Enchantment by Orson Scott Card

Then she had the Great Bear pursue me. He drove me here, where I could run no farther. I fell asleep, and he guarded me, until you came and gave me your oath, setting me free of him. Now I must get home to my family.”
    “ ‘Ya,’ ” said Ivan, echoing her. “Ya-
ga
?” Was it possible that this evil queen was the witch of the fairy tales? “
Baba
Yaga?”
    She gasped and put her hand over his mouth. Her hand was callused from work, and she was stronger than he expected. But he liked the feeling of her touching him, though there was only fear and annoyance in the gesture.
    “Are you a fool, to say her name right out? Even here. Even in this place.” So it
was
Baba Yaga. If unconsciously he was looking for fairy tales, he had stumbled onto the mother lode.
    She took her hand away from his mouth.
    “Sorry,” he said. “For saying her name, and I’m sorry about your kingdom, too. But . . .”
    “But what? We have no choice but to marry. Forget this other woman. Take her as a concubine after we are wed.”
    “But it’s been a thousand years,” he said. “More than a thousand years that you’ve been lying here.”
    She looked at him as if he were crazy. “No thousand years,” she said. “It is
today
. This morning is
today
.”
    She pulled at his hand, drew him onto the bridge, and led him to the other side.
     
    Piotr and Esther lay in bed at the end of the day, watching Johnny Carson because Piotr enjoyed the program; Esther barely understood it. Even when she caught the meaning of the English, she rarely knew why everyone was laughing. But she watched because Piotr wanted to watch. Carson was wearing a turban and holding envelopes to his head, then saying things that made people whoop and laugh.
    Piotr also laughed. She could feel the bed shaking.
    Then, suddenly, it was as if she were falling; her stomach lurched within her. No, it was as if a baby kicked in her womb. No, no, it was as if her baby did not kick. It was as if she were carrying a baby and suddenly knew that it was dead and would never kick again.
    “He’s gone,” she whispered.
    “What?” asked Piotr.
    Esther began to cry.
    Piotr turned off the television, concerned. “What is it, my love? Are you sick? What’s wrong?”
    “He’s gone,” she said. “My little boy. He’s gone. He’s left this world.”
    Piotr put his arms around her. “Hush, hush, my love, that can’t be so, that can’t be true. How would you know it, anyway, so far from him? You’re just afraid for him, a mother’s worry, but don’t be afraid, he’s with Cousin Marek, he’s safe, he’s safe.”
    His words, his tone, they were meant to be comforting, but she took no comfort from them, only from the arms he wrapped around her, only from the warmth of his body next to hers. We made only one baby out of our love, Piotr, only one baby, one little boy, and he is gone.
    Baba Yaga
    Yaga was busy when Bear came back. She was in the midst of a tricky extraction of the living eyes of a merchant who had failed to bring anything interesting to sell, but who had the most fascinating silver-tinted irises that might have some unpredictable effects in spells of vision and illusion. The fellow was trying to persuade her, in his halting foreign speech, that perhaps she could make do with only one of his eyes, while she concentrated on popping out the left eye without bursting it, when Bear gave a great roar just outside the room.
    The merchant jumped in surprise, which of course caused him even more pain than he was already in, as the cords that bound him cut more deeply into his throat. Choking, he managed to croak out, “What was that?”
    “My husband,” sighed Yaga. She was grimly determined not to show how bitterly his return disappointed her. Not that she had really expected to keep him tied up guarding the princess forever—for one thing, there were some very useful spells that she could only cast when he was close at hand. Still, she had thought that by