So Nadya sat with Vladchek, nibbling on a spice cookie or sucking on a hunk of black licorice, watching Magda work. She might have announced herself to these strangers at any time, pleaded to be taken home or given shelter, shouted that she’d been trapped by a witch. Instead, she stayed silent, sugar melting on her tongue, watching as they came to this old woman, how they turned to her with desperation, with resentment, but always with respect.
Magda gave them drops for the eyes, tonics for the scalp. She ran her hands over their wrinkles, tapped a man’s chest till he hacked up black bile. Nadya was never sure how much was real and how much was show until the night the wax-skinned woman came.
She was gaunt, as they all were, her face a skull of hard-carved hollows. Magda asked the question she asked anyone who came to her door: “What is it you want?”
The woman collapsed in her arms, weeping, as Magda murmured soothing words, patted her hand, dried her tears. They conferred in voices too low for Nadya to decipher, and before the woman left, she took a tiny pouch from her pocket and shook the contents into Magda’s palm. Nadya craned her neck to get a better look, but Magda’s hand clamped shut too quickly.
The next day, Magda sent Nadya out of the house to shovel snow. When she returned at lunchtime, she was shooed back out with a cup of codfish stew. Dusk came, and as Nadya finished sprinkling salt along the edges of the path, the scent of gingerbread drifted to her across the clearing, rich and spicy, filling her nose until she felt nearly drunk.
All through dinner, she waited for Magda to open the oven, but when the meal was finished, the old woman set a piece of yesterday’s lemon cake before her. Nadya shrugged. As she reached for the cream, she heard a soft sound, a gurgle. She looked at Vladchek, but the bear was fast asleep, snoring softly.
And then she heard it again, a gurgle followed by a plaintive coo. From inside the oven.
Nadya pushed back from the table, nearly knocking her chair over, and stared at Magda, horrified, but the witch did not flinch.
A knock sounded at the door.
“Go into the larder, Nadya.”
For a moment, Nadya hovered between the table and the door, caught like a fly that might still free itself from the web. Then she backed into the larder, pausing only to grab hold of Vladchek’s collar and drag him with her onto the top shelf, comforted by his drowsy snuffling and the warm feel of his fur beneath her hands.
Magda opened the door. The wax-faced woman stood waiting at the threshold, almost as if she were afraid to move. Magda wrapped her hands in towels and pulled open the oven’s iron doors. A squalling cry filled the room. The woman grabbed at the doorposts as her knees buckled, then pressed her hands to her mouth, her chest heaving, tears streaming over her sallow cheeks. Magda swaddled the gingerbaby in a red kerchief and handed it, squirming and mewling, into the woman’s trembling, outstretched arms.
“Milaya,” the woman crooned. Sweet girl. She turned her back on Magda and disappeared into the night, not bothering to close the door behind her.
The next day, Nadya left her breakfast untouched, placing her cold bowl of porridge on the floor for Vladchek. He turned up his nose at it until Magda put it back on the stove to warm.
Before Magda could ask her question, Nadya said, “That wasn’t a real child. Why did she take it?”
“It was real enough.”
“What will happen to it? What will happen to her?” Nadya asked, a wild edge to her voice.
“Eventually it will be nothing but crumbs,” said Magda.
“And then what? Will you just make her another?”
“The mother will be dead long before that. She has the same fever that took her infant.”
“Then cure her!” Nadya shouted, smacking the table with her unused spoon.
“She didn’t ask to be cured. She asked for a child.”
Nadya put on her mittens and stomped out into the yard. She did not go inside for lunch. She meant to skip dinner too, to show what she thought of Magda and her terrible magic. But by the time night came her stomach was growling, and when Magda put down a plate of sliced duck with hunter’s sauce, Nadya picked up her fork and knife.
“I want to go home,” she muttered to her plate.
“So go,” said Magda.
Winter dragged on with frost and cold, but the lamps always burned golden in the little hut. Nadya’s cheeks grew rosy and her clothes grew snug. She learned how to mix up Magda’s tonics without looking at the recipes and how to bake an almond cake in the shape of a crown. She learned which herbs were valuable and which were dangerous, and which herbs were valuable because they were dangerous.
Nadya knew there was much that Magda didn’t teach her. She told herself she was glad of it, that she wanted nothing to do with Magda’s abominations. But sometimes she felt her curiosity clawing at her like a different kind of hunger.
And then, one morning, she woke to the tapping of the blind crow’s beak on the sill and the drip, drip, drip of melted snow from the eaves. Bright sun shone through the windows. The thaw had come.
That morning, Magda laid out sweet rolls with prune jam, a plate of boiled eggs, and bitter greens. Nadya ate and ate, afraid to reach the end of her meal, but eventually she could not take another bite.
“What is it you want?” asked Magda.
This time Nadya hesitated, afraid. “If I go, couldn’t I just—”
“You cannot come and go from this place like you’re fetching water from a well. I will not have you bring a monster to my door.”
Nadya shivered. A monster. So she’d been right about Karina.
“What is it you want?” asked Magda again.
Nadya thought of Genetchka dancing, of nervous Lara, of Betya and Ludmilla, of the others she had never known.
“I want my father to be free of Karina. I want Duva to be safe. I want to go home.”
Gently, Magda reached out and touched Nadya’s left hand—first the ring finger, then the pinkie. Nadya thought of the wax-faced woman, of the little bag she’d emptied into the witch’s palm.
“Think on it,” said Magda.
The next morning when Magda went to lay out the breakfast, she found the cleaver Nadya had placed there.
For two days, the cleaver lay untouched on the table, as they measured and sifted and mixed, making batch after batch of batter. On the second afternoon, when the hardest of the work was done, Magda turned to Nadya.
“You know that you are welcome to remain here with me,” said the witch.
Nadya stretched out her hand.
Magda sighed. The cleaver flashed once in the afternoon sun, the edge gleaming the dull gray of Grisha steel, then fell with a sound like a gunshot.
At the sight of her fingers lying forlorn on the table, Nadya fainted.
Magda healed the stumps of Nadya’s fingers, bound her hand, let her rest. And while she slept, Magda took the two fingers and ground them down to a wet red meal that she mixed into the batter.
When Nadya revived, they worked side by side, shaping the gingergirl on a damp plank as big as a door, then shoved her into the blazing oven.