- THIRTEEN
Cece
I may or may not have had to stifle a scream as I turned back.
But as I did, all I saw was a woman with slightly graying hair and kind honey-brown eyes.
"You're welcome," she said, giving me an almost maternal smile and moving to the side with an arm held out, inviting me in.
I swallowed hard, trying to reinforce my shield and moving to do so.
I stepped into the small cabin to find, well, what sort-of confirmed my suspicions about a healer or medicine woman.
The walls were lined with drying herbs and flowers.
There were mortars and pestles in varying sizes strewn about and dozens of mason jars filled with spices and, well, other things I didn't want to think about as they looked like maybe they were body parts of small animals.
It was small and cramped with a makeshift kitchen area directly to the left with a fireplace used for cooking.
The center held a small, ancient-looking dining table.
To the right was a seating area with worn, mismatched furniture.
It was quaint, dated but in a charming, old world kind of way.
But that wasn't what had me taking a step back.
That was the fact that six women were in the small space.
They were all of varying ages. The youngest must have been a teenager still, the oldest had the look of skin stretched over bone and sinew, her gray hair just tufts on her head.
All were dressed in modest brown dresses that reached their ankles, mostly shapeless, obviously meant for function and not fashion.
Each of them was set to a certain task. Some were grinding things, another was cleaning, one was stuffing things into satchels, one was mixing something on the fire. My stomach growled at the idea of actual cooked food, but I knew I couldn't eat there. I knew I would have to tough it out.
Everything seemed rather... normal. The women seemed happy, one humming a song softly as she dusted surfaces.
Then, like a bell was struck, every head snapped up and looked in the direction of the small hall where two doors were situated. The furthest one opened and I could hear footsteps, pounding like the bass beat of my heart in my chest.
I wasn't sure what I had been expecting, something supernatural.
Maybe with funny colored skin, wings, weird eyes, talons.
I had no idea. I hadn't been expecting a crone.
Really, that was all that came to mind when the woman came into the room.
She was a perfect representation of a crone with her slight body in long, draping fabrics, her endless mass of wavy, dry gray hair, her keen bright blue eyes, her bent hands with darkened spots, and the wrinkles that seemed to be enveloping her entire face.
If you looked closely, there was a faded blue crescent moon shaped tattoo whose points disappeared into her hairline at the top of her forehead.
"What'd he do?" she asked, her voice a bit croaking. It should have been an offensive sound, but I somehow found myself drawn to it instead.
"What did who do?"
"You can't cross the spells around this ground if you aren't upset with a man you care for," she explained. "Who is he and what did he do?"
"Oh," I said, shaking my head a little. "Really, it's nothing. Not even worth talking about. I'm actually here because I'm lost. I was, I guess... under some kind of spell, following this flickering light that led me here."
The crone shook her head, rolling her eyes like she was sick of the shenanigans as she shuffled toward her kitchen. "Will-o'-the-Wisps, always thinking they're funny."
So that was a Will-o'-the-Wisp. No wonder Drake had used that as the excuse for why I was on Winters land. It truly was uncontrollable. I had been helpless but to follow.
"Don't suppose you'd let me offer you tea?
" she asked, pouring herself a cup of hot water from a small pot hanging in the fireplace then reaching into a tin on a shelf above the fireplace, taking a handful of something and dropping it right in the water, no satchel, no steeper, nothing.
She shuffled over toward her table and gestured for me to sit across from her.
"I'm Baba Yaga," she said with meaning though it meant nothing to me.
"Ah, I'm... Cece."
"Celestine," she corrected. "And that is a hunk of jasper situated against your breast. Try to tell me you aren't here because of a man. A man with the same name as that gemstone, perhaps."
"A gnome gave it to me," I said, uncomfortable with how much she knew.
"Even more damning. Tell me about Jasper."
Not sure it could actually cause any harm and wanting to placate her so she didn't get pissed off, I shrugged. "He's the brother of my best friend. She's... lost in The Green somewhere so we have been looking for her. It hasn't exactly been an easy task so far..."
"Not if that ankle, those ribs, and that face have anything to say about it," she agreed, letting out a gravely, rough noise that I didn't know how to interpret.
