On the Verge (24 page)

“Now, where did I put my mortar?” the witch said, looking about her, raptor-like. “Ah, there it is.”

She sidled over to the fence where a giant mortar lay. An equally overgrown pestle rested precariously on top of it.

“I really should be more careful with them, but I get out of house so infrequently these days. You see, your average, run-of-the-mill witch uses a broomstick to get around. How terrible. Who wants to balance their
tuchus
on a little stick? It’s so crude and masochistic, no? My transportation of choice is luxurious in comparison, not to mention practical. I just pop myself in this mortar, grab the pestle to steer and when I’m not using it to get around, I can prepare my witchy ingredients with it. Brilliant, right?”

“Yes, it’s very efficacious,” Freya said.

“Oh, now you’re throwing around the big words. It’s too late my little turnip. I’ve got your number. You might study hard, but as far as wits go you’re only middling, I’m afraid. Which is fine. Sometimes it’s better to be unassuming when you’re dealing with the Verge.”

Freya wasn’t sure what to say. She’d always prided herself on her intelligence. In fact, it was the source of her self-esteem. She could feel her indignation rising.

“There we are, at a loss for words again,” said Baba Yaga. “That seems to be much more your style, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Well, no, as a matter of fact—” Freya began.

“There’s no time for idle chit chat, dearie. We all have important matters to attend to, so let’s just harvest these bugs and you can get on your way, yes?”

“Yes, but—”

“Wonderful,” the witch continued, effectively cutting Freya off. “Now if you would be so kind as to grab my mortar, I’ll get the pestle, and we can get on with things.”

Baba Yaga shoved the giant barrel-shaped mortar into Freya’s arms before slinging the pestle up onto her shoulder. She drew up close to the cactus with Freya, her anger thoroughly piqued, fuming close behind.

“You see that white powdery scale growing on that paddle there and this one here?” she asked Freya.

Freya looked at the places on the plant Baba Yaga had indicated and there was indeed a kind of dusty white incrustation built up on the thick green lobe of the prickly pear. In fact, once Freya knew what to look for she could see that the entire cactus was covered in the strange accretions.

“Those lovely little growths are cochineal colonies, lovingly tended to by yours truly. Go ahead, try pressing your finger against one.”

Freya hesitated but the witch insisted.

“Do it! You must see what all my hard work minding these little creatures amounts to.”

Freya raised a diffident finger and pressed it against the grey-white residue. It burst open under the pressure, exploding into a brilliant red smear against her skin, like thickened blood.

Freya recoiled, but then tried to compose herself. The witch already thought she was dimwitted; she didn’t want her to think she was a wimp too.

“How–interesting,” Freya said, struggling to find the right word to describe the burst bugs smeared across her fingertip.

“Ha! You city dwellers,” sneered the witch. “You’re all the same. Divorced from the land and all its inhabitants. You’d rather your colors came from chemicals mixed in a factory than a creature raised in nature. Well, you can keep your manmade pigments. There’s no red that compares to my carmine.”

She retrieved a metal instrument from the pocket of her
sarafan
that looked to be part spatula, part spoon and carefully scraped the nearest colony off the surface of the cactus before depositing it into the bottom of the mortar. She harvested several more of the strange chalky clusters before reaching for the oversized pestle she had rested against a particularly prickly section of the plant. Without any reluctance or ceremony she grasped the pestle with both hands, raised it up and brought in down with more force than Freya had imagined her spindly arms could have mustered. The accompanying squelch made Freya feel a bit queasy. Baba Yaga brought the pestle up again and eyed Freya with a look of malicious mischief. Freya knew she was delighting in her discomfort, and she steeled herself for the next stomach-turning spatter of ruptured cochineals.

Baba Yaga repeated the smashing motion several more times before pausing to reach into the bottom of the mortar and spoon out a dollop of the brilliant red paste with two withered fingers. She brought it close to her face and eyed it carefully, touching her thumb to the mixture to test its consistency. Apparently satisfied with her work, she let out a contented little sigh and a grin that bared her spiny teeth and parted the walnut shell skin of her face.

“That ought to do it,” she said.

