The middle-aged man stopped, staring at the strange beast—it was like a horse, but had two heads, the second being that of a woman, and its back was draped in cloth of a foreign design, crudely woven and patterned. His sickle-sword was in his right hand without thought, the quickness of youth still in his fingers even if it was long lost from the graying coils of his well-oiled beard.
“Halt, monster—I do not come hunting you, but only a serpent.” The middle-aged man patted his belt, where rested seven times seven coils of scaled skin. “It stole something dear to me.”
The monster paused, both heads looking at him. The woman head bent back, laughing with a sound like chiming wind, then said something in a tongue he did not understand. The cloth shifted, and the man realized that the woman had been sitting on the horse’s back as she separated herself, standing on her own legs. The horse nuzzled her shoulder, the wild beast acting as docile as a well-trained dog. She was tall for a woman, and young to be a witch with such command over wild beasts.
At least she seemed friendly. He hooked his sickle-sword back on his belt to free both of his hands to gesture, speaking loudly and slowly to aid the young woman’s comprehension. “I hunt serpent.” He pantomimed a wiggling motion. “Walk seven moons.” He made a walking motion, then counted out seven fingers, pointing to the sky and making a little scooping motion to represent the moon turning phases. “Where is serpent?” He exaggerated the motions of looking back and forth, then repeated the wiggling gesture. “You see serpent?” He pointed at her.
She pointed at him. “You serpent.” Then herself. “I Yaga.”
The middle-aged man growled in frustration, shaking his head and then thumping his chest. “I am not a serpent. I am called Bilgames.” He sighed, pointing her. “And you are called Yaga.” He patted the scaly shed skin at his belt. “But this is from the serpent.”
The young woman slowly nodded. “You am Bilgames, I are Yaga. You serpent—” She paused, pointing at the coiled skin at his side and making a widening gesture.
“Big. It was a very big serpent,” the middle-aged man said.
“Big serpent,” the young woman repeated, nodding vigorously. “I see big serpent. Serpent walk moon.” She held up one finger.
And so, the middle-aged man and the young woman began to communicate. It took long hours, so they made a fire and camped. It turned out that she had seen the serpent the previous day, and was very impressed that he had spent seven months chasing such a beast. She could show him where on the morrow, if he would come up and sit on the horse; after privately deciding he was strong enough to wrestle the beast to the ground if it tried to bite him, he agreed.
After all, he privately reasoned, it was only a horse—smaller than a bull and without the horns. Granted, a bull’s horns made for better leverage in breaking its neck in a grapple, but a horse’s neck was delicate by comparison. In the morning, when it came time for him to try to sit on the horse, he told the horse as much, giving it notice that, aging or not, he felt ready to outmuscle it should it attack him. The horse shied away.
The young woman, already perched on top of the horse, glared down at him. “What did you do?”
“I spoke to it,” the middle-aged man said. “How do you control it if you do not know how to speak to it?”
“Never mind that,” the young woman said. “Whatever you have said to him, now he does not want to carry you, and I do not know how to speak to horses to convince him otherwise,” the young woman said. “You will have to teach me how to speak to him. I can ride thrice as far as I can walk, and it will take me three days to walk with you to where I saw the serpent—and in that time, it will have three more days to travel farther.”
“Very well,” the middle-aged man said. “I will teach you as my best friend taught me. He lived among the beasts, and so knew their speech.”
But the secret of speaking to beasts was not so simple as the middle-aged man believed. He found he needed to tell the young woman more, and to explain everything about the circumstances under which he had learned. And so, for seven days and six nights, the middle-aged man spoke of his wild friend and of the ways of the cedar forest, until the young woman had learned the secret speech of beasts and could speak to her horse to reassure it that the middle-aged man was not so frightening after all.
“We have tarried too long,” the middle-aged man said when he sat down behind the young woman on the horse. “Now I shall never catch up to the serpent.”
“The winter is coming,” argued the young woman as they set forth. “Surely the serpent will be stricken with torpor soon, and it must sleep for the winter. For once the snow covers the earth, it will be stuck in place until it is time to melt. And there can only be so many lairs for a serpent of such size, so it surely will want to seek shelter before the snow fixes it in place.”
