Chapter 4

 

There was a peculiar smell wafting in from…somewhere.

David opened his eyes, squinting at the sunlight flowing in through the window. It bathed the room in the morning’s saffron glow, lighting the gossamer white curtains with a buttery hue. He tentatively moved his hands, patting at the plushy, soft blankets beneath him and recognized the familiar texture. He rolled his head left, then right, observing the bedspread, the striped wallpaper, the nightstand, the matching vanity and chair set painted sterile white.

This was his bedroom. He was home.

Anyone else, awaking to this, would have sighed, rolled over and closed their eyes, presuming any ordeals involving giants, lobsters, Old Age, and a Mouth of Death would have been a fantastic dream. But not David. The remnants of the bristling terror that had gripped him still ran electrified in his veins, and he knew he had not dreamed such events. He sat up and breathed deeply. Again, he smelled something fresh and fragrant, the smell of something cooking.

Florence…was she cooking downstairs in the kitchen? But she was supposed to be at the country inn, where they had been heading before David was spirited away. Perhaps Hypnos had given her a dream, telling her to come home when she woke up and found David gone. He prayed he could explain his absence to her, if Hypnos had not already constructed a dream that made her believe some fabrication of his disappearance. He honestly wished the God of Sleep had come to him to let him know what on earth had happened back there, at Geras’s home.

Now that he thought about it, why hadn’t David seen Hypnos in his sleep? In fact, awaking from that slumber had felt different from before. It had felt stagnant…empty…

He got up from the bed, passing the vanity. He checked himself in the vanity mirror. The dark brown hair, the tanned wrinkle-free skin—he was completely himself again. At least that would be one thing he and Florence would not have to worry about. He walked out of the bedroom and started down the stairs. Four steps down, he stepped on something and it let out a loud screech.

David pulled back, nearly losing his balance as a soot-gray cat scrambled down the stairs. It made a beeline for the kitchen. David regained his footing, but stayed put. Since when did they have a cat?

“No crying to me, lazybones,” came a voice that was definitely not Florence’s, from the kitchen. “You sleep on stairs, you get stepped on. Now, off with you. You’ll get cat hair in pot.”

David crept quietly down the remaining stairs. He knew that voice, that thick accent speaking in broken English. He rounded the corner and peeked into the kitchen to see the Russian woman stirring something in a pot which simmered on his cast iron stove. She removed the ladle to taste her concoction and scrunched her nose.

“Eh, such inferior ingredients. All cheese and sugar. Nothing to put meat on bones.” She withdrew a turnip from her sleeve—David had a feeling that her sleeve had been empty a moment ago—and plopped it whole into her stew. There was a brief scream as the turnip hit the boiling broth. Some of the stew sloshed onto the floor, which the cat padded over to the spill to sniff at it.

Baba shooed the cat away with her ladle. “Shoo, greedy thing!”

David took one step into the kitchen. “Baba?”

“Ah, so the Death Caller awakes,” Baba said with a mock sweetness. “Convenient you awake now, after I save you and the danger is long gone.”

David tightened his lips. “And how convenient that you can speak my language. I expected Geras and Elli to speak in any tongue, since they are more than human. But you…what exactly are you?”

Baba laughed. “Let’s say I am what I need to be, when I need to be it. As for speaking as you do, I have what I call ‘magic ear.’ You, too, have such an ear, yes? Can you speak another tongue without having to learn?”

How did she know? David had once drunk enchanted water from the river-dwelling kappa in Japan, that allowed him to understand and speak in Japanese. Perhaps she too had such magical water in her possession. Or did his “ear” allow him to understand Russian too? No, then Baba’s dialect wouldn’t sound broken. “I don’t think my ‘ear’ is as diverse as yours,” he replied.

“Be glad you still have ears, or a head at all. You may have tricked the Old One to make you young again, but you are still cursed, little man. The wolf will hunt you again, and it won’t matter if you are on this side of Curtain, or the other side. When he desires his prey, he does not stop.”

“Wolf? Is that what that thing was that ate Geras’s house? What happened to Geras and Elli?”

“They take care of themselves. Have for centuries. I doubt the beast would keep them down—they probably taste like rotten shellfish. I, on other hand, prefer not to be eaten. Much better to eat others than get eaten.” She smiled widely at David. He gulped when he saw that her teeth were gray and metallic—iron. She chuckled at his uneasiness. “If you afraid of old lady, you don’t stand chance against wolf. You would have been snack if not for Baba Yaga.”

