Babayaga

the most splendid and celebrated prima ballerina in the world. She imagined a sea of roses falling at her feet as bouquets were tossed up to her on the Opera House stage. Next, she thought, she wished to be a movie star, like her idol Audrey Hepburn, wearing glistening pearls and diamonds that sparkled as the flashbulbs went off, capturing her kissing her tall, handsome husband on the Cannes red carpet. Oh yes, she thought, who will my husband be? Who? Who? With her mouth full of chocolate cake, Noelle was now bouncing on the mattress, tickled by all the possibilities. She quickly ran through her options, deciding she did not want to marry another film star, because they always had to kiss the other pretty actresses in other movies and she did not like to share. She did not want to marry a president or king, they were often overthrown or guillotined; and she did not want to marry a soldier, even a heroic one, because they were always being shot. Businessmen were boring, doctors came home with diseases, and race-car drivers had a tendency to crash and burn. She thought about a young man who worked in her village, helping a local beekeeper. He was a tall, thin boy with curly brown hair whom she knew only from watching him walk through town carrying his smokers and gear, often awkwardly weighed down by his harvested honey. He was shy, and she was shy, but by the time she scraped out the last bit of crème brûlée from the bottom of its ramekin, she had decided on her course of action.
    First, however, she had to get the kitchen to prepare this egg for her, which was turning out to be difficult. “Please, sir,” Noelle said, “it is only one egg.”
    The stubborn chef threw up his hands. “I have said no, and little girls need to learn that no means no.”
    “No only means no until you say yes,” she said with a smile.
    He returned to the onions he had been mincing.
    Noelle thought for a moment, wondering what Elga would do in this situation. “Hmmm, well, I am sorry,” she finally said, looking around the kitchen. “The chef at my father’s house would cook it for me. You know, his kitchen is a lot like this, only a little bigger.” The hotel chef kept chopping at his onions. “He is an old chef, Louis is his name. Sweet Louis,” she continued. “I think he has grown half blind and now Papa does not like his food at all, he says his broths are flavorless and watery and his roasts are so dull even salt cannot help them.” The chef slowed, listening as Noelle spun her story. “Yes, it won’t be long before Louis is gone and Papa needs a new chef. Have you ever been to Monte Carlo?”
    The chef put down his knife and came over to the girl. “How do you want your egg?”
    “Cooked on both sides, but keep it runny, and then put it on a slice of dry white toast.”
    He took it from her hands. “You are a silly little girl. I will put it between two pieces of toast, then you can eat it like a sandwich.”
    “Thank you.” She curtsied and the chef shook his head.
    A few moments later, she carefully carried the fried-egg sandwich on its white china plate down the long, high-ceilinged hallway back to her suite. There, she hopped into the big, comfortable velvet chair and gave the chicken a conspiratorial wink before opening her mouth wide and taking her first bite.
    Within seconds she was lying in convulsions on the floor, kicking her legs spasmodically, flailing her arms, and snapping her neck back and forth. Her eyes had rolled up so that only the whites showed and her veins bulged and pulsed out from her skin as the visions flooded her mind with the force of a storm’s foaming waters breaking through an overwhelmed dam.
    Over the next two hours, in the muscular thrall of this unrelenting seizure, Noelle saw many things, but she did not see the beekeeping boy.
    VI

    Will was in Detroit. He wasn’t sure how he had gotten there, but it was a sunny day and he was walking down Congress Street toward Woodward Avenue. There was the Guardian Building straight ahead, with the classical Buell Building towering up on his left. He could smell the yeast from the Stroh’s brewery and hear the distant clickety-clack of a streetcar traveling down Michigan Avenue. Then Will stopped, puzzled. On the corner where the Ford Building should have been there stood a weathered saltbox farmhouse with white clapboard siding. A little beyond that a Holstein cow grazed on a patch of grass by the intersection with Griswold.
    The