Babayaga

by Toby Barlow

  “Knife light, knife light, knife light…”

  “Fine,” the old woman grunted, warily watching Zoya for a trick, but still confident, like a knowing spider eyeing the struggling fly stuck in her web, “you can have some water.”

  “Thank you, Elga.” She got up and walked over to the kitchenette. The rat was her only option. Elga and the girl were steeled with charms, ready to withstand her attacks. But if she could find a way to break their concentration and distract them from the spell … “You know, on the metro tonight I was thinking about those saltpeter collectors back in Kiev, the two who came to dig out the cellar.” Her eyes desperately scanned the counter and the shelves. There it was, an answer to her prayers: the cleaver was lying on the drying rack, right next to the glasses. It could not have been better placed. “Do you remember them? They were a funny pair: one was a dwarf, the other was so tall he had to duck to get in the doorway…”

  In one complete and dexterous motion, she spun, releasing her left hand full of nothing toward the girl on the chair and, following that feint in perfect succession, she grabbed the cleaver, spun, and released a whirl of steel across the room, splitting Max’s skull right between the eyes, spattering the rat’s blood and brains against the wall.

  “Knife—”

  At the sight of the rodent’s sudden explosion, the young girl screamed. Zoya hissed and held out her hand, sending a concussion of air toward the child that knocked her into the doorframe. Elga was hissing now too, with the loud sound of a fat steam pipe bursting, and Zoya ducked to escape the condensed balls of electricity coming at her. Two windowpanes shattered, spraying glass everywhere. She saw Elga pinching her fingers together. Zoya grabbed the cutting board off the counter, holding it up to block the shocks. The lightning blasted the board to smoking splinters. Knowing what was coming next, Zoya quickly looked for another shield. If she rolled she could duck behind the girl, now curled up in a screaming ball of panic with her hands over her ears. But Zoya had no doubt that Elga would take them both out, the little girl was a small price to pay. There was no defense in sight. The old woman’s face was drained of all color, her eyes bloodshot and bulging, her hair shot out frazzled and wild from her skull, the final spell forming on her lips, when, for a fraction of a second, she paused, looking over as the front door creaked and a curious Will poked his head in.

  “Hello? What the—?”

  His entrance had distracted Elga long enough for Zoya to leap across the floor, landing hard on the old woman’s body. Without the slightest pause she immediately began striking the old woman’s face with her fists. After less than a minute of this, Will pulled her off.

  “We have to go!” said Zoya, stumbling to her feet.

  Will looked around, taking in the bloodied rat with a meat cleaver solidly wedged in its skull, the small child balled up and crying in the corner, the unconscious, battered old woman sprawled out, nearly dead, before them, and the chicken pecking at smoky wood scraps that covered the floor. “There is a reasonable explanation for all this, right?” he said.

  “No,” a nearly unconscious and reeling Zoya said, grabbing his hand with the last of her strength and pulling him out of the apartment.

  X

  As soon as they were in a taxi Zoya grabbed him and held him close. She was whispering some indecipherable words into his ear and, kissing his cheek, then whispered some more. Eventually, she stopped and lay down on his lap. She rubbed his cock through his pants and gave him a sleepy smile and then shut her eyes. He let her rest. It had been a crazy night. Already her whispered spells were making the memory of the fight and the old woman and the little girl fade from his mind, the spectacular becoming clouded out by the ordinary. What did they do tonight? Had they seen a movie?

  The taxi sped along rue de Rome. Will looked down at his lover’s face. Even with the deep, sunken circles under her eyes she was unimaginably beautiful to him. He took her hand in his; it was ice cold. He remembered how his mother would complain about her cold hands throughout Detroit’s long, mean winters and how she would soak them in a sink filled with hot water at the end of each day. For some reason, that memory reminded him of the time when he was first living in Chicago, right out of college. He had a client who worked in the fashion industry selling chiffon ladies’ gloves to department stores, and one day, over a long lunch, they arrived at a discussion about how women were always complaining about the coldness of their extremities. Will remembered arguing that evolution must have centered the blood in the middle of a woman’s body, there where the warm womb and waiting eggs lay, nature’s primary interest being in protecting whatever came next as opposed to ensuring the comfort and happiness of what existed now. The client, a flat-nosed former pugilist from the South Side who only worked in fashion because his mother had founded the company, insisted that nature had designed women’s hands with poor circulation to keep them weak and unable to fight off the men who wanted to seize them, assault them, and, as the client bluntly put it, “pump them full of their dark demon seed.” They were both cynical theories, the second one especially brutal. Looking out the taxi window, Will wondered how many human truths were that horrible.

