You will live as you live anywhere. With difficulty, and grief. Yes, you are dead. And I and my family and everyone, always, forever. All dead, like stones. But what does it matter? You still have to go to work in the morning. You still have to live.

Close up your head; your brain is getting loose.

You know how we can be about things which sparkle and shine. We imagine they will put back something of what has been lost.

You cannot escape where you come from, September. Some part of it remains inside you always, like the slender white heart in the center of the thickest onion.

I do not tolerate a world emptied of you. I have tried. For a year I have called every black tree Marya Morevna; I have looked for your face in the patterns of the ice. In the dark, I have pored over the loss of you like pale gold.

When I say forever,' Koschei whispered, 'I mean until the black death of the world. An Ivan means just the present moment, the flickering light of it, in a green field, his mouth on yours. He means the stretching of that moment. But forever isn't bright; it isn't like that. Forever is cold and hard and final.

Don’t worry,” Marya whispered, kissing his forehead. “My old bones will follow yours soon enough.