Babayaga

Whenever the sharp regrets stabbed at her, Zoya reminded herself that the child she lost had been conceived in violence, a bloody curse that had followed her from that moment Grigori seized her in the bedroom until the night she screamed as Elga tore it from her body. Every good thing since then had been tinged with the red stain of that violence. Time was not absolute, and even without witchery she could travel right back to that instant, loom above it, and watch the last vestige of her simple humanity pulled out of her, a dark mark punctuating the end of so much innocence. She came up out of that bath a new creature with a new path and purpose, and with Elga’s guidance (which was always as twisted as a weed root in drought), Zoya began a course of action that had its own logic, rules, and blunt necessity.

As the season began to change, the two women had wrapped themselves up and begun journeying the cold roads together. They never returned to those woods. For decade upon decade they covered the breadth of the continent, rarely resting for long, a year here, a few months there. They went in all four directions, wherever loose fortunes and safe travel could be found. When armies advanced, they followed in the rear guard’s wake, sharing spoils as their luck held solid. They had more than a few narrow scrapes but had always managed to escape clean, packing up and making their tactical retreats, before any real pressure was brought to bear. They were generally careful and quick, looking for sparks of suspicion in observers’ eyes so that they could be gone long before the thought ever reached those watchers’ minds.

Their exits almost always coincided with funerals, and Zoya could count her victims the way Homer counted ships. Legions of soldiers, brokers, barons, bailiffs, and fools had all fallen before her. Murmured instructions into the ears of sleepy-eyed Arabian horses led cavalry lovers to broken necks, and she had coaxed the arc of battlefield bullets and the aim of cannons’ muzzles into many a cursed chest. Some farewells came with great repercussions—a fever sent up a sleeping vizier’s knobby spine had once brought a whole kingdom down—though most were simpler transitions, a few even humane, merely a touch of the unwanted slipped into their tea or a fumbling foot on a loose stair, sending masonry hard against the victim’s head.

No one had ever looked to her for explanation; if she was ever noticed, it was only as a discreet courtesan, a rumored inamorata, or a laughing, playful harlot, always so easily forgotten.

She did have a quiver of curses reserved to make the bad ones suffer, and the bullies and savage sadists ultimately met pains that came in larger dimensions than even their base and brutal imaginations could conjure. Some had cuticle nicks that festered until the arms withered off as minds went feeble, others went into lavatories and never returned, as bowels fell out with bowel movements and whole men disappeared, sucked down into their foul latrines. The ones she despised most she killed best, as in a nightmare, bare naked, rocking astride their sweating bodies, until that ultimate moment came when their bodies tensed, poised for satisfaction. That was when she put her finger to their Adam’s apple and deftly pushed the windpipe shut. Their eyes went wide as she watched with grim pleasure, their one final victory eternally denied. Thusly, every exit was tailored to suit a nature: some came tinged with regret, others felt better.

There was one she had almost spared. He was a military engineer, an officer and hero from the lost war for Crimea. All she cared for was his kindness, the thoughtfulness he showed by bringing bowls of fruit to their bedside in the morning, the way his green eyes gazed at her with so much affection, and how his hand resting on her hip made her cheeks blush as red as a cut thumb. “Don’t make me put this one down. I’ll walk away, but let’s let him live,” she said to Elga. The old woman said nothing, simply undertook the job herself. Passing as a chambermaid, Elga slipped some echoing curses into the folds of his uniform. The spell seeped into his chest at a steady rate until the delirium overtook him. Zoya received the news as she returned one morning to their grand hotel. He had hanged himself, tying sheets to the bannister and tossing himself down the wide open stairwell. As he choked to death, a fumbling, terrified guest tried to cut him loose with a dull dinner knife. Elga later admitted to the spell, said it had to be done, and after that day Zoya had never tried to save another.