“Ah,” Barbara said, the other shoe dropping. “So you came to check me out and see if I could be trusted with your mother.”
Belinda twitched. “Not exactly.”
Chudo-Yudo gave a coughing laugh that sounded almost like a normal bark, and nudged her leg with his large head.
“Okay, pretty much that.” Belinda covered her mouth with her hand, as if surprised to find the truth sneaking out. “Although I hadn’t intended to say so.”
“It’s very strong tea,” Barbara said. “And the answer is that I am extremely untrustworthy under many circumstances, but not when it comes to old Russian ladies. I assure you, Mariska is quite safe in my company.”
“Mine too,” Babs piped up.
“Ah, good to know,” Belinda said. “Perhaps you would like to come to dinner, both of you? It would make my mother very happy. Which would make me quite happy.”
“It is always good to have the law on your side,” Babs said, quoting something Liam said often. It was kind of an inside joke between him and Barbara, who tended to find trouble and vice versa.
Belinda opened her mouth and then shut it again. Babs often had that effect on people.
“We’d love to come,” Barbara said. “We might be staying in the area for a while, so it would be nice to meet some of the people who live here.”
She fingered the end of her long nose. “You know, there was someone who was here last year that I was wondering about. Perhaps you know if she is still in the area. Her name is Maya, and she was the assistant to a man named Peter Callahan, whose company was buying up property to do fracking on. Is she still around, by any chance?”
Belinda shook her head. “I remember her, but no, she and Mr. Callahan are long gone. Maybe you didn’t hear about it, but not long after you left, the governor actually banned fracking in New York State.” She gave the first genuine smile Barbara had seen since they’d met up the day before. “Some people were disappointed, obviously, but a lot of us were really happy about the ban.”
“Oh, right,” Barbara said. “I vaguely remember hearing something about that.” At the time, she hadn’t given it much thought because she had already driven Callahan off and taken care of Maya. “So they left after the ban was passed?”
“Sure,” Belinda said. “Nothing for them to stay for, thank god. At least, the company packed up its operations, and I assume that Peter Callahan was sent to some other state that wasn’t so lucky, and Maya went with him. Was she a friend of yours?”
“Hardly,” Barbara said dryly. Her friends rarely tried to kill her. Almost never. “We merely crossed paths. That’s all.”
She realized that she needed to do two things before she pursued the issue of Liam any further. One, check on the unauthorized door to the Otherworld that Maya had been using, and make sure it had really been closed.
And two, visit the Otherworld to see if she could find Maya and the children she stole. If Maya wasn’t here, perhaps she’d gone back there. If a year had really passed since the children were taken through the doorway in this timeline, it might be too late to get them back. But Barbara had to try. Not just for the woman sitting in front of her, but for all the parents whose children had never come home because Barbara hadn’t gotten involved. There was no way in hell she wasn’t going to try and make that right.
The next morning, Barbara left Babs doing her homework with Chudo-Yudo (the dragon was a lot better at fractions than Barbara was) and rode her motorcycle to the dusty back road that led to the cave where the doorway had been.
On the way, she drove past the small farmstead owned by a young couple she’d taken a liking to after Maya had contaminated the herbal remedies Barbara had been selling to the local folks. When Barbara met them, Lily, her husband Jesse and their two small children had been struggling to make ends meet. Barbara had helped them out in the short term by magically getting Jesse a minor lottery win, and long term by teaching the couple to grow herbs they could sell to restaurants and farmers markets, as well as making soaps and lotions out of them. Barbara wasn’t exactly known for her soft heart or her generous nature, but she believed in helping people who were willing to help themselves.
She’d hoped to stop in and say hello, but when she got to their farm, the house was deserted and there was a “for sale” sign at the end of the driveway. Barbara decided she was liking this new unraveled reality less and less.
