Dragons and Witches Read online

  But the girl … something vaguely maternal stirred in Baba Yaga’s once shapely chest. Once, for a long while, she had kept another girl prisoner and had at times loved her like a daughter. Okay, love was stretching matters. But it had been something close to deep affection. At least now and then. She had given up the right to actual love, but the emotion still lingered like a ghost unable to move on.

  “Come inside,” she told the girl. She gestured with her long chin and smiled slowly, her iron teeth glinting in the setting sun. Baba Yaga knew she was hideous. But she knew what she had gained was worth the loss of her human good looks.

  They left the boy where he was. He smelled like fear and urine, his mouth rounded in a stifled scream.

  Sometimes to save yourself, you tell any lie that finds its way to your tongue. The girl—her name was Beatrice, she eventually admitted, Bea for short—had never sewn a single thing in her life, not even a button. But she attempted to embroider the lace for a number of hours, long into the night, pricking her fingers with the thin sharp needle, leaving dots of bright red blood along the hem of Baba Yaga’s new gown. Sometimes, she cast a glance out the window, but once darkness came, she could no longer see the boy. At some point, a long, piercing scream followed by an odd, loud gurgle broke the quiet of the hut, and both she and witch knew there was nothing left to see.

  “I wish I could let you go,” Baba Yaga said with a sigh as the sun rose. Her three horsemen were saddling their mounts just outside the fence, one horse red, one black, one white. “I really do. It pains me.” The girl was crying now, silent tears falling like rain.

  The red horseman patted his horse, then set to arranging a new skull on a previously empty fence post.

  For a moment, Baba Yaga felt pity. She took the needle from the girl’s bloody fingers. “Go,” she said. She made no move as the girl stumbled toward the door, making little whiffing sounds of fear. Her fingertips smeared red on the doorknob as she twisted it. Beneath them, under the floor, the chicken legs swiveled hard to the right, and the girl tripped down the steps, falling hard once again on her already bruised knees.

  “Please,” she whimpered. “Don’t.”

  “Hmm,” said Baba Yaga. “I said you could go.” She lifted her lips in a hideous smile.

  Oh why belabor the struggle? Or the spicy stew that graced the dining room table later that night? Things happen. Some of them need a little extra salt.

  The following day, having finished the gown and tidily packed the leftover stew into plastic containers, Baba Yaga found just the right necklace in a shop at the town on the edge of her forest. More precisely, she found it adorning the neck of a lovely woman who had had the vast misfortune of wandering into the shop in search of antique lace. Her heart had still been beating—frantically, in fact—when Baba Yaga took the necklace from her. It had stopped not long after. Such is the consequence of having one’s neck snapped along with one’s pearl and ruby necklace.

  “Thank you, my dear,” Baba Yaga murmured as her rough hands worked the delicate clasp. She was a witch, but she was also unfailingly polite. Manners were important even when you could take whatever you wanted. She fastened the pearls and rubies around her own, thicker, neck. The baubles hung a little shorter on her, but she reveled in the smooth feel of the gems against her skin. This was a necklace of quality.

  And so the rest of the fortnight passed the way fortnights do when you’ve got an eternal number of them at your disposal. The usual luring of small children and unwitting wanderers. The perpetual journey of her hut on its chicken legs. Things stirred and cooked in the kettle in her fireplace. Spells conjured. The occasional scrying into past and future in the skull that hovered in her fireplace. A night of festive supper and a curse for those who had attempted to outwit her. Stronger curses for those who actually had, although she had to admit a secret admiration for their moxie.

  Baba Yaga was a fan of moxie.

  She always had been.

  A thousand years ago—this was not hyperbole; the actual number was one thousand and five plus two months—she had been a young slip of a girl. Beautiful and strong and confident and kind. And in love, because young girls are almost always in love with one thing or another. So are old women, but those stories don’t always get heard because the young think that love is only for them and that they will never grow old and so they close their ears and eyes and pretend the possibility doesn’t exist.

