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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 putting both Bear and the princess in a place cut loose from time she would gain more than the few months that had passed for her during the princess's enchantment.

The real disappointment, however, was the knowledge that the princess had somehow managed not only to wake up but also to get the person who woke her to propose marriage to her. The whole point of putting her there had been to make sure that whoever kissed her would be some stranger from another time and place who wouldn't speak a word that she could understand, so that Bear would have plenty of time to eat him from the head down before there was any betrothal possible. And here was Bear, showing that her plan hadn't been foolproof after all.

"Do hold still," she said irritably.

"Sorry," croaked the merchant.

Out popped the eye.

"Here we come," said Yaga.

The merchant sighed and whimpered.

Yaga reached back with her long, thin blade to sever the optic nerve and blood vessels as close to the back as possible—must get the maximum strength from this eye, considering how much the fellow who grew it for her was going to miss it. "There," she said. "Want to see it?"

The man groaned. Taking this for a yes, she held up the eye with its dangling cord. "Now your eye will see for me," said Yaga. "Which will give it a much more interesting career than it would ever have had in your head."

"Please," whispered the man. "Let me keep the other."

"Don't be stingy," said Yaga. "Didn't your mother teach you to share?"

The door flew open.

"My darling husband," said Yaga. "Didn't I tell you to knock first?"

The answer was a roar. Bear shambled into the room on all fours, then stood to his full height and roared again.

"Hungry?" asked Yaga. "I'm almost done with this head, if you want it."

"Who is that eye for?" demanded Bear.

"Why, do you want it?" Whereupon Yaga looked up and realized that yes, indeed, Bear could use an eye, for the very good reason that he had only the one, while his other socket was bleeding. "Did you save the eye?" she asked. "Did you think to bring it back to me?"

"It was crushed," said Bear savagely. "The bastard threw a boulder at me."

"Aren't gods like you supposed to be able to, I don't know, re-grow anything that falls off or out?"

"It didn't fall," said Bear. He sounded downright hostile. "And it wouldn't have happened if you hadn't trapped me there without any powers beyond the natural strength of a bear."

"I was using your powers here, my love," said Yaga. "I couldn't very well let everything fall apart at home just because you're out playing with some princess."

"I want to kill you," said Bear.

"No you don't," said Yaga. He couldn't possibly. The spells that bound him assured that his love for Yaga would be unflagging.

"Well then I want to want to kill you."

"Bear, meet... what's your name?"

The merchant murmured something.

"Do you have to play with your victims like that?" said Bear. "Why can't you kill them first and then take their parts?"

"Things start to corrupt when the body is dead. So I have to take the best parts when they're at their freshest." By now she had finished packing the first eye in clean white ashes. She closed and sealed the box, and set to prodding at the other eye. "You will be a dear and break open the head for me, won't you? I want to get the brain whole, if I can."

In answer, Bear lurched over, grabbed the man's head between his paws, and tore upward so violently that the cords cut right through his throat. With a twist, Bear pulled the head off the spine and dashed it to the stone floor. It split open with such force that the brain was splashed all over Yaga's feet and the rugs as well.

"You clumsy, insolent—"

"Don't start with me!" roared Bear.

For a moment she was afraid of him, for he still carried himself with the power of a god, and she wasn't completely sure that her binding spells would be utterly irresistible, if he got angry enough. Gods were dangerous creatures to enslave. Who knew how deviously they might manipulate the reality around them?

But in a moment, she could see that he really wasn't angry—anger being forbidden to him. The roaring and acting up were the result of pain, and after all, the poor dear had lost an eye. "I should scold you for killing him before I got the second eye out," said Yaga, "but I think your wound is making you cranky and I forgive you."

"Give me the eye you took from that man."

"It wouldn't fit," she said. "And you'd start seeing like a man, which would do you no good at all." She popped the second eye out of the head. Since it was already dead, it wasn't so important to pack it in ash. In fact, she might as well dry it to be powdered later—there were plenty of uses for it yet. "You did waste the brains, you know. I can't even tell which part is which."

Bear stepped in the midst of the pile of brains and twisted his paw.

"Don't be spiteful," said Yaga.

"Kill the girl and take the kingdom if you want it," said Bear. "Forget all this song and dance. You have the power. Or rather, I have the power."

Yaga sighed. "I don't want just to take it. I want to keep it. The high king at Kiev—"

"Is your sworn enemy. The Rus' drove your late husband from the throne of Kiev, didn't they? Stuck the two of you out here in this backwater kingdom of Pryava, didn't they? What do you care what the king of the Rus' thinks of your claim to the throne of Taina?"

"I don't want a war with the Rus'," said Yaga. "And you know why."

Bear roared in frustration.

"Ah, yes, my love. You thought you could trick me, didn't you? But I know that as god of this land and all its people, you're god of the Rus' as well, and if the high king went to war against me, it would weaken my hold on you. Everything must be done legitimately, my pet. Including my conquest of Taina. You're their god, too, aren't you?"

That was a sore point between them, since the king of Taina had converted to a religion that refused to recognize the power of Bear.

"We're really on the same side in this, my love, remember that," said Yaga. But as she looked at his matted fur, his blood-soaked muzzle and chest, she couldn't help but think: If this winter god, this walking rug, this one-eyed whining bear is the magical guardian of Russia, then Russia is going to have a very troubled future. "Tell me all about the knight who threw the rock at you."