Awfully Furmiliar

by Michael J Tresca

  The pumpkin head looked down in dismay, then back up at me. Shadows dance crazily from the arrangement of his features. "I…I think so."

  "What are the odds Yaga will notice him?" I asked Ivasik.

  Ivasik's tail flicked, the equivalent of a human snort. "The same odds she'll notice a talking rat. If you haven't realized by now, everything here talks." He didn't look at the shelves. "Even the things in the jars. Don't do something stupid like talk to her directly and she probably won't notice."

  "What's in the jars?" I asked, staring at them. I immediately wished I hadn't. The eyes of the pickled things all swiveled in their green liquid to stare back at me. They were listening.

  "Stupid talking rats," said Ivasik without missing a beat.

  "You're really very cheery," I said grimly.

  Ivasik sniffed. "I'm a cat." As if that explained everything.

  "Is there anything we can do for Lycus? I don't want him to be eaten by that w…horrible woman."

  Ivasik rolled over and stretched out to his full length, displaying wicked claws. "Not unless he knows how to make clothes. He doesn't strike me as the domestic type."

  I blinked. "Why is that?"

  "The girls like their fancy clothes. Mama Yaga tries to keep up, but they always want something else in the appropriate color. Which is quite a bit of work for the three of them. It's why Yaga's always in rags, if you ask me. The girls are very demanding."

  "And they don't know how to work a loom?"

  Ivasik snorted. "There's a loom in the other room, but the girls won't touch it. They're more warriors than servants. They consider it beneath them."

  "Then I think I have a plan."

  Ivasik opened one eye. "Lycus knows how to work a loom?"

  "Nope," I said. "But I do."

  * * *

  "Lycus!" I shouted to Lycus' sleeping form, pitifully huddled up in a ball in one corner underneath some blankets. "Wake up!"

  That's when I discovered that my ability to mind-speak was directly connected to the person's ability to receive it. Or to put it another way, the person had to be aware of me to hear what I was thinking. It was a dangerous limitation that I made a note of for future reference.

  Lycus, snoring away and whimpering every few seconds, didn't know I was there. So waking up Lycus was going to take a tactic a bit more direct. I clambered up the blanket…

  And nipped him on the nose.

  Lycus flailed, his hand coming up to strike at me. I scrambled off just in time for Lycus to smack himself in the face.

  "AAAH!" he yelped.

  "Shh!" At least he could hear me now.

  Lycus looked down, rubbing his nose. It was red, but I didn't break the skin. "What did you do that for?"

  "I needed you to wake up."

  "For what?" Lycus pulled his knees up to his chest. "Yaga's just going to eat me anyway."

  "No she's not. Not if you’re of use to her."

  Lycus looked at me sideways. "You have something in mind, don't you?"

  "Yep," I said. "Ivasik showed me where there's a loom. It hasn't been used in a long time." I pointed with my snout in the direction of what looked like a pile of garments. "It's in there."

  "So I'm going to use it to swing down from Yaga's hut? That's a great idea!"

  I shook my head. "Uh, no."

  "Use it to trip her when she comes in to eat me?"

  "No…"

  "Create a sling shot with it to fire a bolt of cold iron into her wicked heart?"

  "NO!" I paused. "None of those ideas would work. Mama Yaga would hunt us down easily. We've got to build some allies here first. She has to have a weakness, but we're not going to figure it out with any of those plans. So you're going to weave."

  I had to admit…just running away seemed very appealing. But I suspected there was no running away from Yaga.

  "Weave?" Lycus made his way over to the pile and dug out the loom. "I don't have the foggiest idea how to weave anything!"

  "I know," I said. "But I do. I used to weave, in another life."

  "I knew a fellow who used to weave," said Lycus. "Funny that." He looked at me curiously. "You remind me of him."

  "We can talk about that later. We only have a few hours and you need to get weaving."

  "You're talented, Scrap, but there's only so much even you can do. I can't learn to weave in a day."

  "We're going to start with something easy," I said. "We're going to start with a scarf."

  "A scarf…" Lycus looked around. The wheels were turning. He reached for a tattered knitted coat made of red wool. "I think we can make Eliana a beautiful scarf."