  “Be careful,” her mother told her, as mothers always do.

  “I will,” Baba Yaga said. Her name was not Baba Yaga then, of course. She had a human name and a human life and human desires and wishes and hopes and dreams.

  And a man whom she secretly loved. The secrecy made the love sweeter, of course, because that’s what secrets did. Baba Yaga had absolutely no intention of being careful. Careful was for old women like her mother. Careful was for old men. Careful was no fun.

  They were to meet that afternoon in the apple orchard, she and her secret lover, mid-day, when the sun was high and white in the sky and the air was filled with the scent of fruit and the sound of birds. She walked through the tall grass and imagined him. Thought of how someday soon they would be married, of the lovely gowns she would wear as his wife.

  One hour. Two. He did not arrive.

  She waited until the sun was setting. What if he was hurt? Surely something terrible must have happened. Why else would he not be here?

  Why else indeed? She hurried back to the edge of town, pebbles jabbing the bottoms of her feet as she ran down the unpaved road in her thin-soled slippers.

  “Who are you?” she said to the russet-haired girl who answered the door of her lover’s cottage. She was wearing just a white cotton shift, her breasts clearly visible against the thin fabric.

  Baba Yaga’s lover stood behind her, lacing the leather ties at the neck of his white shirt. His black curls were a careless tangle as though someone had been stroking her fingers through them. Which, of course, someone had. “Um,” he said. “We need to talk.”

  “No,” said Baba Yaga. “I don’t think we do.” Something inside her hardened, and her heart pumped very, very fast. She had worried, had feared him hurt or in trouble. Betrayal had never crossed her mind. Why would it? I love you, he had told her night after night. My darling. My dearest. My only.

  He followed her as she turned and walked away, easily catching up to her with his long-legged stride. She pretended not to notice as he loped beside her, and she smelled the scent of ripe apples on him, the same scent that had wafted from the other girl’s long, carelessly banded hair.

  “Johanne,” he said, for that was Baba Yaga’s human name. “I’m sorry.”

  She turned, and he smiled at her. His teeth were very white. His name was Wilem, and in that moment, she still loved him even as she could see now that he had never loved her. It all might have turned out differently if she had not felt that way. If she had been able to say, Oh. I see now. Whatever was I thinking? These things happen. I will go home and eat my supper and tend to my chores and be glad I am free of him. Be happy that I knew before we were bound together and I was unable to leave.

  But she couldn’t feel any of that. Just waves of sadness and anger and humiliation. She had never experienced that last one. Not ever. It burned in her chest like a wasp sting.

  So she walked away faster this time, moving without thinking toward the trees. “Don’t follow me,” she said even though she knew he had no intention of doing so.

  She wanted to hurt him. Her pain felt bright and sharp, like a fierce diamond. Not for the loss of Wilem exactly, although that was part of it. But for the piece of her that believed she was above such things. That love was easy because everything had always been easy for her. It is hard to discover that you are just like everyone else.

  I want, she said to herself, not ready to finish the sentence. I want, she thought again. She was in the heart of the forest now, deeper into the woods than she had ever ventured. She knew this was dange
rous. There were wolves and worse. Creatures. Fairies, some said. Sprites. Unholy things. It was fully dark now. The moon was rising bright and round in the sky. But the trees were thick and she could barely see it through the branches.

  “I want,” Johanne said again, this time aloud.

  This time something—someone—heard her.

  “You can have it all,” said the woman now standing in front of her as though she had always been there in this place. She was both hideous and beautiful, her golden hair long and wild, her eyes blue as slate, her skin a deep, lustrous tawny color. “You can make him hurt as you hurt. But nothing comes without a price. Be sure, daughter.”

  Johanne was a smart girl. She rarely made mistakes. She rarely found herself in situations where she could make them. She was the youngest daughter. The golden girl that made them all laugh. Spoiled, even. As much as one could be spoiled in those days.

