Free Babayaga: A Novel by Toby Barlow

There was a newspaper lying on the table that he picked up and read. An article described how the world’s leading nations had met at a conference and divided up Antarctica, cutting it up into slices like pie. He paid the check and went home.
    There was no mail in his slot and the elevator was slow going up. When he finally opened the door to his dark apartment, Boris hit him hard in the face with the phone book, knocking him down onto the cold, tiled floor.
    A light was turned on and he opened his eyes. “Hullo.” Oliver stood above him, wearing an expression that reminded Will of the grin young boys give their captured butterflies right before they begin plucking off the wings. Then Will passed out again.
    IX
    Witches’ Song One
    Wait, wait, don’t rush past too fast,
    such the busy bolting red squirrel, you there
    scurrying around the hard, bare field, to what?
    That there? That nettled haven of a hedge?
    Careful, teeth may lie in those shadows too.
    Glance back here first, through the tumble of time
    yes, here, see that bundle of dirty laundry
    stuffed now with so much useless flesh,
    all spilled about to soil the pure snow,
    with deep red blood, leaking free
    from my cracked, hollowing husk,
    as sisters and life all gallop away
    with freshly stolen horses.
    Mourning, lonely and lone as the black moon,
    I trailed the four, trudging till I found my Lyda
    wandering lost like some untethered blinking mule,
    a sole specter dragging wet
    along those rough timbered banks of ice,
    the shoreline stacked with bleached stone and winter branches
    as gray as my drained, dried veins.
    Lyda was sputtering, spitting out scales,
    already talking dumb as a dead fish.
    I told her to come along and she came.
    The trails of the dead plod on,
    we never stop for feast or song,
    following beneath winter’s skeleton trees,
    our weight no greater than a hard frost’s whisperings.
    We finally sensed Basha too, looming
    invisible, sulking, and brooding,
    her only substance the shade of darkness
    that comes to murderous concentration.
    Silent as slate, hear me say solemnly,
    her ghost frightens even me.
    So, some company I’ve got,
    a river’s raw stew, a stomach’s turgid gas,
    the two each saying nothing I can fathom
    but poking, pointing, divining a path.
    Lacking the firmness of fates, we are no more than
    broken pianos, warped keys, shattered hammers,
    our sheet music dancing off with the wind, blowing loose and bleak,
    but we have our certain melody, yes, we do, don’t we?
    See the girl meet the young man?
    See the man meet the young man?
    See the young man become what then?
    Not yet? Maybe never?
    All souls believe they make their own way
    and spin out their path’s filament through bold free will
    and yet we are the spiders, aren’t we, yes,
    voracious and certain,
    shuffling on, luring and stalking,
    tracing out the perimeter
    of those tautened spans.
    Basha is the one guiding the way,
    with the sure force of a cemetery’s gravity,
    she and we go here and there
    and then she stops from time to time
    to softly seethe with hissing vipers, to hoot with shrewd owls,
    and to whisper with other sapient creatures.
    She is our vengeful matchmaker
    all thoughts set fast
    on village death.
    There is a set point, a marked destination,
    And while we cook, chop, and boil,
    I cannot say what its flavor will be.
    But watching our busy Lyda, helping too,
    I’m fairly sure it will taste like fish.
    X
    Exiting the metro early before work, Charles Vidot took his time strolling to the precinct house. Maroc, his recently appointed superior and now day-to-day nemesis, had posted the week’s assignments the evening before and, spitefully it seemed, had assigned Vidot an extra shift. This meant for two nights a week Vidot would have to remain at the station until two in the morning. It was not an assignment an officer of Vidot’s seniority and rank should have received, but it seemed he had, in some manner, accidentally initiated a battle of wills