“Snow covering the earth?” The middle-aged man scoffed. “We are not high in the mountains, where snow can keep—if the serpent must wait a day or two for midwinter’s snow to melt before it moves on again, that will hardly be enough for us to catch it.”
“I have heard the winter never comes to the lands of cities,” the young woman said. “But we are not so far from the lands I know well. Once the snow comes, it often lingers on the ground until springtime.”
The middle-aged man frowned skeptically, but did not argue the point, even though he had traveled many lands. At best, doing so would have created an additional delay. “Very well, let us go forth.”
They rode half the day to where the young woman had seen the serpent. Privately, the middle-aged man thought that the half day horseback had covered two days of walking—a horse may only have twice as many legs as a man, but then, its feet are hardened to hooves tougher than any sandal. Then he got off the horse, and found he could hardly stand. The young woman giggled as he staggered about holding his bottom, teasing him about his tender seat; then the middle-aged man retorted with hurtful words about the superior padding of the young woman’s posterior and she ceased to smile.
“If you do not like my help, I can ride on now, and you can find the serpent on your own.” The young woman scowled, one hand reaching up to steady the horse in preparation for her leap. “It is the muscles that matter, not the padding; you have not exercised well enough.”
“What exercise is sitting?” The middle-aged man shook his head. In this topsy-turvy northern land, walking was rest and sitting was work. Perhaps it really was the case that snow here lingered in the lowlands and melted in the highlands. And maybe men tended the house and cooked while bold young women like Yaga went out hunting and exploring.
Meanwhile, the aforementioned young woman stood, one hand still threaded in her horse’s mane, scowling at Bilgames in his rich clothes and jewelry.
“I apologize for my unkind words,” the middle-aged man said, stroking his graying but still neatly oiled and coiled beard to add gravity to his statement. “Your figure is fine and to be much admired, you did not deserve my ill temper. The pain set my tongue awry, and I appreciate your generous assistance. Which way did it go when you saw it?”
The young woman pointed, then surreptitiously rubbed her own backside as she stretched her neck. She had not been riding in a week, and her own muscles had been caught unprepared for a driven pace. “Up into the hills—it carried three bundles on its back, each wrapped in a different cloth.”
“Three?” The middle-aged man’s brows rose in surprise. “This great serpent is a great thief, then. I see the track it left in the earth—I will walk for a little while to get a sense of where its destination is before we ride again. If you are still minded to be helpful to a visitor to your land?”
The young woman nodded, a smile dimpling her cheeks. “I am,” she said shyly. “I will walk with you, it will give the horse a rest.”
And so, for the second half of the day, the young woman walked behind the middle-aged man, watching his broad back, thick legs, and the slender hips in between. From behind, without the distraction of his foreign-featured face, the middle-aged man looked more impressive to her. They made their way up the hills, and came at last to a waterfall where a chilly mountain stream leaped into a dark pool.
“The sun is setting soon, and I do not see where the serpent has gone from here—we will need light and patience,” the middle-aged man said. “Let us make camp here—the pool is inviting, and I have not bathed in some time.”
And so, they set up camp next to the waterfall. The middle-aged man shook out dirt from his clothes before hanging them to air on a branch before leaping into the pool, emerging with chattering teeth. “Never have I been in a pool so icy chill,” the middle-aged man said as he swam towards the edge of the water, finding his feet.
The horse whickered, expressing its opinion on the foolishness of leaping into a dark chilly pool of unknown depth. The man was lucky, that he had not broken a leg. The fresh cold water of the mountain stream made for excellent drinking, but the horse thought poorly of the notion of going swimming in it.
The young woman laughed, laying her own gown on the rocks before jumping in herself. “Cold water wakes the body and skin, and makes it younger,” she proclaimed when she surfaced, then sent a splash of water out to spray the middle-aged man. He splashed back, until the two of them came up out of the water, shivering cold and eager to dry off by the fire.
