“I don’t know how she can eat liverwurst for breakfast,” Bella said with a shudder. She took a bite of her own toast, mercifully liver sausage free.
Liam did the same with his own toast, and a smear of marmalade clung to his bottom lip. Barbara wiped it away with her thumb and licked it off. “I hate liverwurst,” he said. “Disgusting stuff.”
“It’s better than the sardines from last week,” Barbara reminded him. “I couldn’t even stand to have breakfast in the same room with her. I like sardines well enough, but not before eight a.m.”
Liam nodded in agreement and took a sip of coffee, then looked at his mug dubiously before sniffing it and taking another sip. “What the heck is in the coffee this morning? I finally got used to the hint of blue roses, but this is . . . well, I don’t know what it is.” He took another mouthful anyway.
Barbara stuck her long nose down near the top of her own mug, smelled it, then took a sip too. “I’m not sure. Cinnamon and something else. Nutmeg, maybe? Or cardamom? I think the coffeemaker is in a snit this morning. Sorry.” It wasn’t always easy living inside a sentient hut, no matter what it looked like these days. She felt a burning desire to return home to their old farmhouse; she’d only just gotten used to spending most of her time in a house that didn’t talk back. Well, other than the ghost, of course, but she was mostly pretty laid-back. You know, for a ghost.
Barbara sighed. It was weird being homesick. Having spent her entire life traveling around inside her home, it was a strange new experience. Well, at least Liam was with her. For now.
“What was that big sigh for?” he asked, giving up on his coffee and putting it down on the counter with a thud. “We already have two of the three impossible tasks done and we’ve got more than a week left. I would think you’d be a little happier.”
Barbara rolled her eyes at him. “I’m a Baba Yaga. I do two impossible things before breakfast most days. Besides, those were the easy ones compared to the one we’ve got left. I don’t even know where to start on that.”
Bella gave her a sympathetic look.
“Oh, come on,” Liam said. “All we have to do is find a Human whose heart is so pure that he or she has never spoken a lie. How hard could that be?”
Barbara almost choked on her toast. After spitting crumbs out, she managed to say, “Are you kidding?” When Liam still looked baffled, Barbara said, “Honey, you are one of the most honest people I know. Are you going to tell me you have never told a lie?”
He opened his mouth and she added, “Never lied on a tax return? Never called into work sick when you really just wanted to go fishing?” When Liam shook his head, Barbara went on. “Never told a woman she looked pretty when she didn’t? Never told your parents a tiny fib as a child?”
Liam’s face fell as he suddenly comprehended the magnitude of their task. “But everyone does that. What kid doesn’t tell a fib or two? Who doesn’t tell a white lie to be polite or spare someone’s feelings?”
“That’s my point,” Barbara said. “Good intentions or bad, Humans lie. Most of them on a daily basis.”
“Oh,” he said, sounding glum. But then he perked up. “But wait, you’ve told me more than once that Baba Yagas don’t lie. And you may be a witch with amazing powers, but you’re technically still Human, right?”
“Mostly Human, yes. But what I said was that Baba Yagas try not to tell lies. We’re all too aware of the power of words, so we try to use ours carefully. Most of the time we’ll avoid giving a straight answer or say something that distracts from the actual question. Heck, I’ve been known to set things on fire just to divert someone from a question I couldn’t answer.”
She chuckled at a memory he was probably better off not knowing about and winked at Bella, who was known both for putting out fires and accidentally starting them when she got upset.
“So you haven’t told a lie!” Liam said, pointing at her triumphantly.
“Of course I have, you goose,” Barbara said. “Unfortunately, there are times in every Baba’s career when it is simply unavoidable. Besides which, I realize that it was a very long time ago and a little bit hard to imagine, but I too was once a child. I distinctly remember an incident in which I spilled the porridge on the fire and told my mentor Baba that Chudo-Yudo had done it.”
