Babayaga

by Toby Barlow

  Reaching the car, she heard a voice behind her. “Madame, a moment, please.” She ignored it, a beggar no doubt. But then a hand fell on her shoulder. “We need to ask you some questions.” She turned and found herself facing a pair of policemen. They must have been watching from the shadows.

  “Mmm-hmm,” she said. “What is it?”

  “This vehicle—”

  Ugh, she looked at the car and realized that the spell must have worn off: now instead of being nondescript and ignored by all, the missing police car had revealed itself and been discovered. That was the problem with great taxing exertions like the fight with Zoya, they expended so much energy that the power was often pulled out from any surrounding enchantments. One had to remember where one’s work had been and then go double-check after any struggle, or even a serious shock, scare, or fall, to make sure the important things were still held spellbound. Thankfully Zoya had only had time to give her a black eye, Elga thought, or who knows what other tricks would have been undone.

  This had been a simple spell to begin with; she had never intended to hold on to the car so long, but it had proved to be too useful to part with. She quickly tried to think of which tricks she could use to escape these policemen, but her mind was fatigued and cloudy and even if she could think of one, it would be too dangerous with the late-night pedestrians passing by. She realized she would have to go along with the officers and find her opportunity later. A chance always opened up. “This? It’s not my car,” she said. “I found the key on the street.”

  The policeman nodded. “You will please come with me, madame. We can ask our questions at the station.”

  In her dazed exhaustion, forgetting for the moment the girl she had left sleeping on the hotel stoop, Elga limped off with the policemen to their waiting car.

  A few hours later, after she had told the same lies repeatedly to a parade of different officers, she sat waiting in the dimly lit corner of the station’s jail cell. There were three other women in the cell with her, all prostitutes. Elga shivered in the cold. She had never been arrested before, though she and Zoya had occasionally been detained and questioned. Usually it didn’t take much to be released; Zoya could always distract them with a flash of leg while Elga hissed out the appropriate spell.

  This time was different. This time she was tired, alone and vulnerable. She hugged her knees and thought about Noelle, whom she now regretted abandoning back at the hotel. How would she find her? Elga had never worried about Zoya in all their years together, that one had a fierceness in her that could be frightening. But little Noelle was unproven. She had allowed Zoya to get the upper hand in their battle, and she would need to be taught many more things or she certainly wouldn’t make it. But was she smart? Did she have the right blood in her? Perhaps it was not worth the time, perhaps she should be cut loose or put down? Elga wondered what the right move was. Yes, it’s simple, Elga said to herself, if she finds her way back to the suite, then she lives. If not, forget her.

  Elga shook her head with dismay at how protective she was letting herself feel toward Noelle. She knew soft feelings were weakness, and that girl made her feel soft. Zoya had already been a woman when they met, fully formed, already betrayed and abused. But Noelle was still in possession of an innocence that, like green shoots in spring, stood out against the bleak, starved landscape. Elga thought for a moment of her own daughters, the three of them, but then stopped as she caught one of her cell mates preparing to squat.

  “Piss in the pot, not on the floor,” Elga hissed.

  “Shut up, old woman,” slurred her mascara-streaked cell mate, unsteady on her feet, either drunk or drugged.

  “Piss in the pot, not on the floor,” Elga repeated, staring at the woman. Her cell mate looked away and then stumbled over to the chamber pot in the corner. Elga slipped back to the past.

  So many memories had flowed by, she was amazed at how much was dim now and what stayed sharp. The only child of older parents, she had grown up close to a loud sea. She remembered playing on the red sand shore and the roar of the waves when the winter storms came. Her father ran an inn of sorts, more like a barracks for traders who stopped to barter at their little crossroads. Her earliest memories were of late-night lanterned meetings where travelers with sly, wary eyes toyed with colored stones and sniffed pungent samples as they sat drinking and spinning tales around the rough wooden table. Her father weighed and measured while her quiet mother refilled the visitors’ cups with wine and put out dishes of dates and lamb.

  Elga helped with the chores, but where her parents were reserved, taciturn, and careful, she was boisterous and loud. She enjoyed staying up through the night, teasing the traders and taunting them with barnyard jokes until even her father broke into laughter.

  The years were not counted, so she did not know how old she was when her father sold her. All she knew, looking back, was that it was in a thin season when desperation hung heavy, like spiderwebs off the broad-beamed rafters. One windy night some traders came through and as she watched the haggled exchanges, she failed to note one shallow-cheeked trader who had set his eyes on her.

  The next morning, climbing out of her sleep, she heard her mother’s voice barking her name. She blinked awake only to find the man standing with her mother beside her cot. Without warning, he plucked her up and carried her through the house and out to the horses. His stallion was laden heavy with saddlebags and the mare had a small pack her mother had stuffed with a handful of her possessions. She tried to recall now what would have been in that bag. Some rags of clothes? Perhaps some toy? No. She dimly recalled a small carving of a bird. Was it there? She was unsure.

