by Toby Barlow
Maroc stared at the lone silhouette loitering across the street and shook his head in frustration. Where was she? He had felt so tantalizingly close to wrapping up all the strands in one nice, neat package, but now some gnawing sense at the bottom of his stomach was telling him that the simple solutions he wanted were beginning to slip away. “Fine. Let’s at least grab him. He must know what she did with Vidot. He must. Even if he’s innocent, he’ll have a lot to tell us.”
“Well,” said Lecan, reaching for the door handle, “we’ll never know unless we ask.”
They got out and crossed the street. Alberto stopped his pacing as they approached; they could tell he recognized them at once. Then, pretending he had not noticed them, he began to nonchalantly walk down the path into the darkness of the park. It was bad enough that his date had not shown up, but a conversation with the police was clearly not the way he wanted to spend the night.
“The bastard’s trying to slip away,” said Maroc, picking up his pace. He would have run but he hated running, it always made him feel fat, and so by the time they reached the corner, their suspect was gone. “Come, he went that way, we can catch up with him,” Maroc said. Lecan followed him into the park.
They walked in silence, listening for footsteps, but the Bois was quiet. They followed the paved walkway until it divided and then, instead of splitting up, they both stayed to the right, going deeper into the park and crossing near the lake. Every so often they would pause and look around, hoping to hear their quarry’s footsteps, but as they stood in the silence, it was clear that Alberto had escaped them.
They headed back to the car. Halfway down the walk, Maroc tapped his hand on Lecan’s shoulder and pointed into the overgrowth. “Look, is that him?”
“It’s hard to tell,” said Lecan.
“Who’s he with?” Obscured by the brush, they could only dimly make out a group of figures standing in a small clearing about fifty meters away. Maroc and Lecan moved in closer, stepping carefully between the thornbushes and tree branches in an effort not to make any noise. Coming closer, they found a situation of such interest that it made them completely forget their missing suspect.
There were seven people there, all of whom appeared to be frozen as stiff as wax statues. As Maroc and Lecan came to a break in the trees, it became clear why the group of people were immobile, as the majority of them had guns pointed at one another. A small bald man was moving about and talking. Maroc squinted into the darkness, trying to make out what was happening. “What the devil is he—?”
That was when the little man produced a gun and shot one of the men in the head.
Maroc immediately pulled his whistle from his pocket and blew it as loudly as he could, rushing headlong into the middle of the clearing, with Lecan right behind him. “Police! Put down your weapons and stay where you are.”
Maroc had, up until this point, served largely in administrative roles, and in his entire professional history he had very little actual experience working in the streets among the citizens of the city’s neighborhoods. His long, comfortable career had begun with a desk job in a Paris office; then, during the Vichy years, he’d moved on to more bureaucratic work in Bordeaux, then back to a desk in Paris, where he aided Papon in various departmental roles, and where, over time, he had grown quite comfortable thinking of himself as an important figure of authority and power. Therefore, when he yelled “stay where you are!” he was logically convinced that everyone would do just that. He was, therefore, quite bewildered when his imperious command, combined with his piercingly loud police-whistle blast, had entirely the opposite effect. All the characters in that small clearing, who had, in fact, been standing perfectly still before as they stared down the barrels of one another’s guns, all now suddenly flew into a burst of frantic and frenzied motion. Guns were fired, people ran off in all directions, and, to make things worse, the forest itself seemed to spring into life as two broad caped shadows came swooshing down from the trees, blocking his vantage of the fleeing suspects while knocking one of the women to the ground. What the hell was going on? Who were these superheroes swinging out of the sky like some wild characters from the Fantax or Fulguros comics? Then Maroc realized the large swooping creatures were actually owls and the capes he had imagined were their wide wings. Were these the same killer birds that had attacked the man by the Galeries Lafayette? What was this, some mad homicidal falconry? What went on in this damn park? Lecan went dashing off into the forest, pursuing several of the fleeing group, while Maroc chased down one of the men. Grabbing at the man’s legs, he forced him to fall forward. The man’s gun went off as they hit the ground. When the man started shouting out in English, an infuriated Maroc instinctively punched him hard in the face and knocked him cold. After handcuffing the uncousious man, Maroc stood up, dusted off his coat, and looked around the scene. The birds were gone, frightened by the gun, no doubt. Most of the other people had vanished too. Lecan had not returned. The woman the owls had attacked lay close-by. In her gray suit, she looked ordinary, a secretary perhaps. She was spread out on the ground with her eyes open, staring up at the sky with bloody scratches on her face and a leaking bullet hole in her temple. The dead man, whom the little bald fellow had shot before all the commotion, lay by her side, his legs bent wrong and his arm extended so that the two almost looked as though they were holding hands. Maroc shook his head in dismay. Papon would not like this at all.
