Diary of Anna the Girl Witch 2: Wandering Witch

by Max Candee

  All the while, I listened for any unusual sounds. Eventually, I was rewarded for my careful vigil. Granny’s bed squeaked. I heard muttering, similar to what I’d heard the night before as she had gone back to bed. It was the exact opposite of her loud, rambling rants toward the TV: soft, indistinct, scarcely more than a few muttered words.

  “Insomnia … insomnia … I can’t sleep at all,” she murmured, shuffling into the corridor.

  I silently got out of bed and crept after her. I was barefoot and tried to step gently so as not to make any noise at all. I pressed myself against the wall, desperate to stay in the shadows.

  She was heading for the end of the corridor. There was nothing there, just the wall. I wondered if I’d been wrong to suspect her of anything. Maybe Granny was just walking around at night because she couldn’t sleep. I was disappointed and prepared my excuses for when she turned around and headed back my way. I opened my mouth to say that I was up for water again, but … suddenly she spoke.

  “Open, open, magic door!” she said in a steady, confident voice completely different from her earlier mutterings. Then she sat down and stood up three times, danced the hula, and burped.

  And all of a sudden, a door sprang open in the wall at the end of that corridor. My eyes widened in surprise (and relief). I hadn’t been paranoid after all. Baba Yaga had been up to something!

  Behind the door was a massive, ornate, gilded cage, suspended in midair even though it wasn’t attached to anything. A man was sitting behind the bars, his feet bound by thin gold chains linked to the cage’s floor.

  “Good evening, Koscheyushka!” Baba Yaga exclaimed. “Missed me?” She made a kissing noise and giggled. “We have to quit meeting like this, you all chained up in a cage.”

  “Greetings, old woman,” the man replied in a collected tone of voice. “How is my daughter doing? And when shall I see her?”

  “She is doing very well.” Baba Yaga paused. “I’m taking much better care of her than you or Sereda would ever have managed to. That much is certain.”

  Koschey didn’t take the bait. “And what is she like? Tell me.”

  Baba Yaga puffed up with a measure of pride as she responded. “Well behaved. Helpful. Nice. Clever. Not at all like my daughter, and nothing like you. I don’t know where she gets it from — she must’ve taken after my spirit.”

  My father laughed. “She’s nice, you say? That doesn’t sound like you at all. The cleverness I’ll grant you. But while you’re very many things, nice is not one of them.”

  Granny stood silently for a moment. “I think I might love her.”

  “You can’t think you love someone, you silly old bat. That’s not how it works. When you love someone, you know, deep in your heart. Not that you have one.”

  “Stop it,” she snapped. “I forgot that you consider yourself some kind of philosopher. I’m tired of it. I don’t know why I still put up with you after all these years. I don’t know why I didn’t just hex you to smithereens when I’d first set eyes on you and heard your particular brand of madness.”

  “What exactly do you want me to stop? You’re the one who came to visit me. I never invited you anywhere. I didn’t ask you to come to my cage tonight. I never asked you to visit the kingdom of the dead. But that never worried you much. You rather like showing up uninvited.”

  “Yes, yes, now stop. Let’s return to our discussion. Your daughter’s lovely.”

  “How long are you going to have her stay with you?”

  “I rather thought I might keep her here with me forever, actually.”

  Koschey stared. “Ah, but you are one twisted creature! You never cease to amaze me, even after all these years. What if she wants to leave? Why would you force somebody you claim to love to stay with you forever?”

  “To keep me company. I get lonely here, all by myself.”

  “Ha!” He snorted. Then he smiled sardonically. “You have me.”

  “You’re so stupidly stubborn that I can’t even let you out of your cage. And you’re boring. We’ve known each other too long. I know your best stories and your worst jokes. We’re as bad as an old married couple now.”

  “I think you fail to understand how feelings work and how marriage works,” Koschey said. “For starters, in a marriage, it’s generally considered bad manners for one spouse to lock the other up. If you’ve decided to replace me with my progeny, are you planning on releasing me?”

