by Joy Preble
Maybe I always would have. Maybe I’d have just lived the rest of my life in a sort of Dr. Jekyll–Mr. Hyde kind of way. Kept the witch buried except for surface stuff like making my mom’s tomato plants grow. I think I could have done it. I really do. I’m a rising senior at Kennedy High School. Not a witch in a freaky chicken-leg hut in some forest.
But threaten everyone I love and then come after me even though you’re now gnarly looking and old? I let the witch rise.
I’m not Baba Yaga. I haven’t traded beauty for power. I haven’t let the Old Ones turn me into something just so I don’t have to bend to other people’s will. I’m not standing somewhere in Russia, my hands pressed to my stomach knowing that my lover’s baby has been obliterated because I’m no longer human. I’m not going to eat all the apples from a tree and then gobble an innocent little boy.
I took what she offered only to help save the people I love. Because Ethan was dying and Ben was hurt and Tess was in danger. Because my family had been turned upside down by fate and destiny and crazy mermaids and death. Because I’d sent a girl who deserved better back to die like she was supposed to. I tell myself that it isn’t the same. And I really do believe this.
Viktor hesitates as he hears me groan. Maybe he thinks I’m sick or afraid. I double over, but I still know where he is. The hunger feels all-consuming when I let it. A raw ache in my belly, my blood, my teeth.
My jaw loosens. Unhinges. Drops. I think I even get a little taller. Maybe I’m just imagining that.
He’s almost on me when I stand up, open my witch’s mouth, and lean forward to take a bite.
Viktor’s eyes widen. He makes a noise that sounds like “eep.”
Somewhere, I hear Tess shout, “Holy shit.”
I’m very, very hungry. My jaw widens even more. Viktor begins to backpedal. I stalk after him.
He smells sharp and dark, and his blood will taste rich in my mouth. This simultaneously pleases me and disgusts me. But it doesn’t make me stop. The anger about so many things rises with the witch’s power. I have magic. I am a very powerful woman. But I cannot make my mother better. I cannot make her stop wanting something—someone—she can never have. I can only destroy this man whose selfish desire to live forever has destroyed so many lives.
This is what it comes down to—we get the time we get, and we try to make the best of it before it’s cut short by circumstance or illness or chance. For Viktor this was not enough. He took Anastasia and he took Baba Yaga and he took Ethan, and because of all that, he took me. He killed Professor Olensky. Lily is cursed. My mother inherited her sadness. It will never be enough.
And so the witch in me will eat him. I will chew his flesh and his bones and his desire, and when I am done, I will spit the pieces on the ground. I will put his head on a spike, and I will place it on Baba Yaga’s fence. When I visit her again—which this man has made my fate—I will look into his empty eyes and know that I put him there.
This is what crawls through my veins as I reach for him. Part of me screams that the thoughts aren’t mine. But I’m tired. So tired of all of it. I decide not to listen.
A hand pulls me back. A very strong hand. Actually, just a hand.
“No,” Baba Yaga says. She hasn’t mortared in. She’s just there. When did she arrive? Is this real? Am I real? I strain against the hand. I want to destroy him. I have to.
“No,” she says again. She doesn’t elaborate. Doesn’t give me some witch-to-witch lecture. “This is not Russia, daughter. You are not me. You made him mortal again. That is enough.”
Then she smiles with those iron teeth. Her skull eyes light up kind of cheerfully. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t do it. You let him free, after all. I am no longer compelled to protect a Romanov. Especially one so unworthy of their legacy. And mine.”
She uses the hand that isn’t holding me to lift Viktor in the air. Studies him like he’s a bug under a microscope. And begins to bend him backward. I think she plans on breaking him in two.
He screams.
And in the water, still coming back to me, so does Ethan.
I turn. Ethan is treading water now, struggling. He jerks. Goes under. Swims to the surface. His face is covered in blood. But something else is hurting him now. He screams again. Lifts above the river and bends backward. Like something wants to break him in two.
This time when Viktor screams, he also laughs. Blood is oozing from his mouth, so it comes out as sort of a gurgle.