Hearing a noise, Maroc looked up to see Lecan coming out of the brush, his hair askew, covered in dirt and leaves. He was pulling another handcuffed man along by his elbow. “I managed to trip him up as he was running by,” he said. “He’s an American.”
“I think this one’s American too,” said Maroc, pointing at the unconscious figure in the dirt. “You’d better take yours to the car and radio the station for some assistance. Get an ambulance here too. Tell them we have two bodies and two arrests.”
Lecan led his prisoner off, leaving Maroc standing in the clearing, looking over the three prone figures. Maroc remembered how when he was little, his overprotective mother would never let him play in the small local park after dusk. “Bad things happen in the dark when God cannot see you,” she would say. He wondered what she would think if she could see him standing in this clearing, in the company of two dead bodies and one unconscious prisoner. Yes, Mama, you were right, he thought, very bad things happen in the dark.
II
Elga had the whores all gathered around her in her cell; there were five of them now, three having been brought in during the night. She was regaling them with secrets, tips, and easy tricks, what herbs and teas to drink to avoid diseases, what to scrub yourself with, the subtle ways to spot the crooked policeman who could be bought or seduced, along with simple recipes for lavender perfumes to bring the right kind of customer. She explained the pulls of the night, how understanding the lunar cycles could help them navigate customers’ moods (men paid more on the half-moon, fucked longer on the new moon, fell for any flattery on a quarter moon, and could cut you on a full moon). She told them which birds to watch for omens, how to use menstrual blood for curses, and made them laugh and chortle with her stories about the tiny-cocked corporal and the prudish cardinal who shit his bed. She told them about Catherine the Great’s sumptuous bedroom and all the proud noblemen the queen had bled dead in return for their affection. She let them know how bergamot oil could clear away pimples, how turnips made skin boils recede, and how to kill boot fungus with long soaks of cider vinegar.
“I’ll tell you one important thing,” she said. “If you ever marry a man, don’t take his name. Tell him you’re untraditional, make a scene, have a fight, but”—she shook her finger in their faces—“always keep that one precious thing. Men want to swallow you down, take all of you, even your name, like a big fish gulps down minnows. I tell you, your name is the piece they cannot have. I have been chased by the law and I have been forced into hiding, but I have always used my own name, in every country where I hav
e ever been, even if the police know it, it’s no matter. Your name is the only important word there is. If you lose your name, you lose your strength, and here amid the beasts you need all the strength you can get.”
She asked which of them wanted a husband. Three of the women, blushing, raised their hands. Elga nodded. “See? That’s good,” she said, pointing at the giggling ones. “That’s the way you get a husband, through laughter and tears, back and forth, all the time, like one of those metronomes sitting on top of a fancy fat parlor piano. Tick tock, tick tock, tears and laughter, play it well and you will confuse and bewilder him and he can be yours. He will try to outthink you, outflank you, calm you down, but you can always dance around him with your weeping and your mirth, ha ha ha, until he is pulled under the same way a great whale drags the massive whalers deep to the bottom of the sea. Of course,” she shrugged, “it won’t work on the smart ones, but luckily, ha ha ha, the world has no shortage of stupid men.”
