"Your father is late," sighs my mother, watching out the window.

I raise my head from my sewing. I have been sweating over a traditional wedding shirt for my husband-to-be, but my embroidered sirins look like pop-eyed hens.

The wedding will be in Haymonth, and it means I'll wear grandmother's light dress for the ceremony. Mother will probably pull it on my daughter too if Mokosh blesses me with a healthy child.

"I'll go check on him."

"No, don't even think it!"

My brother starts screaming in a tiny cradle my father made for me eighteen years ago.

"He needs your milk," I retorts, while mother is hopelessly trying to comfort a shrilling infant.

"I can walk my sweetlove to her dear father!"

Danko is standing in the hallway and smiling brightly, showing his white teeth. Mother seems happy and grateful, but I don't.

"I'll go with you!" my younger sister Zabava is putting on her bast shoes.

Danko's face is long. Zabava has just ruined his kind of tryst with me.

The road is running up the hill.

"I'm scared," whispers my sister, "...I hear something."

"If you are scared, go back!" snaps the youth.

Now I hear it too. There is a kikimora right behind us. The creature usually dwells in abandoned barns or mills, but she is here stares at us like an ugly old broad with unnaturally long limbs and beaky muzzle full of teeth.

"Zabava, come to me, quick!"

But it's too late; the creature grabs my pale sister and runs away. I turn to my betrothed in despair, but I see his frightened face and trembling lips that speak better than words. He sobs and runs to the village without looking back.

Once Danko told me he would bring me a dragon's heart...

It's dim and damp inside kikimora's den. My sister is not seen anywhere, but a young woman sits on the floor and leans to the wall.

"Release me, girl, and I'll give you a lot of gold. I'm a princess."

"You are not a real princess, and I don't need your gold," I laugh bitterly, looking at gloomy girl in dirty clothes with a bag of black matted hair, though her muddy face is very pretty. "How can I help you?" I'm really sorry for her: she seems hungry and miserable.

"Just throw thisss dragon figure away. It restrictss me from ssshifting," she says, hissing the "s".

Poor soul must have gone mad, sitting here alone for so long. I do what she asked to comfort her when the bright light covers the girl's skin, and her body transforms into a dragon.

I fright back in fear, but the black serpent rushes towards the appeared kikimora, sinking teeth into the kidnapper. I've just remembered, father told me he would be late...

***

I'm on her back with my cheek on her warm scales. My sister is sleeping in her paws while we are high in the sky.

I won my dragon's heart.