Enchantment (42 page)

Well, she’d find out soon enough. A wasp landed on the mess of brownies and was crawling all over it. In fact, it looked for all the world as though it were deliberately smearing it on its abdomen.

On its stinger.

The wasp rose into the air and headed straight toward Vanya.

“The wasp!” shouted Esther, realizing at once that she had found Baba Yaga’s familiar.

Vanya turned around just as the wasp reached him. It was going for his throat. Whatever the poison was, apparently Baba Yaga knew it was potent enough that just the little bit carried on the wasp’s stinger would be enough. And there was no way Esther could get there in time to stop it. The question then was how quickly the poison would act. The dog had died in only a couple of minutes.

Piotr’s voice came from right beside her. She hadn’t heard him come back out. “Vanya, close your eyes!” A stream of liquid spurted fifteen feet from Piotr’s hand, catching the wasp as it reached Vanya’s neck. Vanya was splashed with the stuff and there was definitely some of it in his eyes, but all Esther cared about at the moment was the wasp. It crawled feebly for a second on the neck of Vanya’s T-shirt. Then it dropped dead into the grass without stinging him.

“Got the little bastard,” said Piotr. He was holding a can of Raid Wasp & Hornet Killer.

“My eyes!” shouted Vanya.

Piotr was already reading the directions on the can. In Old Church Slavonic he called out, “Wash his eyes with water, and keep on washing them!”

Esther turned on the hose as Piotr got the business end pointed at Vanya’s eyes. Not too strong, just enough to bathe the eyes, not sandblast them. Katerina fussed over him, helpless because she didn’t understand the magic that Piotr had sprayed from the can.

Terrel looked at them in awe. “Man, you guys are really quick with wasps.” He picked up dead Edwin, whose little corpse had fallen when Vanya grabbed at his eyes. “I better get home with the dog,” he said.

“No!” said Vanya.

“Wait a minute, Terrel,” said Esther, in her heavily accented English.

In proto-Slavonic, Vanya explained. “If he takes the dog home dead, they’re going to find the poison and then we have to explain how Ruthie was trying to kill me and got the dog by mistake. I don’t think we want to testify at Ruthie’s trial.”

Esther moved immediately to examine the corpse Terrel was holding. She closed her eyes, passed her hands over the animal, and then stroked its belly while inhaling deeply. Sniffing.

In Ukrainian she said, “She didn’t use any kind of detectable poison. It was a spell carried on a potion. There’ll be nothing that a chemist would recognize.”

“How did you do that?” asked Katerina. “How did you test it without tasting it?”

Esther was ready to explain, but then Terrel, increasingly frustrated with all the unintelligible language, interrupted. “I got to get home with this.”

Vanya answered him in English. “You’ve got to know—it wasn’t poison that got him. Nothing that any vet is going to find if there’s an autopsy.”

“They do autopsies on dogs? Cool.”

“They do when people think the dog must have been poisoned. But I’m telling you that there won’t be any poison to find. So why mention anything beyond finding the dog dead?”

Terrel’s face was impassive as he answered. “You mean I don’t get to tell Mom how he twitched his little legs while he was croaking?”

“You shouldn’t take the dog back, anyway, Terrel,” said Vanya. Water was still trickling into his open eyes, carrying away the Raid. “Let me do it. Or my father. We’ll just say we found it dead in our yard. You shouldn’t be involved.”

“No way,” said Terrel. “
I
get to hand little Edwin to her.” He sounded very firm about it. A little frantic, even.

“Whatever,” said Vanya. “It’s your life.”

“No,” said Piotr. “It’s his life, but he is not going to take the dog to his mother. Give it to me.” He handed the hose to Esther, to continue bathing Vanya’s eyes. He strode to Terrel and took the dog out of his arms. “Esther and I have watched what you endure, ever since your family moved into the neighborhood. Because your mother loves the dog more than you, you
think
you want the revenge of giving her the dead body. But what you really want is for your mother to love you. Therefore she must
not
have the memory of this dog’s body in your outstretched arms. Do you understand me? You must be a mile from here, flying your kite, when she gets this dog that we found dead in our yard.”

Terrel thought about this for a moment. “Whatever,” he said.

“So you should go now,” said Piotr.

But Terrel wasn’t done. “What about the kite, Ivan? You want to take it up?”

“Later. Tomorrow. You going to be in town for the Fourth?”

“You kidding? We never go anywhere.”

“Tomorrow, then. You get it up and bring it over here, we can fly it from our yard.”

“If he’s not blind,” added Piotr.

Terrel seemed excited. “Any chance of that?”

“Don’t get too thrilled about the idea,” said Vanya dryly. “Blind people are only interesting for the first ten minutes.”

“He’s joking,” said Esther.

“So was I,” said Terrel. “I better go now. And, uh . . . thanks.” He took the kite and trotted out of the yard.

