Wickedly Ever After: A Baba Yaga Novella

by Deborah Blake

  “Wow,” Beka said. And then looked thoughtful. “Do you think the Queen knew the first task would be so easy?”

  “Wow indeed,” agreed Barbara. She shrugged. “Maybe. Or maybe not. It depends on her actual intentions when she came up with the three impossible tasks, and I’ve learned never to assume I have any idea what Her Majesty is thinking. Either way, it’s one down, two to go.”

  ***

  Back at the bus, Beka dug out a lovely cobalt blue bottle she’d plucked from the sea a few years before and Barbara snapped her fingers, moving the shell inside with a simple twist of magic.

  “That’s great,” Barbara said, tucking the bottle safely away in the bottom of a patchwork tote bag as they sat outside eating s’mores around a small fire pit. “But that’s it for my brilliant plan, I’m afraid. I don’t have any idea where to look for a living representative of a dead species. I don’t even think there is such a thing.” She rested her chin on her hand, feeling vaguely depressed.

  “Actually,” Liam said, startling her, “there is. And I think I know where to find one.”

  “What?” Beka and Barbara said together. Marcus, his muscular arm draped over Beka’s shoulder, just looked intrigued.

  “I have an old roommate from college who went on to work in the biotech industry,” Liam explained.

  “You roomed with a science nerd?” Marcus said. “That must have been an interesting combination.”

  “Yeah, I was studying criminal justice and he was doing a master’s in biology with a specialty in biotech at Adelphi University. I think he was the youngest guy to ever complete a master’s there, he was that smart—but not terribly socially adept, as you might imagine. They used to call us the Brain and the Brawn.”

  “Gee,” Barbara said, “let me guess which one you were.”

  Liam grinned. “I kept him from getting picked on by the frat guys and he kept me from flunking my bio class. Phil was a great guy, despite his unfortunate tendency to quote Star Trek on double dates. We kept in touch, so I know he’s working for a biotech company that’s involved with bringing back extinct animals.”

  Barbara perked up. “Wait, extinct animals, as in ‘dead species’?”

  “The very same,” Liam said. “I didn’t want to say anything back home until I did a little research and talked to Phil, but the company he works for, Phoenix Technologies, is located in Montana. I texted him while you guys were on the beach and he said he might be able to help us. He’s expecting us as soon as we can get there.”

  “That’s great,” Beka said. “You’ll have to keep in touch and tell me if it pans out.” She grinned at Barbara. “Isn’t Bella fighting wildfires in Montana right now? Maybe you can stop by and see her while you’re there. You know, after you fulfill your second impossible task.”

  “Well, let’s not get our hopes up too high,” Liam said. “Phil said that all the stuff they’re working on is very cutting-edge and kept securely locked away. I doubt his bosses are going to just loan us a sample of their newest project.”

  “Of course, it probably doesn’t help that you can’t explain why on earth you’d need to borrow a once-extinct critter,” Marcus suggested. “It’s not exactly something a small-county sheriff usually needs.”

  “No kidding,” Liam said. “I basically stalled and told him I’d give him more details when we got there. So we have tonight to think of something clever enough to fool the smartest guy I know.”

  “Oh good,” Barbara said. “No pressure then. Excellent.”

  ***

  “This is weird,” Liam said to Barbara, watching the landscape change from trees to mountains and back again as they sat in the front seat of the silver truck that both was and wasn’t a part of the Airstream. “Is it always like this?” He looked dubiously at the speedometer, which indicated they were going more than two thousand miles per hour, even though the view out the windshield seemed normal except for its extreme changeability.

  Barbara shrugged, turning around to hand an apple back to Babs, who was strapped into a car seat that Barbara swore was unnecessary (since the Airstream would never let anything happen to them) and which Liam insisted upon anyway.

  “Not exactly,” she said. “But I told it we were in a hurry, so I’m not surprised.” One corner of her mouth turned up as she watched Liam watch the steering wheel steer itself. “You should have seen it when it was a hut on chicken legs. Sometimes when I was a kid I’d go to sleep in Russia and wake up in Poland.” She thought about that statement for a moment. “Of course, the border moved around a lot, so occasionally that was politics, not magic.”