  As the shuttered Parisian storefronts sped by, his thoughts returned to the day, such a carnival of unexpected scenes, the course of events skidding beyond the realm of his reasoning, and in the end it was pretty hard to recall all the details (what movie had they seen?). The one thing he did remember was that he had begun that morning waking up next to Zoya for the very first time. He clearly remembered kissing her sleeping cheek as he had departed for work. He thought about the feeling that had hummed about in his bones as he had walked to the office that morning, as if the arrangement of spinning molecules that defined his body had momentarily unbonded and, in some harmonious anatomic Busby Berkeley choreography, magnetically rearranged themselves into some new, minutely heavier, more substantial element, literally harmonizing him with the universe. Perhaps that was what love really was. Maybe that was why it felt so real, because, like the ultraviolet light or the mysterious, invisible radiation waves vibrating in the air, love actually existed. But only in small and undetectable quantities, impossible to synthetically mimic, composed of only the most thin, fragile actuality that would absolutely vanish if you tried to contain, catch, or even observe it, like those awkward and inscrutable physics conundrums he had never been able to comprehend in his Popular Science magazines. If that’s what love is, decided Will, then he now possessed it. He rubbed Zoya’s hands, hoping to give them some warmth.

  His thoughts suddenly stopped meandering as the car turned the corner and he saw, down his block, a dark figure step into the light for a moment before disappearing back into the shadows. “Continuez dans cette rue,” he told the cabbie. “N’arrêtez pas.” The driver nodded in the rearview mirror. As they passed by the spot where he had seen the man, Will peered into the darkness. There, thought Will, was Brandon’s boy, Mike Mitchell, hanging on the edge of a courtyard doorway, sheltered from the light, dutifully awaiting Will’s arrival. Will looked out the rear window of the cab up into his apartment, where he spotted a light on. Mitchell’s partner, White, was probably waiting there, maybe with Brandon. They must have gotten impatient with Will’s stalling, done a bit of arithmetic together, and were now searching his place. Either that or they were waiting to ask some very pointed questions.

  Will thought quickly, racking his brains about what he could do. He had no leverage, no answers, and he didn’t have any connections to call who could get Brandon and his goons off his back. He realized there was only one person he knew who could manage his way past Brandon. Reluctantly, he gave the cabdriver Oliver’s address.

  Ten minutes later Will was holding up a sagging Zoya and ringing the doorbell.

  “Hullo?” said a sleepy voice.

  “Sorry to disturb you, Oliver. It’s me, Will. I’m afraid I need a little help. I have a—”

  The buzzer cut him off midsentence and he took Zoya ins
ide. Fortunately the elevator was working, so he dragged her in, pulled the metal gate across tight, and pushed the button for the third floor. When they arrived, Oliver was standing at the open door, wearing a blue bathrobe. When he saw Zoya, his face dropped. “My lord, what happened to her?”

  “Long story,” said Will. “I was going to take her to my place but Brandon’s people have it staked out. One of them was watching the door, and I think the other was upstairs, probably tossing the place.”

  “Tossing it? What do you mean exactly?”

  “You know, looking around, searching it. Or waiting for me to come back so they could grill me. Either way, I didn’t want to stick around. Here, help me get her inside.” Together the two of them carried her into the apartment and into the guest room.

  “Of course you’re welcome to spend the night; it’s actually timely that you’re here,” said Oliver, pulling a stack of clean towels and linens out of a closet and throwing them on the bed.

  “Why’s that?” said Will.

  “I’m going to need your assistance with an errand tomorrow. I’d like to say it won’t take long, but honestly I don’t know.”

  “That’s fine”—Will shrugged—“I can’t go to work anyway. Brandon is going to have his goons waiting there too.”

  Oliver nodded. “Precisely. Besides, I believe you’re going to find our errand to be an interesting one. Now, I’d offer you a nightcap but I’m afraid I have to attend to my other guest.”

