Chapter 35 #2
“Aye. Aye, aye, aye.” Yelka rocked back on her heels.
“These are the eyes that last burned me, dearie.” She cackled.
“A young woman, she was. Looking for a dun cow, hoping that it would heal her. She could see the future, she could, and wanted to be rid of the burden. Smiled so sweetly when I kindly offered to help. Came so meekly into my hut, with another lass beside her—a fair-headed thing with sharp eyes. Then they tricked me, oh, they tricked me clever, and the black-haired one shoved me into my own oven, and the other slammed the door, and they laughed while I screamed. ‘Comeuppance’—that’s what the black-haired lass called it.
Comeuppance for feasting on children as if we are not all beasts that feast upon each other. ”
Richard’s breath hitched. His mother and Selwyn. They’d burned this Baba Yaga alive.
“Years it took me,” Yelka crooned, “to gather my spirit from the soot. Years to find my bones again, to call my cottage from the ashes. I limped through the realms. I crawled. I was a thin, thin thing, and my hut would not stand, and my cauldron would not boil.” Her teeth gnashed.
“Then I found the Ardenian stallion, wandering loose in the western forests. Three eyes, it had, and canines like a hound, and a stink upon it that set my legs to dancing. Such foul magic in its blood, dearie. I drank of it, and my cottage rose, and my cauldron sang again.”
Richard narrowed his eyes. The horse in the garden was Rot-infested, and the witch had fed on it like a leech upon a fat vein. Where most Sylari creatures could not bear Rot magic, it appeared that evil entities thrived on it.
“I had hoped,” Yelka sighed, “to find that wretched woman one day and flay her skin. But you smell of her, dearie.” She nosed along his temple, sniffing deeply. “You smell of her blood. Her son. Her son. Oh, what a gift the gods have laid upon old Yelka’s table.”
Her hand fisted in his hair and pulled his head back.
“I shall not eat you quick, no, no. That would be a waste. I shall keep you. I shall take a finger today, and a toe tomorrow, and the slice of an ear after that. We shall see how long it takes for you to pass.” She patted his cheek.
“And your mother shall weep in whatever heaven holds her, and she shall watch her boy unmade slow, and she shall know that old Yelka does not forget and old Yelka does not forgive.”
Richard squinted past her at the oven in the far wall. It was a large blackened hole wide enough to fit three grown men, with space below for a fire. The hinges were pitted with rust, and a long bolt rested by the gaping door.
“Baba Yagas are nearly all fools about the oven.”
Richard grunted hard and jerked his chin towards the cage. Release the children.
Yelka followed his gaze and tutted. “Oh, no, no, no, dearie. The little ones are for the pot.” She shuffled to the cauldron, ladling up the broth and letting it slop back.
“The forest gives me only lean Estaran brats, all gristle and grime. But Ardenian babes—” She smacked her lips.
“Ardenian babes are sweet, dearie. The younger, the sweeter still.”
She took up a long hook and reached up. With a creak of pulley and chain, the cage began to lower, inch by inch, towards the rolling, bubbling green. The triplets clutched each other, wailing, as Jeya struck her sword against the bars.
Richard yelled through the gag and wrenched at his binds. Let me speak.
Yelka paused with the hook in her grip. “Eh? Want to beg, do you, dearie? Want to plead for the chicks?” She sniggered. “Begging won’t fill old Yelka’s belly, but I do enjoy a good plea.”
She doddered back to him and tugged the cloth from his mouth.
Richard worked his jaw and gave her a polite smile. “You waste them, mistress.”
Yelka cocked her head. “Eh?”
“Boiled meat is grey meat. The marrow leaches into the broth and is lost.” Richard lowered his voice.
“An Ardenian child in a cauldron is a poor meal for one night. An Ardenian child in an oven—” He nodded at the bricked maw across the room.
“—is a feast that lasts a week. The skin crisps. The fat bastes the flesh from within. The marrow stays sealed in the bone, sweet as honey when you crack it open. Why squander four such tender morsels on grey soup?”
Above the cauldron, Puck protested he’d rather be boiled than baked while his brothers wailed all the louder.
Yelka’s tongue darted out to wet her cracked lip. “Crisped skin.”
“Crackling,” Richard said. “Like pork scratchings.”
“Oh.” Yelka swayed. “Oh, it has been an age, dearie. An age. Not since I had a baker’s boy, plump as a piglet—” She bared her teeth. “Aye. Aye, you speak true. The oven it is.”
She clapped her hands twice, and the cage swung sideways through the air to clank down onto the kitchen flagstones. Yelka unlatched the door.
“Come now, chicks.” Yelka reached in and dragged them out one by one with terrible strength.
Their ankles were manacled with chains. Jeya waited until the last triplet was clear, then lunged, the wooden sword arcing for Yelka’s throat.
The Shortman’s Cleave—Richard recognised with dim surprise.
It was one of the first drills squires trained with.
But though Jeya executed it perfectly, Yelka did not so much as flinch from the blow. She slapped Jeya, and the girl crashed into the flagstones, the sword skittering from her grip.
“Jeya!” Penn cried.
“She lives,” Yelka snorted. “Hot oven for the chicks first, and the spirited one after.”
She herded the triplets to the oven. Pip was crying so hard that Puck had to half support him. Penn stumbled, and Yelka hauled him upright by the scruff.
Richard’s bonds bit into his wrists. “Mistress! Mistress, wait!”
Yelka glanced back.
“Daisy.” Richard let his voice crack, allowed the panic he was holding off bleed into it. “Please! I beg of you! Do not touch little Daisy!”
“Eh?” Yelka frowned. “Four chicks I caught, dearie. That little lass never followed me.”
“No.” Richard shook his head sadly. “She came with me. She hid herself when your chicken leg took us and slipped into the oven to hide. I lost sight of her—” He choked out a sob.
“She must yet be in there. Curled at the back, in the ash. Please. She is only six. Take her out from there. Spare her at least.”
Yelka’s nostrils flared.
“She came?” she breathed. “The wee juicy lass is hiding in my oven?” Her cackle made Richard’s ears ring.
“Oh, the little dear. Oh, the clever little dear, thinking herself safe in the wolf’s own mouth.
Hold a moment, chicks. Yelka shall fetch the sweetling first. We must marinate her first!
The meat tastes better when it is soaked in herbs! ”
She abandoned the triplets at the oven’s mouth and dropped to her knees before the iron door. Her hands gripped the lintel, and she bent low, sticking her head, then her shoulders, then her hunched back into the oven’s darkness.
“Daisy, dearie. Daisy, my plump dessert. Come to old Yelka—”
“Now!” Richard roared. “The door, boys, shut the door!”
Puck moved instantly, and his brothers followed, hurling their combined weight against the door. It swung on its hinges with a screech and rammed shut.
Yelka shrieked, but she was too late. Jeya was already there, sliding the bolt home.
The door shuddered from the inside.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
“LET ME OUT, LET ME OUT, OH YOU WICKED CHICKS, OH YOU FILTHY LYING WHELP, I SHALL HAVE YOUR LIVERS, I SHALL HAVE YOUR EYES—”
“Hurry!” Richard barked. “Cut me free.”