Babayaga

bearing of the little beast staring up at him. Andrei gasped and fell backward in shock. The stars now streaked down like daggers descending upon him as the world above him spun widly. He heard the women laughing and a voice he knew as his own cried out, and then the heavens all reeled into blackness.
    When he awoke, he was alone in the woods, lying by the smoldering gray and white ashes of the abandoned campsite’s dead fire. He knew if he ran he could overtake the women on the road, perhaps rescue his brother, and turn them over to the magistrate. But instead he closed his eyes and slept again. His sleep was deep.
    When he finally awoke again, it was nearly dusk. He rebuilt the fire and sat contemplating his path. He felt he could not return to the monastery, yet he had no other home. Walking on to the next town, he stopped only briefly, sending letters to his relatives and to the priests saying that Max had disappeared. He was certain those who knew his brother would simply nod knowingly, for Max was always the sort doomed to vanish through some misadventure or lapse in judgment. Then Andrei wandered west, finding harvest, market, and scrap work in the hamlets, villages, and larger cities, slowly working to absorb and accept the strange new truths he had learned about the world.
    Along the way, the women crossed his path again, first finding him scrubbing laundry in a Kiev hospital. Andrei was not surprised when they showed up. After that, they made it their habit to come and go at their whim, whenever he could be useful to their ends. He did not know how they traced his trail, he suspected the wine bottle they had shared that night by the campfire was part of some enchantment, a binding communion, making it impossible for him to ever lose them, or maybe that rat simply had a very good nose. Whatever their methods, Andrei was amazed to see how they controlled what others called coincidence, not only finding people but drawing them in as well. They lured prey to their door when they were hungry, pushed rivals together when they needed blood, and drove lovers into fevered embrace when they desired entertainment. Once you crossed their path, any conceit of free will became a fanciful notion.
    Still, he tried to break free. Always itinerant, he attempted vanishing into various careers and stations, consciously hoping that each transformation would help him escape from the past. At times a soldier, a baker, a vagrant, a drunk, he had finally drifted back to the priesthood. It had been a pragmatic decision, not any sort of idealistic reconciliation. He did not regain his piety; he felt alternately angry and agnostic toward God, suspicious of any theology that could not explain what he had seen with his own two eyes, but he felt comfortable returning to the familiar patterns of his simple roots. So, here he was, decades later, tending his small garden in the fading light. Brushing the red clay off his hands, he headed to the farmhouse. The young girl was gone and the house silent. He suspected that Elga had already packed up and taken her to the city.
    In a few hours he would mount his rickety yellow bicycle and ride down the narrow road to an ivy-laden, crumbling château. Inside was a small chapel. There he would say evening prayers to a congregation composed of one very pious Orthodox couple. They were ancient and wealthy and, like him, they had been exiled from their homeland of Russia for nearly half a century. They would kneel at the analogion and confess their imagined sins as he patiently listened. Then, as always, he would read them their absolution, and they would meekly smile, and he would smile back, knowing that at the same time another ancient friend of his was driving a young child toward the city, intent on evils that no God imaginable could ever forgive.
    X

    After working their way across town, making many fruitless stops at empty bistros, cafés, and apartments where no one answered, Oliver had the driver drop them off on a bustling corner on Place Pigalle. Crossing the promenade, they entered a small café a few doors down from the Grand Guignol. The waitress lit up with a bright “ Ah, bonjour, Oliver!” kissing him on both cheeks before leading them up to the second floor. A Line Renaud LP was playing low on the turntable in the corner. They made their way to the back of the room, where, amid a scattered assortment of oddly arranged tables, they found Boris playing cards with five other men. The