Azovka awakened as I finished serving the autumn stew. She looked aghast at Danilo. “You are the first stone singer in a thousand years!” she exclaimed, in awe. She smiled, laughing, clapping her hands. “Dany, this is a wonderful thing. Stone singers are the perfect accomplices to Copper Men, like my great-so-many-greats grandmother Clementina. She helped Vladimir Popova summon all the gemstones, gold, silver, and minerals and ores to the Ural Mountains in the first place – through her stone singing.”

Danilo explained the godsmark, and we had much to discuss over the hearty stew. I chewed a chunk of deer haunch, the fatty meat melting on my tongue with rosemary and thyme. A bit of carrot stuck in my throat. I swallowed it down, still in shock.

“Azovka, is it common for men to sing stone? And what do you know of the gods, as you are a Copper Woman?” I asked gently.

Azovka’s eyes filled with strangeness. The look drew me in like a well. “Veles blesses each Popova on the day of their birth. He travels like Ded Moroz, full bearded and staved, with jangling keys to the Underworld in his pockets, snakes at his hands. He gave me my lizard form.”

Danilo froze. “You can turn into a lizard?”

“You didn’t know? I guess we never told you.” Azovka shifted shapes, into a large, beautiful green lizard, with a copper kokoshnik with malachite jewels and pearls. It almost looked like Catherine the Great in reptilian form.

“Hah! Wickedly delightful. But you look rather spiteful,” Danilo rhymed, hugging Azovka close to him. She laughed as he scratched the ridges along her scaled back. She turned back into her human form then kissed him on the cheek. He blushed to high heaven.

“I mark you as my Stone Flower, Danilo!” Azovka decreed, her nobility shining through in her proclamation.

“Well, fair Mistress of Copper Mountain, I suppose I must oblige,” Danilo laughed, setting her gently between us. We all fell back into one another’s arms, eating the venison stew, and plotted over how to find Veles to understand why Danilo was marked, and told stories of Saint Clementina.

“She gave Tsar Vladimir Bright-Sun the head of Zmey Gorynych she hacked off with her copper axe!” I proclaimed. “I will be as strong as Clementina. I will give you a dragon’s head too, Azovka.”

Azovka looked flustered. “Zmey is a gentle creature. I’d rather have Polozi’s head. Gold is a pretty thing.”

Danilo winked, holding our hands. “I will get both you your weights in gold when I go to the Tsar and carve him a real thornapple of stone.”

We all froze. “What, Danilo?” I asked without hesitation.

Danilo smiled. “I am accompanying Master Prokovitch to Tsar Nikolai’s court, on a regional display of Podentsky might and talent. Alexei and Stepan are going to. What, you didn’t know?”

“Men and their secrets! No, we did not,” I huffed and puffed. “The royal Romanov Court? The Princess Anastasia? Oh Danilushko, pull every string so that Azovka and I may see the palace life and debut in the Summer Court!”

Azovka bubbled with excitement. “What shalI I wear, Katya? My malachite gown? My emerald dress? My peridot skirt and blouse? Perhaps a tanzanite ball gown! I will be the envy of court.”

“Hold your horses, girls! It will be hard to get train tickets at this time. But maybe… if I sold the moldavite fern flower at the county festival next week – maybe I could finagle two tickets for you two with the proceeds. What do you say, my best girls?”

We all high-fived, planning. Azovka and I spent the week preparing Danilo’s folk outfit – a white sweater embroidered with Mokosh’s tree body in intertwining blue folk patterns, a lapis lazuli belt, and I hand-stitched silk pants like a Tartar dancer with fabric from my malachite casket. Alexei had blessed my dowry box not only with never-ending magick jewels, but needles and thimbles and skeins of the finest mien.

Danilo practiced his stone cutting, spending all day and night at the back of Prokovitch’s workshop after shepherding. Finally, the fern flower – which we tried to find on Ivan Kupalo, or Saint John’s Eve, who had bloomed from a doomed love between brother and sister long ago – was born.

In between a brother and sister in embrace in the moldavite, grew a fern with a single green flower.

Azovka and I shared a look of wonder. She squeezed Danilo’s hand.

“Dany,” Azovka breathed. His blue eyes were a question. Azovka caressed the blossom. “You have made stone breathe.”