anyway? She was buying a love potion from a gypsy street vendor. All because a stranger in a beauty shop had told her to get him back? Ivan has driven me insane. Do I even want him to love me?
She was getting into her car, but at this thought she impulsively got back out. The gypsy woman cocked her head and looked quizzically at her.
Ruth pointed to the bag that the gypsy had first offered. "What does that do?"
The gypsy started scratching herself and cackling with laughter. Ruth wasn't sure whether this meant that Ivan would itch, that someone would tickle him, or that he would turn into a monkey, but in any event, it sounded promising.
Besides, nothing said she had to give it to Ivan. It might be more useful to give it to the shiksa bitch.
Again, she had to know - bake it into cookies? Dash it in his face?
The gypsy pantomimed eating.
"Just like the other one," said Ruth.
The gypsy nodded.
"The bag gets even, the jar gets him to love me."
The gypsy held out her hand. Ruth gave her another twenty. The gypsy shook her head. Ruth added another twenty. The gypsy tucked it down into her bosom, then gathered up the cloth, tied the top into a knot, and got up and walked away.
That's it? I'm the only customer of the day?
Or maybe when she gets sixty bucks from one sucker, she can go buy enough wine to stay drunk for a week.
I'm not going to use these. When would I have a chance? And considering I don't even know what I want. Maybe I should give him both. Or better yet, make both of them fall in love with me. Then it would be my turn to jilt him for the same woman! Now that would be ironic.
Maybe what I should have bought is a gun.
The moment she thought of it, it felt like poison in her mind. A gun! For him? For her? For me? What's happening to me? I don't want anybody dead. I just want my life to go on.
She dropped the little jar and the little sack into the trashbox she kept on the floor of her car. Sixty bucks down the drain, but that's cheaper than buying a new dress that I don't even take out of the bag when I get it home.
Baba Yaga
She was exhausted. If magic had been hard before, it was almost impossible now, so far from Bear's land. Baba Yaga hadn't realized how dependent she was on his power till she tried to do magic without it.
But nothing was going to stop her. She was days behind Ivan and Katerina, but it was easy enough to find them. The house was protected, though, and Baba Yaga was too weak to get through all the magic. It infuriated her to be stopped by a witch that ordinarily she could blow away with a puff of air. But she had to deal with the world the way she found it. Ivan and Katerina were inside the house. Baba Yaga was able to probe just enough to be certain that the marriage was not complete yet. But almost instantaneously, the curtains were flung open and there in the window stood a middle-aged woman, staring right at her.
I'm not supposed to be noticeable, thought Baba Yaga. And yet she knew where to look.
So maybe it would have taken more than a puff of air, she thought.
She turned away from the house, wondering what to do next.
Listen, that's what she'd do. She might not be able to work magic on anyone in that house without being noticed and blocked, but that witch couldn't prevent her from doing magic on herself.
It took hours to put it all together, and she had to make do with substitute herbs, but it worked well enough, a spell of hearing. After she had chewed the mixture into paste and then swallowed it, she sat in the darkness under a tree and began to focus the sounds as they rushed in upon her. People eating, doing dishes, cooking, arguing, listening to machines that talked. House after house. Baba Yaga tuned them out, turned them into nothing in her own mind. Until at last there was only the sound from one house left.
By the time the spell wore off, a couple of hours later, Baba Yaga knew only that there was a woman named Ruth to whom Ivan had been betrothed.