Babayaga

was riding on.
    Distracted with these thoughts, Vidot lost count of the floors as they climbed up the stairs and did not notice which floor they were on when they finally started down a hallway, the sniffing rat leading the way until he stopped at a door. The old woman leaned forward and ran her fingers along the edge of the frame as she carefully inspected the door from top to bottom, sniffing now like a shopper suspicious of cheese. Finally, she pulled a white envelope from her pocket. She poured out a handful of a brown substance and, crouching down, blew it beneath the doorsill. Vidot could smell it, cinnamon. He couldn’t imagine how that spice could possibly help Elga and his brain was feeling sorely taxed from trying to make sense of so many irrational events. He decided it was time to stop swimming against the currents of all these nonsensical details and simply ride along in this wild and fantastical flood.
    The old woman was now stooped on her knees in the hallway, picking the lock with a hairpin. The noise of a door opening down the hall made Vidot look up and he observed a small, balding man emerging from the neighboring room. Vidot felt his tiny heart skip a beat, certain that they would be discovered. He was not sure why he was nervous—he was, after all, the most insignificant player in this caper—yet when the neighbor walked past without a second look, Vidot exhaled with relief. He had to respect the audacity of this old woman, so confident in her camouflage that she had not even looked up from her work as the stranger passed by. The lock clicked and the door creaked open. “You go in first,” the woman said to the girl.
    “Me? Why?” asked Noelle, clutching her chicken close to her chest.
    “Because you are innocent. Now go. This is the last time this trick will work for you,” she said and pushed the girl forward. Elga and the rat followed.
    Vidot watched as Elga quickly took charge of the situation. First, she took the kitchen chair and stood it in the center of the floor, facing the door. “You sit there, so you are the first thing she sees. When she comes in, you start saying these two words, ‘knife light,’ over and over, like a chant.”
    The girl sat hesitantly down on the chair. “Why ‘knife light’?”
    “Why, why why? Why does your finger fit so perfectly in your nose? To get the buggers out. Do not ask so many stupid questions. Do what I say, repeat it over and over, no matter what happens, no matter what occurs. There may be smoke, fire, blood, I don’t know. But do not be scared, do not let yourself be distracted, repeat it over and over again. Got it?”
    “I think so,” said the girl.
    “Good.” Next the woman took a piece of chalk out and went to the door. With her elbow she erased some chalk marks written there and in their place she scrawled a new hieroglyphic. “If you do this well, we will go buy you a new winter coat. Maybe one with a fur collar. You would like that, yes?”
    The girl’s eyes grew big. “Yes, I would.”
    “Right. So be good. Remember, ‘knife light, knife light, knife light.’ Repeat it like that.” Elga went to unpack her case. From its depths she brought out the clock. How had she gotten her hands on that? He recalled that day so clearly, finding Bemm on his way to the station, meeting with the shopkeeper in his storeroom, watching from the pharmacy as she dropped the clock off and then following the woman home. Yes, he thought, Elga must have gone back to the shop. He did not like to think about how she got the owner to hand the clock over. It was a sobering realization, reminding him that he could not let his habitual bemusement distract him from the fact that this woman was perhaps the greatest single evil the city had seen since the mass murderer Petiot preyed on his victims. Vidot squinted his small insect eyes at her and waited for what was to come next.
    For the next hour he watched as Elga took a small screwdriver and systematically dismantled the ancient clock, meticulously removing its escapement from the frame, then carefully disassembling the springs and hands and all the other mechanical features until finally a hundred or so pieces were spread around her on the rough wooden floor, as if she were the center of some marvelously ordered brass universe.
    After that, nothing happened. Elga set herself down in the middle of this vast circle of parts and remained seated there, completely quiet. The girl called Noelle