by Max Candee
I shuddered and headed for the little gate. At every step, it felt like the skulls’ eyes were following me. Which was impossible.
I ran the last few steps to the gate and was about to open the latch when the skulls began to whirl about. The two nearest ones flew off their posts and pounced on me. I screamed and batted them off, and I dashed back toward the house. The two skulls were chasing me, biting at my heels like little demon dogs.
“Leave me alone!” I shouted, kicking at them, unable to call up the familiar energy to scare them off with a good blast. “Leave me alone! Shoo!”
I didn’t know if they could actually do anything to me. They were just making a racket, and I was terrified that my grandmother would come out onto the porch and figure out that I had been trying to escape.
“Shh!” I said to the skulls, putting a finger to my lips. “Stop it. I won’t go anywhere; I promise.”
The skulls continued to clatter around me as I reached the steps, but as I began to climb them, the chicken feet gave a sudden lurch and I was thrown to the ground. Faint applause from inside the house accompanied my fall.
I winced, realizing I’d be bruised from this escapade.
The skulls returned to their posts, their eye sockets still fixed firmly on me. I stood up, rubbed my arms, and went inside, struggling for breath.
The game show host was instructing a new contestant, making the audience laugh and applaud. Baba Yaga sat in bed, watching the screen as if nothing had happened. Did she know what had gone on outside?
I flopped into my armchair.
“Had enough fun?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I said softly. “It was pretty boring.”
“Being alone can get boring,” she admitted, turning to look at me with her icicle eyes. “I think that’s why I started watching TV so much.”
This is my chance, I thought. Maybe she’ll talk about Mom. “Why were you alone, Granny?” I asked quickly.
She waved at me dismissively and turned back to the screen. “Everyone’s alone, Anna Sophia. We’re all just watching each other on a screen in the end. You never really know anyone.”
That’s it, I thought. She is the strangest person I’ve ever met. How could she claim to be alone when I was right here with her? How could I get anywhere with her?
“By the way,” I said. “I couldn’t feel any of my magic powers out there. And I don’t feel them now. Isn’t that strange?”
Baba Yaga chewed on her lower lip, blew her nose into a fresh napkin, and smiled. “Nothing strange. I took it all.”
I stared at her, speechless. “You did what?”
With a groan, my grandmother climbed down off her massive bed and stood facing me. The translucent gray skin on her old face hung around deep worry lines, and her gray eyes had a weary, sunken appearance. “I took your energy,” she said. “You don’t mind, do you?”
I felt my eyes widen as my heart accelerated. “Why would you do that?”
“It’s all your fault, anyway,” she said, still staring into my eyes. “You released those orphan girls selected for me. I’d have eaten well for a while. But now I only have you until the Black Horseman finds someone else for me.”
“Wait, wait,” I protested, raising my hands.
“Well, I’m not literally going to eat you,” she continued. “I hardly eat any meat, anyway. Nasty things, those animals, with their illnesses and worries and pains. But young girls, once in a while, for a feast…” She licked her lips and gave me a sinister wink. “Not you, though. You’re far too useful.”
“Oh, Granny,” was all I could say. The room felt smaller around me, as if the walls had pressed together a little.
Suddenly the TV switched to a music channel, and a young woman began to sing “All about That Bass.” Baba Yaga leaped into the air with a wild yelp. Her bulky clothes swung about her, filling the air with her old person’s smell.
I stepped back. “I… I … need to go outside.” I needed air. I was about to faint or panic and run — and hang the consequences.
“Yes!” she yodeled. “Let’s go out!”
“Oh please,” I whispered, though I didn’t know whom I was pleading to. “Please, please, please…” I had never been so frightened.
Baba Yaga grabbed my hand and dragged me to the porch outside. The house, probably responding to some unheard command, lowered itself to the ground. The rocking chair began to rock madly. The black-and-white cat meowed sharply again and again — but at least it wasn’t changing into a hare. The skulls rattled on the fence, and the music from the TV grew unnaturally loud.
