The dark side of the city, where the clouds never seemed to break--even on a sunny day--because of the smog. Roksana sloshed through the overflowing gutters, her sketchbook tucked inside of her leather waistcoat. Her destination stood at the end of the street, gothic arches and buttresses towering above the tenements that surrounded the old church. Her church now, ever since someone with a hard-on for divine malice burned out the old cathedral a year ago. Roksana spent a lot of time in the old building over the course of the last month, sometimes for comfort, sometimes out of necessity.

She passed an old man with a sandwich board sign draped over his shoulders, and he called out to her and offered her salvation.

‘Jesus Saves,’ the front of the sign read. And on the back: ‘You don’t have to like him. You just have to believe.’

But Roksana knew better. No salvation here. Not even belief was that powerful, not inside of a city’s despair. Even the last bit of hope in this neighborhood, St. Lucja Cathedral, had fallen.

A wind-blown page of newpaper wrapped around her ankle and she leaned over to pick it up.

‘Fourth Dead in Homeless Slaying,’ the headline read, as if to reaffirm the neighborhood’s bleakness.

Roksana mounted the stone steps to the church doors, now hanging half open in the autumn breeze, wood blackened from yesteryear’s atrocity. Inside, gray afternoon light filtered in through the holes where the fire had eaten away the ceiling. Sunken pews, black with fire damage and wood rot littered the floor. The large stained glass window near the pulpit was shattered in several places, shards of glass glittering in the dying light. The organ was gone, as were the risers for the choir.

Rain drumming against the roof, the only music left for God in this place.

Roksana shook her mane of black hair, tried to imagine how she must have looked after traipsing through the storm. Thick eye shadow running, black and white striped stockings dripping wet and soaking the insides of her combat boots. Goosebumps crawled along her pale skin beneath her torn Danzig T-shirt. Roksana knew she looked like a mess because life on the streets and homelessness had a habit of wearing people down, inside and out. Even indomitable spirits like herself. She’d been out of a home for weeks now, evicted by her last landlord because the rent had slipped through the cracks. Hazard of playing the role of starving artist, but Roksana wasn’t about to give up her art, not even for a home.

She pulled three white taper candles wrapped in cellophane along with a box of matches out of the inside pocket of her jacket and began arranging them on the floor of the church in front of the altar. The autumn storm winds whistled as they swept through the cracks in the old building. Candle flame flared to life. Roksana sat cross-legged on the floor, with the three candles in front of her and her sketchbook and pencil in her lap. She stared off into the vaulted ceilings of Saint Lucja, peering into the shadows. To find what, she wasn’t sure, but all of her life, Roksana had been looking in the places that others ignored, trying to find a world she could call her own.

Now, she looked around the church, remembering what it was like to attend Mass, to watch the baptisms and listen to hushed voices in the confessionals, back when the people still came from all over the city to hear the voice of the choir and offer their belief of a loving God. The church was a safe haven back then, a palace. Saint Lucja’s belonged to her in those days too. It belonged to everybody.

Darkwood pews and bone-white arches. Christ looking down on the congregation with a bittersweet smile. The towering silver pipes of the organ. This was what the church used to be. And it would be again, at least in Roksana’s world. She scanned the church as it was now, squinting in the near-dead light, and drew the church as it was before, and would be forever in her memory. Droplets of water pattered against her sketchbook. She ignored the large, dark stains that spread across the paper. The world in the sketchbook was hers, and nothing would change that.

“A dream given form,” Roksana muttered.

“The days of dreaming in this place are long past now,” a muffled voice echoed throughout the cathedral.

Roksana looked up, saw a tall, bulky shape standing in the doorway.

“All the dreamers have left,” the newcomer said and stepped into Roksana’s meager circle of candlelight. “Only the mourners are here now.”

To Roksana, the visitor was a formless thing—a body wrapped in a bulgy brown winter coat and tattered floral skirt with a bright red scarf obscuring the face. Wisps of thin white hair covered the head and revealed patches of gray scalp.

“I’m not mourning, because nothing’s been lost,” Roksana said. “I have it all right here, just as it should be.”

Roksana held up her sketchbook for the visitor to view. The visitor waddled forward and towered over Roksana to peer at her work with beady brown eyes.

“You should be at home, warm and dry, like the rest of the people your age. No good comes of hanging around these places after dark. Dangerous business.”

“Why’re you here?” Roksana said.

“I have every right to be here. It was my church too,” the visitor said defensively.

