Babayaga

tiny-cocked corporal and the prudish cardinal who shit his bed. She told them about Catherine the Great’s sumptuous bedroom and all the proud noblemen the queen had bled dead in return for their affection. She let them know how bergamot oil could clear away pimples, how turnips made skin boils recede, and how to kill boot fungus with long soaks of cider vinegar.
    “I’ll tell you one important thing,” she said. “If you ever marry a man, don’t take his name. Tell him you’re untraditional, make a scene, have a fight, but”—she shook her finger in their faces—“always keep that one precious thing. Men want to swallow you down, take all of you, even your name, like a big fish gulps down minnows. I tell you, your name is the piece they cannot have. I have been chased by the law and I have been forced into hiding, but I have always used my own name, in every country where I have ever been, even if the police know it, it’s no matter. Your name is the only important word there is. If you lose your name, you lose your strength, and here amid the beasts you need all the strength you can get.”
    She asked which of them wanted a husband. Three of the women, blushing, raised their hands. Elga nodded. “See? That’s good,” she said, pointing at the giggling ones. “That’s the way you get a husband, through laughter and tears, back and forth, all the time, like one of those metronomes sitting on top of a fancy fat parlor piano. Tick tock, tick tock, tears and laughter, play it well and you will confuse and bewilder him and he can be yours. He will try to outthink you, outflank you, calm you down, but you can always dance around him with your weeping and your mirth, ha ha ha, until he is pulled under the same way a great whale drags the massive whalers deep to the bottom of the sea. Of course,” she shrugged, “it won’t work on the smart ones, but luckily, ha ha ha, the world has no shortage of stupid men.”
    At this, an awkward silence fell over the group. “What?” asked Elga. “Why so quiet?”
    One of the girls spoke up. “But what if I want to be with a man I can love and honor, not a big dumb oaf?”
    “Ah, um, I see, so you want a trick for that new kind of love you see all over your matinees and musicals? Boy meets girl and they hold hands, ha, you want that shit?” Elga spat on the floor. “Bah. Those tricks exist, yes. There is a spell for every hunger, every need, mmmn, yes, but, mmn…” She shook her head. “Only fools go there.” She was quiet for a few moments, stewing in her thoughts. Finally she noticed they were still watching. “Get away, leave me, go!” she shrieked. They huddled off to the far side of the cell while Elga sat on her thin pallet and brooded.
    These modern girls were too soft, she thought, even the tough ones wanted to be spoiled and pampered. None of them were warriors. Her mind wandered back to the beginning, when she traveled with the ancient trains of archer and spear. The leader of that first group, Oba, who had allowed Elga into their camp, now showed her the way. The other women welcomed her warily; one, named Temra, loaned her bedding and shared her ration. Another, named Rasha, gave her some torn rags along with a needle to sew her own clothes. They were following a chanyu’s army whose name Elga had since forgotten. She did recall how, after many months in the field, this ruler had drunkenly quarreled with Oba over their lot of plunder, and how that night, hours after the victory banquet, Elga was awoken by Rasha and told to quietly gather her things. One by one, the women followed Oba, stepping over the soldiers who lay, unmoving, on the banquet floor. Climbing high up the dry hills above the valley, Elga looked back at the silent camp. “I thank the stars no one awoke to catch us,” she said to Rasha.
    “Don’t thank the stars,” Rasha said with a wry smile, “thank poison.”
    That was when Elga realized how foolish it was to fear an army.
    Over the years, they found countless other khans, nizams, rajes, and princes to serve. Each time, victory followed their hire as they traced the armies’ paths across the fields, hills, ridges, and steppes, east to west and back again, laying the charms for victory, nursing the wounded, burning the dead, and taking their share of the bounty. The pattern was as constant as the North Star: after every battlefield success, their host’s pride would grow and swell until finally the vain and foolish