Cat often took lonely walks to the Jester's Spine Mountains just northwest of the palace. She thought it was fitting, given her relationship to Cicero. Furthermore, it was fitting given his relationship to the throne of Mania. God dammit Cicero, she thought as she walked, what I wouldn't give to go back to the way we were. Amused, Cat hummed the tune of The Way We Were, chuckling at the reference that no one else would've ever understood.
She missed Boston.
Cat's memory wipe wasn't successful. So many memories remained, and more and more surfaced as time went on. The Institute failed at being thorough, but then again Cat was only a prototype. Of course things were bound to fail. She was happy to still have her memories of Cicero – the day they met on the road, the nights they spent together, and all of the laughable bullshit inside jokes they shared.
Cicero is my best god damn friend. A mantra she repeated frequently in her head. It was the truth. It was the only comfort she had in this twisted place.
Those memories were real. But then there were the other memories; the memories that were false. Cat never lived in Goodneighbor. The local ghouls never taught her how to shoot a gun – like an ace, no less. And to top it off, she never had a younger sister named Michelle. The Institute implanted those memories, likely to manufacture Cat to seem as real as possible. Of course they'd put her in Goodneighbor and of course they'd make the resident thugs teach her how to shoot. The Institute wanted Cat to be a soldier. But did they have to implant the memory of a younger sister? What was the point of that? Cat had no memory of a mother or a father. And why did that never before occur to her as unusual? Cat shook her head. That's what they want, she thought. They fuck with your mind and hope you never ask questions. She was asking too many questions.
Slowing her pace, Cat approached the distant beauty of the Jester's Spine Mountains. The sunset overhead looked like a painted blend of orange, pink, and blue, daubed together by a broad, celestial brush. Strange moons peeked down from above, but they were lovely in spite of their oddity.
Something moved in the distance.
Lifting her hand, Cat veiled her eyes to shield away the sunlight. Squinting, she cocked her head to the side. Was that a – a house? A moving house? Yes. There was a house off in the distance and it stood straight up on two legs, awkwardly trotting through the grass. It moved closer and closer, into Cat's direction.
"This place gets weirder and weirder," she muttered. Cat had the instinct to run, but she stood her ground, knowing that running in her infuriatingly heavy dress would have been pointless. She hated Sheogorath's assigned dress. It was bright red, like a fire engine, and covered in layers upon layers of gaudy sequins, glossy silks, and frilly tulle. The upper half of the wretched thing wound around Cat like cherry red mummy wrappings, binding her from navel to neck and from wrist to wrist. And the only thing that held back her breasts, as small as they were anyway, were these useless red laces zigzagging across her chest. The lower half of the dress ballooned out like a fucking cupcake. Awful. The dreaded thing was just awful.
The house was very much walking toward Cat. Its legs weren't human, not that the house itself was human in any case. The legs appeared to be the legs of an animal – some kind of bird. They had long, pointed talons that dug into the soil as they moved, kicking up hunks of mud and grass. The thighs were shaped like feathery drumsticks. Black feathers, no less.
The house itself looked like an old shack. Its triangular roof was dilapidated, and these old, dried up vines clung to its exterior, webbing themselves over a pair of cracked shutters. The door was lopsided, as if it was measured incorrectly to its frame. The house trotted closer, making very little sound; this forced the sight to appear all the more eerie. Once the house stood roughly thirty feet from Cat, it settled itself to the ground, crouching with pointed knees on those downy, inhuman legs.
The crooked door opened with a slow creak.
"Well, well," hissed a scratchy, aged voice, "what have we here?" Through the dark, rectangular shape of the open door, a figure slowly emerged as if fading into view. There was nothing else to be seen beyond the doorway – it was pitch black, darker than night, darker than the darkest cave. No shadows, no shapes, no silhouettes. Was it... the Void?
Cat's knees locked beneath her cumbersome dress. She drew a breath and held it, taking in the sight of the figure. It was an old woman, hunched forward with a prominent hump along her wrinkled back. Her nose was wickedly long – crooked and pointed like a carrot. Her hair was white and thin, hanging in pitiful strands that did nothing to cover the curvature of her naked, alabaster scalp. She wore next to nothing, aside from a thin blue smock that looked as though it had been eaten by moths. Her long white fingers curved around what appeared to be a large wooden pestle with a dusty old skull stuck to the end of it. The skull appeared to be human. Cat exhaled and shuddered at the realization.
The old woman continued moving from her doorway, slowly hobbling toward the young woman in the red dress. Cat didn't run, but she wanted to. Instinct told her that running from this woman would have been pointless. She may have been old, but there was an intimidating strength about her. Magic, perhaps. The bottom line? This old lady wasn't fucking around.
The old woman reached out to Cat, gripping her cheeks between slender, pale fingers. Her nails were long and sharp, and as white as the rest of her. She scanned Cat's face with eyes that were clouded over with the veil of heavy cataracts. She's blind, thought Cat. How can she see me? How can she see anything?
But without issue, the old woman saw her. She saw everything.
"Your blood," rasped the old woman, tilting Cat's face closer to her scope, "is arranged." She released her grip, letting go of Cat.
"Excuse me?" said Cat, softly. "Who... who are you?"
