Wickedly Ever After: A Baba Yaga Novella(16)

“And have you accomplished this assignment as well?” the King asked.

“We have, Your Majesty.” Barbara nodded at Liam, who stepped forward and pulled the plastic carry cage out of his pocket. Through its holes, the frog within could be heard complaining softly about its limited accommodations.

Liam bowed, deeper than Barbara had, and handed the cage to a yellow-eyed servant, who passed it on to the Queen with a curled lip.

The Queen held up the cage by its clear handle and peered inside. “It is a frog,” she said. Disappointment and glee warred in her voice. “How can a frog be a living representation of a dead species? What is the meaning of this, Baba Yaga?”

“Allow me to explain, Your Majesty,” Liam said, bowing again. Barbara was proud of how confident he sounded, despite the audience he faced.

“This is not just any frog. It is a rare species called a gastric brooding frog, which carries its babies in its stomach and gives birth to them through its mouth. Until recently, it was, in fact, completely extinct, until scientists managed to bring the species back to life.”

The Queen looked down at the small innocuous specimen currently residing in the cage she held. “Indeed,” she said, thinning her lips in distaste. “It gives birth through its mouth, you say? How very . . . efficient.” She handed the plastic carrier hastily over to the King, who covered a smile with one slender hand.

“So you are saying that the species was dead, and your science managed somehow to resurrect it?” the King said. “That seems quite clever.”

The Queen gazed at the frog and sighed. “I suppose it will do, although I was hoping for something more impressive, like a dinosaur or the Loch Ness Monster.”

Liam held out his hand hopefully. “Uh, if Your Majesties have no use for the frog, the friend who got it for us could really use it back.”

The Queen made a waving motion with her hand. “My dear boy, take it with Our blessing. We have frogs aplenty already, I assure you, and all of them both more attractive and more melodious than this one.”

Liam grabbed the container before she could change her mind and stepped back to stand next to Barbara. “The Loch Ness Monster was real?” he whispered to her out of the corner of his mouth. “Seriously?”

“She was,” Barbara said. “Nessie died about fifteen years ago, the last of her kind. She was very sweet, actually, but very old and very tired and oh so lonely.” She wondered idly if Liam’s friend could bring back Nessie’s race after all, but decided it was a question best left for a less urgency-laden moment.

The sound of delicate throat clearing brought their attention back to the Queen, who sat upright and poised in her chair, leaning forward the slightest bit in her eagerness. “About that last task,” she said. “If you might read it aloud, Notaire?” She clearly thought she’d beaten them on this one.

The creature flushed with excitement, its pointed nose practically twitching. “Task the third: find a Human whose heart is so pure that he or she has never spoken a lie,” he read off the scroll with a flourish.

The assembled courtiers tittered, a sound like thousands of leaves rustling an autumn wind.

Barbara resisted the temptation to give them all the finger. Barely.

“It seems a remarkably difficult task, my dear Baba,” the Queen said. “But since you are here, We assume you are convinced that you have found such a person. But I note that you did not bring anyone else back with you.” She gazed at Liam dispassionately. “Perhaps you suggest that We believe such honesty lies in your sheriff?”

Liam shook his head. “I strive to be as honest as I can, Your Majesty, but even I fail on occasion, regretfully. As you would say, I am only Human.”

“Indeed,” the Queen agreed. She pointed her ornamental fan at Barbara. “Then perhaps you offer up yourself for this position, Baba Yaga?”

Barbara grinned. “I do not believe anyone here would refer to me as ‘pure of heart,’ do you, Your Majesty?”

Even the Queen allowed a tiny smile to cross her lips at this, and the King let out an actual guffaw. The rest of the court burst into raucous laughter at the thought.

Eventually the Queen waved her fan through the air and the revelry subsided. Barbara thought she could hear the subtle sharpening of knives as they awaited her final answer. Not everyone at the royal court was pleased with the Baba Yaga’s privileged position, or, it might be said, with Barbara herself. She liked to think that she was good at her job, but even she admitted that she sucked at playing at courtly games. To be honest, she just couldn’t be bothered.

“If not your sheriff and not you,” the Queen said, “then who? Not Chudo-Yudo, surely?” The court tittered again; Chudo-Yudo rolled his large brown eyes and showed his large white teeth. For reasons known only to him, he’d stayed in his pit bull form this visit, probably in solidarity with his Human companions.

Little Babs, who had been silently observing everything from behind Barbara’s legs, took three firm steps forward. As usual, she had been so quiet that most of those present had completely forgotten she was there. Barbara herself never made that mistake, having found from experience that the girl might not speak much but she soaked up everything around her like a sponge. A tiny, choppy-haired, snub-nosed, determined sponge.

The Queen’s brow wrinkled. “What is this, Baba Yaga?”