  "I'm sure we can," I said to Lycus. "But Nyx is a better choice."

  Lycus grunted. "If you say so, but I think Eliana—"

  "Eliana barely spoke two words to you," I snapped at him. He really was smitten with the girl. "Nyx is the reason we even know we're in danger. We need to make her happy."

  "Got it," said Lycus, nodding seriously. "Scarf for Nyx it is." He held up the red coat. "I guess we first have to take this apart, huh?"

  I shook my head. "We're not using that coat. This is Nyx we're talking about." I pointed with one paw at a shawl. "That's more her speed."

  "But it's all black," said Lycus, not getting it.

  "That's the idea," I said.

  * * *

  Morning came on us suddenly. Lycus never got a chance to sleep and neither did I. There simply wasn't time.

  The black scarf that Lycus had created under my tutelage was hardly a work of art. But we had woven threads from different black garments, some of silk, some of wool, some of other fabrics I couldn't identify. I used my teeth to pull out the threads, faster than any needle. Lycus shuttled them together. Once we got going, the work went quickly.

  But it was a learning process. Lycus would go for minutes without an error and then I would catch him making a mistake and we would have to pull it out and lose our progress. But we had finished by daybreak, and that was what mattered.

  A lithe blonde girl entered the room, her hair tousled and her eyes puffy from sleep.

  "Breakfast time," she said, rubbing her eyes. She walked out of the curtains from one side of the room, picked her way around the scraps of clothing, and right through the other side and out the curtain to the main room without pause.

  "That must be Dawn," I said.

  "Huh," said Lycus, whose own eyes were bloodshot from not sleeping. "I wonder if we kept her awake?" There had been a lot of wood knocking as Lycus worked the loom.

  "Not likely." I had ducked in and out of the main room and Lycus' room a few times to listen for any intruders and discovered that the barrier between two rooms was soundproof. As soon as the curtain was pulled closed, not a peep made it between the two rooms. The only exception seemed to be Yaga herself, who freely called to her stepdaughters from anywhere. It was another amazing feature of Yaga's home.

  "You need to wake up," I said to Lycus. "You have to wow Nyx."

  Poor Lycus. He shook his head and slapped his own face a few times. I doubt it helped.

  "Ready?"

  Lycus swallowed hard. "Ready."

  I scurried up his back and into his sleeve. We had rehearsed in the middle of the night how I would hide along with him, and with his cuffs rolled up I could comfortably hang beneath one arm with a good look at what he was seeing, most of the time. Then, once there were no eyes upon us, I would duck out and find another hiding place.

  "Let's go," I said.

  Lycus took a deep breath and pushed the curtain aside. Black scarf in hand, he entered the main room.

  Mama Yaga was stirring a pot as Lycus entered, and she looked up to smile benevolently at him. A bit like a shark smiling at a fish.

  "Hello, my young wolf," she said with a cackle.

  Lycus froze in his tracks. At first, I thought it was fear, but then I realized what the problem was: Nyx wasn't there.

  Dawn sat alone at the table. She didn't even bother to look at us, sc
ratching her long mane of hair.

  I started to mind-speak to Lycus to tell him to keep going, but then caught myself.

  Lycus took a few more halting steps.

  "I see you've brought something with you," said Yaga.

  I almost lost control of my bowels just then.

  Lycus almost frozen again. "Huh?" he asked.

  "The scarf."

  Lycus sat down and took another deep breath. "Oh, that. Yes."

  "Where did you get it?" asked Yaga, still stirring the pot.

  "I made it," said Lycus.

  Dawn looked up. "You made it?"

  Yaga arched a furry eyebrow. "Indeed." She tottered over, cradling a ladle full of soup. Dawn held out a wooden bowl and Yaga filled it for her. It smelled delicious.

  Lycus was practically drooling as he stared at the soup.

  Yaga went back and filled another ladle full. "Well don't just stand there boy, bring me your bowl."

  Before Lycus did as he was told, I decided it was time to transition to a new hiding space. His sleeve was close enough to the seat that I could make the leap. I hopped just as Lycus got up, banging his bowl on the table, which helped cover the noise of my impact as I overshot the seat, scrabbled off it, and landed on the hard wooden floor.

