Enchantment (34 page)

Ruth’s heart sank. She wanted to cry, in shame, in grief. “You
are
engaged?”

Ivan shook his head.

Ruth knew a moment of hope. Still a chance.

“We’re married,” said Ivan.

It struck her like a blow. Married. The door, not just closing, but closed, locked, slammed in her face. Married!

“How . . . sudden,” she said.

She turned her back on them then. They would not see the tears that leapt into her eyes.

She felt his hand on her shoulder. She shrugged it off.

“I’m sorry I didn’t write,” he was saying. “Or call. I know it’s hard to believe, but I really couldn’t. And it wasn’t as sudden as it seems, either, it . . . Ruth, you have to believe me, I didn’t want it to be this way.”

“If you didn’t want it to be this way,” she said, controlling her voice almost perfectly, “then it wouldn’t
be
this way, would it? Or are you seriously telling me the two of you
had
to get married?” Ruth turned around and pointedly scanned Katerina’s body, as if the pregnancy might already be visible.

“We haven’t even slept together,” Ivan protested.

“No, of course not,” said Ruth scornfully. “Not
you
. If your wife ever has children, it’ll be a virgin birth. That’s why you needed a shiksa, isn’t it? That’s their specialty.”

“Ruthie,” said Professor Smetski, “this is as much a shock to us as it is to you, completely unexpected, but let’s try to stay calm, it’s a long ride home, and—”

“No, Professor Smetski, I don’t think we’ll be riding home together. I have a roommate who lives here in Syracuse. It was lovely to meet you, Katerina. Just a word of advice. Don’t let Ivan out of your sight.”

Of course the girl didn’t understand a word Ruth said, but she wasn’t a fool, this Ukrainian princess, and her eyes were full of tears. Remorse? Pity? Keep your crocodile tears, darling. If he wants
you
, then I don’t want
him
. The man I loved wouldn’t have gotten married without bothering to break off his previous engagement. So whatever you’ve got there with his arm attached to your back, it’s not a man I ever knew or ever wanted. Somebody else, somebody faithless. I deserve better. So save your tears for yourself.

Bitch.

Without another word, Ruth turned and walked away. Out of the terminal. The payphones were all inside, but she wanted a clean break. Exit scenes had to be managed. No lingering where they could see you, see how you cry when you finally get Emilia on the phone and tell her, Bring your hot yellow roadster out to the airport, Nancy Drew, because your friend Ruthie needs a long ride with a strong breeze on her face to dry these silly damn tears.

Baba Yaga

Baba Yaga was astonished and delighted with these houses-that-fly. Long lodges like the halls of great lords, into which a hundred people crowded themselves, and then they scooted along the ground on their skinny chicken legs until they rose like geese into the sky, trailing smoke behind them from their sideways chimneys.

She knew at once that the princess and her unmanly husband had gone into one of these flying houses and traveled to a faraway place.

Why? To escape Baba Yaga, of course. There are no trails in the sky, no scent of Katerina’s magic left behind. And they’d go a long way, too, to a land where Bear had no power, so Baba Yaga would be weaker yet. They thought that would stop her from following them.

It was always pleasant when an intended victim imagined himself to be safe; that added zest to her life, for it meant that the surprise would be all the more delicious. But for such a person really to
be
safe, that was unbearable, that sat in her belly like bad meat, churning, aching. They were not going to get away just because they had friends with such powerful magic that they could make houses fly.

Inside the airport, though, everything was confusing. Everybody seemed to know where they were going, which line to stand in. Lines meant nothing to her, of course, but when she tried to go past one particularly long line, a burly man stopped her, quite forcefully. Baba Yaga was appearing as an old woman at the time, so he wasn’t rough with her, just kept explaining to her, talking more and more slowly, but none of it made sense. The people in the line had brought gifts, apparently, which they placed into the gaping mouth of a large box. The box engulfed it, and the people passed through a gate, and then they got their gift
back
on the other side. This made no sense at all. She had no gift, but without one, she apparently couldn’t get through, even though people got their gifts
back
.

