Enchantment

Baba Yaga shrieked. But she did not move.

And then she calmed down. "I see," she said. "I see. You didn't just cast a spell of binding. You cast a spell of desire. Very clever."

"So if you'll just release the captives—"

"I must be tired, for it to have taken me so long to see it. I can't want to leave this space, which holds me far more firmly than if there was more physical restraint."

"Very good," said Katerina.

"Clever of you."

"And yet you stand within the pentagram. Will you release the captives? Start with one, just to show you're paying attention."

Baba Yaga glared at her. "No, no, that's too easy. There's more to it than that. Perhaps a spell to make it so I can't even desire to break the spell that keeps me from desiring to leave the pentagram. That's very circular, isn't it? But then there might be a spell making me forget how to break such spells, and on and on, when there's a simple thing you just don't understand."

"And what is that?" asked Katerina.

"This is my house," said Baba Yaga. And with that, the whole section of floor with the pentagram on it dropped out from under her. The witch fell through the trap door, but rose again almost at once, climbing up a ladder. "Oops," she said. "No pentagram. Even though I never wanted to leave it, now that I'm outside, I can't understand why I ever wanted to stay. Or why Bear stood still for you while you drew it on the floor. But that's between him and me, later. Now your precious captives start to die, one for each box of precious powders and each bottle of precious liquors that you ruined. That should take us more than halfway through this crowd, don't you think?" Baba Yaga strolled over to where the pilot stood, half-dead from the beating she had given him. "For instance, I told poor Ivan a lie—I said I killed this one. I think it's just about time I made it true, don't you? We wouldn't want Ivan to die believing something that isn't so!"

On the airplane, Ivan did not wait to see where Bear would appear. The moment Baba Yaga was gone, he sprang for the door, tried to open it. But it wouldn't budge.

A voice behind him said, "Of course she bound them all closed before she switched with me."

Ivan turned. There was the bear on all fours, his head tilted to one side as he studied Ivan's face.

"That missing eye," said Ivan, "I didn't mean to do that."

"The eye's gone anyway, whatever you meant."

"But it was my job, to save the princess."

"From what? It seems to me she's in a lot more danger now than she ever was on that pedestal."

Ivan sidled away from the door, then began backing down the aisle. "On that pedestal she was as good as dead. Now even if she dies, at least she lived first."

The bear shambled easily after him. "Same goes for you."

Ivan slid along a row of seats, then ran headlong up the other aisle toward the front of the plane. Into business class. Into first class.

Bear was singing to himself as he meandered up the aisle. The song was one Ivan had never heard before, in a language that he didn't understand. "If the old hag thinks she gave you the gift of perfect pitch," said Ivan, "she was wrong."

"Singing goes along with speech. I tried it out, I learned a song or two."

"What language was that?"

"My language. The language of bears."

"But bears don't speak."

"That's why you never heard it before." Bear half-stood in the far doorway of the first-class section, his paws leaning on the backs of the last seats. "Baba Yaga thinks I'm going to torture you, but I'm not a cat. I'm just going to kill you, because it isn't right for someone to put out the eye of a god and walk away."

Ivan remembered something, trapped as he was. For he happened to be trapped in a particular place. Standing right where he had stood when he first boarded this plane, to put his carry-on bag of books in the overhead compartment.

He opened the compartment door. He pulled down the bag.

"Are you going to read to me?"

As he opened the bag, Ivan knew what he was looking for. What this whole business had been orchestrated in order to accomplish.

He had a message to deliver.

He pulled the slip of paper from the bag. It still said what it had said before. Ivan was disappointed. He had half-expected that when it was in the presence of the one who was supposed to receive it, new words would appear. But it didn't happen.

Still, this was his last chance. If it wasn't for Bear, Ivan wasn't going to live to deliver it to the intended recipient anyway.

"I think this is for you," he said.

Bear cocked his head to look at it. "I don't think so."

"I think it is," said Ivan. "A message from someone in my time to someone here. The old hag didn't know it, but she brought this plane here solely so that this note would travel back in time, eleven hundred years, so you could have it here today."

"What good is a note like that to me?"

"I don't know," said Ivan.

"Give it to me."

Ivan held it out toward one of Bear's huge paws.

"What, are you blind? Do you see thumbs on my paw? How exactly am I supposed to take that tiny piece of paper?"

"I don't know," said Ivan.

"My mouth," said Bear disgustedly.

Ivan raised his hand, offering the note to the open mouth of the bear, knowing that if he felt like it, Bear would take his hand as well.

Instead, Bear took it between his lips. Then a bit of his tongue came out, tasting the comer of it.

"Delicious," said Bear.

He sucked the paper into his mouth, chewed it slowly, and swallowed.

Now I'll never deliver the message, Ivan thought.

Then Bear stood up so suddenly he hit his head on the ceiling of the plane. He roared, and roared again. And again. And again.

Why didn't he speak?

Bear began slashing the upholstery of the chairs. He rampaged through first class, then back into business class, seemingly oblivious now to Ivan, who followed him, fascinated and appalled by what seemed to be rage. Yet through it all, though Bear roared again and again, he said not a word.

And then, suddenly, he turned toward Ivan and clambered deftly over the seat backs and in a moment he had Ivan pressed to the floor in the aisle, looming over him. He opened his mouth and lowered it toward Ivan's head.

Katerina, if only you survive, it's all been worth it. It was not teeth that touched him. Only a huge tongue lapping his cheek, almost pulling half his face up with it. And another lick.

He's saying thank you. He's thanking me because... because... the note wasn't a message at all. It was the spell of unbinding. It was the spell that set Bear free of Baba Yaga. That's why he wasn't speaking—he had lost her gifts as well as her chains.

"You're free, aren't you," Ivan said.

Bear roared triumphantly in response, then overleapt him on the floor and began pawing at the airplane door.

Ivan got up, wiping the bear slobber from his cheeks, and made his way to the door. The spell on it was gone. He opened it, but before it was even a quarter of the way up, Bear shimmied out through the opening and landed on the ground, rolling in the meadow.

The door opened the rest of the way. Ivan could see a campfire, then another. Dozens of them in the meadow.

Whose? Baba Yaga's army? Ivan had seen them run away.

Ivan lowered himself from the airplane and dropped to the ground. Just in time—the moment he got to his feet, he heard a rush of air and a clap of thunder, and the 747 was gone.

He walked across the meadow to the fires. As soon as people saw him, they began coming up to him, touching him, greeting him. We saw you go into the big white house with her. We thought you were dead. How did you get away? Is she still there? Where did it go?