Baba Yaga
I want to make it clear- I am only telling this story because I lost a bet with the most annoying little man you have ever laid eyes on. And he nagged and nagged and nagged and then, if you can believe it, he threatened to hex me! The nerve, I tell you.
Always I have kept to myself, and I think there is no crime in it. If someone trespasses upon my doorstep, especially if that someone isn’t one of our kind, I see no harm in using them for my entertainment. Or maybe my dinner. What’s it to you? Not like it was your child, for I am sure anyone that reads this would teach their children better than to go bothering the old hermit woman what lives in a hut standing on chicken legs.
What? It was what I had in plenty and usually people are smart enough to be a little off put and then we all come out a little more fortunate for the day.
Once, centuries ago, there was a girl who was not taught her manners and had little in the way of common sense. So it was to my door she came begging, for a flame, because boo hoo hoo, her mean stepmother had left them only a single candle and that candle went out and left them all in the dark.
I ask you, who doesn’t see through those kinds of shenanigans?
It happened that I had some chores that wanted doing, and I am sometimes more curious than I ought to be. Maybe, I think, if this pretty little girl is not smart enough to avoid my home, maybe it is because she is strong or brave.
So I set her to the tasks, and wait to see how she copes. If she is smart, maybe I keep her, like a pet. I am no queen that is needing of a court, but having a mortal about can be useful from time to time.
Many tasks I set her to, and for days and days she does them, almost like she has a magic of her own. Maybe she is not so smart, but someone is doing her thinking for her, and I began to think that it is that someone I would like to know. I think, too, maybe it is another one of my kind trying to drive me out of my comfortable place and claim it for themselves, so I am being especially cautious to hide my secrets.
In the meantime, all of the things that would take me time are getting done, and I am able to go further into my woods, where the deeper magics lie. I cast the bones of foresight, and see that this stupid little pretty girl will someday be a queen of her own kind.
Well! That started the wheels turning in my head, mostly about how blind men are. Then I used the bones to look backward and the whole story came clear. The girl’s father was a fool chasing after a fortune to satisfy a bottomless pit of a woman who drove his child out of his home. But all to no good, for the girl, she had a powerful protection. That piece of the puzzle took some time to figure out- it was her mother, half a fae herself, stuck in a wooden stick in her daughter’s pocket that was trying to save her child.
Now, the charitable thing to do would have been to spirit the stick away from the girl and set the mother free into a new body. The wise thing to do would have been to take the stick and use the mother as a slave.
Over and over I went back and forth, thinking one way and then another. And why would I rush, anyway? The chores were getting done, I was getting good work done, no need to be hasty. Almost in spite of myself, I started to grow fond of the girl, and to admire the mother that never considered her work done as long as her child was in danger.
Yes, I can be a little sentimental from time to time, try not to be so surprised.
So, in time, when I had reached a good stopping point in my greater work, I gave the mother back the form of flame. It’s so close to spirit anyway that it didn’t take much anyway, and a good thing, too. While not quite as stupid as her daughter, she came very close. When I bade the girl to take the flame and begone, the stupid girl went home again! And her stupid mother burned up the bad stepmother and stepsisters, which don’t get me wrong, was a very good start.
Then stricken with horror at her actions, she told her daughter to bury her in the ground, so she couldn’t hurt anyone else.
Stupid woman.
Just as I had foreseen, the girl went onto a city, caught the eye of the right man, and became queen. She lived as close to happily ever after as anyone can, mostly, I think, because she stayed just as stupid til her dying day. Did you ever notice that? It makes me wonder why I spend so much time chasing knowledge, since ignorance seems truly to be bliss.
The world is a strange place, and that’s coming from an old hermit fae who lives in a hut made of bones. Think about that a second.
Her mother though? I dug her right back up again after she left and told her exactly what kind of a fool she was. Oh, how she wept and wailed and begged me to let her go and watch over her poor little child. Never a word of gratitude for not simply eating her, nor for giving her such a useful form. So I stole away her voice, and brought her back to my home where she could pay back all the work that I put into her new form.
Right now, she’s in my fire, warming my little hut. I keep telling her someday I may give her something closer to flesh, that she may be reunited with her Vasilisa.
Too bad I can’t give her wisdom with it.
As for me, Queen Vasilisa managed to spread enough stories about the mean old woman living on the edge of the gloomiest forest in all the lands that most people go out of their way to avoid me. If they should happen to find my little home, the turn pale and flee. Some have seen me at my labors and taken it ill, or let their imaginations run wild. The tales, they grow and grow until I am a legend.
Best of all, I am left in peace, mostly.
Every once in a while, some idiot wanders into my domain and does something truly offensive. Sometimes, they run quickly enough.
And sometimes, I have dinner.
Curiouser and Curiouser 