A Wolf for a Spell

by Karah Sutton

  Zima pressed her hands together eagerly.

  Pick up the spoon.

  “The what?”

  He flapped his wings again. The wooden thing. You were just holding it.

  Zima moved back toward the cauldron and plucked the spoon from the hook on the wall. The surface of the liquid was steaming. The grayish-brown of wild mushrooms looked almost green when she turned her head. Bubbles grew and burst with mouselike squeaks. Stirring the surface of the liquid per his instructions, she leaned forward to inhale the earthy and smoky scents.

  It can only show you her memories, said the raven, so ask it about something Baba Yaga would remember.

  “So it can’t show me where she is now? Or how to become a wolf again?” Disappointment nibbled at Zima’s insides. She had hoped the cauldron would help her reverse Baba Yaga’s spell.

  The raven shook his head. Ask it why you’re here, he said.

  As Zima leaned forward to speak the words, the whispers she’d heard ever since becoming Baba Yaga skittered like spiders over her skin. They grew and spread, until she was covered in them, her whole body wriggling and humming. Her eyes filled with smoke from the fire.

  When the smoke cleared and the whispers lowered to their usual hum, Baba Yaga was seated at the table in front of her, drinking steaming liquid from a mug. Zima jumped. Had the witch returned?

  But Baba Yaga didn’t seem to notice Zima at all. Zima held up her withered hands. They were the witch’s hands. She was still in Baba Yaga’s body, with the raven perched on her shoulder. And yet Baba Yaga was also seated right in front of her.

  A memory, just as the raven had said. She was in Baba Yaga’s memory.

  Wind howled over the roof and past the chimney. The firelight gave the room a soft glow that must have been the only light visible in the forest for many miles.

  The first knock on the door was no louder than a tree branch scratching against the window. The second was louder, more desperate, and by the time the witch had risen and tugged a wool cloth over her shoulders, the third knock was nearly strong enough to break the door down.

  Muttering curses to herself, Baba Yaga went to the door.

  The latch gave a soft click as she undid it and began to turn the handle. Then a gust of wind caught the door and blew it wide open.

  On the threshold stood a young couple, the woman clutching a crying baby in her arms. The firelight threw shadows on their threadbare clothes and holey shoes.

  With arms folded across her chest, the witch said to the visitors, “Were you forced to come here, or did you choose to come?” It was the same thing Baba Yaga had said to Zima. It must be what she said to every visitor.

  The woman stammered out a response. “We ch-chose to come. The b-baby—” she began.

  But the man cut her off. “We found this child,” he said. “In the forest.”

  The wife’s breath caught in her throat. She looked swiftly down at the child, avoiding Baba Yaga’s gaze. Then she jiggled the baby and made a cooing sound to soothe it.

  Baba Yaga reached out to the baby. But the woman pulled away, clutching the child close to her chest. The abrupt motion led to a new waterfall of wails from the infant.

  “He’s sick, I don’t know what’s wrong,” said the wife. “I was hoping you could—”

  “That child belongs to me,” the witch said, fire and thunder rolling deep in her voice.

  At these words, the woman’s eyes grew wide with fright. She stumbled away from Baba Yaga, out the door of the hut and down the steps to the forest floor. Her husband followed close behind, his shouts for her to come back lost in the wind.

  Standing at the door of the hut, Baba Yaga stretched out a hand, fingers spread wide like bat wings. “Stop!” she commanded.

  Through the window, Zima watched in horror as roots tore from the earth, sending snow and mud into the air. They twisted around the woman’s ankles, just as they had done to Zima in her own first encounter with the witch. The woman lurched and nearly lost her grip on the baby, but managed to hold fast.

  But so did the roots. They tied the woman in place. She squirmed, trying to rip her legs free.

  Slowly Baba Yaga descended the steps. Her feet seemed to glide across the snow as she moved toward them, stopping where the man stood next to the trapped young woman. In her voice were all the depths of the earth, the fury of an earthquake. “Do not run again,” she charged. “I will give you one spell, and one spell only, in exchange for the child. I will not offer again.”