“She made me go outside and sit in the mud,” Chudo-Yudo said, his voice muffled by a large bone that was more inside his mouth than out. “And don’t think I’ve forgotten about that.”
“Oh,” Liam said, his shoulders slumping. “If even Baba Yagas lie when they are children, how on earth are we going to find someone Human who has never told even one tiny little fib?” He picked up his mug again, forgetting about the odd taste, and then made a face but drank it anyway.
Barbara patted his arm. “It seems impossible, I know. All the best impossible tasks do. It’s kind of in the definition. But we’ve still got some time. We’ll just have to travel around and see if we can stumble across someone really, really honest before the two weeks are up.”
“What if we take a baby?” Chudo-Yudo asked. “If the kid can’t talk yet, he or she won’t have told a lie, right?”
“NO,” Barbara and Liam said in unison. That was how they had met in the first place, because a creature called a Rusalka had broken the rule about stealing Human children and taking them through to the Otherworld lands. In fact, that was how they’d gotten Babs, since the Rusalka had killed her parents and taken their baby to be a bribe for Liam’s grief-crazed former wife to raise as her own.
“Somehow I don’t think the Queen would consider a baby as an acceptable answer,” Bella said. “And my guess is that she doesn’t deal well with cheaters.”
Barbara shuddered. “Definitely not something we want to test.”
But then Bella got a funny look on her face. “A baby,” she said. “Huh.”
“Hey, I thought we agreed on this,” Liam’s voice was tinged with alarm. “Barbara, we are definitely not stealing anyone’s baby.”
“What?” She waved a distracted hand at him. “No, of course not. Don’t be silly. Babies are noisy and they poop a lot. The Airstream would hate it.” She narrowed her eyes as her sister Baba. “What is it? Come on, I can tell you’ve thought of something.”
Bella leaned both elbows on the counter and stared at Babs. “Hey, Babs, can you answer a question for me?”
“That depends on whether or not I know the answer to the question,” Babs said, scrunching up her button nose. “Do I know the answer to the question? If it is multiplication, I am not very good at that yet.”
Bella bit her lip so she wouldn’t laugh. “No worries, kid. I’m not very good at it either. The eights confuse me every time. No, this is a much simpler question.” She pointed at Liam and Barbara. “If you spilled porridge, or anything else, what would you tell your folks?”
Babs blinked. “That is a very silly question. I would tell them I spilled the porridge, of course. What else would I say?”
Chudo-Yudo spat out his bone with a thunk. “Bella is brilliant. Haven’t I always said she was brilliant, Barbara?”
“I don’t remember whether you did or not,” Barbara said, gazing at Babs with wide eyes. “But clearly you are right.” She leaned over and gave Bella a big hug. “Thanks. You’re the best. I wish we could stay longer.”
Liam raised one eyebrow in question and she grinned at him. “Still don’t get it? I’ll explain it on the way.” She raised her voice a little so that she could divert Babs’s attention from her questionable breakfast. “Time to go put on your ‘goin’ to court’ clothes. We’re going visiting.”
“Can I wear my sword?” Babs asked, getting up from the table. She slid the last of her toast toward Chudo-Yudo, who swallowed it in one gulp, liverwurst and all.
“Of course you can.” Barbara said. “Don’t forget to comb your hair.”
“You kno
w where to find someone who has never told a lie?” Liam said, pushing off from the counter and moving toward their tiny bedroom at the back of the Airstream. “Care to share that information with me? You know, so I don’t look like an idiot in front of the Queen.”
“We’re both idiots,” Barbara said with a crooked smile. “The answer has been in front of us all along.”
***
This time when the four of them sought out the Queen and King, they found Their Majesties playing croquet on the endless blue-green lawn in front of the castle. Courtiers in billowy linen shirts and puff-legged pantaloons held mallets like weapons in a casual war as impossibly beautiful ladies in gowns covered with living embroidery flowers vied to put their balls through glittering gold wickets. As the visitors drew nearer, one of the blue balls took advantage of the distraction to sprout multiple spiny purple legs and run away.
