by Max Candee
We drank our tea.
“How is that possible?” Uncle Misha asked. “The Horsemen have been in your service for as long as I’ve known you. Why did they leave you?”
Baba Yaga’s smile was wan. “They were my servants, not my slaves,” she said. “They saw me weaken. And power is what they answer to, what they’ve always answered to, since they’re power themselves. They’re made of it, you see. It’s not even that I’m weak, just that I’m weaker. I suppose I’ve lost face in front of them. That is enough for them to feel free to break the contract…”
“And what will they do?” I asked.
“I don’t know.” She gave a weary chuckle. “They probably won’t be stealing any more children, if that’s what you’re worried about. But I’ve never been sure what their own purpose was, why they felt the need to serve me in the first place. It’s all been so long…”
Granny looked at Koschey. “I am so very tired, you know,” she said to him. “I have been for a long time. Every year, people believe in us less and less, and it gets that much harder to stay alive. First, they stopped understanding how important we are; then they stopped knowing our names… Who knows where it will end?”
“We’ve been through times like this before,” Koschey said gently. “We survived.”
“Not this time, old friend,” she said. “We’ve never seen it quite like this before.”
They were quiet for a moment.
“It’s strange,” Baba Yaga said. “It hurt so very much, back then, all that time ago. I loved him so dearly, and when he spurned me… I’d never felt anything like it. I had never understood that you could hurt like that without a physical wound. I had no idea that love could hurt — I’d always believed it was this wonderful, magical thing, more real than the magic we wield… But I never knew it was possible for love to make you unhappy. It was so hard. I didn’t know how to make it stop, except to get rid of where the pain lay, to cut out my heart… Such a thing to do. Yet now I can hardly remember his face. I’ve done so much since — not all good things, as you know — that he doesn’t seem to matter. How is that possible? My love was the only thing in the world. And now, it’s just … gone. And yet…”
“And yet, the stars still turn,” said Uncle Misha. “The seeds still germinate and send up shoots. The animals still come together to create children, and the world still moves. The living are born, they live, they die, and existence runs on, with apple trees growing from the earth of their graves.”
“I didn’t know you were a poet, Misha,” said Baba Yaga. She gave a weak laugh. “But I daresay you’re right enough.”
They were quiet again for a while, as we sipped our tea.
“We’ll need to get Olya back to her parents,” I said.
“Of course,” said my grandmother. “Though it’s best if I don’t take care of it. Misha, you’ve dealt with humans.”
“I have,” said my uncle, “but I think it will be safer if she’s simply found. Her memories will be entangled in any case. I’ll leave her in the forest, close to her family, and set beasts to guard her. When she wakes, she’ll find her way. Anna,” he said, looking at me, “do you know where I should take her?”
“Yes,” I said, my voice wavering, “but I don’t want to… I don’t want to go back there.” I never wanted to see that hotel or that lake again, magnificent though they were. “Squire knows,” I said. “The hand. And Knight, his brother. They can lead you.”
“When Egor wakes,” Uncle Misha said, patting my hand with an understanding smile, “he can take us where they show. He will be able to take us much more swiftly.”
“Will she remember any of this?” I asked.
“With any luck, no. She will simply come to in the forest, unable to tell the others anything. They will be worried and confused. But they will find that nothing is wrong with her, and in the end, they will accept it.”
“There will be policemen in the woods, searching,” I said. “Probably for me and Lauraleigh too.”
“You may trust Egor that we shall avoid them,” said Uncle Misha. “All will be well.”
All will be well… How many times had he said that to me when I was a child, when I had come home with a scrape or with tears in my eyes? And it had so often proved true.
Would it now? Could I trust that everything would be fine now?
We were silent again, all lost in our different thoughts.
“And what about you, old friend?” Baba Yaga suddenly said. “Will you go and get back your heart now?”
Koschey smiled. “Is it safe for me to do so?”
Baba Yaga laughed. “Yes,” she said, “it is. Besides, you wouldn’t want those Horsemen to find it, would you? You haven’t got your full power without it. How are you going to deal with the ghosts?”
I shivered. If I hadn’t yet seen Koschey at his full power, what would he be like when he was?
“You may well be right,” said Koschey, “though I rather doubt they’ll present much of a challenge. But there is one small problem.”
“What’s that?”
“I have no idea where my heart is.”
“None?” my grandmother asked, sounding surprised. “I always thought that had to be a lie. How could you let your heart go without some hint as to where to find it?”
Koschey smiled quietly and cast a glance at me before replying. “I didn’t expect that Sereda would die,” he said evenly.
Tears filled my grandmother’s eyes. “Oh,” she said, “yes … of course.” She swallowed. “This whole having-a-heart-again business is going to take some getting used to,” she said as if she were trying to make a joke. Then she took a great gulp of tea. “Anyway,” she went on in a businesslike tone, “clearly we have to find your heart.”
“‘We?’” Koschey asked. “You’ll forgive me, my dear, but I’m not sure I want to send you to find it.”
