Enchantment (8 page)

But there was something new in place. A bridge, a span of smooth white stone reaching across the chasm to the other side.

“Thank God,” he whispered. He walked to the bridge, stepped on it, tested it. Firm and true. He took two more steps.

The woman cried out. He looked back at her. She gazed at him in awe, perhaps even in horror.

“You walk in air!” she cried.

“No, on a . . .” He wanted to say
bridge
but he didn’t remember the Old Church Slavonic word. He tried it in Russian, Ukrainian. She only shook her head. Then she pointed to the opposite side of the chasm.

“This way,” she said. “Here is the bridge.”

He recognized the word at once when
she
said it, because it wasn’t that far from the Russian word after all. So she must have understood him.

He watched in shock as she stepped off the edge of the chasm and walked three steps out into the middle of the air.

“Wait!” he cried. It was clear she was being held up by something—he just couldn’t see it. Yet seeing her there, standing in midair, made him tremble to the groin in fear. She was falling, she had to be falling.

“Come,” she said. “You are my betrothed, and I must take you home.”

“I can’t,” he said. “You see a bridge, but I see nothing here. The only bridge I see is on the other side.”

She took the few steps back to the pedestal, reached out her hand to him. “Though you are only a peasant,” she said, “you are the one who broke the curse on me, and you are the one whose offer of marriage I accepted.”

A peasant? He looked down at his clothes. Knights didn’t dress like this, but peasants didn’t, either.

“Or did the bear take your sword from you?” she asked. “Did you take off your mail to climb?”

“I never wore mail,” he said. “Nor used a sword. I
am
a peasant.”
Smridu,
that was the word he used. Worker. Commoner. But a free man, at least. She hadn’t taken him for a slave. That was something.

“The bear had lost an eye,” she said.

“I threw a stone at its head,” he answered.

“Then you vanquished the bear. The only reason he didn’t kill you as you bent over me was because he kept trying to see you through the missing eye.”

“No, the only reason he didn’t kill me was because you agreed to marry me.”

“You talk so strangely,” she said. “Are you a Roman?”

She must think he came from the Byzantine Empire, the lands still ruled by the last vestige of the empire of Rome.

“My parents live in a faraway country. Far over the sea.”

She relaxed. “And you came to find me?”

“I flew here to study ancient manuscripts, actually, but—”

She had stopped cold on the word
flew
and was covering her mouth in fear.

“I don’t mean that I can actually fly myself,” he said.

“What are you? What kind of wizard?”

“No wizard,” he said.

“You carry no weapon, you speak a strange language, yet you flew here, you threw a stone that blinded the Great Bear. What star will wink out now, because of your stone?”

“Oh, do you call that—” He meant to say, Oh, do you call that constellation the Great Bear, too? But he didn’t know the word for
constellation
in Old Church Slavonic.

She was not going to wait for him to finish. “Whatever you are, you will be my husband,” she said. “Even if you cannot see this bridge, hold my hand and I will take you across.”

She reached out to him. He took her hand.

The moment they touched, he could see the bridge she was standing on. It was very different from the bridge he saw. Where his was like a natural formation of stone, hers was of wood, ornately carved and decorated, with gilding on the upper surfaces. He recognized the workmanship. From sometime before 1000 c.e. Like her clothing.

Where did her bridge lead? What would he find there?

“I’m betrothed to someone else,” he murmured.

“Not now,” she said, looking horrified that he could even think that such a thing might matter. “If you don’t marry me now, then all is lost, and the Widow will devour all my people, all this land.”

“The Widow?” he said.

“Even in your land you must know of her,” she said. “The evil widow of old King Brat of Kiev, who was driven from his throne by the Rus’ and ended up ruling a little kingdom called Pryava. Since he died, she brutally took over other lands until her kingdom borders ours. She claims to be the bride now of an even greater king. She consumes nations and spits out nothing but bones.”

“And she’s the one who put you here?”

“ ‘Until Katerina finds a husband,’ she told my father, ‘then I, Ya’—I mean, she said her name—’I am heir to all these lands.’ Then she had the Great Bear pursue me. He drove me here, where I could run no farther. I fell asleep, and he guarded me, until you came and gave me your oath, setting me free of him. Now I must get home to my family.”

