Jakub’s desk and found the special telescope he sometimes used to keep track of Ducha. She used a match to light the attached gas lamp. Then she trained it on the forest, and then on the Mountains in the far east.
The Mountains were too far away to see anything.
But, assisted by the gas lamp, she could see movement in the midst of the forest. The treetops rustled. A few stray creatures disappeared into the darkness at the edge of the village.
Strange . . .
The wind picked up. The window slammed inward, knocking over the telescope. The oil spilled, and a tongue of flame leapt to life on the hardwood. Felka rushed to stamp out the spreading fire, and outside, the wind howled in the eaves.
Someone knocked on the door.
“I’ll get it,” called Jakub.
She heard his boots tap the hardwood. The creak of the broken doorframe. The crackle of the fireplace.
A gasp.
“Kuba,” called Felka, “are you all right?”
No answer.
She left the telescope and cautiously descended the stairs. For the first time in years, the house was clean. The broken table had gone into the fire, as had the half-filled tankards of beer.
Jakub was silhouetted against the darkness outside. Felka came up behind him and peered over his shoulder.
It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the night. An old woman in a ragged cloak huddled on the threshold. Its hood was pulled low over her eyes. She supported herself on a cane that looked horribly like bone, and it must have been, because it was topped with a skull.
The woman did not look up when Felka joined Jakub at the door. She did not speak.
“Felka,” Jakub was saying, “do we have any food? We should invite this poor traveler inside—”
The woman took off her hood. She revealed stringy black hair that hung like ropes around her hideous face. Her nose was long and covered with warts. There was malice in her eyes.
Felka’s hand closed on his shoulder.
“Jakub Rybak,” said the Baba Jaga.
Jakub shoved Felka back. Her heart skipped a beat. She crossed herself, said a quick prayer to the saints, and made herself ready to meet her god in the heat of a witch’s oven.
“That’s me,” said Jakub.
The Baba Jaga gave them both a long, scrutinizing look. The moonlight cast her wrinkled, spotted face in ugly, yellow-green shadows. Felka wondered if she was assessing the meat on Jakub’s bones or the measure of his strength.
“I am told you were once a father,” said the Baba Jaga. There was a terrible cackling quality to her voice. A crow swooped down out of the blackness and alighted on the skull of her staff.
“Yes,” said Jakub.
Felka did not move. She glanced up at him, noticing that the ghostly moonlight had made him look somehow younger. It seemed to scrape the scars from his face and smooth the ragged hair back from his brow. For a moment, it looked like he still had both his eyes.
“You have a merciful queen,” said the Baba Jaga, her voice rasping from deep within her emaciated chest.
Felka wasn’t sure what she expected. Monsters to crawl out of the forest? Black hounds to drag them away?
The Baba Jaga flung aside her cloak.
She revealed a little girl. She had long silver-blond hair falling over a red vest and a crisp white shirt. She was five years old. She was not ghostly. She was not mavka. She was not dead.
She was alive. She was smiling. She was holding open her hands.
“Tata,” said Jakub Rybak’s daughter. “Tata, please don’t cry.”
50
ONE SECOND, THE MIST WAS swirling silver, and the next, it transformed. Lukasz watched the shadow take shape. A gleaming, glittering, whirling mass of gold and fury. The Dragon didn’t hesitate. It was in its element. It was confident.
Lukasz grabbed Ren’s arm. She was gaping up at the sky.
“Take the boat,” he said. “We’ll hold it off. Get to the Mountain.”
“I’ll help—”
With every wingbeat, a wave of heat hit them. Lukasz had fought enough dragons. He’d been burned, impaled, poisoned—
Every hunt up until now had led to this.
“No,” he said. “Remember what the Leszy said? You need to kill it on top of the Mountain.”
The dragon screamed overhead. It was so close that he could have counted the tines on its antlers. They were wasting time.
He looked back down at her.
“Go. We’ll hold it off. Give you time to get up there.”
“But—” Her eyes were flashing between lynx and human, and he knew she was panicking. “Your hand—”