So Baba Yaga put on Shadow, the charm that made her unnoticeable. It wore her down to wear it—it took strength from
her
, apparently, with Bear so far away—but she used it only long enough to take away a woman’s bag. A light one. She carried it to the box, put it in. The porch of the box moved, drew it inside. Then they let her pass through the gate.

Only it made a loud noise as she passed through it. They indicated she should step back and walk through again. Again the noise. They asked her questions she didn’t understand. They took her by the arm and led her to a place where someone began to wave a wand around her. She had no idea what spell they were casting on her, but she had no intention of finding out. She drew out Shadow, put it on, and they didn’t notice when she moved away. They shuffled around a little, looking vague and distracted. She walked off and left them wondering why they thought they were wanding somebody at the security gate, when no one could remember seeing anybody set off the alarm.

Exhausting as it was, she kept the shadow charm around her neck past the other gates. There was no important magic at any of them. She didn’t know how the floor in front of the box moved, and she didn’t know why the loud sound came when she walked through; but if it was magic, it wasn’t much, because a simple charm like Shadow fooled them all. It shouldn’t have. It was for common people, not for wizards, it would never work with wizards. But apparently wizards were in short supply in this place.

Finally she came to the place where she could see the houses-that-fly through large windows, magnificent clear windows without leading. How could such windows be sustained without magic? And yet she detected no trace of a spell on them. A lot of old prayers had been whispered here at the windows, and especially near the doorways that led down to the houses-that-fly, but that was god business, humble petitioners, obedient servants, nothing to do with the way that Baba Yaga used power.

She walked through an open doorway and made her way to the entrance of the house. She touched the wall of it. Hard, like the blade of a sword. Cold and smooth. She loved the feel of it. But where was the flying spell? She could smell strange things in the air, but recognized none of it. She slipped through the entrance and found row on row of chairs, all facing the same way. Soft chairs, like thrones, and she sat in an empty one.

She watched the people around her and learned how to lower the table, how to fasten a belt around her—what for, she couldn’t imagine, but they all seemed to take it seriously. Finally the only people moving around were the servants in livery and one middle-aged man. The man held a piece of paper in his hand, and the servants kept looking at it. They moved up and down the rows of seats, looking down at the paper, then up at letters written above the seats, checking, checking. Checking what?

Finally she realized: Every seat in this house was full. Every person in here had a paper, and the writing on the paper told where they were supposed to sit. She was in the seat that this man was assigned to, but because she wore Shadow, they kept overlooking the place where she was. Therefore they couldn’t find his seat. And until they found his seat, they were not going to let the house rise into the sky.

The ingeniousness of the system intrigued her. The wizard who created all this magic used ordinary people without a speck of power, and yet they had managed to stymie Baba Yaga herself, simply because they were so stupid that they would fuss around, go back and forth, talk and argue, but the plane would not rise into the sky until they found this man’s seat. If Baba Yaga took off her charm, they would know she was in his chair, and they would try to get her to leave because she didn’t have the paper she needed. She might kill a few of them for daring to refuse her—but she knew that the wizard who designed this system would have foreseen the possibility, and the house simply would not fly.

Well, have your cursed chair, you poor stupid fools. I’ll stand.

She got up and moved away from the chair.

At once the servants found the seat and the man settled into it. Baba Yaga had left an itch in the upholstery—it would get through his clothes after an hour or so. And it would keep working on everyone who ever sat in the chair. It was one of her favorite curselets.

She was standing near one of the servants when she took a black-handled whip from the wall and spoke to it, as if invoking a god. Only, her voice was repeated throughout the house. Baba Yaga couldn’t understand much of what she said. Only a few words, like
Kiev
and
to
and . . .

