“I guess it was unreasonable of me to expect you to,” she said, a little wistfully. “But I don’t have a magic wand I can wave that will make you think I’m any less strange.”
Liam could feel the corners of his lips curve up. “You’re mostly strange in some pretty wonderful ways,” he said. That veil of ebony hair, for instance, or those amazing amber eyes. Or the way you kick ass when it really matters. “It’s just, well, you have all these secrets you can’t or won’t share, and abilities I don’t understand.”
Baba took a sip of wine, a thoughtful expression on her grave face. “Maybe I can explain some of it, but I’m warning you, it is kind of a long story. And it’s . . . complicated.”
Liam put his arm out along the back of the couch, resisting the urge to run his fingers through the glossy raven strands just inches away. “I’ve got all night,” he said, raising his beer at her. “And I love a good story.”
“I’m not sure it’s all that good,” she said soberly. “But it’s mine.” She sat in silence for a minute, clearly trying to pick the right place to start.
“Baba Yaga is more of a job title than anything else,” she said finally. “It’s a time-honored position that originated in Russia and the surrounding Slavic countries, and has spread slowly over time to most of the occupied world. There aren’t very many of us, though, and the job requires a certain single-minded dedication, as well as an aptitude for magic, so it can be hard for any individual Baba Yaga to find a replacement to train who will eventually take her place.”
“Also,” Chudo-Yudo put in, “the Babas tend to be a seriously antisocial lot, and most of them don’t want a small child underfoot, getting in the way and making messes.” It sounded like a direct quote from someone. “So some of them put it off way longer than they’re supposed to.”
“A small child?”
“Most Babas feel that it is better to start the training early, when the mind and spirit are still malleable,” Baba explained. “My Baba found me in an orphanage when I was about five. I was abandoned, so nobody really knew my age for sure. But the Baba must have sensed something special in me, some potential for the talent to wield the kind of power the job requires, and she brought me home to live with her.”
Liam was appalled, although he tried to keep from showing it. Who takes a five-year-old child to live in the woods and trains her to be a witch?
Apparently he wasn’t as successful as he’d hoped, because Baba gave him a crooked smile. “You have to understand, Liam. Russian orphanages at that time were brutal institutions, where cruelty and neglect were the standard fare. Children were clothed, housed, and fed a subsistence diet, but otherwise, they got little in the way of care. It was a long time ago, but I still remember shivering in the cold, with nothing but a ratty gray blanket to keep me warm, and an empty belly that kept me awake when the chill didn’t.”
The smile slid away like a shadow in a storm. “The Baba at least fed me well, and made sure I was warm and dry. Unless we were out tramping through the woods and fields in the rain or snow, which was often.” She shrugged, and a stray lock of night-colored hair fell over his hand, feeling like silk.
“Was she at least kind to you?” Liam asked, caught up in a vision of a tiny, solitary child trudging stoically after a crone like the one he’d met the day before, struggling to carry a basket almost as big as she was filled with dirt-encrusted herbs and odd-colored mushrooms.
Baba shrugged again. “Kind, cruel. I doubt she knew the difference. Babas live a long time, and mine had waited until near the end of her life to take on an apprentice. By then, she wasn’t very good at Human emotions anymore, either expressing them or understanding them. She taught me well, and kept me from harm; affection never really entered into the equation. And having spent the beginning of my life in the orphanage, I didn’t know enough to expect it.”
A sip of wine covered some spasm of emotion she doubtless hoped he wouldn’t see—regret, maybe, or sorrow.
“I grew up without some of the essential foundations that make a human being Human,” she said softly. “I know I’m not very good with people, or making connections. We moved around a lot, in the Baba’s hut on chicken legs, going to wherever she was called, or was in the mood to be.”
Liam reached out, caressed her cheek for a brief moment. She leaned into him for a moment before pulling away. “You seem plenty human to me, Baba. And folks around here liked you just fine before Maya started her campaign to discredit you. Belinda and the Ivanovs still do. And just yesterday Bertie actually kicked someone out of her diner for daring to call you a witch within her hearing.”
Baba looked at him, blinking rapidly. “She did?”
He nodded, dropping his hand back down as if he’d accidentally touched the sun. “Didn’t you get lonely as a child?”