This was hardly the time for romance, he thought.

But her gaze was fixed on the bear. It towered over them, its arms spread wide, its mouth open as it brayed out its triumphal cry. Ivan realized that she wasn't proposing a romantic relationship, she was telling him how to vanquish the bear.

"Proshõ tebe posagnõti za mene!" he shouted in Old Church Slavonic. Will you marry me!

For a moment she hesitated, her face a mask of anguish.

"Ei, posagnõ!" she answered.

The bear was gone, even as the last echo of its roar rang in the air.

Ivan rose to his feet, walked to the edge of the chasm. No sign of the animal. No sound of it, either, snuffling along the bottom. Nor were the leaves returning. They were gone, all the leaves that had filled the moat only moments before.

But there was something new in place. A bridge, a span of smooth white stone reaching across the chasm to the other side.

"Thank God," he whispered. He walked to the bridge, stepped on it, tested it. Firm and true. He took two more steps.

The woman cried out. He looked back at her. She gazed at him in awe, perhaps even in horror.

"You walk in air!" she cried.

"No, on a..." He wanted to say bridge but he didn't remember the Old Church Slavonic word. He tried it in Russian, Ukrainian. She only shook her head. Then she pointed to the opposite side of the chasm.

"This way," she said. "Here is the bridge."

He recognized the word at once when she said it, because it wasn't that far from the Russian word after all. So she must have understood him.

He watched in shock as she stepped off the edge of the chasm and walked three steps out into the middle of the air.

"Wait!" he cried. It was clear she was being held up by something—he just couldn't see it. Yet seeing her there, standing in midair, made him tremble to the groin in fear. She was falling, she had to be falling.

"Come," she said. "You are my betrothed, and I must take you home."

"I can't," he said. "You see a bridge, but I see nothing here. The only bridge I see is on the other side."

She took the few steps back to the pedestal, reached out her hand to him. "Though you are only a peasant," she said, "you are the one who broke the curse on me, and you are the one whose offer of marriage I accepted."

A peasant? He looked down at his clothes. Knights didn't dress like this, but peasants didn't, either.

"Or did the bear take your sword from you?" she asked. "Did you take off your mail to climb?"

"I never wore mail," he said. "Nor used a sword, I am a peasant." Smridu, that was the word he used. Worker. Commoner. But a free man, at least. She hadn't taken him for a slave. That was something.

"The bear had lost an eye," she said.

"I threw a stone at its head," he answered.

"Then you vanquished the bear. The only reason he didn't kill you as you bent over me was because he kept trying to see you through the missing eye."

"No, the only reason he didn't kill me was because you agreed to marry me."

"You talk so strangely," she said. "Are you a Roman?"

She must think he came from the Byzantine Empire, the lands still ruled by the last vestige of the empire of Rome.

"My parents live in a faraway country. Far over the sea."

She relaxed. "And you came to find me?"

"I flew here to study ancient manuscripts, actually, but—"

She had stopped cold on the word flew and was covering her mouth in fear.

"I don't mean that I can actually fly myself," he said.

"What are you? What kind of wizard?"

"No wizard," he said.

"You carry no weapon, you speak a strange language, yet you flew here, you threw a stone that blinded the Great Bear. What star will wink out now, because of your stone?"

"Oh, do you call that—" He meant to say, Oh, do you call that constellation the Great Bear, too? But he didn't know the word for constellation in Old Church Slavonic.

She was not going to wait for him to finish. "Whatever you are, you will be my husband," she said. "Even if you cannot see this bridge, hold my hand and I will take you across."

She reached out to him. He took her hand.

The moment they touched, he could see the bridge she was standing on. It was very different from the bridge he saw. Where his was like a natural formation of stone, hers was of wood, ornately carved and decorated, with gilding on the upper surfaces. He recognized the workmanship. From sometime before 1000 C.E. Like her clothing.

Where did her bridge lead? What would he find there?

"I'm betrothed to someone else," he murmured.

"Not now," she said, looking horrified that he could even think that such a thing might matter. "If you don't marry me now, then all is lost, and the Widow will devour all my people, all this land."

"The Widow?" he said.

"Even in your land you must know of her," she said. "The evil widow of old King Brat of Kiev, who was driven from his throne by the Rus' and ended up ruling a little kingdom called Pryava. Since he died, she brutally took over other lands until her kingdom borders ours. She claims to be the bride now of an even greater king. She consumes nations and spits out nothing but bones."

"And she's the one who put you here?"

" 'Until Katerina finds a husband,' she told my father, 'then I, Ya'—I mean, she said her name—'I am heir to all these lands.' Then she had the Great Bear pursue me. He drove me here, where I could run no farther. I fell asleep, and he guarded me, until you came and gave me your oath, setting me free of him. Now I must get home to my family."

" 'Ya,' " said Ivan, echoing her. "Ya-ga?" Was it possible that this evil queen was the witch of the fairy tales? "Baba Yaga?"

She gasped and put her hand over his mouth. Her hand was callused from work, and she was stronger than he expected. But he liked the feeling of her touching him, though there was only fear and annoyance in the gesture.

"Are you a fool, to say her name right out? Even here. Even in this place." So it was Baba Yaga. If unconsciously he was looking for fairy tales, he had stumbled onto the mother lode.

She took her hand away from his mouth.

"Sorry," he said. "For saying her name, and I'm sorry about your kingdom, too. But..."

"But what? We have no choice but to marry. Forget this other woman. Take her as a concubine after we are wed."

"But it's been a thousand years," he said. "More than a thousand years that you've been lying here."

She looked at him as if he were crazy. "No thousand years," she said. "It is today. This morning is today."

She pulled at his hand, drew him onto the bridge, and led him to the other side.

Piotr and Esther lay in bed at the end of the day, watching Johnny Carson because Piotr enjoyed the program; Esther barely understood it. Even when she caught the meaning of the English, she rarely knew why everyone was laughing. But she watched because Piotr wanted to watch. Carson was wearing a turban and holding envelopes to his head, then saying things that made people whoop and laugh.

Piotr also laughed. She could feel the bed shaking.

Then, suddenly, it was as if she were falling; her stomach lurched within her. No, it was as if a baby kicked in her womb. No, no, it was as if her baby did not kick. It was as if she were carrying a baby and suddenly knew that it was dead and would never kick again.

"He's gone," she whispered.

"What?" asked Piotr.

Esther began to cry.

Piotr turned off the television, concerned. "What is it, my love? Are you sick? What's wrong?"

"He's gone," she said. "My little boy. He's gone. He's left this world."

Piotr put his arms around her. "Hush, hush, my love, that can't be so, that can't be true. How would you know it, anyway, so far from him? You're just afraid for him, a mother's worry, but don't be afraid, he's with Cousin Marek, he's safe, he's safe."