  “Gah,” Liam said succinctly.

  “I know, I hate politics too,” Barbara agreed.

  “This is the strangest family vacation ever,” Liam said.

  Barbara handed him an apple and leaned over to kiss him on the cheek.

  “Maybe,” she said. “I wouldn’t know, since it is the first one I’ve ever taken, our honeymoon aside. But I’m kind of enjoying it so far.”

  “Me too,” Babs said from the backseat, crunching contently.

  Liam just looked at them both and shook his head. “It’s no Disneyland,” he said. “But the company is good.”

  ***

  They met up with Liam’s friend Phil in the employee parking lot at Phoenix Technologies, sliding the Airstream in next to a slightly battered Toyota Corolla with a sticker on the back window that read BEAM ME UP, SCOTTY. THERE’S NO INTELLIGENT LIFE DOWN HERE.

  At a little after nine at night, the rest of the lot was largely deserted, with only a few other vehicles scattered here and there belonging to dedicated folks working long shifts. As they pulled up, a lanky form straightened up from where it had been leaning on the smaller car. In the truck’s headlights, Barbara could see a man with short brown hair above square black glasses, dressed in tan pants, a white shirt, and a navy blue windbreaker. An ID card hung on a lanyard around his neck. A huge smile lit up his plain but pleasant face.

  Liam hopped out of the passenger side and they clasped hands, then banged each other on the back with that half-hug thing Barbara had seen men do before. She helped a sleepy Babs out of her car seat in the rear and walked around to join the others. Chudo-Yudo was inside the Airstream itself, since there was no way he would leave their first prize unguarded when they went inside.

  Liam introduced Barbara and Babs to his old friend. “Barbara, this is my old roommate from college, Phil. Phil, my wife, Barbara, and our little girl, Babs.”

  Phil gazed at Barbara with unabashed admiration, taking in her black leather jacket, black scoop-necked tee, short pleated leather skirt, and tall black boots.

  “You told me she was gorgeous,” he said to Liam. “But you didn’t say you married Xena, Warrior Princess. Holy crap. Kind of makes me wish I’d been able to make it to the wedding. That must have been something to see.”

  “I mentioned the socially awkward part, right?” Liam said to Barbara with a grin that was part apology and part pride.

  Barbara shook her head. Half the time she had no idea what the heck most Humans were talking about. “I’m not a princess,” she said to Phil. “To be honest, most of them are pretty useless anyway.”

  “You never saw the show?” Phil asked. “Xena: Warrior Princess; she was so cool, wore lots of leather, carried a sword, and kicked a lot of”—he looked down at Babs—“tushy.”

  “Barbara doesn’t watch television,” Liam explained.

  Phil’s eyes widened behind his glasses. “What, never?” he said in the kind of tone most people reserve for when someone admits they beat puppies.

  “I am not a princess either,” Babs said in her clear, piping voice. “But I have a sword, so maybe I am a warrior?”

  Phil smiled at her, his grin adding unexpected charm to his otherwise unremarkable features. “I’m sure you are. But yours is a toy
sword, right? Xena’s had a very sharp edge.”

  Babs gazed up at him in the dim light. “It is a real sword. Why would I use a toy sword? That is just silly.”

  He blinked, looking at Liam and shaking his head. “Jeez, and my wife, Tina, wouldn’t let me get our son a squirt gun because she said it encouraged violence. You guys must use some interesting parenting techniques.”

  “You have no idea,” Liam said dryly. “You have no idea.”

  ***

  Phil led them to a small door set at the back of the building. A complicated lock blinked from red to green when he swiped his badge through it and they followed him into the cool, air-conditioned building’s interior. The long hallways were quiet and seemingly abandoned, although periodically they passed a door that gleamed diffuse light through its glass panels, or heard reverberating voices in the distance.

  Eventually they reached Phil’s lab, where he swiped the badge again and waved them inside. “Welcome to my lair,” he said in a mock-spooky voice. It would probably have been more impressive if he hadn’t looked so cheerful.

