Finding Baba Yaga

by Jane Yolen

  The horse’s sides are streaming foam.

  4.

  In every forest’s beginning, is its end.

  The horse emerges from the woods at last.

  Down! Baba Yaga shouts,

  pointing a finger bony as an arrow.

  She is puffing like a chimney

  from the gnashing of her iron teeth.

  Again, I push the lever forward,

  We bolt like lightning seeking its target,

  like a bullet shot from a sniper’s gun,

  like a missile from a man-less drone.

  like Thor’s hammer loosed from his fist.

  We become Death, destroyer of worlds.

  5.

  This time Vasilisa, that cunning girl,

  throws the blue ribbon behind.

  It falls into the ground, burrows under,

  rises up again as a freshet, a spring,

  a cascade, a waterfall, then a river

  vaster, more twisty than the Volga.

  It twines and vines about them.

  Witches can’t cross running water,

  a rule I didn’t know till the Baba curses,

  her spittle falling like rain into the rill below

  Widdershins, she cries, always left.

  So I bank and take us the long route around.

  6.

  We see them again just as they reach the palace,

  with its sweep of vast green lawns,

  the spires of its towers jousting with the clouds.

  I throw us down like a noble’s glove

  ready to slap the prince’s face,

  to force the necessary duel.

  He looks up and raises a hand,

  reaches for his bow, stands up in the stirrup,

  shoots a faulty arrow that falls into the earth.

  It doesn’t bode well for children, I think, and laugh.

  But the Baba sighs. She sees what I do not.

  The horse’s sides are flecked with blood.

  7.

  Then Vasilisa, that cunning girl,

  casts behind her the little wooden doll

  which becomes a hedgehog of spears,

  a concatenation of cannons,

  an army of automatons immune

  to all of the Baba’s magic.

  We’re both done and undone.

  I haul the pestle backwards

  with a heavy hand and hard heart.

  Riding swiftly home, through darkened skies.

  we fling ourselves into a future

  without the other girl.

  8.

  The horse will be well stabled tonight,

  the girl well bedded, the prince well pleased.

  There may be a wedding or not, a baby or two.

  A kingdom won or lost. It’s no longer our concern

  I may weep alone in my room, but the Baba

  shouldn’t care. She never liked the girl.

  I don’t know why.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Ever After

  We Plot Revenge

  On the table is bat guano

  With it we can make bombs.

  Amanita for poison.

  Eye of toad for a spell.

  I could find a gun, I say.

  Get a carrying permit.

  No one checks in this state.

  We stare into the crystal,

  see the death of dreams.

  Even I can read that future.

  After a day and a night of it,

  the Baba writes in her column

  Living well lasts longer than love.

  I want to question her thesis,

  but have no facts to support an argument.

  I sit silent, chew on my thumb.

  We store the guano in the byre,

  amanita in the pantry,

  talk no more of guns.

  We bury the toad’s eye in the garden

  to ward off rabbits, deer.

  Next we will try and live well enough.

  Even if what the Baba says

  isn’t true,

  we have to try.

  A Bed for Weeping

  The bed is cold without her,

  sleep long, dreams dark.

  I turn the nightlight on.

  An echo of my tears

  threads down the hall.

  The Baba is a river in spate.

  We don’t speak of it in the morning,

  carefully closing the floodgate door,

  making certain the dike holds.

  We climb into a little boat

  that will carry us across this gray river,

  each pulling on a separate oar.

  Writing Poems, Telling Lies

  1.

  The Baba gives me paper,

  and a pen that sputters ink.

  Write, she says, tell the true

  Though you may have to lie to do it.

  I make a blobby start, doing as she says.

  How hard can it be?

  As it turns out, very hard.

  Hardest of all is to begin.

  2.

  I think of Papa and start to write:

  Come to the altar of the book,

  open your heart, take in the story

  It’s a transubstantiation

  as great as any you believe in.

  How can this be, this great magic,

  that makes real the unreal, the not-actual

  into a kind of factless fictual,

  turns lies into the True?

  Don’t ask me, for I am new at this work,

  new at telling my own truth.

  All I can start with is Once Upon A Time,

  that oldest and truest of lies.

  3.

  I think of Mama and write some more:

  Like the piano player, I have memory

  in my fingertips. I watch words spill out

  creating worlds, inventing colors,

  bridging generations.

  I write tree, and it grows

  from seed to bole to fruit

  in a moment, needing neither spring

  nor sunshine to sprout.

  I write battle and armies—

  armed and armored—spring up

  before a single piece of metal

  can be forged.

  Once I wrote a seventeen page novel

  in seventh grade, stitching together

  all the books I’d ever loved.

  You didn’t save it, Mama,

  but the memory of creation is here

  in my fingers, as they hold fast

  to the feather weight

  of Baba Yaga’s pen.

  Finally, I Ask Baba Yaga

  I’ve many questions, but am not eager

  to know the Baba’s answers.

