“And could you stir that concoction together with an Astral reindeer antler, please dear?” Asked the Anthropomorphic, white furred fox standing at the counter. Though the Foxen people were a common site on the streets of Seatt-Hell, Lin had found their bipedal nature odd and unnerving for the past few years.

The shop tremored as a boom echoed from out on the street.

“I’m so sorry, Ma’am. I’m afraid we only have Lunar reindeer antlers.” Lin replied, the shadows of her eyes drifting over the Foxen’s figure chaotically.

A second boom rattled the chandelier violently.

Cinching her headscarf tight in frustration, the Foxen nodded curtly. “It’s not ideal, but I understand that not all shops can carry the best of ingredients.”

Lin grinned at the slight, the bags under her eyes concealing that the smile did not reach them. “I’m glad we could make it work, Ma’am. That’ll be right out for you.”

Lin nearly fell from another intense quake. There must be a hill giant or troll passing through the street outside.

As Lin turned to help Astra prepare the order, a voice sliced through the chatter of the shop. “So, this is mythical ‘Memory Maker’ that I hear so much about! I must say I feel disappointment. You look like beaten puppy.” The Russian voice, one foreign yet eminently familiar to Lin, silenced everyone in the shop. As its source stepped from the shadows, uneven lighting fell upon the many crags and grooves of the old crone’s face in a nightmarish display of age, wisdom, and horror.

The weight of her visage was so great Lin found herself plunged into a stupor of horror, the shop emptying without her noticing. A tug on her ear, near constant, increased in urgency.

“Lin. Please snap out of it! We have to get out of here!” Dumbly, Lin turned to see Astra, the white-blue sprite fluttering in the air with an expression of fear that Lin would have called impossible for the courageous sprite to bear.

“Oh, do lighten up dearie. If she left, how would I get drink?” The crone cooed, waving a hand as she shuffled up to the counter. Astra shuddered, seeming to wage an internal war before collapsing to the ground with an uncontrollable cackle.

“Ah, better. Drink should be served with laugh, yes? Make taste better.” A smile revealed black and rusty teeth. Lin felt like a rabbit in the headlights, as if any move she made would spell her doom, but so would inaction.

“Snap out of it, kid! It’s just hag horror. She can’t do nothing to you!” Grizz shouted, clinging to Lin’s ear to scream in her face and block off sight of the old woman. Instantly, Lin felt the fog of her mind beginning to clear, like mist being sliced to ribbons by the sun.

“Nonsense. Little fear hurt many. And nothing is quite broad. One might say nothing is anything made dust. Ha!" The old woman exclaimed as she lunged forward with impossible speed. Lin only saw this because as the crone swiped her hand, Grizz was pulled along with it. “Yes, Baba Yaga can do nothing to you and so she can do anything.” She said with a satisfied grin, inspecting the sewing needle upon which Grizz was hooked.

“Baba… Yaga?” It wasn’t a name Lin had often heard uttered. Hushed whispers behind closed doors. Furtive glances in dark alley ways. Fairy tales meant to scare children into behaving. In this world, what difference was there between fairy tales and reality?

As far as Lin was concerned, the only difference between the two was eye contact.

Baba Yaga’s purple and yellow gaze clawed its way into Lin’s retina’s, ripping and gnashing ever closer to her very soul. Lin filled with an uncomfortable sensation, starting in her gut and rising to her throat. It was like nothing she had ever experienced before, as if she had been filled with dirty oil and set aflame to gutter out smoke and nonsense.

“My name, yes. Have you question for me?”

“W-Why?” Her body was trembling so violently that Lin could barely force the words past her lips. What the fuck was happening?

“So, you are still human, yes? Fascinating. Did egg hatch? No… You are egg? How odd.” Baba Yaga’s piercing eyes narrowed to slits as a bone chilling smile slid across her face.

“Kid! Draw your courage! If you can’t move your hands, then draw it in your mind, but draw a moment when you were full of pure, unadulterated bravery.” Grizz’s gravelly, high-pitched voice was tinged with a level of panic that Lin had never imagined the brazen demon could possess. Was there something about this witch, this Baba Yaga that she should fear? A worm of information wiggled in the back of her mind, but it stayed burrowed under the dark earth of forgotten memory, unwilling to crawl to the surface.

This wasn’t the time for such questions. There was too much that Lin simply didn’t know. She had to focus on what she could solve by herself. Though… Could she solve this by herself? A quick internal search of her body revealed that Lin’s hands were still in order taking position, holding a marker over a laminated slip of paper. So, it would be relatively simple to draw a picture… Assuming her hand could do anything other than quiver uselessly, which was apparently asking a lot of the appendage.

If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

But to draw in the mind? Half the time, Lin had only a vague concept of what she was going to draw, a complex jumble of details and concepts that her hands would then translate into reality. Could she draw without her hands?

“Just take it one step at a time. You only fail if you don’t try.” Forgotten words from a forgotten person, but not useless. All she could do was try.

Lin started differently than her hands might have begun. Instead of creating an outline of her face, Lin crafted an eye. It was perfectly round, with a large iris, as was her style, but it was her eye, a star of dark earth swirling in a pool of autumnal leaves. Spilling over them was a wave of tourmaline-black hair, obscuring and accenting the pale skin of an oval face with pink lips set in a confident, unwavering line.