  The room itself was large and sterile-looking, with white walls lined with stainless steel countertops and small glass terrarium-type cages. Fluorescent lights flickered overhead and some of the counters held tools and machinery Barbara couldn’t even begin to guess the purpose of. The air smelled odd, almost too clean, with an underlying hint of chemicals and a tang that reminded her of ponds and stagnant water.

  “What exactly is it that you do here?” Barbara asked. “Liam tried to explain it to me, but I’m afraid I didn’t really understand. You somehow bring dead animals back to life?” She hoped it wasn’t some sort of necromancy. There were a few wizards who practiced such things, but they made her skin crawl.

  “It’s actually quite amazing,” Phil said, his homely face glowing with pride. “We’re the only laboratory in the country that has been able to replicate the University of Newcastle’s Lazarus Project. Time magazine called it one of the most significant inventions of 2013, you know. The Lazarus Project, that is. Not us.”

  “Uh-huh,” Liam said. “It’s some kind of de-extinction process, isn’t it?”

  “Exactly,” Phil said. “We use breakthrough genome technology to resurrect an extinct frog—the gastric brooding frog, to be exact, which went extinct in 1983. It was actually quite a remarkable creature. Its name came from its ability to swallow externally fertilized eggs into its stomach, which then acted as a uterus until it gave birth through its own mouth. No other living creature could do this.”

  Liam looked almost as green as a frog himself. “Why would they want to?” he muttered.

  “Actually, this frog has some really interesting medical applications,” Phil said, his enthusiasm bringing spots of color to his pale cheeks. “It could help us to figure out how to manage gastric secretions in the gut. We use somatic cell nuclear transplantation to inactivate the nuclei of donor eggs from the great barred frog, Mixophyes fasciolatus, and replace them with the dead nuclei from the gastric brooding frog, using eggs kept in a deep freeze since the species went extinct. It’s an amazing achievement, and could herald a new era in global biodiversity.”

  “Uh-huh,” Liam said again. “I have no idea what you just said, but I’m definitely impressed.”

  “They are very cute,” said Babs, looking into one of the glass habitats. “I like frogs.” She bent down to gaze inside, making little croaking noises that the occupants seemed to respond to.

  The three adults walked over to her and Phil pointed out a few choice specimens. To Barbara, they looked much like any other frog she’d ever seen; small and gray-green with pebbled skin and large, bulging eyes. Hard to believe that such an innocuous creature had so much power over her and Liam’s future.

  “These were created by science?” Barbara said. “Truly?”

  “They were,” Phil said. “But our hope is that now that we’ve got a dozen of them, male and female, they will mate on their own and re-create more without human intervention.”

  “Not this one,” Babs said, pointing at a small frog at the front of the cage. “She does not like any of the boys you have.”

  Phil laughed. “Kids have such great imaginations, don’t they?” But that was the one he grabbed and put into a small perforated container, which he handed to Liam, who tucked it under his coat.

  “Do me a favor and try to bring it back, will ya?” Phil said. “I’d just as soon not have to explain why we are one frog short.”

  “Will doing this get you into trouble?” Barbara asked.

  “Nah, not really,” Phil replied. “You wouldn’t believe the things that go missing in these labs. Remind me to tell you the story about the radioactive spider sometime.”

  She looked over her shoulder and up overhead with alarm. “You lost a radioactive spider?”

  Liam chuckled. “It’s a joke, honey. From an old comic book.” He narrowed his eyes at his friend. “It is a joke, right?”

  Phil winked at him as they excited the building. “I’ll never tell.”

  They walked back over to their vehicles and stood by the side of the Airstream.

  “May I ask you something?” Barbara said to Phil.

  “Sure,” he said. “But if you’re worrying about what to feed the frog, it pretty much eats all the same things as any other non-bioengineered frog.”

  “It’s not that, although thank you,” she said. “I don’t wish to be rude, but I was wondering why you would risk your career to steal a rare specimen for us. It seems like a huge favor to do for an old roommate.”

