Wickedly Unraveled

by Deborah Blake

  Beka took a step forward to stand next to Bella. “I agree with Bella,” she said in a voice stronger than might be expected from someone who looked so rough around the edges. “Barbara would never, ever do anything like that. She’s the best of us all.”

  Barbara had to blink a couple of times to clear her eyes of unexpected moisture. Having her sister Babas take her side meant more than either of them could ever know. Apparently she hadn’t lost them after all.

  “You misunderstand Us,” the Queen said in a surprisingly gentle voice. “Barbara’s loyalty has never been in question, at least not for long. As for her sanity, We would as soon doubt the moons in the sky.”

  Everyone looked up to make sure that all three moons (one still hanging crooked) were there before nodding in agreement.

  “In fact,” the King added, “We are quite convinced her assertion that time has gone awry is true, although it does not appear that there is any way to remedy the situation.” He looked at Barbara and she shook her head sadly, clutching her useless bag of ingredients and tools to her side.

  “But, but,” Brenna sputtered. “Of course Barbara is the problem. I’ve told you.”

  “So you did, Brenna, so you did,” the Queen said. “You also told us that Beka was getting her share of the Water of Life and Death, and that is demonstrably untrue.” She waved her fan in Beka’s direction, then used it to gesture both Beka and Bella back away from Brenna. They moved adroitly, not having to be told twice.

  “Plus you lied about Barbara,” the King added. “Who has informed Us of your treachery in the timeline she remembers, as well as your involvement in the poisoning and displacement of the Selkies and Merpeople, an event which took place in both timelines.”

  “As did your theft of the Water of Life and Death from your own former hut, after which you came to Us and suggested most convincingly that your replacement was too young and inexperienced to continue on as Baba Yaga, and volunteered to come out of retirement,” the Queen said. The bitterness in her voice was so strong, some of the more delicate flowers began to wilt.

  “To Our sorrow and regret, We believed you,” the King said. “For this, We owe Beka a debt we will never be able to repay, although We shall begin, of course, by reinstating her in her position as Baba Yaga, with complete autonomy.”

  Barbara wasn’t sure who looked more shocked by this statement, Beka or Brenna.

  “But Your Majesties,” Brenna protested. “You can’t! I am the Baba Yaga!”

  “You,” the Queen said, pointing her fan in Brenna’s direction, “are beneath contempt. You are a traitor to the crown and to all those you have sworn to serve. Your days as Baba Yaga should have been over long ago. We assure you, they are over now.”

  The color drained out of Brenna’s face, and her hands clenched at her skirt so hard, Barbara heard the material tear.

  “We do not know if you are a victim of the Water Sickness, or merely your own greed. Either way, your power is forfeit for these acts of treason. All your power. The natural magic with which you were born, as well as the power gifted to you by My potent Water of Life and Death. You will be left with nothing. As mortal and weak as any other Human. What will happen after that remains to be decided.”

  “NO! Your Majesty, you can’t! It’s a lie. All lies.” Brenna swiveled and glared at the three younger Baba Yagas. “They all plot against me because they are jealous of my skill and wisdom. I would never do the things of which you have accused me. I am innocent.” Big fat tears rolled down her wrinkled face, but the Queen looked unimpressed by Brenna’s theatrics and raised her fan.

  “No! No! Not my powers!” Brenna’s face grew red with rage, her brief tears already dried and forgotten. “I am the strongest Baba Yaga who has ever lived. The best! You can’t take it away from me!”

  A glimmer of an idea started to form in Barbara’s mind. Hope suddenly bubbled up, like a potion in a cauldron.

  “Wait, Your Majesty,” she said.

  “What?” the Queen said, looking baffled, but lowering her fan a fraction of an inch.

  “What?” Beka and Bella asked in unison. “Why?”

  Brenna stared at Barbara with suspicion. “Yes, why?”

  Barbara ignored the rest of them, speaking only to the King and Queen. They were the ones she would have to convince.