She scrounged around in a wormy box by the backstairs and came up with a tin ladle and a dusty ceramic container with a cork lid. She cackled a bit to herself as she began to spoon the concoction into the round vessel. Freya couldn’t help but note her similarity to all the fairytale witches of her childhood nightmares.

“I think we are done here, my
matrioshka
. Why don’t we head back inside? You can collect your sickly giant in there and get on your way. There’s a lot of work for you to do.”

They made their way up the wobbly stairs and through the magical door, and it disappeared as soon as they had both passed through the threshold. It was almost impossible to see once again in the stuffy hut, but while Freya was waiting for her eyes to adjust to the dimness of the place, she heard the witch let loose a raspy cry of fear mixed with anger.

“What is that abomination doing in my house?” she exclaimed.

A moment more and Freya could see that Rusty was seated on the three-legged chair grasping the little doll that Vasilisa had given them in his meaty fist, holding it up to his ear. It looked for all the world as though it was whispering to him, and that he, in turn, was listening intently.

“How dare you bring that thing into my home! And after all the kindness I’ve shown you.”

The witch was seething. Freya could see the fury in her eyes.

“Freya,” said Rusty groggily. “We have to get out of here. The witch, she can’t be trusted. The doll has told me the truth.”

“Rusty, what are you talking about?” Freya asked. She could feel the panic rising in her throat making it difficult to speak.

“Where did you get that doll?” the witch growled.

“Vasilisa gave it to us. She said it was a charm. That it would give us protection.”

The words fell from Freya’s lips before she had a chance to think about what the repercussions might be for the girl in the shop.

“Protect you! Oh, my, that’s rich,” the witch said, a hysterical quaver animating the edges of her voice. “The only thing that harpy wants is to rid herself of her obligation to me by luring you two imbeciles down here and keeping you alive long enough to be eaten.”

“What?” Freya asked as she eyed Rusty with growing concern. He was rocking back and forth despondently in the corner, the doll still pressed up against his distorted face.

“I’m saying that girl upstairs offering you protection was trying to see you safely down to my hut as part of her payment to me. She owes me fresh meat and she was trying to use that doll there as an insurance policy, but she has no idea what kind of dark magic she is playing with by sending it down here.”

Freya was still trying to understand what the witch had told her when suddenly Rusty dropped the doll to the floor as though it had bitten him. He looked confused and disoriented.

“When did you come back in from the garden?” he asked.

Freya was concerned, but she didn’t have time to process Rusty’s strange behavior and the witch’s disturbing accusations regarding Vasilisa before the little dolly began to writhe on the cracked floor. Her fabric skin undulated and expanded until finally the doll’s sweet face burst open and a hundred or more black sacs exploded out of it. They pulsated, growing larger by the second until the ovules stretched to breaking and enormous earwigs emerged, their great pincers clacking in the dim interior of Baba Yaga’s hut.

“What’s going on?” Freya shouted.

“Take the paint,” Baba Yaga hissed, pushing the ceramic container into her chest. “Go out the way you came and don’t stop until you reach the church. This must be Vasilisa’s backup plan. If the doll failed in her mission to get you eaten, then she thought she could destroy me directly with these bugs.”

The insects, which for the first few moments seemed to have been gathering their strength, now began to advance, their razor-sharp pincers poised to deliver a debilitating blow to whoever stood in their way.

“I’ll give you a head start, but I suggest you start running. Now.”

Freya was confused, but she didn’t need to be told twice to run fast from a cache of angry, oversized earwigs with machete-sized forceps sprouting from their articulated abdomens. She crossed the room rapidly, grabbed Rusty, who flung his arm around her shoulders and the pair left the hut, narrowly dodging the nearest insects’ curved pincers on their way out.

They passed over the witch’s barren yard and through her skeletal fence, reaching the narrow causeway across the marshland before a flash and boom not unlike thunder and lightning rent the air. Freya turned to see a great cloud of the giant earwigs fly through the witch’s front door and out into the moor. Several of them landed in the sucking muck of the marsh but others hit the rocky pathway and, without skipping a beat, began racing on their many legs towards Rusty and Freya.

