Babayaga

talking. “Yesterday a policeman came out from the city asking about Elga. Have you seen her?” He poured the tea.
    “Yes,” she said and continued to stare out the window. “I have seen her. Only days ago. Maybe it was yesterday? I can’t even remember. So much has happened.” She sighed. “I have news to tell you.”
    Andrei sat down across from her. “What is it you have to tell me, Zoya?”
    She looked up. “Max is dead. I am sorry.”
    Andrei closed his eyes and instinctively prayed for grace.
    “There was a fight,” she bluntly went on while he kept his eyes shut. “I was attacked by Elga; she was insane and she wanted me to die. She had a girl there with her. They had me trapped in their spells. I needed a distraction to break the girl’s concentration. So I killed Max and the girl screamed and I got the time I needed to escape. Again, I am sorry.” She stopped talking and he looked at her again, her fingers nervously tapping the handle of her teacup.
    For almost sixty years, Andrei had watched his little brown brother scratch and sniff across the continent in a strange otherworldly state. Part of him had been waiting for the spell to end so that they could be reunited, while another part had hoped Max would vanish completely into the ether, taking all this unwanted mystery with him. Andrei had never thought Max would die before he did, he believed his brother was protected, his mortality locked up within the whorls of magic. Hearing the news, Andrei’s first thought was not grief but worry that this spell had been sustaining them both, as though participating in the strangeness of Max’s adventure had been what kept him going, either magically or because he refused to end his days unsure of how the grim fairy tale ended. How many wars had been waged, how many cities conquered, how many maps redrawn, while his brother was tucked inside wool coat pockets or stashed in steamer trunks or scurrying to and fro across gutters and granaries as the circumstances demanded? Throughout it all Andrei had never lost the connection to his brother. But now it was done. Max was gone. A door unlatched in his heart and Andrei felt something slip out; he wondered if he needed it. Sitting quietly at the table with Zoya, a new emptiness inside him, all Andrei knew was that he was honestly not sad at the loss of Max, he was only aware that his own shadow of time had just grown a full length longer, crossing some unseen line.
    He looked up and saw the anxious expression of the woman across from him. She was waiting for his answer. “I must thank you for coming and telling me this yourself. It is surprisingly thoughtful of you. But I guess in a way we were all family. Do not feel bad, though. My brother truly died many years ago, Zoya,” he said. “He was drowned in his own black sea even before you met him.” Zoya still looked worried, so he told her what she needed to hear, a fact he suspected she knew already. “In his heart, my brother was always a rat.” Now she did look relieved. Andrei gave her a half smile and patted her hand, thinking to himself, Well, here we are, a lost witch seeking absolution from a broken priest. These must be modern times.
    “Where are you heading to?”
    Zoya shook her head. “I don’t know. I’m here with some people, we are leaving Paris,” she said. “But I’m not sure where we’re going.”
    The priest thought about how many times he had asked that same question and heard some version of that same answer from Zoya. He realized a woman as beautiful and self-possessed as Zoya never needed to know where she was heading, she only needed to know what to do once she got there. “Who are your friends?”
    “Two Americans. They’re waiting in the car. I told them you could help us. We need to find a place to hide, very serious people are after us.”
    “You can stay here,” said Andrei. “The policeman told me they had Elga in jail for stealing a car. I doubt they will keep her for long, but she won’t be here for at least a few days.”
    Zoya thought this over, then nodded. “We will stay one day, then we will be on our way. We’ll take the train.”
    “Didn’t you come in a car?”
    “One of the Americans is taking it back. The other is coming with me. You can drive us to the station after we’ve rested.”
    Andrei grinned. He knew Zoya was kinder than Elga, but years with the old woman had made her almost as presumptuous and demanding. “I’d be happy to.