  “She’s right,” Barbara said. “At this moment, Brenna holds within her the most power any Baba Yaga has ever had. The magical potential even the weakest of us contains is huge, and she has not only been accumulating power for a great many years, but undoubtedly drinking extra of the Water, both that which she stole originally and Beka’s share of their current supply, in addition to siphoning off some of Beka’s power to supplement her own.”

  “Your point, Baba Yaga?” the Queen was not known for her patience, and she was clearly ready to finish what she’d started.

  “My point, Your Majesty,” Barbara said with a brief bow, “is that the spell I have been attempting to use to fix the broken timeline hasn’t worked because it lacked the necessary power to undo the magnitude of changes that were created when the original timeline came unraveled. Those changes were brought about by the clash of two witches that resulted in a death. The amount of power this conjunction of raw energy generated was huge, possibly more than all three of the current Baba Yagas could bring to bear.”

  She stared at Brenna, who glared back with so much hate a lesser woman would have paused. Luckily, Barbara was not a lesser woman. Not by a long shot.

  “But when you rip away Brenna’s power—all of her power, original, earned, and stolen—it will generate more energy than any ten Baba Yagas could produce using a safe portion of our total magic. If I perform the spell at the exact same moment you reclaim her power and if you send it into the enchantment, it just might work.”

  Barbara gazed at the royal couple and held her breath.

  The Queen raised one silvery eyebrow. “That is a lot of ‘ifs.’ Baba Yaga.”

  “Yes, Your Majesty.” She didn’t add that it was the only chance she had left. They already knew that.

  The King looked thoughtful, his handsome face more somber than usual. “Even assuming you are correct, Baba Yaga, are you absolutely certain you wish to do this? If everything you have told us about the other timeline is true, there will be sacrifices as well as gains. The Riders will lose their immortality. Brenna will have died.”

  “What? What?” Brenna shrieked. “No! You killed me?”

  Barbara smirked. “Not me,” she said. “After we discovered you about to burn the Riders and Bella to death to fuel your insane immortality spell, Koshka here turned you into a charcoal briquette.”

  “Did I?” Koshka said, looking surprised and not a little proud. “Go me.” A little spurt of fire shot out of his feline nostrils. Bella patted him on the head, only having to lean over a bit to do it.

  The Queen cleared her throat delicately. “As Our beloved Consort was saying, this is not a decision to be taken lightly. You have settled into this timeline, for all that it lacks some of the things you knew from before. You and young Babs here have made a new beginning for yourselves. All of that will be lost should you succeed at casting this spell, and there is no guarantee that your old timeline will be exactly as you recall it. Magic is strange and unpredictable. No one knows that better than you, Baba Yaga.”

  Barbara exchanged glances with Babs, who had stuck close to her side through the entire exchange. The girl would be affected as strongly as Barbara by whatever decision she made. Babs just stuck out her chin in that particularly stubborn way she had always had, and nodded decisively. “Home,” she mouthed silently.

  Barbara sighed, casting a subtle smile around those nearest her in the clearing, all so precious (with one notable exception). “If I succeed, there are many good things that will happen as well. The stolen children will be returned to the families who love them. Bella and Beka will get back the lives they were supposed to have, with men who love them,
magic and all.”

  The smile grew wider as it rested on Beka. “You are so much stronger and tougher in that other world,” she said softly. “It was hard to get there, but you did. If this doesn’t work, I know you’ll get there in this one too.” She turned to Bella. “And you finally get your fiery temper under control, more or less. You haven’t set anyone on fire accidentally in ages.”

  “Cool,” Bella said, slinging one arm around Beka supportively. “It’s kind of hard to imagine being me but different, but I like the idea of getting true love. You’ve got my vote, for what it’s worth.”

  Beka nodded. “Mine too.”

  “And what of the Riders?” the Queen asked. “They are not here to have a say, and they have the most to lose.”

  “They told me once that they trusted me to do the right thing,” Barbara said. “They seemed quite intrigued by the new lives they built for themselves. Especially Alexei. He marries a woman who owns a bar.”

