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CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

I barely felt it when we crossed the barrier. Probably because one minute I was on a sunny dirt path surrounded by trees filled with colored leaves and the crisp Autumn air and the next I was in the middle of a howling blizzard.

“Oh!” I gasped, but the wind tore the sound from my throat and hurdled it away, covering it with its own fierce keening.

The blinding snow blowing in our faces didn’t seem to bother Rath one bit, even though he was bare-chested. He tightened his grip on my hand and with his other hand he raised his enormous war hammer to the sky.

“Baba Yaga!” he roared into the wind. “We come for you! And we do not fear you!”

I stared up at him in awe. His voice seemed to shake the ground. It pierced the wind around us and rose above the howl of the storm, nearly deafening me.

For a moment the blizzard lulled for a moment, then it started blowing even more fiercely than before.

“Come on,” Rath shouted to me. “She’s testing our resolve! We have to show that we’re determined to reach her.”

It was easier said than done. Being a Florida girl most of my life, I wasn’t in any way prepared for the freezing temperatures or the ferocity of the storm.

Also, I had no idea where we were. We seemed to be lost in the middle of a forest of skeletal trees, their naked branches whipping in the punishing blasts of wind that buffeted us from all sides.

The snow was deep—and it was difficult to walk through. I kept getting my boots stuck in the deeper drifts or tripping over hidden roots and nearly falling over. Finally, Rath seemed to realize my problem.

“Hold on, baby—I’ve got you,” he shouted to me. And before I could answer, he reached down with his free arm and scooped me up.

He propped me against his side so that my legs went around his waist and I was resting on his hip. It made me feel absurdly like an oversized toddler.

“Hey, you don’t have to carry me!” I protested, speaking right into his pointed ear to be heard.

“Yes, I do,” he growled, sparing me a glance as he forged forward, through the deep snow drifts. “Who knows how long she’ll keep this up? We have to keep going forward if we’re going to get to her. I can’t have you falling behind and freezing to death.”

“Which way are we going, though?” I asked, deciding to give up and let him carry me. He was so strong it didn’t seem to be a problem for him at all.

“It doesn’t matter which way you go,” Rath told me. “As long as you state your intention to find Baba Yaga and then head in one direction, you’ll eventually come to her hut. Though she’ll likely put some barriers—like this blizzard—in your path.”

“But how do you know this blizzard is sent by her? By Baba Yaga?” I asked. “Couldn’t this just be regular New England weather for February?”

“It could be but it’s not,” Rath said grimly. “Depend on it—this weather is all courtesy of Baba Yaga. We can’t let it stop us from getting to her—that’s all.”

As he spoke, the blizzard abruptly died. One minute the wind and snow were howling around our heads and the next minute there was complete silence with just a few snowflakes drifting quietly down from the sky.

“Wow!” I looked around in awe. “It stopped—just like that.”

“Just like that,” Rath repeated, but he didn’t sound any less grim. “One down and two to go,” I heard him mutter, as if speaking to himself.

“Two what?” I asked.

But the big Orc didn’t answer. He suddenly stopped and his muscular body went rock hard against mine. He was staring at something in the forest ahead of us. I looked to see what it was he was looking at and at first I didn’t see anything.

But then I did.