Koshka raised himself up on his hind legs and peered at the coin. “I can’t believe she did it. It took you two years to master that one.”
“Hey,” Bella protested. “I was only six.”
“True,” Koshka said in a thoughtful tone. “It’s too bad you didn’t find Jazz when she was four or five.”
Bella grunted in agreement. It was common practice to start training a new Baba when the girl was very young. It was thought that the mind and spirit were more flexible at an early age, better able to adapt to the concept of magic. Not that Jazz seemed to be having any problems with that.
“Are you going to say anything to her?” Koshka asked.
Bella sighed. “No. There’s no point in getting her hopes up. The Queen would never agree to let me train someone as old as Jazz. It’s too bad.”
The bathroom door slammed and Jazz said, “What’s bad?”
Koshka and Bella exchanged looks. “The storm is getting really bad,” Bella said. And that wasn’t a lie either. She looked in the direction of the fire tower. “I hope Sam’s okay.”
“I’m sure he’ll be down for dinner later,” Jazz said.
* * *
BUT SEVEN THIRTY rolled around and he didn’t come. By eight there was still no sign of him. The rain drummed on the roof of the caravan, and Bella’s skin crawled. Cabin fever, probably. She was used to being stuck in the converted hut with Koshka, but having another person there, even one undersized fifteen-year-old, made it seem unbearably small. Or maybe she was just fretting about Sam.
“It’s no wonder he didn’t come out in this rain,” she said, talking to herself out loud. “He’s probably still watching for lightning strikes, even though it is getting dark. He told me that lightning starts most of the fires in this part of the country.”
“Sam probably hates lightning storms,” Jazz said. “I wouldn’t blame him.”
Bella picked her head up in surprise. “What do you mean?”
“I looked up his name on the Internet,” Jazz explained. “The article I found said that they thought the fire that killed the Hotshots crew Sam was on was probably caused by lightning. I wonder if he has a tough time on nights like this, like, thinking about it and everything.”
How could he not? Bella thought. “How did you get on the Internet?” she asked.
Jazz stared at her. “I just used my tablet.” She pointed at her backpack. “I charged it and hooked up to your Wi-Fi.”
Bella blinked. “My caravan has Wi-Fi?” It never had before. Usually if she wanted to check something online, she went in to the nearest town.
“Well, duh,” Jazz said, and Koshka gave a snort that was more dragon than cat, causing a faint ribbon of smoke to eddy in the air above his head.
“I think the caravan likes her,” he said to Bella meaningfully.
“Apparently it does,” Bella agreed, absently rubbing her arms. “Does it seem cold in here to anyone else?” It shouldn’t. The caravan had its own magic—and often its own mind—and was always just the right temperature.
Jazz nodded, looking worried. “Can I tell you something and not have you think I’m crazy?”
Bella shrugged. “You’re asking the witch with the talking dragon-cat; what do you think?”
“Good point,” the girl said. “It’s just, well, when I was concentrating on moving the penny, I thought I heard the storm talking.”
She paused, obviously waiting for Bella to laugh at her. But Bella didn’t feel the least bit inclined to do so. If anything, Jazz had just confirmed something Bella had been feeling for the last couple of hours. So she merely asked, “What was it saying?”
Jazz bit her lip. “Nothing specific, really. I don’t know how to explain it, exactly. It was like cursing.”
“Cursing?” Bella raised both eyebrows this time. “What do you mean?”
“You know, a bunch of bad words. The kind that someone will threaten to wash your mouth out with soap if you say them? That kind of cursing,” Jazz said, the “duh” unsaid this time. “Only it wasn’t like I was actually hearing the words themselves, just a kind of feeling.”
“Dammit,” Bella said. “I was afraid of that.” She ran over and shoved open a window, purposely making a hole in the protections that kept the storm away from the inside of the caravan. “Do you smell anything odd, Koshka?”
