Mrs. Yaga by Michal Wojcik Page B

return.
    The Walkman stopped playing, electromagnetic tape spilling out in one big tangle when Aurelia tried to pull the cassette free. She slipped off the headphones, threw the Walkman on the floor and balled her hands into fists. She grabbed a jacket and a shawl from the closet and then her handbag, and made her way up the twisty shambling staircase and the rickety ladder to the topmost floor.
    She hesitated when she saw the mortar big and round and filled with shadow. She froze and listened for footsteps or the sound of a truck pulling into the driveway. All she heard were the usual pops and groans and whispers of the house. A thrill shook her, fear and excitement tangling as she gripped the long pestle leaning against the wall beside the skis and bicycle wheels, and the pestle seemed to respond, warming to her touch. Aurelia took it with her to the shutters and threw them open, startling the ravens perched on the ledge beyond. Dust swirled up in the wind, motes catching the dying sunlight before blowing away.
    She leaned on the pestle and looked out over the road and the forest for one long moment before squaring her shoulders and turning back, hoisting herself into the pestle’s bowl. The inside was dark and moist against her legs and thighs. It too responded to her, accepting her, letting her settle in its maw, and when she pushed against the floorboards with the pestle, the mortar rose a few inches into the air then lurched in an unsteady spinning way towards the open window.
    Aurelia fought the wobble that threatened to spill her, brought the pestle around like a paddle and hastily rowed at the sky. She’d never ridden the mortar before, but she’d seen Mrs. Yaga depart in its embrace and she’d read the old books in the library, the ones written in Old Church Slavonic by hand on vellum, and she’d also gone canoeing once or twice. So she succeeded in steadying the beastly container as she passed the window frame and out over the yard. Her brow furrowed in determination as she swiftly brought the mortar to bear, passing beyond the fence, beyond this sleepy town in northern British Columbia, and over the wavering boundary to the thrice-tenth kingdom.
     
    An hour elapsed before Aurelia spotted the lair of the dragon under starlight and moonlight, the entrance to its cavern folded between the heels of the Mountains of Dusk. Smoke billowed from there in intertwining streams, threading together like rope.
I’ll wait for him here
, Aurelia thought, directing the mortar to descend onto the narrow path to the dragon’s gates. She stowed the pestle away and hoisted herself out from the bowl, her legs cramped and muscles aching, and she tumbled indelicately in the dirt. When she lifted her head, she saw something glimmer in the rocks above her, and she reached into her handbag for a flashlight before wandering up the path.
    It was the sword. A sabre, its hilt hammered together in the form of an eagle’s head. The flashlight’s beam went this way and that, lancing the sheer cliffs above before settling on Greg’s footprints leading down from the mountain. Then it moved to a great disturbance of shattered boulders, tumbled stone. Gregory had seen the dragon, that was plain. He’d dropped the sword and fled.
    Aurelia took up the blade and sat on a nearby stone, idly contemplating the size, the weight, before her gaze went back to the dragon’s cave and the smoke that issued in puffs with each of the dragon’s breaths. Then back down the path, to wherever Greg might be. He was probably back in British Columbia, the thrice-tenth kingdom peeling away until he emerged on some highway somewhere and hitched a ride back home. Memories of rusałki and other forest demons would fade until they became but dreams, mere fodder for essays while he completed his folklore degree. He would forget Aurelia, too, and all she’d have left of Greg would be wilted flowers and a broken mix tape.
    Why do they always listen to Mrs. Yaga? Are