The courtiers present held their collective breath and waited for her to continue her story. Barbara almost hated to go on, since there was little doubt that the facts would be much more disappointing than whatever their imaginations had dreamt up.
“Nothing so exciting, I’m afraid, Your Majesties,” Barbara said. “This Human had become obsessed with halting the natural course of aging—both her own, and others, for a price, of course. You would be amazed how much these mortals will pay to slow the inevitable forward march of the clock.” She shook her head.
“When I arrived, I discovered that this woman, Katherine, had done what should have been impossible. She had somehow created an elixir that affected time itself. It was clear from her own face, which appeared many years younger than her actual age, that she had immense natural powers. I learned too late just how strong she was, when she attacked me in an effort to prevent me from destroying the potion she had crafted.”
Another gasp. The penalty for attacking a Baba Yaga was death. Of course, most Humans had no way of knowing that. And whether or not she had, Katherine Chanter had certainly paid the penalty in the end.
“She attacked you?” The King’s tone was a mixture of dismay and reluctant admiration. “Did she not know who you were?”
“She knew,” Barbara said with a grimace. “But I was threatening all she valued most, and I suspect she would rather have died than to have lost that which she had sought for so long.” One corner of her mouth twitched up. “Besides, you must remember, I am mostly a legend in the lands beyond the doorways. It is unlikely she took that legend seriously enough.”
The Queen tapped a lacy ivory fan on the edge of her chair before flicking it open and waving it gracefully through the air. “One assumes you corrected that misapprehension, Baba Yaga.” It was a statement, not a question.
Barbara sighed. She had the sneaking suspicion that her reputation wasn’t going to be at all improved by the rest of the tale.
“Yes and no, Your Majesty.” Next to her, Chudo-Yudo gave an obvious wince. She couldn’t blame him, since he knew what came next.
“The witch had a large batch of her potion boiling over an open fireplace in her kitchen when I got there, and there were many herbs and other tools of her trade in the nearby vicinity,” Barbara explained. “When I told Katherine that I could not allow her to continue interfering with the natural course of time, she hurled a magical curse at me. A curse of the most violent and malignant kind, intended to kill me.”
Another gasp rose from her audience.
“Whatever did you do, Baba Yaga?” one of the courtiers asked.
The Queen rolled her violet-colored eyes. Daintily. “We assume you killed her first, of course,” Her Majesty said, as if any other outcome would have been too ridiculous to mention.
“I did,” Barbara admitted reluctantly. “But mostly accidentally.” This was not to say she wouldn’t have killed the woman on purpose if given the chance—that curse had been cast with complete disregard for the presence of Babs, and while Barbara could excuse someone trying to do away with her, attacking her adopted daughter was a guaranteed way to end up mangled, dismantled, and altogether deceased.
“Katherine caught me off guard and I only had time to put up a defensive shield. The shield reflected her own curse back upon her, and that was what actually killed her.”
The King stroked his beard thoughtfully. “Hmmm,” he said. “Not as impressive an ending as One might have hoped for, but still, the witch was dead and you were not, so that is satisfying enough. We do not quite understand what this has to do with this disruption of time you claim has occurred, however.”
“I’m afraid I hadn’t finished, Sire,” Barbara said. “The blowback from the Human’s curse mixed with my magic, and she was thrown up against the cauldron containing her illicit time-reversing brew. The potion spilled into the fire, various herbs were blown into the conflagration, and before you could say ‘abracadabra,’ the entire place was on fire. A fire fueled as much by magic as by flame, so that the entire house went up in an instant and Babs and I were lucky to be able to make our way out in time. By the time we had gotten to a safe distance, there was nothing left but ashes and regret.”
The Queen shrugged one silk-clad shoulder. “Unfortunate, but these things happen to those whose reach exceeds their grasp. You are not responsible for the end result, Baba Yaga.”
