Babayaga

pains that came in larger dimensions than even their base and brutal imaginations could conjure. Some had cuticle nicks that festered until the arms withered off as minds went feeble, others went into lavatories and never returned, as bowels fell out with bowel movements and whole men disappeared, sucked down into their foul latrines. The ones she despised most she killed best, as in a nightmare, bare naked, rocking astride their sweating bodies, until that ultimate moment came when their bodies tensed, poised for satisfaction. That was when she put her finger to their Adam’s apple and deftly pushed the windpipe shut. Their eyes went wide as she watched with grim pleasure, their one final victory eternally denied. Thusly, every exit was tailored to suit a nature: some came tinged with regret, others felt better.
    There was one she had almost spared. He was a military engineer, an officer and hero from the lost war for Crimea. All she cared for was his kindness, the thoughtfulness he showed by bringing bowls of fruit to their bedside in the morning, the way his green eyes gazed at her with so much affection, and how his hand resting on her hip made her cheeks blush as red as a cut thumb. “Don’t make me put this one down. I’ll walk away, but let’s let him live,” she said to Elga. The old woman said nothing, simply undertook the job herself. Passing as a chambermaid, Elga slipped some echoing curses into the folds of his uniform. The spell seeped into his chest at a steady rate until the delirium overtook him. Zoya received the news as she returned one morning to their grand hotel. He had hanged himself, tying sheets to the bannister and tossing himself down the wide open stairwell. As he choked to death, a fumbling, terrified guest tried to cut him loose with a dull dinner knife. Elga later admitted to the spell, said it had to be done, and after that day Zoya had never tried to save another.
    Wherever they traveled, Zoya always found a way into the bright chandeliered wings and the warm officers’ quarters where the toasts came from crystal glasses and they cut their meat with silver, but Elga could always be found close-by, down in the scullery, or off in the servants’ wing, or, after the long day’s battles, out among the fields of the dead and dying, digging through the entrails of the infantry corpses, cutting out gall bladders, bile sacs, testes, and spleen for later utility. When doubts arose in Zoya’s heart, and over the years they intermittently did, Elga seemed to have a knack for showing up by her side, consoling Zoya with blunt woodland wisdom, explaining how it was all righteous, even merciful. “It is only fair and only just,” Elga would say. “Men have dragged us by our hair through the ages, and whether they give us crumbs or bright, shiny rocks, they truly give us nothing at all. If you have not opened your legs for them so that they could crawl out as babies or crawl in as men, then they will leave you to starve like a dog on the street. So now we are done playing the way they want us to play. Now we are moving to music they cannot hear, to a rhythm they cannot understand. They call it madness and we call it truth and find me the magistrate you can trust to judge between the two? Bah. So we dance on, we dance on.” At this, Elga would start stamping her foot hard to an offbeat rhythm and flash Zoya a mischievous smile.
    So they danced on. Still, lingering regrets and resentments of all those hard decisions stayed with Zoya, like gristle trapped in her teeth or wax in her ears, and now, when the feelings were rising again and she needed some reassurance, the old woman had sent her off to be alone. It frustrated Zoya. Fine, she thought, I don’t need her, I certainly don’t miss her; after all, I have stayed away these past few years for good reason.
    She recalled how they would once scuttle from camp to camp, city to city, plucking bright gold from the bloodstained hands of doomed officers and shining silver from the soiled fingers of ill-fated miners who all soon after died, cut down by saber or buried beneath whole falling mountains. Back then, the world was its own boiling cauldron of constant violence, the wars and battles never ceased, one Balkan war rolled into another that spawned a world war and then one more. Industry and iron erupted from the earth, soldiers and cannon clogged the roads and crowded the stations, ore filled the hulls of ships, and crates of raw