Baba Yaga- Slavic SpiritSpirit"The Bone-Legged One"

The Hut on Chicken Legs

Deep in the forest stands a wooden hut on enormous chicken legs, spinning and walking through the trees. Its door faces away from every visitor. To enter, the traveler must speak the words: "Hut, hut, turn your back to the forest and your front to me." Only then does it rotate.

The fence around it is made of human bones. The posts are topped with glowing skulls, their empty eye sockets casting light across the clearing. One post has no skull: it waits for the visitor who fails the witch's tests. The gate's hinges are leg bones. The lock is a jaw with sharp teeth.

Inside lies Baba Yaga herself, so old and thin she is more skeleton than woman. Her nose is so long it touches the ceiling when she sleeps on her stove. Her iron teeth crack bones. Her body fills the entire hut when she stretches out, nose in one corner, legs in another. She can smell a living human from the far side of the forest. "Foo, foo! I smell the Russian smell!" she cries when a visitor enters.

She travels in a giant mortar, propelling herself with a pestle, sweeping her trail away with a birch broom so no one can follow. The winds rise when she passes. The trees groan and bend.

Vasilisa the Beautiful

In Afanasyev's collection, a young girl named Vasilisa is sent by her cruel stepmother to fetch fire from Baba Yaga. The errand is meant to kill her. Vasilisa's only protection is a small wooden doll given by her dying mother, who told her to feed it when in trouble.

Vasilisa journeys through the dark forest and arrives at the bone-fenced compound. There she sees the three horsemen who serve Baba Yaga. A white rider on a white horse: the Bright Dawn. A red rider on a red horse: the Red Sun. A black rider on a black horse: the Dark Night. When Vasilisa asks about them, Baba Yaga claims each as her own. "My Bright Dawn. My Red Sun. My Dark Night." She warns that too many questions will age a person before their time.

Baba Yaga sets Vasilisa to work: sorting poppy seeds from dirt, separating mildewed corn from good. Each night, Vasilisa feeds her doll, and the doll performs the work while the girl sleeps. Baba Yaga is astonished but cannot find fault. She grants the fire: a glowing skull on a pole. Vasilisa carries it home, and the skull's eyes burn so fiercely they reduce the stepmother and stepsisters to ashes.

The Geese-Swans

In another tale from Afanasyev, Baba Yaga sends her flock of enchanted geese-swans to snatch a boy from his home while his older sister looks away. The sister chases the birds deep into the forest, to the hut where the witch intends to cook and eat the child.

Along the way, the sister meets a stove, an apple tree, and a river of milk, each offering help if she will eat what they provide. She refuses. She rescues her brother and flees with the geese-swans in pursuit. Only then, desperate, does she accept what the helpers offer. The stove hides them inside it. The apple tree covers them with branches. The river conceals them beneath its milk-white surface.

The Three Sisters

In some East Slavic tales, there are three Baba Yagas. A hero visits the first, who feeds him and sends him deeper into the forest: "My middle sister knows more than I do." The middle sister does the same. The eldest lives in the deepest part of the wood, and she possesses the magical horse or the fiery bird or whatever the hero came for. Each has a chicken-legged hut and a bone fence, but the eldest's skulls burn brightest.