Babayaga by Barlow Toby

Author:Barlow, Toby [Barlow, Toby]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2013-09-17T16:00:00+00:00

A dazed Noelle sat cross-legged on the hotel bed, watching Elga dig through the oversized canvas carpetbag. The old woman had been bustling about the room for over an hour, muttering phrases to herself and barely acknowledging the girl. From the bottom of the bag the old woman hauled out a large bundle wrapped in an old sheet. Inside was an exquisite-looking clock, which she set on the table; then she went back to searching the carpetbag. After a minute of rummaging, she pulled out a pistol.

“Look around carefully and weigh all things, weigh them right, like a butcher weighs meat,” the old woman said, giving Noelle a raised eyebrow as she waved the pistol in the air. “Especially dumb toys like this. People think guns are important—ah, so much fear and lust over this chunk of steel, right? But like so much else, they are very wrong, guns are not important; they are stupid. But…” She held up her finger to make a point, then suddenly went back into her carpetbag, searching and digging until she came up with a box. “Bullets yes, bullets are important.”

“What do you have a gun for? What do you shoot?” asked Noelle.

“Oh, I’ve shot lots of things. Mostly food, animals, some troublemakers,” said Elga. “The other day, I had to shoot a stupid pig to shut up his big pig mouth. I was careful, though, I only used one bullet, see?” She pulled at the loading gate on the gun, unslid the rod, and the chamber popped out. Noelle could see it was full of bullets except for one empty casing. Elga popped the empty casing out, took a bullet from the box, and refilled the chamber. “First, I walked into the man’s store and put the gun right up to his head and pulled the trigger. No chance of missing there. Then, to be sure the idiot stayed quiet, I cut out his tongue.”

“Ew, what did you do with it?”

“Mmmn, well, um, tongues are tender,” said Elga. “They taste good in a nice meat stew.” She chuckled, set the gun down on the bedside table, and went digging into the bag again.

Noelle knew she should be frightened or shocked, but instead she was numb to all these new surprises. She simply took them in. She had been sleeping for much of the last day, still exhausted from her baptism in the hotel bath. Each time she had awoken, the old woman had been sitting by her side, stroking her hair and rambling on with strange lessons. “Listen now, where other people see trees, you should see fire, and if they look up to the mountaintops, you watch their feet.” And then: “Men are like lakes, broad, big, and easy to navigate; women are rivers, small, narrow, with deep, twisting currents.” And then: “Reading is important, but all kinds. When we learned how to read words, we forgot how to read dirt.” Sometime in the middle of the night, Noelle had awoken briefly to hear her still talking: “Remember, the earth is angry, it bristles with weapons.

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