Chapter 32
Looking for the purse on this side of the veil was a waste of time.
Baba Yaga had wanted her to look in the version of the purse that had been in the hut that night.
Anything her copy of the bag contained from the days of the Eucharist deal would have long since been cleared out.
It had to have been something she carried at the time.
Something that would let her see the full picture.
But how was she supposed to get back there? Baba Yaga had been conspicuously absent since that night in the woods, as had her archway. There was clearly not going to be a follow-up invite.
But mortals weren’t always invited in the stories. Sometimes, they found their way to her—foolishly, but boldly.
Her grandfather’s voice crackled in her brain. “Vasilisa navigated the forest safe and sound, by the guidance of her magic doll.”
Whenever her grandfather had told the story of Vasilisa the Beautiful, who received a doll from her mother that later guided her to Baba Yaga, Hayleigh had pictured her family’s motanka in Vasilisa’s arms. The motanka her baba had given her for protection.
But she didn’t have the motanka anymore. Her mother had taken it and done…what with it? Hayleigh had always assumed she’d thrown it away, but what if she hadn’t? What if it was still somewhere in the house?
Only one person knew for sure.
She found Luda in her parents’ bedroom, where seamstress mannequins displayed a line of robe à la francaise gowns waiting for the Gray women to slip into them later that night.
The final one held a man’s costume—an intricately embroidered brocade jacket with matching hose and plumed hat fit for Louis XIV.
“I said no!” barked Colt, pushing that final mannequin to the ground. “Are you trying to make me look like a joke? To get everyone laughing at me behind my back?”
“I would never,” said Luda, casting her eyes to the floor. “This is a costume fit for a king—my king.”
Her father was unmoved. “It’s effeminate. No one would ever take me seriously again. Is that what you want?”
“No, of course not, I just want every detail to be perfect.” Her mother reached out to brush her hand along his arm, but he recoiled at her touch. “Please?”
“I said no. That’s final.”
They seemed to notice then that Hayleigh was standing in the doorway. Colt let out a low grunt as he fixed his eyes on his daughter’s hair and nodded toward a row of powdered wigs. “At least there’s something here that’ll make you look like a woman again.”
And then he was gone. Across the room, Luda stood still, her hands knitting together and eyes downcast.
“Mama,” began Hayleigh, taking a step forward.
The vulnerability slipped from her mother’s features as Luda’s chin tipped up to regard her coolly. “The makeup artist won’t be here for another two hours.”
Hayleigh picked her way across the room, brushing her fingers along lengths of slippery silk and across the ribbed rows of embroidery. “The costume’s perfect. Louis XIV probably would’ve sacked a city for one like it.”
“Thank you.”
“Every detail is perfect. Like always.”
“I appreciate you saying so.” Her mother’s smile widened, and then she turned to clean up the hem of one of the gowns, picking up a pair of scissors to snip an edge she apparently wasn’t satisfied with.
She had enlisted a local seamstress to do most of the construction of the costumes, but she’d taken on the finishing work herself.
“Mama,” Hayleigh ventured, “whatever happened to that motanka doll that Baba Milana gave me?”
Luda paused and slid her eyes Hayleigh’s way. “What made you think of that?”
“I was just remembering that Christmas we spent with them.”
“It was certainly…memorable.”
“It was the best Christmas we ever had. I don’t think I ever really thanked you for that. I know how hard it was for you, but it meant so much that you did it.”
Her mother raised her eyes in surprise and made eye contact, held for a few beats of quiet understanding.
“So the doll,” said Hayleigh. “Do you remember what happened to it?”
Luda was quiet for a moment before pulling a needle sharply through a section of hem. “I told you, I got rid of it.”
“I know you did, but I guess I hoped…Maybe that was something you said for Dad’s sake. But that since it was something from our family, that linked us back to Ukraine…”
“What makes you think I want to keep any links? We were starving when we left.”
“I think you know Ukraine is so much more than what the small men tried to make it, and that the motanka was part of how our family survived it.” The words broke her voice, and she had to take a deep breath before she could continue.
“I need some of that right now. I need some of what made you a woman who could survive that.”
