Hammer of Witches by Shana Mlawski

the Baba Yaga.”
    I frowned. This sounded like the beginning of another story, and I was getting sick of stories by this point. Being part of my own was about more than I could take.
    “She’s a Storyteller,” Jinniyah explained. “A very powerful Storyteller! The Baba Yaga’s so famous that people in Russia even make up stories about her. They say she’s an evil old witch, and Amir says she’s a kind of a ghul. You do know what ghuls are, don’t you?”
    “No . . .”
    “Arabian desert demons. The men live around cemeteries and dig up the graves to eat the corpses. And the women, the ghulah, lure men to the desert so they can eat them all up.”
    My face pulled itself back at the thought. “And you want to go visit one of these people?”
    Jinniyah nodded with vigor, sending black sparkles springing from her hair. “Oh, yes, yes, yes! The Baba Yaga knows the answers to all sorts of questions. She can see the past, the future. She’ll know where Amir is, easy!”
    Exactly what I was afraid of. I turned away from Jinniyah toward the closed window shutters. How could I tell her that I had no interest in finding Amir al-Katib, that I had liked the man a lot better when I thought he was dead — and not my father?
    On the other hand, a meeting with this Baba Yaga did sound tempting. A wise fortune-teller who could answer any question? Maybe it was exactly what I needed. Lately everything I knew as true was disappearing, melting away. What I needed most was answers, someone who could help me separate the truth from all the stories. A person who could tell me, without qualification or doubt, exactly what I needed to do.
    Jinniyah took one of my hands in both of hers. “Come see the Baba Yaga with me, Bal. Please?”
    I looked down at the girl and sighed. Oh, how could I say no to that guileless face, that hopeful smile? I took Jinniyah’s hand and led her toward the attic door.
    “So, ‘Bal,’ huh?” I said, smirking at her.
    The girl grinned back at me. “Baltasar’s too long.”
    “All right, but I’m going to have to call you Jinni.”
    Jinni made a face but didn’t seem too put out over it. “That’s what your mom used to call me.” Before my eyes the ifritah transformed into a human girl with curly black hair and the threadbare clothes of a peasant. And before I knew it, we were galloping down the inn’s staircase, pushing our way through the crowded tavern — where there was still no sign of Antonio de Cuellar — and bursting out onto the dusky pier.
    Outside the sky had changed to a lilac-indigo hue. Above the Santa María and its sisters, the first stars began to twinkle. Jinniyah stopped us short in front of the ships and raised her head to the sky.
    She started sniffing.
    I followed her lead but found I couldn’t smell anything at all — only the normal salty-fishy aromas of Palos’s port.
    “Is this some kind of genie thing?” I asked her.
    “I’m trying to find an entrance to the Baba Yaga’s house. People from all over the world always want to visit her and ask her questions about the future, but she lives very very far away. So the Baba Yaga created magic doors all over the world so people could come visit her more easily. There used to be a door in Palos that she created for Amir. But that was before . . .”
    Though Jinniyah trailed off, I knew exactly what she meant. She meant before Amir had trapped her in the necklace. Before he had abandoned us.
    But Jinniyah got over the thought quickly — much quicker than I did, anyway. “I can sense magic, you know,” the girl said, out of nowhere. “It makes my skin all prickly. Especially right here, on my nose.” She tapped the tip of her nose and went cross-eyed. “The entrances to Baba Yaga’s house are highly, highly magical, so it’s always easy for me to find one. In fact, they’re so magical, they even make me sneeze sometimes!”
    I chuckled through my own nose at the thought of Jinniyah sneezing her way