A bowstring twanged. I ducked back behind the tree. An arrow sliced the leaves a hair left of the oak.
He was good, but not great. Andrea would’ve nailed me by now.
“You alive?” he called out.
“Yep. Still breathing. You missed again, hotshot.”
“Look, I have no problem with you. Give me the damn rabbit and I’ll let you go.”
Fat chance. “This is my rabbit. Get your own.”
“It’s not your rabbit. It’s the witch’s rabbit.”
Figured. “You got a problem with the witch?”
“Yeah, I got a problem.”
If Evdokia wanted him dead, he would be dead by now. This was her forest. She hadn’t killed him, which meant she was amused by his antics, or worse, he was a relative or a son of a friend. Injuring him was out of the question, or I could kiss good-bye any chance of cooperation from Evdokia.
“Last chance to give me the rabbit and walk away from this.”
“No.”
“Suit yourself.”
A shrill whistle burst through the woods, lancing my eardrums. It drowned all sound and shot up, higher and higher, to an impossible intensity. I clamped my hands over my ears.
The whistle built on itself, slicing the petals off wildflowers to the left and right of the oak, stabbing through my hands into my brain. The world faded. I tasted blood in my mouth.
The whistle stopped.
The sudden quiet was deafening.
Russian fairy tales talked of a Nightingale Bandit, able to bend trees with his whistling. I seemed to have run into the real-life version.
“You alive?” he called out.
Barely. “Yep.” I dug in my brain, trying to recall the old Russian folk tales. Did he have any weakness . .
. if he had, I couldn’t remember any. “You whistle so prettily. Do you do weddings?”
“In five seconds I’m going to split that tree down the middle and you with it. Hard to make jokes with your lungs full of blood.”
I slid a throwing knife from the sheath on my belt and sneaked a glance. He sat in a tree, one leg under him, the other dangling down. Relaxed and easy.
“Fine, you got me. I’m coming out.”
“With the rabbit?”
“With the rabbit.” I slipped a throwing knife in my hand, flipped it, and rustled the weeds to my left with my foot. The Nightingale leaned to the side, trying to get a better look. I lunged right and threw the knife. The blade sliced through the air. The wooden handle smashed into his throat. The Nightingale made a small gurgling sound. I sprinted to the tree, grabbed his ankle, and jerked him down. He crashed to the ground like a log. I hit him in the throat a couple of times to make sure he stayed quiet, flipped him on his stomach, yanked a plastic tie from my pocket, and tied his hands together.
“Don’t go anywhere.”
He gurgled something.
I circled the tree and ran into a horse tied to the branch, its head swaddled in some sort of canvas. A coil of rope waited on the saddle. Wasn’t that nice.
I snagged the rope and hauled the Nightingale upright against the tree, facing the bark. He was short but well-muscled, his dark hair cut down to a mere fuzz on his head.
A hoarse gasp issued from his mouth. “Bloody bitch.”
“That’s nice.” I finished tying him to the trunk. He couldn’t even turn his head. “Just remember, it could’ve been the other end of the knife.”
I stepped back. He looked secure enough. I sliced the tie off and dangled it by the bark so he could see it. “I’m going to go see the witch now. In your place, I’d try to get free. I might be in a bad mood on my way back. Come on, bunny.”
The rabbit hopped down the path and I followed it, listening to the sweet serenade of curses.
THE STICK WAS SIX FEET TALL AND TOPPED WITH A grimy human skull, decorated by a half-melted candle. It jutted on the side of the road, like some grisly path marker. A few feet past it another yellowed skull offered a second candle. Some people used tiki torches. Some people used human skulls .
. .
I looked at the duck-bunny. “What have you gotten me into?”
The duck-bunny rubbed his nose.
The skull looked a bit odd. For one, all the teeth were even. I stood on my toes and knocked on the bony temple. Plastic. Heh.
The bunny hopped down the trail. Nothing to do but follow.
The path opened into a garden. To the left, raspberry bushes rose next to gooseberry and currant. To the right, neat rows of strawberries sat, punctuated by spears of garlic and onion to keep the bugs off.
Trees rose here and there, surrounded by herbs. I recognized apple, pear, cherry. Past it all, at the end of a winding path in the middle of a green lawn, sat a large log house. Rather, the back of the large log house. A couple of clean glass windows stared at me above a wraparound porch rail, but no door was visible.
We stopped at the house. Now what?
“Knock-knock?”
The ground shuddered under my feet. I took a step back. The edge of the porch quaked and rose, up and up, rocking a little, and beneath it huge scaled legs dug into the ground with talons the size of my arms.
Holy shit.
The legs moved, turning the house with ponderous slowness ten feet above the ground: corner, wall, another corner, Evdokia in a rocking chair sitting on the porch.
“That’s good,” the witch said.
The house crouched down and settled back in place. Evdokia gave me a sweet smile. Middle-aged, she was plump and looked happy about it. Her face was round, her stomach was round, and a thick braid of brown hair snaked its way over her shoulder down to her lap. She was knitting some sort of a tube out of strawberry-colored yarn.
There was only one person in the entire Slavic mythology who had a house on chicken legs: Baba Yaga, the Grandmother Witch, the one with a stone leg and iron teeth. She was known for flying around in a mortar and for casual cannibalism of wandering heroes. And I’d walked to her house on my own power. Talk about delivering takeout.
Evdokia nodded to the chair next to her. “Well, come on. V nogah pravdi nyet. ”
No truth in legs. Right. Will you walk into my parlour, said the spider to the fly . . .
Her smile got wider. “Scared?”
“Nope.” I walked up the steps and took the chair. The house jerked, my stomach jumped, and the garden dropped down below. The house had straightened its chicken legs. Trapped. No matter.
“Besides, I’m all gristle and tough meat anyway.”
She chuckled. “Oh, I don’t know, you might be just right for a nice big pot of borscht. Throw some mushrooms in there and mmm.”