“We have to move faster,” Freya said. “Do you think you can manage it?”

Rusty looked at her and nodded. Freya let go of him, but before they could find their footing on the slippery stones, a great rumbling shook the mud beneath their feet. They looked behind them just in time to see Baba Yaga’s hut uproot its raptor claws from the moist earth and take a few stiff steps off the little island before building speed and scuttling through the stinking swamp leaving only the gruesome grinning skulls of the fence in its wake.

“Looks like Baba Yaga made her escape,” Freya said. “We best make ours.”

The earwigs were only a few feet away, climbing over each other in an attempt to reach Rusty and Freya. Freya broke into a sprint with Rusty following a few paces behind, his normally impenetrable features clearly telegraphing the pain he felt with each harried step.

They reached the end of the jetty but the incessant clattering of the earwigs’ pincers continued to grow closer. Freya glanced backward again and was immediately sorry she had as the giant bugs had nearly caught up with them. Those closest to them were throwing their muscular tails up and over their backs, driving the pincers forward like a scorpion sting. Freya whipped her head around and willed her exhausted body to carry her faster.

They entered the far end of Skid Row and Freya could see the shabby church that was their gateway out of the subterranean nightmare at the end of the ghostly street. She focused her gaze on the tattered building and pushed forward, but suddenly her foot hit the edge of a broken brick, twisting her ankle and sending her down to the ground.

The insects were upon her in seconds. She threw the first few off but there were so many of them she was quickly overwhelmed, even with Rusty ferociously kicking and flailing at them with everything he had left. A particularly large one scurried onto her chest and raised its pincer. The double blade of the murderous appendage glinted in the light before descending rapidly through the air toward her throat.

Freya screamed and threw her hands up in a futile attempt to block the deadly attack. When, after a moment, nothing happened she lowered her arms slowly to find that the bugs had disappeared as though they’d never existed. Rusty stood above her flailing at empty air. They looked at each other, confused, when suddenly a slow clapping noise filled the dead street air.

“My, my, my,” came Vasilisa’s sardonic voice. “That was certainly an impressive performance. If you hadn’t tripped you might have actually escaped my little six-legged friends.”

Freya got to her feet quickly. She swayed momentarily as the blood rushed from her head and she stumbled before finding her balance once again by grasping tightly to Rusty’s arm.

“Careful, Freya,” Vasilisa cooed. “Calm down. The beasties are gone. Catch your breath now. That’s a girl.”

Freya glared at her. The ambivalence that Freya had seen in her eyes earlier was gone. She still seemed frail but also grim and dangerous, like the brittle bones of a skeleton.

“What is this about?” Freya said through gritted teeth. “I’ve lost count of how many times we’ve almost died in this nasty sinkhole. I thought you were trying to help us, but you were just using us to get to Baba Yaga? Is that it? You sent us to her to die to fulfill some kind of obligation, and when that didn’t work out, you thought you’d just get rid of her with us as collateral damage?”

“I warned you not to come down here, didn’t I? I told you to leave, that the color wasn’t worth it. So don’t blame me. I wasn’t even going to give you the doll originally, but I’m getting desperate. I’m so tired of her.”

Vasilisa waved a hand vaguely in the direction of the empty patch of mud where Baba Yaga’s house had once stood.

“Her story and mine are forever entwined. I just want my freedom. I want a chance to write my own tale.”

For moment Freya felt herself soften. The girl seemed so pathetic, so genuinely miserable, but the memory of the murderous bugs was still fresh.

“Look,” said Freya. “I can’t pretend to understand your situation. I’m sure being stuck with Baba Yaga in any capacity is unpleasant. But it really has nothing to do with us. I just need the color, and Rusty and I will leave you to plot whatever revenge you want.”

“But you were the perfect offering for her. She’s tricky, you know. Always making promises and then setting impossible tasks before she’ll fulfill them. She told me she’d set me free if I could provide her with fresh meat, but it had to get to her house on its own two feet. She knew that was impossible. No human could ever cross her swamp and live.”

“What made you think we’d be any different?” Freya asked.