  “I’d release you in a heartbeat.” Baba Yaga gave one of her little chuckles. “But only if you agree to join my work.”

  My father was silent for a while. He didn’t sound nearly as snarky when he said, “What are you talking about now, old woman?”

  “I’ve come up with a plan, but I need your assistance for it to work, Koschey. If you agree to help me, I’ll let you and your daughter go free. On the condition that you come regularly for Sunday teas, of course. We’ll eat my pies and—”

  “Focus, you old bat! This isn’t the time for your domestic fantasies.” He was no longer laughing. “I was married to your own daughter, for goodness sake. She’s the one I’ll always love; not you.”

  I pressed myself closer to the wall and inched forward so I could see them better. Baba Yaga stood with her back to me, and she blocked my line of sight to my father. A strange thing was happening. From where I stood, she now seemed a young woman with a vigorous body and a thick head of long, flame-red hair. For the first time, I saw the powerful witch I’d heard about rather than the frail old woman with her crazy mutterings and ranting at the television. For the first time, too, I could see some resemblance between her and me.

  “Fine, I’ll tell you,” said Baba Yaga. “Even though you’re interrupting me like an annoying mosquito.”

  “Go on then.”

  “You remember the old days, eh, Koschey?” she asked, walking to the cage and stroking its thick metal bars. “Fewer people lived in this world, yet you and I were so much stronger. A paradox.”

  “Nothing paradoxical about it,” said Koschey. “They loved us. Or hated us… No matter; they felt something about us.”

  “Not only felt. They feared us. Every night, they told stories about us to their children, who then spent hours being afraid. They sang songs about us. They drew pictures of us. Some even prayed to us. There was a town…” Baba Yaga signed.

  “Ivanovo,” Koschey said. “I remember that town where they venerated you.”

  “That was before the Christians expelled the witches of Ivanovo.” My grandmother’s voice trembled with deep, potent pain. “All that remains is a song about that town having too many women without husbands. And no one remembers why … no one remembers me.”

  Sadness permeated Dad’s voice when he replied. “In those days, these chains of yours would be nothing to me. This cage would be nothing. I understand what you’re saying, old woman. And?”

  She reached inside the cage and caressed Dad’s hands. “And I’m proposing to you that we bring that time back. The time of our power. That we show them what really matters.”

  “Show whom, and how?”

  “There are some powerful leeches out there in the world. They consume people’s emotions as we do — but instead of fear, they control with greed. You know, I have that magic screen in my bedroom. I’ve been watching it for a year now; it shows me true pictures from the world outside. And … and sometimes I even catch myself wanting a cell phone.”

  “Leeches, then,” Koschey said.

  “Yes. Leeches. People’s emotions used to feed religion, so we paid the scientists and misbelievers to ridicule it. People used to worship their empires, so we stirred wars and revolutions to bring those down. People used to adore powerful leaders, so we bankrolled dissidents and faked history records to make those leaders seem monsters. And we had some good times, eh, Koscheyushka? You remember?”

  “I remember. The times of Chaos. The good times.”

  “Oh, the Chaos! The superstitions, the fear and the pain, the search f
or magic solutions to people’s woes. You could bewitch anyone! And now we have the leeches of greed in control.” She sighed. “The strongest of all. How do you fight them off to bring back Chaos?”

  “I don’t know, Yoga,” Dad said.

  My ears perked. Did he just call her Yoga? I must have misheard.

  “But I know — and I need your help.” She lowered her voice almost to a whisper. Try as I might, I could only hear bits of what she said next: “Ghosts … and cities… All the people … their cars and diamonds … life and death!” She cried out the last two words, making them ring in the silence of the sleeping house. Then she whispered, “Only then … and your daughter … and you.”

  Oh, what was she talking about? She sounded mad. The time I’d spent at her place had lured me into thinking she was almost normal — a lonely old granny who filled the silence around her by playing the television too loudly and yelling at it. I had almost forgotten about girls having been kidnapped and held in the Montmorency Castle dungeons for her, Mom having died because of her, Dad having been held captive. Was I that naïve, that desperate to find some semblance of a family that I’d accept everything? Or had she bewitched me?