  “Borrow,” Phil corrected absently. “And I guess Liam never told you how we met. He wasn’t just my roommate—he saved my life.”

  Barbara raised one eyebrow and looked at her husband. “Really? He didn’t mention anything like that.”

  “It wasn’t really a big deal,” Liam said.

  “Like hell it wasn’t.” Phil stared at the ground for a minute, then raised his head to look Barbara in the eyes.

  “I was young when I was in college; sixteen when I started undergrad, nineteen when I entered the master’s program. A genius IQ and little to no social skills don’t make for a great college experience, I can tell you. I had great grades, no friends, and a girl had just dated me for a week to win a bet with her pals and then dumped me in front of a bunch of drunken idiots, who laughed at me. When Liam first met me, I was standing on top of the largest building on campus, getting ready to jump off. He talked me out of it, convinced me to move in with him, then took me under his wing until we both graduated. Even introduced me to the woman who eventually became my wife.”

  He shook his head. “Liam not only saved me that night, but every good thing that came afterward was because of him. I don’t know exactly what this is all about, but he told me that your future happiness together depends on having this frog. As far as I’m concerned, it’s little enough to ask.”

  Liam’s ears burned a bright red in the dim light of the parking lot. “You’re exaggerating, Phil. I was just a friend when you needed one, that’s all.”

  “You were and are a good man. That’s a rare thing.”

  Barbara put her arm through Liam’s. “He’s right, you know.”

  Little Babs had been listening quietly, as usual. “Liam saved me too. A bad lady had me and he and Barbara saved me and took me home with them. Now we are a family.” She looked up at Liam seriously. “You are a good man. You are Barbara’s good man and my good man. And Chudo-Yudo’s good man. You told me that when someone says a compliment to you, you are supposed to say thank you. Are you going to say thank you?”

  Liam chuckled. “Sometimes you learn your lessons too well, kiddo.” He turned back to Phil. “Thank you for the compliment. And for the frog. You have no idea what this means to us.”

  “Maybe you can tell me the story sometime,” Phil sa
id hopefully. “I get the feeling it is even more interesting than Spider-Man.”

  Liam and Barbara exchanged looks. “Maybe,” he said. “You never know.”

  After another round of manly back thumping, Phil climbed into his car and drove away. Barbara buckled a droopy-eyed Babs into her seat and they set off for the campground where they’d rented a space for the night.

  “I like him,” Barbara said finally, after they’d been driving in silence for a few minutes. “Did you really keep him from killing himself the night you met him?”

  “Mmm, I suppose I did,” Liam said. “Although there was always the chance he wouldn’t have gone through with it. But he was standing on the edge with one sneaker in midair when I walked onto the roof looking for a quiet spot to think.”

  “How did you talk him out of it?” she asked.

  Liam laughed. “I told him that I was studying criminal justice, and asked him if he realized that suicide was against the law. Then I threatened to perform a citizen’s arrest. While he was trying to figure out if I was serious, I just walked up and pulled him away from the edge. It wasn’t a big deal.”

  Barbara squeezed his hand. “He was right, you know. You are a good man. I look forward to spending many, many years listening to your ridiculous stories.”

  He smiled at her, but worry still lurked at the corner of his eyes. “Two down and one to go, eh?”

  “Yes,” said Barbara. “Too bad the one that’s left is the most impossible task of them all.”

  ***

  The next morning Liam and Barbara leaned on the counter in the Airstream watching Babs eating her current breakfast of choice, whole-wheat toast with liverwurst and sliced-up prunes. A glass of orange juice sat at her elbow; she would take one precise bite of her food, chew it thoughtfully, and then wash it down with juice. Every week she chose a different combination and seemed to eat them all with the same intense concentration, and, as far as they could tell, enjoyment.

  Barbara’s other sister Baba, Bella, had managed to get away for an hour to visit, although she hadn’t had time to wash the smell of smoke from her curly red hair and there was still a smudge of soot on the side of her nose. She had listened to their story with fascinated interest, but hadn’t had anything to suggest on how to obtain their third impossible item, alas.