This story was a gift to  mikakitty for her fabulous 30th birthday. Mika asked for a tale that is a twist the standard Russian fairytale and involved the legendary hag Baba Yaga, and I was all too happy to oblige her! It will also serve me as a semi-spooky Halloween submission.

Mika has been too busy to illustrate it for me, so I have accompanied it with the art of Ivan Bilibin, the famous Russian fairytale artist whose work is in the public domain.

Vassilissa the Pure, Euna the Impudent, and the Baba Yaga

Once, in the great taiga forests of Kievan Rus, there lived a henpecked miller and his second wife, who had each brought a daughter to the marriage. The miller's daughter was named Vasilissa, and true to her name she was her father's princess who embodied the simple beauty and rugged obedience of the ideal peasant woman. His wife's daughter, a slightly older girl named Euna, was considered to be vile and un-marriageable; her mother was the strong-willed, argumentative, illegitimate daughter of a minor landholder, and she had passed on those attributes to the combative Euna.

The strict Orthodoxy of the Old Believer miller forbade Vasilissa from offering her hand in marriage to a suitor whilst her older stepsister Euna was unwed. And none would ask for Euna's hand--not because she was ugly, for she was in truth quite fair. But suitors, drawn to her beauty, fled when they realized she argued, spat, talked back, and refused to wear her hair or clothes in a modest way.

In time, due to their daughters' inability to marry and attract a husband to aid in running the mill, the miller and his second wife found themselves on the brink of starvation. One day, while returning from a failed attempt to sell his flour at market, the miller came across a hideous old hag that lived several leagues away--though her name was well-known to the locals, they never used it for fear of attracting her attention, for she was a powerful witch and sorceress.

"Fie, fie," said the hag, "the smell of a true Russian lies thick across the path. Are you here of your own free will or by compulsion?"

"I am afraid it is both, grandmother," said the miller, taking care to avert his eyes and speak with the utmost politeness. "For you see I am here freely to sell my flour, but I am compelled by poverty which I fear will reduce my wife and two daughters to starvation."

"I am not your grandmother nor anyone else's," snapped the hag. "But since you have met me this day with respect, I will make you an offer. Sell your daughters to me to be my servants for a year and a day. If they please me, I will return them with gifts and my blessing. If they displease me, I will make them my repast and return the raw gristle off their bones."

"No, grandmother" said the miller. He was not an inventive man and had no idea what honorific he might use despite having just been chided for using the wrong one. "I could not part with my precious Vasilissa, and her older stepsister Euna is beloved of my wife if no one else."

"Fie, you smell like a true Russian and have a hard head like one as well," the hag sniffed. "Here is something you might grasp a bit better." She flung a small sack at the ground, and it burst open, spilling golden coins upon the path.

Eyes wide, the miller eagerly fell to his knees and began to scoop them up.

"I thought as much," said the hag. "I take it that you, like all your local peasants, know their way to the hut of the great Ježibaba if only so that you may avoid it. Have your daughters there on next saintly feast day, and I will see to it that another goldsack finds its way to you. Fail, and it will be you on whom I repast."

And so it was that Vasilissa and Euna found themselves walking through the woods toward Ježibaba's hut with but a kerchief of supplies each.

"Father and Mother must have been sorely hard-pressed to give up that which they loved so dear," said Vasilissa. "It must grieve them so to see us go; I will pray for them both."

"Honestly, sister," said Euna, flipping her wild hair over one ear. "They call you Vasilissa the Radiant but I think you must be Vasilissa the Dull. We've been sold into demeaning servitude below our station in life! If our parents truly loved us, they would have had no part of such a scheme."

"We must accept our lot stoically, and honor our parents' sacrifice by doing as our new mistress demands!" cried Vasilissa, shocked by Euna's lack of filial piety.

"Honor and pray for the parents that sold us to a hag known to be a witch and a cannibal? We shall see, my sister. We shall see."

Ježibaba's hut lay at the edge of a marshland, and stood on two sturdy tree stumps to protect it from the occasional flooding. It faced a large yard, fenced in with a barrier made from bleached white sticks.

"I've heard tell that those are actually giant, ancient chicken legs," whispered Vasilissa. "They say Ježibaba can cause her hut to rise and travel at a single command! And they say that the fence is of bones!"

"And I've heard that Georgians think scrambled eggs are when you kick a man in the crotch hard enough to pop them," groused Euna. "We'll see if what they say had any more truth than your head has brains."

The hag met them at the door. "Fie, fie, the smell of a true Russian lies thick across my yard. You must be the serfs promised me by that miserable miller. Are you seeking work or shunning work?"

