Page 9 of When Among Crows
And maybe she still will, she thinks. But first she has questions.
He pulls away from the pillar as she approaches. He still has that guitar case on his back, soft and definitely not shaped like a guitar is inside it.
“You’re Dymitr?” she demands.
He smiles a little. “She gave you my name?”
“I asked for it. I’m not interested in cursing you,” Ala says.
“And you are…?”
She hesitates. But there’s little danger in giving out her own name. She’s already cursed, after all.
“Aleksja,” she says. “But everyone calls me Ala.”
There’s a chill in the air here, from the wind off the lake. She’s glad she borrowed Tom’s zip-up for the walk, even though it smells like pipe tobacco and men’s deodorant.
“So you’re a bartender,” he says. “Not every zmora could work in a customer service job without scaring off the customers.”
His accent reminds Ala of her mother. The way she lisped a little and consonants fell heavy from her lips. It’s been many years since she died, more than Ala cares to count, but she can still hear the woman’s voice, exhorting her to sit up straight or to run a comb through her hair.
“Who says I don’t scare them?” she says. “The Crow is a feeding ground. It’s not exactly dependent on liquor sales from Toil and Trouble.” She looks toward the lake, where two white apartment buildings stand right next to the water, just barely visible now in the moonlight. “I don’t believe in angels, you know.”
“Come again?”
“You show up out of nowhere with this remedy to my littlecondition,” she says. “And it’s like you expect me to think you only mean well, only… I don’t believe in angels.”
If she had to guess, she would say he looks…sad. But the expression is fleeting.
“Do you believe in a simple exchange?” he says. “I was clear about my motives. I’ll give you the fern flower if you help me get to Baba Jaga. Simple as that.”
Ala laughs.
“Why the hell do you want to meet with Baba Jaga?” she says. “I’m given to understand that most mortals leave her presence owing more than they received.”
For the first time, he seems at a loss for words. He holds the guitar case against his stomach, pinching it in such a way that makes her think something much slimmer takes up space inside it.
“My reasons are my own,” he says. “But I suspect you’re desperate enough to agree even if you don’t know them.”
“Fuck you,” Ala says automatically, but he’s right, and she can’t pretend that he isn’t.
The curse found her a few years ago, constricting her chest like a gasp and prickling behind her eyes. At first, it showed her brief visions, easily banished. But then it crept across her days, taking up minutes, and then hours. Tormenting her.
Killing her, just as it killed her mother—by inches.
“I know what haunts you,” he begins.
“You have no idea what haunts me. How could you possibly?”
He reaches for her, and she’s too unused to this—a mortal who doesn’t fear her, a mortal who would dare to touch her cold skin—to pull away. His fingers close around her wrist, so gently she could break his grip without even trying. Just enough to get her attention.
“Show me, then.” His eyes are gray-brown, like a military jacket, like a tree trunk in winter. “Make sure I understand.”
Ala needs no further invitation. She tugs her wrist free from his grasp, and makes the world fall away.
Not every zmora is equally good at illusions, just like not every zmora has an equally good nose. Ala has a talent for the former, if not the latter.
The Thorndale platform disappears: the awning, the heaters (switched off now that it’s no longer winter), the old woman and her suitcase, the benches, the screens that predict the arrival of the next train, and the tall buildings near the lake.
