by Max Candee
Baba Yaga hissed, pleased. I’d just revealed that I knew about her feud with Koschey.
“It’s just a human, vnuchechka,” she said. “Completely irrelevant to beings like us. You’re quite right, it’s got nothing to do with me or your father. Its fate is of no interest whatsoever. But that doesn’t mean it can’t serve a purpose. And I’m hungry.”
“But she’s got something to do with me,” I protested. “She’s my friend!”
Baba Yaga sighed.
“I’m sorry I had to leave you with those humans for so long that you started to think of them as pets,” she said. “But you must know that however much he likes a cow, a farmer will still turn her into hamburgers someday.”
“I won’t let you!”
“Oh? And how are you going to stop me?”
I struggled to find something to say. Baba Yaga sneered, and then suddenly, without warning, she grabbed one of my wrists and swung me around until I fell to my knees on one side of Lauraleigh.
Baba Yaga knelt too, her long nose only inches from mine. I hardly even had time to yelp at the pain before she was snarling at me, not a trace of kindliness on her face, both my wrists held tight in her grip.
“You think you can hide from who you are?” she spat. “You think you can run from what you are? You think you’re too good to do what you have to, to survive? You think you’re better than me? Eh? Do you? Just because you like this pathetic, weeping creature? Just because of who your father is?” She shook me, hard, and I was too scared even to be angry anymore. “Come on! Show me just how good and decent you are!” She yanked one of my hands high and pressed it on Lauraleigh’s forehead, just above her terrified, pleading eyes.
“You feel that?” my grandmother hissed. “You taste that? Terrified, isn’t it? Can you taste its fear? All that lovely fear spicing its energy? And it’s sad, and it’s worried, and it’s looking at you and trying to work out who you really are and what you’re doing here. And it’s all delicious, isn’t it? Isn’t it? Can you really stop yourself from feasting on that?”
She cackled — because it was true, I could feel Lauraleigh’s energy, it was so clear and present, and almost without thinking, I was drawing it off. I could feel my own strength growing, and I closed my eyes. I’d never felt anything like that before. It was better than a glass of water after a hot day in the sun. Better than walking out of the snow into a warm room. Better than plunging into a bath after days tramping through the forest. Better than turning around when you were feeling lonely in the orphanage and realizing that Lauraleigh has come to see how you were…
I pulled my hand away. What was I doing?
I opened my eyes. Granny was standing a couple of meters away, a satisfied look on her face. Lauraleigh had crumpled to the ground. I could just see a pulse at her throat.
“So,” said my grandmother. “You are a witch after all.”
I wanted to blast her with all the magic I had, all the power I’d just gained from Lauraleigh, and hit her, hurt her, make her suffer for what she’d done. The shadow in me laughed at the thought. But I didn’t. Somehow I didn’t. I had to keep control. I had to save Lauraleigh — and somehow my father.
Granny looked … smug.
She thinks she’s won, I thought. Maybe I can use that against her.
Lauraleigh wasn’t important to her. She’d just been a test for me. That didn’t mean Baba Yaga didn’t intend to eat her; it just meant that the meal was only a side benefit.
“What do you want for her?” I asked.
She raised an eyebrow. “What’s that?” she asked.
“What can I do for you to let her go?”
“Are you attempting to bargain with me, vnuchechka?” she said quietly.
“No,” I answered, my voice steady. “To trade.”
She tapped the side of her mouth with a finger.
“What on earth could you do that my Horsemen and my hands can’t, though?” she said. “Or I can’t?”
“I don’t know, Granny,” I said. “You tell me.”
Unexpectedly, she burst into peals of laughter. “You’re cleverer than I thought, Anna Sophia,” she said. “I was starting to think you might be as useless as your mother.”
Anger flared inside me again.
“No — don’t lose your temper,” Baba Yaga warned. “Don’t waste your energy like that, not so soon after a meal. You’ll need it if you’re going to do me a kindness.”
“It won’t be a kindness, Granny,” I said. “It will be a payment.”
“Well, there’s no need to be so nasty about it,” she snapped. “If you’re going to do something, you might as well be nice about it. Really, I am sorry I couldn’t keep you out of that orphanage, if these are the manners they taught you, but you don’t have to take it out on me quite that much.”
My jaw dropped. I couldn’t believe it! Ten minutes ago she was talking about all the ways she was going to cook Lauraleigh, five minutes ago she was holding my wrists so hard they still hurt, and now she was trying her grumpy grandmother act again?
“Oh, don’t look at me like that,” she said. “Pick up your pet and take it inside, and we’ll talk. There might be something you could do for me after all.”
“Her,” I said.
“What?”
“‘Her,’ not ‘it,’ Granny. And she’s not my pet; she’s my friend.”
Baba Yaga sighed. “Orphanages!” she said to no one in particular, rolling her eyes. And then she went inside.
* * *
I managed to get Lauraleigh inside and lay her down on my bed, but I couldn’t untie the knots binding her or undo the gag. At least she was unconscious now. I touched her on the forehead and whispered “Sleep” to her, which I hoped would help.