"I am seeking work," said Vasilissa, "in honor of the choices my family has made for me."

"I am shunning work," said Euna, "for by being here I am kept from doing anything which might increase my station in life."

Tall and gaunt, disheveled of hair, milky of eye, Ježibaba regarded the girls. "A sensible answer and a disrespectful one both," said she. "I am not opposed to keeping you, children, to help me with my labors in fulfillment of my agreement. If you satisfy all my wishes I shall reward you; if not, I shall devour you body and soul. We begin on the morrow."

The hag led the girls into her rude stilted hut; to their surprise, the interior seemed to have more chambers than could possibly have fit in such a small space. The twin hard cots laid out for them were in a tiny, squalid room; the hag locked them in, advising them to sleep well as she would come and put them to work at sunrise.

Vasilissa quietly sang the Orthodox hymns the village priest had imparted to her, while Euna did her best to ignore her stepsister's off-key singing and rest.

"Children dear!"

Vasilissa and Euna were startled by the soft speech. In the dim light, they could see rats that had crawled from holes in the wall.

"Long as we’ve served her, she's never given us so much as a burnt crust. Children dear, if you feed us bread, we shall help to save you from the wicked Ježibaba."

"I've no food to spare for the likes of you," said Euna, "and Ježibaba hasn't proven herself evil in anything but village rumors which are often slander."

"I'll give of my repast, kind rats," said Vasilissa. She gave the rodents fully half of the hard bread rolled up in her kerchief.

"We thank you, children dear. And for that we say unto you: when the evil Ježibaba asks you how a good life is lived, tell her one must be kind and good to everyone; do not speak ill words to any one; do not despise helping the weakest, and always hope that others will help you in turn. Do not tell her the truth or what you really believe."

The next morning, Ježibaba woke the girls by tossing a handful of powder on the floor at the crack of down; the bursting sound and stinking vapors drove them from the room and into the kitchen, where the breakfast-table was piled high with a feast fit for the Czar. "Your scraps are on the floor," sneered the hag. "Take not from my table."

Vasilissa obediently knelt down and took of the moldy bread and weeviled potatoes laid out for her. Euna quietly shoved her food into a hole in the wall ("let the rats feast on that, if they're so hungry," she muttered), and stole honeyed ham and baked potato slices from the hag's table ("she's barely picking at it, and can never eat so much; it's just a waste!").

"I mean to know those who serve me," said the hag Ježibaba at length. "Tell me, children, how is a good life lived?"

"Oh, Grandmother, one must be kind and good to everyone," said Vasilissa. "Do not speak ill words to anyone, do not despise helping the weakest, and always hope that others will help you in turn."

"Hmm, spoken as a true servant of the Czar, the priest, and the father," said Ježibaba appreciatively. "What say you, other child? Have you a different idea in your pale, thistle-gold head than your sister in her sun-browned and dark-furred one?"

"First, I am not a child but a woman in full flower," said Euna, testily.

"Don't quibble with me over words, child," snarled the hag. "Answer my question!"

"A good life is lived by being strong, self-sufficient, and relying on others to catapult oneself to greater heights of power and station," said Euna, truthfully. "A life well-lived begins a peasant's and ends a czar's."

"Impudent whelp!" cried Ježibaba. "You dare speak such selfish nonsense at my table?"

"Forgive her, grandmother!" cried Vasilissa. "My sister knows not what she does."

"Fie! We shall see," growled the hag. "For now: to work!"

She set the girls to backbreaking labor, oiling the many hinges in her hut, decorating the trees nearby with bows and ribbons they spun themselves with bleeding fingers over many hours, clearing the wilderness nearby, and feeding the hag's many ravenous midnight black cats, dogs, and horses. They were soon in tatters, covered in bites and scratches; Vasilissa did her work dutifully and quietly, while Euna complained loudly and did shoddy work when she wasn't watched, using the time to quietly steal a stockpile of food and fashion a knife and rope to escape or slay the old witch.

After some time, Ježibaba called the girls to her. "Fie, fie! You have performed your duties--though not always well--but they were merely practice for the true tasks I would set out for you. Go now and fill you each one of the tubs down by the river that I might use the waters for my divinations. Use only the dippers that have been provided."

Euna and Vasilissa walked to the river where it emptied into the swamp, and found there the tubs as requested. To their horror, though, the hag's "dippers" were actually sieves from which the river water emptied instantly.

"Another impossible task!" cried Euna. "I think she wants us to fail, and is setting us up that she might devour us while still fulfilling the letter of her contract."

"Worry not, my sister," replied Vasilissa. "I am sure that our virtue will be rewarded with aid and succor."