Baba Yaga…that rang a bell. David had read that name somewhere, he was sure of it. He could not place where he had read it, but the word “witch” surfaced in association with that name. “Why did you save me?” he asked.

“Eh.” Baba shrugged and removed a handful of salt from her sleeve and chucked it in the pot. “There is something strange about you. Strange things intrigue me.”

David stepped closer to her, trying to sneak a look at what she was cooking. Baba turned around, advancing on him and poking him with her ladle. “No interfering. Soup will be ready when I say it’s ready. Meantime, you don’t make any more smelly thoughts. Wolf will find you if you think too strongly. It smells it.”

“What are you talking about? That wolf can smell thought? That’s imposs—” David caught himself, realizing he was about to say something was impossible when, given how his day had been, nothing seemed to be so anymore.

Baba Yaga frowned. “Why you think it come to Geras’s home, eh? To play cards? Peh! Most people have simple thoughts, fleeting thoughts. They come and go and don’t cause a stir. But you—you have very strong thoughts. They hang in air, like scent of sage tied up to dry. You thought about something the wolf wants. He smelled what you were thinking and came to devour it. So no thinking!” She rapped David on the head with her ladle and then went back to tend to her soup.

David rubbed his head, wincing at how hard she had whacked him. “What kind of wolf is bigger than a house and can smell thoughts?” He narrowed his eyes on Baba. “And how do you know all of this? I don’t suppose you might know about Ilombas as well—I was told practitioners of black magic create them.” He glanced back towards the boiling pot again. “You’re not summoning any other evil creatures with your cooking, I trust.”

Baba Yaga sighed. “I know nothing about such things as Ilombas or whats-its. But wolves—I know of wolves. There are always wolves. Wolves in the shadows, wolves in the storm, wolves ready to gobble you up. But this, this is very bad wolf. Wolf that will do worse than eat a house, or swallow an ocean.”

“This must be that ‘worst to come’ that Hypnos warned me about. But what was I thinking about, that it came to hunt me down? What was it really looking for?”

Baba shrugged again. “You tell me. They’re your thoughts.”

“I was thinking about what that snake did to me—about being young again. And Ny—” David paused, casting a weary glance at Baba. “The Night goddess. But she’s gone, so that can’t be what the wolf wants. Does it want to find the incarnation? The little boy with the gray wings?”

The old woman smirked. “Not so little now. But I do not think wolf is ready to hunt gods. Not yet. It is still not strong enough for that. But something smaller, something less powerful, perhaps.” Baba took what looked like a brown lizard from her sleeve and threw it in the pot.

David groaned, throwing his hands up in the air. “You’re the one who said I shouldn’t think, and now you’re making me think about all this…this madness! Why won’t you tell me what that beast wants, instead of feeding me all these riddles…”

Riddles…I remember. She was the best at solving riddles. It was in her nature. It dawned on him what else he had been thinking about.

Baba looked over her shoulder and grinned at him.

“Acacia…I was thinking about Acacia, too.” David ran his fingers through his hair, feeling his face flush hot. “Is the wolf after Acacia?”

Baba stirred the soup again. “Best you don’t think of her. Your thoughts about her, particularly strong. Stink up whole town.”

A cold, heavy weight sloshed in David’s stomach, and clawed upwards towards his chest. “But why? Why would it want Acacia?”

“You ask me? I know much, but not all. It is wolf, she is part lion...perhaps dog likes to chase cat?”

The gray cat, lazing on the windowsill, lifted its head and gave Baba a sharp look. Baba hoisted the pot off of the stove and set it to rest on the kitchen counter. “Give moment to cool. Then, you eat.”

David sniffed at the simmering slop. He did his best to keep from coughing at the stench. “What is it?”

“Wolf knows your scent now, knows you know the sphinx. This soup will cover your smell, so wolf won’t find you. Also show you why Russian cooking better than French.” She dipped the ladle in the pot and held it out to David. “Eat.”

David took the ladle from her, staring at the bubbling spoonful. He glanced at the cat. It shook its head at him.

“Keep opinion to self, mangy furball,” Baba warned. “Or next time I throw you in pot.”

David held his breath and then raised the ladle to his lips and sipped. He managed to swallow the liquid but gagged. Tears filled his eyes, and he snorted as if to sneeze out the horrible taste.

Baba clapped her hands, seeming delighted at his reaction. “See? Will make you hearty. Grow much hair on chest. Now finish it.”