But then a second later, one of the women shuffled over, the one who seemed like a teenager, and reached for my ankle.
"Let her," Baba Yaga told me, waving a hand.
"She will set it so you stop making it worse.
Now, back to this Jasper. He's not just the brother to your best friend, is he? "
"Really, it's nothing. We made out twice and then..." I clamped my mouth shut, embarrassed.
"Then?" she prompted, sounding bored. "He took your innocence."
I snorted hard, laughing a little nervously. "Yeah, no. That shipped sailed back in freshman year."
"Changeling," Baba Yaga observed, brows knitting.
"Yeah, I guess. I didn't know any of this," I said, waving a hand around, "existed until Jasper brought me in."
"You've never felt drawn to the woods?"
"God, no. I've actually always been really leery of the woods. I never got close. I have some irrational fear of being attacked by some wild animal. I don't know why."
"A spell. To keep you out of here. Your parents didn't want you to come back."
"Any idea why? No one seems to be able to tell me anything at all about my possible lineage or what I am or why I can do this," I said, lifting a hand and putting all my energy into creating the shield even though I wasn't afraid of anything right then.
"I haven't seen a power like that in a long time," Baba Yaga said, though somehow sounding wholly unimpressed. "I'm not here to give you answers about your family, girl. That isn't my place. My place is men."
"What does that mean?"
"You've never heard of me? Not even in your human fairy tales?"
"No."
"I exact vengeance on men who wrong women."
I felt myself start at that. It was so ridiculous that I almost wanted to laugh.
But nothing about Baba Yaga's expression seemed to suggest I was allowed that luxury.
"Like... a voodoo curse?" I asked, brows drawing together at the image of bent old Baba Yaga sticking pins in a sack shaped like a man.
"Child's play," she said, scoffing at the very idea. "My methods are much more lasting."
"But why?"
"You're new to this realm, dearie. It has been at least one human lifetime since I have been in the human realm, but I can't imagine things have changed all that much since then.
Progress is progress but it takes generations.
Since the beginning of time, the best thing you could be in any universe has been a man with a small bit of fortune or power.
And the worst thing you could be? A woman.
Any woman. Any one of us could face the same fate.
Powerlessness. Abuse. Rape. We have that burden as we always have, as we always will.
Someone needed to step up and make it clear that not all women were powerless, that not all men's sins would just be accepted, brushed off, excused because men 'can't help themselves'.
Before me, women had no where to turn to set things right.
I gave them back that power. And as such, men, powerful, unstoppable men, are brought to their knees by the mutter of my name.
That is why my methods are more lasting.
They need to be. Men need to know that any woman at any time could come to me and that he will pay three fold for his misdoings. We can't afford to be soft."
"That's... kind of a sad way to live, isn't it?"
"Girlie, when you have had an entire army of Dark fae take turns on you at thirteen like Rose here," she said, gesturing toward the young girl who was still doing something to my ankle, "then you may speak about it being a sad way to live."
And, well, looking at that young girl, thinking about how innocent I myself had been at the tender age of thirteen, at the horror she must have endured, I had to admit, castration by fucking fire ants sounded like a merciful punishment for their actions.
"Now you get it," Baba Yaga said with a nod as if she read my thoughts.
"Yeah, I get it."
"Your Jasper, what did he do?"
"Nothing worth any punishment you would offer."
"That's your choice to make," she said, nodding.
"Many women come here angry and bitter, not having given much thought to their decision.
They stay, they eat, they rest, then they change their minds.
Many end up staying here for ten, twenty human years, enjoying a life without men, without expectations on their actions or beauty, where they can do good work, can champion the right causes. "
Like a feminist commune. I had to admit, I knew a fair amount of women in the human realm who would love something of the like.
"This isn't a home built solely on anger, bitterness, or hatred.
This is a place of refuge and healing, of sisterhood and love.
We make healing teas and compresses for women troubles.
We step in as midwives when another can not be found.
So while men who have reason to fear me cower, men whose women need me are glad I exist."
"Why would the Will-o'-the-Wisp lead me here?" I asked after a silence fell.