Invasion

by Dmitrii Mansurov

  ***

  Yaga, in a spoiled mood because of recent events, returned home and pondered over the details of a new plan. This time, she took into account all the possible troubles. She became so immersed in her thoughts that she nearly collided with the half-crazed sparrow that jumped out from behind the trees.

  "Hitting me! With cheese!" the sparrow was indignant. "I will—"

  "Look where you're going!" Yaga abruptly changed the course and flew into a tree. The trunk became uprooted and the tree fell to the ground. A crazy squirrel with a nut jumped from a tree and stared at the cause of the accident angrily. Then she threw a nutshell at Yaga and the sparrow. "If you ever crash into my tree again, I'll turn you into a wet place on a shirt! One that will never get dry again!"

  The sparrow looked at the sky anxiously, breathed a sigh of relief and said, "Well, I, personally, haven't crashed into you."

  Yaga followed his gaze and saw a kite soaring high in the sky.

  "Are you bothering the king of birds again?" she asked. "How come you're still alive? I'd eat you if I were him. Bones and all."

  "I'm already dead!" the sparrow boasted ominously. Then he pulled out the mask looking like a skull from under his wing and put it on his head. "I just rose from my grave! I'm a vengeful spirit of hellish revenge! I'm a crow-like spa... rring. Uhm... A sparrow... Oh, who cares? Everyone should fear me!"

  "You’re one crazy…," Yaga replied, but the bird already flew away. "Well, I'll see you later, if you're not strangled by then... Stop throwing shells at me!"

  ***

  Yaga returned to her hut, put the broom near the threshold, went to the table, and pushed the apple with her finger gently. The apple rolled on the plate and the plate itself began to glow.

  "Call the wood goblin for me!" Yaga ordered. The fox that was sleeping in a cage stretched in delight and opened her eyes. Yaga was surprised by the appearance of God-knows-what in her own house. She looked away from the plate and stared at the cage.

  "What the hell is that?!" she demanded.

  Only now did the frightened fox notice whose hut she had chosen when fleeing from Hunter! Damn it. Instead of escaping from the frying pan, she went directly into direct fire!

  "Do you think this is a shelter for homeless foxes?"

  The fox had been dreaming quietly about the owners of the hut turning out to be a nice old couple who would treat her to some chicken, so she was as discouraged as Yaga was. Chicken, of course, became an unreachable dream once again. It'd be good if she didn't end up in a chicken soup herself. She didn't know if Yaga ate foxes or preferred to make collars out of them, but regardless of that, it was clear that she was in a grave danger.

  "Get out of here! Now!" Yaga ordered, but the fox didn't even try to comply. Yaga couldn't touch her in a cage, so it was much safer there than it would outside. Putting her muzzle on her front paws, the fox looked at Yaga plaintively and sighed.

  "There is no happiness in life," she muttered.

  Yaga sighed, grabbed the cage, and carried it outside.

  "Get out of my sight!" she said again and slammed the door to her hut shut. The dog had followed her orders and took the playful beast as intended. Why were there so many playful beasts anyway? Who was going to work? But her plan hadn't progressed one bit. Which was very bad.

  The fox looked at the hut incredulously. Yaga had just let her free? It was incredible! Or was this some kind of elaborate revenge?

  "Dog?" the fox looked closer, checking whether the nasty four-legged creature that had been masking itself for a regular mongrel over the years was hiding nearby.

  It didn't seem like it.

  Slowly, fearing a trick, the fox escaped from the cage and froze for a moment, waiting for the thunder from heavens, wild victory cries, or angry growls coming from the monsters who were lurking around, waiting to ambush her. But nothing happened, so the fox immediately broke into a run.

