Babayaga

whispered the tiniest of spells and touched his ear to keep him asleep a little longer. They had crawled into bed exhausted soon after Oliver had left that morning. He had departed with a promise to “sort things out proper” with the authorities. “Don’t worry, I’ll go to the embassy first. I have a bit of pull there.” Putting on his hat, he said he would send word when the coast was clear. “Head south,” he suggested, “to Antibes. There’s a little hotel down there that Scott and Zelda used to stay at. The Hotel Belle Rive. Lovely spot, right by the water’s edge. Shut yourselves in your suite, find some dance music on the radio, and order up room service till you hear from me. Shouldn’t be long.” Then he smiled a perfectly confident smile that reminded her of a lawyer leaving his client at the gallows, promising a pardon that never comes.
    She was quite sure she would never see him again, not because he was a bad man, but because men like Oliver, though sincere in their dedications, also suffered from a squirrel’s tendency to be distracted by any random acorn that fell on their path. These were the men who committed their betrayals casually and effortlessly, letting people down with little malice and less concern. Promises were simply nice solid-sounding words to them, and so, as Oliver’s car drove off, she was relieved to see him go. After all, he had been useful, but he was used up. She did not mean to judge him, she merely observed. But what she saw was what she had seen all too often, a silly, vain creature who had been raised to believe the universe spun around him, when in fact he was the one spinning in the darkness, circling truths he could never hope to perceive.
    Besides, she recalled, he was so lazy in bed.
    Will stirred in his sleep; she let him rest. When they first climbed up to the loft she had arranged their pallet, laying the priest’s spare sheets and blankets over straw and filling buttoned shirts with clean stable rags for makeshift pillows. He sat on a stool, watching her work, telling her of Bendix, the drugs, and the vivid dream he had been chased through. While she was intrigued to hear about the hallucination’s landscape and the mystery man who had saved him, she was more interested to hear about this scientist who, she learned, had once hunted her and killed her friend and stolen their secrets. A rage swelled inside her but she bit her tongue: this was not something she could share with Will. “Oliver is right,” she said, lying down on the sheets, “we need to go south.”
    “Where to?”
    “Not to Antibes, not to anyplace where anyone knows we could be.” She paused to think. “If we cut across the Pyrenees, we could disappear into Spain. Maybe go down near Gibraltar, then we can always cross to Algeria or Morocco if we need to. We should be fine.” She gave him a reassuring smile and stretched her body out across their makeshift bed. “I know how to travel.” She reached across to her lover. Elga had once told her that no man could run like they could run, pride and weakness always slowed a man down. “We move like the water, they move like fat fish. It looks like it will work, but it doesn’t. Their big stupid balls always slow them down.” But Zoya was sure Elga was wrong. Will had tumbled into her life the same way he fell into her arms now, full of vitality and lustful energy. He had no strong ties to any history calling him back and no ambition of where to go. He could be hers, entirely, and she did not plan on letting go. Tightly embracing, they licked, bucked, and bit, rolling over and into each other through the morning until they both lay exhausted again, his chest bellowing hard, her skin chafed raw by his stubble. Soon he had slipped off to sleep. Now, hours later, she ached to wake him again. She wanted the feeling of his hands on her hips and his body hard inside her. She had felt a difference, an awakening, a new kind of appetite, deeper than the simpler one that so often gnawed at her; this was a fresh hunger that she liked, promising a union that filled her heart with warm blood and satisfaction. She wanted more.
    Outside, the birds stopped chirping. She noticed the silence immediately. She was feeling cautious, though she knew birds quieted for many reasons. A dog or a fox could be passing nearby, or a hawk could be gliding overhead. Perhaps the priest had returned, though she guessed that he might have come and gone already,