On the Verge (22 page)

With a pop Rusty’s head and torso emerged above the surface and Freya was able to grab hold of him under his arms. A few more mighty tugs, this time with her feet braced against the tangled roots of a dead shrub, and he slid out of the marsh and onto the narrow path.

Freya bent over his face. Mud caked his mouth and nose. She put two trembling fingers on his neck and checked for a pulse. There was nothing at first and then a soft flutter, so faint that she wasn’t sure if it was his heart or just wishful thinking. She waited and there it was again, weak but she could feel it. She shook him, gently at first and then harder, unsure of how to bring him around. She screamed and even slapped his face, but he remained unconscious. Finally, she put her head down on his chest, exhausted and near tears again. She didn’t know what to do. Her mind was racing but it offered her no solution.

She lay there, her head over his heart, listening for the reassuring thump of muscle pumping blood, and she let her body go slack. She realized she was still clutching the doll that Vasilisa had given her back at the shop. She lifted her head and brought the little toy up to her face.

“Now what?” she asked.

The doll didn’t respond.

“What am I supposed to do now?”

She sounded desperate. Freya clutched the doll in both hands willing it to show her the way, to give her some direction. It stared back at her, its pretty glass eyes shining. The pleasant smile sewn on its face remained unchanged.

“Please, just wake him up. Make him come back to me. Help me out just one more time,” she pleaded.

Freya stared at the doll a moment longer and then tucked its dirty body into the chest pocket of Rusty’s sweater. Nothing happened. Then the tears came in earnest, silent, hot tears. She was angry and scared and frightened that Rusty might actually be dead. She reached out and cradled his face with both her hands, running her thumbs gingerly over the hard ridges of misshapen bone that distorted his peaceful expression. Then she bent down and kissed him, light and soft and quick. Almost immediately he stirred and his eyelids fluttered open. He rolled over on his side and coughed dark mud and black water.

“What happened?” he groaned. He sounded unsure and groggy but very much alive.

“I think I just saved your life again,” Freya said. “You really need to stop getting yourself into these situations. I might not always be here to save you, you know.”

She said it with a smile on her face and relief in her voice.

“I remember narrowly avoiding Baba Yaga’s horseman and then getting caught in the bog. I couldn’t keep my head up. How did you get me out of there?”

“A lot of pulling and a little help from our dolly friend there.” Freya pointed to the ragdoll in Rusty’s pocket.

Rusty looked reassured but not surprised.

“Thank you,” he said. “I am humbled by your assistance and in your debt.”

“You’re welcome,” Freya said. She didn’t mention the kiss. She wasn’t sure how to bring it up, and they had more important things to worry about. A kiss that woke the gentle giant; she really was living a fairytale.

Freya stood and offered Rusty her hand. He grasped it and she helped haul him up to his feet. It seemed odd to continue on their journey after they’d both almost died, but they still had business to attend to with Baba Yaga. They exchanged a look and then turned in unison back in the direction of her hut at the end of the rocky path. It was easier to see now in the pale light of Baba Yaga’s artificial daybreak and Freya estimated that they were about halfway across the malodorous swamp.

“Not too much farther,” Freya said.

“No, but we must still be on guard. You never know wh—”

Rusty paused in mid-sentence. Freya had heard it too. The thunder of hooves. Again.

“You have got to be kidding me,” Freya said, but she knew that anything was possible in this nightmarish underworld. She looked over her shoulder and a red-orange light seemed to set the old clapboard houses of Skid Row on fire. The chimerical fire tore down through the street and a whinny, cold and cruel, echoed out from the wooden gully like a vengeful ghost. It made Freya’s hair stand on end.

“Let’s go!” she exclaimed and without waiting for Rusty’s reply she grabbed his hand and set out at a sprint. They ran hard down the stony path, their feet skidding across damp stones and slick mud. Freya’s chest was on fire and her legs felt like lead but she pushed forward, willing herself to go faster. She looked back and saw Rusty, his arms pumping and his breath coming fast and ragged. For a moment he leaped to the side to avoid a craggy stone and Freya saw the thing that was following them. A rider like the last, but this time he and his steed were red-hot like molten lava. His armor glowed like the tip of a poker set into a fire, and he swung a blazing morning star about his head so that the air sizzled around him. The horse snorted steam as it ripped across the jetty. It was gaining on them easily.