“Perhaps not, Your Majesty,” Barbara said, not willing to let herself off the hook that easily, but not foolish enough to argue with the Queen. “But it wasn’t until Babs and I returned to the Airstream—our traveling hut—that we discovered that things had gone much more seriously awry than I had initially supposed. Upon our arrival, we found Liam, my husband, had vanished, and Chudo-Yudo had no memory of his existence in our lives. It took Chudo-Yudo a moment to remember Babs, and further developments showed us that time had not only unwound itself to a point almost three years previous to the last moments that Babs and I knew we had lived though, but also unraveled so that the reality that remained no longer resembled that which we knew to be true.”
There was silence for a moment after she finished her recitation, and then the Queen said in a shocked tone, “My darling Baba Yaga…did you say husband?”
Barbara sighed. This was going to be even tougher than she’d thought.
Chapter Seven
Chudo-Yudo shook his massive head. “I know. That was the part I found the most difficult to believe as well, Your Majesty.”
Barbara nudged irritably him with the toe of her boot. It was like kicking a rock. Why was the idea of her finding love so damned shocking to everyone? Just because she never had before, and because she had a tiny tendency to be antisocial and a little short-tempered…
“Yes, Your Majesty. In my timeline, I have been married for three years to a Human named Liam. He is a sheriff, one who enforces the law, and he was of great help to me on a mission you assigned me. I assure you, in the history I recall, you gave your blessing for the union, and even allowed me to share very small amounts of The Water of Life and Death with him, so he would age more slowly than normal.”
The Queen shook her head. “How remarkable. It is not that We doubt your word, Baba Yaga, but you must admit that this story sounds quite fantastical.” She gazed thoughtfully at Babs, who gazed thoughtfully back, her dark brown eyes old beyond their years.
The King leaned forward. “Is it possible that you are under some sort of spell, or suffering from exhaustion?”
Barbara’s hands curled into fists at her sides, more out of frustration than anger. She couldn’t blame them for not believing her. The story was fantastical. No less true for being so, but she wasn’t sure she would have believed it if anyone else had told it to her.
“I assure you, Sire, I am quite well,” she said. Broken heart aside. “And my tale, although bizarre, is quite real.”
The Queen pursed her perfect rosebud pink lips. “Do you have anything that can prove the veracity of your saga? Some token of this time We cannot recall as you do?”
She tapped the fan again, a sure sign of agitation. Barbara sympathized with the Queen’s frustration. How could she make them accept the impossible, the incomprehensible, even in this land where the impossible happened in one form or another every day?
Babs pulled on Barbara’s tunic to get her attention, and Barbara bent down so the small girl could whisper a suggestion.
Barbara rewarded her with a smile and a quick tug of the hair before stepping closer to the Queen’s chair.
“I have this,” she said, sliding her dragon ring off her finger. “Liam gave this to me when he proposed.” (Admittedly, after she had asked him first.) She held it out so that the diamond in the dragon’s mouth glinted in the three moons’ light. “He clearly searched for just the right ring for me.”
“Why Baba Yaga, are you blushing?” the King said, humor coloring his voice. He turned to his wife. “That alone makes me think there must be somethi
ng to this. Our Barbara, blushing over the thought of a man. Never did I think I would see the day.”
Barbara’s cheeks heated even more, and Babs gave a rare giggle.
“They kiss all the time,” she told the Queen. “It is very silly.”
“Indeed,” the Queen said. “We can see that it would seem so. Wait until you are a little older.” She bestowed a radiant smile upon her consort, who returned it filled with the accumulated devotion of millennia. “It will, perhaps, make more sense to you then.”
Her beautiful face grew stern again as she put out her palm to receive the ring. Barbara hesitated for a second, unwilling to let her one last connection to Liam out of her grasp. Despite the wide open vistas around her, it felt as though she couldn’t get enough air into her lungs.
