Orson Card - Enchantment

Baba Yaga finally found their reservation—but not till they had already taken off from Rochester. As it was, she had to scramble to catch a Syracuse flight that would get her to Kennedy before they embarked on the transatlantic leg of their journey. She was angry that they had tricked her—not just that they had succeeded, but that they had dared to try—but they hadn't eluded her for long. It was the big transatlantic plane that she wanted, anyway.

Now to find that they had gotten off the flight was almost unbearable. She screamed and ranted all the way up and down the plane, spewing nauseating, annoying little curses between screeches. Nobody noticed her, of course, and all the spell-casting left her exhausted. She could barely sustain Shadow by the time she was done. But it didn't matter. In a few minutes she and the plane would be back in her own world—the world where Bear could replenish her strength whenever she needed. And casting the spell to bring it all home would be easy enough. She had the cloth already prepared, hadn't she? And sooner or later, Ivan and Katerina would return to Taina. It would have been nice to destroy them in Ivan's world, but in the end, destroying them in Taina would have the added benefit of demoralizing the entire population of Taina. It was really better this way. They had escaped one trap, but inevitably they would walk into another, sooner rather than later. And in Taina, there'd be no more interference from the mousy little witch Ivan called Mother.

When the seatbelt light went dark and people started moving around again, Baba Yaga began following one of the flight attendants around, filling her with wordless curiosity, along with images of the pilot as the man with the answers. And when the flight attendant finally went to the cockpit, Baba Yaga didn't have to understand English to know what was being said, for she was feeding the girl questions below the level of language.

"What is the head of the plane?" asked the flight attendant.

The pilot looked at her as if she were insane.

Baba Yaga cast Understanding on him, which in her weakened state didn't confer actual comprehension, but did make him listen attentively, setting aside biases and expectations that would have interfered. In the end, the pilot told her, "The thing that leads the plane is me, and the tool I use to do it is this." He pointed to the thing that looked something like a car steering wheel.

At once the flight attendant relaxed, then looked confused. "What am I doing up here? Did you want something?"

"No," said the pilot, laughing. "We didn't want anything."

"Then you shouldn't have called me," she said. She rushed out of the cockpit, embarrassed.

The pilot only had time to say "I think somebody's been hitting the bottle" before Baba Yaga, unnoticeable as ever, leaned over his shoulder and draped a small cloth over the control that he had indicated. Baba Yaga herself might be weak here, but the cloth had been given its power at a time when she had her full strength. It would do its work. The plane and everything in it would follow where the cloth took them.

Home.

One moment they were flying over the Atlantic, still not quite out of the sight of land. The next moment, they were in the air over the deep forest of western Rus'. The panic in the cockpit lasted only until Baba Yaga cast off Shadow and revealed herself. For in the transition from one world to the other, the power of Bear had flooded back into her. She felt like a girl again; all the weariness was gone. And now it was a simple matter to impose Understanding on the pilot, the crew, and all the passengers—not just openness, but real comprehension of every word she spoke, though not one of them spoke her language.

"I have brought you here. Take me to my kingdom!"

They seemed reluctant at first. Not until the copilot and several flight attendants were vomiting or dancing around insanely did the pilot really understand the kind of power he was dealing with. And the pilot didn't actually get cooperative until she had given him a crippling rectal itch, which he had no choice but to scratch at savagely, until finally he persuaded Baba Yaga that yes, he would take her wherever she wanted to go, and no, he would not make any more foolish demands about taking them back to Kennedy at once.

This was the primeval forest of Mother Russia. They circled around for many hours in search of a stretch of flat, treeless ground where a 747 could land. Finally the coming darkness of night forced a decision—a meadow that wasn't really long enough or level enough, but it was their only chance. Baba Yaga helped with the landing, making it smoother than they had any right to expect, and then stopping it quite abruptly before they ran into the forest edge. She was in her strength again, her powers filling her, her spells as potent as ever, and she rather enjoyed the pain and panic and injuries suffered by the passengers because of the sudden stop. What she cared about was keeping the flying house from being damaged by a collision. The people were here only because they happened to be in the airplane when she took it. Though the sound of shrieking and weeping was music to her ears.

As the sounds of pain and panic died down, Baba Yaga seized the microphone and, with the help of a vigorous new spell of Understanding, she announced to the entire plane, "You have reached your final destination."

After the meaning of her announcement had a chance to sink in, the crying and screaming started up again in earnest.

Restoration

Every morning Sergei arose at dawn and walked to the door of his hut to see if Ivan and the princess had returned. Every day, all he saw was the chasm, the empty pedestal, and no future at all for him and poor Father Lukas.

Who could have guessed that within days of Princess Katerina's departure, Dimitri would revolt? And who could have guessed that the moment he had power, Dimitri would declare Christianity to be a false religion and forbid its teaching in all of Taina? Father Lukas was all for becoming a martyr, and tried to persuade Sergei to do the same, but in the end it was Sergei who carried the day by asking which Christ would rather have, two dead clerics or two living missionaries who might someday restore Christianity in this benighted place?

Ever since then, they had been living in the one place Sergei knew that no man of Taina had ever succeeded in finding, at least not when the princess was lying here in enchanted slumber. Of course he was not so foolish as to tell Father Lukas of the significance of the place, just as he did not tell Father Lukas of the precious parchments hidden in a sack inside a box under a stone just inside the woods. To the priest, this was a place of penance and prayer. To Sergei, it was a rendezvous. Katerina and Ivan would come back, and when that happened, Dimitri's support would melt away. It was only with the princess gone that the people despaired and listened to his claim that they needed a strong warrior to save them from Baba Yaga. When Katerina returned, the people would flock to her again; indeed, they were already deeply ashamed of having followed Dimitri, especially after he used some hideous magic to strike old King Matfei dumb, and longed for—prayed for—her safe return.

So disgusted were they with Dimitri's strutting and boasting and bossing and bullying that they even prayed for Ivan to come with her, for they realized now that having a king meant more than leadership in battle. King Matfei's hand had rested lightly upon them. Dimitri's hand was not so deft.

And yet even he was better than Baba Yaga. So they did not revolt, not yet. And when Sergei crept back to the village to hear news and gossip, he heard more and more resignation in the voices of those he spoke to. They were still faithful Christians, they assured him. But how could they shrug off Dimitri's kingship when Baba Yaga might return at any time?