David forced himself to down what was left in the ladle. “There,” he gasped, pounding his fist on his chest a few times to get the soup down.

“There, nothing. I said, finish it.” Baba pointed to the pot.

Dios mío, I should have let the wolf eat me, David thought.

Despite the stew gurgling in his stomach like an irritable boar, David went to the coat tree by the front door and gathered one of his coats.

“And where do you think you’re going?” Baba asked. She had planted herself on one of the settees in the parlor while David had finished her scent-masking soup.

“My wife Florence is at an inn a day’s journey south from here,” David explained as he threw on his coat. “Now that your stew will hide my scent from the wolf, I can go to her without putting her in harm’s way. She must be worried sick, all alone and not knowing where I went.”

Baba leaned back on the settee, as comfortable as if she were in her own home. “I would not worry about pretty little yellow hair. You will see her very soon.”

David halted, his hand on the doorknob. “What do you mean? Is she all right?”

Baba shrugged. “What do I know? I’m just old lady.”

David walked over to her, nearly tripping over her cat again. “You know much more than you want me to believe. Clearly you know magic. Do you have a spell that can let me see where Florence is?”

“Should not bother. Will see her in short time.” She took her crow-headed pipe from one of her sleeves and a small pouch of tobacco. She began preparing her pipe to smoke. “But perhaps you would like to see how another is fairing, someone far away who you care much for?”

“You mean Acacia.”

“For that, I would give you a moment to see. But it would come with price.”

David turned from Baba, pacing the floor over to the window. His desire to see Acacia, even if it was a momentary image, burned in his heart like star fire. But should he tempt himself to it, when Acacia could no longer be a part of his life? He had a settled life now, with a wife, an apprenticeship that had opened so many doors to him, and a good social standing. Acacia had wished him to have such a life and had severed her ties with him so he could have it. Would seeing her bring him more anguish than he could bear? Would he even like what he saw? What if she was hiding in fear from the wolf, or what if the new Nyx was sending more creatures after her to drain her of her cunning, as the old Nyx’s Shade had almost done? What if the wolf or Nyx had already found her…what if she was…

“There is always a price for every choice we make,” David said. “You can’t take without giving something, no matter how small. What would you ask of me, to show me Acacia?”

Baba snapped her fingers over the bowl of her pipe, and a spark ignited the tobacco inside of it. She puffed twice, and the white smoke was born into the air. “Let us agree, you would owe me favor. Sometime, someplace. I promise it will be equal value to what I give you, no more, no less. And you will not argue or try to make me change my mind when the time comes that I ask for your favor. Deal?”

“It is a dangerous thing to make ambiguous deals with witches.”

Baba Yaga smiled, her iron teeth glistening. “You are in more danger than you could imagine, boy. Face it or flee. It matters not to me.”

David returned to Baba, looking her straight in the eye. “No false illusions. You guarantee you’ll show me the truth?”

“I guarantee nothing.”

David glanced at the cat, who was rubbing itself against his legs. He looked back at the witch. She watched him steadily, breathing out smoky trails that formed the shapes of cats that prowled around her hat. One smoke trail blossomed into a larger feline shape: the sleek but muscular body of a lioness, with a long mane around its fierce but human face, and two feathered wings extended from its shoulder blades. A Grecian Sphinx.

David knew Baba was producing this image to entice him, to lure him into accepting her offer—and the ache to see the real thing, the true sphinx, was so great, he thought his entire chest would burst.

“Tell me what you need,” he said.

After gathering a silver tea tray from the kitchen and pouring a film of water onto it, David set it on the floor in the parlor at Baba’s feet. Out from her space-defying sleeves, the witch withdrew a small red pouch. She sprinkled the black powdery contents within it onto the water on the tray and mumbled a string of words that rumbled in her chest with the foreboding of a distant storm. Shortly, the water began to swirl, the powder darkening the liquid before it glowed with a greenish radiance.

The cat hissed but did not run away. David knelt before the tray, staring into the glow. He could see nothing at first, save the swirling colors of the water, reminding him of a serpentine dragon’s coils twisting through a dusk-laden sky.

Then, he could see it forming…her face…it was so close…

She was in a dark place. There were candles encircling her, dimly illuminating her features, but did nothing to help reveal what sort of place she was in. There were walls, but they rustled and wavered as if made of fabric.

She was not alone. A form stood before her, an abominably tall stretch of materialized shadow. Even in the lack of light, its eyes glistened like orbs of mirror. Its back looked massive in comparison to its slender legs and thin face, but for a moment, its back expanded outwards into two distinct wings before folding up again.