“My dear Baba Yaga,” the Queen said as they approached and made their formal bows. “Has it been a fortnight already? How rapidly time moves on your side of the doorway.” She snapped her fingers and servitors immediately appeared with chairs for her and the King. The other members of the court simply gathered in close, murmuring among themselves.
Barbara ignored them all, her attention focused completely on the royal couple.
“Actually, it has only been about half of the allotted time,” she said.
The Queen looked almost disappointed. “And you have come to admit defeat before the full time I allowed you has elapsed? I expected more from you and your mate.”
“Not at all, Your Majesty,” Barbara said, making sure that not a hint of triumph showed on her face. It was bad enough to show up the Queen. Gloating could be a fatal error in judgment. Literally. “We have accomplished the tasks you set for us and have returned to present you with the proof of our labors.”
“Indeed?” the King said, lifting one dark eyebrow. “How very intriguing.”
The Queen looked haughty and mysterious—so pretty much as she usually did. “I barely remember the terms,” she said. “Where is my Notaire?”
A tall spindly creature with a long pointed nose and batlike ears pushed his way through the crowd, a formal scroll clutched between spindly many-jointed fingers. He unrolled the parchment with great pomp and read aloud the first impossible task in a faint French accent.
“The first task: catch the song of the ocean in a bottle,” he said in a voice that sounded like choral bells at dusk.
“Ah, yes,” the Queen said. “Let us begin with that.”
Barbara dug into her bag and pulled out the vibrant blue bottle with its luminous shell tucked inside. With a small, gracious bow, she handed it to the Queen, who wrinkled her elegant nose.
“Really, Baba Yaga?” she said, dubious in the extreme. “A bottle with a shell inside does not the ocean make.”
“Pull out the cork and listen,” Barbara suggested.
The Queen did so, and put the bottle to her ear. A reluctant smile spread over her face as she listened to the music held captive within.
“Ah,” was all she said, but when she handed the cobalt container over to her consort, he listened for a long time and then let out a sigh.
“I had forgotten the sound of it,” he said, a hint of wistfulness in his voice. “There is much beauty here in our lands, but nothing like the seductive allure of the waves and the shore.”
For all its charm, there was, in fact, no ocean in the Otherworld, which was why the Selkies and Mer and other paranormal creatures who lived in the salt water had been forced to stay behind when most of their brethren had retreated at last to the safety of a Human-free land.
“How did you manage such a thing?” the Queen asked, sounding, thankfully, more curious than put out.
Barbara grinned and bowed again. “I bring Your Majesties greetings from the youngest Baba Yaga, Beka, and Gwrtheyrn, King of the Selkies.”
“Ah,” said the King. “Well played, Baba Yaga.”
The Queen gave a tiny nod. “You were lucky to have such good connections to help you with your first task, Baba Yaga. I doubt they were of much assistance with the second.” She turned to the creature with the scroll. “Which was . . . ?”
“The second task: bring to Us the living representation of a dead species,” the Notaire read off without expression.
“And have you accomplished this assignment as well?” the King asked.
“We have, Your Majesty.” Barbara nodded at Liam, who stepped forward and pulled the plastic carry cage out of his pocket. Through its holes, the frog within could be heard complaining softly about its limited accommodations.
Liam bowed, deeper than Barbara had, and handed the cage to a yellow-eyed servant, who passed it on to the Queen with a curled lip.
The Queen held up the cage by its clear handle and peered inside. “It is a frog,” she said. Disappointment and glee warred in her voice. “How can a frog be a living representation of a dead species? What is the meaning of this, Baba Yaga?”
“Allow me to explain, Your Majesty,” Liam said, bowing again. Barbara was proud of how confident he sounded, despite the audience he faced.
“This is not just any frog. It is a rare species called a gastric brooding frog, which carries its babies in its stomach and gives birth to them through its mouth. Until recently, it was, in fact, completely extinct, until scientists managed to bring the species back to life.”