  She rode on the stallion with the trader, listening for the roar of the sea for as long as she could until the horses led them up into the mountain trails. Finally the surf’s sound disappeared into the folds of the wind and her childhood vanished back behind an arbor’s bend. Then she felt alone. The horses climbed on. When they finally stopped, he walked them off the trail and made camp. There was no fire. The waning, bloodred light was slipping behind the distant dry peaks as her new husband set out their bedding. Frozen with fear, she lay down. He was not gentle, and the moments that followed were worse than any nightmare she could imagine. Her mother had never warned, or even intimated, that this is what marriage could bring, and her father had always been reassuring and gentle with her. As Elga screamed out in those dark hills, the most unbearable pain she felt was that of her parents’ betrayal.

  Two days later they reached her new home. Her husband, Oman, came from a shepherd clan, with three brothers who tended their goats together. Life was not easy; she was the only woman working for the four of them and the chores were onerous, endless, and came with no gratitude. She labored hard at backbreaking tasks, receiving no tenderness from her husband, a man who was absolute, resolute, and methodical in his actions.

  Soon she bore a son, and this pleased Oman greatly. The arrival of a child into their home brought the tender side of Oman to the surface. After his work was done, he would sit out in the field with their son for long periods, watching the light leave the day.

  Life was still brutal and hard, though it was only after she was pregnant a second time that the absolute horror of her existence arrived in full. She gave birth on a feast day. It was a painful, tearing birth, and when it was over she held the baby girl for only a few moments, watching her squeak and cry at the new light of life, before Oman took the child from her arms and told Elga to rest. When she awoke, her husband and the baby were gone. Her brother-in-law told her that the child had died in the night and her husband had gone to bury it.

  Over the next five years, three more sons were born, each of them healthy, and two more daughters came who did not live a day. Each girl she briefly held and comforted, and each one was taken from her hands. In the morning, the men always told her the same story. But by then she had been living with the tribe for nearly a decade, she knew their trades and how they bartered and dealt with th
e strangers passing by. She knew how to read her family’s eyes, and this was a tribe of bad liars.

  Oman’s youngest brother, Elon, was a sweet, foolish man. He was the one ready with song and drum when the wine was poured. She would work chores with him and gossip about the family. One day, as they were combing wool for the looms, she gaily chatted and led him down to her trap. “You are so good at this! I think I’ve changed my mind, I agree now with what my husband says.”

  “What does my brother say?”

  “Oh, you know, how he grumbles and says, ‘Bah, women are a waste of food.’ I say, ‘No, Oman, though I do not mean to dispute you, I say we women are very useful.’ Now, look at you, Elon, you are showing that he is right, you are so much better at even this chore than I am.”

  “Well, I am certain you women are better at some tasks.”

  “In the towns, perhaps. But not here. We need men for all our tasks. I can help with cooking and the wash, but you only need one woman for that. Too many women would be more useless mouths to feed, right? And even if our neighbors could pay enough for a wife, we get too few visitors looking to strike that kind of a bargain. Why, look how far my husband had to journey to find a woman.”

  “Yes, he went a long way and he still got a fat, ugly bride,” Elon said and both laughed.

  “Yes,” she said, “I am only good for making him sons.”

  “You have given him strong sons.”

  “I know. It is good too that those daughters of mine did not live. My husband did the right thing there.”

  “Yes, he did,” said Elon. He was about to say some other words, but stopped himself. That was when she knew the truth.

  “It is all right, my friend,” said Elga, shaking her head as if it were nothing. “He is a wise man, he is very wise. But tell me, where did he bury them? He never told me.”

  Elon was silent for a moment and then he answered her question. “In the river swamp. He buried them down in the reeds of the swamp.”

  She nodded and said no more. Then she waited, almost three moons, simmering and stirring her plans in her boiling and turbulent mind. She would wander the muddy wetland trails in the dawn’s bleak mist, amid the shrill, disturbed cries of waking starlings, searching, wild-eyed, for a sign of where her daughters might be buried. She would at times collapse and kneel on the ground, blinded with anger, a grief hot inside her that felt like molten metal. At dusk, after feigning her way through the day, she would return again to the swamp, clawing at the earth for graves she could not find. Night would come and the screaming wind would blow as the tall reeds swayed thick, looming above her like hissing serpents. During these trying days, she kept her face serene at home, and when she went on trips into the village, she was chatty and friendly. The horse trader found her full of idle questions about the roads and trails that ran out of town. When she asked for ways to kill off the squirrels nesting in her lofts that were eating at her grain, a bullman’s wife gave her a recipe for poison.

  Finally, the spring moon turned and Oman rode off, his mare topped with goatskins for the new season’s trade. Only hours after he was gone, she went round and invited his brothers to her house for dinner. “I have a seasoned boar that needs roasting.” She put out bulgur stew, sausages, radish, and blackberry wine. As she was setting out the meal, Elga told them that she had woken that morning from a nightmare in which her husband faced terrible trials on his journey. She raised a glass: “We must frighten this bad dream away with a toast to his safe return. All of us. Even my boys must drink this toast for their father’s safe return,” she insisted.