When he was gone, they were silent for a few moments, until Piotr set down the dog’s corpse. Then he sighed. “Well, that’s one less yipping pest.”

“That dog died for me,” said Vanya. “Speak no ill of him.”

“He was talking about Terrel,” said Esther. “And it wasn’t a nice thing to say.”

“Maybe I was talking about Ruthie,” said Piotr.

“Oh,” said Esther.

“I think my eyes are OK now,” said Vanya. “Hose down those brownies. Dilute them into the lawn.”

“It’s going to be a bad day for the earthworms,” said Piotr.

“Was it the Bitch Widow who put her up to it?” Vanya asked in proto-Slavonic.

“I think she lied to Ruthie about what the potions would do. The chicken was obviously supposed to be a love potion.”

“What about the wasp?” asked Vanya.

“The Widow’s familiar,” said Esther.

“So is she dead now?”

“The wasp is. But the Widow is still ruining perfectly good air by breathing it.”

Piotr brandished the can. “Your magic may be good for some things, but it was Johnson and I who stopped the wasp.”

Esther hugged him. “Even though you don’t understand all that we do, Piotr, you stood beside us when it counted.”

“I feel like I just won a joust,” said Piotr.

“Good lance work,” said Ivan.

“I can’t believe she found a way in,” said Katerina.

“There’s always a way in,” said Esther. “Always.”

“I hope so,” said Vanya. “Because somehow we’ve got to return the favor and get past
her
defenses.”

“You’ll do it, too,” said Esther. “But the picnic strategy is out.”

They laughed. Nervously.

Baba Yaga

That afternoon in Tantalus the fire department was called out seven times, and not one of the fires was a false alarm. No one died, but five houses, a gas station, and a barn were lost. Every one of the fires was obviously arson, even without the presence of detectable accelerants, because they started in such impossible places. But no one saw anything suspicious before or after the fires, and after this one night of rage, the arsonist never struck again in Tantalus.

14

Fireworks

Katerina could hardly bring herself to eat supper that night. Not that she wasn’t hungry—she was. But they had come so close to dying. The food here was already strange. None of it looked like anything. Everything was flavored with something else, so nothing tasted like itself. She hadn’t really had much appetite since she left Sophia’s house. And now Baba Yaga had found a way to get curses past the perfect protection of Ivan’s mother’s house.

Using Ruthie wouldn’t be tried again. But Baba Yaga would find someone else. That boy, for instance. He was seething with resentments. Right now he seemed to like Ivan and his parents, but that could change, if Baba Yaga enticed him the right way, or fooled him about what he was doing, the way Ruthie was deceived. Or it might be Piotr himself, or Mother; every day they left the house to work, to shop, to run errands. Who knew what they might bring back with them? What familiar? What curse concealed in papers in Piotr’s briefcase? Or in the grocery bags that Ivan helped Mother bring in from the car?

It was just a matter of time.

What was this food? Mother said it was potatoes, sliced thin, with a cheese sauce. But nothing looked or tasted like cheese, and she had no idea what potatoes were. Everything felt strange in her mouth.

She ate it anyway, chewing methodically. When one is at war with Baba Yaga, it’s good to do it on a full stomach. You never know when the crisis might come, and you have to be at full strength.

But what strength did they have? All these tasks that Ivan had been working on, the gunpowder, the alcohol, the bombs, the Molotov cocktails—what good would such mechanical things do against magic? Yet Mother had such faith in them that Katerina went along.

And . . . there was the killing of the wasp today. That stream of liquid, and the wasp went down and died. A creature sustained as a familiar was very hard to kill. So maybe there was something to it after all . . .

He could have died. A bite of that piece of chicken, and he would have twitched himself to death within a few minutes. Not really my husband yet, but the only one I’ll ever have. No child in me yet to inherit.

The time for waiting is over. Leaving the marriage half-done was supposed to keep Baba Yaga from attacking Taina. But it only provoked her all the more to attack Katerina and Ivan. And without Katerina, Taina was lost.

“You don’t like it?” asked Mother.

It took Katerina a moment to realize what she was asking. Oh, yes. The potatoes. Or no—Mother had just offered her another platter. Of something. Stuff. It looked like strange turds on the platter, from some large, possibly sick animal.

“Salmon cakes,” said Mother. “I make them myself, but not too spicy this time, I notice you don’t like them spicy.”

Katerina had learned the Ukrainian word
spicy
very quickly, after her first taste of jalapeños. Piotr and Ivan only laughed at her as she panicked, looking for water, something to stop the burning in her mouth. They made her eat bread, which worked much better than the water. “I forgot,” said Ivan. “I forgot how hard it is to get used to the American way of cooking.”

“Not as hard as the Jewish way of cooking,” said Piotr.