At this, an awkward silence fell over the group. “What?” asked Elga. “Why so quiet?”
One of the girls spoke up. “But what if I want to be with a man I can love and honor, not a big dumb oaf?”
“Ah, um, I see, so you want a trick for that new kind of love you see all over your matinees and musicals? Boy meets girl and they hold hands, ha, you want that shit?” Elga spat on the floor. “Bah. Those tricks exist, yes. There is a spell for every hunger, every need, mmmn, yes, but, mmn…” She shook her head. “Only fools go there.” She was quiet for a few moments, stewing in her thoughts. Finally she noticed they were still watching. “Get away, leave me, go!” she shrieked. They huddled off to the far side of the cell while Elga sat on her thin pallet and brooded.
These modern girls were too soft, she thought, even the tough ones wanted to be spoiled and pampered. None of them were warriors. Her mind wandered back to the beginning, when she traveled with the ancient trains of archer and spear. The leader of that first group, Oba, who had allowed Elga into their camp, now showed her the way. The other women welcomed her warily; one, named Temra, loaned her bedding and shared her ration. Another, named Rasha, gave her some torn rags along with a needle to sew her own clothes. They were following a chanyu’s army whose name Elga had since forgotten. She did recall how, after many months in the field, this ruler had drunkenly quarreled with Oba over their lot of plunder, and how that night, hours after the victory banquet, Elga was awoken by Rasha and told to quietly gather her things. One by one, the women followed Oba, stepping over the soldiers who lay, unmoving, on the banquet floor. Climbing high up the dry hills above the valley, Elga looked back at the silent camp. “I thank the stars no one awoke to catch us,” she said to Rasha.
“Don’t thank the stars,” Rasha said with a wry smile, “thank poison.”
That was when Elga realized how foolish it was to fear an army.
Over the years, they found countless other khans, nizams, rajes, and princes to serve. Each time, victory followed their hire as they traced the armies’ paths across the fields, hills, ridges, and steppes, east to west and back again, laying the charms for victory, nursing the wounded, burning the dead, and taking their share of the bounty. The pattern was as constant as the North Star: after every battlefield success, their host’s pride would grow and swell until finally the vain and foolish victor wholly believed that it was only his strategic foresight and sharp-eyed skills that had forged all his good fortune. He would grow impatient with the imperious Oba and her crafty tribe, who were, after all, no more than superstitious wenches—skilled with the healing arts, yes, but too ugly to look at. Then requests would be refused and lines would be drawn.
Some died from wild blue lightning fire searing their camps, some found their tents coursing thick with plague rats, some tasted polluted wine; and then there were the fortunate ones whom Oba benevolently indulged, allowing a more glorious end as their heads were sliced off in a clean flash by their enemies’ bright, shining steel. But in every case, arrogance and hubris turned once proud armies into simple carrion, lying plenty for a murder of crows, as the women marched on.
With every day, Elga learned more. Her christening bath had been in a pool by the Belaya River. Her dream had been of a snake wrapped around a white marble egg. Oba could not tell her what the egg signified, but the marble meant a long life and the snake, she said, was a very good spirit to have on your side. She taught Elga how to grind up the serpents’ sloughed-off skin and inhale it, which brought visions of all varieties: some came as prophecies and predictions; others tore the fabric of reality away, giving her fractured glimpses with meanings far greater than she could comprehend; and others merely widened her perspective and control, letting her chart the paths of her enemies’ approach.
She gained other virtues as well, wisdom, strength, and, most important of all, time. The serpents’ smoke entwined with the eternity of death, slowing the effect of her years to a mountain’s crawl, so that men’s sons were born as babes, grew to men, withered ancient, and were buried in the time it took a wrinkle to even hint its presence at the corner of her eye. But age she did, along with all her sisters, centuries slow, but sure, as they passed back and forth between the comforts of the court and rougher life with the army in the field, tending to the healing tents and bargaining for fates as imperial borders wandered and kingdoms dissolved into dust.
