Read Online The Fierce Reads Anthology by Anna Banks - Free Book Online Page B

wall, a woman stood at a vast black cookstove that stretched the length of the room. Twenty different pots boiled atop it, some small and covered, some large and near to bubbling over. The oven beneath had two hinged iron doors that opened from the center and was so large that a man might have laid lengthwise in it. Or at least a child.
    The woman lifted the lid of one of the pots and a cloud of fragrant steam drifted toward Nadya. Onions. Sorrel. Chicken stock. Hunger came upon her, more piercing and consuming than her fear. A low growl escaped her lips and she clapped a hand to her mouth.
    The woman glanced over her shoulder.
    She was old but not ugly, her long gray braid tied with a red ribbon. Nadya stared at that ribbon and hesitated, thinking of Genetchka Lukin. The smells of sugar and lamb and garlic and butter, all layered upon one another, made her shake with longing.
    A dog lay curled in a basket, gnawing on a bone, but when Nadya looked closer she saw it was not a dog at all, but a little bear wearing a golden collar.
    “You like Vladchek?”
    Nadya nodded.
    The woman set a heaping plate of stew down on the table.
    “Sit,” said the woman as she returned to the stove. “Eat.”
    Nadya removed her coat and hung it by the door. She pulled her damp mittens from her hands and sat down carefully at the table. She lifted her spoon, but still she hesitated. She knew from stories that you must not eat at a witch’s table.
    But in the end, she could not resist. She ate the stew, every hot and savory bite of it, then flaky rolls, plums in syrup, egg pudding, and a rum cake thick with raisins and brown sugar. Nadya ate and ate while the woman tended to the pots on the stove, sometimes humming a little as she worked.
    She's fattening me up , thought Nadya, her lids growing heavy. She’ll wait for me to fall asleep, then stuff me in the oven and cook me up to make more stew. But Nadya found she didn’t care. The woman set a blanket by the stove, next to Vladchek’s basket, and Nadya fell off to sleep, glad that at least she would die with a full belly.
    But when she woke the next morning, she was still in one piece and the table was set with a hot bowl of porridge, stacks of rye toast slathered with butter, and plates of shiny little herring swimming in oil.
    The old woman introduced herself as Magda, then sat silent, sucking on a sugared plum, watching Nadya eat her breakfast.
    Nadya ate till her stomach ached while outside the snow continued to fall. When she was done, she set her empty bowl down on the floor where Vladchek licked it clean. Only then did Magda spit the plum pit into her palm and say, “What is it you want?”
    “I want to go home,” Nadya replied.
    “So go.”
    Nadya looked outside to where the snow was still falling heavy. “I can't.”
    “Well then,” said Magda. “Come help me stir the pot.”
    For the rest of the day, Nadya darned socks, scrubbed pans, chopped herbs, and strained syrups. She stood at the stove for long hours, her hair curling from the heat and steam, stirring the many little pots, and wondering all the while what might become of her. That night they ate stuffed cabbage leaves, crispy roast goose, little dishes of apricot custard.
    The next day, Nadya breakfasted on butter-soaked blini stuffed with cherries and cream. When she finished, the witch asked her, “What is it you want?”
    “I want to go home,” said Nadya, glancing at the snow still falling outside. “But I can't.”
    “Well then,” said Magda. “Come help me stir the pot.”
    This was how it went, day after day, as the snow fell and filled the clearing, rising up around the hut in great white waves.
    On the morning the snow finally stopped, the witch fed Nadya potato pie and sausages and asked her, “What is it you want?”
    “I want to go home,” said Nadya.
    “Well then,” said Magda. “You'd better start shoveling.”
    So Nadya took up the shovel and cleared a path around the hut, accompanied by