“Let’s dance, Anna Sophia!” Baba Yaga bellowed, dragging me around with rough, jerky motions. “Dance!” She pushed me into her garden of dead plants.
I didn’t want to dance with this dangerous witch, but her gray eyes, hypnotic and irresistible, were locked on mine. I tried to pull my hands out of her grasp, but she only laughed and held me stronger. Shaking her derriere in rhythm with the music from the TV, she pulled me left and then dragged me right, twisting my body from side to side, twirling me around. I could barely stay on my feet, unable to grasp any method to her mad outburst of movement, her scornful laughter, her vitriolic screams, but knowing it was there.
“Feel it!” she yelled. “Feel it rise through the soles of your feet!”
“Feel what?” I asked, desperately trying to free myself.
“Stop fighting me, you young fool,” she said. “Your grandmother won’t do anything to hurt you. Feel it! Feel it float up from the earth!”
“Feel what?”
“Everything! Life! Power! The world!”
She forced me to spin, sidestep, lean backward and forward. She made me jump, and because she was holding my hands, we were jumping unnaturally high. Maybe as high at the golden peacock whirling in the wind on top of the roof, maybe even higher. I couldn’t tell because the world was becoming unreal around me, the colors more intense, the air lighter and sweeter. A powerful wind arose, making the trees around us dance as well.
Warmth began to spread from the soles of my shoes up along my skin, a jittery sort of warmth like hundreds of hot ants crawling.
I yelled in alarm, but Baba Yaga only laughed. “Do you feel the energy, Anna Sophia?” she screeched. “Do you feel the power of this land?”
Yes — I did feel that energy. And I wished for this grotesque ballet to stop. She let me go, and immediately, a bolt of lava rose from the earth and traveled up my spine, making me cry in surprise and fear. The heat spread itself to all my limbs and into my head, filling each cell of my body with tingling and a sort of electric buzz.
“Draw in as much as you can and hold it in your heart!” my grandmother screamed right into my face.
My limbs began to vibrate as if I’d plugged myself into a wall socket. The energy — I knew what it was now, an infusion of my stolen power — was so potent and fresh that my spine arched, throwing my head backward. I felt like a fishing line, stiff and frozen, pulled taut by the jaws of some mighty monster.
Opening my mouth wide, I screamed with all the power I had in me and fell flat on the soft earth. But I could not rest. The energy was still flooding into me as if that earth were a giant battery charger, making me jump around like a like a ball suspended in the air by the jet of a fountain.
Then it all became quiet — and only the shadow inside my heart laughed gleefully.
“What was that, Granny?” I asked, looking at the sky above. My magic was back; I felt its familiar hum.
“Some energy practice. A witch should know how to draw power from the land.” She paused and asked, “Do you have a magic wish, Anna Sophia? Something you tried before but couldn’t do?”
“Yes. To find my father.”
She snickered. “Apart from that.”
I sat up and then stood, swaying slightly from side to side. “That bread loaf,” I said. “I couldn’t make it appear before.” I rummaged in my pockets, but I couldn’t find the crumbs Egor had given me. I shrugged. Did
it really matter whether I had those crumbs or not? I mean, they were just crumbs I’d picked up. It’s not as if they were a precious gift from a friend or anything. After all, I didn’t have any friends. What on earth did I even mean by the name “Egor”?
Anyway, it was about time Granny taught me to use my magic properly, after all those years of promising to. Filling my lungs with air, I prepared to say my magic phrase.
Baba Yaga raised a hand. “Wait. For the bread loaf to appear, did you jump in place thrice, pulling yourself by your nose?”
I shook my head. “What? Of course not. Are you crazy?”
“And besides, did you chase a cockroach while running on your hands and feet and singing ‘Jingle Bells?’”
“Granny!” I rolled my eyes.
Baba Yaga put her hands on her hips. “Ha! I knew it. Of course your spells didn’t work. Now do as I say.”
I gave her a sidelong glance.