A couple of miles away, a narrow road led to a barely visible path, impassible even by her BMW. So she left the bike humming a show tune quietly to itself and made her way carefully to the entrance of a cave. It was so well hidden by shrubs and overgrown trees that she would never have spotted it if she hadn’t been there before. But now she shoved her way through the prickling thorns and springy green saplings until she found herself in the Stygian darkness underground.
Summoning up a glowing light from her outstretched palm, she peered around her at the damp walls, jagged rock floor, and uneven ceiling that threatened to put a dent into even her hard head. It was nice to see that something hadn’t changed. Even the squeaking of the bats seemed melodically familiar.
She followed the path she remembered until she came to the place where the doorway had once stood, a shimmering arch into a forbidden world. Now there was only a relatively new rock fall, a solid wall of stone that blocked any movement forward. Barbara sniffed the air, and ran her fingers over the outer edge of the wall. Familiar magic tingled as it coursed its way up her arm.
Excellent.
Well, that answered one question, at least. The magic she sensed was her own, so she had clearly closed the doorway, either because she’d found it herself or at the Queen’s command, if its existence had been discovered from the other side. Of course, that left plenty of questions unanswered, like why had Barbara hung around for a week, if the doorway had been dealt with? Had it taken her that long to find it, or had something else happened? It was maddening to have the memories of one timeline while wandering around in another.
She complained about it to Chudo-Yudo later over lunch. “It’s as though everyone around me remembers a fake life, and I’m the only one who remembers the real one.”
“I remember too, Baba Yaga,” Babs said around a mouthful of tuna sandwich with its crusts cut off.
Barbara nodded. “I know, sweetie.”
“Well, it doesn’t seem fake to me,” Chudo-Yudo growled. He had an entire tuna—fins, scales, and a glittering silver tail that hung out of one side of his mouth as he chewed. “And if you want to know what you did, why don’t you just ask me? I mean, I was there for some of it, and you told me about some of the rest. Mind you, you were being oddly secretive there at the end, but still, I ought to be able to fill in some of the blanks.”
“I’m an idiot,” she said, smacking herself on the head with the hand not holding her own (scale-free) sandwich. “Why didn’t it occur to me that if you didn’t remember the timeline Babs and I do, that meant you’d remember the other one?”
“Well, you have been preoccupied pining over your lost sheriff,” Chudo-Yudo said indulgently. “Although at first I thought you’d just lost your mind. It was a lot easier to believe that than it was some story about altered timelines, or that you’d actually fallen in love. With a Human, no less.” He looked thoughtful. “I’m not sure insanity is completely off the table.”
“Very funny,” Barbara said, giving him the rest of her lunch. She still didn’t have much appetite.
He shrugged, his furry white shoulder almost knocking the table over. The table, being used to such things, righted itself with an indignant huff. There were advantages and disadvantages to living in a semi-sentient former hut and sometimes it was hard to tell one from the other.
“It isn’t, really,” he said. “You have to admit that your tale is hard to believe. Even without the mind-boggling love story. Even I might have been excused if I doubted your sanity—although probably not. We’ve been together for a long time and you have always been
the sanest person I know. The crankiest, maybe, but also the sanest. But if you and Babs both insist on the same version of the truth, I have to believe it. Even if it is hard to wrap my brain around the concept of you being married.” He gave her a sharp-toothed grin. “To a Human.”
“Yes, you mentioned that part.” Barbara rolled her eyes at him. “Feel free to stop mentioning it; there’s a good dog.”
Babs ignored their bickering from long practice. “It is good that Chudo-Yudo believes us, Baba Yaga, but what do we do now?”
The humor fled from Barbara’s eyes like a frightened rabbit running from a wolf. “Now we go to the Otherworld and visit the Queen,” she said.
“Oh,” Babs said. “The Queen.”
“Crap,” Chudo-Yudo agreed. Nobody argued.
Chapter Six
Barbara decided, after much discussion and no small amount of argument, that it was important for all three of them to go see the Queen together.