“Bathing will be the death of me,” the middle-aged man said through shivering teeth as he huddled by the fire, his back against the sleeping horse and the young woman next to him wrapped in a blanket. “The serpent stole my prize while I bathed—and this chill is like to give me a sickness. And… never mind.”
“No, go on,” the young woman said. “Tell me another story. You have done so many interesting things. And I still do not know what the serpent stole from you.”
“I would tell you the story of that, but first I must tell you the story of the flood, and the man who was made immortal by the gods,” the middle-aged man said. “If I do not, then nothing will make sense about the serpent.”
Soon the young woman fell asleep, lulled by the voice of a man who had long been king, and thus had ample opportunity to speak at length without risking unwelcome interruptions. Morning came, and the middle-aged man went around to the other side of the pool, searching both banks for the serpent’s trail while the young woman packed up their things.
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“There is no sign of the serpent, but for the sign we followed in,” the middle-aged man said. “It may have climbed the mountain.”
The young woman looked up, frowning at the steep rocks above. “I do not think I could go up,” she said. “Not unless I could fly. I shall wait here and gather forage from the forest.”
And so, the young woman gathered forage from the forest while the middle-aged man climbed the cliffside and disappeared above the top of the waterfall. The day grew cloudy, which bothered the young woman not at all and the middle-aged man only a bit, for without the sun he felt the chill weather more keenly whenever he stopped overlong in one place. Though the clouds looked heavy with rain, none fell on him, and he was grateful for that. He crossed the stream above the falls, and searched the other side there, looking for signs of where the serpent might have climbed up.
He heard a rumble as of distant thunder, and decided to cross the stream and return the way he had come. The rumbling noise grew louder and louder, and he had just pulled up the bottom of his robe and slung it over his shoulders when a surge of water came sweeping into view. He ran, hoping to cross before the flood of water reached him, but misjudged. The water knocked his legs from under him and he was swept over the edge before he could find his feet. Then he fell screaming through the air until he tumbled into the pool.
The young woman, distantly hearing his scream, rushed to see what had happened. “Bilgames!” she shouted, looking this way and that. With the pressure of the storm behind it, the water arced through the air instead of falling straight down, and she could see the mouth of a cave behind it. “Bilgames? Where are you?”
A head surfaced on the opposite bank of the swollen stream.
“Bilgames? Is that you?” The young woman shouted loudly enough for the forest to ring.
“I hear you, Yaga, it is me,” said the dripping man as he pushed himself to his feet.
“Do you see the cave? There is a cave behind the waterfall.” The young woman pointed off to her left at the surging water while looking to her right at the middle-aged man downstream and on the opposite bank.
“I see the serpent,” said the middle-aged man, pointing to his right. “Your loudest voice has awakened it.”
The young woman turned, seeing the great head of the serpent poking through the stream of water, indifferent to the mass of the floodwater. She froze still in place as its gaze swept over her.
The middle-aged man shouted as loudly as he could. “Thief-serpent! I am here for you!” The middle-aged man ran up the bank, holding his empty hands out wide to either side, and the serpent reared, water spattering to either side. “Do not be afraid, Yaga!”
The young woman’s paralysis broke, and she grabbed a stick, shaking it as menacingly as she could, banishing fear from her voice before she shouted again, her voice filling the forest like a giant’s. “You are surrounded, little worm!”
The serpent turned this way and that, fear or indecision holding its head up in the air. The middle-aged man, his beard now wild and messy, leaped out over the pool, grabbing onto the serpent with both arms. As he fell, he pulled the serpent down into the deepening pool below with him. The serpent’s tail thrashed once, twice, thrice and was still, floating on the top of the pool.
The young woman held her breath as she crept forward. When she could no longer hold her breath, she gasped, and then cried. The serpent was dead, and with it the hero, the exotic traveler who had come from the distant land of cities, for neither’s head had broken the water before her lungs had given out. She sat on the rocks, bare feet dipping into the pooled water as the waterfall gently roared.
“Do not cry.” The words were in the tongue of the city-man, a raspy and quiet version of his voice, and the young woman was glad as his thick hand clasped her shoulder. “When the water calms, I can see if my prize is hidden in the cave.”
