“Welcome. Please sit down.” The Fox turned down the volume on the TV and motioned to a table with a samovar, several teacups, and a plate laden with honey cakes. Mama smoothed her denim skirt. She looked so pale next to the lustrous Fox. I was getting a bit suspicious: in the fairy tales, foxes were crafty, treacherous creatures — probably not without a reason.
“Thank you. This is for you.” Babushka offered her the bag. I’d seen her pack a bottle of vodka and a box of chocolates along with the money.
The Fox waved it away. “Afterward, afterward. Alinochka, why don’t you sit on the bed while I talk with your mama and grandma?”
As I settled on the scratchy plaid throw, the Fox poured them some tea and added a coffee-colored liquid from a brown bottle. The black label was covered with ornate golden designs and lettering, some not in Russian. At once a sharp herbal smell filled the room, which made me nauseous again. “Now, tell me about your daughter from the beginning, from birth.”
Mama laid out my migraine diary in front of her, then hesitated for a moment, looking around the room and at the Fox with reservation, as though she’d forgotten how we got here and why. “All right. Alina was born in the winter and caught pneumonia when she was two weeks old. She skipped the crawling stage and began walking at seven months. She had already begun talking at six. Chronic sinus infections.”
She gave the dates and durations of all my colds, flus, and childhood illnesses. The Fox listened attentively, wrinkling her nose after each sip of tea. From my shadowy corner her fur appeared almost flat, like freckled human skin. Her hind paw, clad in a high-heeled slipper, danced under the table. Babushka took a big bite from a honey cake.
“As a toddler, prone to tantrums. Often in a bad mood. The migraines started a year ago, but Alina still finished first grade with all fives. The doctors advised to keep a diary.” Mama slid the diary toward the Fox. “The average episode lasts four hours, the auras before are…”
I tuned out. The aliens had begun drilling and pounding on the right side of my skull. Then they moved on to the left side. I took off my shoes and wound into a kitten ball. The Fox’s pillow was uncomfortable: hard, cold, and pierced with stems of goose feathers. My vision was full of holes. A low choral humming came from the corner where the Orthodox icons hung. I squinted to see whether the saints were moving their mouths, but their dark, mournful faces only stared, flickering in and out of the candlelight’s yellow fog.
White light strobed in front of my eyes, and the usual countdown began. Ten, nine … I jumped off the bed and stumbled toward the table, hoping to reach someone before the explosion. Babushka caught me. Eight, seven … She sat me on her sturdy knees and held me tight.
“You’re forgetting Chernobyl, Vika,” she said.
“I need to know everything before I can start the healing.”
“Alina was in Kiev,” Mama said to the Fox apologetically. “With her grandparents, on her father’s … my husband’s side. But the cloud didn’t go over Kiev. There was no direct radiation. She wore that radiation meter for months.”
I’d been four then, but I remembered that day at the zoo. I’d looked so many times at a photograph we’d taken: me sitting astride a big stuffed bear; Grandpa Sasha and Baba Lera, who had been recently diagnosed with cancer, on either side. A donkey flanked Baba Lera, and a monkey in a red vest and skullcap sat on Grandpa’s shoulder.
Suddenly, my migraine lifted. The countdown stopped, and the aliens retreated. I saw them all clearly now: Babushka, Mama, and the red-haired woman in glasses and a blue housecoat. She was much too beautiful and young to be a witch. Her pink lips were lined with maroon pencil, and a small gold cross twinkled on her freckly chest.
“We never know the whole story,” she said in a doctorly manner, the way Babushka spoke to her patients. “I don’t trust the news. I don’t trust anyone. These days we have to take matters into our own hands.”
“Exactly what I’ve been telling her,” Babushka said. “She doesn’t listen to anyone’s sensible advice. About anything.”
Mama rubbed her nostrils.
“There are many causes for ailments. But, besides a few microbial and viral infections”—the witch nodded at Babushka—“the causes are rarely biological. For one, Russia … Well, what am I saying, the whole world, the whole world is full of spirits thirsty for revenge. Wars, revolutions, genocide. The crafty ones find their way into a new life. But most are too broken. They linger around, haunt the streets, haunt our homes, contaminate the minds and bodies of the most innocent. They hide in the hollows of the heart, warming themselves in the downy scarf of a child’s soul, leaking poisons of old hurt.”
“This philosophy seems rather—” Mama began.
“Listen carefully, Vika, and think,” Babushka interrupted her, as though Mama were a disobedient child. “She is very sensitive.”
I was about to tell them that it didn’t hurt anymore when the witch called me over. She took out a measuring tape from her pocket and wrapped it around my head. I was nervous. With a magician’s flourish she showed Mama and Babushka a thumbed number. Then she dug her cold fingers into my scalp.
“Ah yes, I can see the pain now, strong pain. You poor child,” she chanted in a low voice. “The pain is like black ink, filling your head, and your head is a giant inkwell. All those spirits are floundering in the ink — I see them. They want to express their pain through you, but we will banish them out of your head — banish! banish! banish! — tell them to go and cry elsewhere!”
She encircled my head with her fingers and rubbed it, singing something folky under her breath. She smelled more like Mama than a witch — of dishwater and borsch and Lancôme perfume. She massaged her song into my head, hard and fast, now building my hair up into a crown, now letting it fall to my shoulders. “Into the forest they go! Into the forest! Into the forest!” she shrieked.
It felt good, but so what: this witch didn’t know what she was doing. She had been wrong in her diagnosis of my pain, which was gone. I was doomed.
She lifted her hands and blew hot breath on my nape.
“How do you feel?” Mama said. She was pale, her big, gray eyes shining with fever. No, I never wanted her to die or go away, even if it meant I wouldn’t get the magical helping doll like Vasilisa’s. Instead of growing up, I would shrink, I would turn into a doll myself and ride in Mama’s pocket everywhere.
“It doesn’t hurt anymore,” I said and smiled. “She stopped the pain.”
Mama jumped from her chair and clutched me to her chest. “Oh God, thank you. Thank you, Galina Kirillovna.”
The witch’s name turned out to be just an ordinary Russian name. “You’re welcome. This one wasn’t too hard because she’s so young,” she said. “May your daughter grow up healthy and happy. And remember that the child’s health depends on the mother’s.”
She measured my head again and showed the mark to Mama and Babushka. My head had shrunk two centimeters. I touched it all over. Ears, mouth, nose, eyes — everything seemed intact. Maybe something had happened after all. Maybe she’d somehow altered the surface of my skull so it was now impossible for the UFO to land. I wouldn’t know until the next attack.