“No,” Baba Yaga said. “I wouldn’t expect you to trust me. But you can’t go yourself, can you?”
Koschey looked troubled. “No,” he said, “I can’t. I have to stay here and see what I can do to keep the ghosts from overrunning Siberia. Russia. The world.” He glanced at Uncle Misha.
“No,” said my uncle before Koschey could even speak. “I’m old, Koschey. I haven’t the energy, haven’t the skills. And I’m needed here as well. Don’t even think of asking Egor; he’s such a homebody, he’d never go more than a day or two away from his castle. And as I remember Sereda, I very much doubt she hid your heart anywhere near. Most likely it’s very, very far away. Maybe even on the other side of the world, where our powers don’t run and we can’t feel your heart.”
“That would be like my daughter, yes,” said Baba Yaga. “We have a problem, then. We can’t let anybody else know. And yet we do need to find your heart, but we can’t do it.” She turned and looked straight at me. “But she could,” she said.
Uncle Misha grunted. It was not a pleased sound. “I thought you might be leading us to that,” he said. “It’s not an idea I’m very happy with.”
“I hate to lay another burden on her,” Koschey said, shaking his head. “Hasn’t she already done enough?”
“Has she not earned a rest?” Uncle Misha added.
None of them seemed to be paying any attention to the fact that I could hear them.
“The other girl would have to go as well,” Baba Yaga carried on as if the two men hadn’t spoken. “We’ve seen today, I think, how Anna Sophia needs Lauraleigh to keep her in check. Besides, two heads think better than one.”
“Still,” said Koschey, “she is very young. And if she does need to leave Russia…”
“I haven’t lived in Russia for most of my life,” I broke in.
They started, as if they’d forgotten I was there.
I don’t know where the idea had sprung from. Maybe just hearing them talk about it had given me the idea. Another quest would be difficult and risky, and part of me didn’t want that … it just wanted to rest.
I translated their conversation to Lauraleigh and looked at her, a question in my eyes. After a moment, she nodded.
“Do you truly want your heart back?” I asked my father.
“Yes,” he said, “I do. Not only for myself but because I cannot fully help the world without it.”
“Then I will find your heart for you, Dad,” I said. “With Lauraleigh. We’ll get it back for you.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes,” I said. “No one else can, so I have to, don’t I? And anyway…” I looked over at Lauraleigh and switched into French. I could see the same joke sparkling in her eyes. “It’s not like we’ve really had much of an adventure yet,” I said. “And I promised Lauraleigh I’d help her have one.”
As the three grown-ups stared at us with dropped jaws, Lauraleigh and I burst into laughter.
* * *
So now we’re off to wander the world and find my father’s heart. We have no idea where we’ll end up.
But this we do know.
Together, we’re ready for anything.
Afterword
Dear Diary,
Most of us returned to Blackwood Castle before moving on, although Baba Yaga and Lauraleigh decided to stay on in Yaga’s hut for a couple of days. My Granny said that she wants to return to her energy practice but she’s a little afraid to face the powerful energies of Yoga on her own.
I was thinking: If I’d ever seriously wished for a father — a specific one, I mean — would I ever have imagined Koschey? I don’t think so. Now that I have him, I wouldn’t change him for the world, but even though the world has brought me back my father, he’s not exactly what I would have wished for.
The world turns, and what it brings us may not be what we want — I’ve heard my father say that a few times. But just because it’s different doesn’t necessarily mean it’s bad.
What we want is all so complicated, isn’t it?
* * *
My father was looking at me. We had finished our discussions and knew what we were going to do next. Knew that I would soon leave to search for his heart.
It hadn’t struck me until now what that meant: Just after finding my father, we would part. And not because we had to, but because we chose to.
That was the price of not being human, I guess.
“Anna,” he began — and I felt a little warm spot in my stomach just hearing his voice. My father was speaking to me, my real, actual father, whom I loved and who loved me.
“I know it must seem unfair, this parting,” he said. “But the way the world turns is not always what we wished for.”
“I know, Dad,” I said.
“But before you leave, there is one more thing we must do. We must free the ghosts.”
“We?” I said, surprised.
He smiled. “Well… I could do it on my own, of course,” he said. “But I thought you might like to join me. We have not had much time on our own, after all. And this is something only you and I can see. The others, even your grandmother, if they came with us … they’d see the ghosts, and they would see them as they vanished. But they wouldn’t be able to perceive the spheres of light and sound to which I send them. To see them meld into the universe from where they came, watch as they become again as they were, as they join the great choir that is existence and become a part of that chord. As they recognize and take the place they have earned in its harmony. It’s not something the others can hear, that sudden addition to the chord that makes it more perfect.”
“And I can?” I said, eyes wide. I’d swum in magic, yes; at least, I thought I had. But this… This was beyond anything I’d imagined.
“If you are with me, yes, you can,” he said. “You are my daughter. How can you not?”
I couldn’t help but grin. It was something I could share with him, only with him. If I understood him right, even my mother couldn’t see what he said I could.
“All right,” I said. “Let’s do it. Just let me check with the others…”
“They have already gone,” he said.