  ***

  Exactly at eight in the morning, Kashchey walked over to the bedroom and began to wait next to the door. The princess had to wake up soon. The effects of the gas had ended a long time ago, but for some reason, she was still asleep, like some spherical cat that just had lunch. Kashchey listened to the silence and trusted his ears. Apart from the measured ticking of an ordinary cuckoo clock, there were no sounds. That didn't seem like royal behavior. Any royal offspring was obliged to enter a stage of noisy awakening that would turn into violent craziness due to kidnapping. Especially if there were no gag and ropes involved. Kashchey had been planning to hear a lot of sophisticated threats, unspeakable insults, and poetic sobs, but this mean-spirited girl kept stubbornly silent! Was she so afraid that she didn't want to remind him of her presence? And what if... No, it couldn't be! No corpses in his house!

  "Can you break the plates or something? I've left a hundred of them for a reason," Kashchey muttered.

  Yeah, the whole operation had gone wrong. He'd made a run across the country and fought the best guards of the kingdom, put to sleep all the royals at once, sliced through hundreds of swords and spades, made a bunch of impressive explosions, and for what? To nervously walk about his own castle and wait for one young person to open her mouth and speak the words that she would naively believe to be curses?

  "I give up! If the mountain won't come to Kashchey, Kashchey will explode this mountain! Princess, get up!"

  Kashchey unlocked the inner lock with his key and pushed the door forward. He expected that the girl would throw something heavy at him, but the door didn't budge and didn't open. Well, the Princess was certainly alive and in full mind — otherwise, it would have never occurred to her to prop the door with something.

  "Are you building barricades?" Kashchey asked. "It's practical. But useless!"

  He had nothing to be afraid of, considering that he was immortal, so Kashchey took a few steps back and crashed into the door, slamming it out of the hinges and making it fall to the floor. It touched the edge of the table, and hundreds of plates and dishes were catapulted straight in Kashchey's direction. The tabletop itself fell on the top. The clatter of the dishes made Kashchey's ears ring.

  "Oops!" he exhaled. "At least they're smashed now."

  Stepping out of the wreckage, Kashchey shook off the shards from his clothes and started looking around. He didn't find the princess.

  Strange.

  "She's gone?!" he exclaimed, puzzled. "She just left?! What kind of people are these princesses?! I didn't give her permission to run away!"

  This was a complication. Kashchey didn't expect that the princess would be able to pick the lock on the door. And who could expect such a thing from a princess? Was she learning how to pick the locks between the dances? Did she have nothing better to do at home?

  What was this world coming to? This was the end of everything! Oh, to hell with humanity. What was the princess coming to? And the most interesting thing was, where was she going now, and where did she get the lockpicks? No. The most interesting thing was how did she leave the room and then barricade the door?!

  The princess couldn't leave the castle. She would never be able to open the gate. She hadn't passed by, or else Kashchey would have definitely noticed it. So, the princess went to wander around the castle, which no one had seen for a few thousand years. But why? Was she looking for a back door?

  'What childish play is this?' he thought. 'Has she heard the tales of secret passages and thinks that palaces and castles are built based on the same model?’

  There will be so much dust! The horror! Of course, she wouldn't get lost. The footprints would stay on the thick layer of dust for millennia… unless some bore obsessed with cleaning made this place his home in the future. But this was unlikely because Kashchey didn't plan to relocate.

  ***

  He didn't like to wander through an abandoned part of the castle. He didn't want to get lost in the countless turns and mirroring corridors. He had no idea who built the castle. Nor did he know why all his memories began with him being
all alone in the vast forests just before he appeared in the castle. As if he had materialized out of thin air, an addition to this abandoned building.

  Kashchey spent several centuries on trying to find at least some traces of the castle's previous owners or its builders, but he came to the strange conclusion that it had never been inhabited before. At the same time, many rooms were filled with objects whose purpose was even more mysterious than the existence of their mythical owners. Kashchey gradually fell into a depression because he couldn't answer these vital questions.

  Depression turned into anger, and anger eventually grew into a morbid sense of humor. He even tried to commit suicide but found himself coming back to life time and time again. Convinced that death wouldn't accept him under any circumstances, Kashchey realized that he had to live and cope with boredom. Since then, he began to live life to the fullest, exploring the world and enjoying the diversity of his existence. Sometimes he arranged tours across the castle and found a lot of convenient gadgets. Capsules with sleeping gas, fireworks, flying boots… it all came from there. At some point, his life became quiet and measured. That is, until Kashchey heard about a partially-golden Maria.