The Queen looked down at the small innocuous specimen currently residing in the cage she held. “Indeed,” she said, thinning her lips in distaste. “It gives birth through its mouth, you say? How very . . . efficient.” She handed the plastic carrier hastily over to the King, who covered a smile with one slender hand.
“So you are saying that the species was dead, and your science managed somehow to resurrect it?” the King said. “That seems quite clever.”
The Queen gazed at the frog and sighed. “I suppose it will do, although I was hoping for something more impressive, like a dinosaur or the Loch Ness Monster.”
Liam held out his hand hopefully. “Uh, if Your Majesties have no use for the frog, the friend who got it for us could really use it back.”
The Queen made a waving motion with her hand. “My dear boy, take it with Our blessing. We have frogs aplenty already, I assure you, and all of them both more attractive and more melodious than this one.”
Liam grabbed the container before she could change her mind and stepped back to stand next to Barbara. “The Loch Ness Monster was real?” he whispered to her out of the corner of his mouth. “Seriously?”
“She was,” Barbara said. “Nessie died about fifteen years ago, the last of her kind. She was very sweet, actually, but very old and very tired and oh so lonely.” She wondered idly if Liam’s friend could bring back Nessie’s race after all, but decided it was a question best left for a less urgency-laden moment.
The sound of delicate throat clearing brought their attention back to the Queen, who sat upright and poised in her chair, leaning forward the slightest bit in her eagerness. “About that last task,” she said. “If you might read it aloud, Notaire?” She clearly thought she’d beaten them on this one.
The creature flushed with excitement, its pointed nose practically twitching. “Task the third: find a Human whose heart is so pure that he or she has never spoken a lie,” he read off the scroll with a flourish.
The assembled courtiers tittered, a sound like thousands of leaves rustling an autumn wind.
Barbara resisted the temptation to give them all the finger. Barely.
“It seems a remarkably difficult task, my dear Baba,” the Queen said. “But since you are here, We assume you are convinced that you have found such a person. But I note that you did not bring anyone else back with you.” She gazed at Liam dispassionately. “Perhaps you suggest that We believe such honesty lies in your sheriff?”
> Liam shook his head. “I strive to be as honest as I can, Your Majesty, but even I fail on occasion, regretfully. As you would say, I am only Human.”
“Indeed,” the Queen agreed. She pointed her ornamental fan at Barbara. “Then perhaps you offer up yourself for this position, Baba Yaga?”
Barbara grinned. “I do not believe anyone here would refer to me as ‘pure of heart,’ do you, Your Majesty?”
Even the Queen allowed a tiny smile to cross her lips at this, and the King let out an actual guffaw. The rest of the court burst into raucous laughter at the thought.
Eventually the Queen waved her fan through the air and the revelry subsided. Barbara thought she could hear the subtle sharpening of knives as they awaited her final answer. Not everyone at the royal court was pleased with the Baba Yaga’s privileged position, or, it might be said, with Barbara herself. She liked to think that she was good at her job, but even she admitted that she sucked at playing at courtly games. To be honest, she just couldn’t be bothered.
“If not your sheriff and not you,” the Queen said, “then who? Not Chudo-Yudo, surely?” The court tittered again; Chudo-Yudo rolled his large brown eyes and showed his large white teeth. For reasons known only to him, he’d stayed in his pit bull form this visit, probably in solidarity with his Human companions.
Little Babs, who had been silently observing everything from behind Barbara’s legs, took three firm steps forward. As usual, she had been so quiet that most of those present had completely forgotten she was there. Barbara herself never made that mistake, having found from experience that the girl might not speak much but she soaked up everything around her like a sponge. A tiny, choppy-haired, snub-nosed, determined sponge.
The Queen’s brow wrinkled. “What is this, Baba Yaga?”
“You remember my protégé Babs, Your Majesty,” Barbara said.
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