  “Your other—?”

  Oliver smiled. “Sweet dreams,” he said, heading for the door. Then he stopped and paused. “You know, it’s funny that they only went to your place. After all, they did see you with me. Perhaps they’ll come sniffing round here in the morning.”

  Will was amused that Oliver seemed to be feeling left out of things. “They’re probably afraid of you, you can be quite intimidating. Plus, you’re connected.”

  Oliver nodded. “Probably.”

  “But thanks for helping. I really had no place else to turn.”

  Oliver patted him on the back. “Of course, my friend. We’re a bit like Harlequin and Pierrot, aren’t we?”

  “I guess,” said Will, with no clue who Oliver was referencing and too sleepy to care.

  A few moments later Zoya lay soundly sleeping beside Will in the undersized guest bed as he listened to the sounds from the next room. There were faint whisperings accented occasionally by a woman’s cooing laughter. Will recognized the voice: it was Oliver’s British assistant, Gwen. No wonder she had seemed to dislike Zoya that first morning they met; Oliver was sleeping with her too. When the voices finally died down and the creaking of the bedsprings started, Will switched off his light. That Oliver, he thought, what a cad.

  XI

  Back in the battle, perched on Max’s forehead, the flea’s moment of decision had come fast. Distracted by the brunette’s feint, he had glanced over to see what had been thrown at the little girl when the flash of the silver blade caught his eye. The rat, too, had clearly fallen for the same sleight of hand and was looking completely the wrong way as the cleaver came straight at them. Vidot felt Max tense as he recognized his fatal error. Vidot leapt to freedom, knowing there was no hope for the rat. His own desperate jump had him spinning in the air, giving him one last glimpse of Max. Vidot was in awe that a creature that had once appeared so small, scurrying beneath his feet in the gutters and alleys of the city, could now seem to him such a massive leviathan beast. Oh, how great the small things can be, observed Vidot, arcing high up in the air as the rat’s skull was smashed in behind him with a thunderous splintering crack.

  Vidot landed on the cold floor, blood splattering all around like hard rain. Without pause, he jumped again, aiming now for Elga. He landed right on the peak of her scalp. With the sounds of screaming and exploding glass now filling the room, he found himself caught up in the momentum of the battle and wholeheartedly joined in, siding with the brunette against their common nemesis. Using his only weapon, Vidot vigorously sunk his teeth into the old witch’s skull.

  Immediately he regretted it.

  The fiery blood flooded in, not sanguine warm like he was used to but instead an acidic mix that blurred and burned, kerosene raw, blinding Vidot and sending him into shaking convulsions. He felt a red rage explode in his abdomen as a wall of serpent’s eyes suddenly opened, the snake’s shimmering green scales becoming the interlocking shields on a horizon littered with dead soldiers strewn helter-skelter across the amethyst twilit field. The serpent opened its mouth and a farmhouse burned inside, wild with full yellow flames raging thickly out the windows. The smoke rose up to form billowing ferns as will-o’-the-wisps crackled and exploded. Seven tiny skulls seeped up from the surface of the storming muddy swamp and snails dripped out of their eye sockets while slugs slid from their ears. A huge bottomless blackened mouth opened, showing rows of razor teeth, and a seething mass of speckled beetles came flooding out in a scream.

  Then Vidot was running, lost, through the rows that were now tall reeds. Desperation gripped his heart, the boiling purple sun was sinking against the shadowed cattails, and he kept running. He sensed he was not escaping or fleeing, he was not chasing or hunting, he was searching, fruitlessly. As he ran, unseen forces pressed on him, compacting him down, harder and harder, into a substance dense as coal. The pressure came from all sides, it pressed on his heart, his chest, his brain. It felt like the collapse of all virtue, all goodness, all humanity.

  At the point where he was almost lost forever into this feverish and dark hallucination, a great, violent, seismic shock knocked his fangs loose from the old woman’s cranium and sent him spilling out to the floor, shaking him to his senses. He lay there stunned, gazing up, as he watched the brunette leap onto Elga and furiously and unmercifully beat the old woman’s face with her fists. Eyeing the action carefully, and desperate to escape the melee, Vidot leapt again, this time onto the younger woman’s head.

