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rolled as his boot struck him in the chest. He grabbed it, and rolled over to avoid the other boot, which
did not follow. Finally he sat up, rubbing his shoulder and the side of his face. It felt as if his arm had been wrenched out of its socket.
    What had Brian been thinking about? That Kelvin needed a brush with death. Maybe so.
    â€œBut not my death,” he said in a low croak, breaking into a hunch-backed run, feeling strangely exhilarated by the lacerating bite of the gravel through the thinning soles of his socks.

All The Voices Cry
    I HATE TO ADMIT IT, but I missed the turnoff. So many trees came down in last summer’s storm that I may have mistaken the markers. The landscape looks different when it’s all humps and mounds and puffed out sails of snow. A person lost in the woods walks in a curve, so perhaps I will return to the cabin, eventually.
    Otto would never have cut back in a loop through the woods. He would have persevered in a straight line across the lake, headlong into the howling wind, even if he’d had to crawl, frosted to the ear tips. Freya, Freya, don’t be a darlink idiot. Czech gave his English a glinting edge that could cut my polite Canadian vowels to shreds in an argument.
    It has been eight years now since Otto’s death and I often catch myself acting without consulting him. The first mechanical movements are long past, when I begrudged my own body’s instinct to continue breathing. Indoor plants have come and gone. I have bought a bicycle. All the life-sustaining illusions about the importance of winter hats and true love have begun to reassert themselves. But after thirty years together it is not surprising that I should still be prone to phantom conversations. The mind twitches, remembering.

    It is a difficult thing, to know when one is ready to lay aside the cloak of widow’s weeds, and to seek a new mate, a lover, or perhaps to begin with, someone to stand beside at parties. This idea of setting out to find someone new, for example. Otto would have considered it predatory, the kind of thing the witchy Baba Yaga side of me would do. Whenever Baba Yaga made an appearance—usually when I got angry about the spread of zebra mussels and the wicked passage of purple loosestrife through the waterways—Otto would disappear outside to the woodpile, take up his axe and chop, leaving Baba Yaga to fume and clank about in the kitchen.
    These days, Baba Yaga is feeling quite proactive. She has wheel-clamped the chicken foot that holds up her house. She does not want potential suitors to be nauseated by intemperate spinning. In the evenings she stands before the mirror speaking nicely to the imaginary princes who have arrived at her door clutching bouquets of blue roses. Oh but how lovely. Let me just get a vase. She notices a fragment of squirrel flesh caught in her tooth, hurries off to find a toothpick.
    Oh, but I have accepted that Otto is not here. Like Baba Yaga’s princes, he is also imaginary, even though I can see him walking beside me in his heavy plaid coat. How many times did I sew the buttons back onto that coat? Baba Yaga and I have a right to regenerate our lopped off limbs. Yes we do.
    This walking is such work. My snowshoes are failing me. Each step is a voyage downwards into the icy shadows that swallow me up to mid-thigh. Pushing against the sucking softness, I heft my foot out and make a tiny moonstep before
falling headlong into the drift. When I stop I hear my heart beating and the plump sound of snow pushed out of the trees by passing gusts of wind. There is snow in my eyelashes and up my sleeves. Sweat makes its way between my breasts in silver runnels. This is as juicy, as marinated, and as edible as I get.
    What if a curious accident were to befall me? What if a bear, awake with spring hunger pains, should shamble out of the woods? There is a book about a woman who takes a bear for a lover, isn’t there? Baba Yaga could take the bear