  My father echoed my thoughts. “You’re insane,” he said with quiet, terrifying anger. Suddenly it didn’t seem so unreasonable for Granny to keep him locked up in a cage. “There’s no way it would work. Love, life, death… Leave these ideas alone.”

  After a pause, Granny responded — and to my surprise, her voice was full of sadness. “You’re not listening to me, Koschey. It’s not only about our feeding. I can make people understand. Think about saving the very foundation of this world, the link between the people, us, and them.” She pointed a finger upward, and her hand was the smooth-skinned, slender hand of a young person. “I can do it with or without your help.”

  “You assume too much,” Koschey said. “You assume you know how it all works.”

  “Don’t you know?” she asked in an intonation so soft and vulnerable that a wave of sympathy for her washed over me.

  “Oh, drop your tricks,” my father grumbled. “They no longer work on me.”

  “They don’t?” Baba Yaga said in a soft, alluring voice. I didn’t know how my father would be able to resist.

  He sighed. “You’re a survivor, I’ll give you that. You’re also an angry old witch. There, behind this beautiful illusion, is saggy flesh, rotten breath, and thinning hair.”

  Baba Yaga laughed. “That’s very true. And you’re a silly old man who can’t keep his temper.”

  Koschey said nothing. It seemed they were replaying an old argument for which he had run out of words.

  “I like to see you angry,” she said. “Watching you turn into a tornado — oh, what fun! Now I have my TV for entertainment, though. So really — what need do I have of you? I’ve seen your tornado act a thousand times before. And you never say anything interesting. Just that same old pretend philosophy. But the TV… Do you know, the people on it even change their clothes from time to time. A lot, actually. Not like you, still wearing that silly robe you’d had on back when I’d first met you. You’re getting outdated. What use are you, anyway? I haven’t gotten a single new idea out of talking to you, all this time you’ve been here. But the TV… Oh, the two of them give me interesting ideas. That TV. And your little daughter.”

  “Get out of my sight,” said my father in a tired, colorless voice. A blast of cold wind burst from his cage, making it sway madly. It pushed Baba Yaga out of his small room and slammed the door behind her. The wind blew with such force that it threw me down the corridor. Panicking, I remembered the Nimble Feet spell and was able to run through the shadows almost noiselessly before my grandmother could see me.

  I had seen and heard enough. Without a glance back, I crept into my room and slid into my bed. Tomorrow I had to find a way to visit my father.

  My grandmother was insane — and she had way too much power bubbling inside her. That combination couldn’t possibly lead to anything good.

  Chapter 14

  Dear Diary,

  I need to find a way to talk to Dad. Now that I know where he is, I just have to find a way to distract my grandmother.

  I can’t believe I’m going to be able to talk to someone from my family — really from my family, I mean. He’ll be able to tell me more about Mom. Though I don’t know how much time we’ll have for catching up, because there’s a far more pressing issue on my mind: What is Baba Yaga up to?

  So many things to do! I’m trying to sort them out in my mind. Figure out a way to set Dad free. Make sure Lauraleigh and Uncle Misha are safe. And Egor. I think I remember them now. How could I not think of them for so long? How could I forget what we’d done, where I’d left them? That old woman is bewitching me, and I’m so gullible. But not anymore.

  I must stop whatever it is my grandmother’s planning to do…

  Then maybe, one day… Oh, but I’m scared to even think about it. Maybe one day, I’ll be part of a real family.

  Because a father is already a family, even if he’s alone. It’s wonderful, just thinking about it.

  * * *

  In the morning, I found a note from Squire on my pillow: I found out a lot. I’ll visit you right after sunset. Wait for me out on the porch.

  That was encouraging although a little late; I already knew where my father was. But I wanted Squire to come back to me. At least he’d keep me company when I went to help Dad.

  I had a plan — and although it was a complicated plan, I felt positive about it. As we ate breakfast in the kitchen that morning, I was smiling, imagining how I’d soon be able to get time alone with my father.