That startled me.
“They wished to return that child Olya before the hour grew too late. You will meet again at Misha’s cottage when we are done. And then you’ll be able to tell them, if you choose, what we’ll have accomplished together. Or keep it to yourself. Best to decide afterward, don’t you think?”
I was still a bit shocked that Uncle Misha, Egor, and the two floating hands had left without me, but maybe that was intentional. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’d wanted some time away from me. And they must have known my father would make sure I didn’t do anything stupid.
But this way we were alone together. With a secret to share.
“All right,” I said again. “Let’s go.”
He chuckled. “I don’t think we’ll have to go far.”
He was right. We had hardly left the gates of Blackwood Castle when we saw three ghosts close to its walls, almost as gray as the stones. They stirred in confusion. Then they began to drift toward us.
“Not here, I think,” said Koschey. “There are so many of them that doing them one by one would be inefficient. We’ll go farther, to the clearing…”
We did, walking side by side. And then there they were.
The ghosts. Hundreds of them. No, thousands. Far too many for me to count. They were like a mist in front of the trees, and still more kept joining them, emerging from behind branches. I couldn’t see how they would all fit, but then they were ghosts and insubstantial, they had to be blending into each other somehow… I had learned that the two worlds, the ghosts’ and ours, were like different radio frequencies: They and we could coexist in the same place without interfering with each other. Maybe there was a similar arrangement for different kinds of ghosts…
“Stay close,” Koschey said. “There’s nothing to fear, but remain by my side all the same.” He walked toward the sea of ghosts, his robe trailing on the ground so that he seemed to float almost as much as they did.
There was a movement among the apparitions, a shudder like a gust of wind over a field of tall grasses.
So many, I thought. So many people who have died recently.
But none of them was Olya. None of them was Lauraleigh or Egor or Uncle Misha. Or even my grandmother. Was it selfish to think that way? Maybe. But there are only so many people we can help, or care about, or even know.
I could sense that power from my father again, like when he broke free from his cage. He seemed larger than usual; his every motion seemed to move even the air around him like the ripples that a swimmer causes in water. And the ghosts could feel it too, sense it, like flowers drawn to the sun even if they don’t know why.
They swirled around, a chaotic mass suddenly discovering the center of gravity which was my father, whose eyes by now must once again be golden. I felt no fear, though, for a moment, I was worried that they would fall on him like a wave and possibly drown him. There were just so many ghosts! But I shook my mind clear. He was my father. He was Koschey. These were his charges. He was here to make things right, and he would.
One of the ghosts came forward. Just one. Pale and disoriented, he stretched his hands out toward my father. He looked as if he’d had a kind face back when he was alive.
My father put out one hand and glanced back at me with those gilded eyes of his. “Watch, Anna,” he said. “It’s like receiving a friend, welcoming them home after an illness, where they’re still not quite sure where they are. But they know that…”
He stopped.
The ghost had tried to take his hand, but nothing had happened. The pale hand had passed by Koschey’s fingers.
A confused look appeared on my father’s face. I rushed forward to be next to him. Frowning, he put out his hand again to grasp the ghost’s hand. But the two would not connect.
“What?” he said. Again and again, he tried to seize the ghost’s han
d, but they kept slipping away from each other as if there were some cushion of air between them that would not let them pass.
The ghost uttered a low moan. He too was trying to touch my father — if not his hands, then his face, his chest, his clothes, anything. But they couldn’t come into contact.
Worry swept over my father’s features. “I can’t…” he said. “This isn’t possible; this isn’t right. I must be able to…”
But he wasn’t.
What was going on? There shouldn’t have been any trouble at all. This was Koschey; he was free, he was as powerful as he had ever been. I knew that. I’d seen what he was able to do. He’d been able to draw the darkness out of me when I was almost drowning in it, and he wasn’t even supposed to be able to do that. Helping these ghosts was his entire purpose; it was why he existed. Even at his weakest, he could do that.
But to do so, he had to be able to touch them and lead them away. And he couldn’t.
Something worse than worry was on his face now: fear.
It had never occurred to me that my father could be afraid. Realizing that he could was almost more terrifying than the question of what could make him fear.
The ghost fell back, confused, moaning. Koschey looked at me, his eyes large like those of a frightened child, but there was nothing I could do, no way I could help. We both knew I couldn’t risk trying to touch the ghost.
Koschey’s eyes were flickering between gold and brown. He no longer seemed that awesome embodiment of power but just a thin old man caught up in something beyond his understanding.
I grabbed his arm. It was all I could think to do.
The ghost stared helplessly at us. Then he looked away and began to wail, uttering a long, rhythmic sound like the whimpering of a large dog. It seemed to sound more in our heads than in our ears as it was taken up by the other ghosts. All those others who had been patiently waiting and now realized that what they’d hoped for wouldn’t happen, joined the wail with terrifying power. The sound filled me with a sense of gravity vanishing, with a feeling of loss like clouds breaking up before they’ve rained. The ghosts began to move again, stumbling around like the blind on an uneven field.