Lin felt her own face growing rather red as she continued this process. There was something both prideful and embarrassing about drawing herself being brave. She tried putting herself in a superhero pose, but the lines wouldn’t cooperate. They insisted that such a pose was against their nature. It wasn’t who or what they were meant to be. What came instead was one hand frozen in a scooping motion, as if it were holding something heavy, whilst the other was held up protectively. At a glance, the pose was one of fear. But that was the point, wasn’t it? True bravery cannot exist save in the face of the greatest of terrors. Otherwise, it’s just unproven bravado.

There was more to the image. A man made of black slime and a friend being devoured, but as Lin attempted to depict it, her word began to spin, sending her stumbling to the side. She could move. Of course, she could move. She had gone through the greatest of horrors that a human could possibly endure. What was this “hag horror” when compared to Lin’s nightmares?

Planting her feet, Lin straightened her spine and raised her chin to meet the soul splintering eyes of the Baba Yaga. “If you aren’t sure of what to order, I would recommend the ‘Ascendant spirit’ made with ethically collected unicorn horns.”

The Baba Yaga paused for a moment, surprised and then burst out into shrieking, manic laughter. “Ah yes, I am dealing with professional, of course! Ascendant Spirit sounds delicious, but I consume solely unethical drinks. Better for skin. How about blueberry smoothie mixed with mandible of endangered beetle?”

Lin couldn’t be sure if she wrinkled her noise at the scent of Baba Yaga’s breath, or the stink of her (anti?) morality. Whatever the case, the sight of her extreme reaction made Baba Yaga double over with cackles.

“Little Schei always loved innocent and foolish girls. Are you one such child? I think not.” A green hand sporting yellowed, overgrown nails reached across the counter to pat Lin’s cheek, eliciting a shudder.

“How else would you have come to wield magic of Koschei?” She continued. “I need cauldron, which he stole. When he died, defying his name, I was so sad. I thought it lost forever! So, imagine how happy I am to find memory magic used so blatantly! Only with cauldron could you perform such feats. Now, give.” Baba’s tone was chipper and happy, but her eyes were laced with harsh steel. Lin’s gut filled with the chill realization that if she answered wrong, it would be the last thing she ever said.

“Your… Cauldron… Right.”

A black pot, full of blood and boiling tears. The face of a screaming friend swallowed into the crimson abyss. A single hand reaching out, grasping for salvation, but gripping only sorrow.

“You know… I’ve seen a lot of cauldrons in my life, and I can’t for sure say which if any were yours. But I can say that I didn’t steal any!” Lin giggled nervously, her chuckling dying out under Baba’s silent glare.

“You think theft funny? I might steal your eyes, see if you laugh.”

“No I-”

“Yes. Yes.” Baba raised her hands in exasperation and rolled her eyes. “You do not know who you are, so how can you remember what you did? Yes yes.”

“I know who I am." Do I?

“So, I must show you.” Baba continued, steamrolling over Lin’s words. “Who you are and what you become, so that you can remember who you were. Make drink, then we go.” She turned her back on Lin, waving her hand dismissively.

There was a long moment of frozen time, where Lin wasn’t sure of what to do. Should she do what the evil witch lady asked and make her a blueberry smoothie? Or should she run away? Could she save Grizz before escaping? Abandoning the little ink demon felt wrong… But assailing the witch felt as impossible for Lin as flying from heaven’s needle.

“Why wait? I thirst.” Baba’s eyes glowed purple.

Lin nodded automatically and began grinding the beetle mandibles into a fine powder to mix with some frozen blueberries she found tucked in the back of the freezer. For some reason, no one ever ordered this drink. Finishing off the mixture with two squirts of winter scorpion venom and one dollop of sun skunk powder, Lin handed the concoction over with a dull expression. Her body was moving by rote, without any true comprehension of what she was doing or why she was doing it.

“Now. Come.” Lin walked around the counter and followed Baba out the door, pausing for a moment to flip the “open” sign to “closed.” Baba’s eyes widened imperceptibly, and a grin snaked across her face.

“Children, always so stubborn.” She muttered amusedly, and then clapped her hands. With a boom, a horrifyingly wonderful house atop overgrown chicken legs came bounding around the corner, stopping to kneel before Baba Yaga. She patted one leg affectionately.

“Good girl, little Cumberhatch. Get in!” She commanded, turning to face Lin.

“Don’t do it kid! She’s got you under some kinda spell or something! I think she’s gonna eat ya and turn your skin into a coat, ideally in that order!”

Baba scoffed. “A coat, out of that skin? Would be lucky to make socks…. Might work for earmuffs.” She said concedingly.

“You hear that kid?! She’s gonna turn you into earmuffs! Those aren’t even an essential item of clothing! That can’t be the way you go! You wanted a purpose out of your life, right? If you don’t fight now, you’ll never get it, when you’re so Satan-damn close to it, too!”

Lin’s vision shook, as if the ground were rumbling and tumbling around her. Her shoulders shuddered with increasingly violent breaths, every inhalation feeling like a declaration of war. She knew that she could not go along with whatever compulsion was controlling her. And yet, her feet strode ever onward, ignorant of her mind’s admonitions.