  Even the Queen laughed at that, a peal of lightness in an otherwise somber gathering. Alexei was notorious for his love of drinking, even in a court where there was always a party going on somewhere, day or night.

  “More than that, though,” Barbara went on. “As Babs so wisely said, and you reiterated when you told me you were resolved to deal with Brenna, if one makes a mess, it is one’s responsibility to clean it up. I made this mess. I broke the timeline, and it is up to me to fix it. No matter what the end result, I have to try to make things right again.”

  The King and Queen spoke to each other quietly for a moment, the meadow so silent and still, you could hear the flutter of a bird’s wing as it shifted in a nearby tree.

  Finally, the Queen turned to Barbara and nodded once, briskly. “We agree, Baba Yaga. It is worth the attempt. You have Our full support. It will be as you have asked. Set up whatever you need. We cannot assist you, since this is a Human problem, but we will hold this space safe as you do your magical working.”

  She waved her fan clockwise around the circle, and the orange and yellow ivy burst into heatless flame, shutting all those inside off from the rest of the Otherworld. A few lords and ladies who had been standing too close to the outer edge took rapid steps inward.

  Brenna made another effort to protest, but at another gesture from the Queen, a quartet of extremely large guards in silver armor moved to flank the disgraced Baba Yaga, and she subsided into incoherent and mostly inaudible muttering, glowing with the dim light of a stasis spell. Any efforts she made to fight its magical hold sputtered and dissolved instantly.

  Barbara gave Babs a quick hair tug for reassurance and made the few preparations that were necessary. A large, perfect quartz crystal was placed toward the north, the shards of phoenix eggs opposite it in the southern quarter to represent fire. The vial of centaur tears—down to eight, which she prayed would be enough—went into the western quadrant, as a form of water, and in the east, one of the phoenix’s bright feathers as a symbol of air. Four pure white candles, one for each element, were placed in each quarter, and she sprinkled rosemary around them all to form a circle of remembrance. The Kalpataru leaf she held in the palm of her right hand. She was as ready as she was going to be.

  “You’d better come and stand next to me,” she said to Babs. “I’m not sure what will happen if this works, and I don’t want to take any chances.” If she went back and Babs was somehow left behind in this timeline, Barbara wouldn’t be able to bear it. There was undoubtedly some danger in bringing her into the circle, but there didn’t seem to be any way to avoid that. From the look in her eyes, Babs was a lot happier to be by her side.

  “We’d like to help too, if you’ll let us,” Beka said. She and Bella moved to join the other two. “We probably shouldn’t be inside the circle itself, but we could help to guide and control the energy from out here, and add our own to boost yours.”

  Barbara nodded, tears of gratitude pricking at the corners of her eyes again. She gave them each a quick hug, just in case. She truly had no idea if this would work, or what would happen if it didn’t. Maybe nothing at all. Maybe some unforeseen disaster.

  For a moment, her resolve wavered. She clenched the fingers of the hand not holding the leaf and felt the cool metal of her wedding ring biting into her palm.

  The hell with it. She was going to get her life back. She was going to get everyone’s life back. Well, except Brenna. Tough luck.

  She looked at the Queen and nodded her head, then snapped her fingers to cause each candle to burst into flame. The Queen aimed her fan at Brenna, who began to scream as a trickle of energy was slowly drawn outward, glowing like the light of a small sun. As the trickle grew to a stream and the scream to a high-pitched wail, Barbara held up the leaf and began to recite the spell in her strongest, steadiest voice.

  “Transformation happen now

  Change the wrong to right

  Take away the dark mistakes

  Return us to the light

  Weave together what was sundered

  Mend the broken threads

  Undo the magic that was blundered

  So that happily it ends

  I call the power of the leaf

  The power of rock and tree

  Re-entwine what’s come unraveled

  As I will, SO MOTE IT BE”

  She uttered the last words, practically shouting them to the sky as she poured all her desire into the leaf in her right hand. “This is my wish!” she added more quietly. “Please.”

