Enchantment (31 page)

Except that the source of her power was far off, and she had to draw on it across time and space, while Mozhaiski was powerful here, in the present moment.

She sniffed the air more deeply. Yes, masked by the heavy scent of Mozhaiski’s benign, summery air, there was still a trace of winter in the air. Bear was still in this world.

She raised her hand to summon him, but then caught herself in time: In this world, Bear was not necessarily under her spell. The Bear whose power she controlled was the Bear of another time and place; here he might well be free, or under the power of a great wizard with whom she dared not do battle in her weakened state.

Tread softly, she told herself. Plenty of time to watch and wait, see how the land lies here, find out who makes the magic of tin houses on rolling feet. Not Mozhaiski—this was not the sort of thing he did, generally confining himself to meddlesome rescues of sailors and gifts of rain to farmers’ fields. No, a greater wizardry was at work in the world, or some god only just now coming into his own.

Let the princess lead her through this world. Baba Yaga could afford to wait. Though she was bound not to lay hands on the princess directly, that boy was still with her. She’d find some way to kill him through some other hand, or at least rend them apart, breaking the spell.

She thought back to yesterday’s burning of the church. Such a fine idea! She raised no hand against the princess, but rather simply ignited the dried wood of that ugly magicless sanctuary for the untalented devotees of a distant and disinterested god. Of course the princess got out—whether because of a spell or simply because she was a clever and lucky woman, Baba Yaga could not guess. But even if the church-burning failed to kill the girl and solve Baba Yaga’s problems all in one blow, the thing had been worth doing for its own sake.

She’d find other ways in this world; there would be other tools to use. Even if her powers were weaker here, even if there were strong rivals that she dared not provoke, she’d make do, she’d find a way to win.

Or if she couldn’t, or if her life was in danger, she’d simply cover herself with the cloth she had soaked with the oil from Bear’s fur, speak a single word, and all that was encompassed by the cloth would be carried back home in a moment. If that included the princess or her lackey ur-husband, or both, so much the better. For them to come back to Baba Yaga’s house under her power would be sweet indeed.

11

Airports

If Ivan had doubted Cousin Marek’s magical power, he would have been convinced by this: A genuine passport and visa for Katerina, in her name, and only a day after telephoning a friend in the new passport office in Kiev.

“The independent government of Ukraine is only a few months old, and already you have connections?”

“My connections are older than the government,” said Marek.

Katerina looked through the pages of the book. “So much paper, and almost nothing written in it. And these letters—” She pointed to a word in the Roman alphabet. “—I don’t know some of them.”

“The letters Kirill gave to your language,” said Ivan, “are not the only letters in the world.”

“And you know all the letters?” she asked.

“All the letters in that book,” he said.

“But there aren’t very many here,” as if his achievement were not so remarkable after all. Was she teasing him, or scorning him? How could he hope to tell?

“I know two alphabets,” said Ivan. “The one that’s used here, in the land of my birth—the one Kirill invented. And the one that’s used in America, where my family lives.”

“And which of these lands do you call your own?” asked Cousin Marek. “I’m curious, is all.”

“I’m at home in both places,” said Ivan. “But more a stranger here, I think, than there. Maybe I’m foreign in every land.”

Marek chuckled. “Aren’t we all.”

Katerina was studying her own passport photo. “This seems a remarkably faithful likeness of the woman,” she said. “Who is she, and why is her portrait in this book?”

It took Ivan a moment to realize she wasn’t joking. But then, how would she recognize herself? The shining metal of a sword was the only mirror in King Matfei’s court, and before modern times no one in Russia had much use for mirrors, since they believed a spirit from another world could leap from a mirror to possess them or attack. She had probably seen her own face in a pool—rippling, distorted, with fish darting between her eyes.

“The portrait is of you,” said Ivan.

“When did the painter spy on me?” she said.

“It’s not painted,” said Ivan. “The man yesterday, who made the light flash—”

“That’s what that spell was for? To take my picture from me?”

“Not a spell, a
tool
, like the light switch and the running water in the kitchen.”

“You keep insisting on this, but isn’t it time you explained to me why spells aren’t also tools?”

Ivan shook his head. “You are being obstinate,” he said. “You know the difference perfectly well yourself. You’ve handled a scythe—it cuts because the blade shears the stalks of grain. But a spell has no such contact between one thing and another.”

“Then you’ve proved my point,” she said. She walked to the light switch and turned it on and off. “There—what connection did my action have with that light? And this portrait—the light flashed, but nothing touched me.”

“The light touched you.”

She laughed. “And when I wave my hands in the air to cast a spell, there’s no doubt a wind, too.”