“What do you want?” the sphinx asked. Her voice was laced with warning.

The shadow presence took three steps towards her. Acacia lowered her head, snarling one corner of her lip to show her canine tooth that could rip flesh.

“I come to offer you refuge,” the presence replied. “The worlds that you know will cease to be. There is a Devourer coming to make a feast of all living things. For the cruel actions of my predecessor against you and others, I wish to make amends by giving you safety in my realm, where the Devourer cannot follow.”

The sphinx bared her teeth fully, and the muscles in his shoulder blades tensed. Her obsidian claws flexed from her paws. “Why should you care about me, or any of the victims that your mother’s—no, you and she are one and the same. Why do you care what your Shades did to us? You benefitted from our suffering. You took our talents, our strength, and many of us, our lives. What need do you have for me now, unless you intend to try to drain me of my cleverness again?”

The winged shadow rippled like a reflection in the water. “I am not the same as the goddess before me. I am more than she was. I have foreseen the future with her gift of prophecy. The mortal world, and yes, your world across the Curtain, will be consumed. We gods exist to herd, as much as your kind exist to be herded.”

“If you are so powerful as you claim, why not stop whatever will consume the worlds?” Acacia’s tail whipped back and forth like a pendulum from an impatient clock.

“Why should I want to stop it? I have no love for your kind’s world, or the human-mastered world. I have my own realm. My benevolence is limited. But there is a shard of it for you, perhaps because the Nyx before me was so drawn to you and your cleverness. There will be no place else for you to go to survive. Accept my offer, if you are not foolish.”

Acacia sat back on her haunches, holding her head high. “Tell me, first, how it feels to live countless lifetimes and have no one or nothing to love, or to love you. Then, perhaps, I can judge if it is better to live as you do, or to perish with those whom I have loved. Somehow, I am led to believe the former is more horrible.”

“Those whom you love…You refer to the humans that you tended to all those years. Your pretend ‘pride’.”

“They were as real a pride to me as your heart is pitch black.”

“They will all die, Sphinx. Whether it is due to the Devouring of the Worlds, or to their brief lives, they will die. Let them go from your heart. Come to the Night and embrace the eternal.”

Acacia closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. When she opened her eyes again, they held a cold but collected serenity. “Thank you, but I decline your offer. You would be wise to never summon me again.”

The shadow reached within the folds of his robes—if he indeed wore robes, and it was not his bare skin—and brought forth an object. It was a blackish bubble, as if blown from tar or oil. “Let me leave you with a parting visage, Sphinx. A glimpse of the near future, a taste of the horror that will come from the one who would end your world, and all worlds touched by light.”

Acacia narrowed her eyes on the bubble. The shadow-being dropped the bubble, where it splashed into a pool of night, spilling out around her feet. Acacia hissed, stepping back from the liquid with the urgency of evading acid. The pool did not burn her, however, but clung to her fur with sticky molasses tendrils. A shape inflated up from the pool, something that could have at first passed for a malformed log or a crocodile’s backside, but soon solidified into what was clearly a human, prone and still.

The intense look on Acacia’s face faded, dissolving into horrified heartbreak. The shape before her was a young man with dark hair and dark unblinking eyes, lying dead in a soaking mess of his own blood. Most of his middle shredded and mauled to threads.

“No!” she howled. “You lie! You deceive me!”

“My gift of prophecy must reveal what is to be. I cannot alter the design of the future, just as the previous Nyx foresaw that she would not attain your intelligence, no matter how badly she willed and worked to change her vision. I cannot deceive you, Sphinx. He will be destroyed. His murderer will relish in his slow, excruciating death.”

The sphinx was silent, a frozen living corpse. All the strength seemed to melt from her being. She slowly, shaking, placed one paw upon the cheek of the corpse before her.

The body popped into nothingness, and the murky pool soaked into the ground.

Acacia’s eyes flared white-hot venom, and she growled, “Who would do this?”

“It will be the one called Fenrir. Your beloved human’s fate is tied into confronting him. They will fight, and Fenrir will win.”

Acacia curled her claws, digging into the earth. “Where is Fenrir now?”

“He moves swiftly and silently. Despite his great size and his path of destruction, he is difficult to track.”

“But not impossible. He will wish he never left his prison. Your vision will never come to be, Nyx. Like the Nyx before you, you believe you can foresee all, but you cannot predict everything.” She turned away sharply and vanished into the surrounding darkness.

