Wickedly Ever After: A Baba Yaga Novella (3 page)

“Piece of cake,” he said with a straight face.

“Easy peasy lemon squeezy,” Barbara said back. He’d taught her that one.

“I am pleased that you are so confident,” said the Queen. “You have a fortnight, as time is measured in the mundane world. At the end of the two weeks, you will return to Us having accomplished these tasks or to tell Us you have failed.”

“Oh, and one more thing.” She held out one hand imperiously toward Chudo-Yudo. “You may leave the flask containing what remains of your portion of the Water of Life and Death. We would not wish there to be any cheating, should you be unsuccessful.”

Chudo-Yudo let out a noise that sounded suspiciously like a growl, despite the fact that he was in dragon form, and Liam took a step forward.

“I do
not
cheat,” he said firmly.

The Queen raised one eyebrow at his lack of formal courtesy but finally nodded her head in reluctant admiration. “No,” she said. “I do not suppose you do.” She waved him back and made a shooing motion at the entire group. “Well, you had best be on your way. You have much to do and little time to do it.”

“Good luck, Baba Yaga,” the King said.

“We’re going to need it,” Barbara said under her breath. As they walked away, she could hear the wagering begin.

***

“That didn’t go as well as we’d hoped,” Chudo-Yudo said as they followed the path that led back to the doorway between the worlds. He’d resumed his pit bull shape as soon as they’d left the court, since that made it easier for him to walk and talk with the others.

“Hey, at least she didn’t turn us into anything,” Liam said, trying to sound cheerful. He was the one who always tried to look on the bright side, whereas Barbara was more likely to just stick a sword in whatever side was left. “And really, it can’t make that much of a difference, can it? So you age a little more slowly than I do. It’s not the end of the world, right?”

Chudo-Yudo snorted tiny flames. “You never told him how old you really are, did you, Baba?”

Barbara could feel the heat in her cheeks. “Um, it never came up, exactly.”

The dragon-dog snorted again, this time narrowly missing setting a bright blue willow tree on fire. Only its flexible nature allowed it to bend its branches out of the way in time and they could hear it grumbling at them for some time afterward.

“How old do you think she is?” he asked Liam.

Liam shrugged. “Well, she always said that she was older than she looked, and she looks like she is in her late twenties or maybe early thirties. So I figured she was in her late thirties, or something like that.”

Barbara winced. “Actually, I’m eighty-two.”

“Eighty-two,” Liam repeated flatly. “You’re eighty-two.”

“You always said you didn’t care how old I was. That age was just a number.”

“Eighty-two is one hell of a number,” Liam said, shaking his head. “And I still don’t care, except that obviously it
does
matter if we manage to accomplish the three impossible tasks, which all sounded pretty impossible to me.”

“Barbara?” a small tenor voice piped up from Liam’s side. As usual, Babs had been quiet and soaking up everything going on around her. “If he does not get the magical Water, how old will Liam be when
I
am eighty-two?”

Liam and Barbara exchanged glances and Barbara swallowed past the lump in her throat. “It doesn’t matter, sweetheart. We’re going to succeed. Do you know why?”

Babs tilted her head to one side like a little bird, a gesture she often made when trying to remember one of her lessons, and one that never failed to melt Barbara’s heart. Ironic, since before meeting Liam and Babs, she would have sworn she didn’t have one.

“Because we are Baba Yagas, and Baba Yagas are tough, smart, and resourceful?” Babs said.

“That’s right,” Barbara said with a grin. “And what else?”

“And we kick ass,” the girl added.

“Barbara!” Liam said.

“What? We do.” Barbara didn’t believe in sugarcoating things for Babs just because she was young. And then she added in a grimmer tone, “We’re going to have to, this time.”

***

Once back at the house they sat down over milk and cookies for a counsel of war. Or at the very least, a counsel of “What the heck do we do now?”

“How on earth can we possibly catch the song of the ocean in a bottle?” Liam asked glumly. “I mean, does the ocean even have a song? And if it does, how would you catch it?”

“Hmmm . . .” Barbara said, biting the head off a gingerbread man.

“What does ‘hmmm’ mean?” Liam asked.

“It means she has a plan,” Chudo-Yudo suggested. “Or, you know, something plan-adjacent.”

“Do you have a plan?” Babs asked, nibbling a little more delicately on a gingerbread foot.

“I always have a plan,” Barbara said. “Well, or something that might, with a bit more thought and a lot of luck, become a plan. You know, something plan-adjacent.”

