Beyond the Woods: Fairy Tales Retold

by Paula Guran

  The blond girl shivers. Her stepmother sent her here and her mother, reduced to the tiny doll wiggling in her pocket, seconded the notion. She, however, is not so sure. Ludmilla, her father’s second wife, means her harm but she is loath to think her own mother has the same intent.

  “Go to Baba Yaga and get us some coals for the fire,” Ludmilla told her. Shura, her mother, said she should obey. “Ask Baba Yaga no questions she does not invite.”

  “Why, Mother, must I go?” Vasilissa had whispered to the twitching wooden doll. The thing had started speaking to her six months ago—five months after her mother’s death, and one month after Ludmilla had married her father. She still doubted sometimes that the doll really did speak, but seeking out a priest and telling him the tale would be far worse than a little madness. Thus, she listened to the doll, who had never set her wrong.

  “Because she is your grandmother, but she won’t treat you any better for that. She has her own rules. Just do as I say and no harm will befall you.”

  Vasilissa had set out for Baba Yaga’s compound. She walked a day and a night and on the evening of the second day she has come to the black dacha. A thundering of hooves splits the air and a torrent of air pushes past her, shoving her to the ground. She is familiar with the occurrence by now—in the mornings a woman in white charges past her, and at midday a fierce female rider in red does the same. Now, at dusk, a black rider takes her turn. She gallops past, through the gate, and disappears up the stairs of the dacha.

  The little girl has spent the last hour sitting in the forest, watching the dacha, trying to ignore the tiny voice of the doll. At last the urging becomes too much and Vasilissa rises and drags her feet as she approaches the gate. The skulls glare down at her, eyes glowing red. She passes under their gaze, icy with fear.

  Although she has been waiting for it, the child’s knock startles Baba Yaga. She drops the pestle and it clunks heavily against the side of the mortar. From the air three sets of disembodied hands appear and she gestures for them to move the mortar back into a dark corner of the room, then she shuffles to the door.

  The girl cowers under the Bone Mother’s gaze. For the longest moment the old woman says nothing, just looks at the child, trying to see a trace of her own daughter in the youthful features. Vasilissa peers with the same intent, thinking that the eyes set deep in the wrinkled face once looked out from her mother’s face. A smile cracks the withered visage.

  “What do you want, girl?” Her voice is the sound of the pestle grinding against the mortar. Vasilissa clears her throat.

  “Please, grandmother. My stepmother sent me to beg some coals from you. Our fire has gone out.” Her feet are rooted to the spot as she stares up at her grandmother. Baba Yaga is tall and very thin, her face is a map of wrinkles, tattooed with age spots; she has a long nose and a surprisingly full mouth. Her hair is long and iron grey, pulled into an untidy plait hanging down her back.

  “Stepmother? How long has she reigned?” Her heart trips at the idea of loss, of not knowing how long her daughter has been gone.

  “Ludmilla and her daughters came to live with us five months ago,” Vasilissa keeps her voice carefully neutral.

  “How does she treat you?”

  “As a stepmother does.”

  Baba Yaga grunts and steps aside so Vasilissa can pass into the parlor. The girl looks behind her surreptitiously.

  “What, child?” The question is sharp. Vasilissa swallows hard.

  “They say your house stands on the legs of giant chickens and moves around and around.”

  Her grandmother’s bemusement is obvious. “Who would believe a stupid thing like that?” She leans down to the child. “When did you ever see a chicken big enough to support a dacha?”

  Vasilissa giggles in spite of herself and steps across the threshold into a dim room filled with the smells of things that have lived for a long time. The doll in her pocket shakes.

  After supper, Vasilissa watches her grandmother sleep in the big old bed across the room. Her face is less lined in repose but Vasilissa still thinks of each furrow as a journey taken, a map of her grandmother’s past and perhaps one of Vasilissa’s own future.

  Will I look like her? Would my mother have looked like her had she lived? Is it so bad, to have lines to show where and who you have been?

  Baba Yaga stirs, snores a little, settles. The little girl snuggles into the small bed she has been given and closes her eyes. Sleep comes quickly and she does not trouble the little doll for the first time in many nights.

