Barbara was tired of waiting. In theory, those seeking her assistance were supposed to come to her. She decided that parking within twenty feet of her home was close enough to count. There was a cold beer with her name on it (literally, since a small organic brewery in Utah made a beer called “Baba” that she was quite fond of), and she wasn’t going to be able to relax until she figured out if she was truly needed, or if whoever was out there was just wasting her time and annoying her. It was never a good idea to annoy a Baba Yaga. Particularly not this Baba.
Muttering under her breath, she stomped over to stand in front of the driver’s side door, arms crossed, booted feet planted firmly on the ground. Chudo-Yudo trailed along behind her, probably out of sheer boredom. They tended to spend more time away from civilization than in it, which made it easier for him to be out and about, and a week stuck in the Airstream in the middle of a parking lot had made the dog-dragon even grumpier than usual.
The window lowered slowly, revealing a pale, rugged face under badly cut brown hair. Baba thought the man might have been reasonably attractive when he didn’t look so tired and worried. The lines of strain had carved crevices and valleys onto an otherwise pleasant landscape, and dark brown eyes were ringed by shadows that spoke of many a sleepless night. A faded purple and green bruise adorned one flat cheekbone.
Barbara hardened her heart. Just because someone wasn’t sleeping well didn’t mean he merited her assistance. Maybe the guy had a guilty conscience. Or stayed up all night gambling and chasing women.
She hoped he hadn’t come to her in search of some kind of magical treasure to get him out of debt. That might have worked on occasion in the old days, back in the dark green, mysterious forests of Mother Russia, when Baba Yagas were more inclined to play along with the fairy tales people told about them. Not anymore though, and definitely not her. He was going to have to really need her help, or she’d turn him into a toad and go drink that beer.
“Hey,” she said, possibly a touch more forcefully than she’d intended to, based on the way the guy flinched. “I’m guessing you wanted to talk to me, since you’ve followed me back here three days in a row. Were you ever planning to get out of that truck?”
The man eyed her dubiously, and looked even less encouraged by the sight of the large canine sitting at her feet, long pink tongue lolling, and just a hint of steam curling out of his nostrils. But after a minute he shut off the engine and opened the door. For all his hesitation, once he was in front of her, he straightened up and pulled his shoulders back, as if gathering his courage. A couple of inches over her five foot ten, he wore a clean blue shirt over jeans that actually looked like they’d been ironed. One hand gripped a small box.
Barbara raised a dark eyebrow, but didn’t say anything. She’d gone as far as she was going to—the next step was up to him.
***
Ivan Dmetriev tried not to stare, but it was difficult. The woman in front of him was nothing like he’d been expecting. His babushka, his father’s mother, had often told him tales from the land where she’d been born. DeKalb, Illinois had a large Russian community, and after church on Sundays their tiny parlor had always been filled with diminutive elderly women with musical voices. They drank strong, dark tea from his babushka’s battered silver samovar, filling the air with their chatter about grandchildren, and the inferiority of the local produce compared to the fruits from home, and sometimes, if he was lucky, frightening stories about the witch, Baba Yaga.
How he’d loved those stories as a child. Such a magical, frightening figure, the sometimes wicked, sometimes wise Baba Yaga, with her iron teeth and up-curving pointy chin, and her long nose that always sniffed out the truth. When the babushkas told the tales, their creaky voices lowered to spooky whispers as the night came creeping inward past the lace curtains, he could almost see the witch flying through the air in her enchanted mortar and pestle, and see the wooden hut in which she lived racing around the forest on its giant chicken legs.
So at first he laughed when his grandmother had pulled him aside last week and told him that the stories were real. That the Baba Yagas were real, too. Powerful witches living among (although often apart from) regular human beings, their ancient magical homes and transportation transformed into modern versions, but their roles mostly unchanged throughout the years.
Ivan’s initial thought was that perhaps his beloved babushka was finally feeling her years and losing her grip on reality. Especially when she’d informed him, seated in stately upright grace on the carved wooden chair that made her look like a shrunken but regal queen, that in her younger days back in Russia, she had met one of these legendary witches.