Haunted (22 page)

“C’mon.” Tess pulls on my arm. “We need to follow her, right? Or should we try to keep running?”

I can barely make myself say the words. “It’s her, Tess. It’s Baba Yaga. Look at her eyes. See?”

I don’t want to follow her, but my feet move without my permission. The same happens to Tess. We shuffle behind the woman in saffron to the middle of the clearing. Our knees bend of their own accord, and we sit on the ground.

“You have chosen without understanding,” the woman who might be Baba Yaga says. “So now you must know. There really is no more time, even here where time is fluid. Come back with me, Anne. Your friend too. She has earned this for you. Her gratitude has made me generous. But do not worry. It will not last. Still, this is what I am, and I do not question my moods. So I will tell you a little secret. Sometimes, I grant favors. Sometimes, I do not. Today, I am of a mood to do so. I can heal, or I can destroy. This is the nature of my power. Both please me. But beware. Favors like this—they come only once. And only of my free will. As you are well aware, no one likes to be commanded. No one likes to be used. Nothing good comes of that kind of power or that kind of magic. And nothing—absolutely nothing, daughter Anne—comes without a price. There are no simple answers. But there is, as always, a story.”

And the rest of the story unfolds as if we’re in a movie. Somehow, in my head, there’s a voice narrating—slow and gentle and mesmerizing. I couldn’t stop listening even if I tried. I catch myself smiling. It’s like a fairy tale, even in the way it begins.

Once upon a time
, the voice tells us,
I was young and beautiful. You see the woman before you now. I loved, and I lived. But I cursed my beauty, because I knew it was fleeting. Beauty is power if you’re a woman, but for me, it was not enough. To have the life I wanted, to have the power I wanted, I needed to be more. But how? So long ago, this was, so long that the Old Ones still roamed among us—goddesses who granted boons to foolish girls and wise girls and some of us who were both. I had seen what happened to women whose only power was physical. Nature changed them as nature does, and then their power faded. Still, I did not believe it could happen to me. I was lithe. Young. I would live and love forever.

But then one day, the man I loved told me that he loved another—a common story until it happens to you. Then it is not so common at all. Pain is unique to each of us, and mine was unbearable. Perhaps the Old Ones were listening that day. Perhaps it was my destiny. That part I do not know. But I made a bargain. I would give up my youth, and I would give up my beauty. No longer would I be governed by how someone perceived my face. In return, I would have the power I craved. I did not ponder the choice for long. I knew the whims of the Old Ones, how swiftly they might cancel an offer such as this. “Are you sure?” they asked me, although later, I knew that they had already made their choice. I answered yes. Oh, yes. Beauty is power, but I wanted to be feared on my own terms—to help or hurt as it pleased me. No predictability, even if the cost was a heart of stone.

But hearts are strange things. Even when they’ve stopped beating, sometimes they still feel.

Her name was Marina. I had been Baba Yaga for a very long time when she came to me for help here in this forest. I no longer counted my time by days or years. Such markers are of no consequence to one who lives as I do. The world had changed around me, but the midwives and the herbalists and those who still secretly followed the ways of the Old Ones—they still knew what I was, what I could do. Their mothers and grandmothers had passed the secrets down to them, and thus to the woman named Marina.

“Help me,” she said. I can still see her now, half hidden behind one of my birch trees. “I love him. I gave him his precious son even before he became the tsar. Even before he married. But my Nicholas has eyes now only for Alexandra. My son should have everything, but he has nothing. Alexandra has borne him girl after girl. Only I have given him a son. What can I do? If you do not help me, I will have nothing left. There will be nothing left for me but the river. Or worse.”

This is what she told me. And because—like today—I was feeling generous, I listened. Or rather, I almost always listened. But I had not chosen to act in a very long time.

“I am not afraid of you,” she said. “I am too desperate to be afraid. I should have known that Nicholas would not stay with me and with the boy. But my heart could not give up hope. My darling boy, Viktor. Do you know that his name means “champion”? Nothing will give me happiness if he cannot have what is rightfully his.”

It was this last part that intrigued me: the absolute certainty with which she believed her son deserved the legacy of his bloodline. How deliciously perfect! I could both reward and punish her arrogance with one single spell. Heal and harm with the flick of a finger.

I placed my hands on her shoulders and sent forth my will into her. “Go home and hug your son,” I told her. “Tell him that Baba Yaga gives him her blessing. If you do this, he will get what he deserves. He will have the legacy of a tsar. Your son, and his children, and his children’s children.

