Excerpt: Night Witch

Walking down the hallway, Baba Yaga and I looked as normal as one could look in such times. Drab uniforms, poorly cut and poorly sewn, made us resemble the others scurrying back and forth in the long hallways.

We’d looted the uniforms a winter ago from a pair of corpses frozen deep beneath the snow. Magic, soap, and hot water (the latter two hard to come by in this city of poverty and impeding war) cleaned off the smell of the dead and made our dress unremarkable.

But people did remark on Baba Yaga. There was no hiding her bright eyes, more hawk than human, or the heavy coil of raven black hair that crowned a face carved out of wind and weather, with long deep lines between nose and mouth. Luckily she kept her mouth closed and let me talk my way past official after uniformed official. Otherwise somebody might have noted her wolf-sharp teeth, whiter and sharper than any woman ever had.

As it was, they noticed her, a dark-haired woman past her youth but still beautiful, with a face like a ravaged Tsarina. Myself, they smiled at but forgot as soon as they passed us along to the next official. A fair-haired girl, a face as round and fresh as an apple, just like all the other country girls flocking to the city. My face too was more spell than truth, but nobody had a wizard’s eyes or the wit to look closer. At least, not until we came to the final office.

He was sitting behind a desk as big and heavy and black as his soul. I could see the aura of flame that burned around him, all ambition, fueled by the blood of others.

“My generals say that I should talk to you. That you may help us to victory,” he said slowly. His face was as marked as hers, but his was pitted by smallpox, a disease that generally left us witches untouched.

“You would be wise to deal with me, Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili,” Baba Yaga said.

The dark eyebrows drew together and the fine mouth beneath the heavy curling mustache frowned. “That is no name of mine,” he said. “Not here, not now.”

“They tied your soul to your body with that name,” she answered. “There’s a midwife in Gori who whispered it into my ear a long time ago.”

“It will do you no good,” he said, still staring straight at her. “Others have tried to curse me and failed. Even that wily little German can’t touch me, for all he pays his astrologers and his sorcerers.”

“Still his soldiers are drawing closer,” Baba Yaga observed.

“We will deal with him. He’s clever, but he’s gone too far this time. He cannot eat France, and Poland, and hope to swallow Mother Russia too.”

“But his soldiers are close and they may take you. And where would old Mother Russia be without you?"

“Let them try.” He shifted in his chair, favoring the left arm that most claimed had been weakened in an accident. Myself, I could see that he’d attracted maleficent wishes from his youth. There’s many a witch who can peer into her own future and must have seen nothing but blood and sorrow issuing from this man, like storms off a mountain.

But he was right, such minor spells would be useless against him. Like Baba Yaga, he was too strong to bend off his chosen path with evil charms or muttered words. I’d stopped fighting her long ago for much the same reason. It was never worth the effort. She’d gobbled up her opponents and so would he. Better to keep one’s head well covered and let the blizzard rage overhead.

Right now the pair were busy dickering, each trying to get the better of the other. For all his pretended disinterest, Josef Stalin wanted what Baba Yaga was offering: a quicker way to defeat the Germans ever marching closer.

“I have to keep my troops from rioting. They won’t like the look of your friends and servants,” he said to her.

“My servants appear as I wish,” Baba Yaga said. “And they’ll give you the luck you need, the sharper edge to your sword, so you can cut your enemies down.”

“Give me ammunition, more airplanes, and tanks that don’t stick in the mud,” he replied. “That I can use. Swords belong to the last century.”

“You’ll get what you want. And you’ll give me what I want.”

“And that is?”

“A boxcar or two of fresh souls, whenever I’m feeling a little hungry,” said the greedy old woman.

“You can have as many as you like,” he said. “Poets, writers, kulaks, little Mongolian priests wrapped in yellow wool, marshals with stars on their shoulders, whatever you desire.” After all, what did he care for such men or women: he’d already sent them to their deaths by the millions. In many ways, he was far crueler than her. She was a glutton but never so wasteful as he was.

She grinned then, her white wolf teeth gleaming brighter than the lanterns in the room. “And one thing more,” she said.

“Make it quick. I have other meetings tonight.”

“It’s just a small thing. A bite of your heart. Just a nip.”

He started to shake his head but Baba Yaga stretched out a long-fingered hand to stop him.

“Not now, not soon. Later. After you have had all that you want.”

“All?”

“Every enemy dead and buried. Every soul who hates you bent to your will. Even the worst of those will kiss your hand and call you friend.”

“And then you’ll take a bite of my heart,” he said, each word dropping like a rock into a cold, deep lake.

She shrugged and bobbed her head from side to side. “If I remember. I may forget. I’m a very old woman, you know.”

From my own experience, I could have told him that there is nothing more dangerous than Baba Yaga when she shrugs and mutters about her age. But he would not have listened. Nobody ever did when Baba Yaga unfolded her long fingers and pretended to hand over every dream fulfilled.

“Send your people where you will. You have my permission and protection for them. And a piece of my heart when you desire, if you fulfill all your promises.”

Baba Yaga snagged his pledge out of the air, piercing each word with the tips of her long curved nails and popping them into her mouth with a cruel smile.

But he didn’t notice. Stalin's head was bent over the papers on his desk and we were already forgotten.

We went down the long hallways, passing from official to official in reverse until at last we were out the door. The streets were dark and empty, the cold of autumn starting to drive out summer’s warmth. Far off to the north, I could smell the snow gathering, waiting, and behind it snarling, savage, the old gods of war howling and ready to be unleashed.

“So,” said Baba Yaga, looking older and more terrible by each tick of the clock as the wind tugged at our hair and unraveled our spells of disguise, “I’m to the east to gather the ones that we need.”

“And me?”

“Go west, clever Vasilisa, and lend your wits to the flying women. Do what you can and terrify our enemies until I come for you.”

Thus I went on Baba Yaga’s orders to find Raskova’s daughters, the 588th, and to climb the wind each night to fill the Germans’ sleep with nightmares.