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waiting for him to turn to ash before their eyes.
    “You all saw,” quavered Banya, twisting her mustache, eager to make up her fault. “I didn’t tell! It was Venik!”
    “It’s been recorded in the minutes,” Zvonok said darkly.
    “I don’t understand,” said Marya, her tears drying on her cheeks. “How do you know my name?”
    “Don’t worry about it, dear,” said Zvonok brightly. “It’s far past your bedtime. Let’s get you to sleep, shall we?”
    All Marya’s fingers and toes were numb. She let herself be led away from the cackling komityet, shaking as though she had been drenched in water dragged in frozen buckets from the Neva. The domovaya pulled her past a grim Lenin demanding: Have YOU Volunteered for the Front Lines? Marya had a moment of panic: What if she could not get big again, and was to be stuck down here forever with the goblins and frowning paper Lenin staring her down? Suddenly she wanted very much to see the front of the stove again, and her own bed.
    “What did he mean? Who is Koschei?” she asked softly.
    “You know, you’ve been very careless, Masha. I try to watch out for you, even though you’ve never given me boots or cream, and I think that’s a testament to my generous soul, but you insist on drawing attention to yourself.”
    “But I don’t! I’m so quiet the Abramov twins tripped over me last week.” Since the affair of the scarf she had tried very hard never to be noticed by anyone.
    “Marya Morevna! Don’t you know anything? Girls must be very, very careful to care only for ribbons and magazines and wedding rings. They must sweep their hearts clean of anything but kisses and theater and dancing. They must never read Pushkin; they must never say clever things; they must never have sly eyes or wear their hair loose and wander around barefoot, or they will draw his attention! Safe in a house and a husband, that’s where you belong! But it’s too late now, too late! Fool child, the house and I tried so hard to raise you right!”
    “But who is he ?” Marya pleaded—yet she did know that name, didn’t she? The name pulled at the back of her mind, bending her toward it.
    But Zvonok had gone knuckle-white with fear and anger, and would say nothing. When they passed through the flower-carved door and back into the space between the stove and the wall, she yanked on Marya’s sash once more. Marya spun like a spool, and she felt the peculiar sensation of a great huge hand pulling her up by the crown of her skull, of her bones yawning and stretching. When she stopped spinning, she faced the stove, and was quite her own height again. And she found herself disappointed, only a little. It was over. The extraordinary thing was over and it had taken minutes. She had gotten big again with no trouble, and how long would she have to wait now for some other scrap of the naked world?
    “Here,” whispered Zvonok. “This is the best I can do for you.” The little domovaya reached into her red vest and drew out the silver hairbrush Marya had seen in the flotsam at the komityet. It grew larger and larger as she pulled it out, until it was taller than Zvonok but perfectly sized for Marya’s hand. “It belonged to Svetlana Tikhonovna. Did you know she was a dancer when she was young, with the ballet? Comrade Stoylik calls her names, but when she sleeps, he comes out to curl up in her hair and sleep next to her ear. He says she smells like Kiev.”
    “Won’t he know you took it?”
    “I’ll slap the bottoms of his feet until he says it was yours all along. But you keep it safe from old Svetlana—she’d love to have it back.”
    “I already have a hairbrush, though,” protested Marya.
    Zvonok winked, first with one eye, then the other. She put one hand over her left eye and spat.
    “You need this one.”
    And with that, the domovaya hopped up onto one foot, spun around three times, and vanished.

4
    Likho Never Sleeps
     
    In a city by the sea that was certainly never