  He quickly found a dusty corridor with footprints leading to the escaped princess. Kashchey stopped and said loudly into the void, "Princess! I'm in no hurry. You, on the other hand, will be hungry soon. I know that princesses are scrupulous in this regard and prefer to lose weight to become more attractive, but you risk swelling up with famine if you go on like this! Does it sound like something you want? Maria! Hey!"

  Nothing but silence answered him. Naturally. What else? His position was not to be envied. The princess wouldn't return by herself. She'd keep wandering around the castle until her last breath in search of salvation. On the one hand, who cared? But on the other hand, how would he find the answers to his questions if the princess got lost completely in these webs with dead spiders and flies? And then the prince would ride up, kill Kashchey, and perish in the depths of the castle as well. The king wouldn't get to see the youth again, so he'd discard the kingdom and storm Kashchey's castle because he would have nothing else to lose. He would also kill Kashchey and he would also get lost in the castle along with his army. This place was really much bigger on the inside.

  It was exciting but not what Kashchey needed.

  "Maria! Come back and forgive me!" Kashchey called. His lonely voice echoed in a deserted castle. The words, in turn, echoed off the walls and raced into the distance in numerous repetitions. "I'm leaving! Those who are hiding have only themselves to blame!"

  Silence.

  "I'll repeat for the deaf!" he shouted so loudly that bits of petrified dust fell from the walls. "I'm leaving!"

  Leaving! Leaving! ...ing. ...ing.

  The echo made Kashchey frown.

  "As you wish!" he waved his hand. "In a month, my castle will get its very own ghost. We shall pass the centuries with the ghost of the princess, reminiscing about the old glorious days and scaring lone travelers on warm moonless nights... Oh, to hell with you." It's time to save that crazy lady while she still hadn't turned into a walking mummy. He'd never be able to prove his good intentions afterward.

  ***

  "The wood goblin is listening!" the voice replied reluctantly right from the plate situated across the wood goblin's portrait. He seemed to be in a bad mood. "What happened? Who are you planning to roast this time?"

  "The fox spent the night in my cage and refused to leave," Yaga complained. "She must be depressed."

  "I'm also depressed," the wood goblin pointed out. "Ask the fox if she has some additional space in your cage. We can howl from anguish together."

  "Not in my hut, you can't. Go to the clearing and howl all you want. What's the matter with you?"

  "Never mind," the goblin sighed. "What is this about?"

  "I need a dog," Yaga explained.

  "No poaching!"

  "Me? Poaching?" Baba Yaga nearly choked on the little air she consumed. "Are you out of your mind?!"

  Goblin cleared his throat.

  "Sorry, my nerves are getting the better of me." His apologetic voice warmed slightly, but with its generally icy tone, the temperature rose from two hundred and two degrees below zero to two hundred and one. "It's just that there are vandals in my forest! Barbarians! Monsters!"

  "All at once or separately?" Yaga asked.

  "Are you joking?"

  "What have they done?"

  "Look at it!" the plate finally brightened and produced an image that made Yaga's hair stood on end — or it would stand on end if not for the kerchief on her head. "Well?"

  "Who did this?" Yaga asked, her heart frozen from the terrible premonition. The speed with which she had to devise the new formula to create a were-being depended on this answer.

  "The survivors say that a dog did it... by the way, is it by any chance the one you're asking about?"

  "Not at all," Yaga waved her hands. "My doggie is peaceful. It won't lay a paw on anyone. And here it looks like a three-headed Cerberus has paid you a visit. You should check with the authorities. Maybe he has actually escaped?"

  "I've already asked them," the wood goblin said, frowning. "They politely hinted to me that if he had escaped, the planet would be up to its ears in the ghosts of the ancient Greeks. So, what's up with your dog?"