  They rise before dawn and eat a light breakfast, then Baba Yaga leads Vasilissa into the stable yard.

  “Today, you must earn your keep. When I leave, you will clean the yard, clear out the stables, and sweep the floors. When you have finished that, take a quarter of a measure of wheat from my storehouse and pick out of it all the black grains and wild peas you find there. Then cook my supper.” She leans down and whispers. “Or you will be my supper!”

  The girl giggles, not in the least bit afraid.

  “Yes, grandmother. I bid you good day.”

  “My riders will come, my riders three. First is my glorious dawn, then my bright day, and last my tenebrous night. They cannot harm you, and will answer if you call.” Baba Yaga climbs into the mortar, an ungainly scramble, grasps the pestle in her left hand and a long straw broom in her right.

  The mortar, responding to her commands, rises in the air with a grinding sound and floats to the opening gate. Baba Yaga uses the pestle to steer and, with the broom, sweeps behind her to cover any trace of her passing. Vasilissa thinks it an extraordinary way to travel, when there are several fine horses peering at her from the stables. She shrugs.

  When her grandmother has disappeared from view, Vasilissa pulls the little doll from her pocket. She puts a few crumbs of bread in front of the thing and a spoonful of milk.

  “There, my little doll, take it. Eat a little, drink a little, and listen to my grief.”

  The doll shakes itself as if waking and eats up the morsels with alacrity. Vasilissa speaks once again.

  “Today, little doll, I must clean the yard, clear out the stables, and sweep the floors, then separate a quarter measure of wheat from black grains and wild peas. Then I must cook supper. Tell me, little doll, what shall I do?”

  “Cook the supper, of course. Leave the rest to me.” The tiny thing jumps up and stands on the top step, raising her arms before she fixes the child with painted blue eyes. “Best you don’t see this lest you become too old too soon.”

  Vasilissa bows her head and goes inside the dacha. She prepares her grandmother’s supper, never tempted to look outside at the storm of activity the doll creates. Some things are best not known; some wisdoms should not come too soon.

  The mortar makes it way through the trees doing surprisingly little damage. Baba Yaga knows her paths and, as she sweeps behind her, she ensures no one can follow her trail, trace her back to the black dacha too easily. Not everyone appreciates her place in the scheme of things.

  Baba Yaga is a woman who cannot be bound. She will bear no more children, she will bow to the wishes of no man; she is independent, adrift from the world and its demands. The world, in ceasing to recognize her value, has granted her a freedom unknown to maids and mothers. Only the crone may stand alone. She heals when she can and, when she cannot, ushers others along their path, easing suffering, tempering fear.

  The people of the forest know enough to leave signs when she is needed: a red rag tied to a fence or gate post. An offering is left, too, so as not to actually hand anything over to the old woman and risk the catching of old age, which some of them seem to think of as a contagion. She’s a last hope to most, too feared to be willingly approached except in desperation. Oftentimes they wait too long. Mourners put such deaths down not to their own inaction, but to malice, to the crone being hungry to take a life, to feed herself on the juices of the living. She is deathless, strange thing that she is, and they assume she must f
eed off them to maintain this ever-life.

  When she does manage to save someone, there is still fear—gratitude becomes a strange, haunted animal, constrained by a niggling unease, an idea, however unreasonable, that the price of her aid is too high. She should, she tells herself over and again, be used to it; inured to the ache it causes her. But she isn’t; she suspects she never will be, and she fears for herself if she ever does become numb. Pain tells her she is still just a little human; something less than mortal, but more than a stone. This comforts, sometimes.

  Today she saves a child and helps an old woman along the path, all in the same cottage. The child has a fever, easily quelled by a tea of herbs. She hands the child’s mother enough of the mixture for two days more. The woman’s mother-in-law lies quietly in a shadowed corner, waiting for the last darkness to fall. There is no request for her help with this one, it’s as if the old woman is not worth the trouble, not worth an offering to the dark woman who roams the woods.

