The Tale of Baba Yaga

“Babushka, tell me a story.”
“Anything for you, sunshine. Long ago and far away, there lived a little girl. One day, the girl hid from a blizzard in a valley, where she found a rowan tree next to a spring. The little girl was cold and tired, and she bathed in the spring... and the tree spoke to her. The rowan taught her secrets of birch and oak and ash, songs of wolves and stories of birds, and the wise tree taught her deep and ancient magic. When the little girl left the tree, she was no little girl, but a woman and a witch.
“The witch lived with many peoples, learning more of power and magic. But as her fame spread, more and more people came to ask her for help. Some tried to force her, but forcing a witch never works the way people think it does. Others begged her, and the witch hated the begging. Why, the witch thought, did all these people come to her with problems instead of solving them for themselves?
“So the witch started asking higher and higher prices from those who came to her. She asked for buckets of gold and threw them down the well. She asked for tracts of land and never visited them. She asked a man to cut off his ears to heal his blindness. She asked a farmer to burn his fields to save his cows. She asked for a child to cook her pet dog to give her parents wealth and glory. And people did all these things. The witch grew angrier and angrier with everyone’s begging, until she grew a wrinkle for every question asked and a wart for every favor given.
“Old and bitter, the witch traveled far and wide, to the lands behind the moon and beyond the sun, and she found that everywhere she went, the people were foolish and the problems were the same. She found fault with everyone, from the angels in Heaven to the devils in Hell, and shook her fist at demigods and swore at queens.
“Oh, child, I could tell you so many stories. I could tell you how she lived in a dancing hut on chicken legs; how she flew about in a mortar and pestle, sweeping her tracks away behind her; how she has three horsemen who she calls her Bright Dawn, her Red Sun, and her Dark Midnight. I could tell you about the Thrice-Tenth Kingdom and the firebird, the Island of Buyan, and Vasilisa the Beautiful, who escaped her. I could tell you about the warlord Kostchtchie of Iobaria, who came to her and demanded she make him live forever. She tore out half his soul and put it in his torc, that he might never die, but made him ugly in exchange. So hideous Kostchtchie was, he fled to the very Abyss, and rules there still, nursing an eternal grudge.
“But let me tell you a different story. Long ago, when there was still summer, this land was ruled by the linnorm kings. But the old witch wanted the land, and she gathered a mighty host, of trolls and wolves and dark things that flitted in the night. Before the moon had turned round once, she broke Wise King Jarguut, and the great thanes of Djurstor. Then she wreathed the land in unending winter, and set her daughter Jadwiga as queen of Irrisen, with a crown of ice upon her brow.
“A hundred years passed, and the old witch took Jadwiga away, and made Jadwiga’s sister Morgannan queen. And so it’s been ever since. Every century, the old witch came and took the queens away, and set a new daughter on the throne. Two of them fought back, cunning Tashanna and cold Elvanna. Now, one of the old witch’s granddaughters rules our land, fair and sweet-tempered Anastasia.”
“Babushka, the old witch... she is Baba Yaga Bony-Legs?”
“She is. And she is my great-grandmother, and yours as well, child.” —The Tale of Baba Yaga, as told by Zhoseniya Jadwiga Velikas