Ivan despaired. “Why do you have to argue with me? You’re not stupid. This is my world, not yours, and if I tell you that magic is different from tools and the difference matters, then you should spend your time trying to understand the difference, not arguing with me.”

She seemed about to answer with another argument, but then stopped herself. “The difference really is important?”

“Yes.”

“Then explain it to me, and I’ll try to understand.”

The result was a painful hour of explaining electricity and wires and circuits, along with a vague explanation of cameras. And by the end, Ivan wasn’t altogether sure that she understood anything. Except the one most important thing: That she not use magic in this world, not in front of other people, nor even speak of it.

“They don’t believe in it?” she said. “Even though it works?”

“It takes talent and training to use magic,” said Cousin Marek, who had listened to Ivan’s explanations without helping once. “While any fool can use a machine.”

“Any fool who can afford to buy one,” said Ivan.

“And any fool who can afford to hire a wizard has magical power at his command, too,” said Cousin Marek. “And now who’s arguing for the sake of argument?”

The next day, the tickets arrived for Katerina’s flight, and Ivan changed his reservations so they could sit together. “You can conjure money out of thin air?” Ivan asked Cousin Marek.

“Of course not,” he answered.

“Then what magic did you use to buy her ticket?”

“American Express,” said Marek.

“An immortal carries American Express?”

“Not
my
American Express,” said Marek. “What use would I have for such a thing? When I want to travel, I walk. No, the card belongs to a friend. Your family are not the only folk to leave this land and go across the sea. And not all who leave this place forget their Cousin Marek.”

For the first time, Ivan realized that this might have happened before. “Did you help us get our visas to leave the Soviet Union, back when Mother and Father and I lived here with you?”

“I tried.”

“Then why did it take all those months?”

“I didn’t have such good connections in Moscow,” said Marek. “And I wasn’t all that eager for you to leave.”

With passport and ticket, and a decent selection of clothes that more or less fit her, Katerina was ready to go. Ivan was not, for when he returned to America he would have to face Ruthie and Father and Mother and somehow explain Katerina to them all. But there were no more reasons for delay, and many reasons to move quickly, not least of which was that Baba Yaga was still hovering nearby, plotting who-knew-what nastiness.

They bade good-bye to Sophia and rode with Cousin Marek to the train station. Ivan noticed that Katerina showed no fear of climbing inside Marek’s truck. Perhaps that was because her trust in Mikola Mozhaiski overrode any fear. Or perhaps she had believed him when he told her it was simply a tool. Though, given the number of people who died each year in auto accidents, it might have been wiser for Ivan to warn her not to get into any kind of car.

When they got to the train station, Katerina immediately grasped the idea of many cars being pulled along a track by a single engine. “The locomotive is the ox,” she said, “and it pulls these houses like sledges across snow.” Close enough, thought Ivan.

Cousin Marek walked the length of the train. Only when he was assured that Baba Yaga wasn’t aboard did he let Ivan and Katerina get on. “Be alert,” he said to them both. “Watch for her, and don’t let her talk to you. She can persuade the sun it’s a pudding.”

“She can’t outrun a train, can she?” said Ivan. “Or outfly a jet? So we’re safe.”

Marek scowled at him. “Don’t wear the hide until the bear is dead,” he said.

“How will we know her if we see her?” said Katerina. “We might have seen her yesterday, but she can seem to be whatever she pleases.”

“Look at her eyes,” said Marek, “and you’ll know. She can’t change those, not without being blind.”

“Look at the eyes and see what?” asked Ivan.

“The enemy.”

Ivan had long since learned that when Cousin Marek didn’t want to give a straight answer, he went in circles, and they were circling now. Rather the way Ivan had led the bear around the chasm till it gave up.

As the train pulled out of the station, Ivan felt a thrill of fear. Cousin Marek was no longer with them—as he said, why leave a trail fifty feet wide for the old hag to follow—and now it was up to him, Ivan the nonfighter, Ivan the scholar with his nose in a book, to keep Katerina safe and guide her through this dangerous world.

What if she gets airsick and throws up on the plane? Did Sophia explain to her about how to deal with her period here, or is Mother going to have to explain that in America? What if there’s some disease she isn’t immune to? He thought of
War of the Worlds
, when the alien invader is felled by the common cold.

Katerina was hardly the alien invader, and as for Baba Yaga, he knew better than to count on some microbe-ex-machina to save them from her. For all he knew, the witch had gotten on the train at the first stop, making Marek’s check of the train useless. How far did her powers of illusion go, anyway? Could she be on board disguised as a suitcase? How did he know what was possible? The world that only a few days ago had seemed, if not safe, then at least comprehensible, was now fraught with new dangers and possibilities. It made everything new again. New and frightening, the way America was when Ivan first arrived, and everything he said and did seemed foolish, not only to the other children in school, but to himself. Add to this Katerina’s insistence on making her own decisions, whether she understood all the consequences or not, and Ivan knew he’d get very little rest, on the train, in the air, or at home.

