Babayaga

Over the years, they found countless other khans, nizams, rajes, and princes to serve. Each time, victory followed their hire as they traced the armies’ paths across the fields, hills, ridges, and steppes, east to west and back again, laying the charms for victory, nursing the wounded, burning the dead, and taking their share of the bounty. The pattern was as constant as the North Star: after every battlefield success, their host’s pride would grow and swell until finally the vain and foolish victor wholly believed that it was only his strategic foresight and sharp-eyed skills that had forged all his good fortune. He would grow impatient with the imperious Oba and her crafty tribe, who were, after all, no more than superstitious wenches—skilled with the healing arts, yes, but too ugly to look at. Then requests would be refused and lines would be drawn.

Some died from wild blue lightning fire searing their camps, some found their tents coursing thick with plague rats, some tasted polluted wine; and then there were the fortunate ones whom Oba benevolently indulged, allowing a more glorious end as their heads were sliced off in a clean flash by their enemies’ bright, shining steel. But in every case, arrogance and hubris turned once proud armies into simple carrion, lying plenty for a murder of crows, as the women marched on.

With every day, Elga learned more. Her christening bath had been in a pool by the Belaya River. Her dream had been of a snake wrapped around a white marble egg. Oba could not tell her what the egg signified, but the marble meant a long life and the snake, she said, was a very good spirit to have on your side. She taught Elga how to grind up the serpents’ sloughed-off skin and inhale it, which brought visions of all varieties: some came as prophecies and predictions; others tore the fabric of reality away, giving her fractured glimpses with meanings far greater than she could comprehend; and others merely widened her perspective and control, letting her chart the paths of her enemies’ approach.

She gained other virtues as well, wisdom, strength, and, most important of all, time. The serpents’ smoke entwined with the eternity of death, slowing the effect of her years to a mountain’s crawl, so that men’s sons were born as babes, grew to men, withered ancient, and were buried in the time it took a wrinkle to even hint its presence at the corner of her eye. But age she did, along with all her sisters, centuries slow, but sure, as they passed back and forth between the comforts of the court and rougher life with the army in the field, tending to the healing tents and bargaining for fates as imperial borders wandered and kingdoms dissolved into dust.

From almost the very first, Temra was her closest friend. Elga had no idea how old she was, only that she had served Oba for eons and could sense from a glance or a footfall the old woman’s many moods. Temra cautioned when to stay out of Oba’s path and, alternatively, when it was timely to ask for favor. Over the years, she also provided wise guidance on how to master this range of new powers. “You are a different animal now, but you are not evil. Like the serpent who guides you, you can be an ally to many,” Temra told her. Elga could not think of any beast allied with the serpent, but she did not contradict her friend. She merely worked her days and lay through the nights as the years fell around them like drops of rain.

Elga stayed with Oba, Temra, and the rest of the tribe for what would have been the span of four lives, studying, listening, watching. To memorize the spells, she mimicked Temra by the firelight and then turned them backward, spinning them into riddle songs that she repeated as she followed the dusty long trains of mules and camels.

Finally, in the end, she was forced to flee, once again alone and frightened. Oba’s mind had slowly blackened with a seething paranoia that wrapped around her thoughts like a choking ivy. Obsessive, secretive, and certain that those around her were trying to hurt and betray her, she sulked and brooded and kept to her tent. Then, one by one, the other women of the tribe began taking ill, some mortally stricken with fever, others dying from bloody cramps. Plague pyres burned and suspicions grew. Finally, one night, Oba sent a message for Elga to come to her side. When Elga found her, Oba whispered that she needed help taking the conspirators down, and that the worst of the plotters was Temra. Elga begged to leave, Temra was a sister, friend, and lover to her, but Oba firmly insisted. Elga asked why she could not do it herself, why she needed her help, and that was when she learned her final lesson from Oba.