"Many names," muttered the crone. "Let us think... which name would you recognize?" The old woman snorted and spit, her mucus landed on the mud. Snapping her fingers, a small fire appeared right where the spit had landed. "Must warm these old bones," she hissed through clenched teeth. She crouched to the grass, holding out her hands, warming them against the heat of the fire. "Come," she said. "Sit."
Obediently, Cat shuffled closer and sat. She wanted to crack a joke, but she was too scared to say anything. Jokes always made Cat feel more at ease. But her voice had lodged up in her chest like a stone. Cicero wasn't there to laugh with her. Right now it felt like he was a million miles away. Cat was all alone.
"You should be frightened, girl," said the old woman. "You share a fire with Yaga."
"Baba Yaga?" Cat recognized the name. It was a Russian fairy tale – an old one. She certainly didn't think it was real. Well, until now...
"Known to some," nodded Yaga.
"Do you... live here?" asked Cat.
Yaga closed her blind eyes and chuckled a slow, throaty laugh. "No," she answered. "Yaga is passing through. Yaga goes where she pleases."
Cat stared, her eyes fixed on the sight of this woman. "I'm sure you do," she nodded.
"As Yaga was saying," continued the old woman, "your blood is arranged. Unnatural." She tapped a spindly finger to her long, ugly nose. "Yaga can smell this on you."
"I'm a synth," said Cat, her eyes dropping to her lap.
"Ah," said Yaga. "You are an orphan." She cracked a wrinkled smile, revealing pointed teeth organized in gaps around her black gums. "Orphans are admittedly delicious meat."
Stunned, Cat swallowed a burst of anxiety.
"You have no one," said Yaga. "You are alone."
She felt the sting of Yaga's words. They were honest. "I have one person," whispered Cat. "But for the most part, yes, I am alone."
"And," said Yaga, shaking her head, "you are not beautiful." The crone gestured to Cat's appearance. "Someone has turned a sublime witch into an offensive doll."
"A witch?" asked Cat. "I – I'm not a witch."
Yaga bowed her head and replied, "A matter of interpretation. There is a prestige within you, Cat."
Shocked, Cat asked, "You know my name?" Then she shook her head. "Of course you do..."
Yaga reached for Cat's hand, grabbing it with the strength of a man. The crone was assuredly no weakling. She removed a very small knife from beneath her smock and quickly sliced it across Cat's palm.
"What are you doing?!" shrieked Cat, trying, and failing, to wrench away. She was no match for Yaga.
The crone lifted Cat's bleeding palm to her mouth and lapped up the blood. Her tongue was rough and dry like sandpaper. Cat winced. Then, Yaga let go and nodded as if she understood. "Ahh... Yaga does know your world," she said. "You are far from it." The old woman swirled her hand over the fire. The flames swirled in accompaniment, commanded by her whim. "Perhaps you should return to it," added Yaga.
"Why?"
"To help the others – the ones like yourself."
Cat furrowed her brow. "Why should I care about them?"
Yaga threw her head back and cackled. "You shouldn't!" Her voice dripped with sin. "But," she sighed, "you do." She swirled her hand faster and the flames twisted up like a miniature tornado. They spun tighter and tighter until the fire became a glowing orb. The orb convulsed and expanded to an ovular shape, further widening to the size of a hefty satchel. Yaga drew a breath through her narrow, hideous nose. "For you," she exhaled, pushing the satchel toward Cat. "Carry it home. Open it later. When it's ready."
Cat leaned forward, reaching for the satchel. As she did so, Yaga grabbed a fistful of her long black hair. Cat held back a yelp of pain, for what reason she couldn't understand. She was scared to show too much weakness in front of the crone, for Baba Yaga was incredibly powerful.
"It reminds me of a particular child who had discovered my house," muttered Yaga. "Black hair, grown long like a mane." She grimaced. "Yaga choked on her hair and vomited her broken bones back to the earth. Digesting the child was no easy task." She pulled harder on Cat's hair.
With the squeeze of her eyes, Cat gritted her teeth. "Please," she whispered so quietly that it was as if Cat hadn't said anything at all.
The crone pulled the hair harder, her grip tightening around the clump between her fingers. Cat couldn't bear the burning sensation on her head anymore. She was helpless in Yaga's grasp, feeling it worsen, burn, and tighten with each passing second. "Please," begged Cat, her voice a bit louder. The pain intensified. "Please!" she screamed.
Release.
The stabbing heat dissipated from Cat's head, and she no longer lurched parallel to the ground. Sitting up, Cat reached to her temples and felt the sensation of short, shaved hair. She moved her hands up and back, navigating the extent of her scalp. The top of her head had longer hair arranged in a wide strip, reaching from her forehead back to the base of her skull. The strands were thick and long but by no means were they as long as they had been. A 'hawk, Cat thought. Yaga gave me a mohawk.
"The warrior's touch," said Yaga. "It's painful, but it's yours." The crone stood, balancing her weight on her skull-tipped pestle. In the background, her house shifted in its seat, eagerly waiting for Yaga to approach. "Go," she said, "return to the palace." Yaga turned away from Cat and hobbled back to her house. She opened the lopsided door that led to unimaginable darkness. With a subtle glance over her humped shoulder, she muttered, "We may meet again, Cat."