Babayaga

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.

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.