Sure enough, after some time, one of Ježibaba's black cats approached. "I am a cat which would scratch your eyes out as soon as I would gaze upon you, dear children," it said, "but long as I and my sisters have served Ježibaba, she's never given us so much as a bone. Give me some of the bacon I know you have secreted away on you, and I shall tell you how to complete my mistress's impossible task without angering her."

"I will not part with my only bacon for one who may be lying," said Euna, "for you have given me no reason to trust you. Begone; I will fill the tub some other way."

When she had gone, Vasilissa produced her small mouthful of bacon and gave it to the cat. "Here, partake in what little I have."

"I thank you, mistress," said the cat. "Follow me."

She led Vasilissa to a place in the stream where there was a natural vein of clay, and instructed the girl on how to stop up the holes in the sieve with it. In that way, Vasilissa was able to fill the tub using only the vessel she had been instructed to use. For her part, Euna noticed her stepsister's filling tub and took water out of it with her cupped hands. Trusting as ever, Vasilissa assumed that Euna had found some other way of stopping up the sieve-holes.

In time, Ježibaba arrived to inspect the tubs. She seemed disappointed that the girls had completed their tasks, and dipped a hand in Vasilissa's tub. "Tell me, child, did you follow my instructions?"

"I did, grandmother."

"And the water tells me true that you have done so. It will serve well for divination." The hag walked over to Euna's tub. "And you, child, have you done the same?"

"Yes," lied Euna.

"Liar!" cried Ježibaba. "Fie, fie! The water tells me a different tale! Explain yourself, you wretch!"

"Why should I busy myself in a task that you designed to be impossible?" asked Euna. "You clearly expected us to fail, so it matters not what I did, for you will soon devise some other way to devour us without breaking your word."

The hag cuffed her at that, leaving a gash in Euna's cheek. "You would do well to respect your elders and betters, girl!" howled she. "Like your sister."

"I will respect my elders when they act their age, and respect my betters when they prove themselves to be so," said Euna stubbornly, her arms crossed and nose in the air.

As punishment, the hag denied Euna and Vasilissa even scraps for the next month. Euna continued to steal from the witch's meals and so did not go hungry; Vasilissa gave what little food she had to one of Ježibaba's black steeds, which showed her where a stand of bitter but hollowly nourishing weeds could be found.

Only mundane chores were offered for many moons yet, until Ježibaba appeared to the girls near sunset one day: "Fie! My samovars need heat, children. Go outside and alight them only with that which you find on the ground within half a versta's walk, and take care that you follow my instructions to the letter. I will come for my tea at midnight, when the gibbous moon is waxing its highest."

Vasilissa and Euna followed the witch's directions to a small field adjacent to the stilt-legged hut, and there found two ornate samovars filled with cold tea suspended over two fire pits. In each pit was a heap of old bones--human bones, to judge from the skull. No matter how many strikes of tinder and flint the bones took, they would not alight, and there was nothing in the half-versta radius that was not cold and wet.

Ježibaba's prize black hound appeared. "As long as I and my pack have served Ježibaba, she's never given us so much as single kindness, and I have heard of the regard showed my fellow servants," said he. "If you will but give me a bone from your pile to gnaw upon, I will aid you in your task."

"I doubt very much that a dog can accomplish the impossible," sniffed Euna. "Begone with you, cur. I will find my own solution to this ridiculousness."

"Take of this bone, friend," Vasilissa said when her sister had gone.

"My thanks to you," replied the hound. "Follow me." He led Vasilissa to a place exactly half a versta away where some of the hut's old boards had come loose and fallen to the ground. Protected by the eaves of the house, they were dry. With that as her fuel, Vasilissa's fire soon burned heartily.

For her part, Eula found some heating oil in a flask. It was well outside the half-versta radius and well off the ground, but Euna was convinced that she had once again been set up to fail, and resolved to make herself warm and play the old witch the fool. Once coated with the oil, the boned burned energetically; Vasilissa did not ask any questions.

The hag appeared from the shadows exactly as she had promised, and poured a cup of steaming tea from each samovar. "The tea is hot, at least, which will soothe my old bones and give me leaves to read. But have you fed the fired as I commanded?"

Both girls nodded, their features lit by dancing flame-shadows.

"You there!" cried Ježibaba to the skull in Vasilissa's blaze. "You who I slew for taking a woman against her will, speak to me now from amid your eternal torment: were my instructions followed?"

"Yea, my mistress," groaned the spirit of the dead man in agony. "I burn with a pure fire."

"And you, you who I slew for causing a woman to be killed through false accusations of adultery: did the other girl follow her sister's shining example?"