“You keep saying that like it is a real thing,” Liam said. “So what is the plan?”

“It’s not so much a what as a who,” Barbara said.

“A who?” he said.

“Gesundheit,” Barbara said, and Chudo-Yudo snickered.

Babs looked confused and Barbara said to her, “You know the answer to this. Who do we know who lives by the ocean and spends a lot of time in the water? We saw her on our honeymoon trip after Liam and I got married. And then went back for her wedding.”

The little girl’s face lit up. “Oh, Beka! She is the Baba Yaga with the pretty yellow hair whose hut is a painted bus. I liked her. And Chewie.” Chewie was Beka’s Chudo-Yudo, an immense black Newfoundland. He and Barbara’s Chudo-Yudo were best buds. “Do we get to go see her again? I liked the ocean. It was cold and very wet and the waves knocked me over once, remember? They have salt in them. I would like to go to the ocean again.”

Liam laughed and he and Barbara smiled at each other. That was more words than Babs usually said in an entire day. (Being raised by a crazy woman who hid you away from everyone else could really stunt your social skills.) Apparently the ocean—and Beka and her dragon-dog—had made a big impression.

“That’s a great idea,” Liam said. His face fell. “But when we drove the Airstream out to California on our honeymoon, it took weeks. Admittedly, we were stopping all over the country to show Babs her new land, but still, we don’t have enough time to get to Santa Carmelita and back in two weeks. Especially since we’ll still have the other two impossible tasks to do even if Beka can help us with this one.”

“You worry too much,” Chudo-Yudo said.

“What the rude dog is trying to say is that the Airstream is magical. It may
look
like an Airstream trailer pulled by a silver Chevy truck, but deep down it is still the same enchanted hut on chicken legs that the old Baba Yagas used to travel through the vast forests of Russia and its Slavic neighbors. It doesn’t use gas or follow the same rules as actual mechanical devices,” Barbara said. “Or the same roads either, for that matter.”

“I don’t understand,” Liam said. “We traveled on regular roads on the last trip.” He pushed away his cookie as though the conversation was making his stomach hurt. He’d done a good job of adjusting to Barbara’s magical life, but sometimes she wondered if he would be happier with a normal woman. Luckily, he never showed any signs of coming to his senses.

“That’s because we weren’t in a hurry. If I have to get from one part of the country to another rapidly to deal with a crisis, the Airstream seems to sense it and gets me there faster. The only way I can explain it is to say that it takes shortcuts that don’t show up on any map, slipping through the folded edges of someplace that abut on the folded edges of elsewhere.”

Liam rubbed his forehead. “You know, as an explanation that leaves something to be desired. Like, I don’t know,
any kind of sense
.”

Barbara shrugged. “It’s magic, not physics. Mostly it can’t be explained, it just is.”

“Technically, most physics can’t really be explained either,” Chudo-Yudo pointed out.

“Not helping,” Liam said. “So how long do you think it would take us to get to Beka in California from here in upstate New York? Using the fold-y shortcut thing.”

“I’m guessing two or three days,” Barbara said. “If we took turns driving. The Airstream kind of drops in and out of real roads, so even though it knows where it is going, it is always a good idea to have someone at the wheel.”

Liam looked a little pale. “You’d let me drive the Airstream? Is that even allowed?”

“As long as it is okay with the Airstream it is. And it knows you’re a part of me now.”

A slow smile crept over his face like the sun coming out from behind the clouds. “I am, aren’t I?” he said and scooted his chair close enough to be able to wrap his arms around her and give her a slow, deep kiss.

“Ugh, stop that,” Chudo-Yudo said. “There are impressionable dragons in the room. And Babs.”

Barbara gave Liam another kiss and then pulled back, laughing. “Silly dog. I guess we’d better go pack whatever we’re going to need and hit the road.”

“Right now?” Liam said. “Shouldn’t we wait until morning and start out when we’re fresh?”

She shook her head. “The people of the Otherworld are very literal. If the Queen said two weeks, she meant two weeks from the moment she spoke. We’ve already lost part of a day. And we have no idea how long it is going to take up to figure any of this out, even if Beka can help. I don’t think we have any time to waste.”

Babs tapped Barbara on the arm, looking serious. As usual. “Barbara?”

“Yes, honey?”

“Can we bring the cookies?”

“Of course we can.”

“And Chudo-Yudo?”