There was another long silence. Finally, her mother said, “And if I didn’t actually throw it out, what then?”
Her heart skipped a beat. “Can I have it back? Please? I promise, I’ll make sure Dad doesn’t see it.”
After one final hesitation, Luda crossed the room to enter a cavernous walk-in closet. A minute later, she emerged with a small pine box and thrust it into Hayleigh’s arms before stepping briskly back to the gowns. “Take it.”
“Thank you,” said Hayleigh, backing out and clutching the box to her chest.
“I’ll see you back here in two hours.”
“You will. I promise.”
The sun was already low in the sky when Hayleigh plunged into the forest that ran behind the Gray estate and into the foothills. Her hands clutched the colorful motanka close to her chest as she pushed her way through the snowy landscape.
“Well, let’s hope this works,” said Hayleigh, peering down at the doll, “because otherwise I’m ruining these boots for nothing.”
Then she took a deep, slow breath, channeling some of what Stephan had guided her through that day in the spell circle.
She didn’t aim to cast a spell, precisely, but she did make herself aware.
Aware of the smell of fresh snow and cold cedar, of the twilight chatter of chickadees and sparrows, and of a low wind stirring the boughs overhead and dancing across her cheeks.
She felt her place in it all, connected to it all. Not separate but whole.
The doll was rough in her hands as she whispered, “I need your help. Please.”
There was a twitch and a stirring. The motanka slipped its stubby arms over Hayleigh’s fingers and leaned its head back so that the solar cross face regarded her with interest.
“I, um,” said Hayleigh, wetting her lips, “am trying to find my way back to Baba Yaga. There’s something I couldn’t do before, but I’m ready now. I need you to show me how to get there.”
The doll regarded her for a moment before thrusting one arm forward in a point. “That way?” The doll flopped its head back and forward in a nod.
It was pointing toward the darkest, thickest part of the wood. Not just off the beaten path, but off the very concept of a path.
“That way? You’re totally sure?”
Another floppy nod.
She sighed. “Well, guess I really am ruining these shoes. And maybe my pants too. But…” She straightened her back. “Here we go.”
The doll took her on a series of twists and turns, always in the direction that looked the least hospitable.
But though the way might have been no more than an animal path through a bramble, Hayleigh could always manage to squeeze through.
She had started a trail-tracking app when she set out, and after about twenty minutes, she checked it, only to find that the line had long since stopped tracking her progress.
They had gone somewhere satellites could not find them.
Finally, the trees broke, revealing a familiar rustic cottage. Only this time it was atop a pair of knobby chicken legs, which carried it across a patch of clear-cut land running like a scar across the hillside.
“Stop!” she called, breaking into a run. “Hey, stop!”
The old witch wasn’t going to make this easy. She supposed it was fair. If she’d been turned down on a deal, and they later tried to come back to the table, she’d have made them work for it.
The house didn’t stop. It swayed and bobbed atop the long, spindly legs and continued with its march. She knocked her hand against the back of one leg when she finally caught up. “Let me in! Please!”
A rope dropped beside her face. The domovoy peered over the lip of the front porch, holding the other end of the rope and waving.
“Am I really about to rappel up the side of a chicken hut with the help of a house spirit?” she murmured.
The motanka nodded.
She shoved the doll into her coat and wrapped her hands around the rope, working her way up the side of the chicken hut with the help of the domovoy. The landscape blurred past, and she didn’t dare look down—knowing she’d lose her nerve.
“Thank you,” she gasped as she finally pulled herself over the edge of the splintering wood porch. The little man only nodded before melting back into the walls, and she lay there for a minute before getting her breath back.
“New Year’s resolution—get to the gym more.”
Finally, she stood—not without a stumble or two as she adjusted to the lurching of the house’s pace. The door gave way at her touch, and she stepped inside.
The cottage was nearly empty. There were no chairs. No tables. No food. No oven. Even the wall decorations were gone.
There was only one item left. The blue bag sat on the floor in the center of the empty room.
This time, when something inside tried to leaden her limbs and whisper Don’t look, she was able to firm her chin and say, “No.”