“Hey, it’s not like I own the place. I just--”

“Remembrance. I’ve outlived them all, my husband and my children. I was married here. My children were baptized here. This place is all that is left of them.”“Well that’s a sad story now isn’t it?” Roksana said as she got to her feet. “It could all be back the way it was though. Just a little attention”

Roksana found the old Communion chalice lying next to the altar, blackened and warped. It was a fine cup once, gold-plated with beautiful, serpentine engraving. The gold plate was gone now, and the etchings were buried under a fine layer of ash and dust. The rim of the chalice was bent inward so that half the cup appeared to be swallowing itself. The old woman watched Roksana’s every move with a birdlike cock of her head.

“Let me show you,” Roksana said, plopping down in her space between the candles again. She set the chalice on the floor in front of her and began scribbling in her notebook.

“There you see,” Roksana said finally. She held up the sketchbook for inspection.

The old woman coughed. She said, “Remarkable. I saw this cup every Communion for as long as I can remember, but I never remember it looking so--pristine as you’ve captured it. How is it done?”

“How is what done?”

“What’s your secret, girl?”

“My secret? Mind over matter,” Roksana said. “Out there--” and she pointed to the church doors. “Out there I’m nobody. I’m a street rat, and I’m an artist trying to survive. But here--” She tapped her pencil against the cover her sketchbook. “Here I can change things. I’m a creator. I’m a fucking Mother Goddess. A little bit of focus and a little bit of belief and not much else.”

Roksana cradled the chalice in her hands. “Even you, old Mum. I can transform you. All I have to do is believe.”

Roksana saw movement beneath the tattered red scarf and thought that maybe the old woman was smiling.

“I’ve lived a long time, dear. I’m think I’m quite content to be who I am,” the old woman said.

Roksana rolled her eyes. “Nonsense. You stand right there and let me work. In five minutes, you’ll feel like a whole new woman, I promise. And if you don’t believe me, I believe me, so it won’t really matter.”

“Your passion for your work is heartwarming,” the old woman said.

But Roksana didn’t hear because she was in another place with her head down and her pencil dancing across the page. On occasion, she peered up to look at the old woman, frown, erase, and begin again. By the time Roksana finished, there was a broken crescent of white wax around her from where the candles ran onto the floor. The afternoon had faded into evening, the only real light now coming from the candles. The old woman stood unmoving, and Roksana wondered if she hadn’t fallen asleep on her feet.

“I wonder, was this how you looked when you were younger?” Roksana said.

She offered the old woman her sketchbook. Gnarled fingers reached out, wrapped around the spiral binding, and the woman examined the page. The picture was a young woman in the nude with hair that might have blended with the night sky and darkened skin. The old woman said nothing. Roksana stared at her expectantly. And then the tall, bundled mass began to shake, and the old woman sobbed. The sound was coarse and gravelly and held a lifetime of misery and regret.

“Wasn’t supposed to make you cry,” Roksana said.

“No,” the old woman said. “But it brings me back to a time—something I want to remember. Something I want to see again. It’s beautiful.”

“Well, you best be getting home, Old Mum. It’s dark and wet and I’ve done all I can do here today.”

“You must join me for dinner,” the old woman blurted out.

Roksana stared at her then leaned down and picked up the chalice at her feet.

“Wasn’t that good. I couldn’t expect you to pay for it. Not even with food.”

“Don’t be a fool, girl. I can tell just by looking at you that you haven’t eaten in days. Come home, eat dinner with me, and I’ll send you on your way to do whatever it is you do when you don’t have old ladies in tears.”

And then as Roksana stood there mulling it over, “I hope you like beef stew. Certainly not the feast of kings, but it’s better than nosing around in the trash.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Roksana said. “Let me clean up here, first.”

Roksana blew out the candles leaving them on the floor, and then picked up her pencil, sketchbook, and the Communion chalice. “Still have some work to do on this one.”

The streets outside the church were foggy and unlit, the automatic streetlights not having illuminated yet. Roksana followed the old woman through winding back alleys and cobblestone walkways off of the main streets. By the time they arrived in front of the woman’s home, Roksana’s hair was soaked again and her t-shirt stuck to her skin. The house was squashed between two large apartment buildings, fronted by a tiny, brown yard and a wrought iron fence. Atop the fence posts were skulls. Red lights gleamed in the eye sockets. As they approached the two-story Gothic structure, Roksana stopped and flicked one of the skulls. It made a hollow, plastic sound. She looked to the old woman who stood on the front steps.