“Go ahead, Yaga,” he says. “Kill me. But you’ll kill her hero, Ethan too, you know. I still have some tricks, Yaga. Do you think I wouldn’t have a plan? My soul in the doll. And a part of my magic hidden elsewhere. Enough to do the job. I live. Ethan lives. I die. He dies. Such a perfect safeguard, yes? Your darling Anne wouldn’t kill her lover, now would she? How will she feel when you do it? But maybe that’s what you want. Your precious Anne all to yourself. Not quite your Anastasia. But good enough, eh?”
Baba Yaga licks her lips. Opens her own enormous mouth.
My head swirls with all that’s happening. I’m still dizzy with hunger. But I need to stop her. She’s going to kill Viktor. Ethan will die. Then she touches me on the forehead, and my jaw becomes just my jaw again. The power inside me shrinks back. Hides.
“No!” Tess yells. She rushes toward Baba Yaga. “No. You can’t.”
In the water, Ethan screams again.
And then I see Lily.
Wednesday, 3:18 pm
Ethan
Lily pulls me under water. The pain is unbearable. The vision in my left eye is gone. And now I’m being torn in two by something I can’t quite identify. Vaguely, I hear Viktor scream. Where is he? Is my pain connected to his? I don’t understand. I just know I’m dying. Here in the Chicago River with Anne on the sidewalk above me. I’m dying and I can’t seem to make it stop.
Anne, I call in my head. Anne. Can you hear me? I love you, Anne. I’ve always loved you. I will always love you. Know this. Remember this.
“Be still,” Lily says. Can I really hear her underwater? Am I dead? “I hold you accountable,” she croons in my ear. “Just as Viktor. But there is value in love. You saved my daughter, even from me. You did not stop. Your heart—it is far purer than mine ever was. You have suffered as I have. You will suffer more. But know this, Ethan. Had I not become what I am, destiny would not have brought you to Anne. Love, Ethan—it finds a way. There is value in it. You were willing to die. Be willing to live and love instead.”
Her hands rip into my back. Nails dig. I feel my skin tear. Skeletal arms hold me under. My body bows and bends—a different force. But under the water, in the quiet, it is just Lily and I. She scrapes deep into my back, nails sharp as talons raking the skin near my shoulder.
“Do not be afraid,” she murmurs. “I will release you from him. I will set you free. Already his life force is waning. I can feel it, Ethan. I can die now. But you—you must live. Live, Ethan. Love my granddaughter. Do right by her.”
She claws my back again. So much blood in the water. Is it all mine? My body writhes, twists. The magic that is Viktor’s magic howls inside me. Can magic feel pain? He’s dying. Viktor is dying. And so am I.
“There,” Lily says. Her voice is gentle. “It is done. I have removed the thing that binds you to him. Did you not know, Ethan? Did you not understand? No matter. It is gone. You are free. And so, it seems, am I. Love her, Ethan. Live.”
She floats in front of me now, her hair snaking around her, those gray eyes locked on mine. In that instant, there is light again. Sparkling like crystal in the murky river. Lily smiles. Then shimmers into the light.
Somehow I swim to the surface.
Wednesday, 3:33 pm
Anne
Two things happen at once. Ethan rises to the surface of the water, still gloriously alive. And Baba Yaga cracks Vikto
r’s back and tosses him into the river. First one rusalka, then another and another and another surround him in the water. Closer and closer they swim, circling so fast they make a whirlpool. They disappear into its vortex, dragging Viktor with them.
Is he alive when he sinks? Blood has been shed. I don’t know if this means he has to die. I don’t choose to ask.
Baba Yaga sends both hands to the edge of the river. They lift Ethan up and out. Lay him on the grass. He’s bleeding—so much blood on his face. His clothes are ripped and torn. Tess and I kneel next to him. She pushes his wet hair off his forehead.
“Your mother,” he gasps. His head tilts oddly as he looks at me.
“Safe,” I tell him. “Viktor’s gone, Ethan. Baba Yaga broke his back. The rusalki took it from there.” I’ll tell him the rest of it later. No time for stories now.