The dragon-cat bounded up onto the counter underneath the window and stuck his large nose out through the open space. “Pah!” he spat. “Magic. There’s magic in the wind. I knew the hair was standing up on the back of my neck for a reason.”
“Who could make a storm this strong with magic?” Jazz asked, only the slightest quaver in her voice betraying her fear. “Could you?”
“I could,” Bella said. “But not easily. My sister Baba, Barbara, could do it, or Beka, I suppose. In fact, the only ones I can think of who could create this kind of unnatural natural phenomenon are Baba Yagas.” She and Koshka looked out the window and then at each other.
“Brenna,” they said together. “It has to be Brenna.”
* * *
JAZZ WATCHED WITH a mixture of fascination and trepidation as Bella laid out a few basic magical tools: an athame, a chalice, a rough celestite crystal, and a candle the exact color blue of a cloudless sky.
“What are you going to do?” Jazz asked. “Can I watch, or will I be in the way?”
“You can watch if you like,” Bella said. “But there won’t be much to see. Sort of like when you moved the penny earlier; most magic happens inside the person doing it. I’m just using a couple of simple items to magnify my focus while I try to stop the storm.”
“With magic, you mean?”
Bella nodded. If it was started with magic, in theory it could be stopped with magic. Of course, in theory Brenna shouldn’t have had enough power left to cause more than a sprinkle, so there were a lot of things that didn’t add up here. Including the answer to the question of why on earth Brenna would want to create a storm of this magnitude. But that was something to deal with later. For right now, Bella just wanted to make it stop before lightning set the entire forest ablaze.
She lifted the chalice, filled with mead crafted from the purest spring water, and saluted the goddess who watched over witches. Then she dipped the tip of the athame into the mead and sketched a circle onto the table in front of her with the wine. Once that was done, she placed the crystal and the candle into the middle of the circle and easily lit the wick on the candle with a thought and a snap of her fingers.
Closing her eyes, she called on the powers of nature that all Baba Yagas were connected to and commanded them to banish the wind, rain, and lightning.
It didn’t work.
Again and again, she threw her energy into the storm, but it just bounced right off. The storm was too powerful. Or the one who sent it was.
“Dammit,” Bella said, finally admitting defeat. “I’m not getting anywhere. I need to focus my magic more tightly, aim it right at the source of the storm. But for that I need to know where the storm is coming from, and I can’t tell that from here.”
“Does that mean you’re giving up?” Jazz asked, sounding like a kid who had just seen Superman without his cape.
“Not at all,” Bella said. “One of the first things you learn about doing magic is that you have to be flexible. If you try something and it doesn’t work, you may need to change your approach, that’s all.” She tapped her fingers on the table, then snapped them to extinguish the candle. “I need to look at the storm from a different vantage point. Maybe if I can get to higher ground, I’ll be able to tell where it is being generated. I’m going to the fire tower.”
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Koshka asked.
“Not at all,” Bella said. “Do you have a better one?”
The dragon-cat sighed. “Sadly, no. Go on, then. I’ll watc
h over things here.”
Bella gathered a few supplies together and pulled a reasonably waterproof hooded cloak out of the closet (which was, for the moment, miraculously actually a closet). Slinging it over her clothes, she tucked her supplies into the pockets sewn inside and turned to give a quick hug to Jazz. It was a mark of how freaked-out the girl was that she actually tolerated the hug without making a snarky remark.
“You’ll be safe here with Koshka,” Bella told the girl. “And the caravan won’t let anything happen to you either.”
“But what about you?” Jazz asked. “You’re going out into that storm. What if a lightning bolt hits you?”
“I’m a Baba Yaga,” Bella said with a smile. “It wouldn’t dare.”
* * *
BELLA PULLED HER transportation out of its special storage compartment underneath the caravan and hoped that what she’d told Jazz what true. It probably wasn’t the smartest thing in the world to be riding her little red Enduro dirt bike into a raging storm, even if it was powered by magic instead of gasoline. But it would take too long to hike to the fire tower on foot, and she needed to save her energy for another try at calming the weather.