  She had no idea that there were things one should never say yes to. That there were deals that could not be undone. Oh, she knew that this forest was an uncertain place. That it was dark and she was in too far and she should turn and try to find her way home.

  But headstrong, beautiful girls who have been cheated on don’t always think clearly.

  In a fair world, everyone is entitled to one awful, furious mistake.

  In the real world, sometimes one is all it takes.

  “I want,” Johanne said again.

  “So you have said,” the woman told her. “Three times plus another. So you shall have. Power. All of it. Dominion. This forest and those who abide within its boundaries. Hold out your hand, daughter.”

  Johanne hesitated. But she had already agreed. The woman grasped her hand tightly. Drew the tip of her dagger across the sweet flesh of Johanne’s innocent, smooth palm. Three cuts. Shallow and quick.

  “So you will it. So it shall be.”

  The transformation was as quick as the slices. The details of the bargain implied but not understood until it really was far, far too late.

  She stumbled through the forest as the waves of magic slammed into her. Her bones, her skin, her veins, her blood—all of it boiled and roiled and twisted.

  “Oh,” she said, sounding very much like that girl who would futilely attempt to sew lace for her many years later. “Please, no.”

  There was no going back.

  She fell to the forest floor, face buried in the dead leaves and broken twigs and bits of fur and feathers and squirmy things that crawled.

  “Wilem,” she cried. Then, “Mama. Papa.”

  No one heard her. No one came.

  Twisting on the wind, she heard vague strains of tinkling laughter. “Oh daughter,” said the voice. “You are such an innocent fool. But not for long.”

  Somewhere nearby, a wolf howled, a long, thin, startling cry.

  How much time passed before she rose and lumbered to the stream a few yards away? She had no idea. All she knew was a terrible, gnawing hunger.

  An apple tree sat a few feet from the water. Did apples grow in this forest? It made no sense. But she reached up and grabbed red fruit. First from the lower branches, then somehow higher, stuffing herself with juicy, tart apples. She ate and ate. Flesh and core and stem and seeds. She ate until finally, she felt she could eat no more.

  Then she waded into the water, her skirts heavy but strange around her. She bent and cupped her hands and drank, gulping hard, unable to slake her thirst for many long minutes.

  Finally, she lifted her head. The hunger was returning, fiercer than before. Her stomach felt like an empty pit. And what was wrong with her mouth? The stream was clear as glass as she looked down at her reflection.

  “No!” she cried. “No, no, no!”

  She looked away, then back. The same figure met her gaze. And the same when she inspected herself, all but her face which she could see only in watery reflection.

  She was hideous.

  Her face was long now and wizened, her skin like worn leather. Her nails were jagged and hard as stone. And her body—it was someone else’s now: thick, her breasts pendulous, her waist and hips and legs and arms all enormous in proportion. In the water, she could see her eyes glowing black, a tiny skull in their centers instead of a pupil. Her teeth were glinting. They looked like some sort of metal—iron?

  “No,” she said again, and even her voice was different now. Deep and rasping, an old, old woman’s voice. A crone. A witch. A hag.

  Later she would understand that beauty comes in many forms. But in this moment, all she could see was ugliness.

  And Wilem. She could see him, too, standing in the center of the forest, gaping at her.

  “How did you find me?” Had he really come looking? What did that mean?

  His mouth opened and closed, and she watched as he rubbed his eyes, as though he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

  “It’s me,” she said. “Johanne.”

  “Witch,” Wilem said. More precisely, he shrieked it. Until then, she had not taken him for a shrieker.

  “Witch, witch, witch.”

  “How did you get here?” she asked, ignoring his babbling. The hunger in her belly was even worse now. All she wanted was to eat again. She bit her huge lower lip with her new iron teeth and tasted salty blood. It made her even hungrier.

  “I don’t know,” he shrieked. “I was home, and now I’m here. Don’t hurt me. Please don’t hurt me.”