She thanked me over and over. And that very evening, when she returned home, she clasped her son Viktor to her, held him tight, and whispered my words in his ear. “Thank you, Mother,” he told her. “Thank you.”

The woman in saffron dances closer to Tess and me, presses one slender hand against my cheek. “Power has a price. It is the way of things—not only here in my forest, but in all places, in all things. A balance. I had willed Viktor a legacy, a passing down. We do not own the magic, not even witches as ancient and skilled as I. Just as I paid the price of my beauty, Viktor would pay for what he craved, even if he did not know he was paying, did not understand that his blood would allow the Brotherhood its strongest of magics. My power passed down through his blood from child to child to child. And then the best price of all for his arrogance. Each of those children would be female.”

She smiles at me and Tess like we’re supposed to applaud or something. I mean, it’s fitting in a girl-power kind of way, but honestly, she’s as full of herself as Viktor is. And even though I’m still terrified, it just makes me angry.

I push her hand away. “With all due respect, he
did
manage to trap you here, didn’t he? Compelled you to save Anastasia? And now, since the spell’s still gone all wonky, you’re stuck with him, right? That’s gotta suck.”

Tess elbows me in the ribs. “Isn’t she ticked off enough at us?” she whispers.

Saffron-dress Baba Yaga arches an eyebrow but otherwise ignores our interruption. “He did not believe that a mere
girl
could ever defeat him. He was the tsar’s first son. How could a sixteen-year-old schoolgirl find a way to undo what he had managed? The ancient prophecies were for fools like his protégé, Brother Ethan.”

The mention of Ethan’s name jolts me, makes me realize that we can’t sit here having story time much longer. We need to find Ethan and Ben. We need to get ourselves out of here.

The witch doesn’t seem to have such a pressing agenda. She keeps rambling. “It is the perfect circle, you see. My power passed through Viktor to a daughter that he never even knew existed. And then to that daughter’s daughter. And down the line to you. His own desire for power would defeat him, and in turn, would lead you to me—to a destiny that Viktor could not even have imagined.”

Won’t anyone ever let go of the whole destiny thing? She stops talking—finally—and begins to whirl and twirl and dance around the clearing. She may be done, but I’m not.

“What about the rest of it?” I call to her. “What about the rusalka? Lily? She tried to come to you too, didn’t she? But you didn’t help her. If you helped Marina, then why not Lily? Lily’s part of Viktor’s bloodline, just like I am. Why did you let her become such a horrible thing if you could have stopped it?” Or could she have? Maybe her help would have just trapped Lily in a different way.

She doesn’t answer. She just raises her arms to the sky. The dense forest spreads open. We move suddenly and without any warning. We’re no longer in the clearing, but in front of Baba Yaga’s hut. In the distance, like it’s behind a gauzy curtain, I see the beach at Lake Michigan. My mother’s still kneeling on the sand, her arms outstretched like she’s reaching for me.

To my right, the stream appears. Had it been there when we arrived? But now it is, winding through the forest, disappearing into the trees. Ben sits next to it, staring into the water. But where’s Ethan?

“Ben!” I run to him. Tess follows at my heels. “Ben! Get up, Ben. Get away from there!”

“I’ve got a really bad feeling about this,” Tess says. “Really bad.”

Ben’s face is as pale as I’ve ever seen it. He looks up at me and Tess as we skid to a stop next to him. “Can’t move,” he says. “I can’t feel my legs. The horseman—the one in black—I think he put some of kind of spell on me. I’ve been sitting here trying and trying to move. But I can’t. He kept asking me what I really wanted. What I most desired. And I kept telling him that I just want to wake up from whatever this is. I just want to go home.”

“Oh, crap,” Tess says. “Ben, is that really what you said?”

As if on cue, Saffron Dress Baba Yaga begins to laugh. “An interesting twist, isn’t it, child? Are you still so torn? Hasn’t the rusalka you seem to care about so much taught you anything?”

“He doesn’t mean it!” I scream at her. “He doesn’t understand all these tricks and games. Just leave him alone! He didn’t ask to be part of this!”

“Neither did you, girl. Is he worth saving? Is he worth the power you have, the power you are yet to receive?”

“Is that what this is about? I can only help people who are worthy of it? Is that what you think? Is that why you didn’t help Lily? Because she wasn’t worth it to you, and somehow, I am? Why?”