  "The mongrel. A quiet, timid thing. It gets scared in the woods if it's off the leash. And with the leash, just give him someone to bark at and he'll fall all over himself in excitement! Yesterday, he escaped from the yard and disappeared. He is extremely important to me."

  "I'll walk through the woods and see if I can find your fugitive. Do you need it urgently?"

  "As soon as possible."

  "Well, I can't promise it'll happen that soon, but I'll try," the goblin said. "Meanwhile, do you want me to lend you a wolf for a day? Can he help?"

  "Which of the two?" Yaga clarified. "A one-eyed cyclops with no tail or that other one with lacerations all over his back?"

  "Yeah..." the wood goblin sighed. "When I find out who did that, I'll skin them myself!"

  "Better bury these ones and get new wolves. In the southern forests, there is an abundance of them. So help them out with overpopulation."

  "Deal," the goblin nodded. "I’ll contact you soon."

  "See you."

  The plate darkened.

  Yaga began to think. What was she supposed to do now? She couldn't find a way to carry out the kidnapping elegantly and gracefully. And the dog! Did he have bloodthirsty dinosaurs in his family? To destroy a swarm of angry and hungry wolves. Normal animals couldn't do it. So much for hypnotizing peaceful mongrels!

  She'd have to work on her own, then. She had to ignore her mind-control abilities and return to the old rude but effective method. The vampires were close, and there was almost no time left. They could attack any day now, and there was nothing she could do to oppose them yet.

  "Stupid, stupid fox," Yaga muttered reproachfully. "If you only knew that soon, because of your antics, there will be no one to raise the chickens. Only chicken vampires will be running around. Though that would be one interesting view…"

  ***

  The culprit that caused Yaga such a vicious headache was wandering through the forest, talking to all who would listen, which meant, in essence, that she was talking to herself. After escaping from Yaga safely, the fox calmed down and even remembered what enjoying life felt like, but now hunger was reminding her of its presence again.

  "It seems like everyone's already been eaten," she muttered. "By whom? Who is this greedy glutton?"

  The sparrows looked at her from the tree branches they were sitting on.

  "If you have no luck hunting, you'll have good luck in sticking to a diet!" one of them said.

  The fox looked up. The sparrows were right. Well-fed and plump. Hundreds of them were perched on a huge oak tree, noisily discussing the fresh gossip. Suddenly, she was overcome with the desire to be rude. Maybe it'd hel
p her feel better? But there were so many birds... These parasites could make a mess so fast that she wouldn't have time to even blink, especially considering their sheer number. A peaceful chat it was.

  "This one's talking about a diet, too," she grumbled. "Fools. Being fat is more fun. When there’s just skin and bones, there’s nothing to gnaw at."

  "The lighter we are, the higher we fly!" the sparrows said.

  "Yeah," the fox agreed. With this diet, she, too, would start flying soon. If the wind blew any harder, she'd go up the air for sure. "I, for once, want to stand on my feet! I have no wings."

  "So what's stopping you?" the sparrows looked surprised. "There's an oak, there are some acorns. The boars go there frequently. Catch one, eat them, and stay on your feet until they break under your weight."

  Well. That was actually a great idea! She could set up a trap!

  The fox rushed to collect the acorns in a pile. She had to attract the attention of a small boar and then catch him or her while the mother pigs were munching on acorns. The main thing was to avoid catching their eye, but the fox was pretty confident in her abilities to be stealthy. She had to run at extreme speeds so often that the probability of another run did not scare her any longer. Big deal, embarking on yet another run.

  ***

  A bully with a skull on his head sat on a tree with other sparrows, peering at her. Then he chirped ominously, "Hey-a-a-a-a-a-a-a! I'm a horror flying on the wings of a zombie!"

  The sparrows turned their heads toward the bully.

  "Zombies, zombies, zombies!" he chirped again threateningly.

  The sparrows squeaked in surprise. Then they began to faint one by one. The fox had just pushed another acorn to a big pile when a brown, soft lump fell right onto her head, bounced off it and flopped into the grass. Just in case, she jumped back and warily looked at the sparrow that was lying with his feet up.