To. The woman was telling the people what the destination of the house was. Only then did Baba Yaga realize that of course the houses didn’t all fly to the same place. Certain houses went to certain places, and everyone knew where except her—no doubt because the information was written on those nasty little papers, which she couldn’t read, or it was said aloud in a language that she couldn’t speak.

The door to the house-that-flies was closed, and she couldn’t open it.

The house began to move; it almost knocked her down when it started.

If she was taken away from here, she didn’t know how she’d find her way back. And since she didn’t know where Katerina and Ivan had gone, there would be no hope of finding them without this as her starting place. She had failed.

She almost took out that little cloth and draped it over her head. But it made her too . . . not frightened—she wasn’t
frightened
—too
ashamed
at the very thought of giving up, going back home empty-handed, blocked by a wizard who used cattle like these as his servants. She would not do it.

She pulled off Shadow and began to weep loudly, shifting her appearance so she looked like a frightened, confused country woman she had robbed out in the farm country a few days ago. Not knowing the language hampered her, but she hoped they’d just assume she was old and senile.

Oh, these servants were in fine form, running around, searching for her seat. Only there were no seats, she had no ticket, she heard them babble at her and comprehended nothing, and finally the house-that-flies stopped while the servants talked to men from a little room in front, who looked at Baba Yaga in exasperation and spoke in savage whispers to the women before they finally went back into their room and made the house glide back to the doorway.

They opened it, they ushered her outside, they left.

So the houses were controlled in that little room in front—that was good to know. And you really did have to have a paper with those letters on it so that there’d be a seat for you. And you had to know where you were going, or you’d end up somewhere else.

That was why Baba Yaga lingered in the airport for several days, watching. She tried to use Shadow only sparingly as she ate the oversalted, oversweetened food that nobody noticed her stealing. She learned to use the toilets and began to imitate their obsessive handwashing. She rifled through luggage until she found clothing that fit her and would allow her to blend in with the locals when she wasn’t wearing Shadow.

Most important, however, she learned about tickets and money and credit cards. She accosted an employee and put him under a brief spell of talkativeness. She made him talk slowly and repeat things until she thought she understood what he was talking about. Money was no longer made of gold, she discovered, it was just magical numbers that were stored in tiny houses with a single large window called
computers
, and credit cards were the charms that commanded a distant servant to send these magical numbers through thin wires to other computers, and then, behold! You got a piece of paper with magic words on it that would compel the people in the flying houses to give you a seat and carry you with them to your destination.

Now that she knew credit cards were valuable, Baba Yaga began to collect as many of them as she could. She would slip Shadow on over her head, walk right up to people as they were paying for their tickets, and take the cards out of their hands. Soon she had dozens of them.

But what good would they do her, when she didn’t know where Katerina and her consort had gone? Not till she got one of the ticket sellers to explain the computer screen to her did she finally get it. This was not all the work of a single wizard. Each of the different lords-of-the-air had his own livery, so his servants could be identified by the colors of their uniforms. And each lord had a different realm, so certain liveries would take you only to certain places. Also, they kept records of everyone who flew in their houses. Since Baba Yaga knew more or less when Katerina and Ivan had flown away, it wasn’t hard—just time-consuming—to find out which lord-of-the-air had transported them, and where they had gone. It was a simple matter after that to get a ticket to carry her to the same destination.

Conveniently enough, Ivan’s address was even listed in the computer. Baba Yaga had the ticket seller write it down for her. Everyone was so helpful. She paid using the prettiest credit card, and then left it with the ticket seller as a gift. Along with a minor curse—a bladder infection and diarrhea—just because she
was
Baba Yaga, and certain things were expected. Then, familiar now with all the airport routines, she bypassed every one of them without incident, got on the house-that-flies, and sat down in a seat, clutching in her hands the tickets that would take her first to Berlin, then to New York Kennedy, and then to Syracuse. From there she would somehow get transportation—a train, perhaps?—to Tantalus. The place where Ivan and Katerina had gone.