Deathless by Catherynne Valente

be marvelous to go out into the central square and both of us shoot as far as we can, and then go running to see what we have shot! Once I played that game with a boy, and he shot a frog right through the throat. And the strangest, ugliest thing happened. The frog turned into a girl, and she started crying, all covered with mud and naked.” Naganya paused to allow Marya to be impressed. “She wore a green dress when they married, and made wedding bread like nothing you’d believe. The crust was all full of honey and sugar and hard little candied bilberries. She cried when the banns were read, too. The same tears as that day when he shot her. Perhaps she didn’t want to be married to him, but who would not want to be married to an expert marksman? I cannot believe it. She must have cried for some secret amphibian reason. Then her dress caught on fire while they danced, and there was a mess, but that’s neither here nor there.”
    “If we shoot in the city, we may hit someone who is not playing our game,” said Marya sleepily. The small of her back still burned pleasantly from Koschei’s nails.
    The vintovnik struck the pillow with her walnut fist. “That’s the fun of it! Ah, well, if you want to be a baby about it, we can go out into the wood. Probably won’t get anything but squirrels, and none of them ever turn into girls.”
    “All right, Nasha. And if I get a frog, she’s all yours.”
    The imp snuggled closer. “Do you still love me, then, Mashenka?”
    “Of course, Nashenka. Punishment doesn’t mean you aren’t loved. On the contrary. You can really only punish someone you love.”
    Naganya clicked her ironworks happily.
    Marya opened her eyes in the dark, staring up at the carved ceiling, which showed a scene of a great fringed wyrm beset by boyars. “Have I ever told you about the first time Koschei punished me?”
    “Koschei punished you ?”
    “Oh yes, many times. But the first time was because he asked me not to speak, and I spoke anyway. I didn’t say anything much; I just told him I was feeling better. But it wasn’t what I said, it was that I’d broken my word. Even if you think it was cruel of him to tell me not to speak, I had promised.”
    Naganya wriggled, fretting. Even though the punishment was long done, she could not help worrying for her friend.
    “And so when I first came to Buyan, he did not let me come into the Chernosvyat with him, or have supper, or meet any lovely rifle imps with names like mine. He left me at the stables to look after his horse because I had broken my promise.”
    “Well. You could still breathe, I’m sure.” Naganya could not help needling—it was her nature.
    “Some things are worse than not breathing,” Marya said softly. “When you are so far from home, and frightened, and have been sick a long time, and no one knows you at all, and you miss your mother and your old house, and you don’t know if you are to be married or killed, to be left in a stable alone without a word is very bad. But I got out the shovel all the same, even though the blade was half as tall as me. I mucked out the horse’s stall—and that beast makes a mess, I can tell you, all manure and exhaust and broken mufflers! After a while I was hardly crying at all, but my arms ached like death. I brushed his coat and rubbed him down with oil, with him snorting and his eyes glowing all the while. He was still white and cream-colored, as he was while I was sick.
    “‘Why do you change colors like that?’ I said, not expecting an answer. ‘It makes it hard to choose the right oil!’
    “And he rumbled at me, ‘I’m not the horse who fetched you in Petrograd. That is my sister, the Midnight Nag. Then you rode my brother, the Noontide Horse, who is red as sunrise. You and I have only just met. I am the Dawn Gelding, and you must ride all of us to get here. My name is Volchya-Yagoda.’
    “‘He named you wolf-food ?’ I asked, since I didn’t know Koschei’s humor