Wickedly Ever After: A Baba Yaga Novella (5 page)

Liam introduced Barbara and Babs to his old friend. “Barbara, this is my old roommate from college, Phil. Phil, my wife, Barbara, and our little girl, Babs.”

Phil gazed at Barbara with unabashed admiration, taking in her black leather jacket, black scoop-necked tee, short pleated leather skirt, and tall black boots.

“You told me she was gorgeous,” he said to Liam. “But you didn’t say you married Xena, Warrior Princess. Holy crap. Kind of makes me wish I’d been able to make it to the wedding. That must have been something to see.”

“I mentioned the socially awkward part, right?” Liam said to Barbara with a grin that was part apology and part pride.

Barbara shook her head. Half the time she had no idea what the heck most Humans were talking about. “I’m not a princess,” she said to Phil. “To be honest, most of them are pretty useless anyway.”

“You never saw the show?” Phil asked. “
Xena: Warrior Princess
; she was so cool, wore lots of leather, carried a sword, and kicked a lot of”—he looked down at Babs—“tushy.”

“Barbara doesn’t watch television,” Liam explained.

Phil’s eyes widened behind his glasses. “What,
never
?” he said in the kind of tone most people reserve for when someone admits they beat puppies.

“I am not a princess either,” Babs said in her clear, piping voice. “But I have a sword, so maybe I am a warrior?”

Phil smiled at her, his grin adding unexpected charm to his otherwise unremarkable features. “I’m sure you are. But yours is a toy sword, right? Xena’s had a very sharp edge.”

Babs gazed up at him in the dim light. “It is a real sword. Why would I use a toy sword? That is just silly.”

He blinked, looking at Liam and shaking his head. “Jeez, and my wife, Tina, wouldn’t let me get our son a squirt gun because she said it encouraged violence. You guys must use some interesting parenting techniques.”

“You have no idea,” Liam said dryly. “You have no idea.”

***

Phil led them to a small door set at the back of the building. A complicated lock blinked from red to green when he swiped his badge through it and they followed him into the cool, air-conditioned building’s interior. The long hallways were quiet and seemingly abandoned, although periodically they passed a door that gleamed diffuse light through its glass panels, or heard reverberating voices in the distance.

Eventually they reached Phil’s lab, where he swiped the badge again and waved them inside. “Welcome to my lair,” he said in a mock-spooky voice. It would probably have been more impressive if he hadn’t looked so cheerful.

The room itself was large and sterile-looking, with white walls lined with stainless steel countertops and small glass terrarium-type cages. Fluorescent lights flickered overhead and some of the counters held tools and machinery Barbara couldn’t even begin to guess the purpose of. The air smelled odd, almost too clean, with an underlying hint of chemicals and a tang that reminded her of ponds and stagnant water.

“What exactly is it that you do here?” Barbara asked. “Liam tried to explain it to me, but I’m afraid I didn’t really understand. You somehow bring dead animals back to life?” She hoped it wasn’t some sort of necromancy. There were a few
wizards who practiced such things, but they made her skin crawl.

“It’s actually quite amazing,” Phil said, his homely face glowing with pride. “We’re the only laboratory in the country that has been able to replicate the University of Newcastle’s Lazarus Project.
Time
magazine called it one of the most significant inventions of 2013, you know. The Lazarus Project, that is. Not us.”

“Uh-huh,” Liam said. “It’s some kind of de-extinction process, isn’t it?”

“Exactly,” Phil said. “We use breakthrough genome technology to resurrect an extinct frog—the gastric brooding frog, to be exact, which went extinct in 1983. It was actually quite a remarkable creature. Its name came from its ability to swallow externally fertilized eggs into its stomach, which then acted as a uterus until it gave birth through its own mouth. No other living creature could do this.”

Liam looked almost as green as a frog himself. “Why would they want to?” he muttered.

“Actually, this frog has some really interesting medical applications,” Phil said, his enthusiasm bringing spots of color to his pale cheeks. “It could help us to figure out how to manage gastric secretions in the gut. We use somatic cell nuclear transplantation to inactivate the nuclei of donor eggs from the great barred frog,
Mixophyes fasciolatus
, and replace them with the dead nuclei from the gastric brooding frog, using eggs kept in a deep freeze since the species went extinct. It’s an amazing achievement, and could herald a new era in global biodiversity.”

