Babayaga

“I don’t know,” said Will, amazed at how quickly Oliver could segue from witnessing a close friend’s death to expounding a random conspiracy theory, “You might be overthinking it.”

“Well, I don’t know about that. Look at the facts, look at history, our own government got Willie Hearst’s papers to spread wholesale, widespread panic about cannabis, laws were passed, people were hauled off to prison, the distribution effectively quashed. Meanwhile, people drink themselves dumb every night. Can’t have the people thinking too much, right? So, maybe you’re correct, and perhaps that’s the point, we should all be doing considerably more overthinking.”

“So was Boris a dopehead?”

“Who, Boris, what?” Oliver shook his head as if he had been suddenly pulled back to reality “A dopehead? No, Boris was not a dopehead. He was merely a man seeking solace in an incredibly hostile world. I suspect, though, he might have gotten his hands on a bad batch.” He sniffed the resin again. “I have no real expertise here, but luckily I know a few who do. We’ll take a little detour and visit some friends.” He leaned forward. “Pardonnez-moi, vous pouvez nous emmener au numéro dix, rue Jacob, s’il vous plaît.”

“What about finding Ned?”

“Under the circumstances, she’s going to have to wait.” He gave Will a forced grin. “Invisible hands are moving pieces on the board right now and I’m rather curious as to why.” As Oliver folded up the tinfoil and tucked it back in his vest pocket, Will noticed that Oliver’s hands were shaking.

XI

Zoya entered her apartment and looked around. There was still no sign of Max. Now this was odd, she thought. Usually the rat would have sniffed her out within two or three days. She thought of checking in again with Elga. But the last few visits had been too unsettling, lately there seemed to be a constant undercurrent of impatience and anger that rose like winter sap out of the old woman’s moods. Zoya wondered if Elga was finally going mad, perhaps from too many centuries of stewing those vestigial remnants of spent spells in the rotting murk of her mind.

Zoya caught herself in the mirror. She was in essence the same young woman she had been for so long now; little had changed. How long had it been since that day when she had almost died in those cold Russian woods, an exile, stripped of every bond and affection, her heart scraped raw and her ribs sore from weeping? She was so newly grown into the fulsome body of a woman as to be still only a child, two children really, the other nascent one not yet stirring within her, though already so hungry. She would recall that hunger, the only thing about her child she would ever know. (To this day, whenever she found herself in bustling Parisian brasseries, watching wealthy tourists abandon their uneaten baguette or cheese plates, it filled her with such a quick, intuitive anger that she would instinctively hiss maledictions at their heels.)

She could still recall stumbling upon that trace scent of food as she wandered, staggering, starving, and lost in the woods so many dawns ago. Venison, she had been sure it was venison, a thin fatty smell sneaking through the needled larch to find her. The faint aroma had caught her like a fish on a hook, pulling her step by step deeper into the forest until she finally came across the lone hut. Unlike in the fairy tales, the little house did not stand on chicken legs, but was raised instead on thick stilts of stunted birch. Stumbling out of the red twilit woods, Zoya kept her distance and quietly worked her way around the building, looking for any sign that she might be welcome. The hut was foreboding. Without any sign of a door or window, smoke crept out from the roof and sharp scratched lines of yellow light leaked out from the pitch-caulked cracks between the hut’s timbers. She thought she could make out a woman’s deep voice, either talking to herself or humming a tone-deaf tune. Zoya hid behind a thick patch of thistle, settling in, to wait for the owner to emerge. But all night and well into the next morning, no one came out. As she lay there, pains of famine now desperately screaming in her belly, Zoya dug and scratched at the earth, finally sucking on worms and beetles for moisture. Part of her wanted to bang on the cabin walls and beg for bread, water, and mercy, but another, stronger feeling urged her to stay where she was. So she kept waiting. But nobody came out. Instead, the aromatic scents from the cabin smoke grew deeper and richer; the air swam with the fragrances of clove, garlic, and ginger, all wrapped in the smells of simmering haunch fat and pinewood smoke. It was too much to bear. Drained now of all strength, Zoya collapsed flat against the earth, her tears turning the soil beneath her face to mud.