“You should have seen me,” his grandmother said, pride clear in her strongly accented words. “I wasn’t scared at all. Well, not much, at any rate, for all that the Baba Yaga was a fierce and ugly creature. Sparks flew from her eyes and set the leaves around us to smoldering. When she gnashed her teeth, it made a sound like boulders falling down a hill. Oh, she was a fearsome sight. But I was on a quest, and I was young and beautiful, and full of the courage that comes from being in love.”
“Grandmother,” Ivan had said, trying to be soothing, “I’m sure that you met an old woman in the woods. But it can’t have been the Baba Yaga. She’s just a tale, told to scare small children.”
His babushka snorted. “And how do you know she is just a tale, my darling Ivanenka? Do you know everything there is to know? I do not think so.” She patted his face with a feathery touch. “Have I ever lied to you? No, I have not. So when I tell you that I met a Baba Yaga, then this too you must believe.”
Against his will, Ivan had believed. His grandmother told him a story as remarkable as any of the ones he’d listened to as a small, wide-eyed child. A story of how her love (his grandfather!) had gotten lost in the woods, and how the not-quite-wicked witch had made his babushka do three impossible tasks before leading her to the bear pit he’d fallen into.
But thankfully, the ending was a happy one. His grandmother had been reunited with her beloved, and the Baba Yaga had been so impressed by the young girl’s bravery that she’d promised her a favor, whenever she needed it.
“But I never had to use it,” his babushka said. “And so we have it still, and you need only take it to the Baba Yaga, and ask for her help. I am certain she will grant it to you, for your need is great and your heart is true.” She handed him a small wooden box. “This holds the token the witch gave me. If you give it to her, she will know I sent you.”
Ivan’s head spun with a dizzying combination of hope and disbelief. “I lost the last court appeal. My own lawyer won’t even talk to me because of all those lies. We’re out of options. What could she possibly do? And how am I supposed to find this mythical witch? Is she simply going to appear, just because we need her help?”
His babushka made that particular clicking noise with her tongue that only disapproving grandmothers can make. “It will not be quite that easy, my little rabbit, but I suspect you will not have to look very far. Did you not pay attention to all the stories? This is how magic works.”
And so it had.
Now Ivan stood in front of a tall, dark-haired woman with glittering amber eyes and a forbidding expression, and he wasn’t at all sure that he’d come to the right place. She looked fierce enough to be a witch, and her nose was, perhaps, a little long, but she was way too beautiful to be the ancient crone he was seeking. Did Baba Yagas have assistants?
“Well?” the woman asked again, a faint Russian accent making her low voice sound almost familiar in his ears. “Did you want something?”
Ivan held out the box his grandmother had given him, his calloused hands barely shaking at all.
“My name is Ivan Dmetriev. I have come to redeem a favor owed to my family by the Baba Yaga. Can you take me to her?” he said.
The dark-haired woman snatched the carved wooden container out of his fingers, muttered something in Russian, and tapped the top of the box three times. It popped open, and he caught a glimpse of something that shone with an iridescent glimmer in shades of red tipped with black. It looked like a shard of rock, if rocks ever came in that color. Or maybe some sort of shell from a creature that lived in a mythical sea.
Strong fingers snapped the box shut before he could get a better look, and it disappeared into a pouch Ivan hadn’t noticed before. If anything, the woman’s scowl deepened.
“A family debt of honor,” she growled. “Wonderful. Just what I needed. Now I’m never going to get that beer.” At her feet, he could swear the dog was laughing.
***
Barbara stared at the box in front of her, as if her gaze could cause it to burst into flames. Which it could, of course, if she wanted it to, but that wouldn’t get rid of the problem. She’d recognized the contents immediately—not a shell or a crystal, but rather, a single large dragon’s scale. And not from just any dragon, either. The scale inside the wooden box came from her dragon. Her Chudo-Yudo, and therefore the Chudo-Yudo of the Baba Yaga who’d trained her. Why her mentor Baba had given such a token to this man’s grandmother was a mystery, but given it she clearly had. Which made it—and him—Barbara’s problem.
Her mentor was long gone, having lived well beyond even the normal couple of centuries that Baba Yagas were granted by their use of the Water of Life and Death, a gift from the High Queen of the Otherworld that prolonged life, increased strength, and boosted the Baba’s natural magical powers. (While also conferring obligations to the Queen and the denizens of her world, of course. There’s no such thing as a free elixir.) Barbara had inherited her predecessor’s home, her possessions, and her duties. And now it looked like she’d inherited one unused promise, as well. Fabulous.