“Uh-huh,” Liam said again. “I have no idea what you just said, but I’m definitely impressed.”

“They are very cute,” said Babs, looking into one of the glass habitats. “I like frogs.” She bent down to gaze inside, making little croaking noises that the occupants seemed to respond to.

The three adults walked over to her and Phil pointed out a few choice specimens. To Barbara, they looked much like any other frog she’d ever seen; small and gray-green with pebbled skin and large, bulging eyes. Hard to believe that such an innocuous creature had so much power over her and Liam’s future.

“These were created by science?” Barbara said. “Truly?”

“They were,” Phil said. “But our hope is that now that we’ve got a dozen of them, male and female, they will mate on their own and re-create more without human intervention.”

“Not this one,” Babs said, pointing at a small frog at the front of the cage. “She does not like any of the boys you have.”

Phil laughed. “Kids have such great imaginations, don’t they?” But that was the one he grabbed and put into a small perforated container, which he handed to Liam, who tucked it under his coat.

“Do me a favor and try to bring it back, will ya?” Phil said. “I’d just as soon not have to explain why we are one frog short.”

“Will doing this get you into trouble?” Barbara asked.

“Nah, not really,” Phil replied. “You wouldn’t believe the things that go missing in these labs. Remind me to tell you the story about the radioactive spider sometime.”

She looked over her shoulder and up overhead with alarm. “You lost a radioactive spider?”

Liam chuckled. “It’s a joke, honey. From an old comic book.” He narrowed his eyes at his friend. “It is a joke, right?”

Phil winked at him as they excited the building. “I’ll never tell.”

They walked back over to their vehicles and stood by the side of the Airstream.

“May I ask you something?” Barbara said to Phil.

“Sure,” he said. “But if you’re worrying about what to feed the frog, it pretty much eats all the same things as any other non-bioengineered frog.”

“It’s not that, although thank you,” she said. “I don’t wish to be rude, but I was wondering why you would risk your career to steal a rare specimen for us. It seems like a huge favor to do for an old roommate.”

“Borrow,” Phil corrected absently. “And I guess Liam never told you how we met. He wasn’t just my roommate—he saved my life.”

Barbara raised one eyebrow and looked at her husband. “Really? He didn’t mention anything like that.”

“It wasn’t really a big deal,” Liam said.

“Like hell it wasn’t.” Phil stared at the ground for a minute, then raised his head to look Barbara in the eyes.

“I was young when I was in college; sixteen when I started undergrad, nineteen when I entered the master’s program. A genius IQ and little to no social skills don’t make for a great college experience, I can tell you. I had great grades, no friends, and a girl had just dated me for a week to win a bet with her pals and then dumped me in front of a bunch of drunken idiots, who laughed at me. When Liam first met me, I was standing on top of the largest building on campus, getting ready to jump off. He talked me out of it, convinced me to move in with him, then took me under his wing until we both graduated. Even introduced me to the woman who eventually became my wife.”

He shook his head. “Liam not only saved me that night, but every good thing that came afterward was because of him. I don’t know exactly what this is all about, but he told me that your future happiness together depends on having this frog. As far as I’m concerned, it’s little enough to ask.”

Liam’s ears burned a bright red in the dim light of the parking lot. “You’re exaggerating, Phil. I was just a friend when you needed one, that’s all.”

“You were and are a good man. That’s a rare thing.”

Barbara put her arm through Liam’s. “He’s right, you know.”

Little Babs had been listening quietly, as usual. “Liam saved me too. A bad lady had me and he and Barbara saved me and took me home with them. Now we are a family.” She looked up at Liam seriously. “You
are
a good man. You are Barbara’s good man and my good man. And Chudo-Yudo’s good man. You told me that when someone says a compliment to you, you are supposed to say thank you. Are you going to say thank you?”

Liam chuckled. “Sometimes you learn your lessons too well, kiddo.” He turned back to Phil. “Thank you for the compliment. And for the frog. You have no idea what this means to us.”

“Maybe you can tell me the story sometime,” Phil said hopefully. “I get the feeling it is even more interesting than
Spider-Man
.”

Liam and Barbara exchanged looks. “Maybe,” he said. “You never know.”

