As a clever proverb said, “If you want to dance, you have to pay the piper,” and only now did Artem realize the depth of its meaning. Until he died of old age, his tutor had always liked to repeat another phrase: “For three minutes of fun, we have to pay for years.” Sometimes he added that many people understood it only after the above-mentioned years disappeared into eternity. After hearing these words, the head of the guard nodded dejectedly and said a slow, “Yea-a-ah…”, though Artem didn’t understand why.
When the last beam was removed, and the branches flew after them, the princes took some time admiring their still-sharp swords, sheathed them, and jumped on their horses. It was time to do the main task, which was saving the princess.
It was nearly midnight. The dog, who was dozing in his small cabin, was tossing around and clicking his teeth. He was dreaming about a big sugar bone and his attempts to grab it. But the bone constantly flew away, stopping an inch from his jaws. Finally, it escaped to a distance that didn’t allow the dog to reach it just by craning his neck, so he had to get up. The dog marveled at the vividness of this dream. Just in case, the dog wagged his tail and then made a sharp jerk towards the bone. Frustratingly, it was once again quicker. Flying far to the side, it hung at the level of the dog’s eyes, slowly rotating around its axis. The dog growled with displeasure.
The bone stopped and then moved smoothly, making an insulting circle around him. The dog was turning after the brazen bone but didn’t risk pouncing, instead waiting for the best moment to attack. However, his patience didn’t last long. When the bone made the tenth circle, the dog’s control snapped. Making a fraudulent leap, he grabbed the hateful bone and was about to turn in into chips when a huge shadow rose behind his back. The dog felt someone’s hard stare and froze in fright.
The shadow came closer and turned into Baba Yaga, who said in a measured, hypnotic voice, “Face the forest… ugh, damn it to hell… look at me!”
The dog opened his jaws. The bone fell to the ground.
“Look at me!” Baba Yaga repeated, simultaneously unhooking the collar from the chain and waving the ball in front of the dog. “Now watch the toy! On the count of three, you will obey me completely!”
The last one wasn’t necessary. The dog was willing to perform any Yaga’s request one hundred and fifty percent as it was, anything to be left alone.
“One!” Yaga counted. “You feel warmth all over your body.” With her right hand, she grabbed her head and mumbled, resigned, “I can’t believe I’m doing it… Hypnotizing dogs now.”
The hypnotized subject tilted his head to the side in surprise and raised his right ear. Yaga cleared her throat and repeated, “The heat spreads through your body, from head to tail. Your eyes are closing, your eyelids are slowly getting heavier… Two! You’re falling asleep. You’re getting sleepier and sleepier, you want to sleep for the whole day! And while you’re sleeping and dreaming, you’ll be doing what I tell you. Attention! My first order is that you will bring an old beast-friend of yours who will decide to play with you into the woods to my house. On the count of three, you’ll start waiting for this beast to appear. On my next command, you’ll wake up, and you won’t remember anything about what happened to you… THREE!”
The dog twitched in surprise. He thought that Baba Yaga had just held a swinging ball in front of his nose but there was no one here right now. The yard was empty. The dog turned to pick up the bone and stopped halfway.
‘What bone?’ he thought, puzzled. ‘Why would there be a bone?’
And there was no Yaga. No sign of her anywhere. It must have been just a nightmare.
The dog lay down on the mat, yawned, closed his eyes and instantly fell asleep. Immediately after that, his body shuddered, and his eyes snapped open again. Only this time, they glowed green, and a light angry growl was coming from the dog’s mouth. Completely under Yaga’s influence, the dog began to wait for an old friend who wanted to play with him. There was no one in the yard, and his eyes closed again. To an outsider, it could seem that the dog was sleeping deeply, but it wasn’t like that at all. His ears were quivering faintly, picking up on the slightest noise, and he was ready to jump up at any moment to complete the task given to him.
The fox clung fiercely to the branch and shook it with all her strength, spilling out the anger that had accumulated in her over the day.
‘This isn’t life, this is a curse! I couldn’t even catch chickens! How terribly shameful! I’m a red embarrassment, nothing else!’ she thought. ‘Man up, you weakling, we can’t leave food to chance! It won’t eat itself! I have to take revenge! I have to punish someone! To bite the dog’s tail off. To eat it! To eat the dog!’
At this very moment, a harmless bush began dreaming of becoming a cactus or a rose to take revenge on the fox. But there was no cure against genetics — except for genetic engineering, of course, but that was still hundreds of years away from being invented! This fact hurt the bush to the roots.
The abuse of the bush ended unexpectedly. Yaga dashed by at lighting speed, blowing the fox far away. The frightened fox barely managed to suppress the tremors running through her paws. What the hell had just whistled past her?
“Why is everyone running around?” she growled, shaking. “As if they’re in a hurry… And where was she going to anyway?”
The fox considered it, trying to stop her paws from trembling so much. She did so quickly, but her long tail continued to shake like a leaf.
And then it dawned on her, as if lightning struck!
“Yaga is flying to the village to steal chickens! There’s no other reason for it! What is going on in this world?! I have to go there right now before all the birds get stolen by someone else!”
Forgetting everything, the fox ran towards the chicken coop.
The people who lived in the house opposite of it were asleep. The fox understood this simply by observing that all the lights were off in the windows. But she still didn’t understand why people always settled near the chicken coop. Apparently, this was fate: wherever the delicious birds went to live, people inevitably followed and constructed almost unapproachable fences around them. Or maybe people were the servants of the chickens. And at night, as they were sleeping, the dogs stood guard. There was no way in as the chickens were under 24-hour protection. Only a sneak attack would do.
The fence was nothing, since it was built for the protection from the cattle. Any little thing could easily slip through it, akin to how the water slipped through a sieve. The dog, as usual, would be snoring in his house, but he could wake up from the cries of the rooster. So, she needed to sneak with minimal noise to keep from disturbing him.
The fox grimaced from yesterday’s memories. The tail wasn’t hurting any longer, but the wounded self-esteem demanded bloodthirsty revenge. If she was lucky, the fox thought, she could put the remnants of the eaten chicken in front of the dog’s house, so that in the morning, the creature would be in some serious trouble. She’d eat to that! Or rather, she’d drink to that. To revenge. To food, mostly, but to revenge as well. So long as the rooster didn’t wake up. Otherwise, the bloodthirsty revenge would turn into a particularly sophisticated suicide, and next time, the fox would be able to get into the chicken coop painlessly only in three or four months. During that time, the fox’s weight would drop to a full zero, and she would quietly withdraw from this miserable life. She couldn’t let that happen. No way.