Babayaga

rue de Tournon, s’il vous plaît ,” Oliver told the driver and then took the tinfoil out of his pocket and unwrapped it. Inside was a small piece of brown resinous material.
    “What is it?” asked Will.
    “Some narcotic, I suspect. Not sure what variety. You ever tried anything?”
    Will shook his head.
    “I liked hashish the few times I’ve tried it, found it fascinating,” Oliver said. “Of course Huxley’s written about the heavier stuff, peyote and mescaline, but even a bit of any mind-expanding drug can reveal a lot. Small wonder society tries to ban it. Too much illumination and people might find a way to connect the dots, they might start wondering why doughboys are dying to protect barons’ bankbooks. Can’t have that. So instead the state unscrews the tap on the greatest mind-deadening drug in the world, alcohol, while releasing the hysterical prosecutorial hounds on all that reefer madness.”
    “I don’t know,” said Will, amazed at how quickly Oliver could segue from witnessing a close friend’s death to expounding a random conspiracy theory, “You might be overthinking it.”
    “Well, I don’t know about that. Look at the facts, look at history, our own government got Willie Hearst’s papers to spread wholesale, widespread panic about cannabis, laws were passed, people were hauled off to prison, the distribution effectively quashed. Meanwhile, people drink themselves dumb every night. Can’t have the people thinking too much, right? So, maybe you’re correct, and perhaps that’s the point, we should all be doing considerably more overthinking.”
    “So was Boris a dopehead?”
    “Who, Boris, what?” Oliver shook his head as if he had been suddenly pulled back to reality “A dopehead? No, Boris was not a dopehead. He was merely a man seeking solace in an incredibly hostile world. I suspect, though, he might have gotten his hands on a bad batch.” He sniffed the resin again. “I have no real expertise here, but luckily I know a few who do. We’ll take a little detour and visit some friends.” He leaned forward. “ Pardonnez-moi, vous pouvez nous emmener au numéro dix, rue Jacob, s’il vous plaît .”
    “What about finding Ned?”
    “Under the circumstances, she’s going to have to wait.” He gave Will a forced grin. “Invisible hands are moving pieces on the board right now and I’m rather curious as to why.” As Oliver folded up the tinfoil and tucked it back in his vest pocket, Will noticed that Oliver’s hands were shaking.
    XI

    Zoya entered her apartment and looked around. There was still no sign of Max. Now this was odd, she thought. Usually the rat would have sniffed her out within two or three days. She thought of checking in again with Elga. But the last few visits had been too unsettling, lately there seemed to be a constant undercurrent of impatience and anger that rose like winter sap out of the old woman’s moods. Zoya wondered if Elga was finally going mad, perhaps from too many centuries of stewing those vestigial remnants of spent spells in the rotting murk of her mind.
    Zoya caught herself in the mirror. She was in essence the same young woman she had been for so long now; little had changed. How long had it been since that day when she had almost died in those cold Russian woods, an exile, stripped of every bond and affection, her heart scraped raw and her ribs sore from weeping? She was so newly grown into the fulsome body of a woman as to be still only a child, two children really, the other nascent one not yet stirring within her, though already so hungry. She would recall that hunger, the only thing about her child she would ever know. (To this day, whenever she found herself in bustling Parisian brasseries, watching wealthy tourists abandon their uneaten baguette or cheese plates, it filled her with such a quick, intuitive anger that she would instinctively hiss maledictions at their heels.)
    She could still recall stumbling upon that trace scent of food as she wandered, staggering, starving, and lost in the woods so many dawns ago. Venison, she had been sure it was venison, a thin fatty smell sneaking through the needled larch to find her. The faint aroma had caught her like a fish on a hook, pulling her step by step deeper into the forest until she finally came across the lone hut. Unlike in the fairy tales, the little house did not stand on chicken legs, but was raised instead on thick stilts of stunted birch. Stumbling out of the red