  They’ll be hard kernels between my teeth.

  Biting down becomes a question of physics,

  a reply only dentists can give.

  I feel a query under my tongue,

  rough-edged, slightly salty,

  like a loosened tooth.

  Vasilisa, I wish it were your tongue.

  Perhaps that is the answer I’m seeking.

  The only answer.

  Baba Yaga Tells the Future

  She looks into a glass of water,

  floats a blood-red petal, pushes it

  like a toy boat with her quill pen.

  She scrys through a water glass

  as if reading the book of life, afterlife,

  as if the future is crystal, is clear.

  She runs her forefinger with its iron nail

  across my palm till it raises a welt,

  then licks the welt to make the blood come.

  She yanks out three of her teeth,

  casts them on the table like dice, laughing

  when they come up craps.

  Takes the Farmer’s Almanac off the shelf,

  riffles through its pages.

  The weather informs her prognostications.

  Last, sh
e shuffles her tarot deck,

  finds the hanged man, turns the card around,

  holds him to the light.

  Says: Telling the future is dead easy, girl,

  easier when you’re already dead inside.

  Finally, I Think About Baba Yaga’s Tears

  They were not like human tears,

  more like blood, like fire,

  bright red and smoking,

  running down her cheeks and leaving scars.

  You did not even want her here, I say.

  And yet she was feisty, stood up to you.

  She smiles ruefully at me. Ruefully.

  It’s not a word I’ve ever used before.

  It sits between us like an unwanted guest

  at the dinner table.

  She’s my daughter, the Baba says.

  That should have surprised me, but it doesn’t.

  Instead it is the final piece of the puzzle,

  the one that looks as if it can’t possibly fit,

  yet when you rotate it, suddenly it does.

  Will she come back? I whisper.

  Bad pennies always do, she tells me.

  Then, finger against her nose, adds:

  She’ll break your heart all over again.

  But not tomorrow, I say, knowing that to be true.

  The Baba smiles, nods, but doesn’t laugh.

  Not when you want her, but when you don’t.

  Going Widdershins

  I sit down and scribe a letter,

  with scratches and blots,

  and a certain amount of love

  telling Mama I’m safe, warm.

  I sign it, With lots of love

  but no longer yours, Tash

  Post it early morning

  when Papa is deep in dreaming,

  dropping the letter and my key

  onto the doorstep of the house

  as the mortar hovers above.

  I circle three times going widdershins,

  just because I want to,

  just because I can.

  I do it well.

  I’ve finally learned to forgive.

  I haven’t yet learned to spell.

  Baba Yaga Swears

  Baba Yaga swears at objects:

  a rug that dares to trip her,

  a branch that reaches out trembling fingers

  to slap her across the face.

  She curses stones that shake

  as she crosses the river,

  lights that dare shine in her eyes,

  a sour piece of fruit, thorn beneath the nail,

  a knife that cuts too close to the bone.

  She doesn’t swear at people.

  That’s what spells are for, she says

  as she teaches me the words.

  Turn to Me

  I have learned to lean into the hut’s turnings.

  The first time I was dizzy with it,

  It felt like the moment the boy you crush on

  walks towards you in the high school hall,

  never noticing your befuddles.

  Or the girl you think of as yours dazzles

  with a perfect ten point smile.

  The second time I felt a slight rise, as in a fever.

  The third, a small knock at the door.

  Now it is like living on a house boat:

  the swell of waves, the turn of tides,

  a moment of emotion, with the “e” removed.

  Tomorrow the Baba promises she will teach me

  the words of summoning, so I can make

  the little house turn to me on command.

  Not shazam, not abracadabra,

  but something simple to remember,

  yet dead easy to forget.

  Finding the Inner Witch

  Now we read to one another, finishing Pushkin,

  going on to Dostoyevsky. Afterwards we try Gaiman,

  Austen, Rowling, Pullman, even Stephen King.

  She teaches me how to parse a sentence,

  how to identify a gerund, how to cut back on adverbs,

  how to write columns, how to parse poems,

  how to spell.

  I’ve learned to write poetry, telling the truth

  through metaphor, simile, straight-forward lies.

  We play cards, work in the garden.

  I make more raised beds, liking the feel

  of wood beneath my fingers, the sawdust smell.

  She shows me the way to plant the herbs.

  I take up knitting, make her a shawl.

  It is full of knots. She says she likes it that way.

  She sings to the balalaika in a reedy tenor voice,

  songs of longing for the motherland.

  I learn to embroider, I learn to scry.

  I’m woeful at both, but she doesn’t tell me so.

  We are like an old couple now, an odd couple,

  the oddest. Are we sisters? Cousins?

  Mother and child? It doesn’t matter,

  for I crossed tundra, taiga, major highways,

  nineteen stones and a meadow

  to find this home.

  She promises me I’ll be the Baba ever after.