“Because you’re stronger. Because you’re like me. You picked this boy because you could live with the thought of him leaving you. And you haven’t truly given your heart to Ethan because you couldn’t live if he left you again. You are the perfect girl for my legacy: true only to yourself.”

“You really don’t know her, do you?” Tess pulls my hand into hers, holds tight. “She’s not like you. Not at all.”

“Ignore her. Help me get Ben up.” Tess and I each link a hand under his arms and pull. We lift him, but his legs just buckle underneath him, and he slips out of our grip and flops to the ground.

Baba Yaga morphs. The good old original stands next to us again—long brown dress, huge horrible hands, gross iron teeth. The black koshka winds around her ankles. He flicks his pink tongue in and out of its mouth, looks at me, and hisses.

“I like you better this way,” I tell her. “At least now, you look like what you are. And Tess is right. I’m not you. I never was. I never will be.”

“Do you give your promises so lightly, girl? Will you dare tempt me by refusing to keep true to your word?”

“So what exactly is drinking from the stream going to do? Let you take little vacations to Maui or something? You and the cat planning on hanging out at the beach and sipping umbrella drinks? I know what I wanted from the bargain. I wanted to save my friends. But what do you want? You’ve given me your little history lesson, so now I think it’s only fair that you tell me. Since you think I’m so worthy and all.”

“Drink.” Baba Yaga points one wrinkled finger at the stream. “Then you will know.”

“Not until I see Ethan. Not until my friends are safe.”

I realize that I’m furious. At Baba Yaga. At Viktor and the rusalka. Even at myself for ending up here with everyone’s lives hanging in the balance. Everything has been manipulated for so long. Maybe even Baba Yaga doesn’t know the truth anymore. But I’m tired of this crazy game we’ve been playing. I don’t want her to ask me any more questions. I refuse to tell her that I’d pick one thing over another. She thinks that I’m like her, but I’m not. I don’t know what I am yet, but I know I’m not that.

Horse hooves sound through the woods. The horseman dressed in white gallops up and dumps Ethan on the ground in front of me. One of his eyes is swollen shut, and there’s an ugly purple bruise on his cheekbone.

I fall to my knees next to him. “Ethan! Oh, Ethan.” I touch my fingertips to his eye. “I’m so sorry. Are you okay?”

He squints and glances around us, then whispers in my ear. “The horseman’s on our side. Just be ready.”

Ethan

Be ready for what?” Anne grabs my elbow as I stagger to my feet.

I try to clear my vision. One of my eyes is closed to a slit.
Easier if Mistress continues to believe you are weak
, the horseman had said. Did his fist hit me? Or just magic? I don’t know. I don’t even know for sure if I can trust him.

But it’s the horsemen who helped us get out of here last time, and it’s this horseman who’s helping us now. They are still not bound in the same ways as Baba Yaga. The Brotherhood’s magic never took them into consideration. It’s our only loophole.

“I think I can get us out of here. But we won’t have much time. We’re going to have to move quickly.”

“We can’t! Ben. He can’t move his legs, Ethan. It’s some kind of spell. Baba Yaga’s paralyzed him or something.”

I turn, horrified, and see that she’s right.

A scrim will appear,
the horseman had whispered to me in the forest.
Mistress will let them see their world. She doesn’t mean to let them go, just to play with them. To let Anne see her mother, force her to consider everyone who might be hurt by what she does or doesn’t do. As it rises, the magic is at its weakest. You can break through then. But you must act quickly. Before the witch realizes what you are doing.

It appears just beyond the stream now, just as he’s described it. A division between where we want to be and where we are. Anne’s mother kneels on the sand, still reaching for her. Lake Michigan is behind her, blue and deep.

“Look.” Tess points toward the lake.

“Oh crap,” Anne says.

And I know in that instant that it no longer matters whether the horseman had been lying or telling the truth. After that, there’s no time to think at all.

In those few seconds as the scrim settles, Lily rises from the lake and walks swiftly toward the stream. Her hair snakes around her. Her dress is soaked and tattered. She presses her hands against the magic that has kept her from us. And in those few seconds, crosses from the real world to the forest and glides into the stream.

“Well, my dear girl. Your Ethan has made quite the error in judgment. Even I don’t trust my horsemen. But it seems that your mermaid grandmother has finally found her way to me. Drink, Anne.” Baba Yaga looms over us, taller than I’ve ever seen her. “You have promised. Once you drink, then you can make all this go away.”

In the middle of the water now, Lily starts to weep. Ben starts to drag himself back toward the stream.

“Stop me,” he says. “Anne, please. Make it stop.”