"Nay, my mistress," shrieked the dead murderer. "I burn in a fire as impure as myself!"

Ježibaba's eyes were as lit coals as she turned to Euna. "Fie, fie! Have you learned nothing, girl, from your sister's example or my words of reproach? Are you so eager to be my sup?"

"I am eager to be treated with respect. I am eager for you to quit your demands of me," said Euna. "You have given me no reason to be deferent to your wishes, and no expectation that my treatment will be any different if I resist than if I yield."

The assault from the hag was feral, leaving Euna cut and bruised on the dewy lawn. "This is my final warning, wench," said the witch. "Fail to complete my tasks once more, and I will make you as these souls who boil my tea."

Work returned to more mundane but still backbreaking tasks, and the allotted period of a year and a day was drawing to a close. One day before the end of their servitude, the hag called the sisters to her once more. Dirty, barefoot, and dressed in rags, they had seen the depredations of a hard winter--though both were still yet very beautiful for all their mistreatment, and Euna's proud head remained unbowed.

"At dusk tonight, three men will ride past my hut," said the hag. "Listen well to what they say to you. Upon their heels will follow my children; you will bathe them in order from oldest to youngest. Once you have done that, we shall share a final meal and our bargain will come to its end."

Having said this, Ježibaba separated the girls, placing each on opposite sides of her hold with the hut and its associated brambles in between. Each was provided with a fire to tend with fuel beneath a tub of water.

In time, three riders appeared, each clad in armor and riding one of the hag's nightmare steeds: one in red, one in white, one in black. The approached Euna first: "Ho, girl! We would parley with you."

"Ride on, strangers, and be silent," cried Euna. "For an armed man is to a maiden as a hungry dog is to scraps, and I will not be devoured nor pierced by your proud lances."

When the riders approached Vasilissa, they made the same hue and cry: "Ho, girl! We would parley with you."

"Speak, then, my good sirs," said Vasilissa with a curtsey.

"Listen well, then," said the red knight. "I am dawn, and with me breaks the light."

"I am midday, and with me comes heat and the banishment of shadow," said his white brother-in-arms.

"And I am night," said the final, black, knight. "With me die my brothers, and come forth the invisible lords beyond mankind's dominion."

Vasilissa understood not their words, but as they departed the witch's children were on their heels. Rats, frogs, bats, and all manner of vermin they were, writhing disgustingly about near the tub. Vasilissa pondered over which to bathe first for many agonizing minutes, for she was not of nimble mind. But the truth soon broke upon her: the knights' identities were a riddle and a clue all in one. Therefore, Vasilissa washed those creatures that prowled at daybreak first, followed by those that moved under the noon sun, and the nighttime creatures like bats last of all.

Euna was horrified by the creatures when they appeared; refusing to bathe them, she drove many away and killed with a burning log those that would not flee. She dumped their bodies into the tub, reasoning that as low creatures they should all be bathed at once.

As daybreak approached, Ježibaba called both girls into her stilted hut. "Fie! Your term of service has ended. I will deal with you each in turn."

"Thank you for the pleasure of serving, grandmother," said Vasilissa, curtseying as best as her tatters would allow.

"You, dark of skin and dark of hair," said the hag. "You are not a creative child, nor an intelligent one, but you are possessed of the virtues which every true Russian seeks to instill in his daughters. You are kind, devoted, loyal, and generous, even when there is no cause to be. For that, I give you this."

The witch handed Vasilissa a bag. "This contains new clothes, and embroidery of the highest quality for your wedding," she continued. "Also inside are coins of gold, enough to settle my debt to your father and pay your dowry. Go forth, dear child, and live the life domestic in happiness and duty."

Vasilissa obeyed, worried as she was about her sister. She soon found the road and was on her way back to her father's mill.

"And then there's the matter of you, child," sneered Ježibaba, turning to Euna. "You are everything your sister is not. You are prideful, questioning, headstrong, and aspire to power and violence when neither are suited to your station in life. You are a snake."

"It if funny that you say that," replied Euna defiantly. "In my home village I was often called Snake or Serpent by the children. It is fitting that yet another child seeks to honor me with what they think an insult."

"Fie! You have disobeyed my every order, stolen from me and from your sister, and conducted yourself in a way that is un-Russian," continued the witch. "In fact, with your sister gone, I smell nothing of Russia on you at all, so alien is your vile behavior. You recall my promise at the beginning of our arrangement: rewards for obedience, rending and doom for spite."

Euna crossed her arms and stared at the hag.

"Have you nothing to say to that?" demanded Ježibaba. "Nothing to say for yourself?"

