Not knowing where she lived, Baba Yaga again had to use magic to find her. It took two days, searching for rage and pain. There was plenty of it to be found - what angry people these are! - but finally, after casting her net rather widely, she detected Ruth driving along the freeway. So quickly everyone moved! But now that she had Ruth's soul imprinted in her heart, Baba Yaga would always be able to find her.
Not speaking the language, Baba Yaga had to do the wasp trick, guiding the little pricker into the beauty parlor and then causing Ruth herself to imagine the woman and the words and the language to draw out of Ruth's turmoil of feelings about Ivan the ones that Baba Yaga figured would be most useful to her: The desire to have him back, and the desire to destroy him.
Then, on the sidewalk, Baba Yaga appeared in person, because this time it couldn't be hallucination, the potions had to be real. Sixty dollars? Baba Yaga wanted to laugh at the money. But she knew she had to take it, or Ruth wouldn't believe the potions had any value.
Whichever one she chooses will suit me fine, thought Baba Yaga.
The next morning, Ruth woke up to find all her hair lying on her pillow. The mirror confirmed it: She was bald as an egg. She screamed. She wept. She resolved that she was going to get back at Ivan, because somehow this crowning misery had to be his fault, too. She wouldn't have had a perm and a dye on the same day if it hadn't been for him!
Out in the woods, where Baba Yaga was catching insects and killing them for the magic they held in their tiny bodies, Baba Yaga sensed Ruth's rage and horror. This time the curse wasn't just a bit of extra fun. Within hours, Ruth would fish the potions out of the trash in her car. For in Ruth's mind, her baldness was also, however indirectly, Ivan's and Katerina's fault, and someone was going to pay, one way or another.
Chapter 13
Picnic
Ivan saw his bags in the corner of his room. He hadn't unpacked, not even a toothbrush, since Mother had a new one waiting for him in the bathroom when he got home, and there were plenty of clean clothes. But the dirty ones in the suitcases needed washing. He wasn't even sure why he had been reluctant to unpack upon arriving. This was his home; and yet he felt as if he were only here in transit. He was married now; that meant he could never be more than a visitor in his parents' home.
He tossed the bags on the bed and opened them, pulling out the tightly rolled clothes. He couldn't remember now which were dirty and which were clean - Mother would insist on washing them all anyway, and this time he'd give in and let her. Into the laundry basket went the clothing.
Onto his desk went the books, the papers, the notes. His dissertation. His future? Not likely. It would be too hard, to devote a year or more to writing as if he were still as ignorant as any ordinary scholar. It was bad enough that dissertations all had to be written in the miserably pedantic language of scholarship; to have it be false as well would be unbearable. Did it even matter? He had to go back to Taina with Katerina, and if he lived he would be king there, at least in name. As a career choice, it was generally regarded as ranking somewhere above professor. Not to him, though, having no inclination for it.
I belong in neither world now - each has spoiled me for the other.
The bags were empty. On impulse he lifted each one and shook it. A slip of paper floated down and slid under the bed.
He fell to his knees, suddenly filled with urgency. He knew at once what this paper was. It was the note that had been left in Baba Tila's window. He was home now, and Mother had been Baba Tila's pupil. Now he understood what she had been learning. Maybe the note would mean something to her.
But Mother was as baffled as he had been. She and Katerina both looked at it; Mother held it up to the window, passed it over a flame, even laid it gently on a bowl of water, to see if some other message became visible. Nothing.