“ ‘Ya,’ ” said Ivan, echoing her. “Ya-
ga
?” Was it possible that this evil queen was the witch of the fairy tales? “
Baba
Yaga?”

She gasped and put her hand over his mouth. Her hand was callused from work, and she was stronger than he expected. But he liked the feeling of her touching him, though there was only fear and annoyance in the gesture.

“Are you a fool, to say her name right out? Even here. Even in this place.” So it
was
Baba Yaga. If unconsciously he was looking for fairy tales, he had stumbled onto the mother lode.

She took her hand away from his mouth.

“Sorry,” he said. “For saying her name, and I’m sorry about your kingdom, too. But . . .”

“But what? We have no choice but to marry. Forget this other woman. Take her as a concubine after we are wed.”

“But it’s been a thousand years,” he said. “More than a thousand years that you’ve been lying here.”

She looked at him as if he were crazy. “No thousand years,” she said. “It is
today
. This morning is
today
.”

She pulled at his hand, drew him onto the bridge, and led him to the other side.

Piotr and Esther lay in bed at the end of the day, watching Johnny Carson because Piotr enjoyed the program; Esther barely understood it. Even when she caught the meaning of the English, she rarely knew why everyone was laughing. But she watched because Piotr wanted to watch. Carson was wearing a turban and holding envelopes to his head, then saying things that made people whoop and laugh.

Piotr also laughed. She could feel the bed shaking.

Then, suddenly, it was as if she were falling; her stomach lurched within her. No, it was as if a baby kicked in her womb. No, no, it was as if her baby did not kick. It was as if she were carrying a baby and suddenly knew that it was dead and would never kick again.

“He’s gone,” she whispered.

“What?” asked Piotr.

Esther began to cry.

Piotr turned off the television, concerned. “What is it, my love? Are you sick? What’s wrong?”

“He’s gone,” she said. “My little boy. He’s gone. He’s left this world.”

Piotr put his arms around her. “Hush, hush, my love, that can’t be so, that can’t be true. How would you know it, anyway, so far from him? You’re just afraid for him, a mother’s worry, but don’t be afraid, he’s with Cousin Marek, he’s safe, he’s safe.”

His words, his tone, they were meant to be comforting, but she took no comfort from them, only from the arms he wrapped around her, only from the warmth of his body next to hers. We made only one baby out of our love, Piotr, only one baby, one little boy, and he is gone.

Baba Yaga

Yaga was busy when Bear came back. She was in the midst of a tricky extraction of the living eyes of a merchant who had failed to bring anything interesting to sell, but who had the most fascinating silver-tinted irises that might have some unpredictable effects in spells of vision and illusion. The fellow was trying to persuade her, in his halting foreign speech, that perhaps she could make do with only one of his eyes, while she concentrated on popping out the left eye without bursting it, when Bear gave a great roar just outside the room.

The merchant jumped in surprise, which of course caused him even more pain than he was already in, as the cords that bound him cut more deeply into his throat. Choking, he managed to croak out, “What was that?”

“My husband,” sighed Yaga. She was grimly determined not to show how bitterly his return disappointed her. Not that she had really expected to keep him tied up guarding the princess forever—for one thing, there were some very useful spells that she could only cast when he was close at hand. Still, she had thought that by putting both Bear and the princess in a place cut loose from time she would gain more than the few months that had passed for her during the princess’s enchantment.

The real disappointment, however, was the knowledge that the princess had somehow managed not only to wake up but also to get the person who woke her to propose marriage to her. The whole point of putting her there had been to make sure that whoever kissed her would be some stranger from another time and place who wouldn’t speak a word that she could understand, so that Bear would have plenty of time to eat him from the head down before there was any betrothal possible. And here was Bear, showing that her plan hadn’t been foolproof after all.

“Do hold still,” she said irritably.

“Sorry,” croaked the merchant.

Out popped the eye.

“Here we come,” said Yaga.

The merchant sighed and whimpered.