“Faster,” she shouted, but she wasn’t sure how much more speed she could muster from her weary body.

Baba Yaga’s house drew near. The blood pounded in Freya’s ears, her lungs burned, her muscles tightened, near fatigue. Still the horse and rider pursued them. They were so close now Freya could feel the heat ripple off of them, singeing her skin. The pounding of hooves was almost upon them, the whir of the morning star filled the air. Still they pounded on, flying down the narrow path with all the energy they had left.

Baba Yaga’s shack was within reach, just a few more steps and they would be there. The air was sweltering now and the ground shook from the fiery horse’s charge. Freya turned to look behind her once more and was horrified to see the knight had drawn nearly even with them. He seemed to stare down at her through the slit in his crimson visor. He swung the morning star up, preparing to bring it crashing down on top of them, when suddenly Freya felt herself dragged to the side. She lost her footing and rolled erratically across the rocky ground. Rusty had grabbed her by the waist and twisted her out and away from the path of the blazing knight just as the horseman reached the gateway to Baba Yaga’s hut. She felt the hot wind generated from the morning star blow angrily across her face as the spiked ball narrowly missed her head. Then, the air sizzled, there was a flash and a spark and the terrifying cavalier disappeared as it hit the fence surrounding Baba Yaga’s yard, leaving only shimmering waves of heated air in his wake.

Freya had come to a rest on her stomach and she rolled over now, drawing in deep breaths of the swamp air, happy to fill her lungs with the stale atmosphere after coming so close to a violent death twice, mere moments apart from each other. She wasn’t sure how much more punishment her body could take, and they hadn’t even met the witch yet. These Verge creatures meant business.

“Why are we doing this again?” Freya asked.

Rusty was sprawled on the muddy ground nearby. He looked pale and he was breathing hard, but Freya was glad to see his chest rising and lowering. She smiled at him. She saw the little doll had survived their wild dash and hung like an enchanting if somewhat soiled marionette from his sweater pocket, and her smile deepened.

“I think it’s because your life is at stake,” Rusty said and then he laughed. It was the kind of half-sane giggling that happens only when you’re not sure whether to laugh or cry, and it caught in his throat so that spasms of voiceless mirth shook his body.

Freya couldn’t summon the energy to do anything but grin sardonically at the sad irony of Rusty’s words. She looked up at the sky and noticed that the red knight seemed to have heralded a counterfeit daybreak, and she could now see their surroundings clearly although they weren’t much to look at, just stinking marsh stretching far into the distance and Baba Yaga’s curious hut crouched on the little island of solid ground amid the steaming bog.

Freya rolled onto her knees so she could see the witch’s house more clearly. It was surrounded by the fence that had broken the knight’s charge. In the light of day she could see that it was no ordinary picket fence but a barrier made of bones. Long tibias and femurs, yellow with age and jutting out of the ground at strange angles, formed a formidable barricade to the barren yard beyond. But it was the skulls set at regular intervals along the top of the barrier that sent a chill down Freya’s spine. Like so many heads skewered on pikes they clearly announced what would await trespassers foolish enough to call upon Baba Yaga.

“Well, we’ve come this far,” Freya said. “Let’s go meet this Baba Yaga.”

Rusty had stopped laughing and was crouching low, his hands on his knees, studying the hut. It was an imperfect circle constructed of thick black sticks of charred wood held in place by a slipshod arrangement of rope, mud and twine. A cap of crooked branches and scraggly dry brush acted as a roof although it was uncertain how such a haphazard arrangement of twigs and bracken would keep out the elements or protect the occupant from whatever creatures might wander out of the swamp. Indeed the entire place appeared more like the coarsely made nest of some overgrown marshland raven than a proper house.