  Nobody seemed to notice. Odd noises were commonplace in Yaga's hut.

  I scrambled back towards the potted trees as Yaga focused on Lycus, who held his bowl out.

  "About time," whispered Ivasik, his looming yellow eyes staring down at me. The trees were also the cat's favorite hiding place.

  I about jumped out of my skin. I found little comfort in the fact that the cat saw fit to hide when Yaga was around as well.

  "Eat, eat," said Yaga. "We need to fatten you up! You're a little bony wolf, you are."

  She sat down, the lion-clawed chair practically purring as she lowered her bulk into it. Despite her age, she seemed ponderously heavy; not the weight of a fat person but of a great beast, all muscle rippling beneath her paper-like skin.

  Lycus needed no encouragement. He started eating his meal slowly but sped up as he dug into the meal. The boy had an endless appetite.

  "You should put the scarf down," said Dawn. "You'll get soup on it."

  Lycus looked up at Dawn, confused. Then he realized what she meant and slid the scarf off his shoulder onto the table. Yaga said nothing, watching the exchange silently as she sipped from her own bowl of soup.

  "You worked all last night to make that scarf?" asked Dawn.

  Lycus nodded between slurps.

  "You can't have slept much."

  Lycus allowed himself a half-smile and shook his head.

  "Were you cold?"

  Lycus thought a moment. "No, it's quite comfortable here." He looked carefully at Yaga when he said it. The boy was treating her like a mark. Once he thought of her that way, she seemed less fearsome.

  "Then why did you make the scarf?" asked Dawn.

  "Oh," Lycus put down the spoon. "I made it for Nyx."

  Dawn's eyes flashed. Yaga let out a low, rumbling chuckle.

  "For Nyx? Why?"

  Lycus considered his spoon carefully, as if it was a question of great import…just as I had coached him. Either that, or he was so delirious that he was struggling to think straight.

  "She was very kind to me," said Lycus.

  Dawn sniffed. "I'm sure. She's always had a fondness for strays."

  "Now Dawn…" began Yaga.

  "What does Nyx need a scarf for?" asked Dawn. "Did she tell you SHE was cold?"

  Lycus shook his head. "No," he said. "But I thought I would repay her. If she doesn't like it she can throw it away."

  "I'm sure she won't." I caught a glimpse of a flickering aura around Dawn that looked like the rays of the rising sun. When I focused on the glow was gone. "I'm sure she'll just go on and on about it, and just wear it all day and rub our noses in it."

  I realized the hut had stopped moving and settled down some time before dawn.

  Yaga poured Lycus another bowl full of soup. "Eat," she said quietly.

  "Would you like a scarf?" asked Lycus. "I'm sure I could make—"

  Dawn laughed. "This? This ugly black thing made of old clothes? Certainly not."

  "Right then." Lycus dug into his bowl.

  "But…" began Dawn. "If it were yellow and trimmed with gold, it would accentuate my blonde locks. I think that'd be very nice of you."

  Lycus nodded, still slurping. "I shall get right on it, milady."

  Dawn blushed. "Good." She seemed pleased with herself and flustered at the same time. "I look forward to it."

  Yaga sat back in the chair and folded her arms, watching them both.

  And just like that, we extended Lycus' lifespan another day.

  * * *

  Lycus' plan to create another scarf would have to wait. His fear of the hag was overwhelmed by sheer exhaustion. As soon as she left, he crawled into his bed of rags and fell asleep immediately. Eliana came out shortly after Dawn went to bed.

  "They're never in the same room together," said Ivasik. "I think they sleep in shifts."

  It took me awhile before I noticed that Will was missing. I was so grateful that he was quiet that it never occurred to me the reason he was quiet was because he simply wasn't there.

  The next morning, Will was back on the table.

  "Will?" I whispered. "Are you all right?"

  Will, whose features had been frozen in a look of surprise, suddenly changed his expression to a frown. "Define all right."

  "What happened to you? Where did Yaga take you?"

  Will shuddered, wobbling on the table. "She took me with her. On her…trips."