  Landing amid her dark hair’s roots, he immediately had to hold on tightly as she continued smashing Elga. Finally, the woman was pulled off by a man Vidot did not recognize. He tried to understand where this new fellow could have come from, but he didn’t have time to figure it out, as they were now running out of the building and getting into a cab.

  His head still woozy, Vidot was tempted to tap into the young woman’s skull to wash out the traces of Elga’s burning blood. Then he remembered scenes from the battle. How exactly did this woman overcome that old woman’s magic? Perhaps the brunette was not so pure herself. So Vidot delicately hopped over to the man’s skull. Vidot had come to apply only the slightest criteria in choosing his victims: dogs, cats, or vermin like his wife’s lover—it did not matter to him as long as they were warm-blooded—but after his experience with the old woman, he decided he would try to stick to well-bred gentlemen from now on. This fellow certainly seemed decent, pulling the girl out of the battle and all that, so it was worth a try. He tapped in and tested. Yes, it was pure and sweet, not unlike a new Beaujolais. Chalk another victory up to the well-educated guess.

  As the taxi drove through the streets, Vidot realized that by leaving Elga behind he was perhaps losing his one final chance to solve the mystery of his transformation. The old woman was, he was certain, the only person on earth who could turn him back again into the man he truly was. Without the solution she could have possibly provided, he would probably not last long—he would either be clawed by a beast’s scratching paw, blown by a strong gust into the frigid Seine’s waters, or perhaps even scooped up like Bemm by a fearsome predator. Even if he survived all that, the great mortal clock, the timepiece that had begun ticking the moment he had first awoken as a flea, would soon simply wind down to a halt, leaving him to expire in the dust, unnoticed as he was swept away by a bored grocer’s broom. He had just barely survived yet another terrible cataclysm, this one the most frightening by far, but he had also hopped away from his only known possibility for salvation, and time was running out.r />
  XII

  Elga lurched up and spat, scratching a bite on her head. She looked at Noelle, sitting on the floor by her side. Her eye felt like it was starting to swell. “Get me some ice.”

  The little girl went to the kitchenette and looked around. “There’s no ice.”

  Elga nodded and got to her feet, surveying the scene. She paused to take in Max’s dead body. “I need a moment.” She limped to the bathroom and, putting her head in the toilet, vomited and heaved for the next twenty minutes.

  Coming out of the bathroom, she looked at the girl. “Okay, it’s time to go.”

  The girl pointed to the clock pieces on the floor. “Should we collect our things?”

  “No,” said Elga, “leave them. It doesn’t matter. But bring your chicken.”

  They headed down the staircase together, Elga wincing with every step. She was furious with herself. Noelle looked at her with eyes sunk with exhaustion and guilt. “I know I made a mistake. I’m sorry,” said Noelle.

  Elga shrugged. “No, it’s fine. You’re only as good as your teacher. We had her trapped, you know that? We did. I should have ignored her request for water. So stupid. It’s my fault. And I should have left Max in the car. Dumb. But you”—she clumsily patted the girl’s head—“you didn’t do so badly for your first time.”

  Reaching the bottom stair, she made Noelle wait as she peered around the corner. The desk clerk had his head down on the register. She loudly cleared her throat but still he did not move. Elga and Noelle walked across the lobby and out the front door.

  “I’m so tired,” said the girl, sinking to the stoop.

  “Yes. I told you, spells drain you, even little ones. Now wait here, I’ll pull the car up.” The girl only nodded, closing her eyes and wrapping her arms tightly around the chicken. In her dazed confusion, it took Elga a moment to remember where she had parked. Then she dug out the key and limped down the street toward the car. The cafés and nightclubs were closing, sending their tipsy, laughing customers out weaving along the sidewalks. A couple stopped to kiss beneath an alley lamp. All these accidental lovers, she thought, will wake up ill from poison in the morning, their hearts filled with black regret. She knew she probably looked drunk to them too as she stumbled toward the car. Though she used it occasionally as a base for potions, she had always found alcohol to be a poor enchantment. It made the banal beautiful and warmed cold hearts, but it was unwieldy and possessed no finesse. She had watched alcohol work like a cudgel through the ages, smashing lives and homes, even kingdoms and empires. It was too base and rough for her taste, but there was no denying the power of its spell; they even let you sip it in the church.