“Lily did something to my shoulder,” he says. His voice is so faint that I can barely hear him. We need doctors. A hospital. An ambulance.
He struggles to sit, but manages only to roll slightly to one side. I suck in a breath when I see it. The back of his shirt is ripped almost completely off. His skin is a bloody mess. It takes me a few seconds to see what’s gone.
“Your tattoo,” I tell him. “She dug it off your back. The lion tattoo. Ethan—it’s gone.”
In his head, I hear the rest of it. What Lily told him about the tattoo and how it kept him linked to Viktor.
Baba Yaga moves to stand over us. Her hands skitter back to her and tug the hem of her skirt as they begin their climb back to her empty, flapping sleeves. In the distance I hear sirens. Out in the river, my mom is still on the water taxi.
“I have given us protection, daughter,” Baba Yaga says. “Do what you need to. The real world can be held at bay for only so long. People’s memories are short, though. I will not have to do much to make them forget what they’ve seen.”
I rip the bottom of my T-shirt and use it to wipe Ethan’s face.
“His eye,” Tess whispers in my ear. “Anne. His eye.”
Ethan’s right eye is blue and whole. But his left eye has been jabbed. Something has gone straight through it.
Gently, I press the piece of shirt to Ethan’s eye.
“Rusalka,” he whispers. I don’t ask him to tell me more.
Rage rises inside me. Rage and grief and a million other emotions too dangerous to identify. But not the hunger. Somehow, for now, that’s gone.
I have no idea how much power I have left—maybe none. Maybe all of it. But everything inside me pushes into my hand as I press it to Ethan’s damaged eye. Heal, I tell the wound. Please. Heal. In my head, I imagine the eye knitting itself together. Becoming whole. Healed. The pain gone.
My hand feels warm against Ethan’s face. Something is working. Oh, please, let it work.
When I peel my hand away, his eye looks like his eye again. Happiness floods through my veins. Softly, I press a kiss to his lips. “It’s going to be okay,” I say.
“Did you do something?” Ethan asks. “I can’t see from that side.”
How can that be? I healed his eye. Healed it. But when I look, I see the truth. One eye—his left eye, still blue as a summer sky—is blind.
“Nature commands a price, daughter,” Baba Yaga says. Her voice is calm, matter of fact. “You have brought him back to you a third time. Always there are consequences. I believe in time he will find it a small price to pay.”
I stare at her, then back at Ethan, then at the river now calm, not a rusalka in sight.
“Your debt to me is paid, girl. You have given me my chance for vengeance. You are released from your bargain—but only if you want to be. I have lived a very long time. I can wait a bit longer for your response.”
In that instant, she stops being there. She doesn’t rise up to her mortar. I don’t see the sky rip as I have before. She is just here and then she’s not here.
“Is it over?” Tess asks.
“Yes,” I tell her. “I think so.”
A Month Later
Anne
It has taken a lot to un-implode our lives. We’re still working on it, actually. My mother’s in therapy, and she’ll probably be going for a very long time. Maybe forever. Some of that is my fault. Most of it really isn’t. People are what they are, and they feel what they feel. Sometimes a hole is so deep that you can’t get out of it. And the magic stuff just made it all more complicated.
A week after that horrible day downtown, my parents announced that they were separating for a while. It was Mom’s request, not Dad’s. But she was insistent that she needed time to figure things out and eventually he gave in.
My father has rented a small apartment in Evanston, not far from where Ethan lives. This wasn’t on purpose, by the way. It’s just there was a newer building with studio apartments available. At least that’s what my dad says—my dad who seems to have accepted that I’m with Ethan now, whether he wants me to be or not. As I’ve yet to find him peeping in Ethan’s windows when I’m over there, I guess I have to believe him. He has a view of the lake, although lately I’d rather not look at the water.
Dad goes with Mom to some of her therapy sessions, and they’re seeing a marriage counselor too. They both say that they want to make our family work again. I hope that they can. I sleep at my dad’s on the weekends, and we all have dinner together on Sunday nights when he drives me back home.