“We shall return it, Baba Yaga,” the Queen said softly. “But We must be able to touch it to sense its whole essence.” She reached up and plucked the ring out of Barbara’s fingers, then closed her hand around it and brought it up to her chest, eyes drooping shut as she tuned in on the energy contained within the piece of jewelry.
“What is she doing?” Babs asked in a low voice. “Is it magic?”
“Of a sort,” Barbara explained. “Any item that belongs to someone takes on some of the aura of the person who owns it. Things that have great emotional meaning, especially those which are worn or carried for a long time, absorb that emotion. Those who have a gift for it can sometimes sense feelings or even memories that have attached themselves to the item.”
“It is called psychometry,” Chudo-Yudo added, leaning around Barbara’s legs to put his face next to the child’s. “Even some Humans can read the history of an object, if they happen to have that talent.” He gave a snuffling woof, as if dubious about such skill residing in a mere Human. “The Queen, of course, has much stronger abilities than most, since her magic is drawn from all those who inhabit the Otherworld.”
“Shhh,” a lizard-like courtier hissed, his green tail lashing. “I want to hear what she says.”
The Queen was silent for a moment. When her violet eyes opened, they had darkened to a vivid amethyst hue, her irises rimmed with gold.
“So much love,” she said in an almost reverent tone. “We would never have thought you capable of it, Baba Yaga. But it shines out like the glow of a thousand suns. Love, and respect, and loss, and fear, and determination. But most of all love. We can see an image of a tall man with dark blond hair and broad shoulders. He is not unattractive, for a Human, and his love too is held in this ring.”
She grimaced. “We have caught glimpses of memories and images that make no sense to Us. Some of them are quite horrible—something to do with the Riders? Human children. And…a rusalka?” The Queen sighed and handed the ring over to her consort, who had been eying it eagerly. “Feel free to try it yourself, my treasure, but it is unlikely that it will mean any more to you than it did to me.”
The King held the golden dragon for a moment, then dropped it back into Barbara’s eager hand. “As you say, my dearest. Many images and strong emotions. No doubt I perceived it even less clearly than did you, but still…it seems that our Baba is telling the truth. However incredible that truth might be.”
“This is very bad,” the Queen said, leaning back in her chair and pondering all the permutations. “Such a thing should not have happened, but since it has, something must be done about it. We cannot know what changes have been wrought that We are as yet unaware of, but time is not meant to be trifled with or changed. It is a very serious matter.”
Barbara took a deep breath. She’d survived the first part of the explanation; it remained to be seen how well she would fair after the second.
“I am afraid it is worse than you think, Your Majesty. Those children you saw in my memories were stolen away from their Human parents by a scheming rusalka who used an illicit doorway to bring them from my world into yours. Once here, she traded them to a few of the more influential members of your court for power to boost her own. In my own timeline, I was able, with Liam’s help, to retrieve the children and return them to their homes. In this current universe, the children are still missing, and I regret to say, are likely still hidden away here.”
“What?” The Queen rose from her seat, pale cheeks suffused with anger. “You must be mistaken, Baba Yaga. No member of my court would be so foolish. It breaks Our strictest rules.”
The Paranormal people had once lived on the other side of the doorway, coming and going as they pleased. But as the Human population grew, it became harder and harder for the magical folks to hide, and it became more dangerous to continue to try to coexist. The Humans tolerated the tiny pranks and mysterious ways of their uncanny neighbors, but the occasional theft of their children aroused such fury, the Queen eventually forbade it altogether.
Such actions had been part of the reason she eventually moved as many as could go to the Otherworld for good. She would have no tolerance for those who broke this particular edict.
Barbara prayed that she was right, and the same folks who had been involved the first time had the children now.
“I can tell you which of your lords and ladies were involved in the original timeline, Majesty, and you can send your guards to search their homes.” She swung around and pointed at three different couples, all among the highest level of the King and Queen’s inner circle. One strikingly beautiful pink-haired woman immediately prostrated herself on the ground, sobbing and begging for mercy.
