Babayaga

the chicken up under her arm, began making her way down the street with tentative, sleepy steps. A glowing green clock on the wall of a shuttered café told her it was three a.m. Perhaps Elga had driven off and forgotten her. That seemed possible, the old woman was moody and hard to predict. Noelle knew she had disappointed her in the fight with the bad woman, but Elga had seemed kind about it afterward, even forgiving. So it did not make sense that she would have abandoned her. There must be some other explanation.
    Noelle walked down toward what she thought was the center of the city. She knew if she followed the lights of the Eiffel Tower she would eventually reach the Seine and there, somewhere near the Louvre, she would find the hotel. All she wanted was to crawl into warm sheets and sleep. Oh, such a soft bed, how nice it would be. She looked down at the still bird in her arms. Was it dead? She paused to lean over and listen to it. It was breathing, making a barely perceptible soft, trembling sound as it slept. That cooing made her feel better.
    She had never walked alone in the city, and after she had continued for a few blocks she was surprised to find a particular comfort in the late-night emptiness. At her home back in the village, her parents had always spoken of Paris as a dangerous and forbidding place, seething with vague horrors. They never explicitly enumerated these terrors, though whenever there was talk of the city, her mother’s eyes would grow wide as if she were describing a goblin’s lair. Yet near her own home, Noelle would often find herself frightened in the woods, where there were spiders hanging from trees and writhing centipedes waiting under rocks. There in the forest, the wind creaked the bony branches, thorns scratched her face, and thick mud puddles sucked at her shoes, threatening to swallow her down. The city, by contrast, seemed quite predictable, paved and chiseled, with wide, smooth concrete sidewalks leading past the finely lettered windows of confectioners and tailors, bookshops and tobacconists. Even though they were closed, they were still comforting. All you had to worry about in cities were people, not the creatures of the wicked wilds; and for some reason, right now people did not worry Noelle very much. The chicken in her arms kept her warm, and she felt so content on her little adventure that she was tempted to start singing old nursery songs.
    It was only as she came near the Galeries Lafayette that she began to feel slightly nervous, because that was when she began to hear the clipped footsteps trailing behind her. The pace was the same as her own, and when she slowed to let the person pass, no one passed. She did not want to turn around, and she did not want to run, but she picked up her pace again and tried to walk faster. The footsteps behind her kept up. Perhaps, she thought, it was a policeman, or merely a grocer on his way to the early market. Still, she would not look back.
    She tried to distract herself by thinking about the Galeries. She had been there once a few seasons past when her mother had brought her into the city for Christmas shopping, and Noelle had hoped Elga would take her there as well. It was the most beautiful place, every little girl’s dream, like being inside a sparkling diamond or a sugar-tiered birthday cake. Her mother had bought her powdered beignets and currant scones—
    —Noelle’s thoughts froze as the footsteps behind her came closer still, so close that they were right behind her. Her heartbeat was racing fast as a hummingbird’s. She did not have any money or she would have run out into the street and flagged down one of the lonely black taxis that were occasionally passing by.
    “Good evening, mademoiselle.”
    The sound of his voice made the hair on her neck stand on end. She now felt as small and weak as a ladybug cowering beneath the shadow of a great descending boot. She dared not look up at the stranger. She kept walking, her eyes focused straight ahead. “Hello,” she said, hoping not to offend.
    “Do you have a spare sou?”
    “I do not,” she said, though she would have given the beggar any change she had to make him go away.
    “Oh,” said the stranger. “Very well then…”
    This short conversation had distracted her long enough that she had not seen the darkened gap of a courtyard that lay tucked between the approaching buildings. But the stranger had noticed. In one sudden motion, he pulled her up off