Anneke’s in trouble.
Andrew has never been in the military, but he imagines that one of the comforts the lifestyle affords, for some at least, is the certainty of following orders. When the command comes, you obey, end of story. Love speaks in imperatives, too.
The phone was still warm from his hand when he got into his big steel beast, and now he roars west, knowing he’ll find his apprentice drunk, hoping that’s all.
He knows it’s not all.
That’s when he nearly hits the SUV.
92
Anneke breathes hard, trying to calm herself. The hut is on the move, swaying and pitching, making her want to throw up the thin gruel of whiskey sloshing around in her belly.
The man with the beard sits across from her, the bastard with the bald head who handcuffed and blindfolded her. She can hear him grunt from time to time, swear occasionally, though she doesn’t know exactly why; but it’s his koanlike chanting that really bugs her out. He sounds insane. He sounds like a woman who’s been in labor for a while, just running air over his vocal cords because he hasn’t got anything left. Something between a kid’s impression of a ghost and some Indian chant on a shitty 1960s western.
Hee-ee-ee-ee-uh-ee-ee-ee-EE-uh-ee-ee-ee-oh fuck oh fuck oh fuuuuck-unh uh-uh-ee-ee-ee.
She imagines this is what a guy sounds like just before he bangs his head into the wall ten or fifteen times.
If not for the greasy towel around her eyes, she would know he was frantically trying to finish sewing up the last of nine burlap dolls. All stuffed with rags and hair and iron shavings, their feet shod in canvas cut from army surplus boots and stapled on, their eyes twin buttons, seams sewn with blood. His blood. He pokes a finger or an arm and sews. The swaying of the hut doesn’t help, but he knows better than to disappoint her.
Anneke remembers the glimpse she got inside the hut; it used to be a cabin, the kind they rent out on the lake, but it had compacted in on itself, the whole thing just the size of the kitchen now, the walls crumpled together but still intact somehow, these walls discolored where the modern appliances had been removed. She only saw one appliance, a sort of old-timey antique shop stove. Glowing red.
And then the bearded man cuffed her to an iron loop in the wall, blindfolded her. She failed to notice, during their brief and lopsided struggle, that he, too, is chained to the wall by one ankle.
She’s upset with herself she didn’t fight harder sooner. She might have been a match for him were she not bewildered, terrified, and dragged halfway across the state—her shirt is torn, her ass and back are on fire, and dirt falls from her pockets when she moves.
Then there’s the torque.
The thing throbs like it has a pulse.
And it’s heavy.
She notices she gets sleepy and heavy-limbed when the hut moves faster.
It’s draining me.
93
Andrew reflexively pounds the horn, but only for a split second; he needs both hands, now, quick, swerves hard, the driver of the SUV visible in a flash, her mouth a classic O of panic.
She swerves, too.
She wasn’t going all that fast, fishtails anyway.
Top heavy.
Rolls.
Lands right-side up in corn.
Her air bag goes off.
Andrew pulls a U-turn, meaning to help the SUV driver.
Then he sees the tractor she was trying to go around.
Only it’s not a tractor.
Magic makes it look like a tractor, strong enough magic to fool even him, until he really looks at it.
His heart skips a beat.
Two beats.
He’s still got clonazepam in his system, or else he would likely go into a full-blown panic.
A hut on chicken legs.
Loping down the road away from me.
It’s HER.
Not the hut she had in the woods, but its modern sister.
He thinks the hut will stop, turn around, come for him.
It keeps going.
Toward my house!!!!!
Now he sits, breathing hard, trying to process.
Anneke.
House.
Shit, the other driver!
He drives up and looks at her.
Fortyish lady in short hair.
One drop of blood on her forehead.
“You okay?” he shouts.
“I think so,” she says, unbuckling, stepping out into the flattened corn.
She’s got her cell phone out, motions to him to pull over and park, dials.
Nick on her forehead.
Shit flies around in a crash.
She’s probably okay.
I don’t know, but probably.
Help’s coming either way.
But not for Anneke.
“Sorry,” he says, drives off, leaves her screaming, “HEY!” after him.
94
Anneke hears the accident.
Hears the horn.
Recognizes it as Andrew’s Mustang.
“HEY!” she screams with everything in her.
Even magic.
The torque drinks most of that down.
But not all of it.
Beard man hits Anneke.
It’s more of a hard, awkward heel-slap than a hit.
He never hit many people in his other life and has no talent for it now, even though desperation and insanity have made him stronger.
The blow hurts Anneke a little, but now she knows where he is.
She kicks the fuck out of him.
Just lies back on her skinned and burning ass and donkey-kicks him until he squeals and backs against the hut’s wall away from her, his glasses broken, blood in his beard.
“Uncool!” he says. “Help! Help!”
She almost laughs at this.
She tries to feel the metal in the handcuffs, wonders if she can pop them with the same energy she used to relocate the road sign.
Not with the damned torque on me.
Now she tunes in to the metal of the torque.
Imagines it wrenching open.
It doesn’t.
She pushes harder, trying to feel the most basic structure of the iron. It warms on her neck. It moves just a little, writhing in tiny motions, a snake waking up. She begins to force its tail away from its mouth. The torque squeals the fine squeal of agonized metal.
Something else is in the hut now.
She sees me.
Knows what I’m trying to do.
And just like that the hut goes away.
A woman squats beside a river, light snow dusting the ground, a birch forest mostly bare behind her. November? Late fall. A woman washes clothes in the water, an old woman in a colorful scarf, Slavic. Is that her? No. Baba Yaga is coming up behind her. Not the woman with the mole, but an old, sallow woman whose skin hangs from her jowls. But it’s her. Anneke wants to shout a warning to the washerwoman, but whatever part of Anneke sees this has no mouth. This is not today, and it is not yesterday. This is before trains. Now the woman at the river becomes aware of the other, reaches for a stick, magic tickles the air. A witch. She has the stick, but before she can point it at Baba, the older crone jabs a birch-broom at a birch tree. Something very like a snake ripples from the upper branches, down the trunk almost too fast to see in a shower of fallen brown leaves, rides up the old woman’s stick and arm, and coils around her neck. Its mouth fixes to her mouth. Baba Yaga breathes in even as the snake breathes in, drawing the washerwoman’s breath from her. The washerwoman struggles and dies, suffocating. The snake crawls from around the corpse’s neck, eats the stick the woman had been grasping, then slithers up around Baba’s neck. Gently. It breathes into her mouth. A wind shakes the last of the leaves from the trees by the river. Baba grows less sallow; her cheeks take on a rosy glow. Even the scarf around her head, sort of a faded red, glows more brightly, as if freshly dyed. Two old babushkas in headwraps and embroidered blouses. They should have been exchanging recipes or bitching about their children, but they were both witches and one has murdered the other with an iron snake. Baba Yaga gathers the clothes from the river, balances the basket on her hip, and leaves the dead woman there. Her broom stays behind, sweeps the beginnings of a grave it will roll the body into. At last, almost too far away to see, Baba turns and gathers her shawl about her, looks over her shoulder.