Chudo-Yudo raised one furry eyebrow. “You planning to start a fight with someone?”
“I said I needed to blow off some steam, didn’t I?” Barbara said, rapping three times on the wardrobe and sending a jolt of magic through the handle. It creaked open to show her a bunch of leather pants and a few silk shirts, and she pushed it shut with a curse and tried again. This time the space behind the door was gray and foggy, with occasional glints of sparkling flitting lights, like fireflies, off in the distance. A distant roar echoed into the trailer, and the smell of spring flowers drifted through the air.
“That’s better,” she muttered, kicking the door frame gently with the toe of one boot. “You are the worst door in the history of doors.”
Turning back to Chudo-Yudo, she said, “I just thought I’d see if Koshei was around, and maybe wanted to get in some swordplay.”
The dragon-dog gusted a charcoal-scented sigh in her direction. “Is that what they’re calling it these days?” He shook his massive head. “Look, I’ve got nothing against Koshei. For a dragon, he makes a very handsome-looking guy. And I know that he’s been a companion to Baba Yagas down through the centuries, and he makes you happy on the rare occasions when he decides to make an appearance. But has it ever occurred to you to hang out with someone who is maybe a little closer to your genetic structure?”
Barbara gave him a smile that didn’t hide the flash of melancholy in her eyes. “Right. Because there are lots of guys standing in line to date a long-nosed, older-than-she-looks, fairy-tale wicked witch.”
Chudo-Yudo gave her an innocent look. “Hey, you’re not that wicked,” he said, not denying the rest of the list.
A slammed door was his only answer.
“Besides,” he said thoughtfully as he wandered over to magically pluck a bone out from underneath a couch that had no underneath, “who says wicked can’t be good?”
***
Barbara spent a little time enjoying the usual (that is to say, unusual) enjoyments of the Otherworld, but she couldn’t shake her edgy restlessness as the back of her mind constantly gnawed at Ivan’s problem like Chudo-Yudo gnawed at a bone. Finally, she gave up and headed back towards the path she’d taken in.
But in typical Otherworld fashion, the land refused to cooperate. She took one walkway in what she thought was the right direction, only to find fronds of ten-foot-tall blue ferns in her way. Turning in another direction, the track disappeared altogether, replaced by a cerulean pond filled with cavorting nymphs who waved at her gaily as she walked by.
“Seriously?” she muttered under her breath. “Anyone would think you didn’t want me to go home.”
To her left, a phoenix flashed brightly through the air, highlighting a narrow trail through fire-singed flowers. The Otherworld was sometimes helpful, and sometimes not, Barbara thought to herself as she strode towards the newly revealed path, but rarely subtle. Fine. She wasn’t all that subtle either, so she could hardly complain. She’d clearly been thinking hard enough about her current quandary for the mystical world to notice, and point her towards . . . something. She only hoped it wasn’t the edge of a cliff.
At the end of the path, she found a sparkling fog, much like the one she’d come through on her way from the Airstream into the Otherworld. For a moment she was confused, thinking she’d simply followed a different route back. But when she put her hand into the transitional mist, the door she touched was slightly rougher than hers, with a rounded top instead of her square one.
“Hey!” she said, to no one and nothing in particular. “Wrong Baba residence.” Or was it?
Shrugging, she reached out and rapped briskly on the door. After a moment, it opened to reveal a pretty but startled face topped by a mass of red curls held up in a loose bun. A few freckles adorned a nose almost as aristocratic as hers, and full lips parted in amazement.
“Barbara!” Bella said, her surprise turning to pleasure as she recognized her unexpected guest. “What are you doing here? Come on in.”
Barbara stepped through the doorway into a space even smaller than her own. Unlike her modern-looking Airstream, her sister Baba lived in an updated version of a gypsy caravan; compact and homey, mostly made out of wood like the magical hut it had once been, it was well suited to Bella’s travels through the more sparsely settled parts of the country. In some ways the most traditional of the three American Baba Yagas, Bella tended to keep to herself. It wasn’t that she didn’t like people. She just liked trees and animals and mountains better.