  For now that’s quite enough.

  Coda

  You Think You Know This Story

  So, this is a tale

  both old and new,

  borrowed, narrowed,

  broadened, deepened,

  rethreaded, rewoven,

  stitches uneven,

  re-plastered, re-harled,

  rehearsed, reworked

  until it’s my own.

  Love comes through a back door,

  leaves by the front.

  Not all baptisms occur at the font.

  Witches are made, of blood and bone.

  Witches are made, not only born.

  A story is, not always means.

  We pass on our genius

  as well as our genes.

  You think you know this story.

  You hope you know this story.

  You want to tell this story,

  perhaps now you will.

  Reading Group Guide

  A Tor.com Book/Published by Tom Doherty Associates Reading Guide for Finding Baba Yaga by Jane Yolen Grades 9–12

  ABOUT THIS GUIDE

  The questions and activities that follow are intended to enhance your reading of Finding Baba Yaga, a novella in verse by Jane Yolen. This guide has been developed in alignment with the Common Core State Standards; however please feel free to adapt this content to suit the needs and interests of your students.

  SYNOPSIS

  In Finding Baba Yaga, the stories of modern runaway Natasha and Russian fairy tale witch Baba Yaga intersect in a poetic journey. Reminiscent of the artful design of a Russian matryoshka nesting doll, elements of Slavic myth, Russian folklore, and fairy tales cleverly fit into the contours of a contemporary narrative in Jane Yolen’s verse novella. Powerful individual poems scaffold into a rich story that explores the sometimes fragile, fraught bonds of parents and children, motherhood, and sisterhood; the bittersweet transition from child to adult; the nature and power of religion, language, and story; and the ambiguous identity and morality of Baba Yaga herself. The literary genres and poetic styles in this unique novella twist and turn much like Baba Yaga’s ambulatory, chicken-footed hut. It’s as if Finding Baba Yaga’s dynamic ingredients, from existential to everyday, from the magical to the mundane, and from mythic to modern, have been ground together by Baba Yaga’s mortar and pestle itself. You think you’re in narrator Natasha’s contemporary reality, when author Jane Yolen “turns the fables” on you, and sends Natasha on a trail—or is it through a tale—to learn to write (or, Finding Baba Yaga invites you to consider, perhaps to “right”) her own story.

  PREREADING DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

  1. Finding Baba Yaga is a novella in verse. Have you read other verse books? How was that reading experience similar to reading “standard” prose fiction? How was it differ
ent? Do you prefer one to the other? If so, why?

  2. Baba Yaga is one of the most famous, and infamous, characters in Russian folklore. Her roots can be traced to Slavic myths and pre-Christian pagan traditions. Modern culture has also appropriated this ancient persona, who can be a force of good or evil; a source of guidance or grief; a witch or godmother, albeit one who is more “scary” than “fairy.” Baba Yaga, or variations of her image and character, appear in movies, comics, and merchandise. Have you encountered Baba Yaga in any of these literary or commercial contexts? What are your impressions of this perennial witch character?

  3. If you haven’t encountered Baba Yaga, is there a fairy tale story or character that has stayed with you since early childhood? Which character or tale? Why do you think fairy tale characters, stories, or symbols can have such “staying power” in personal and cultural memory and imagination?

  POSTREADING DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

  1. Why do you think author Jane Yolen chose to write Finding Baba Yaga in verse form?

  2. From your reading of the first poem, “You Think You Know This Story,” do you think the author would argue that more gets lost, or found, in translation of stories from oral to written; between cultures; through time; when they scale from personal to universal, or vice versa? Why do you think this poetic “prologue” emphatically distances Finding Baba Yaga from fairy tale tropes like charming princes and magic wands?

  3. In Chapter One, what does the poem “Soap in the Mouth” reveal about the relationship between the narrator (Natasha) and her father? How does “The Taste That Lingers” explore the power of language? How does the next poem, “Behind a Closed Door,” discuss language’s lack of power? In “Fence of Bones,” Natasha envisions her mother aging into a wizened, cronelike condition, and Natasha calls her a “witch.” Why do you think Ms. Yolen chooses to evoke these vivid parallels between Natasha’s mother and Baba Yaga?

  4. In Chapter Two, the poem “This Is Not a Fairy Tale” revisits the opening poem’s rejection of fairy tale stereotypes. In light of this persistent metacognition on whether or not Finding Baba Yaga is, itself, a fairy tale, how do you interpret the last line of Chapter Two’s final poem, “The Last Road”: “Like the hero in any good tale, I boldly walk in”?

  5. The poems in Chapter One and Chapter Two root the narrative in a modern moment and realistic setting, with attention to gritty details about a family in distress, and a runaway’s physical and emotional dislocation. Why do you think the author organizes the poems in Chapter Three under the title “Into the Woods,” which recalls fairy tale “poster child” Red Riding Hood’s path to her grandmother’s house?