Wickedly Ever After_ A Baba Yag - Deborah Blake Page 0,7
well as we’d hoped,” Chudo-Yudo said as they followed the path that led back to the doorway between the worlds. He’d resumed his pit bull shape as soon as they’d left the court, since that made it easier for him to walk and talk with the others.
“Hey, at least she didn’t turn us into anything,” Liam said, trying to sound cheerful. He was the one who always tried to look on the bright side, whereas Barbara was more likely to just stick a sword in whatever side was left. “And really, it can’t make that much of a difference, can it? So you age a little more slowly than I do. It’s not the end of the world, right?”
Chudo-Yudo snorted tiny flames. “You never told him how old you really are, did you, Baba?”
Barbara could feel the heat in her cheeks. “Um, it never came up, exactly.”
The dragon-dog snorted again, this time narrowly missing setting a bright blue willow tree on fire. Only its flexible nature allowed it to bend its branches out of the way in time and they could hear it grumbling at them for some time afterward.
“How old do you think she is?” he asked Liam.
Liam shrugged. “Well, she always said that she was older than she looked, and she looks like she is in her late twenties or maybe early thirties. So I figured she was in her late thirties, or something like that.”
Barbara winced. “Actually, I’m eighty-two.”
“Eighty-two,” Liam repeated flatly. “You’re eighty-two.”
“You always said you didn’t care how old I was. That age was just a number.”
“Eighty-two is one hell of a number,” Liam said, shaking his head. “And I still don’t care, except that obviously it does matter if we manage to accomplish the three impossible tasks, which all sounded pretty impossible to me.”
“Barbara?” a small tenor voice piped up from Liam’s side. As usual, Babs had been quiet and soaking up everything going on around her. “If he does not get the magical Water, how old will Liam be when I am eighty-two?”
Liam and Barbara exchanged glances and Barbara swallowed past the lump in her throat. “It doesn’t matter, sweetheart. We’re going to succeed. Do you know why?”
Babs tilted her head to one side like a little bird, a gesture she often made when trying to remember one of her lessons, and one that never failed to melt Barbara’s heart. Ironic, since before meeting Liam and Babs, she would have sworn she didn’t have one.
“Because we are Baba Yagas, and Baba Yagas are tough, smart, and resourceful?” Babs said.
“That’s right,” Barbara said with a grin. “And what else?”
“And we kick ass,” the girl added.
“Barbara!” Liam said.
“What? We do.” Barbara didn’t believe in sugarcoating things for Babs just because she was young. And then she added in a grimmer tone, “We’re going to have to, this time.”
***
Once back at the house they sat down over milk and cookies for a counsel of war. Or at the very least, a counsel of “What the heck do we do now?”
“How on earth can we possibly catch the song of the ocean in a bottle?” Liam asked glumly. “I mean, does the ocean even have a song? And if it does, how would you catch it?”
“Hmmm . . .” Barbara said, biting the head off a gingerbread man.
“What does ‘hmmm’ mean?” Liam asked.
“It means she has a plan,” Chudo-Yudo suggested. “Or, you know, something plan-adjacent.”
“Do you have a plan?” Babs asked, nibbling a little more delicately on a gingerbread foot.
“I always have a plan,” Barbara said. “Well, or something that might, with a bit more thought and a lot of luck, become a plan. You know, something plan-adjacent.”
“You keep saying that like it is a real thing,” Liam said. “So what is the plan?”
“It’s not so much a what as a who,” Barbara said.
“A who?” he said.
“Gesundheit,” Barbara said, and Chudo-Yudo snickered.
Babs looked confused and Barbara said to her, “You know the answer to this. Who do we know who lives by the ocean and spends a lot of time in the water? We saw her on our honeymoon trip after Liam and I got married. And then went back for her wedding.”
The little girl’s face lit up. “Oh, Beka! She is the Baba Yaga with the pretty yellow hair whose hut is a painted bus. I liked her. And Chewie.” Chewie was Beka’s Chudo-Yudo, an immense black Newfoundland. He and Barbara’s Chudo-Yudo were best buds. “Do we get to go see her again? I liked the