  “You’re going to make the little ones drunkards,” teased Elon.

  “Ha ha, no, I have mixed some water with the wine, so indulge a superstitious woman; let us drink and shout the devils away.”

  They all drank the wine and soon the men were unconscious, their heads heavy on the table. She pulled each one down from his chair and lined them up next to one another on the floor.

  She killed her sons first, hammering a long fence nail through each of their hearts. Then, taking an ax, she methodically beheaded each one of her brothers-in-law. Going out to the pens, she drove the livestock into the barn, bolting it shut, and while the goat kids and spring lambs panicked and brayed, she put all the buildings to flame. When she took Elon’s strongest horse and rode off, the mad screaming of the dying livestock burned in her ears.

  She was sure Oman would try to track her, but she never saw him again. She felt no sense of guilt, no sorrow. Her husband had brought that pain to the world, she had merely set the scales to balance. Still, she was wise enough to keep running, blazing over the mountain passes and across the high plateaus. She wrapped herself in shawls to cover her eyes from strangers’ questions and risked the bandits at night to cover as much ground as possible. On some loose and rocky flats she lost her horse to a sprain and then continued on foot, lying down on her belly to sip from the streams she passed, rarely pausing for long.

  As the eighth sun rose, now starving, thirsty, and dizzy, she found herself following a strengthening scent of woodsmoke down a broken ridge of alder and pine that led her into a bustling encampment. A group of women were busy caring for a field full of injured soldiers. The women paid her no mind until the leader of the group whistled loudly and signaled for her to approach. Without introduction, and in a blunt tone, the woman told how the forces had already advanced over the next rise, harrying a retreating army. Supply horses were supposed to bring up the rear, the woman said, but for now they were alone there and overworked, with three of their own ill from fever. They needed help. “What about you?” the woman asked. “Did the soldiers attack you?”

  The woman pointed at the blood that was still splattered on Elga’s dress. “Oh,” said Elga, looking at the stains. “No, I was only slaughtering animals.” Already a good liar, Elga knew to wrap her deceptions in vestiges of the truth. The woman nodded, and Elga felt as if a conditional trust had been achieved.

  The woman pointed her to the campfire and she began helping, washing rags and filling pots while watching the other women work. They cleaned out the dirt, gravel, and pus from the open wounds, applied herbs and poultices to fight infection. Some of the women sang. The men writhed and screamed. Over the next few days, most died, but some were saved. Elga took directions well and could feel the women observing her out of the corners of their eyes, judging her strength as she worked. When the riders came to tell them of the battle past the next rise, the women packed up and went off to find the injured. Elga traveled with them. This is where her long life began. These nurses had skills and secrets.

  XIII

  Witches’ Song Seven

  Here they are, gawking ones, a pocketful of curses,

  not empty spells cast by angry incompetents,

  red-faced over banquet tables, nay,

  but sordid troubles embroidered well

  unfurled in spells untoward

  able to ignite the great metamorphoses, yes, you’ve seen well,

  but subtler spoilers come in handy too,

  right spit words that make you miss crucial connections in distant stations,

  leaving you as lone, soft, and vulnerable prey

  for salivating wolves who dine on lamb and ewe.

  Or you drool yourself, dripping constant stains, or spilling through passing palsy drops of shame

  from pewter spoons and crystal bowls,

  splotching dress shirts and fine silks, all now spoiled for public judgment.

  Then fun too: rich, pungent flatulence summoned at intimate times,

  with counterpoints of noxious belch and burp,

  and rich myriad tapestries of ill blushings,

  lavender rashes, and textured boils,

  a plague of unreachable itches

  desperate for their needed scratches,

  all indulgently accented with lasting urinary burnings.

  Not enough? More, then, more. Grave addictions, the harshest needs,


  the barest raw hungers, all voracious

  open-mouthed, and panting to fill a gaping hole

  with alcohol, baccarat, horse cocks, or the poppy scar’s sap, yes.

  Then of course taunting self-doubts,

  gnats of insecurities, shaming anxieties

  that flash white and hollow like lightning bolts tearing

  through sturdy hilltop elms.

  A vague but constant sense of forgetfulness,

  always nipping with haunt

  or a shadowed guilt for an imagined crime

  that chews and frays at your tired mind.

  Oh, a fierce envy for new polished shoes or great worthless land tracts,

  a fevered lust for rubies, sapphires, pearl, and other beachcombed stones,

  a gravitational attraction and steady pull

  toward expensive strangers.

  A gift for spilling teacups and dropping china,

  a tendency to catch cloth on lit candles

  or absently forgetting hearth and stoves

  till cherished cottage and castle have all turned to cinder.

  A strong wind for ill rumors,

  the instinct to fold both winning hands and good enterprise.