  A shudder ran through the clearing, the air in front of her blurring and wavering. Through the haze, she could see the concentration on Bella’s face, the sweat pouring down Beka’s paler one. Beyond them, Brenna’s body lay in a crumpled heap, as the Queen sent the glowing flow of energy directly into the center of Barbara’s circle.

  It was almost, almost, almost enough, but Barbara could feel the shiver that marked the moment before the spell collapsed. So close. So close.

  Then a small hand slid into hers, holding on with a strength belied by its diminutive size. A rush of additional power ran up her arm, across her chest, and into her core, flowing outward into the leaf and the rock and the shards and the feather, out into the circle and beyond.

  The shudder became an explosion, and everything turned to black.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “Baba Yaga! Baba Yaga!” The piping tenor voice brought the world slowly back into focus.

  Barbara’s knees trembled a little and she could feel the uneven earth beneath her booted feet. A deep breath drew in only the scent of trees and clean air, and she opened her partially closed eyes all the way and took a look around.

  The Queen and her court were gone, along with the rest of the Otherworld. Barbara and Babs stood at the edge of the Human witch’s yard, facing a house that lay in ruins, but clearly hadn’t burned. It looked, in fact, as though a tornado had torn through it, ripping it apart log by log and flinging the pieces into the air like a giant’s plaything. It reminded Barbara a little bit of Babs’ new blocks, when they were strewn about between projects.

  Best of all, they were not alone. Katherine Chanter stood staring at the wreck of her previously tidy home, her pretty face twisted in fury and disbelief, but clearly and unmistakably alive.

  “She is not dead!” Babs observed, sounding cautiously happy. “That is good, right?”

  Barbara shrugged. “Well, it is certainly good for her, although she doesn’t seem to be in the mood to appreciate it at the moment.”

  Barbara wasn’t sure exactly what it meant that things had changed from their original timeline. Hopefully it was an indication that the spell had worked, and undone all the harm caused by the violent confrontation that had precipitated all that followed, rewinding the unraveled pieces of time back into a less destructive whole. But there was also the possibility that they now stood in a third timeline, in which events had been altered to some extent, but perhaps not enough to have mended the most important broken pieces.

  �
��What the hell happened here?” Katherine turned her attention away from her shattered cabin and aimed it at Barbara instead. “What did you do to my house?” She looked confused, as if she couldn’t quite remember how things had gotten from point A to point B.

  “You showed up at my door,” Katherine said, pointing an accusing finger at Barbara. “And you shoved your way inside and demanded I stop making my wonderful elixir.” She shook her head as if to clear it. “You’re the Baba Yaga.”

  “I am,” Barbara said. “One of them, at least. And yes, I did all of that. Your so-called elixir was messing with time, which is completely unsafe and against the rules.” Nobody knew that better than she did, that much was for sure. “So I stopped you.”

  She glanced around the clearing and was pleased to note that all the plants which had previously shown signs of unseasonal coloration or growth seemed to have gone back to normal. There were no berries on the raspberry bushes, and all the leaves were their proper tones for the time of year. Another change, but surely a good sign.

  A low growling sound drew her gaze back to Katherine, who was making a noise that sounded surprisingly like Chudo-Yudo in a bad mood.

  “You stopped me? You stopped me?” The woman’s voice went up an octave with each repetition. “You stopped me from making a magical potion that would keep me and thousands of other women looking young? You stopped me from getting rich from all my hard work? What gave you the right?” That last one came out as a shriek.

  “She is the Baba Yaga,” Babs said calmly, having finally let go of Barbara’s hand. “It is her job to stop bad magic.”

  “I don’t care if she is Harry Potter,” Katherine said with a sneer. “I am not going to let her ruin my life’s work.” She thrust her hands out in front of her and started muttering in Latin.

  Oh, not again, Barbara thought, preparing to put up a shield. At least this time maybe the house wouldn’t explode, since it was already lying in a heap.