“I wouldn’t consider going without him.”

“And my sword?”

Liam winced and Barbara bit her lip to keep from laughing.

“Sure,” she said. “Cookies, a dragon-dog, and a sword: what every well-equipped little girl takes on a journey.”

“Remind me to sign her up for the Girl Scouts when we get back,” Liam said. “And I guess I better call Nina at the station and tell her she’s going to need to arrange a replacement for me for the next two weeks. It looks like we’re taking a road trip.”

***

Four days later, not long after sunrise, Beka opened her door and said, “Hey! What are you guys doing here?”

Chewie stuck his large head around her legs and said, “They’re going to think you’re not happy to see them, with a greeting like that.” He and Chudo-Yudo rubbed noses affectionately, tiny flames dribbling out of their nostrils.

“Oh, sorry! That’s not what I meant. I was just surprised,” Beka said, giving Barbara a big hug and then giving one to Liam for good measure. Little Babs still wasn’t very comfortable with being touched, although she would occasionally pat Liam or Barbara on an arm or shoulder as a way of showing affection, so Beka just smiled at the girl.

“You were here not that long ago. I thought you were planning to stay home for a while. You weren’t Called out here on some kind of a mission, were you?” Beka looked around as if some catastrophe might be lurking around the corner. “I
figured if anything came up around here, I’d be Called to handle it.” Uncertainty lurked in her blue eyes.

Barbara wasn’t much more of a hugger than Babs was most of the time, but she knew that Beka had struggled to build up her confidence after her mentor, Brenna, had purposely torn it down. She put her arm around the younger woman. “Quite the contrary, actually. We’ve come to you for help.”

Beka’s eyes widened. “You did? Wow. I guess you’d better come in and tell me all about it. I’m sorry you missed Marcus, but he’s already taken the fishing boat out for the day.”

“Can we go sit by the ocean?” Babs asked. “We have to talk about the ocean anyway.”

“You do?” Beka smiled at Babs and then looked at her adoptive parents. “Is that okay with you? We should be able to find a place to sit by ourselves. It’s early enough in the day that it’s mostly only surfers and a few people walking their dogs.”

“I am
not
wearing a leash,” Chudo-Yudo said warningly.

Barbara rolled her eyes. “As if I’d try to put a leash on you. I might as well just set myself on fire and cut out the middleman. This is California; you’ll be fine. Just stick close and try not to scare the natives.”

“I don’t care about him scaring them,” Liam muttered. “As long as he doesn’t eat them.”

Chudo-Yudo sniffed. “Take a bite out of one hunter and everyone holds it against you forever. I was friends with that deer and the guy was trespassing on our land. Jeez.”

“Huh,” Beka said. “At least Chewie has never tried to eat anyone, although he has been known to shower everyone in a ten-square-foot area when he shakes the water off his fur.”

“I would rather eat s’mores,” Chewie said with dignity. “People taste bad.”

Liam rubbed one hand over tired eyes. “I’ll tell you what. The first person who gets me a cup of coffee can eat anything or anyone he or she wants.” He yawned.

Beka laughed and snapped her fingers, producing a steaming cup. “Here, take mine. I’ll pack us up a little breakfast picnic and we can go sit on the beach and eat while you tell me what brought you all the way out here that you actually think I could help you with. This ought to be good.”

***

“Well, that’s bad,” Beka said when they’d finished telling her the story of the Queen’s challenge. “And it doesn’t bode well for me and Marcus when I go to her to ask for the same favor. Three impossible tasks in two weeks? That’s harsh, dude.”

“That’s the Queen for you,” Barbara said. She licked a bit of cream cheese off of one finger and dusted bagel crumbs onto the sand. In deference to the California heat and the beach, she’d traded in her usual black leather for a long cotton batik skirt and a cropped red top that made her cloud of black hair seem even darker.

“She’s as volatile as she is beautiful. I’ve seen her be incredibly kind and generous, but she can also be cruel. I’d been hoping for the first one this time, but . . .” She sighed, laying her head on Liam’s shoulder for a moment.

Liam placed a light kiss on her forehead, keeping his eyes on Babs’s tiny figure as she played by the edge of the waves.
Her narrow face, with its pointed chin and snub nose, wore a slightly less solemn expression than usual as she ran in and out of the frothing water. Chewie stood guard a few feet away, the water-loving dragon-dog ready to race to the rescue if the girl was surprised by an unusually large wave.