the food was when we were kids. Now everything tastes like shit. I wonder if it's because it's all imported and comes from a can, or if it's just how memory works?"

Yakov shrugged. “A bit of both, I suppose. And not all the food is shit. Imported chicken is pretty good."

Sergey made a contemptuous noise deep in his bird throat. “Humanitarian help? They call them Bush's legs."

"So I heard."

"Those chickens are fucking monsters. What do they feed them in America?"

"I don't know,” Yakov said. Still, he felt closer to Sergey, another shared experience, as meaningless as it was, somehow making them alike. He did not like the feeling-Sergey was a criminal and a lost soul, wedged temporarily into the body of a fat white bird. He was nothing like Yakov, and not a person Yakov wanted to be friends with.

Yakov looked ahead; the crystal light and the magical forest were growing habitual, and he wondered why Berendey hadn't apprehended them yet; then he remembered the rumors of his disappearance, and his mood darkened. He started to think that they could spend an eternity wandering through this forest, and doubted if they would be able to find their way back.