When I went into the kitchen, my grandmother was seated in her usual chair, waiting for the hands to finish making us tea.
“Sit,” she said.
I sat.
“Is your temper under control?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Good. I don’t care to listen to sulky children.”
The hands brought us our tea, and for a while, we said nothing.
Finally, I’d had enough. “So,” I said. “What can I do?”
“Well,” she said reflectively, “there is a certain task you could perform for me.”
“What is it?”
“I need you to find an island for me. A specific one.”
“What? Why?”
“Because in the middle of that island, there’s a tree.”
“So?”
“In the branches of that tree, there’s a chest.”
“You want me to find you a chest? Couldn’t you just make one?”
“No, no. You see, inside that chest, there’s a hare.”
“How do you know this?”
“I just do. Inside that hare, there’s a duck.”
“What?” Now I was utterly confused. Leaving aside the matter of how there could be a duck inside a hare, how was any of this important?
“And inside that duck, there’s an egg. And inside that egg, there’s something I want.”
“So why don’t you go get it yourself?”
“Because I can’t find the island. And if I could, I wouldn’t be able to find the chest.”
“Why not?”
“Because of the enchantment on it. And because of what’s in the egg.”
“I don’t understand. How is there an enchantment you can’t break?”
“Because it was made specifically against me. And because of who made it.”
“Who was that?”
Baba Yaga looked at me appraisingly.
“Why, my daughter, of course,” she said quietly. “Your mother.”
I froze. Immediately, I knew what was inside that egg. I knew what my grandmother was asking me for.
“Yes, exactly,” said Baba Yaga. She didn’t need magic to know I’d worked it out; it must have been written all over my face. “I need your f
ather’s heart.”
Chapter 18
Dear Diary,
There’s no way I can trust my grandmother. She’s cruel and wicked and I can’t believe how calmly she was going to butcher a person. Lauraleigh. My friend.
But getting my father’s heart and giving it to her may be the only way to save Lauraleigh.
Can I risk that? My mother died to make sure Baba Yaga didn’t get Koschey’s heart. Would I be betraying her memory?
My only hope is that my father’s right that she can be tricked…
* * *
“Why?” I asked.
“Only for the noblest of intentions,” answered Baba Yaga. “I need your father’s heart to save the world.”
I almost choked. Now she wanted me to believe she was acting for the public good? After she’d just lectured me about how I shouldn’t care about people?
I struggled to keep control. I couldn’t do anything that might cause her to change her mind, not when it was my only chance of saving Lauraleigh.
“Really,” I said. “And how will that work?”
“Well, with your father’s heart, I can control the ghosts, which will let me set things right. It has to be done, after all.”
“What ghosts?” I asked.
“Oh, don’t try to be clever; it doesn’t suit you. The ghosts who were surrounding that castle where my Horsemen found you. And others like them.”
“What are they? Why are they suddenly appearing?”
“You don’t need to know those details. All you need to know is that I need your father’s heart.” She sighed. “It would all have gone much more smoothly if your mother had just handed it over in the first place.”
I felt a burst of pain and sorrow at the thought of my mother. Though I managed to control it, I couldn’t help asking, “If she had, would she have died?”
Baba Yaga considered that for a moment. “No,” she said calmly. “I don’t believe she would have.”
I bit back the urge to scream at her. Instead, I asked, “If you just freed my father, couldn’t he take care of the ghosts for you?”
“Ha!” Baba Yaga snorted. “That old bag of bones actually doing something useful to help people? No, Anna Sophia, he wouldn’t. He’s too full of himself. You see, when I control the ghosts, I’ll be able to save the world. Save humans from themselves. It will make people much happier. All the materialism will disappear and a new era will dawn. People will finally value love and life and friendship. They’re going to find that respect for one another and for the natural world is far more important than the latest model of an overpriced cell phone.”
“And what will happen to my father?” I asked.
“Oh, he’ll be fine,” she said with a wave of her hand. “After all, he’s lasted this long without his heart. How much can he need it?”
She was lying, I was sure. But I couldn’t let her know I thought that.
“So why me?”
“Because you’re the only person in the world who can find it. I can’t, because I don’t have any connection with Koschey. But you… You’re his daughter. You’ll be able to feel it. And you’re your mother’s child. You’ll be able to trace Sereda’s magic.”
“How?”
“By following your intuition, girl,” she said. “That’s how your mother’s magic always worked.” Her expression grew dreamy and maybe even a little sad. “Intuition and emotion… She never had time to learn how to use magic properly. And yet somehow she never failed at what she set out to do. She could have been so much…”
For a moment, every thought of my task was banished. She’d never really talked about my mother before.
“What was she like?” I asked.
Granny smiled sadly. “She was a silly little ninny,” she said, but there was no harshness in her voice. “A sweet, silly creature who spent so much of her time tending the flowers in the woods. I don’t think I ever quite understood her. But she was kind and knew how to care for the world. And cheerful, always so cheerful, even when things were wrong…”
Her voice drifted off, and we sat there in silence, both of us thinking of Sereda. But I wasn’t seeing my mother’s face as I’d seen it in Koschey’s mind. I was seeing Lauraleigh’s. They sounded so similar…
My mother had already died because Baba Yaga wanted Koschey’s heart. I couldn’t let Lauraleigh die too.
