Chapter 21
She opened with a question. “Do you have a guess who I am?”
“You’re the Baba Yaga.” The name came out more like BabA YahA, which was the way her grandparents had always pronounced it.
Baba Yaga acknowledged her with a nod. “Very good. I have many names, but that is what most call me.”
Baba Yaga. Trickster. Shapeshifter. Witch of the wood. Everything wicked you’re born knowing but don’t have a name for. She lurked off the beaten path, waiting to punish those arrogant enough to ignore the rules and set their own course.
“If you’re really the Baba Yaga, how am I supposed to trust anything you say?”
“What reason would you have not to trust me?”
“Well…they say Satan made you from the essence of evil.”
The old woman shook with laughter. “Mmm, they say that, do they? Even though they have been telling my stories long before the idea of Satan ever entered the world?” The old woman’s eyes sharpened in a spear of light cast by the dancing fire.
“Have you heard how he distilled the evil he supposedly crafted me from?”
Hayleigh shook her head.
“Then listen well. He gathered twelve nasty women and cooked them in a cauldron. The first had sought to end her marriage, and when denied, ran away from home. A second had yelled at the village priest when he shamed her daughter in front of the congregation. The third provided herbs to wash out pregnancies…”
Baba Yaga went on, but the pattern was clear within the first few examples. They were all women who had gone against the established rules of their time. Rules specific to the women of their time.
“And when he was done, he inhaled it all and spit me out,” finished the Baba Yaga, settling back into her seat. “Or so the story goes.”
“And you’re part of my curse?”
“I was called. I was not the only one called, as I think you know.”
“But you’re the only one who’s tried to talk to me instead of just torturing me.”
The Baba Yaga nodded. “The rest are here to make you listen—to me. You are a daughter of Yaga.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
Baba Yaga pulled the motanka back down from the shelf and settled it on the table. “Your mother may have tried to hide it, but she cannot change who she is. You are my blood, which makes you my charge.”
Hayleigh tried to make sense of what was being said. “If you’re my fairy godmother or something, aren’t you supposed to be a little nicer to me?”
The Baba Yaga scoffed. “What would you learn from nice?”
She couldn’t protest that but it still didn’t make the situation go down any more easily. “I don’t understand any of this. Daughter of Yaga? What does that even mean?”
“Of course you don’t understand. There’s a power to ancestral memory, which is why it’s one of the first things the conqueror destroys.
Pull you up from your roots, leave you with no sense of who you are, and it’s easier to shape your world in a way that suits them.
They robbed you of your culture and made you doubt your own eyes. ”
Her head lightened. “What do you mean, made me doubt my own eyes?”
“Think back, girl, remember. You met someone outside, didn’t you?”
Hayleigh nodded. “A domovoy.”
“And was it the first time you had seen one?”
“In person? Yes. My grandfather used to tell me stories, but I…” A wave of disorientation passed over her then, as she considered how familiar he looked.
She reached back through the surface level of her mind and found no explanation, so she kept reaching—past the place that insisted she had never actually seen a domovoy. That she couldn’t, because they were just a story.
Deeper.
And then she finally found it.
She was kneeling next to a bush, leaves tickling her cheeks. A strange little soot-covered man peeked through a crack in the chimney.
“If you’re real, why can’t anyone else see you?” she’d asked.
“You can see where the seams split. Most people can’t. Now, bring me a treat, and I’ll keep the vermin from your home.”
She’d allowed herself to be convinced he wasn’t real, the product of an overactive imagination—along with the wee povitrulia with her petal hat who lived in the roses and the hairy chuhayster who roamed the wood near Emerald Trails, watching over everyone with his bright blue eyes, and the dvorovoy who had saved the horses.
Every time she brought them up, her mother would get a strange look, eyes darting over her shoulder. And then she would drill into Hayleigh that they were only figments of the imagination. Bits of old-country nonsense her grandfather had put in her head.
“Hush,” she’d said sharply, though her hands trembled. “Do you want people to think you’re one of them?”
“Of course not, Mama.”
“Good, because they used to make examples of families for less.”
In her effort to be an obedient daughter, she had repeated, “They’re only figments,” until she simply stopped seeing them all.
“You remembered, didn’t you?” asked Baba Yaga.
“I…Yes. But what does it mean?”
“Some humans act as a bridge between our world and yours. You can see things others can’t—even that handsome witch you’re keeping company with could stand right beside me and not know I was there. While we sometimes choose to reveal ourselves to mortals, you can see us whether we will it or not.”
Hayleigh didn’t know what to do with these revelations. A part of her desperately wanted to doubt it, to cast it as some kind of deceit, but the thought couldn’t take root. The memories were too sharp. Their associated feelings too strong.
Besides, she’d seen other things too.
Women with the bodies of fish gazing up through the water of Lake Washington, startled to find her looking back.
A hulking beast covered in mud that came out only at night, its eyelids so long they brushed the ground.
A torrent of memories flooded her. Creatures whose very existence defied the rules of reality she’d been taught strictly to respect, rules that it was considered sacrilege even to question.