From almost the very first, Temra was her closest friend. Elga had no idea how old she was, only that she had served Oba for eons and could sense from a glance or a footfall the old woman’s many moods. Temra cautioned when to stay out of Oba’s path and, alternatively, when it was timely to ask for favor. Over the years, she also provided wise guidance on how to master this range of new powers. “You are a different animal now, but you are not evil. Like the serpent who guides you, you can be an ally to many,” Temra told her. Elga could not think of any beast allied with the serpent, but she did not contradict her friend. She merely worked her days and lay through the nights as the years fell around them like drops of rain.
Elga stayed with Oba, Temra, and the rest of the tribe for what would have been the span of four lives, studying, listening, watching. To memorize the spells, she mimicked Temra by the firelight and then turned them backward, spinning them into riddle songs that she repeated as she followed the dusty long trains of mules and camels.
Finally, in the end, she was forced to flee, once again alone and frightened. Oba’s mind had slowly blackened with a seething paranoia that wrapped around her thoughts like a choking ivy. Obsessive, secretive, and certain that those around her were trying to hurt and betray her, she sulked and brooded and kept to her tent. Then, one by one, the other women of the tribe began taking ill, some mortally stricken with fever, others dying from bloody cramps. Plague pyres burned and suspicions grew. Finally, one night, Oba sent a message for Elga to come to her side. When Elga found her, Oba whispered that she needed help taking the conspirators down, and that the worst of the plotters was Temra. Elga begged to leave, Temra was a sister, friend, and lover to her, but Oba firmly insisted. Elga asked why she could not do it herself, why she needed her help, and that was when she learned her final lesson from Oba.
“I have never told you this but all in our camp, you and me and the rest of the women, our bonds to the darkness give us a stronger hold on life than weakling mortals possess,” Oba explained, her fingers working nervously on the edges of her shawl as she chattered on. “A man can stab or choke you to death, but if you are one of us, if you have our blood, your ghost will remain, still capable of a curse and a haunting, still able to track, still able to whisper and curse, until your will is done or the earth finally burns and vanishes. It takes more than one hand to kill a woman of our spirit, you need another with powers to help. Two sisters must act together, one blow for the body, one blow for the soul. So remember, you need a second sister to kill with you or you will never be safe, the witches’ spirits will follow you, they will haunt you, and they will kill you.” Elga did not
like the look in Oba’s eye as she said these things.
Before she was allowed to leave, Oba made Elga promise to lure Temra back before the sun rose, but instead, the moment she was out of the tent, Elga ran stumbling, panicked, out through the camp, barely able to breathe, trying to find her friend to give warning. When she got to their pallet, Temra was gone and no one had seen her. Elga wandered the campsite, searching in the dim glow of the vigil fires for her friend. Temra was innocent, she knew that as clearly as she knew where to find her hands. Oba had descended into a madness, time had chewed through the spells and was now tearing apart the old woman’s reason the way a swarm of locusts went at fields of summer grain. Perhaps she was talking to Temra at that very moment, convincing her that Elga was the traitor. It might be worse, she realized, thinking it through; perhaps Temra had been the second sister who had helped Oba bring the cramps and the fever to all their fallen sisters. Perhaps Oba was now only covering her tracks. Elga stopped searching for her friend. It was not safe. She grabbed her few belongings and made her way to the edge of the camp, where she hid. Hours later, she took a horse and rode it out bareback, driving hard for four days, up creeks and off trails to confuse any pursuers, until the stallion became delirious and unsteady, almost crushing her as it collapsed from exhaustion. Elga made camp, built a fire, and smoked the horsemeat. She shaved the edges of the ribs against flat rocks until they were sharp as warrior knives and tucked the new weapons into the leather belt of her skirt. Then she continued on through the wilderness, moving steadily north and west, beneath the bleak and pallid skies.
III
“Smoke?” the bald man asked, holding out a silver cigarette case.
“No,” Will said tersely.