The image in the tea tray blinked out. All that was left was the remaining bits of powder floating in the water.

David looked up at Baba. “I don’t understand. That man, he kept saying ‘the Nyx before him.’ He can’t be Nyx’s incarnation, is he? He was a little boy when I saw him two years ago. He couldn’t have turned into…that…And who is this Fenrir that will kill…someone Acacia cares about…” David wiped a hand over his face. “Who was that, Baba? Who did Acacia see in the pool?”

Baba cocked an eyebrow at David. “You know well who that was. Who do you think Sphinx would mourn so greatly for? Who would be in danger of death that she would do anything to prevent it? Only one man she knows has crossed paths with wolf lately, yes?”

“The wolf? What does the wolf have to do…”

David felt a tapping on his ankle. He looked down to see the cat, holding a leather-bound book in her mouth and batting his leg with her tail. It was a large book, so the cat must have dragged it along the floor to bring it to him. David recognized the gold-plated lettering on the cover; it was a book from his Collections Room library.

“Why did you bring me this?” He picked up the book, reading the title: The Poetic Edda. He remembered it now; he hadn’t read this book since he was about ten years old. His parents had brought it from Cervera, as well as a chest-full of his other childhood books, when they had attended his and Florence’s wedding, thinking he would want them for his personal collection.

He recalled it was a compilation of poetry from the 13^th century about gods and heroes, magic, and monsters from the far north. Yet for some reason, he remembered that he had read it once, and then never desired to read it again. Why? It should have been everything he loved about myths and heroic tales. He rejoiced in such stories. David flipped through the pages, taking in the familiar scroll-work drawings, the worn print, and soon it came back to him why he had detested this book.

Ragnarok—the End of the World. There were poems in the Poetic Edda about all the heroes that would one day be destroyed by the monsters, the gods killed, and the world devoured. Ten-year-old David had not been able to stand it. Heroes didn’t lose! Monsters couldn’t win! Even in the Greek myths where heroes occasionally met their doom, at least most of them won the day before their untimely deaths, thus it was an honorable sacrifice. But for all the Norse heroes to be eaten or slain and the world to come to an end? That was unacceptable. Thus, he had tossed the book aside and stayed devoted to his tales where the heroes triumphed and the villains got their comeuppance.

David froze when he got to one page. He had almost missed it, but the word had somehow leapt off the paper, snaring his eyes. It was in the story about how the father of the gods, Odin, would someday battle the son of a traitor god, Loki. Loki’s son would kill Odin, thus slaying the mightiest god in the world.

Loki’s son was named Fenrir. On the opposite page was a sketch of a white-bearded god wearing a crown-shaped helmet—it must be Odin—riding on an eight-legged horse, and he was battling a monstrous black wolf.

David snapped the book shut, closing his eyes. “The wolf, he’s Fenrir, isn’t he?”

“Ah, so boy is not so stupid.” Baba Yaga picked up the tea tray from the floor.

David opened his eyes. “And Acacia thinks Fenrir is going to kill me. Dios mío! She is going to go after that wolf!” David dropped the Poetic Edda on the settee, and marched over to Baba, coming so close to her that she had to step back. “Why did Nyx show her that vision, if there is nothing she can do to change it? He must know Acacia would go after Fenrir by showing her that. Nyx must want her to go after him. What does he want?”

Baba shrugged. “I’m just an old lady—”

“You are not just an old lady! You know something you’re not telling me, and I need to know it right now!”

Baba’s eyes darkened, and the grimace on her face could have turned ravens’ feathers white with fear. “You should be grateful Baba Yaga tell you anything at all. But now you owe her, remember? It would be best you thank her for her kindness towards you. You wouldn’t want to make her angry. Make her decide that you should do something quite nasty to pay for her services, no?”

David pulled back. He looked away from her poisonous gaze. “I deeply apologize, Baba. I am thankful for your help. I did not mean to offend. My emotions got the better of me.”

“You should calm yourself. Would not want to be temperamental to your arrival.”

David did not need to ask what “arrival” she was referring to, for the sound of the front door opening caught his ear.

He dashed from the kitchen to the front hallway. There, standing in the doorway, was a bedraggled young woman, her blonde hair hanging in tangles around her panic-stricken face. The bottom hem of her dress and her shoes were coated in mud.

“David!” Florence exhaled the word, as if all the relief and fury were pouring out of her in that one breath. “Why did you leave me alone?”