  Baba Yaga noticed that my mood had improved. She looked at me over her cup of tea and grunted, “What are you so cheerful about?” So much for encouraging her granddaughter’s good spirits.

  “I’m not particularly cheerful, Granny. I just had a good night’s sleep.”

  “Really? Well, that’s good then.” With a sigh, she launched into a new set of complaints. “I wish I was that lucky. I suffer from terrible insomnia; must be old age.”

  Now there was a possibility I hadn’t thought of before. What if I could sedate her for a few hours? “I know some herbal teas that can help people fall asleep,” I said. “Why don’t we find out which herbs we need, and I’ll make some for you this evening.”

  “Find out?” Baba Yaga looked at me with her mouth open. “I know more about herbs than anyone else. Who’d we find out from, if not from me?”

  “Oh,” I said, defeated.

  She smiled. “Some chamomile tea could help.”

  Grandmother stood and opened her cupboard. I got up and peeked over her shoulder. The shelves brimmed with faded cartons, jars of herbs, and stranger things. Every item seemed meticulously marked, but some of the markings were so old and washed out that I couldn’t even guess what they said. I did make out the words Dragon Blood on a glass jar of black liquid, Dried Mice Tail Powder on another, and Hare’s Heart on an old box. I wasn’t sure if it was an actual heart, because the box was sealed.

  Somehow, I imagined that it was.

  Eventually, Granny found and pulled out a cotton bag that read Chamomile and handed it to me.

  “Since you had this bright idea, why don’t you make your old grandmother a glass or two of tea before bedtime tonight?” Her intonation was a little sharp, like she was annoyed with me.

  “Um… Granny,” I said slowly, “I’ve also heard that too much TV isn’t very good for sleeping. Maybe you should get some fresh air today. Take a walk in the forest. So you’ll sleep better.”

  She cocked her head and looked at me with narrowed eyes. Then she shrugged and said, “You might be right. I’ve been cooped up here for ages. Maybe I ought to go pay a visit to my neighbor.”

  I felt my eyes widen. “You have a neighbor?”

  “I sure do. Old Leshiy.”

  She must have seen that my surprise was genuine. I hadn’t expected h
er to have any neighbors dotted about the forest, especially since she’d kept complaining about how lonely it was here. I wasn’t sure who this Leshiy was, and I certainly couldn’t picture my weird grandmother paying a social call — or having friends in the first place.

  With a bemused chuckle, Granny clarified the situation for me. “You don’t know who Leshiy is?”

  “Not at all.”

  “And how could you,” she said, rolling her eyes extravagantly, “with those parents of yours sending you away to some far-off place… When, instead of a talented witch, they’ve turned you into a clueless little girl. Into an empty shell.”

  This was the first time I’d heard her mention my parents. I wondered if it was a good time to ask her about them. She said they had sent me away, but from what I’d heard, she’d chased them away.

  “Well, vnuchechka, Leshiy is a sylvan. I hope you know what a sylvan is, at least.”

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t.” I pulled my feet up and hugged my knees. I looked around the living room, at the massive bed with colorful blankets, the huge TV, the cobwebbed, wooden walls. What was I doing here? There was something about my father … or was it a search for my mother? I wasn’t really sure. “You’re right. I’m an empty shell. Aren’t I?”

  Granny gave me a crooked smile. “It’s not your fault, Anna Sophia. You’re a clever girl, and if you listen to me carefully, you’ll be fine.”

  “Thank you, Granny.” I grinned back at her. “I’ve never had a grandmother before, have I? It feels great having you.” It did — didn’t it? I wasn’t sure if I was being honest. I vaguely remembered that I had to make her feel I was trustworthy enough for her to leave me alone for a while. At the same time, part of me was growing to love this nice old woman. She does love me, I thought.

  “No need to get sentimental, Anna Sophia,” Granny snapped, although I could tell she was pleased with my show of affection. “Pay attention and learn. A sylvan is a forest creature. He is a tree, actually.”