Traditionally, Baba Yagas had traveled through the forests of Russia and the surrounding lands in large enchanted mortars that were steered with huge pestles, but these days such a thing would stand out a bit too much. So each of the Babas inherited an updated version from her mentor and persuaded it to transform into a vehicle that suited her own particular needs and tastes. Barbara, for instance, rode around on a glossy royal blue BMW classic motorcycle, while California surfer-girl Beka drove an improbably well-preserved Karmann Ghia with a tie-down for her surfboard.
Bella’s choice might have been a little less flashy, but it was much more practical for the forests and badlands in which she tended to spend most of her time. She had a truck (which was essentially a magical extension of the main hut) for pulling the caravan, but for short trips, the zippy little dirt bike couldn’t be beat.
Of course, riding it in the rain through intermittent lightning bolts wasn’t going to be much fun, but at least it would handle the muddy trails better than virtually anything else, and hopefully its magic would help Bella to stay upright and relatively safe on her trip.
She pulled her cloak around herself as tightly as she could, tucking the ends under the opposite thighs to hold them in place, pulled on her helmet (she was a Baba Yaga, not Superwoman), and started off into the dark and stormy night.
* * *
IT TOOK NEARLY twice as long to get to the fire tower as it had the last time she’d gone; the wind and the rain fought her the entire way, the bike swaying and slipping on what had been easy paths. The darkness didn’t help either. The full moon was hidden behind sullen clouds, and the dirt bike’s headlight barely made a dent in the gloom.
When Bella finally reached the base of the tower and started climbing the stairs, she could have sworn there were suddenly a lot more than the original seventy-five—not that seventy-five hadn’t been more than enough to begin with. It felt as though the wind was trying to blow her off on purpose, whipping her cloak around her like the wings of a demented bat and tangling her long hair into knots. The thunder rattled the steps beneath her feet, and she clung to the railing as if it were a lifeline.
Once at the top, she paused for a moment to catch her breath and then banged on the door. She could see Sam inside, sitting at the small kitchen table, his shoulders hunched and his head in his hand. He clearly didn’t hear her knocking over the sound of the storm, so finally she simply opened the door and went in, her hand slipping for a moment on the wet metal knob.
“Sam?” she said softly, not wanting to alarm him.
He jolted upright, eyes wide. “Bella! You startled me. What the hell are you doing out in this? Are you crazy? How did you get here?”
Nice to see you too, she thought. And, Probably, but that’s not the point.
“Sorry,” she said, dripping on his floor. “I did knock. And I have a dirt bike.”
Sam shook his head like a man rousing himself from a nightmare and got up from the table to grab a towel. “No, I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m not great with thunderstorms, and this one is a doozy.”
“You have no idea,” she said under her breath, taking the towel gratefully and rubbing it across her hair. He looked like a man who was barely holding himself together, his hands trembling the slightest bit when she handed him back the towel. “Are you okay?”
He shrugged, shoulders tight. “Sure. You want to tell me what the hell you’re doing coming out in this mess? Not that I’m not glad to see you.” He looked anything but—like a man who was feeling wretched and was uncomfortable being seen with his defenses down. She didn’t blame him, and normally she wouldn’t intrude, but it couldn’t be helped.
Bella tried to think of a good way to tell him that she needed to get a better look at the storm from this vantage point without using the words witch or magic and failed miserably.
She opened and closed her mouth a couple of times and finally said, “I’ll explain later, but you have to believe me when I say it is important. Can you just trust me for now?”
Sam stared at her without speaking, studying her face. Something he saw there must have convinced him. “Okay. What do you need? Can I help?”
She almost sagged with relief. Or maybe that was the weight of the urgency riding on her shoulders. “Did you happen to see where the storm started? The specific area or at least the general direction?”