  Baba Yaga sits by the narrow pallet, hands waving the hovering younger woman away. Her nose twitches at the stale smell of the old woman’s body. She has not been bathed and she has soiled herself some time today, or the day before. Baba Yaga looks at the younger woman.

  “I hope your daughter treats you thus when your time comes. I hope she pays you the same respect, gives you the same dignity at your dying time,” she spits and the woman shrinks away to sink against a wall on the far side of the cottage, hoping the curse will somehow slip from her skin, not embed itself in her pores.

  Baba Yaga takes the hand of the old woman. The last vestiges of life have collected in her eyes, which shine in the dim room, and she smiles at the dark woman, grateful, for once, without fear. “Bless you, Baba. I beg you to help me pass on.”

  The deathless one nods and pulls a flask from the folds of her faded dress. She holds it to the lips of her patient, who drinks greedily. The old woman falls back and sighs her last breath.

  Who would do this for me? wonders Baba Yaga. Who would perform these things for me?

  The fact that she is deathless does not make the absence of an answer any less painful. She closes the old woman’s eyes and rises, giving a final glance to the woman’s daughter-in-law. “Bury her well. I will know if you do not.”

  The grinding noise of the mortar barely troubles her; she is so deep in thought that she forgets to sweep away the traces of her passing.

  The old woman’s son returns late that evening. He has been deep in the forest for almost a month and when he left his mother was hale and hearty. Her illness was sudden, occasioned by a summer cold and compounded by her daughter-in-law’s neglect. His shock at her loss is acute.

  His wife, afraid of Baba Yaga’s curse and in full knowledge of her own culpability, seeks a scapegoat. She is desperate to stay her husband’s hand, to keep his grief away from her, to keep him from ever thinking she had a hand in his mother’s demise.

  “It was Baba Yaga. The Bone Mother came and took her.” She does not mention that their daughter was ill, nor that Baba Yaga saved the child’s life. She lets her husband believe the dark woman took his mother out of spite, to extend her own life. He stays hollow-eyed beside the corpse, sitting the death watch through the dark hours.

  In the morning he buries she who gave him life, and when he finishes shoveling earth on top of the still form, he notices the path of broken branches and crushed grass left by Baba Yaga’s mortar. Without a word to his wife, he pulls the axe from the block beside the woodpile and sets out.

  Vasilissa, exhausted by her labors in the kitchen and anaesthetized by the honey wine her grandmother had let her try, sleeps so soundly that she does not feel Baba Yaga’s long-fingered hand slip under her pillow and grasp the little wooden doll. She does not hear the old woman shuffle from the room and shut the door quietly behind her. The child sleeps on, blissfully ignorant.

  Baba Yaga, having eased herself into a chair by the fire, props the doll on a small table beside her and watches to see what the thing will do. At first there is nothing, no sign of life, but there is something about the doll that reminds her of a forest creature pretending to be a rock or a log in the face of a predator. She drops crumbs of bread into the small creature’s lap and places a thimble of wine beside it. Her eyes gleam over the golden hair, the large blue eyes so like her own, and the full lips that, if her eyes do not deceive her, begin to pout at the extended scrutiny.

  “There, my little doll, take it. Eat a little, drink a little, and listen to my grief.” She leans forward, certain of herself now. “My daughter ran away with a worthless man and I did not see her again.”

  “Oh, Mother!” The doll jumps up and stamps its tiny feet, almost upsetting the thimble of wine.

  “Ah! I knew it. You’re a cunning little bitch, Shura,” Baba Yaga sits back, shaking her head. “Not even properly dead.”

  “Dead enough, it would seem.”

  “How did you come to this, daughter?”

  “My penance for leaving you alone is to watch over my daughter as long as she needs me. In this ridiculous shape. Imagine my surprise when I died and woke up like this. Hoping for heaven or purgatory—at least—and this is what I get.” Shura sits heavily and takes a deep draught of wine. “If I didn’t know better I’d say you had something to do with it.”

  “Who’s to say I didn’t?” Baba Yaga runs a finger down one of the golden curls, seeing for a moment the little girl Shura had been. Willful, selfish, demanding. Leaving her mother when she was ill unto death to go off with a man.