Inside, there was an envelope full of documents. The envelope she had carried between Jack and Colt. The documents she had not taken a close look at.
She had sensed something was off, but she had been trained not to look, so she didn’t.
Told not to ask questions, so she hadn’t.
Her whole life, she had been conditioned to obey and to accept the version of reality handed down by authority figures, instead of the one she saw with her own eyes.
Felt with her own heart. And people had been hurt.
She had been hurt.
Hayleigh took a deep, steadying breath and held the file to her chest. Then, with a hand that trembled only slightly, she opened the file, ready to look this time.
It took going through the papers a few times, but then she found the signs of what had happened.
First, there was an invoice with an obscenely large number under the vague line item special services.
And then, looking over the time stamps on one of the forms again, she noticed that the samples had stopped at a warehouse for a full day, and only then gone on to the lab.
That wasn’t allowed. She didn’t know everything about this process, but she did know it was time sensitive. That was why you hired couriers like Gray Services who specialized in that sort of thing and were empowered to deliver legally binding chain-of-custody paperwork.
Flipping deeper into the file, she came across a revised version of the exact same form. It was identical in all ways except that the stopover at the warehouse had been deleted, and the delivery date had been shortened to one day earlier, obscuring the delay.
There was a sticky note attached to it that said Fixed it personally. -C
She lowered her head, and the papers slipped from her fingers.
Yes, she was sure of it now—her father’s company had been involved in tampering with the soil sample before it could be delivered to the lab for testing.
And she had helped make it happen. Maybe she hadn’t known, but she should have. At the end of the day, she’d wanted the resort built as much as anyone, and it had been easier at the time not to look, not to have to ask questions.
But that all ended today.
She was done letting people tell her what to do, who to be, what to see and to believe. She was done obeying when obedience required going so hard against what felt right. She would do better, but she would also demand better of the people she surrounded herself with.
“I swear,” she said.
As the words left her lips, one side of the house tore free without warning, split boards spinning into nothingness. A wind gusted through the room, nearly knocking her off her feet.
“What’s going on?” There was a low tugging on her jeans, and she found the motanka staring up at her. It waved its hands furiously and gestured toward the door in a clear message of Get out!
“But I need those papers,” protested Hayleigh. “I need proof of what happened!”
She snatched at the documents, but they turned to black feathers and slipped from between her fingers. As they spun away into the wildness outside, she made like hell for the door.
The roof groaned and sagged overhead, but she made it through and onto the porch just before the whole thing collapsed behind her.
Suddenly, everything went still. The wind disappeared as quickly as it had picked up. The motanka slumped to the ground beside her. Hayleigh stared at the pile of planks and rubble, wondering what had just happened. The chicken legs bent down, so that the stairs came to rest on the earth.
Revealing the Baba Yaga standing at their base. She leaned on her staff and stared directly at Hayleigh.
“Congratulations,” said the old woman.
“Congratulations? What do you mean…congratulations?”
Baba Yaga lifted a hairy chin toward the remains of the house behind her. “You have accepted the truth now. You’re free of us.” Her eyes caught movement in the trees—shadowy figures retreating into the distance.
“Wait, what?” asked Hayleigh, surprise shooting through her in a bolt. “You mean the curse is broken?”
“I do indeed.”
“But those documents…I needed them to prove what happened.”
The old woman waved her hand. “Those were just reflections. Never intended to leave my realm.”
“So where are the originals, then?”
“How should I know? My role was to bring you to this point, no further.”
Hayleigh pressed her hands to either side of her head. “But…what about Eucharist? What happens to them?”
“What indeed?” said the old woman, and then she slowly faded away, as did the remains of the house, and then the raven, who swooped one final time in a comforting rustle.
Only the motanka remained at Hayleigh’s feet, a pop of color in the misty surroundings. The wind whistled across the bare mountainside, carrying with it the clean smell of snow and tousling her hair with a tickle.
“That can’t be it,” she murmured. “This isn’t the end of the story.”
But though she couldn’t shake the feeling that something more needed to be done, she still felt…lighter. For the first time since she’d seen the old woman in the window of Nordstrom’s, she was no longer running from something.
And it was entirely up to her what happened next.