It’s all very calm and civilized. At least on the surface.
Underneath, of course, is a different story. But like in the fairy tales, no one goes into Baba Yaga’s forest and comes out the same. No one really lives happily ever after. But at least now we’re all moving forward.
Doctors have confirmed that Ethan has no sight in his left eye. No one can understand how it looks so healthy otherwise. So far he has chosen not to explain it to them. Like everything else, it could all be a lot worse. I was able to use my magic to close the wound on his back. The skin is smooth now and unblemished. No sign of that lion tattoo that I always found so sexy.
As for Ethan himself, my heart beats faster when he walks into the room. He is the only one I’ll ever want. The only one I’ve ever wanted. His hair is still a little bit too long, and his eyes—both of them—are still a stunning blue. His skin smells earthy and spicy and clean, like soap. When he kisses me, my body tingles in a way that is its own kind of magic. We don’t seem to be able to read each other’s thoughts any more—at least not the way we did. We’re both okay with that.
Most days, we’re together. School starts for me in another few days, so this is going to change. But for the past month, it’s been Ethan and me. We talk and eat and listen to music, and lately in the afternoons we’ve started walking to a little park not far from where he lives.
We lie on a blanket under the trees and he kisses me and I kiss him back, and sometimes he even reads me poetry like we’re in a romantic movie. I think about how lucky we are to have found each other. I ponder what Lily told him—the story he murmured to me that night after Baba Yaga’s hands pulled him from the river and brought him back to me. He was dopey from painkillers and lying on our guest bed. I’d pulled the rocking chair next to the bed and was curled up there with my pillow and a blanket. My mother was sedated and sleeping, and my father had finally drifted off.
He hadn’t argued about Ethan staying the night. He was just happy Mom was alive.
I climbed into the bed and slipped under the covers with Ethan. We pressed against each other and he told me what Lily had done. What she’d said. That if he’d stopped her from jumping that night so many years ago, things might have been different. He might not have followed the path that ended here with me. I might never have been the one to save Anastasia. Everything else might have been different too. It had taken seeing her in the river again for him to truly understand.
We whispered together in the darkness until he fell asleep with me tucked in the crook of his arm. In the morning, we woke peacefully, the sun shining in the window, my head still resting on the pillow next to him.
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered to him that next morning. My fingers caressed that beautiful unseeing eye.
His answer had been to kiss me and pull me close. I felt his heart beat fast against mine. And for the first time since we’d met, I understood what love really was.
•••
In other matters of love or at least lust, Ben and Tess are still together too. Ben didn’t remember much of what had happened. But he’d been conscious by the time he reached the hospital. Tess had gone over there as soon as things were finally over. Her brother, Zach, stayed with her until Ben’s parents arrived. She’d called me about a dozen times so I could help her craft a plausible story for everyone. So far it seems to have worked.
“Thank you,” Ethan told Tess the other day when the four of us went out for pizza. We sat at a little table at Lou Malnati’s, stuffing our faces with deep-dish cheese pizza and onion rings—the official food of people who have endured magical trauma.
Tess narrowed her eyes at him. Crunched a piece of Lou’s famous butter crust between her teeth. A string of cheese was stuck to her lip. Ben leaned over and ate it off her lip, then kissed her.
“Eww” was my personal comment. If someone is going to eat pizza off me, we’re going to do it in private.
“Why are you thanking me?” Tess picked up the spatula and helped herself to another slice.
“Because you never give up. Because Anne and I wouldn’t be here without you.”
“That?” Tess dredged an onion ring in ranch dressing and shoved most of it in her mouth. “Guess you owe me, huh?”
•••
As for me and Baba Yaga, well, I still don’t know how that story is going to end. She’d told me that I owed her nothing, but it’s not like there’s been an official de-powering. Mostly it feels like a “don’t ask, don’t tell” sort of thing. I won’t bother the magic, and so far it hasn’t bothered me. All I know is that it feels wrong to give it up completely. And until it doesn’t, I guess I’ll just live with things as they are. I’m not the same girl who went into Baba Yaga’s forest. I’m done pretending I am.