Ivan rolled his eyes. “Kosher is good, too. Just different.”

“Everything carried to extremes. The rabbi who made Jews keep two kitchens—I hope God has a special place in hell for him. What an absurdly elaborate effort, just to make sure you never accidentally boil a baby goat in its mother’s milk!”

“I never made you eat kosher,” Mother reminded him mildly.

“So we slip now and then,” said Piotr. “For company.”

Ivan laughed. “I think Katerina would have preferred kosher.”

That was back when she first came here. Now she was more used to the flavors, and some were good—cinnamon, nutmeg—though Ivan loathed nutmeg and wouldn’t eat anything in which it was detectable. Still, each new food was an unpleasant adventure. Couldn’t they just leave meat in its natural form now and then? Couldn’t bread look like bread, a fish like a fish?

“What’s troubling you?” asked Piotr. “It’s not the spiciness of the food.”

“No, it’s just . . . it’s time to go back.”

Piotr nodded, but his eyes teared up. It seemed to surprise him, how the emotion came so quickly to the surface. “Sorry,” he said, dabbing at his eyes. “What a baby! But everything is so strange where you come from, this business of witches. Today I faced the worst thing in the world—to see your child die. I keep seeing him out there, like Edwin, limp, cold, empty. I held the dog and I thought, it was supposed to be Vanya. I gave the body to Mrs. Sprewell, and she burst into tears, sobbing, and I thought, that would have been me, grieving. How do I know I’ll ever see you again, Vanya, once you leave?”

“You don’t,” said Ivan. “But here we’re easy targets. The Maginot Line.”

Katerina had no idea what he was talking about. But Piotr understood. “I know,” he said, “it’s right to go. And with Katerina’s father in trouble—no, you have to go.”

“What I don’t understand,” said Mother, “is why we can’t go, too.”

Everyone looked at her in surprise. Piotr immediately thought it was a good idea. Ivan seemed to have doubts, but was slow to answer. It fell to Katerina.

“You’re not trained for war,” said Katerina. “You’re very good—but when the Widow is at her full strength, you’re no match for her.”

“And you are?”

“I’m the princess,” said Katerina. “The hearts of the people are gathered in me. When a king has the love of the people, then whatever he does has the power of the people in it. My spells will have that. I’ve learned from you, Mother, and that’s good. But in Taina, when I cast the same spell, it will have many times the strength than if you were to cast it. Do you understand me?”

Mother nodded, closing her eyes. “I understand, but I can’t believe I wouldn’t be useful.”

“You would be useful to her,” said Katerina. “She would use her power to overwhelm you, and then rule you.”

“She could never turn me.”

“She turned Dimitri,” said Katerina.

“Dimitri wanted to be turned,” said Ivan.

Katerina shook her head. “No. She lied to him.”

“Dimitri wanted to be king,” said Ivan. “She can only use the desires already in a man’s heart.”

“When did you become a scholar of magic?” asked Katerina hotly.

Ivan raised his eyebrows. “I’ve read every damn thing ever written about the folklore of magic.”

“But you didn’t believe in it,” said Katerina.

“I do now.”

“And you’ve never done it.”

“No,” said Ivan. “And you’ve never led an army into battle. And I had never fought a bear before. But go ahead, you’re probably right, except if the Widow can force people to want what they never wanted, then who is safe? Whom can you trust?”

His argument was compelling. Baba Yaga hadn’t turned many people, and Katerina was sure it wasn’t from lack of trying. She could fool poor simple folk, like Sergei’s mother, but only in fairly innocuous ways—she could get the old woman to spread false gossip by lying to her. But she couldn’t have made her kill. She could get information out of people, but she couldn’t make them betray their neighbors. Dimitri did what he did because it was already in his heart to do it.

And nothing was certain in life.

“I have to trust everyone,” said Katerina, “and yet there’s no one I can really be sure of.”

“You can be sure of me,” said Ivan.

She looked at him, searching his face. I’ve known you so little time. The others I knew all my life. The others are my own people. You are a stranger, from a strange time and place. I know what they can do, what they will do. I have no idea of what you are or what is in your hands and heart and mind.

And yet when you tell me I can be sure of you, I
am
sure.

It is myself I can’t trust. Because I know that my trust in you, Ivan, my husband, my stranger, is not the result of reason and experience. I trust you because I’ve come to know you, and coming to know you, I’ve learned to love you. I’ve fallen in love with your boldness, your humility, your innocence, your kindness, your willingness. I know that you will stand by me as best you can. But you don’t know what my husband needs to know. You can’t do what my husband needs to do. I can trust your heart, your king’s heart, but your mind doesn’t know what it needs to know, your hands don’t have in them the skill they need to have.