“The neighborhood kids and their jokes,” the old woman said. “But I won’t give the delinquents the satisfaction. I’ll leave those damn skulls up all year long, just so they can’t laugh.”

Inside, Roksana’s stomach lurched at the smell of potatoes, onions, and slow-cooked beef. She hadn’t eaten in two days, and had done a commendable job of ignoring her body’s cries for sustenance until now. The old woman led her into the kitchen, a tiny room at the back of the house beyond the dusty parlor and vacant dining room. The kitchen was a contrast to the rest of the house. In the kitchen, everything was a dull yellow color from the stove to the walls, and the lights shone down from tracks in the ceiling. It was bright and cheery, unlike the desolate dark halls Roksana had just walked through. The old woman went immediately to the stove and lifted the lid off of the stew pot.

“Aren’t you going to take your coat off?” Roksana asked.

“I’m old, girl. I’m always cold. Don’t mind me. You can take yours off if you like, just drape it over the back of your chair.”

Roksana had a seat at the small square table against the wall opposite the stove while her hostess went about preparing dinner. Her taste buds danced as the first spoonful of the salty, rich stew hit her tongue. The old woman sat down in the seat across from Roksana and watched her eat without touching her own stew.

“Good yes?” the old woman asked.

Roksana mumbled something through a mouthful of bread and scraped her spoon across the bottom of the bowl. The old woman offered her own bowl of stew to her guest.

“Not really hungry right now,” she said. “Help yourself.”

Roksana took the bowl with enthusiasm. When dinner was finished, Roksana gathered the bowls and spoons, stood up, and stumbled toward the sink.

“That was great, Old Mum,” Roksana said lazily. “You’ll have to give me the recipe.”

Roksana set the bowls in the sink, and the kitchen seemed to tilt on its side. The old woman hummed and flipped through the pages of Roksana’s sketchbook.

“I think I need to sit down.”

Her hostess ignored her and stared at the sketch Roksana had done earlier of the dark-haired woman. Roksana had a seat, watched the old woman’s approving eyes as her own eyelids lowered. And then the old woman stopped humming and the pages of Roksana’s sketchbook stopped flipping and there was darkness.

Crashing--metal on metal, and with each clang Roksana’s head throbbed. She opened her eyes slowly, letting in only a little light at first. A tall figure moved about, pacing frantically back and forth across her blurred field of vision. The floor beneath her was cold, the wall at her back rough and biting. Stone. Roksana shook her head and sat forward. She could still see the old woman’s kitchen, the yellow walls and the track lighting, but they were distant, in another room. Her vision cleared and Roksana began making out details. She was in a room the size of a pantry, blocked off crisscrossing white, slats. Like a cage. In the center of the cage door was a skull, which Roksana might have taken as another harmless prank by the neighborhood kids, except that its mouth was filled with sharp, triangular, gnashing teeth. Roksana braced herself against the wall.

“You out there, Old Mum? What the hell is going on here?”

The old woman turned away from sink and strode across the kitchen toward Roksana’s prison.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Roksana said.

She saw the old woman--who had removed her coat and scarf--all too well now. She was tall and impossibly thin, like a skeleton coated with loose skin. The old woman had a protruding jaw and hooked nose, and when she grinned, Roksana could see that it seemed every one of the woman’s teeth had been capped with silver and filed down to points.

“No joke,” the monstrous thing that now looked down on Roksana said.

“Jezi Baba,” Roksana muttered.

The woman laughed, a cackle that bubbled in her throat. “And where’d you learn that name, girl? Your drawings? School books?”

“I read the fairy tales,” Roksana said. “I read them all.”

“And a fine lot of good it’s done you.”

“You killed the others,” Roksana said. “You must’ve--”

“And having tasted their flesh, could you disagree with me?”

Roksana’s stomach churned. She stared down at the floor, her head in her hands. Jezi Baba’s gnarled old hand shot through the bone bars of Roksana’s prison and grabbed her face. She was forced to look the demon in the eyes—red, glaring orbs.

“Don’t let them fool you, girl. They had it coming. They all have it coming. This is what happens when you forget where you’re from. When you abandon the old ways to follow Him.”

“Him?”

“The new god, you silly bitch. The man on the cross.”

“Look, I don’t know about any of that. Let me go. I won’t tell anyone you’re here or what you’ve been up to or anything.” Heart racing, sweat sliding over her brow. Roksana’s hands were clammy and wet.

