"I lost an eye for you already. Must I die for you?"
"You can't die, you fool. You're immortal."
"Yes, well, I thought my eye would grow back, too, but it hasn't."
"You've lost faith in yourself! Isn't that rich? A god who has become a self-atheist!"
"You don't even know what it means to be a god. The burden of it."
"You should have remained a weather god like your father. Taking on a totem only subjected you to the pains of mortality. Without even the release of death."
"The whole father-son thing doesn't have the same meaning in my family," said Bear. "We don't breed true. Weather god was never my option. This people didn't need a sky god. They needed a god to keep winter under control. Like any good king, we respond to the needs of the people. We become what they need us to be."
She understood the thinly veiled criticism of her own kingship. "Did they need you to be a one-eyed cowardly old fart?" She poured him a dish of mead. "To help settle your meal."
He looked at the dish but didn't lap at it immediately. "I should never have let you seduce me," he said.
"I didn't seduce you, I enchanted you. There's a world of difference."
"Bears have no business marrying women. We're unfaithful by nature."
"But you kept your word, you sweet hunk of bear, you."
"Hera let Zeus dally."
"Hera was weak," said Yaga. "She deserved what she got. And in case you're thinking of going about betraying me with other women, I've put a charm on you. Try it and your balls fall off."
"If Hera couldn't do that to Zeus, I doubt you can do it to me. You're not even a goddess."
"Try it and see."
"Don't worry. I'm done with human women."
"Good. Stick to swans and heifers or whatever it was that Zeus had a taste for. Or she-bears. But as far as humans go, you're mine."
"Why this charade of marriage? You only want my power. You don't even think about me except when I come into your room."
"I think about you all the time, my love," she said, pretending to feel hurt.
"I'm not going to go kill that boy, not in the middle of Taina, surrounded by soldiers. He and I will have an accounting about this empty eyesocket of mine, but not now. Certainly not at your behest, my love, since you're the one who sent me into that pit to fight with him."
Yaga silently went back to combing her hair. They both knew, of course, that he would do whatever she told him to do, and if he tried to resist, she could make things very uncomfortable for him. A binding is a binding, and the one who is bound is bound. Anything else was just talk. When the time came, when she really meant it, Bear would kill whomever she wanted dead.
Apparently mistaking her silence for patience, Bear went on. "Do you have any idea how sad it is, to see you comb those few scraggly grey hairs of yours as if they were long luscious tresses? I can see your sallow scalp right through it, the hair's so thin. I've seen bald men with more hair."
She sighed. "I'm combing thick reddish hair tonight. Sorry if you don't love me enough to see that."
"And your dugs hang down to your knees."
"Only when I'm sitting and leaning forward to see into my mirror."
"I don't have eyes enough to waste them looking at lies."
"Since the truth can never be known," said Yaga, "a wise woman learns to become a connoisseur of lies, choosing only the best and most satisfying to surround herself with. I sink into my lies like featherbeds, and they keep me safe and warm." She got up and danced a little through the room.
"So you plan to kill the boy yourself?" asked Bear. "Won't that cost you any chance for the throne?"
She shrugged and kept on dancing. "I'll find other hands to do it for me. I always do."
She began to sing a melody. The rhythm of it had nothing to do with her twirling steps. Bear lost interest. He lay down on the floor and fell asleep.
"I've got to find a faster-acting spell," Yaga murmured. "It took you forever to fall asleep."
Bear opened his one eye. "I didn't take your damn potion," he growled. "The stuff stank so bad I could hardly tell that it was supposed to be mead in the dish. You can't poison a bear, you silly bitch."