  The man reached out and took the baby from his wife’s arms, his own hands trembling. The woman screamed and collapsed into the snow, her hair catching on the twigs and brambles surrounding her.

  Holding the baby close, the man said, “The spell I—we—request is for my family to be able to come to you with a question—any question—and be assured of a truthful answer.” The child’s cries quieted, as though he too was eager for the witch’s spell.

  Zima couldn’t help but feel impressed. Grom said humans always lied, but this one was on a search for truth.

  “Done,” said Baba Yaga, with a glance at the full moon overhead. “The full moon seals the exchange. I will give you and your family truth, always.” She extended her arms toward him. “Now give me the child.”

  The man’s lips quirked, and he looked down at the now-cooing baby. “How do I know that the exchange is sealed? I should ask a question first, so I know.”

  Baba Yaga’s jaw tightened, but she nodded. “Then, what is your question?” she asked.

  The look the man gave her was full of venom. “How do I become the tsar?” he asked.

  It wasn’t a word Zima recognized, but she could feel the hunger in the man’s voice as he said it.

  Baba Yaga clamped her mouth closed, and Zima watched as she struggled against the powers of the moon and earth that bound her. Only when she seemed close to snapping like a bough in a lightning storm did she speak, in a voice that was not her own. It seemed to come from somewhere different entirely, somewhere beyond them both. The voice told the man of a tunnel that led from the forest to a castle, which would allow them to sneak inside the castle undetected. It spoke of how the current tsar loved to play chess, and of a dagger of gold and rubies that could be found in the tsar’s room and used to murder him while he played.

  None of this made any sense…castle, chess, tsar….But one word Zima did recognize: “murder.”

  Zima could feel Baba Yaga’s heartache as the witch spoke. The horrible instructions made her breathless. This man was going to kill someone. “But know this,” said Baba Yaga, “if you kill him, then that dagger is cursed. It will seek the blood of a tsar, always.”

  The man was unfazed. His jaw jutted forward and he stared at Baba Yaga, as if challenging her to stop him.

  She extended her arms for the child, her palms wet from the tears streaming down her cheeks.

  With a smile, the man held the baby out to her.

  As moonlight illuminated the child, an unreadable expression flickered across Baba Yaga’s face. She stepped away from both man and baby, and before the man had time to protest, she had retreated into her hut, leaving the child in his arms.

  As Baba Yaga shut the door behind her, the whispers in Zima’s head swelled louder than ever. They filled her ears and throat and chest, rumbling as though the ground beneath her feet were shaking. Find the gray wolf, the voices said. Find the gray wolf. She could almost taste the words. Almost touch the voices that Zima knew, without understanding why, came from the very forest itself. Find the gray wolf. Find the gray wolf. By the look on Baba Yaga’s face, she guessed that the witch could hear them too.

  But in the memory, Baba Yaga didn’t find the gray wolf. Instead, she sat by the warm fire, returning to the drink she’d been sipping only a few minutes before.

  * * *

  —

  “I don’t understand,” said Zima. “Why did she agree?”

  She had to take the child by any means necessary, s
aid the raven, sorrow weighing down his words. A baby found in the forest, growing like a root, is a new witch. One is born when it will soon be time for this Baba Yaga’s reign to end. He turned very grave. She has to raise it to become the next Baba Yaga.

  “But she didn’t.” Baba Yaga had let the humans take the baby away.

  He lied, said the raven. It was an ordinary human. She didn’t realize until after she’d agreed to the bargain. He had risked his own child in order to get what he wanted. The raven croaked. Despicable.

  “But why didn’t she stop him? He wanted to murder someone.”

  Fear, he said. That he or any other human would trick her again. She chose to conceal herself, to avoid humans at all costs. And for a hundred years, she did.