“Go on. Jump thrice, pulling yourself by the nose. Then find a cockroach — the king, mind you. Chase him while you sing ‘Jingle Bells.’” The appalling thing was she seemed perfectly serious.
The energy tingled inside me, urging me to act. The mad dance of a few minutes ago had left me warm and shocked, and maybe it had made me a little more open to experimentation than usual. With a sigh, I jumped up three times, pulling myself by the nose.
“Hey!” she yelled. “Do it again. Now with feeling!”
I repeated the silly jumps.
“You won’t get anywhere like that. What kind of witch are you?” She laughed and mimicked my half-hearted jumps. “This is how you do it. Look!” Grabbing the tip of her nose with both hands, she pulled on it — making it at least twice as long — and jumped a whole meter in the air three times. “Now you!”
I shook my head. What was I doing here in this Siberian forest, outside this mad woman’s house on its daft chicken legs? A faint memory stirred and disappeared before I could register it.
But there was nothing to be done. I decided to just enjoy the silly practice. Closing my eyes to visualize the bread loaf, I repeated Baba Yaga’s actions as best I could.
“Good!” she cried out. “Now find the cockroach king. There are plenty where the house likes to sit.”
What did a king cockroach look like, anyway? I approached the house. Might as well go through with it, I thought as I yelled in my best commanding voice, “Get up, you slovenly chicken!”
The house, visibly shocked at my rudeness, shuddered and got up.
I pushed away the thought that it could get back at me by dropping down on top of my head when I was beneath it. I walked ahead until I found a whole nest of fat red cockroaches. They scurried away. Not losing a moment, I followed the largest of them, singing “Jingle Bells” as loudly as I could. When the song was over, I yelled, “Manna from the skies!” I had to keep from rolling my eyes again. The whole experience was nothing but idiocy.
“Done,” I said.
“And there you are,” Baba Yaga said behind me.
A hard, maybe mocking edge to her voice made me pay attention. Feeling all my blood rush to my face, I turned around. On the central flagstone sat the black-and-white hare, and on a plate before him rested a large, round, steaming loaf of rye bread. Walking toward it, I seemed to remember that I had just finished baking it — right before we came out for the insane dance.
“But I baked it myself,” I said, scowling. “What’s so magical about it?”
My grandmother smiled. “Did you now? Did you actually bake it, or is your mind suggesting an explanation so you don’t go barking mad?”
I stopped, shocked by the idea. What she had said was surprisingly similar to how Egor had explained the instant conjuring of things from thin air. Wait, I thought. Who’s Egor? Still, I wasn’t about to give up.
“Those floating hands of yours baked it and brought it here,” I said, but the sarcastic look on Granny’s face had told me the answer before I even finished the sentence. “No, huh?”
I broke off a small piece of bread and chewed it. It was delicious.
* * *
That night, after we’d eaten more of my bread with some borsch and had tea with pastries, Granny fell asleep watching her TV.
I decided to take another risk. I was going to wake up Squire. Strangely, I’d almost forgotten about him, but there were so many hands floating about that another one didn’t seem special. But earlier that day, I’d found him when I was getting a clean shirt out of my pack. I smiled when I found him. It had been so kind of Granny to let me have one of her hands.
I found some old yellowed paper in the back of the kitchen cupboard and fished a pen out of my backpack. I didn’t want to talk to Squire in the kitchen in front of the other hands. Instead, I crept out onto the porch and woke him up there.
Squire seemed excited when he came to life. He was bobbing up and down far more than usual, but at least this time he didn’t try to tickle me.
“Hi there,” I said, happy to have a friend. Granny was right; being alone was hard — but at least I had Squire.
He wrote on the paper, Hello Anna Sophia! I missed you!
I smiled and asked, “So is this where you’re from?”
Yes, I know this place well. He paused and then wrote carefully, Have you seen Knight, Anna Sophia?
I shook my head; I hadn’t seen any pairless hand in Baba Yaga’s house.