She changed into her formal “going to court” attire—in this case, a red silk tunic embroidered along the hem with sinuous black Oriental dragons, and black velvet leggings tucked into high-heeled black leather boots that made her look even more imposing than she already was. Her normally wild dark hair was corralled into a bejeweled mesh woven out of silver to match the silver sword that hung at her waist from a matching gemstone studded belt.
“You look very pretty,” Babs said as Barbara bent down to tuck a ruby-tipped barrette into the girl’s asymmetrical pixie-cut hair. Babs was dressed in a miniature version of Barbara’s own outfit, except that her tunic was a muted sky blue and its matching dark blue boots had flat heels.
“Thank you,” Barbara said, straightening up after giving the girl’s outfit one last tug. It didn’t do to appear before the Queen in anything less than perfect order, if you could help it. Her Majesty was nothing if not a stickler for protocol. “You look nice too.”
A barking cough drew her eyes to the massive white pit bull waiting patiently for them to finish. His preparations were much simpler, since they were limited to having Barbara buckle on the jeweled collar that attached to the flask of precious Water of Life and Death he guarded. If the dragon-dog was going to the Otherworld, so was the Water.
“You too, Chudo-Yudo, but you are always so handsome, it hardly seems worth commenting on.”
He gave her a lolling pit bull smile. “Well, you’re not wrong,” he said. “Can we go now? The sooner we get this over with, the happier I’ll be.”
It wasn’t that he didn’t like visiting the Otherworld, which was the only place he could change back into his natural form and literally spread his wings, but the High Queen of the Otherworld was as temperamental and unpredictable as she was gorgeous, and any visit to her court came with its own risks.
Once they were all ready, Barbara opened the closet that doubled as a hidden entrance to the passageway to the Otherworld. She stared at the rows of mostly black shirts, pants, dresses, and jackets that hung there, sighed, and closed the door. Then she rattled the wonky handle and gave the bottom of the door a forceful nudge with the tip of one boot.
The closet let out a tiny squeak of protest, but when she opened it again, the interior was filled with a swirling mist through which barely visible sparks could be seen flitting to and fro. The three of them trooped through until they came out the other side into a landscape of rolling chartreuse hills dotted with oddly shaped trees under a faintly lavender sky. Three giant blue rabbits played a complicated game of tag made more interesting by the large wings that unfurled from their backs at the sight of the newcomers.
Barbara exhaled in relief at the (relative) normality of the scene before her. When Maya had been traveling back and forth through the illicit doorway with the stolen children, she had thrown off the balance between the Human world and the Otherworld, causing major unsettled shifts on this side of the door. Now, as then, Barbara’s closing that passage seemed to have corrected the imbalance and returned the magical land to its usual uncanny splendor.
It was good to see the Otherworld looking as it should, but it wasn’t completely unchanged. Glancing up, Barbara saw that all three moons, two crescents facing in opposite directions with a full moon in between, hung straight in the sunless yet still bright sky. In the original timeline, one of the crescents had ended up slightly crooked as the result of the Queen’s fit of temper. Clearly that hadn’t happened here. At least not yet. Barbara wasn’t sure what that meant.
They followed a path lined on both sides with tall orange and yellow sunflowers whose chatter rose and fell with a sound like chimes. A winding river accompanied them most of the way there, adding its melodic murmuring to the background. A water elemental waved at them gaily as they passed.
The castle appeared when it was good and ready to, as usual, its stone walls glittering under graceful towers that seemed to reach upward with impossible fragility. Gaily colored pennants flew from the tops of tall spires. The castle grounds rolled out before them like a perfect carpet of moss and grass, dotted here and there by oversized mushrooms that acted as seating for the elegant lords and ladies of the court.
The group wandered past a life-sized game of chess being played using goat-legged fauns for pawns and various other magical creatures for the other pieces. A particularly shaggy set of disgruntled looking centaurs towered over the rest.