The royal couple looked grim. “Do as the Baba Yaga says,” the King commanded three sets of fierce-looking guards in gleaming silver armor. “Search their houses and bring us anything untoward you find.”
Barbara held her breath the entire time they were gone, which thankfully wasn’t long. The guards returned with three dazed and blank-eyed children, a tall girl whose light brown hair was already taking on a vaguely silvery hue, a small boy of about two who was seemingly unchanged from the day he had been taken, and a small girl Barbara had once known well. Mary Elizabeth had the same blonde tresses, blue eyes, and stubborn chin Barbara was so familiar with, but she looked closer to the age she had been when Barbara set out on her vacation in her own timeline, eleven, than the eight years old she should have been in the current timeline. She had aged faster in the Otherworld than she should have.
“Damn it,” she muttered. “I was afraid of that.”
Chudo-Yudo growled under his breath. “They’ve been here too long, haven’t they?”
“Yes,” Barbara said. “Two of them are older than they should be, and one hasn’t aged at all.” Time flowed differently on this side of the doorway, which is why there were legends of people stumbling through a crack into the lands of faerie and coming back years later completely unchanged, or a day later and seemingly twenty years older.
But one crisis at a time.
The Queen stood up as the guards brought the children into the room. She twitched a finger and the three couples were marched over to stand in front of her and her consort. “You,” she said, pointing her fan at each one in turn. “You dare to break Our laws and risk the safety of every denizen of the Otherworld? You sat in Our court every day, ate at Our table and lied to Our face?”
There was an explosion high in the sky, and one of the crescent moons was suddenly hanging canted at an angle, burning a little dimmer than the rest. Tiny sparkling fragments rained down upon the ground, causing the emerald green grass to sizzle and hiss. A splashing sound heralded the high-pitched shrieks of six lovely maidens as they materialized in the middle of the pond, shedding pure white feathers as they made their way to shore.
Barbara watched the erstwhile swans wobble as they attempted to use legs for the first time in years. The Queen ignored them. No doubt whatever minor offenses had gotten them turned into swans in the first place paled in comparison to the crimes she was dealing with now.
Ironically, Barbara felt almost cheerful. In her own timeline, the Queen had blown up the moon and cha
nged the ladies in waiting back from swans. So at least something was back on track, although an angry Queen is never a good thing.
“Explain yourselves,” the King said in a deep voice.
The three couples babbled and pleaded and protested, sounding for all the world like a flock of some kind of exotic twittering birds. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a helpful word in the bunch. None of them had seen the rusalka who called herself Maya since they had traded her a portion of their magical powers for the children she had stolen. None of them had any idea where she was now.
“Enough of this,” the Queen finally said, shouting to be heard over the noise. “You are all an embarrassment and unworthy to a part of Our court. You betrayed Our trust and broke Our most immutable law. There will be no forgiveness. Instead, let you stand as an example to the rest, lest others forget the price for such a crime.”
She waved her fan as if it were a magic wand, and where the six courtiers had stood, there were only elegant stone statues which bore their likeness.
“Take them to the south gardens,” she said to the guards, her expression icy. “I do not wish to look at them any time soon.”
She turned back to Barbara, her amethyst gaze softening only slightly.
“So, Baba Yaga, it would seem that yet another part of your unlikely tale has been proven to be true. We wish it had been otherwise.” She returned to her seat, taking her consort’s hand as if seeking comfort. “That such a thing could happen right under Our nose is quite distressing.
They all turned and looked at the small Humans still standing with the guards who had brought them in, seemingly unaffected by the fuss or the transformation of those who had been caring for them. The little boy was playing with a purple toad wearing a jeweled collar, and the girls watched a trio of colorful butterflies the size of dinner plates flit around over their heads.
“We assume you will return the children to their parents now,” the King said, a hint of regret in his tone. Children were rare in the Otherworld, and therefore treasured. “One supposes they are missed.”
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