“What is the prize?” The young woman turned a tear-streaked face to the man. “Tell me—the short version, I do not want to fall asleep again. Not because you are boring,” she hastily added. “It is just that your voice is very relaxing.”
“Immortality,” the middle-aged man said. “When I visited Utnapishtim, I asked him to grant me immortality, and he told me I must stay awake seven days and six nights. I could not; sleep took me. When I woke, he told me there was a special shrub that could help me in my quest—far away, across the sea, in the distant land of Ta-Seti. So, I walked beneath the sea all the way to Ta-Seti, holding my breath all the way.”
The young woman rolled her eyes. “That doesn’t sound practical or possible.”
“You just saw me hold my breath a great long time, did you not?” The middle-aged man’s eyes twinkled. “In any event, I found the shrub, and dug it up, and wrapped its roots and the earth between them in a bundle of cloth. I would need to take a boat back, of course, since salt water is bad for inland plants, and this was a mountain shrub—but I stopped to bathe in the river and the serpent stole it away from me. I grabbed it by the tail, and it slipped right out of its own skin.”
The young woman looked at the middle-aged man skeptically for a moment, but she had seen the shed skin; it was packed with the rest of his things. Then she looked at the body of the serpent, lying in the pool. “What should we do with the body of the serpent?”
“That is a good question,” the middle-aged man said. “I suppose we might drag it up onto the ground, and make sure it is all the way dead. I would not want to bathe again in the pool with it still there.”
And so, they worked to drag the serpent out of the pool. The man severed the head with his sickle-sword, and they coiled the body seven times around their unlit firepit. By the time they had done this, the waterfall had returned to a gentle splashing trickle, and they were ready to investigate the cave of the serpent. Inside, there were nine bundles, for the serpent had made three trips into the world and brought back three treasures each time.
But the middle-aged man had not eyes for the other eight bundles, for he fixed his eyes only upon the brown and dry branches of the shrub he had so carefully wrapped up. “It is dead,” he said, sighing heavily.
“I am good with plants, I will see what I can do.” The young woman took the plant, and when she left the cave, the man followed.
The two of them sat silently around the fire, their second night by the waterfall one filled with exhaustion. They slept late past the rising of the sun, and started their day slowly, the young woman smoking slices of the serpent and the middle-aged man oiling and coiling his beard. It was nearly noon when the middle-aged man finally broke the silence.
“I will go, then. Perhaps the dried leaves of the plant are what I need.” The middle-aged man sighed heavily. “I feel older every day.”
“I know the magic of plants.” The young woman felt inside her pouch. Inside were three shriveled berries, and she pulled her hand back out. “This plant needs to be high up and close to the sun; it needs the warmth. It is nearly dead, though, and if you take it away with you to the distant land of cities, it will die, and you will have nothing but dried leaves. I can bring it to life and make it bear seeds. But there is a price—I would ask a favor of you.”
“Anything,” the middle-aged man said, kneeling before the young woman.
“I want a daughter,” she said. “I know that it is the man’s part upon which the sex of the child pivots, for I have spoken with a goddess and she told me as much. My first husband gave me three sons before I left him in my greed, seeking a man who would give me a daughter. Then my second husband gave me three more sons before he left me for a woman who would complain less. You are a wise man, wise in the ways of the wide world. Do you know how to give a woman a daughter?”
“Yes,” lied the middle-aged man. “Of course. I have given many women daughters.” That last part was most likely true. If he had sired only sons, his kingdom would have been overrun with boy children in the early and shameful part of his reign, before he had learned wiser ways.
“You promise to give me a daughter?” The young woman looked at the middle-aged man, stroking his oiled and coiled beard.
“I promise,” lied the middle-aged man. “I feel honored that you wish such a thing of me, and will do my very utmost to fill your belly with a daughter—I will plant my seeds in you, but it is upon you to grow them.” That part, at least, was true.
“Then I promise to bring that plant back to life,” lied the young woman. “But we will have to go up the mountain. It will not grow so low to the earth, and not at all without my touch.” That part, at least, was true.
