Babayaga

had sold for any comment to matter now—instead she kissed him on the cheek and heated up some carrot soup. A little later Dottie boiled a large pot of water and filled the bath, a narrow steel tub that sat in the corner of the loft. Billy combed her hair while she soaked. When she was done, Billy took their dog out again for a long walk, and when he returned, the mutt’s fleas were meticulously harvested, bottled, and placed up on the shelf. In the afternoon Dottie sat and modeled again while Billy painted. Debussy’s La Mer played on the radio.
    When Billy rose from the easel and put away the paints, Vidot knew it was time. He sucked in his breath and waited, watching as, one by one, Dottie reached for the bottles on the shelf. The first bottled flea caused Billy no problems. Within seconds the flea emerged attached to a harness and was swiftly put away. The fate of the second one, however, was exactly what Vidot most feared. After disappearing beneath the white hood, his neighbor’s mauled carcass was quickly swept out, falling to the floor before it had even finished its final convulsions. Vidot had no time for sympathy, for at that moment Dottie reached for his vial.
    The moment Billy shook him down onto the hard white paper Vidot began his charade. You’re going to have to force yourself to march, he told himself, march, march, march, though it is against your instinct, though every microgram in your exoskeleton is begging you to leap, to soar, to break free and escape the doom that awaits, this is the time you must march. He tried to remember what it was like to march in unison with his fellow cadets in his youth brigade. But that brought other memories that were even darker than his current condition, so he blanked them from his mind and kept marching beneath Billy’s careful gaze.
    Observing his neighbors the night before, Vidot had come to the conclusion that while most fleas jumped, there were some fleas that could not jump at all, and these, he assumed, were the ones that Billy put into the chariot harnesses. Vidot knew his only hope at outwitting a man who had been outthinking fleas for more than thirty years was to convince the man that he was the wrong kind of flea. As he marched across the table, he prayed it would be enough. Vidot saw the gleam of the tweezers coming down. Then he jumped.
    The fist came smashing down hard on the table behind him as he leapt. He had spotted a fold in the tenting where he knew he could hide for a moment. When Billy lifted the fabric to find him, Vidot leapt again, right over his captor’s head, through the small opening and out into the rich, warm kaleidoscopic light of freedom. He did not pause to look back, he did not know if he had enraged the circus ringleader or if his escape was being shrugged off as a minor irritation. He thought he heard Billy curse, and the little mutt barked, but Vidot did not pause to worry as he leapt, jumped, and practically flew up to the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, the great wide open window.
    Only after he passed across the threshold and began tumbling and spinning down toward the cobblestone street below did it occur to Vidot that leaping out from a fifth-floor apartment’s window might not be the most prudent path to liberty.
    XIX

    Witches’ Song Five

    Oh no, oh no, tut-tut, look and scream,
    your pretty pest has gone,
    flailing and flying over the abyss
    heading to be flattened,
    most certainly flat, on the solid surface below.
    So, tell me, do, who will you pray to now, pious ones?
    What divine hand swoops in for the rescue?
    Ah, let me guess, some manly shade, yes?
    Some broad-shouldered musky balled spirit?
    A pretty boy Jesus? An undaunted Allah?
    Or some wizened circumcised Jew with neat sea-parting tricks?
    Boys, boys, so many boys you have placed
    in control of your dreams, destiny, fortune, and fate, why?
    Tell me this too: where was your own father
    when you stumbled and fell?
    Who scooped you up and set you right on your path,
    swatting your bum for luck as you ran off, weeping “waaa-waaa”
    through your lush ivy gardens?
    See there, it was a woman’s hand that set you right. Yes.
    Your mother or matron or nana who watched and nurtured.
    So why this faith in the swollen and awesome
    all-present phallic-bearing force?
    Why do you pray for what you’ve never known?
    It’s not that we’re envious or spiteful, no,
    frankly we don’t much care,
    Lyda spits out her distaste for Poseidon
    in fish