Katerina tried her best to remain as calm and brave as Ivan had when he came to Taina. She would not be shamed in front of him by showing cowardice. Now she understood how baffling and frightening it was to be in a strange place where the old rules no longer applied and no one knew how to value her. In Mikola Mozhaiski’s house, she hadn’t really grasped it yet, for she was among people whose language she understood; indeed, it was Ivan who still sounded like the accented stranger. But now in the cacophony of the station and the train, where everything was unexpected and she only understood one word in fifty, she was nauseated with fear. She found herself wanting to cling to Ivan’s arm and beg him to come back to Taina with her. Better the known danger than the unknown! But she couldn’t ask that, for in Taina it was
his
life that was in danger, while here, as far as she knew, neither of them was threatened. Her fear was foolish. Ivan would protect her, and if he couldn’t, she might be able to help herself with a little magic. And if that didn’t work, well, her life was in the hands of God, wasn’t it? If he wanted her dead here, then nothing could save her; if he wanted her to live, then nothing could harm her.

The airport was a nightmare, though Ivan assured her that all was normal and safe. The customs official who looked at her with no respect whatsoever, as if she were a peasant with an unpleasant stink, and then rattled off a stream of the strange language that they spoke here—she barely kept herself from bursting into tears. Then Ivan interposed himself between her and the official, said a few words, showed the little book, and the man’s demeanor softened. She was just about to smile at him when he suddenly picked up something heavy and slammed it down on a pad of wet blue cloth and then on her blank book, staining it and making a brutal pounding noise. She jumped back and screeched inadvertently before regaining her composure. The official laughed in her face, the swine. She felt humiliated, though Ivan simply hurried her along and spoke soothingly to her that this was a common thing, he should have warned her, he was so sorry, they always stamp the passport.

She wondered how many things in her kingdom might have surprised or frightened him, and she had never thought to warn him or prepare him for anything. Instead she had scorned him for not already knowing what any child knew. But now she knew a bit of wisdom: Whoever travels to a new land is always a child.

She thought back to when Mikola Mozhaiski woke up the gruzovik and made it go forward, controlling it effortlessly with a wheel in his hands and with devices he pushed with his feet. She had imagined herself trying to control this moving house. Impossible. Yet hadn’t she expected Ivan to pick up a sword and know how to use it instantly? She wanted to tell him she was sorry for not understanding what he was going through. But as she was about to do it, she wondered whether he really had felt the same fear as she. After all, he had traveled from land to land before, and even learned a new language, so he was used to new experiences. She didn’t remember him showing fear in any obvious way, either, except reluctance to do certain things. So to say anything about fear right now would merely be a confession of her own.

As the airplane lumbered over the runway and then rose into the air, she wanted to scream in terror—and in delight, both at once. She was flying! She wanted to look out the window; but when she did, it made her want to throw up, to see the ground fall away like that, everything becoming small. And when the airplane made a sharp turn in the air soon after takeoff, she did throw up.

Oh, the unspeakable humiliation of it! Ivan was there at once with a little bag in case she vomited more, but it was too late, wasn’t it? Her blouse was smeared with vomit, and even after the attendant led her to the bathroom and helped her rinse that part of the blouse, the smell lingered on the cloth
and
she had a cold wet spot that was quite uncomfortable. She had thought that the bra Sophia had bought for her in the village could not possibly be any more uncomfortable, but now she knew better. She could be cold, wet, humiliated, and smell like vomit.

When she got back to her seat, she looked out the window to hide her face from Ivan. By now the airplane was so high that all she could see was clouds below her, and she pretended it was only snow, and this was a huge sleigh gliding along, occasionally hitting an inexplicable bump—no doubt a bird or a particularly thick cloud. I don’t want to be here, she thought. I want to go home, where I’m not humiliated every moment, where I can speak and be spoken to, where people know that I’m Princess Katerina and treat me with respect instead of contempt or pity.

Mustn’t think this way, she told herself. Keep control. No crying.

Then she felt Ivan’s hand gently but firmly take hold of hers, and he leaned close to her and whispered in her ear, “You’re doing very well, and many people get sick in airplanes, so don’t be ashamed of it.” Then he kissed her cheek the way her father might have, when she was a little girl, and it was too much for her. She burst into tears. Or rather, burst out with a single sob, and then wept in silence, turning her face toward him, hiding her tears against his chest as he held her. Oh, if only it were my father here with me! she cried silently, but then rebuked herself. This is what a husband should do for his wife, and he is doing it. A wife should not wish that she were still with her father. That was undutiful and childish.