A helpful brownie carrying a tray of crystal goblets pointed them toward the back of the castle. There they found the Queen, her consort, and some of her majesty’s more favored courtiers dining al fresco by the edge of an azure blue pond the size of a small lake. Barbara recognized the six white swans floating near a fountain that shot rainbow-hued streams of water into the air. Something else that had changed in her world but not here.
“Baba Yaga, how lovely!” the Queen cried when she spotted them. “Were We expecting you?” She used the royal “We,” of course.
As always, the Queen looked ethereally beautiful. Her silvery-white hair was piled atop her head in a complicated arrangement of curls and braids, adorned by a gold tiara studded with amethysts, diamonds, and tiny pearls. A matching necklace hung around her long neck, and her gossamer white silk gown was covered with a fine netting hung with yet more pearls, each more delicate than the last.
She was a vision of perfection, set off even more by her handsome consort’s striking dark hair, neat pointed beard, and dove gray tunic and leggings. They sat side by side on carved wooden chairs that weren’t quite thrones.
Barbara bowed so deeply, her forehead nearly brushed the ground. “I am afraid not, Your Majesty. I hope we haven’t come at a bad time.”
The Queen waved one languid hand. “Not at all, dear Baba. Our lunch is mostly a forgotten memory, and We merely nibble on its remains. Do come and talk to Us. Things here have been remarkably boring of late, and you always manage to entertain.”
Barbara hoped the Queen still thought so after she heard the latest strange tale.
“Thank you, Your Majesty. You remember my apprentice Babs, I hope.” She had no idea if they would or not, after Chudo-Yudo’s initial reaction.
“Of course,” the Queen said. The King gave Babs a friendly smile. Children were highly valued in the Otherworld, because most of those who resided there were both long-lived and rarely fertile. “You brought her to meet Us when you first decided to take her in and train her to follow in your footsteps.” A tiny wrinkle disturbed the otherwise perfect royal brow. “How odd. One does not remember the exact circumstances of that meeting, although We are quite certain it occurred.”
She turned to her consort. “My darling, you must remember. Where did Baba Yaga say she found the child?”
The King looked, if anything, more baffled than she did. “I must confess, I do not remember ever seeing this charming urchin before, although it is clear from her aura that she is, in fact, Our Baba’s trainee. How is this possible?”
Barbara bowed again, hoping she wasn’t going to be turned into somet
hing unpleasant sometime in the next minute or two. “I am afraid there has been an accident, Your Majesties. A magical accident, resulting in the unraveling of time and circumstance. The history you remember is not the one that I and Babs have experienced. This current reality is a lie.”
There was a stunned silence around the table as her words sank in.
“Impossible,” the Queen said, sitting up even straighter in her chair. The wooden arms sprouted bright pink flowers that blossomed and died almost immediately. “How would such a thing even happen?”
Barbara could feel the muscles in her jaw tighten, and it felt as though her words had to fight their way past clenched teeth. But not speaking wouldn’t help her now.
“It is difficult to explain, Your Majesties. To be honest, I do not completely understand it myself. I can only tell you that a few days ago, I was living in a reality that was very different from the one in which I find myself now. I was on my way to take a family vacation when I was Called to deal with a Human witch who was in far over her head. This witch had created a potion that could actually turn back time.”
The court gasped in unison.
“I confess, with some chagrin, that I underestimated this woman.” Barbara grimaced. “It was an error completely of my own making, Your Majesties, although I have paid a steep price for my hubris. I assumed that because she was a Human, and because her intentions were more prosaic than evil, that she could not be any real threat. I was, alas, proven completely wrong in that assumption.”
“Do continue, Baba Yaga,” the Queen said. “We are on the edge of Our seats with suspense.”
The King nodded in agreement. “What happened? Did this woman summon demons to her aid? Invoke ancient and arcane powers handed down to her by her ancestors? It must have been something quite dramatic.”
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