Yaga reached back with her long, thin blade to sever the optic nerve and blood vessels as close to the back as possible—must get the maximum strength from this eye, considering how much the fellow who grew it for her was going to miss it. “There,” she said. “Want to see it?”

The man groaned. Taking this for a yes, she held up the eye with its dangling cord. “Now your eye will see for
me
,” said Yaga. “Which will give it a much more interesting career than it would ever have had in your head.”

“Please,” whispered the man. “Let me keep the other.”

“Don’t be stingy,” said Yaga. “Didn’t your mother teach you to share?”

The door flew open.

“My darling husband,” said Yaga. “Didn’t I tell you to knock first?”

The answer was a roar. Bear shambled into the room on all fours, then stood to his full height and roared again.

“Hungry?” asked Yaga. “I’m almost done with this head, if you want it.”

“Who is that eye for?” demanded Bear.

“Why, do
you
want it?” Whereupon Yaga looked up and realized that yes, indeed, Bear
could
use an eye, for the very good reason that he had only the one, while his other socket was bleeding. “Did you save the eye?” she asked. “Did you think to bring it back to me?”

“It was crushed,” said Bear savagely. “The bastard threw a boulder at me.”

“Aren’t gods like you supposed to be able to, I don’t know, regrow anything that falls off or out?”

“It didn’t fall,” said Bear. He sounded downright hostile. “And it wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t trapped me there without any powers beyond the natural strength of a bear.”

“I was using your powers here, my love,” said Yaga. “I couldn’t very well let everything fall apart at home just because you’re out playing with some princess.”

“I want to kill you,” said Bear.

“No you don’t,” said Yaga. He couldn’t possibly. The spells that bound him assured that his love for Yaga would be unflagging.

“Well then I
want
to want to kill you.”

“Bear, meet . . . what’s your name?”

The merchant murmured something.

“Do you have to play with your victims like that?” said Bear. “Why can’t you kill them first and then take their parts?”

“Things start to corrupt when the body is dead. So I have to take the best parts when they’re at their freshest.” By now she had finished packing the first eye in clean white ashes. She closed and sealed the box, and set to prodding at the other eye. “You will be a dear and break open the head for me, won’t you? I want to get the brain whole, if I can.”

In answer, Bear lurched over, grabbed the man’s head between his paws, and tore upward so violently that the cords cut right through his throat. With a twist, Bear pulled the head off the spine and dashed it to the stone floor. It split open with such force that the brain was splashed all over Yaga’s feet and the rugs as well.

“You clumsy, insolent—”

“Don’t start with me!” roared Bear.

For a moment she was afraid of him, for he still carried himself with the power of a god, and she wasn’t
completely
sure that her binding spells would be utterly irresistible, if he got angry enough. Gods were dangerous creatures to enslave. Who knew how deviously they might manipulate the reality around them?

But in a moment, she could see that he really wasn’t angry—anger being forbidden to him. The roaring and acting up were the result of pain, and after all, the poor dear had lost an eye. “I should scold you for killing him before I got the second eye out,” said Yaga, “but I think your wound is making you cranky and I forgive you.”

“Give me the eye you took from that man.”

“It wouldn’t fit,” she said. “And you’d start seeing like a man, which would do you no good at all.” She popped the second eye out of the head. Since it was already dead, it wasn’t so important to pack it in ash. In fact, she might as well dry it to be powdered later—there were plenty of uses for it yet. “You did waste the brains, you know. I can’t even tell which part is which.”

Bear stepped in the midst of the pile of brains and twisted his paw.

“Don’t be spiteful,” said Yaga.

“Kill the girl and take the kingdom if you want it,” said Bear. “Forget all this song and dance. You have the power. Or rather,
I
have the power.”

Yaga sighed. “I don’t want just to take it. I want to keep it. The high king at Kiev—”

“Is your sworn enemy. The Rus’ drove your late husband from the throne of Kiev, didn’t they? Stuck the two of you out here in this backwater kingdom of Pryava, didn’t they? What do you care what the king of the Rus’ thinks of your claim to the throne of Taina?”