I had no choice but to marry you. But little by little I have come to long for you to include me within the circle of your arms, of your mind, of your pure love. To embrace me, to give me the babies I was born to have, to help me raise them. And I don’t care which world we raise them in, yours or mine or some other that we haven’t seen yet. I’m sure of you, Ivan. I want you as my husband.

But as my king? How could I trust you to be king?

Ivan looked at her face and saw . . . compassion.

It couldn’t be clearer. “You can be sure of me,” he had said. He hadn’t meant it as some kind of declaration. He was only saying what should be obvious to everyone—what his parents already knew about him. She was supposed to laugh and say, Yes, of course, I know that.

Instead, her only answer was this silence, this pity.

They say that love conquers all. They say that because they’re idiots. Love can’t conquer anything. Love can’t make a scholar into a warrior. Loving her can’t make her love me.

Now his parents could see how it was between them. They could see that their son offered his life to this woman, and, poor thing, she had no idea what to do with it. The gift was worthless to her.

So he laughed. “Well, there you go.” He held up his hands. “Soft. Dimitri told me I had a woman’s hands. But the women of Taina, their hands are callused. From sewing, weaving, from endless spinning. What I have are the hands of a princess.” He reached out to her, took her hands between his. “And you,” he said, “you have the heart of a warrior.” He leaned over and kissed her cheek. Like a brother. Like a friend.

Katerina looked down at the table. She certainly wasn’t helping to smooth over this embarrassing moment.

“Father,” said Ivan, “I hope you have enough room on some credit card to charge two tickets to Kiev.” He turned to his mother. “Only two, Mom. Sorry.” And then to Katerina. “I’ll see if we can fly day after tomorrow. After we’ve tested the fireworks. Or the first flight we can get after that.”

“Thank you,” said Katerina.

“Yes, well, it’s about time you got home. Though I must say you’ve done a better job of fitting in here than I did there.”

She looked upset. But her words were mild. “I had someone helping me. You didn’t.”

“Yes, well, you happened to come to the one family in the world where everybody speaks at least a little ancient Slavonic. You’d think someone had planned all this.” He got up from the table. “I’ll see you all in the morning.”

Ivan went to his room. To his empty room. It was good to have a place where nobody else had a right to go. What had he been thinking of, wanting to marry Ruthie—wanting to marry at all? He wasn’t afraid of solitude. No scholar could afford to be.

He lay down fully dressed on his bed, not meaning to fall asleep yet. He just needed to think. About what, he wasn’t sure.

So instead he thought about nothing. About things in the room. About the athletic trophies in a box in the closet. How much of his life was that? The shelves of books—so much time reading. Neither of them amounted to anything. He ran. He lost or he won. No one remembered a week later. And the books he read—what did that amount to? University people were always so proud of being readers instead of television watchers, but what was the difference, really? It was a one-way transmission. I read, but it made no difference to the writer. He never knew. And when I’m dead, what will it matter the books I read? My memory is where the book ends up, just like the TV show, and when I’m dead, that memory is gone from the world.

Like running the hurdles. Work so hard, jump over every one, fast, high enough but no higher, because you can’t afford to hang in the air. And then, when the race is over, you’re dripping with sweat, either they beat you or you beat them . . . and then a couple of guys come out and move the hurdles out of the way. Turns out they were nothing. All that work to jump over them, but now they’re gone.

What will it matter, then, if I was happy or . . . whatever? After I’m dead, my parents will miss me, sure, but then someday they’ll die, and then who’ll remember me? Nobody. And that’s fine. Because it doesn’t matter. Baba Yaga will win or she’ll lose. A thousand years later, nobody will believe she ever existed. And Taina will be completely forgotten. So what does it matter that some stranger loved the princess of Taina but never had her love in return?

He reached over and switched on the CD player. He had a Bruce Cockburn album in it. So Cockburn talks about how he’s thinking about Turkish drummers, only it doesn’t take long because he doesn’t know much about Turkish drummers. A pounding in his head. Unshed tears. Bloated like the dead. This was not the best song to be listening to.

He let it keep playing.

When he woke up it was dark and silent. Night outside. He needed to pee, hadn’t gone before he went to bed. He hated sleeping in his clothes. His pants always got twisted around and his clothes didn’t fit right after sleeping in them. He pulled down his pants and Jockeys in one movement, then pried each shoe off with the other foot while he was unbuttoning his shirt. By the time he pulled his stocking feet out of his pant legs, his shirt was off. He peeled off his socks, then felt around in the dark for his bathrobe and drew it closed around his body as he opened the door.

The hall was dark, too. He stood in the hall, listening. How late was it? He didn’t look at the clock. He heard his father snoring softly in his room. But just the one snore, not the duet, his mother and father snoring together.

He padded toward the bathroom. Then walked past it and stood outside the door to Katerina’s room. Listening for her breath. Some sound.

But there was nothing there for him. And he really had to pee.