  Well. That wasn’t quite what she hoped to hear. Although had he begged her forgiveness, it wouldn’t have mattered. Either she’d kill him or she’d let him live, but that would be entirely up to her.

  Unfortunately for Wilem, the hunger won.

  There was a brief commotion as her right hand detached and raced toward him, leaping up and poking him in both eyes. Hard. With a squishing sound, although that was somewhat masked by his renewed shrieking. Johanne didn’t find this any more or less unusual than everything else that was happening to her. It simply … was. Her hands were removable now. Fascinating.

  The end for her lover was quicker than he deserved. She was, after all, very, very hungry.

  He tasted like mutton and onions and garlic and the tiniest bit of sugar.

  She wiped his remains off her lips and her giant chin.

  “Baba Yaga,” she said, knowing without knowing how, that this was now her name.

  Baba. Slavic for old woman. A negative word, but she would reclaim it. Yaga. A word she’d heard once from a traveling scholar. Its meanings were lost in antiquity. It meant snake maybe. Something that sneaked up on you and surprised. It would do.

  Baba Yaga. Yes. This was her name.

  Was still her name now as she passed the remaining days until Halloween.

  She had lived many years since that day when she unwittingly traded beauty and youth for power and domination and this huge body that demanded respect above all else. The day she ceased playing by human rules. Not that humans weren’t capable of huge, horrible evils. Just open the daily news feeds and there was enough callous, narcissistic behavior to make even the most ancient witch blush. But there was generally a balance. Forces that held people accountable. Rules. Laws. Social order. Body cameras. The occasional weapon of mass destruction.

  But Baba Yaga had only one force. Her own.

  The day of All Hallow’s Eve, she collected the final pieces of her costume and flew over her forest in her giant mortar, then returned to her hut and finished the leftovers of the spicy stew she’d made from the flesh of the girl who couldn’t sew.

  She dressed as the sun began dipping lower in the sky. Stockings—silk and luxurious over her enormous legs. The gown, slipping over her head and falling in delicious midnight blue folds. The lovely pearl and ruby necklace that had once adorned some other woman’s fragile neck.

  She stood by her fireplace, the skull hovering in the flames. “I want,” she said. “I want. I want.”

  Baba Yaga wanted many things, no different than when she had been Joanne except that now she ge
nerally got what she wanted and made sure to know what she was asking for.

  She lifted her arms and covered her face with her enormous hands. They slipped from her midnight blue sleeves and clung to her hair. In the fireplace, the skull’s eyes glowed.

  The transformation was swift and only slightly painful—a twinge in her bones as they grew smaller and more slender. An ache in her wrists as her hands clambered down her body and returned to their rightful place and locked tight. A swelling in her heart that she couldn’t quite explain.

  She knew it was just a temporary glamour. An illusion for just this night. She understood there was still no going back from what she had become so long ago. But when she peered into the fire and saw herself reflected in the skull’s eyes, she still gasped with pleasure.

  “Here you go, Mistress,” said the horseman in blue. He held out a floral cotton pillowcase.

  “Or perhaps this?” offered the horseman in black. He presented her with a tiny plastic jack-o-lantern shaped bucket.

  “Or this?” suggested the horseman in red. He was holding a larger plastic bucket, this one embossed with flying, smiling bats.

  Baba Yaga frowned.

  “You ask for candy,” the red horseman explained. “The humans give it to you if you say, ‘Trick or Treat.’”

  “And if I don’t?” She studied the pillowcase. All the flowers were cheery daisies.

  “They give you candy anyway.” He held out a map of the town. One set of houses was circled in black marker.

  “Are the people particularly delicious here?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “They give full size candy bars. Trust me. That’s a good thing.”

  Even powerful witches learn something new.

  “Chocolate bars,” said the blue horseman. “Or those ones with the peanut butter.”

  “Or red licorice strings,” added the one in black. But Baba Yaga didn’t seem to have a taste for those this evening.

  In the end, it turned out she those preferred chewy, sugar-sprinkled sour candies shaped like children.