He pointed out the window. “Toward the east. It came in from there, where you can see the two mountainous areas meet in a kind of notch. But they hadn’t predicted bad weather for today, and there was nothing on the radar. Until, suddenly, there was.”
The east. It figured. Bella thought that might be a narrow enough area to focus on, especially with the distinctive feature Sam had indicated. Of course now she was going to have to work major magic without it looking like, well, major magic. Although the poor guy looked so wretched, she thought she could probably have ridden a unicycle while singing “The Star-Spangled Banner” and he might not have noticed.
“Do you want me to make you a cup of tea?” she asked. “You look like you could use one.”
Sam winced. “That obvious, huh? Sorry. I should have offered you some, since you’re the one who just came in from the storm. How about I make the tea and you do whatever it is you need to do.” He was clearly curious, but at least she had managed to distract him for the moment, as he moved off to heat up the kettle and pull out a couple of mugs from a cupboard.
While he did that, Bella moved to the window facing east. She pulled her cloak with its magical tools tucked into the pockets close around her, ignoring the drip, drip, drip of water sliding off of it onto the floor. Breathing deeply and evenly, she put both hands against the window, directing her energy through the glass and out into the storm.
Closing her eyes, she visualized an army pushing back the rain, the wind, the lightning; her magical warriors fighting back against those of the witch who sent the storm. Again and again she shoved her will against the might of the tempest. And again and again she failed.
“Dammit!” she said, then jumped when a hand appeared with a steaming cup of tea.
“It’s not going well, I take it?” Sam’s raspy voice said, bringing her back to reality with a thud. “Whatever it is.”
Bella wrapped her hands around the mug, grateful for its warmth. The more she fought the storm, the colder and more drained she got. It was as though the elements were absorbing everything she threw at them, using them to feed the storm instead of stop it.
“Crap!” she said. “I’m an idiot!”
Sam blinked at her, diverted for a moment from his own misery. “I doubt it,” he said.
“No, really, I am.” Bella took a cautious sip from the cup and put i
t down with a thunk. “I’ve been trying to use force against a wild animal when what I really need to do is soothe its soul. I can’t believe I didn’t remember one of the most basic lessons my mentor taught me: in the face of an unbeatable foe, it is better to sneak in under its defenses than to face it head-on. I’ve been going about this all wrong.”
“You know you’re not making any sense at all, right?” Sam peered into her eyes as if trying to discern the depths of her madness.
“Not at all unusual,” Bella said with a tight laugh. “You’ll get used to it.” She gave him a quick hug, more for her own benefit than his, and said, “Thank you for the tea. I have to go outside now. Don’t worry; I’ll be fine.”
“Don’t worry?” Sam roared. “There are gale-force winds out there and the platform is sixty-nine feet off the ground. You’re out of your mind.” He reached out a hand to stop her, but she had already stepped out the door and onto the platform outside.
EIGHTEEN
THE WIND WAS even worse on the platform surrounding the tower cabin than it was on the ground below, and the rain misted her vision and made the surface slick underneath her feet. But it didn’t matter; she could feel the rightness of her new approach bubbling in her veins like wine.
Fighting the storm had just fueled its fury; it had been born out of hate and anger, and couldn’t be combated with the same things that had created it. So instead, Bella started to sing. She sang an old Russian lullaby, one that her own Baba Yaga had sung to her when she was a small child. Its melody was soft and haunting, the words gentle and soothing.
“Baby, baby, rock-a-bye, in our little corner is a green garden with a scarlet flower,” she sang, the Russian words translating themselves into English automatically in her head. “The flower is under the sun and little Ilusha is asleep. Please, my children, don’t make noise and wake Ilusha up. He is sleeping in the cradle, he’s not crying nor is he screaming. He sleeps tight all night long. Please, my children, go and bring us that little flower. That scarlet flower for little Ilusha.”
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