Babayaga

did not speak as the stations passed. He looked at his feet and then looked up to read the signs posted in the car, but his eyes kept wandering back to her. She wore a red sweater, yellow scarf, and a simple beret that her long black hair spilled out, falling down around her shoulders. Her cheekbones were high, framing a pair of strong, clear blue irises that managed to find his gaze whenever it wandered back to her face. Then they would both turn away with a blush and a smile. A small dark bruise below her right eye made him feel instinctively protective. Had she been hit? Who would hit a woman?

Finally, as they approached the George V station, she said, “I’m sorry, have we met before?”

“No, maybe, I don’t know, I think I would remember if we had.” He fumbled his words, embarrassed and awkward. The train screeched to its stop and he rose to leave. He thought about asking for her number, but it felt too awkward, too sudden. Still, that gaze.

“Well then,” she said, rising to go, “until we meet again.”

He nodded politely. As they left the car, she turned toward the station’s southeast exit. He thought about going back to stop her, to say something funny or charming, at the very least to catch her eye one more time, but it seemed silly and he was tired. Although it was still relatively early, it already felt like it had been a long night and he did not have time for any more foolishness. Up on the street the rain had stopped. He turned off the Champs- Elysees and walked up into his neighborhood, where the comforting scents of bread baking and simmering kitchens seemed to leak out from every apartment and cafe. It was late into the dinner hour and the aromas of roasting lemon chickens, garlic sausages, and peppered lamb all spilled onto the street, mingling there with the pungent petrichor that always followed an autumn rain. Will realized he had not eaten yet, so he stopped in at the Basque’s place for a bowl of steamed mussels and a pichet. There was a newspaper lying on the table that he picked up and read. An article described how the world’s leading nations had met at a conference and divided up Antarctica, cutting it up into slices like pie. He paid the check and went home.

There was no mail in his slot and the elevator was slow going up. When he finally opened the door to his dark apartment, Boris hit him hard in the face with the phone book, knocking him down onto the cold, tiled floor.

A light was turned on and he opened his eyes. “Hullo.” Oliver stood above him, wearing an expression that reminded Will of the grin young boys give their captured butterflies right before they begin plucking off the wings. Then Will passed out again.

IX

Witches’ Song One

Wait, wait, don’t rush past too fast,
such the busy bolting red squirrel, you there
scurrying around the hard, bare field, to what?
That there? That nettled haven of a hedge?
Careful, teeth may lie in those shadows too.
Glance back here first, through the tumble of time
yes, here, see that bundle of dirty laundry
stuffed now with so much useless flesh,
all spilled about to soil the pure snow,
with deep red blood, leaking free
from my cracked, hollowing husk,
as sisters and life all gallop away
with freshly stolen horses.

Mourning, lonely and lone as the black moon,
I trailed the four, trudging till I found my Lyda
wandering lost like some untethered blinking mule,
a sole specter dragging wet
along those rough timbered banks of ice,
the shoreline stacked with bleached stone and winter branches
as gray as my drained, dried veins.

Lyda was sputtering, spitting out scales,
already talking dumb as a dead fish.
I told her to come along and she came.

The trails of the dead plod on,
we never stop for feast or song,
following beneath winter’s skeleton trees,
our weight no greater than a hard frost’s whisperings.
We finally sensed Basha too, looming
invisible, sulking, and brooding,
her only substance the shade of darkness
that comes to murderous concentration.
Silent as slate, hear me say solemnly,
her ghost frightens even me.

So, some company I’ve got,
a river’s raw stew, a stomach’s turgid gas,
the two each saying nothing I can fathom
but poking, pointing, divining a path.
Lacking the firmness of fates, we are no more than
broken pianos, warped keys, shattered hammers,
our sheet music dancing off with the wind, blowing loose and bleak,
but we have our certain melody, yes, we do, don’t we?

See the girl meet the young man?
See the man meet the young man?
See the young man become what then?
Not yet? Maybe never?

All souls believe they make their own way
and spin out their path’s filament through bold free will
and yet we are the spiders, aren’t we, yes,
voracious and certain,