The aerie effect was heightened by the two enormous black raptor claws that protruded from the undercarriage of the hut. Like stilts, the scaly legs lifted the copse-like house above the muck. Shiny black talons grasped the ground firmly and appeared as though they might be called upon to crush an intruder or to run very fast and far away from a serious threat. Freya was surprised by the fear the incongruous legs struck in her. The bizarreness of their presence underneath the house filled her with an inexplicable dread. She only knew that her first instinct was to leave and never return. She suspected this is exactly what the witch had in mind when she’d constructed such a dwelling.

Rusty stood from his crouched position. His normal aloof demeanor had returned, but Freya could see an almost imperceptible change in his carriage, a slight downward slope to his back and shoulders. She attributed this to the fact that only a few moments before he had almost drowned in a stinking bog.

“Let’s go,” he said, his misshapen mouth set in a stoic line.

They both stepped forward, slowly, toward the bony gate of the uncanny little house. Freya held her breath as they passed through but nothing happened as their feet touched the barren ground of Baba Yaga’s front yard.

“How do we get up there?” Freya asked.

The long bird legs made it so that Baba Yaga’s door was nearly even with the top of Rusty’s head, but no sooner had she asked then a set of rickety stairs unfolded itself from the tiny porch. The pair looked at each other and then Freya put an uncertain foot on the lowest stair, testing it to see if it would hold her weight. It creaked loudly but seemed sturdy enough. She hurried up the stairs, afraid of what would happen if she lingered too long on their unreliable support. Rusty followed closely behind.

“Should we knock?” Freya wondered out loud.

She stared with trepidation at the black wood door and its disturbing latch constructed from the jawbone of a predator, holding what seemed to be a human vertebrae securely in its toothy mandible. But again, no sooner had she asked than the carnivorous mouth loosed its hold on the skeletal remains and the crooked portal swung open revealing the dreary interior of Baba Yaga’s home.

“Come in, my dears. You’ve certainly earned it.”

It was a voice like no other Freya had ever heard and she was certain she never wanted to hear another like it ever again. It was dry and crisp like fall leaves, but there was no trace of the fragile beauty of fall in it. Instead there was only bleakness, a sour rottenness that permeated the harsh consonants and attenuated vowels of Baba Yaga’s accented voice. Like the swamp she called home, it was clear that there was some terrible degradation at the witch’s core. Freya cringed and it took all her will power not to take flight right then and there before she even set eyes on the vile conjurer of Slavic lore.

Freya held her breath and Rusty’s hand and stepped forward into the gloom beyond the threshold. It took a few moments for her eyes to adjust to the shadowy interior; even the gloomy morn outside was brighter than the confines of Baba Yaga’s hut. The air there was close and warm. The effect was stifling. Freya felt herself gag. She actually found herself longing for the tainted swamp air outside, and she looked for a window, but it appeared that the only opening to the exterior was the doorway they had just passed through. As soon as Rusty cleared its threshold it slammed shut again with a sound that carried the force and finality of a dungeon gate.

“Don’t linger by the door,
lyubimaya
,” Baba Yaga wheezed. “It’s not polite you know, and you’ve already offended me with your stench. Don’t make it worse. You uplanders always smell of fresh air and the world after a rainstorm. It makes me sick.”

Freya still couldn’t see her. She wasn’t sure she wanted to. But slowly she was able to pick out the details of their surroundings. The only light source was an ancient lantern that hung from the crooked rafters on a cobweb-encrusted chain. It seemed to be more decorative than functional as the globe of glass protecting the flame was ensconced in an ornately filigreed metal cage that blocked much of the already scant light. What light did escape fell upon an ancient wooden table and the giant brass samovar it supported. The distended belly of its grotesquely rounded urn, along with its curved spigot, reminded Freya of a lewd imp from a bacchanal.

The floor was mostly lost amid the darkness, but from what Freya could see it appeared to be covered in grime and spotted here and there with dark stains that might have been tar or blood. In a space like this it was impossible to be sure. The walls were crowded with deep shelves that held glass jars and tins. Some appeared to be spices and herbs; others held organic matter of indeterminate origin. None of them looked familiar to Freya, but they all had an insalubrious air about them. Freya imagined they were the ingredients for the nefarious spells and charms of the old witch. She squinted her eyes at the cracked and peeling labels of the containers nearest her but they were scrawled in Cyrillic.