But I also wanted to just sit there and keep on talking with my granny and hearing more about my mother…
I shook the thought away. It wasn’t helping.
“So,” I said in a sharp tone, “I find this island. I get a trunk out of a tree, open it, get a duck out of a hare, an egg out of a duck, and then I bring you the egg?”
“No, you break open the egg to make sure you’ve found Koschey’s heart,” she said. “Though you’ll have to be careful; you can’t touch another person’s heart without dying. I’ll give you a box you can put it in.”
“How will I know it’s his heart?” I asked.
“You’ll know,” she said simply.
I hesitated.
“I need you to swear you’ll keep Lauraleigh safe while I’m gone.”
“Of course,” she said.
“And I need to speak to my father before I go. In case he can tell me anything useful.”
She snorted. “You can do that on your own time,” she said. “Pretty useless you’ll be in finding his heart if you can’t even work out how to talk to him.”
Good, I thought. That means she doesn’t know that I already found him.
I spoke again. “And when I get back, you’ll have to set him free before I give you the heart.”
Her face darkened. “You’re getting greedy, girl,” she said. “Why would I do that?”
“Because otherwise I won’t give you the heart.”
“Then I’ll eat your pet.”
“What good will that do you, if you can’t get Koschey’s heart?”
She stared at me, her eyes hard. “Find the heart first,” she said, “and then we’ll talk about it.”
“All right,” I said. I was sure she didn’t mean it, but it was good to get the concession anyway.
“Anything else, princess?” Baba Yaga said in a nasty tone. “Or do you think you can manage?”
“Yes,” I said. “I’ll need to borrow a mop and a bucket.”
That actually managed to shock her. “Why?”
“To fly, of course,” I answered scornfully. “You don’t think I’m going to waste time walking, do you?”
Baba Yaga looked rather impressed. Apparently, she hadn’t known I could do that. Perhaps I should not have revealed how much more advanced I was than she had thought; it might have been useful to conceal some of what I was capable of. But there were limits to how much I could hide.
“Fine,” said Granny, “a mop and bucket there will be. You can leave in the morning. You might as well make sure you’re well rested first.”
I hadn’t realized how late it already was. Had we really spent almost the whole day arguing?
“There’s one more thing,” I said, trying to hide my nervousness.
“More?” she said, exasperated. “What a spoiled child you are, demanding all these things from your poor old grandmother. They never gave you anything at the orphanage, so you became so greedy?” She sighed. “Well, what is it?”
“I need you to give me back the energy you’ve taken from me,” I said.
That did it. She was shocked into silence.
“I can’t do this if I’m weak,” I argued. “I don’t know what dangers I’ll come across. I have to be able to defend myself. And who knows how much power it will take to get to the island and open the chest? You don’t even know where it is, Granny. I need to be as strong as I can.”
She stared at me warily. But it was obvious that I was right.
“Fine,” she said. “Starve me out of my home, why don’t you… What a way to treat a poor old woman. I’ll strengthen you up before you go.”
“Why not now?”
She chuckled. “Do you think me a fool, girl? Why would I risk you trying to steal your pet away in the night?”
She stood up, her joints creaking. “Well, that’s settled then,” she said. “With all this talk, we’ve wasted most of the day.” She sighed again. “And now I’ll have to go and find a new main course, since you won’t let me eat your pet. Tsk, the trouble you put me to…”
Muttering along those lines, she went out onto the porch. “I’ll be back when I’ve found my dinner,” she said. “Use the hours well, Anna Sophia.”
I didn’t need to ask what she meant. Even before she settled into her mortar, I’d already started to run toward the wall that hid Koschey’s cage.
“Open, open, magic door!” I yelled. But nothing happened.
Why not? Had Baba Yaga changed the spell? Or moved the cage? Or was I just too weak?
No — I was in too much turmoil. I couldn’t concentrate. I kept thinking about the conversation and what I had to do, and my rage at my grandmother was starting to spark again as I recalled her poking at Lauraleigh and deciding how to chop her up.
I needed to calm down.
I went to look at Lauraleigh. She was still sleeping peacefully even though she was tied up. Good.
“I’ll save you, Lauraleigh,” I whispered. I sat down by her bedside and stroked her hair. It was a meaningless thing to do, but it was calming.
When I had regained my composure, I went to talk to Dad. It was time to decide whether it was safe to bring Baba Yaga his heart, or if there was any way to trick her, or if there was some other way to save both him and Lauraleigh.
I reached the end of the corridor, made a foolish twirl and quietly said, “Open, open, magic door!” I danced the hula.
The wall opened, and there was Dad, sitting in his cage. His eyes lit up when he saw it was me. But then his expression started to look worried.
“Anna, what’s happened to you?” he said. “The shadow inside you; it’s grown. Why are you letting darkness into your heart?”