After another round of manly back thumping, Phil climbed into his car and drove away. Barbara buckled a droopy-eyed Babs into her seat and they set off for the campground where they’d rented a space for the night.

“I like him,” Barbara said finally, after they’d been driving in silence for a few minutes. “Did you really keep him from killing himself the night you met him?”

“Mmm, I suppose I did,” Liam said. “Although there was always the chance he wouldn’t have gone through with it. But he was standing on the edge with one sneaker in midair when I walked onto the roof looking for a quiet spot to think.”

“How did you talk him out of it?” she asked.

Liam laughed. “I told him that I was studying criminal justice, and asked him if he realized that suicide was against the law. Then I threatened to perform a citizen’s arrest. While he was trying to figure out if I was serious, I just walked up and pulled him away from the edge. It wasn’t a big deal.”

Barbara squeezed his hand. “He was right, you know. You are a good man. I look forward to spending many, many years listening to your ridiculous stories.”

He smiled at her, but worry still lurked at the corner of his eyes. “Two down and one to go, eh?”

“Yes,” said Barbara. “Too bad the one that’s left is the most impossible task of them all.”

***

The next morning Liam and Barbara leaned on the counter in the Airstream watching Babs eating her current breakfast of choice, whole-wheat toast with liverwurst and sliced-up prunes. A glass of orange juice sat at her elbow; she would take one precise bite of her food, chew it thoughtfully, and then wash it down with juice. Every week she chose a different combination and seemed to eat them all with the same intense concentration, and, as far as they could tell, enjoyment.

Barbara’s other sister Baba, Bella, had managed to get away for an hour to visit, although she hadn’t had time to wash the smell of smoke from her curly red hair and there was still a smudge of soot on the side of her nose. She had listened to their story with fascinated interest, but hadn’t had anything to suggest on how to obtain their third impossible item, alas.

“I don’t know how she can eat liverwurst for breakfast,” Bella said with a shudder. She took a bite of her own toast, mercifully liver sausage free.

Liam did the same with his own toast, and a smear of marmalade clung to his bottom lip. Barbara wiped it away with her thumb and licked it off. “I hate liverwurst,” he said. “Disgusting stuff.”

“It’s better than the sardines from last week,” Barbara reminded him. “I couldn’t even stand to have breakfast in the same room with her. I like sardines well enough, but not before eight a.m.”

Liam nodded in agreement and took a sip of coffee, then looked at his mug dubiously before sniffing it and taking another sip. “What the heck is in the coffee this morning? I finally got used to the hint of blue roses, but this is . . . well, I
don’t know what it is.” He took another mouthful anyway.

Barbara stuck her long nose down near the top of her own mug, smelled it, then took a sip too. “I’m not sure. Cinnamon and something else. Nutmeg, maybe? Or cardamom? I think the coffeemaker is in a snit this morning. Sorry.” It wasn’t always easy living inside a sentient hut, no matter what it looked like these days. She felt a burning desire to return home to their old farmhouse; she’d only just gotten used to spending most of her time in a house that didn’t talk back. Well, other than the ghost, of course, but she was mostly pretty laid-back. You know, for a ghost.

Barbara sighed. It was weird being homesick. Having spent her entire life traveling around inside her home, it was a strange new experience. Well, at least Liam was with her. For now.

“What was that big sigh for?” he asked, giving up on his coffee and putting it down on the counter with a thud. “We already have two of the three impossible tasks done and we’ve got more than a week left. I would think you’d be a little happier.”

Barbara rolled her eyes at him. “I’m a Baba Yaga. I do two impossible things before breakfast most days. Besides, those were the easy ones compared to the one we’ve got left. I don’t even know where to start on that.”

Bella gave her a sympathetic look.

“Oh, come on,” Liam said. “All we have to do is find a Human whose heart is so pure that he or she has never spoken a lie. How hard could that be?”

Barbara almost choked on her toast. After spitting crumbs out, she managed to say, “Are you kidding?” When Liam still looked baffled, Barbara said, “Honey, you are one of the most honest people I know. Are you going to tell me you have never told a lie?”

He opened his mouth and she added, “Never lied on a tax return? Never called into work sick when you really just wanted to go fishing?” When Liam shook his head, Barbara went on. “Never told a woman she looked pretty when she didn’t? Never told your parents a tiny fib as a child?”