“There’s no way, girl. Your spirit is too sweet. I’m going to devour you.”

“Oh God,” Roksana said, feeling the urge to vomit.

“That’s right. Tell Him all about who’s going to murder you, who’s going to pick her teeth with your scrawny bones. But He won’t do anything, because He never gives. Just takes and takes and takes, even from His peers. They don’t believe in me because of Him, and because of Him, I devour them.”

“You burned Saint Lucja’s,” Roksana said. “You evil bitch, do you know what you’ve done!”

“I’ve enjoyed every second of it.” Jezi Baba turned and walked away towards the stove.

“Give me my sketchbook.”

“And who the hell are you to be making demands?”

“I’m going to die anyway. What does it matter to you? Just give me my sketchbook and let me die doing what I love to do.”

“Gonna make an old woman cry again, are you?”

Jezi Baba grabbed the sketchbook from off of the table, where it rested next to Roksana’s stolen Communion chalice. The chalice was pristine, gold plated with silver etching. Where the cup had been warped before, the rim was a perfect circle. Jezi Baba threw the chalice against the bone wall of Roksana’s prison.

“Sorcerous little bitch.” She threw the book at the prison door and it landed on the kitchen floor. Roksana eyed the sharp-toothed skull in the middle of the door warily, reached through bars and grabbed the book. The skull snapped at her and Roksana retreated to the back of the prison, pressed herself against the wall, and held the book to her chest.

“No magick,” Roksana said. “Just a little attention. A little belief.”

She cleared her throat.

“Dead men hold no doors. Now unlock. Open up.”

The door skull’s jaw froze, there was a click, and the door swung opened. Jezi Baba stopped stirring the pot she had on the stove, turned and glared at Roksana.

“I told you I read the fairy tales. All of them.” Roksana said.

“None one but me has spoken that incantation in three centuries,” Jezi Baba said. “Where did you hear it? Did He tell you? Did you hear your new god speak?”

“You silly old hag, you don’t understand a damned thing, do you?”

Holding her sketchbook in one hand Roksana grabbed the tops of her ears, one at a time with the other and pulled. Skin stretched and tightened until the tops of Roksana’s ears stuck up out of her mane of hair, large and pointed and elfin.
“Faery,” Jezi Baba hissed.

“It’s not what you believe, Old Mum. It’s the belief itself that is important. I’d been going to that church for years soaking it up until you torched it. Damn shame, really.”

Jezi Baba grabbed a meat cleaver from a wooden block next to the stove, the blade covered with old brown blood. Roksana ripped a page from her sketchbook and held up the sketch of the nude woman.

“You remember yourself, Old Mum? Back before you were a twisted old bitch. Back when you were the Earth Mother Kupala, and you loved the land and the people? You may not remember, but I do.”

“Kupala died when the Christian God reigned,” Jezi Baba said.

“Wrong. Kupala died because she wasn’t ready to adapt. They stopped believing in her and she stopped believing in herself, rather than finding another way to live.”

“Nasty little faery. I’m going to make jam out of your eyeballs.”

“You’ll do no such thing. I told you I create, and with the power to create comes the power to destroy. Take another step and I’ll rip this picture in half and you’ll die. Don’t believe me? Look how the vessel for the blood Christ changed, all at my whim.”

Jezi Baba glared at the cup; her iron-toothed jaw locked, as if considering her next move. Roksana watched and waited.

The hag screamed as she rushed Roksana, swinging the cleaver wildly. Roksana sidestepped the monster and tore the picture in half. Jezi Baba screamed out in agony, grabbed her chest.

“You’re dead, Old Mum. Happened just like I said it would.”

Jezi Baba collapsed at Roksana’s feet. Roksana crumpled the paper in her hands into two little balls and dropped them on the prone form in front of her. She nudged the body once, twice. The old monster’s sides rose and fell with her deep snores.

“Thought you were really dying, didn’t you, you old bat? But gods don’t die, unfortunately, not as long as someone knows they’re out there. Then again, who am I to deny you your little dreams of death?”

Roksana snapped her fingers and the illusion she had cast over the chalice dissipated. The goblet was charred and twisted again, just like it had been at the wreckage of Saint Lucja’s. Perception really was reality. Anything was possible with belief. Well, belief and a little bit of faery glamour.

Raindrops drummed against the roof of the old house and thunder rumbled in the distance. The streetlamps outside shined through the arched windows in the parlor. Roksana picked up the chalice and her sketchbook. She had a long week ahead of her. She had a church to restore.