"I say that I am sick of your orders, your riddles, your games," replied Euna. "If you mean to eat me, then eat me. If you mean to free me, then free me. But do not stand before me and act the martyr when you have attempted to unfairly stack the odds against me at every turn. Do not screech at me like a spoiled child because you have met someone who does not fear you and will not play your silly games."

Ježibaba approached Euna, her thin and colorless lips drawn back from her pitted and yellowed teeth, her nails like talons. She lashed out with her hand…

…and seized Euna's, not in an iron grip but an embrace of friendship.

"Well done, girl," laughed Ježibaba, her grimace now a warm and inviting smile. "Well done."

"So," said Euna. "There was a method to your madness after all. I'm surprised."

"Yes, yes." The hag led Euna to a nearby table, and set her out a plate of food and a mug of tea. With a touch, she mended the girl's clothes. "It was a test."

"A test of what?"

"I see myself--have always seen myself--as a protector of women," said Ježibaba. "But moreso than that, the power which courses though me--of which you have seen only the merest hint--is the elemental power, raw and writhing, of femininity in nature. I nurture it, I blow upon its sputtering embers, I embody it--even as I do as I will according to only the whims of my heart." The witch laughed. "Ambiguity, nuance, fury…they are woman as well, after all."

Euna's eyes darted back and forth, bright and intelligent, as she processed the information. "So my sister was really failing your tests all along," she said.

"When the mood strikes me, I test people. Men for honor, as weeding out the rotten ones does the world in general and womankind in particular a service. I aid those that mean well, devour or destroy those women who are tiresome, and seek out those who are like me."

"Who don't obey without reason, or fail to question the motives of those who help them, or rely overmuch on others," Euna said, a light dawning in her eyes.

"Yes, all the qualities that you so amply demonstrate, and which are so missing in the Russian woman of today, all of them so much like your dullard bore of a stepsister. Songs will be written about her dutifulness and beauty, I'm sure, if only to serve as rhetorical chains keeping their sex mired in labor and squalor. Your ambition is much, much more interesting."

Euna leaned forward. "So the question then becomes, what do you do when you find one like me? Like yourself?"

"I offer them a choice," said Ježibaba. "The same choice that was offered to me two thousand years ago. They can depart with my blessing, and gifts to make those of your idiot stepsister seems like something to wipe a czar's rear, or…"

"Or?"

"Or they can take my place. I can give unto them my vast powers, confident that they will be exercised in a way that reflects their source. They can become the very spirit and protector of the feminine in this sphere of the world, where in many ways a strong and mercurial hand of womanhood is needed more than anywhere else. I can return to mortality and live out a comfortable retirement with a handpicked successor."

Euna's eyes were shining now, as if enkindled with the embers of a sacred bonfire. "There must be a price," she said. "There is always a price."

"Yes, verily there is," sighed Ježibaba. "For the duration of their tenure, and until they pass the power on to a successor and retire, they will lose all their youth, all their beauty, and only appear hideous to other people."

"A steep price," mused Euna, fingering her beauteous blonde hair.

"Steep indeed, but steep also is the power, the satisfaction, the need." Ježibaba leaned back in her chair. "Two thousand years have I been carrying it, and my predecessor two thousand before that. I have made my offer seventeen times in that span, and every time it has been turned down."

Silence across the table. Flames crackled and grew in the darkest part of Euna's eyes.

"If you need time to think about it, I can-"

"I'll do it," Euna interrupted. "I'll do it now."

"You're sure?" said Ježibaba. "There will be no turning back until you find a successor once you begin down this path."

Euna glared at the old woman, and the steel in her glare was all that was needed. "Very well."

At the edge of the clearing near the swamp, a pale young woman in clothes that had been regal centuries ago watched as the new tenant wrought changes to the old hut. The stilts which were hen's legs in legend became hen's legs in fact, and the whole home lifted itself up upon them and charged off into the unknown; the dark figure at one window, face hidden in a wild and windblown tangle of discolored hair, waved goodbye with a hand that was all gristle and bones.

The woman, who had once been known as Figchen in her long ago home along the Baltic, set off at a walk toward St. Petersburg. The czarevich Peter was, as they said, in need of a wife after all.

And Euna? She, like Figchen, left her name and past behind until such time as she chose a willing successor--something she has not yet deigned to do. Her old nickname, Snake, has instead become her watchword, along with the title of grandmother she once refused to bestow on the undeserving. She writ her new name large into the legends: Grandmother Snake.

Or, to use the hushed and ancient Russian of the serfs who saw her most often, Baba Yaga.