"If only you could step outside the pentagram, you could stop me." She set the ornate chair onto the fire.
"Don't burn that chair! It has so many spells of comfort on it that - "
"Set these people free, and I'll let you out." Katerina was opening larger boxes now, and found one that was filled with books. She walked to the fire, ripped a page from somewhere in the middle of the book, and dropped it into the flames.
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."