  “Was he her father? The one you left with?”

  “Of course not, Mother. Did you really think him the type to stick around?” Shura sighed. “Vasilissa’s father would have had your approval. He was a rich merchant, kind and gentle. Is a rich merchant if Ludmilla’s kept him safe.”

  Baba Yaga sits back and releases a pent-up breath. “What’s she like?”

  “Like me, I suppose. She’s looking out for her own daughters, but it’s at the expense of mine and I don’t like that.” She looks down at her tiny fingers. “Truth be told, if I could kick her out of my bed and out of my house I would.”

  “But you can’t.”

  “But I can’t, Mother, no. You could, though. Or take Vasilissa into your own.” The painted eyes shine as if alive. “You could do that, Mother, look after my beautiful girl.”

  The old woman’s face collapses in on itself, as if her age has suddenly arrived with no warning, like a fat guest walking across a weak threshold. Shura watches as something liquid and silver makes its way down one of the furrows of her mother’s face. This is the first time she has faced the devastation she caused. Her wooden heart, kinder than her human one was, twists painfully in her otherwise hollow chest.

  “Don’t cry, Mama. Please don’t cry. Look after my child. Set me free.” She regrets the last the moment it leaves her lips. Baba Yaga’s eyes snap open, turned to angry obsidian.

  “Thinking of yourself to the last.” She lifts the doll and holds it in her strong hand. If the doll could breathe, she would struggle for breath. “You want me to take your child so you can rest in peace. Then she can leave me when I need her, just like you did.”

  She holds the toy high, contemplating throwing it into the fire, stirring up the coals once more and watching the doll be consumed. Shura, sensing the direction of her mother’s thoughts, is smart enough to shut up, to lie limp in the claw-like grip, and to hope as hard as she can that her mother’s anger is not as strong as her love.

  In the end the old woman simply shakes the doll in frustration, rather like a dog worrying a bone. Shura remains silent: she has retreated to her state of wood and varnish to ignore the horror of what her end could have been, of what her life may continue to be.

  Baba Yaga does not leave the dacha that day. Vasilissa finds her in the morning, still sitting by the dead fire, motionless as a stone; although she breathes, her hands and face are very cold. She cannot move her grandmother from the c
hair, nor will the old woman answer her; the Bone Mother merely shifts her stare from the dead fire to the window that overlooks the yard.

  Vasilissa brings cold compresses and drips water between Baba Yaga’s dry lips, but the old woman does not stir; her eyes have all the animation of glass. Vasilissa, fearful beyond measure, picks Shura up from the floor by the fireplace. The side of the doll lying nearest the fire is slightly burnt. Shura guzzles down the wine Vasilissa gives her first of all, finishing her meal with cake crumbs.

  “There my little doll, take it. Eat a little, drink a little, and listen to my grief.” Vasilissa takes a deep breath. “I fear my grandmother is dying.”

  Shura sags, a marionette whose strings have been cut. “She cannot die, but she can become a stone. She did for almost a year after my father left.”

  “What must I do, little doll? What must I do, my little mother?” To her distress, Vasilissa’s mother shrugs and shakes her head. The child flares up. “We must do something! We cannot leave her like this.”

  “It’s her heart that troubles her, not any physical ailment, Vasilissa.” Shura’s voice fractures. “How do you cure loneliness? How do you ease the pain of singularity? She stands alone. She stands outside.”

  Vasilissa gives her mother a frustrated shake and sets her on the mantle. She settles herself on Baba Yaga’s lap, curling her child’s form around her grandmother, wrapping her arms around the thin shoulders, burying her smooth face in the corrugated skin of Baba Yaga’s neck. Her voice is soft as she makes her promises.

  “Don’t leave me, grandmother. I will not leave you. You will not stand alone any longer. Do not become stone.” Her voice strengthens. “I love you, grandmother. I will not leave you.”

  She falls asleep, her promise still on her lips, sticky and sweet like honey. Her dreams, though, are fraught: she sees a man hunting through the woods, following her grandmother’s trail, his axe sharp and his temper frayed by grief.