Squire seemed to lose his excitement a little.
“I promise I’ll keep a lookout, Squire. But in the meantime, I need your help.”
He bobbed and then wrote, Anything for you.
“I need you to find out where Baba Yaga keeps my dad.”
I’ll do my best, he wrote.
I smiled. “I’m going to miss you while you’re gone. I’ve already missed you. It’s hard to be alone.”
Squire nodded slowly in understanding.
That made me feel bad. If anyone knew about loneliness, it was a pairless hand. “I’m sorry. I promise I will look for Knight.”
Then I watched as Squire scuttled off.
I sighed, crumpled up the paper, and stuffed it into my backpack. I didn’t want to lose this conversation with one of my few friends.
I went back inside and fell into a troubled sleep.
Chapter 13
Dear Diary,
I had been waiting to meet my father for a long time, but I guess I never knew quite what to expect until I actually saw him. Especially since meeting my grandmother has taught me to expect absolutely anything from my family!
Luckily, I found out that my dad is the best in the whole world. Now I just have to figure out a way to set him free. It’s good that I’m his daughter and Baba Yaga’s granddaughter — I think their spirits are playing inside me. I’m sure I have a few tricks up my sleeve, and it’s quite likely that soon my dad and I will be a proper family.
* * *
I woke up later that night feeling thirsty. It was dark, either the middle of the night or early morning. I decided to go to the kitchen to fetch some water. I stood up, crept down the corridor, and … walked right into my grandmother.
“What are you doing?” she asked, seemingly as startled as I was. Her voice was harsher and more suspicious than usual. She took a quick step back, and her eyes darted around. She appeared unusually defensive.
This was odd. Odder than I’d come to expect from her, and that was really saying something. If she couldn’t sleep, why wasn’t she watching late-night TV reruns? That seemed more her style. What was she doing walking around the house in the middle of the night? She rarely moved about, even in the daytime.
“I just wanted to get some water, Granny,” I said.
“Then get on with it!” She seemed irritated, and she muttered something incoherent as she shuffled back to bed.
I watched her retreat down the hall; then I walked into the kitchen, which I surveyed carefully. Everything there seemed the same as before.
Why had she been up at this ti
me of night? I wondered if one of the hands would be able to tell me. But none of them seemed to be around; she must have put them all to sleep too.
How fortunate they were. I didn’t manage to fall asleep again, even after I had curled up under the blanket once more. Maybe Baba Yaga had also been fetching some water or grabbing a snack in the middle of the night.
But there was also the possibility that she had been visiting my father. The thought thrilled me. Maybe I could follow her and find him!
I took care not to get too excited, though. I had to be vigilant and make sure that I didn’t do anything too rushed.
In the morning, I started the day exactly as I had the one before. I went to the kitchen and fetched tea and bagels for our breakfast. Granny turned the TV on as she always did. Then she started her usual rant about the clothes of the breakfast show presenter being different from those the day before.
“Who needs that many outfits, Anna Sophia? What do you think she does with the ones she wore before? Does she just chuck them out into the street?”
I alternated between nodding and shrugging. I wasn’t listening to her at all. I was formulating a plan.
I knew that Squire wouldn’t be able to come during the day; as the only pairless hand, he’d be way too conspicuous. It was worth waiting to see if he’d come at night — but at the same time, it was better to work out something I could do if he didn’t. I didn’t know when Squire would return, after all. It might not be for a few nights, and I wasn’t willing to wait that long. Not when her previous night’s wanderings suggested that Granny was up to something.
The day dragged by. Not having slept well, I was tired. I was careful to stay awake the whole time, though, because I was worried that if I fell asleep, I’d miss my chance. I drank a lot of tea, hoping it would keep me up — or at least, I’d awaken to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. Even when Baba Yaga went to bed and finally turned off the TV, I lay with my eyes open. To stay awake, I sang songs in my head and told myself the most exciting stories I could still remember from my childhood. Still, it was a challenge; I was seriously sleepy.