The two of them worked their way up the mountain, where the wind was chilly and cold, walking the horse behind them, laden with meat of the serpent. And the young woman spoke to the bones of the mountain, following a thin trickle of water through a narrow path between the rocks, leading the middle-aged man into a shady meadow surrounded by steep walls of rock that blocked out the wind. Here was a spring, one of the original sources of the mountain stream. The way was narrow, so the young woman came back out, unloaded the serpent meat from the horse, and turned the beast loose, telling it that it would need to care for itself for a time.
“Here,” the young woman said. “Dig a hole for me. I will speak to the plant.”
“But it is so shady here,” the middle-aged man said. “You said they must be near the sun.”
“And we are nearer to the sun—they need to be near the sun, but shaded from it,” the young woman said. “Have you been a farmer?”
The middle-aged man admitted he had never been a farmer. He owned gardens, but his gardens were kept by servants. And so, he dug a hole while the young woman gently unwrapped the dead plant. Secretly, she pressed three shriveled berries into the clay clinging to its roots, and then she whispered to the berries, telling them to grow bright and strong and swift.
“What are you saying to the plant?” The middle-aged man frowned, for she was not speaking in his language.
“It was my magic,” the young woman said, setting the plant in the hole and patting the dirt in place around it. Then she wiped her hands off, took a waterskin and poured it out over the plant. “There.”
“How long will it take, Yaga?” The middle-aged man stared down at the plant.
“I do not know, Bilgames,” the young woman said. She did not wish the middle-aged man to pay too much attention to the dead plant; she lifted her gown over her head. “I have planted your Nubian shrub; it is time for you to plant me a daughter.”
The middle-aged man did not need to be told twice.
And so it went. For seven days, the two of them devoted their waking hours to their respective planting efforts, the young woman whispering to the little seeds and the middle-aged man planting his seed. Then the young woman saw the first shoots of green climbing up the dead wood of the shrub, spiraling out of the ground.
“Let us go down the mountain,” she said. “We have had only the meat of the serpent to eat. The most critical period is over; it only needs to be tended once a week or so for the next few months.”
But when they came to leave the hidden garden, they found that the snow had fallen outside, and it was very cold. They had not run out of the meat of the serpent, and the hidden garden of the mountain was much more pleasant than climbing up and down the snowy mountain. And so, they continued as they had, the young woman pouring all her magic into the little plants and the middle-aged man pouring his masculine essence into her.
In the second week, green shoots wrapped around the dead shrub’s branches.
In the third week, green leaves sprang forth, dotting the branches of the dead shrub.
In the fourth week, the three young plants grew thick and woody.
In the fifth week, the three young plants bloomed with white flowers.
In the sixth week, the flowers fell off and berries grew, ripening to red.
On the first morning of the seventh week, the middle-aged man woke early. The meat of the serpent had grown bitter, and the berries looked sweet; so, while the young woman slept, the man picked and ate a berry. Its sweet flesh was thin, covering a bitter pale green bean inside, but even the bitter bean was a welcome new taste after so long dining on the smoked meat of the serpent.
That day he felt great energy, as he had not in ten years. Then night fell, and they made love; but the man did not fall asleep as he usually did. Instead, he lay awake the whole night, staring at the woman mutely, until dawn. He felt tired now—so he went and ate three more of the berries, and felt again the energy of youth returning to his limbs. He woke the woman with a kiss, and they made love all day, until she fell asleep with the fall of night.
Near the end of the seventh week, the woman wondered why the plants had only three berries left upon them—were there creatures eating the berries in the night? The man reassured her in the most effective way that he could; when she fell asleep in exhausted delight, he took the last three berries and stole himself away in the night, having stayed awake seven days and six nights.
In the morning, the woman woke and found herself alone. By this time, she had missed her courses twice, and knew she was with child; and though she missed the man sorely, she knew that their bargain was ended. And so she journeyed down the mountain, returning to her people. In the autumn, she gave birth, and cursed the name of Bilgames when she saw she had borne another son instead of a promised daughter. But she could not bring herself to hate her son for the sake of his father, for he was of her flesh; and so, she accepted him into her arms and nursed him at her breast.
And that is the story of when Bilgames met Yaga.