“Shh, Zaria, do not fret. You will get him back soon enough. He is your very special friend and he always will be.” She pulled a small stoppered vial of charmed water from another pocket. Using a clean, white linen rag, she wiped their hands free of blood. Only a faint line remained behind on their palms, proof of their joining.
She picked up the baby boy. “Come now, Zachary. Let us return you to your mother before she worries herself to death.”
She returned to her cottage, shifted into her crone form once again, and walked outside to the parents where she handed the baby boy to his relieved mother. “Bring him back here in five years. Meanwhile, go to the flagyer stronghold in Abruzzia. Ask for Donatello Capricci, their leader. Do you know how to get there?”
The father nodded.
“Good. Take him there, and live there with them, tell them Baba Yaga said they are to offer you sanctuary and protection and to escort you back here at the appointed time.”
“He is the one? The Watcher of the Goddess?”
She shifted into her matronly form again because it tended to frighten people less, although people usually took the crone’s words more carefully to heart. “Absolutely. Your little boy will help fulfill not just the most important prophecy, but many others. He will save your people. Not only in this life, but in every life to come.” She reached out and stroked the boy’s arm. He smiled at her.
Baba Yaga felt her heart twist at the sight of his toothless smile. She wanted to cry, but steeled herself.
The mother anxiously nodded and nervously smiled. “He’s a good baby. He never fusses, never cries.”
Baba Yaga forced a smile. “Of course he is a good baby. He is the protector of a Goddess. No mere colic can darken his temperament.” She made a shooing motion with her hands. “Now go. Straight to Abruzzia. You may never return home or his life might be in peril.”
The parents solemnly nodded and hurried off. As they disappeared down the path, she straightened and shifted into her youngest form, of the maiden. It was most comfortable, a twenty-something body she by all rights should have lost claim to countless millennia earlier.
Perk of eternal life.
As Baba Yaga turned toward her home, she started at the sight of a woman standing behind her. “What was that all about, eh?” the woman asked.
“None of your business, Cailleach,” Baba Yaga angrily said, pushing the other woman aside and striding toward her home. “Why aren’t you busy shagging some poor guy senseless? Last I heard, you and Brighde had some sort of wager. Wasn’t it to see how many men you could use to death before winter solstice?” She had no use for either of her two younger sisters. Neither were sensible nor helpful.
Cailleach followed her into the cabin, which was actually much nicer and larger on the inside than it appeared from the outside. “That sounds intriguing, sister.” She tossed a long, blonde lock away from her forehead. Sometimes the woman preferred to take on the appearance of a ginger-headed beauty to look like a local in the lands she ruled.
Sometimes she just liked to show off her gorgeous looks, like today.
“You have your work to do,” Baba Yaga snarled. “So do me the courtesy to leave me to mine. I have people I tend to and care for. They and their business are no concern of yours.”
Cailleach flopped down into a soft chair and twirled another unruly flaxen lock around her finger. “The more you push me away, the more it interests me. Come on, tell me what’s going on, Babs.”
Baba Yaga spun around, a ball of flame forming in her palm. “Do not call me that,” she said with a growl.
Cailleach’s eyes narrowed as a smile split her face. “It’s got to be about a man, isn’t it? You don’t really care about these people at all. Someone finally breached that damned rocky heart of yours, didn’t he?”
With a howl of rage, Baba Yaga flung the fireball at her younger sister. Cailleach didn’t even flinch as she waved her hand in front of her. The fireball harmlessly dissipated across an icy mist before Cailleach also waved that away.
She stood, her green eyes sparking as she advanced on her older sister. “You can’t fool me, Old One. Just because you are the eldest by quite a lot and then some, it doesn’t mean I don’t know more than you in some things. Who is he?”
With a cry, Baba Yaga burst into tears and crumpled to the floor. After overcoming her momentary shock, Cailleach stooped beside her older sister and gathered her into her arms. No matter what their differences in opinion or temperament, they were still sisters.
“Tell me,” she softly entreated.
Unable to speak his name, Baba Yaga could do nothing but sob her agony against her sister’s shoulder. So many ages of loneliness just to find love and have it snatched away so quickly that even her powers could do nothing to save him. If only she’d been able to reach him sooner.
Finally, she could tell the story. “He was of the dragon line.”
“When did he die?” Cailleach gently asked.
“Over a hundred years ago.”
“You lost him that long ago and never summoned us?”
“To do what? Look at a rocky cairn and talk about a man you never met?”
“Why is that child so important?”
Baba Yaga sat back and wiped her eyes on her skirt. “I made a promise as I buried him. I told him I would not let his line die out. We met when he came to me, entreating me for help to save his people. Willing to sacrifice himself to me to do it. I couldn’t harm him. I fell in love with him.”
Her face darkened. “Those damned cockatrice killed him. Before I realized what had happened, they’d…they’d…” She began crying again, the memory of the horror of the discovery of her lover drawn and quartered too much to bear even this many years past. A drop of time ago in her long life despite outliving many mortals time and again.
Cailleach brushed the hair from Baba Yaga’s face. “There was nothing you could do?” she softly asked. “Even summoning us would not have helped?”
Baba Yaga closed her eyes and shook her head. “His soul had already departed into the Ether.”