  One hundred years? It was an old memory. All those years ago the human had tricked the witch into helping him murder another human, and Baba Yaga had done nothing to stop it. She’d let fear stop her.

  And now she’d tricked Zima into becoming a part of some cryptic scheme.

  Zima wanted no part of this. Whatever role she was playing in this scene from Baba Yaga’s past, it had nothing to do with Zima now. But what could she do? Anything was better than waiting here, trapped in this hut, vulnerable to any other humans who came along looking for spells.

  She had moved half a step toward the door when a noise from outside startled both her and the raven. There was a crash as something pounded against the chicken legs of the hut, then a thrashing of bushes and twigs.

  Someone was prowling about on the ground below.

  Baba Yaga stretched her legs, feeling their power, the muscles and balance that allowed her to leap over the uneven ground as if she were flying.

  She held the scent of the dagger in her nose. The wolf’s senses were stronger than her witch body’s had been—even at the height of her powers—and her new nose was her guide. The blade still remembered the blood of the old tsar, and Baba Yaga had breathed it with her new wolf sense of smell. She would hunt them. The sooner she found them, the sooner the task of defeating the tsar would fall to someone else instead of herself.

  Though it had been many years since the dagger had tasted blood, the scent still lingered. It was a subtle kind of magic, but one she could take advantage of as a wolf. The fact that she’d managed to get hold of the dagger at all was a wonder. It certainly made her glad for the raven’s assistance.

  But even with the valuable clue from the dagger, finding her prey still required her to catch a hint of their scent somewhere.

  The first part of her journey was to travel to the great road, the one that connected the villages on the edge of the forest to the city beyond. The shortest way was through the depths of the forest.

  As much as she enjoyed her new wolf senses, there was an emptiness inside her that grew increasingly hard to ignore as she ran deeper into the forest’s heart.

  She had never been separated from her magic object before. It had connected her life force to the forest. Were her witch body to go too long without it, she would die. For the first time in three hundred years, she could no longer hear the voices of the forest. When she strained her ears and looked deep inside herself, she thought perhaps she could hear them. But they were no more tangible than a soft breeze.

  The emptiness distracted her, clawed at her as she leapt down a hill toward a stream. It was too late by the time she realized what the stream was.

  The sound of the water should have told her. The omen that tolled under its bubbling current.

  These were the Waters of Death.

  She snapped her mouth closed, realizing her mistake just as she plunged into the stream. Touching it wouldn’t kill her—in fact, the waters could heal some injuries—but if she swallowed even a drop, her heart would stop beating.

  What a fool she was! Overlooking, ignoring.

  This was her forest, and yet she hadn’t heeded what it told her.

  It had been so long since she’d listened. Because she hadn’t wanted to hear. And now she had almost met her death within moments of beginning her journey.

  She shook herself dry. The air threatened snow. She had to remember the secrets of the forest, evade its tricks and perils.

  With careful steps, Baba Yaga continued on her journey. She would not be caught unawares again.

  Oh dear, said the raven.

  “What?” said Zima, snapping to attention. She’d been thinking of Grom, wondering if the pack was safe, if they were worried about her. “Who is it?”

  The raven stared at her, as if he’d never heard such a foolish question before.

  Someone desperate for a spell, I expect. Why else would anyone dare disturb Baba Yaga?

  Zima moved away from the window. What if the human tried to trick her into giving something she didn’t want to give, like the man in the memory? Her hands clutched at her bony cheeks. “But I can’t do spells!” she said in a nervous whisper. “I haven’t found the object yet. And Baba Yaga said I mustn’t talk to anyone!” She wanted to tuck her tail between her legs—if only she still had a tail.

  Quiet! shushed the raven. Just stay hidden and they might think you’re not home. He craned his neck to the top of the windowpane, his beak flattened against the glass, looking down at the ground.

  “Get away from there!” said Zima. “What if they see you?”

  I’m just trying to get a look, said the raven in a guarded voice. His shoulders were hunched. If I say RUN, tell the hut to get us out of here.

