Wickedly Magical (Baba Yaga, #0.5)(2)
She hoped he hadn’t come to her in search of some kind of magical treasure to get him out of debt. That might have worked on occasion in the old days, back in the dark green, mysterious forests of Mother Russia, when Baba Yagas were more inclined to play along with the fairy tales people told about them. Not anymore though, and definitely not her. He was going to have to really need her help, or she’d turn him into a toad and go drink that beer.
“Hey,” she said, possibly a touch more forcefully than she’d intended to, based on the way the guy flinched. “I’m guessing you wanted to talk to me, since you’ve followed me back here three days in a row. Were you ever planning to get out of that truck?”
The man eyed her dubiously, and looked even less encouraged by the sight of the large canine sitting at her feet, long pink tongue lolling, and just a hint of steam curling out of his nostrils. But after a minute he shut off the engine and opened the door. For all his hesitation, once he was in front of her, he straightened up and pulled his shoulders back, as if gathering his courage. A couple of inches over her five foot ten, he wore a clean blue shirt over jeans that actually looked like they’d been ironed. One hand gripped a small box.
Barbara raised a dark eyebrow, but didn’t say anything. She’d gone as far as she was going to—the next step was up to him.
***
Ivan Dmetriev tried not to stare, but it was difficult. The woman in front of him was nothing like he’d been expecting. His babushka, his father’s mother, had often told him tales from the land where she’d been born. DeKalb, Illinois had a large Russian community, and after church on Sundays their tiny parlor had always been filled with diminutive elderly women with musical voices. They drank strong, dark tea from his babushka’s battered silver samovar, filling the air with their chatter about grandchildren, and the inferiority of the local produce compared to the fruits from home, and sometimes, if he was lucky, frightening stories about the witch, Baba Yaga.
How he’d loved those stories as a child. Such a magical, frightening figure, the sometimes wicked, sometimes wise Baba Yaga, with her iron teeth and up-curving pointy chin, and her long nose that always sniffed out the truth. When the babushkas told the tales, their creaky voices lowered to spooky whispers as the night came creeping inward past the lace curtains, he could almost see the witch flying through the air in her enchanted mortar and pestle, and see the wooden hut in which she lived racing around the forest on its giant chicken legs.
So at first he laughed when his grandmother had pulled him aside last week and told him that the stories were real. That the Baba Yagas were real, too. Powerful witches living among (although often apart from) regular human beings, their ancient magical homes and transportation transformed into modern versions, but their roles mostly unchanged throughout the years.
Ivan’s initial thought was that perhaps his beloved babushka was finally feeling her years and losing her grip on reality. Especially when she’d informed him, seated in stately upright grace on the carved wooden chair that made her look like a shrunken but regal queen, that in her younger days back in Russia, she had met one of these legendary witches.
“You should have seen me,” his grandmother said, pride clear in her strongly accented words. “I wasn’t scared at all. Well, not much, at any rate, for all that the Baba Yaga was a fierce and ugly creature. Sparks flew from her eyes and set the leaves around us to smoldering. When she gnashed her teeth, it made a sound like boulders falling down a hill. Oh, she was a fearsome sight. But I was on a quest, and I was young and beautiful, and full of the courage that comes from being in love.”
“Grandmother,” Ivan had said, trying to be soothing, “I’m sure that you met an old woman in the woods. But it can’t have been the Baba Yaga. She’s just a tale, told to scare small children.”
His babushka snorted. “And how do you know she is just a tale, my darling Ivanenka? Do you know everything there is to know? I do not think so.” She patted his face with a feathery touch. “Have I ever lied to you? No, I have not. So when I tell you that I met a Baba Yaga, then this too you must believe.”
Against his will, Ivan had believed. His grandmother told him a story as remarkable as any of the ones he’d listened to as a small, wide-eyed child. A story of how her love (his grandfather!) had gotten lost in the woods, and how the not-quite-wicked witch had made his babushka do three impossible tasks before leading her to the bear pit he’d fallen into.
But thankfully, the ending was a happy one. His grandmother had been reunited with her beloved, and the Baba Yaga had been so impressed by the young girl’s bravery that she’d promised her a favor, whenever she needed it.
“But I never had to use it,” his babushka said. “And so we have it still, and you need only take it to the Baba Yaga, and ask for her help. I am certain she will grant it to you, for your need is great and your heart is true.” She handed him a small wooden box. “This holds the token the witch gave me. If you give it to her, she will know I sent you.”
Ivan’s head spun with a dizzying combination of hope and disbelief. “I lost the last court appeal. My own lawyer won’t even talk to me because of all those lies. We’re out of options. What could she possibly do? And how am I supposed to find this mythical witch? Is she simply going to appear, just because we need her help?”
His babushka made that particular clicking noise with her tongue that only disapproving grandmothers can make. “It will not be quite that easy, my little rabbit, but I suspect you will not have to look very far. Did you not pay attention to all the stories? This is how magic works.”