Total pages in book: 88
Estimated words: 83281 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 416(@200wpm)___ 333(@250wpm)___ 278(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83281 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 416(@200wpm)___ 333(@250wpm)___ 278(@300wpm)
“Uh…Baba Yaga?” I sat up and pulled the sheet up to my chin, trying to be sure I was covered. I wished now that I had put my t-shirt back on before going to sleep, but it was too late now—I was naked in front of the most powerful witch in the world.
“Yes, that is my name. You should know since your companion shouted it into the wind to force me to see the two of you,” she snapped. “But maybe you expected someone more like this?”
Suddenly, she shimmered and changed. Instead of the elegant court lady, a crooked old woman with a humped back and a hooked nose was sitting on the stool. She was dressed like a Russian peasant woman with rough, hand-woven clothes and a wooly shawl around her hunched shoulders.
“Or this?” Baba Yaga shimmered again and became the Wicked Witch of the West from the Wizard of Oz. Her skin was green and her hat was tall and pointed. Her black gown clung to a gaunt frame and she laughed menacingly—the signature witch’s cackle.
“Heee-he-he-he-he-he-he!”
“Stop!” I put a hand out. I wished Rath would wake up—how could he sleep through all this?
Baba Yaga shimmered again and this time she was nothing but a golden light, floating in the air above the wooden stool she’d been sitting on.
“Just trying to give you what you expected,” her voice said. “You humans have such strange expectations.”
“Aren’t you human too?” I asked.
The ball of light shimmered and became the first woman again—the one in the ruby red gown with the towering hair.
“I haven’t been human in centuries, child,” she said, looking down her elegant nose at me. “Which is one reason I find dealing with your kind so very tiresome.”
“Well, I’ll never bother you again if you’ll just reverse the spell my mother had you put on me,” I said.
“Ah, the binding.” She nodded thoughtfully. “I take it you want to be unbound?”
“Yes, please!” I nodded eagerly.
“But you are halfway unbound already. You could not have defeated my Hydra, otherwise. And as for that lust potion you brewed—poor Fendal is still fucking themselves as we speak.”
I took it that “Fendal” was the Two Natured One she had sent to try and persuade us to turn back.
“I’m, uh, sorry about that,” I said. “But I still want to be all the way unbound. It’s not just my magic this spell is affecting. I also can’t talk to anyone I don’t know. And, er, it’s messing with my personal life too.”
She arched one elegant silver eyebrow at me and nodded at Rath, who was still asleep beside me.
“You don’t seem to be doing too badly.”
“I can’t…can’t go all the way,” I said, feeling frustrated. “I’m still a virgin! A shy, self-conscious virgin with a serious social anxiety problem—all because of the binding you put on me when I was just a little girl! This binding has made my life a living hell—I want it off!”
It occurred to me belatedly that I shouldn’t have been so blunt, but I was angry, damn it! All the times I’d come home crying after being teased at school, all the lonely years I’d spent with no friends and no one to love me, all because I couldn’t talk to anyone—they all rushed up on me at once like a wave that nearly drowned me in misery.
Baba Yaga didn’t look angry, though—despite the fact that I was practically shouting at her. She looked thoughtful instead.
“Are you quite certain you wish to be completely unbound?” she asked me. “You don’t even know why your mother begged me to bind you in the first place—or why she paid such a high price. Every drop of her magic she gave to me. She didn’t even save enough to keep herself healthy.”
“Is that why she died of cancer?” I asked, my mouth suddenly going dry. “Because she gave you all her magic?”
“I would imagine so.” Baba Yaga shrugged, as though my mother’s death was of no consequence to her. “No witch of a line as powerful as the Pruitts dies of disease. They simply fade when they are ready—it enables them to plant their spirit in the place of their choosing. As your Grandmother did, I believe.”
“My Grandmother was against the binding,” I said, remembering what Goody Albright and Madam Healer had both said.
“Yes, she was,” Baba Yaga agreed, nodding. “The question is—which of them did you trust the most?”
“I…I don’t know,” I confessed, frowning. “I know that both of them loved me…”
“They did indeed. And they loved each other, but this issue drove a wedge between them that nothing could overcome,” she pointed out. “Your Grandmother felt you would become a powerful enough witch to deal with and perhaps even end the curse that is on your family. Your mother, however, had only recently lost your father—who was her Heartmate—and she did not believe you would be able to. She never wanted you to go through the pain she went through herself, and so she begged me to bind you—bind you and put a memory spell on you to make you forget all about both your Grandmother and Hidden Hollow, where she lived. She knew if you ever returned, the binding would begin to unravel—as it has.”