  “What?! How?” said Zima.

  Shush! I can see something….

  Nothing the raven said was comforting. In fact, each time he spoke, it made the whole situation seem worse.

  No…it’s…not a human, said the raven.

  The pounding of her heart in her ears lessened slightly. “What did you say?”

  I said it’s not a human. It’s…The raven pulled away from the window and rolled his eyes at her. It’s a wolf.

  Zima scrambled toward the window and stretched up on the tips of her toes to look down at the creature below. It took less than a second to recognize the skipping walk and brown shoulders of Veter.

  Her temper erupted, engulfing the terror that had just possessed her. So now Veter decided he could come to the witch? He managed to muster the courage, only after it was too late and Zima was trapped in a witch’s body.

  “House!” Zima shouted as she stomped to the door and grasped the handle. “When I say so, get us out of here and kick some dirt in Veter’s face while you’re at it!”

  The raven opened his beak to protest that Baba Yaga had ordered her not to speak to anyone, but Zima had thrown the door open. The house gave a nervous shudder, as though it was letting her open the door against its better judgment.

  “What are you doing here?” she snapped at the figure on the ground.

  Veter’s ears twitched and folded back. He looked up at her, his brow furrowed and his paws planted firmly on the ground. Zima could tell he was trying to act braver than he felt. When he spoke, his voice shook.

  I am looking for Zima.

  “Why?” Zima said, glaring at him.

  Because I need to make sure she is unharmed.

  Part of Zima’s heart was touched that he had faced his fears to come looking for her. But it was a small part. The bigger part remembered that she probably wouldn’t be in this mess if he hadn’t abandoned her yesterday.

  For a second she wished that she had the witch’s magic object in hand, so she could switch places with Veter. At least she’d be in a wolf body, though not her own, and Veter would be the one stuck as a witch.

  Instead, she said, “She’s gone. You won’t find her, so don’t bother looking.”

  There was just time for Veter to let out a pitiful whimper before Zima slammed the door closed and threw herself into a chair.

  The boom of the door shook the walls. When the rattling ceased, the raven said dryly, Well, that was unnecessary.

  Zima ignored him. “House!” she
shouted. “Get us out of here! And don’t forget what I said about the dirt!”

  But the hut didn’t move.

  “House!” Zima said again.

  Nothing acknowledged her words. No creak of wooden rafters, no tilting floor to signify a nod.

  “Why doesn’t it answer?” Zima asked the raven.

  Maybe it doesn’t like being yelled at.

  He stared at her, his beak lifted smugly, and Zima deflated a little, ashamed of herself. She held her head in her hands for a moment. She shouldn’t have lost her temper like that, not at Veter and especially not at the house. There was no one she could turn to for help when she needed it. “Oh, what should I do?” she asked.

  The raven gave a pointed look up at the rafters. A musty, grassy scent floated downward from the hanging herbs. I’ve told you, you have to ask nicely.

  “No, I mean…,” said Zima, peeking between her fingers, “about Veter…”

  Ah, said the raven. He puffed up his feathers. Well, that’s not really my concern.

  Zima ignored him. The unhelpful little feather-beast. She had to make it up to Veter for yelling at him. He clearly regretted his decision and had come to set things right. And Zima had told him her wolf self was gone, all but saying outright that it was his fault.

  She pushed herself upright and skulked back to the door. It opened with a creak. On the grass below, Veter sat, unmoving, his head hung low.

  “Veter,” Zima called.

  He lifted his head. The sunlight caught the long scar across his face. He narrowed his eye at her.

  How do you know my name?

  Zima coughed. She thought she heard a titter of laughter from the raven behind her, and waved her hand at him to be quiet. “I…er…I’m a witch,” she said. She placed her hands on her hips. “Of course I know.”

  And why will I not find Zima? Veter asked, getting straight to the point. What have you done with her? His lips curled into the hint of a snarl.