do, they were useless against this spell of binding she had cast upon him.
"Face me," she said.
He turned and looked at her. She was hideous - not just old, but her face deformed by the malice that had driven her for years. And now her face burned with hatred for the defeat he had just inflicted on her.
"You think you beat me?" she said. "This army is nothing. I'll have Taina tied in knots, husband slaying wife, mother killing babies, till no one is left alive, except the ones who wish that they were dead. All because of you and what you did today, with your vile magic from your terrible, mechanical land."
Of course he could not answer.
"Ah, he wants to speak, he longs to speak. But I don't want to hear your voice just yet." She walked around him in a slow circle, looking him up and down. "You're not much. What does she want with you?" Then she laughed mirthlessly. "Oh, that's right, she didn't choose you. Who did? That's the question, isn't it? Who chose you?"
Ivan wanted to answer defiantly, to utter some witticism that would prove his courage and give her something to remember and resent after he was dead. But then again, if he could speak, chances were his voice would tremble and betray his fear, giving her something else to mock.
"Don't be frightened," she whispered. He could feel her breath as she pulled herself up to get her mouth closer to his ear. "Don't be so afraid that you piss on yourself like a baby."
At her command, he felt his bladder release his pent-up urine down his leg.
Do you think this bothers me, Baba Yaga? It's no worse than what happened to poor Sergei. Besides, it isn't me doing it, it's you.
"Whoever chose you knew how to send you to where the little bitch was napping. I couldn't go there, not even with all the power of Bear. Was it that walking windstorm, that fart in a bottle, Mikola? I don't think so. He knew, he sensed, he stayed near the place, but no, he didn't find you, did he. Someone else. Someone who could look past the frailty of your body and see something useful. Something that could un-... do... my... army." Her fingers clenched tightly on his arm.
"There is muscle there, after all. Not a swordsman's muscles. Not even a peasant's. But lithe. You throw things. Like those boys. You throw things."
She was in front of him now. She slapped his face. Again. Again. Each blow staggered him, but he suddenly had enough volition, enough reflexive control, to regain his erect posture before losing control to her again. His face stung from the blows, and under the stinging on his skin, he felt a throbbing ache in his nose, around his eye. Thus it begins.
And thus it ended. She leaned back against the flight attendants' station and contemplated him. "Finally rutted with her, did you? I heard you. I was listening, just across the street, in the house of the woman whose beloved puppy died. You were humping like bunnies. If there's a baby inside her, I'll show it to her before she dies." She leaned closer, a little more alert. "That bothered you, didn't it. You see, there's pain... and there's pain. But your pain is nothing to me. You were a tool all along. But not my tool. And whatever it was that whoever-it-was saw in you, I don't see it, and I don't have a use for you. So I don't care what happens to you."
He felt a relaxing in his throat. He could speak. But the words she just said gave him hope that she might let him go. And if she let him go, he might find some way to help Katerina. With that hope came silence - he didn't want to say anything that would damage whatever chances he might have.
Of course she knew that, counted on it. She was just toying with him, of course she was. But maybe there was a chance.
She laughed. "You can speak, and yet you say nothing."
All at once he felt the need to speak well up in him; he was going to say something. Anything. So to keep from saying what was in his heart, he said the first thing that came to mind. "You'll never get this thing to fly again."