Page 119 of My Wild Horse King

I’m not sure how to ask her to tell me more, but when I try, I make a weird whuffling sort of sound.

“I could spend a very long time talking about Squannit, including the horribly inappropriate relationship she had with one of the horsemen.”

Horsemen? That reference causes me to snort, which blows snot all over Baba Yaga. She can’t really mean the four horsemen of the apocalypse, right? Famine, pestilence, warfare, and death, from the Bible. That’s insane, right?

Surely.

“Anyway, I know you have some decisions to make, so I just wanted to mention something important.”

I really wish I could speak right now. I toss my head.

“Talking won’t help. You humans always ask the wrong things.” She purses her lips. “That’s why I came while you think you’re stuck.”

Think?Am I not really stuck?

“Listen carefully, Gustav Daniel Liepa Belmont. More than anyone else, you should understand that life relies on balance. Parents must keep their children safe, and that requires rules, but for their children to grow and learn to handle life alone, they need freedom. Those two things can’t exist in a vacuum. Where the one grows, the other shrinks.”

I blink, and she rubs my nose.

“Good boy. At least you’re listening.” She drops her voice, as if the others might notice her if she makes too much noise. “All of life exists in such a balance, and our job—mine and my sisters’—is to help maintain that balance.”

The balance between freedom and safety?

“Not freedom and safety, you simpleton, the balance between life and death. The balance between scarcity and abundance.”

Whoa. She can hear my thoughts? Or was it an accident she replied to them?

She sighs. “Gustav, you are yourself already a balance of sorts. You’ve left the life you knew, the place you were raised, and now you’ve rejected the life you ran toward as well. You understand in a way that those others never will that life needs both a pushing force and also a pulling one. Growth only comes when there’s resistance. If you truly eliminate the bad, the good ceases to have meaning.”

But what does that mean? What am I supposed to do to Leonid?

“Leonid’s beautiful and terrible. He’s pure, and he’s evil. He’s dark and light all rolled together, just as his forefather was, and his problem is that he’s not balanced in any way. One day, he’ll find his counterpoint. Until then, all you can do is contain him so he can’t offset the balance of the earth too dramatically.” She drops to a whisper. “Those kinds of imbalances always wake them up, and no one wants that, except maybe Squannit. They wreak enough havoc in their dreams. So I need you, my boy, to help contain the incomparable Leonid, alright?” She smiles, then, and it’s one of the most stunning smiles I’ve ever seen. It’s a study in contrasts.

The wrinkles of wisdom.

The tenacity of middle-age.

The hope of youth.

“I can’t stay much longer, or Squannit, that sly vixen, will feel me and come after you for my sake.”

Come after me?

“Trust me. She’s not someone you want to anger. In fact, neither Squannit nor stupid Osiris ever would leave me alone about Rurik, and what they did was way worse.”

Wait. Is she saying. . .

“If they find out you’re here, or that the humans I gifted with powers are still mucking around, well. It’ll get ugly. I can’t protect you from them both, and I can’t protect you from either of them here. Do you understand?” She looks around, then, as if she hears something on another plane. “They—I can’t fight them. Not in America. You need to make sure you don’t do anything really big or really stupid, not until you’ve gone home.”

Home, as in Russia?

“Eastern Europe is best,” she says. “Keep that in mind.”

Good grief. Our existence is apparently not even legal, and now our creator might get in trouble if we make a mess over here where her contemporaries might realize we exist.

“Yes.” She claps. “Exactly that. I knew you’d get it.”

We’re her bag of pot. Her dirty little affair.

---