SIX

After setting Koschei and his surroundings on fire, the soldier glanced around, and his red eyes spread the flames everywhere. Bewildered by the damage he had inflicted, he took off and ran away from the spring. As he disappeared into the woods, Koschei saw flames and plumes of smoke emerge in the distance, until the horizon was dense with gray fumes.

Koschei was on fire, too, so he submerged himself in the spring. The flames on his skin died down immediately, but the nightgown, now singed and shriveled, seemed to become one with his body. He tried prying it off, but it wasn’t budging and covered his skin like scales, or scabs, concentrated around the neck area and below the ribs.

He helped the animals nearby form a chain to start passing water in buckets and splashing it on the flames. But though they were using water from the healing spring, the fire wouldn’t let up. It burned for seven days and seven nights, and the island’s abundant greenery was reduced to nothing more than scorched earth and charred sticks, and the wail that persisted and seemed to become one with the wind haunted the desolate landscape. The animals with Koschei survived, but others, trapped deep in the thicket, were piles of ash. The beautiful house burned to a crisp, too, even though the twin baby moles took turns pissing on the flames to put them out. The only thing they managed to salvage was the moon-sun-stars crown, which they took to guarding with their little chubby bodies.

With the vegetation burned, one could easily see across the whole island. Neither the soldier nor Leshy was to be found. Leshy’s red slippers were retrieved on a faraway shore.

“Was he chasing the soldier?” Koschei wondered. There was no trace of the soldier, but he must have gone somewhere.

“I didn’t see them, but I was too flustered,” a sockeye salmon said from the water.

“Well, we’re doomed,” said a cuckoo, kicking the ash beneath her feet. “Whatever chance we had to salvage this island is gone with Leshy. He’s the only one who knows how to replant and repopulate it.”

“And it’s all my fault,” Koschei lamented. Some animals began reassuring him that it wasn’t, not really, but the majority knew he was telling the truth. “I have to make it right, and I have to find Leshy for all of you,” he said to weak affirmations.

Koschei waved at his friends the animals, inhaled deeply, pinched his nose, and jumped off the edge of the island into the water. The trench beneath him turned out to be surprisingly deep. Koschei breathed out so he could fall deeper and deeper. He exhaled, and exhaled, and yet the trench’s bottom was nowhere in sight. He was reluctant at first, but then Koschei tried to breathe in, and it turned out that he could breathe underwater too. The scorched bits of his nightgown stuck to his body had turned into gills.

Because he didn’t have to worry about his breathing anymore, and because he hadn’t slept for seven days and seven nights, Koschei fell asleep as he continued down. He slept and slept, and woke up only when his body hit a hard surface with a thud. Koschei opened his eyes and saw that a snake with a crown on her head was sitting on top of his chest and staring at his face. When she saw him come to, she yelped and fell off. “Brother, he’s awake!” the snake cried out excitedly, as she slithered away. “Come see!”