Baba Yaga eyed her. “I can see this is a lot for you to take in. Why don’t we eat before we get to the last part of this conversation…” The old woman waved her hand and a sviata vechera feast appeared.
The smell of it brought her back to her grandparents’ table.
A candle had been stuffed in the kolach’s braiding, and its light flickered and danced across eleven other dishes, which, along with the kolach, represented the twelve apostles.
There was kutia, borscht, piroshki, varenyky, Olivier salad, holubtsi, herring, marinated mushrooms, haricots, beet vinaigrette salad, and kholodets.
They had eaten until they could barely move, all but the kolach, which was left for the morning.
Hayleigh had spread out on the orange shag carpet of the living room floor and stared at the didukh, a bouquet of wheat arranged artfully on the wall.
Traditionally, it would have been the first wheat of the harvest, but her grandmother had probably bought this version at World Market.
She had been aware that she should have wanted to be back in the Gray family living room, with its mountain of expensive gifts, but she didn’t.
She should have been overwhelmed by dozens of aunts, uncles, cousins, and family friends who had stuffed their way into that tiny, cluttered trailer, talking loud and smoking and drinking, but she wasn’t.
She didn’t, and she wasn’t. She’d been content. It was such a rare, fleeting feeling, usually found only when she was somewhere far from her life, on Red’s back.
Until this week. Until Stephan Midwinter had forced her to eat fried food and play pull tabs at the Muddy Boots, giving her a playful jab in the ribs when she’d smacked the machine after getting frustrated that she kept losing.
She’d felt it then, with him, and then again and again over the last few days. After the snowsquatch competition, when she’d been allowed into his circle of fellowship, and again last night when they had laughed until they couldn’t laugh anymore.
Hayleigh had spent her life aware, on edge, calculating her every next move to be sure it met standards she knew had been strictly set and yet barely communicated.
And where it was communicated, it was doctrine, with no room for questions, even when it left her feeling a little sick inside to follow through.
If obedience were easy, it would be indulgence; it wouldn’t be obedience if it didn’t chafe. The words echoed through her mind—not hers.
With Stephan, though, she could relax. He never made demands, never asked her to go against her instincts. Not that he never disagreed, but when he did, he was clear about his reasons. Clear and kind.
“You’re not eating.”
Baba Yaga’s voice brought her back to the present. Small portions of everything had been arranged on her plate, but they were untouched, the fork in her hand clean.
“I’m not hungry,” said Hayleigh, pushing the food away. “No more food. No more stories. I came here to learn what I need to do to ‘satisfy the Wild Hunt’ and break the curse. Naveah said you’d be able to tell me what to do.”
The old woman watched her solemnly, as if giving her a chance to take it back. When Hayleigh didn’t budge, Baba Yaga waved her hand. The feast disappeared. In its place sat a blue handbag of stylish leather in a square folio style.
“Debts must be settled,” said the Baba Yaga.
She recognized the bag. She’d bought it for herself when she’d gotten the job at Goshen, and it had ferried the paperwork for many years’ worth of deals. It’d been a long time since she’d seen it—where had it gone? And why did the sight of it make her throat tighten?
“My Le Tanneur…Why is that here?” Her palms had grown sweaty, and she wiped them against her front.
“Open it. Open it, and you will understand.” And then after a moment of silence, the old woman added, “The hand that carries must bear the weight.”
“Okay…” As soon as she stood, her legs grew leaden, and she couldn’t move. There was a tang of metal in her mouth.
A whisper passed through her mind. Don’t look. Don’t ask questions. Just do what you’re told, like a good girl.
“Open it,” repeated Baba Yaga. The old witch grew longer, thinner, stretching to loom overhead.
She tried again to move, but she still couldn’t. She was frozen, her mouth tacky. “I…I can’t.”
The old woman’s ember eyes flashed. “The scales won’t balance with cowardice, girl.”
Hayleigh did her best to guess the old woman’s meaning without opening the bag. “Scales…justice. You’re saying I need to make sure there’s justice for Eucharist?”
Baba Yaga just stared. “Open the bag, Hayleigh. It will be so much clearer.”
“I can’t,” she insisted.
Baba Yaga’s eyes fixed on her. “Are you saying you will not open this bag? You refuse what Baba Yaga is offering?”
“No, I mean…Yes. If it means opening that bag, then yes.”
Baba Yaga let out a long sigh. “Then go, girl. Our business is done.”
An unseen hand pushed her toward the door. Apparently when Baba Yaga dismissed you, it was no mere suggestion. She had to block herself into the doorway, pushing her arms and feet against the frame to resist being thrown out straightaway.
“Please, can’t you tell me anything else? Something that isn’t riddles?”
The old woman took slow steps in her direction, knocking her walking stick against the planks of the flooring with dull thuds, until she came to a stop directly in front of Hayleigh.
“No,” said the Baba Yaga.
Then she shoved Hayleigh out the door and into the storm that wailed through the night.