“But why is this child so important?”
Baba Yaga couldn’t speak it. She’d already bent enough rules as it was.
Cailleach gathered her close and held her, rocking her. “I’m so sorry, sister. Is there anything I can do to help? I swear to you, if there is, I will give my all to do it.”
For once, Baba Yaga sensed absolute sincerity from her younger and usually self-absorbed sister. “Actually, if you really mean it, yes. There is.”
Chapter Three
Five years later
Zaria looked up at her nursemaid. “Amma, who are all those people?” She pointed out the window to the large party, at least thirty people, who had arrived in the castle’s courtyard.
The old nurse gave her a smile that Zaria saw right through, even though she was only five years old. “It’s a party, little Sunshine. Come, it is time for your bath. We will have guests wishing to see you later.”
Zaria didn’t want any part of a bath but knew the fastest way to get it over with was to cooperate. The little girl obediently let her nurse bathe her. As soon as her bath was over and Amma had dressed her, she raced out of her room and downstairs to investigate the fuss firsthand.
Amma chased behind her down the stairs as fast as her elderly legs would carry her. One of the knights stopped Zaria before she could bolt out the door.
“Where you going, little one?” he asked.
“I want to see what is going on!” Zaria jammed her little hands on her hips and stared up at him with a fierce look on her cherubic face.
He laughed and picked her up as Amma hustled up behind her, red-faced and out of breath. “You will see what’s going on soon enough,” he told the little girl. He handed her over to her nurse. “King Elsleng sent me in to fetch you, as a matter of fact.”
Zaria’s petulant glare turned to one of wonder. “Really? Father sent for me?”
“Really. Follow me.” He led them outside to the courtyard. Several knights surrounded someone, but whoever they guarded couldn’t be seen through their solid wall of manflesh. Zaria’s mother and father stood to the side, talking to someone who appeared to be an old woman, but her back was turned to Zaria.
Amma set Zaria down. She raced over to her father’s side, grabbing his hand and turning to look at the strange old woman. Zaria recoiled at first, until she spotted the clandestine wink the old crone gave her.
There was something familiar about her. Whatever it was, Zaria instinctively knew that while every single adult here feared this woman, she would never hurt her.
“Ah, there she is,” the old woman said. She knelt down and stared into Zaria’s eyes. “Show them your left palm, little one.”
Confused but trusting, Zaria held up her palm. Every now and then she felt a funny tingle in the lines across her flesh, but they never hurt, and she never thought anything of it before.
Her mother, however, gasped with surprise.
“Bring him!” the crone ordered.
The guards led over a young boy about Zaria’s age, followed by a nervous couple that must be his parents. Zaria brightened as the boy smiled at her.
The crone laughed. “See? They know each other. Zachary, hold up your right hand.”
The little boy smiled and held up his hand. The crowd went silent at the sight of an identical sign on his palm.
In wonder, Zaria released her father’s hand and walked over to her new friend. They compared the marks on their hands, then linked fingers. It felt like a missing part of her was now returned.
Her father nodded, stunned. “What exactly is it that you need, Baba Yaga?” he softly asked. “It is yours if I can give it.”
“You have it wrong.” She nodded at Zaria and Zachary. “It is what these two will give your people when they are older. And then again later, eons from now. The prophecies cannot be denied.” From somewhere in the depths of her cape, Baba Yaga produced an ornately carved wooden tube and handed it to him. “I cannot influence the course of the prophecies. You know this. Only humans can do that. What the Seers scribe is not up to me. They are guided by the Universe, the Goddess of all, not by me.”
Stunned, the king stared at the wooden tube in his hands. “But…if this is true, and she is the Goddess, does that not make her more than human?”
“While she is a goddess, she is not the Goddess. The Goddess is eternal. Zaria is human born. Perhaps saying she is ‘human’ isn’t the correct word, then. Let us say she is ‘mortal.’” Baba Yaga sadly smiled down at the two children. “Teach them well. They will be the salvation of your kind several times over.”
Baba Yaga left the king and queen with clear instructions before her departure. Never forcibly separate the two children, even when they were older and others deemed their closeness improper. Train Zachary well, especially in arms and defense, but always return him to Zaria’s side every evening.
To never force Zaria to marry, because she must be free to follow her heart, no matter how improper it might appear to others at the time. Once she found her love, whatever form it took, she must be allowed to pursue it.
Their very survival rode upon their adherence to these things.
As the children grew, it wasn’t difficult to see their close bond. They could even finish each other’s sentences. Both children proved highly intelligent, and schooling them was a pure joy to their instructors. The children excelled in their scholarly studies, becoming voracious readers. Zaria accompanied Zachary to his lessons at the hands of the king’s most highly skilled knights, and she, too, learned how to shoot an arrow straight and true, how to wield a sword, and how to fight.
It was Zachary who comforted Zaria when her mother succumbed to a fever when she was ten. No adult could console her, but she would sit for hours with her head in Zachary’s lap while he softly sang to her. Anyone could see the children were perfect for each other. Some even suspected they might eventually wed each other.
For the most part, peace ruled her father’s land. As the children grew into young adults, rumors of violent attacks began filtering in from the outmost boundaries of the kingdom.