And since the Baba Yagas, while acting independently, ultimately reported to the powerful and volatile High Queen of the Otherworld . . . a failure on Beka’s part could be catastrophic to her, as well. The queen had once turned a half dozen handmaidens into swans during a fit of pique; Beka had no desire to discover if she looked good in feathers.
“What was your baby doing out here in the open waters?” Beka hissed, trying not to panic. It wasn’t that she wasn’t sympathetic, but she’d been trying her best to avoid any major issues since her mentor Brenna, the Baba Yaga who’d raised and taught her, had retired a few years ago and left her to handle things on her own. After years of being told by the elder Baba that she wasn’t “quite ready yet,” a tiny inner voice seemed to have taken up residence inside Beka’s head, constantly whispering the same thing.
“Why aren’t you in the trench with the rest of your people?” Beka slid into the cold water, barely noticing the chill as she tried to figure out how she was going to rescue the merbaby without being seen by the men on—she peered up at the clean white side of the boat—the Wily Serpent.
The sea creature tightened her grip on Beka’s surfboard, gazing at the nets with terror in her wide-set eyes. “Didn’t you know?” Her head bobbed up and down with the waves as she waved her long elegant tail in agitation. “There is a problem with our home; all the life there is being poisoned by something our healers have been unable to detect. The plants, the fish, even some of the people have become sickened by it. All the mer and selkies must move to a new place closer to land to escape the contamination, and my little one got away from me in the confusion.”
She let go of the board to grasp Beka’s arm. “Please, Baba Yaga, I know I should have watched him more closely, but please don’t let him die.”
Not a chance, Beka thought grimly. Then gritted her teeth as she realized the boat had stopped its lazy forward motion and come to a halt. The mechanical screech of a winch disturbed the quiet sea air as the nets slowly started being drawn in toward the boat’s hull. Pain accompanied the sound as the merwoman realized what was happening and unconsciously tightened her grasp, webbed fingers turning into claws.
“Oh, no,” she said, seaweed-tinted tears flowing faster now. “It’s too late.”
Beka shook her head. “Not yet, it isn’t,” she said, and set off swimming with strong purposeful strokes toward the slowly rising mesh of ropes. “Stay here,” she ordered, tossing the words over her shoulder. Then she swam as if a life depended on it.
As she drew closer to the boat, she could see that it wasn’t as pristine as she’d thought; a blue-black crust of barnacles marred the deep green bottom half where it met the water, and the white paint on top was dull and peeling. For all that, though, the boat itself seemed solid and well constructed—as, alas, did the net that was slowly but relentlessly being pulled in toward its home.
Beka took a deep breath and dove under the water. Thankfully, since she spent so much time in the ocean, she had long ago done magical work that enabled her to keep her eyes open even without protective goggles. Through the gaps between the ropes, she could see the merbaby clearly, swimming in desperate circles round and round the ever-shrinking space. His tiny pale green face was splotched with crying, although any sound he made was lost in the metallic grinding of the winch as it pulled the purse seine in tighter and tighter. As he spotted her, he shot over to her side of the net, making soft eeping noises like a distressed dolphin.
Beka swam up to the choppy surface to gulp another breath, then down again; the trip was noticeably shorter on the way back and she knew she was running out of time. It was tempting to use magic to blast through the net, but she was afraid that she might accidentally hurt the child, and magic often didn’t work well underwater, so in the end, she simply pulled out her knife and sawed away frantically at the tough fibers.
Twice more she had to dart above to take a breath, but after the last time, her efforts paid off; she had a ragged hole not much more than two feet long, but large enough for the small merbaby to exit. The fish within were already bolting toward freedom, brushing her with their tickling fins as they flashed past.
She gestured for the merbaby to come closer, only to realize that while she had been fighting with the robustly woven strands, the child’s tail had become entangled in a section of net, and he was trapped, unable to get loose from the seine’s unrelenting grasp.
Cursing soundlessly, Beka raced to get one more deep lungful of air, then threw herself toward the hole and eeled her way through the impossibly small opening. Frantically, she fought the sinuously twining ropes until the little one was free, and she could shove him through to the other side. Only to find herself trapped in the ever-shrinking net and rapidly running out of time and oxygen.