Babayaga

Wherever they traveled, Zoya always found a way into the bright chandeliered wings and the warm officers’ quarters where the toasts came from crystal glasses and they cut their meat with silver, but Elga could always be found close-by, down in the scullery, or off in the servants’ wing, or, after the long day’s battles, out among the fields of the dead and dying, digging through the entrails of the infantry corpses, cutting out gall bladders, bile sacs, testes, and spleen for later utility. When doubts arose in Zoya’s heart, and over the years they intermittently did, Elga seemed to have a knack for showing up by her side, consoling Zoya with blunt woodland wisdom, explaining how it was all righteous, even merciful. “It is only fair and only just,” Elga would say. “Men have dragged us by our hair through the ages, and whether they give us crumbs or bright, shiny rocks, they truly give us nothing at all. If you have not opened your legs for them so that they could crawl out as babies or crawl in as men, then they will leave you to starve like a dog on the street. So now we are done playing the way they want us to play. Now we are moving to music they cannot hear, to a rhythm they cannot understand. They call it madness and we call it truth and find me the magistrate you can trust to judge between the two? Bah. So we dance on, we dance on.” At this, Elga would start stamping her foot hard to an offbeat rhythm and flash Zoya a mischievous smile.

So they danced on. Still, lingering regrets and resentments of all those hard decisions stayed with Zoya, like gristle trapped in her teeth or wax in her ears, and now, when the feelings were rising again and she needed some reassurance, the old woman had sent her off to be alone. It frustrated Zoya. Fine, she thought, I don’t need her, I certainly don’t miss her; after all, I have stayed away these past few years for good reason.

She recalled how they would once scuttle from camp to camp, city to city, plucking bright gold from the bloodstained hands of doomed officers and shining silver from the soiled fingers of ill-fated miners who all soon after died, cut down by saber or buried beneath whole falling mountains. Back then, the world was its own boiling cauldron of constant violence, the wars and battles never ceased, one Balkan war rolled into another that spawned a world war and then one more. Industry and iron erupted from the earth, soldiers and cannon clogged the roads and crowded the stations, ore filled the hulls of ships, and crates of raw supplies stuffed the boxcars. Whole cities rose up from the earth, swallowing up the countryside and spoiling the landscape, in many places beyond recognition, and the birds’ evening songs were now forever warped by the constant, shrill scream of the ubiquitous engines.

Now, though, things seemed to be settling down. The great threat of atomic annihilation had made all the European soldiers finally hang up their guns and go home, like chastened children worried that their overbearing brute of a father might slap them around. Perhaps, thought Zoya, this is why Elga is so angry, because she misses the busyness and scheming that came with the great din of battle, for now there’s nothing to distract and drown out her own rattling mind; perhaps it is the silence that is driving her mad. But no matter the reason, thought Zoya, I do need to stay away from her, for good, if I can. She has used me and haunted me and taken too much. I do not need her around. The anger flared in Zoya’s mind. Why, if that rat showed up now, she thought, I might bite him right in half.

She smoked the owl pellets and sat with her mixture of visions. Afterward, she felt better. Applying her makeup before the small vanity mirror, she prepared for the evening’s errands. She was a little concerned about moving around the city so openly during the time when the streets were most crowded; she preferred to go out later at night, or even in those mid-afternoon hours when people had finished with lunch and were trapped at work or napping at home. She knew she had already been out too much this past week, exposing herself almost recklessly, but Zoya also knew she had to keep moving and stay on her toes, for now she had her prey marked. She needed to bring Will in soon, before he grew confused, or some other woman got in the way. She had a small window to build a strong and simple bond with her busy rabbit, which she planned to do by mixing the two ingredients men enjoy most, lust and conquest.