  "Where did she go?" Will was my best source of information about the outside world.

  Will glanced fearfully at the entrance. "She gets in her giant mortar and pushes it with a giant pestle."

  "A mortar?" I blinked. "Really?"

  "Really," said Will. "Yaga uses it to slide along the ground, like a sled. She poles it along with her pestle. It’s magic!"

  "And what is she doing out there?"

  Will looked over at the trees. "Seeds."

  "Seeds? Seeds for what?"

  "For her trees." Will seemed uncomfortable. "She plants them in front of the hut in the wee hours of the morning."

  "Where does she get these seeds?"

  "From the villages," said Will. "They were very angry with her."

  "Why?" I crept closer, cognizant that the chair might try to squash me if I got too close. "What is she doing to anger the villages?"

  Will's mouth opened and closed a few times. He was dreadfully afraid. "She goes into graveyards and…it's terrible!"

  Before I could ask more, Yaga entered the room and I scurried to my hiding place.

  Mama Yaga went out, scooping up Will, and left Eliana in charge. Eliana went off to her own room, humming to herself. I considered waking Lycus and just running for it, but I suspected there were magical defenses in place that would let her or Eliana know if we left.

  I ran over to Lycus and tried to wake him, but it was impossible, even with a well-placed nip. The boy was exhausted.

  Entering the main room again, I screwed up my courage and padded towards the chair.

  "Taking another run at the table are you?" asked Ivasik.

  "I'm considering it," I said.

  "Going to bribe me with more food?"

  I would have frowned at him if I had the face to do so. "Why?"

  "I could help," said Ivasik. "If you get me more meat."

  I shuddered at the thought. "No thanks. I'm thinking something a little less disgusting, like bread." There was a plate of bread just visible at the edge of the table.

  Ivasik snorted. "Bread? Bah!" He turned around and curled up on the floor. "This will be fun to watch."

  I was in a dilemma. The chair was going to swat me, of that I was sure. I had to get onto the table and get the bread.

  I took a step back to think. />
  All I needed was the bread OFF the table. I was so fixated on getting the bread myself that I hadn't thought of the obvious!

  I ran towards the chair.

  "The chair's too far away from the table," said Ivasik. "You'll never make it."

  I ignored him and bounded onto the leg of the chair. I scrambled up to the seat and then hurled myself off it without stopping, right towards the table. It was too far for me to jump, just as Ivasik said. But it was close enough for the chair to reach…

  WHAM! One of the wooden paws stretched out and took a swipe at me. It missed, but it struck the table.

  "That was close," said Ivasik. "The next time it's going to—"

  I ran up again, leaping along the legs of the chair. This time I could swear the entire chair moved, its four lion-like legs stabilizing it as it took a steadier swipe. It managed to catch the end of my tail, which spun me across the floor. I landed, a little dizzy but unhurt.

  "You're crazy," said Ivasik, tail flicking. "Why don't you just give up?"

  "Give up?" I said, panting. I darted towards the chair again. "I'm just getting started."

  This time the chair was ready. The feet scrambled out of the way as I dove towards them. It took all my ratly might to grab onto it. The crossbar bent in an attempt to dislodge me, but I hurled myself up at it again and bounded off.

  WHAM! The wooden paws just grazed my fur, but it hit solidly into the table. If I didn't know any better, I’d think I was making the chair mad.

  There was a wobbling sound as the dish on the table spun from the impact. It started to fall…

  The chair's arm snatched out to steady it, but a sliced piece of bread fell off and flipped end over end. I dove for it and, leaping, snatched it out of the air. The chair was so preoccupied with keeping the plate on the table that it didn't bother to stop me. Or perhaps it wasn't smart enough to know how.

  Ivasik watched in surprise. "I don't believe you just pulled that off. You must really like bread."

  I dragged the piece of bread out the front entrance. "It's not for me."

  Sure enough, the huge hound was waiting outside.

  "Hello," I said.

  The dog lifted its huge head, bloodshot eyes fixing on me. "You're back. And still alive, I see."

  "Yes," I said. "And I've brought you a gift."

  The dog slowly stirred to his feet. His ribs were showing. "A gift? For me?"