The Walkman stopped playing, electromagnetic tape spilling out in one big tangle when Aurelia tried to pull the cassette free. She slipped off the headphones, threw the Walkman on the floor and balled her hands into fists. She grabbed a jacket and a shawl from the closet and then her handbag, and made her way up the twisty shambling staircase and the rickety ladder to the topmost floor.
She hesitated when she saw the mortar big and round and filled with shadow. She froze and listened for footsteps or the sound of a truck pulling into the driveway. All she heard were the usual pops and groans and whispers of the house. A thrill shook her, fear and excitement tangling as she gripped the long pestle leaning against the wall beside the skis and bicycle wheels, and the pestle seemed to respond, warming to her touch. Aurelia took it with her to the shutters and threw them open, startling the ravens perched on the ledge beyond. Dust swirled up in the wind, motes catching the dying sunlight before blowing away.
She leaned on the pestle and looked out over the road and the forest for one long moment before squaring her shoulders and turning back, hoisting herself into the pestle’s bowl. The inside was dark and moist against her legs and thighs. It too responded to her, accepting her, letting her settle in its maw, and when she pushed against the floorboards with the pestle, the mortar rose a few inches into the air then lurched in an unsteady spinning way towards the open window.
Aurelia fought the wobble that threatened to spill her, brought the pestle around like a paddle and hastily rowed at the sky. She’d never ridden the mortar before, but she’d seen Mrs. Yaga depart in its embrace and she’d read the old books in the library, the ones written in Old Church Slavonic by hand on vellum, and she’d also gone canoeing once or twice. So she succeeded in steadying the beastly container as she passed the window frame and out over the yard. Her brow furrowed in determination as she swiftly brought the mortar to bear, passing beyond the fence, beyond this sleepy town in northern British Columbia, and over the wavering boundary to the thrice-tenth kingdom.
An hour elapsed before Aurelia spotted the lair of the dragon under starlight and moonlight, the entrance to its cavern folded between the heels of the Mountains of Dusk. Smoke billowed from there in intertwining streams, threading together like rope. I’ll wait for him here, Aurelia thought, directing the mortar to descend onto the narrow path to the dragon’s gates. She stowed the pestle away and hoisted herself out from the bowl, her legs cramped and muscles aching, and she tumbled indelicately in the dirt. When she lifted her head, she saw something glimmer in the rocks above her, and she reached into her handbag for a flashlight before wandering up the path.
It was the sword. A sabre, its hilt hammered together in the form of an eagle’s head. The flashlight’s beam went this way and that, lancing the sheer cliffs above before settling on Greg’s footprints leading down from the mountain. Then it moved to a great disturbance of shattered boulders, tumbled stone. Gregory had seen the dragon, that was plain. He’d dropped the sword and fled.
Aurelia took up the blade and sat on a nearby stone, idly contemplating the size, the weight, before her gaze went back to the dragon’s cave and the smoke that issued in puffs with each of the dragon’s breaths. Then back down the path, to wherever Greg might be. He was probably back in British Columbia, the thrice-tenth kingdom peeling away until he emerged on some highway somewhere and hitched a ride back home. Memories of rusałki and other forest demons would fade until they became but dreams, mere fodder for essays while he completed his folklore degree. He would forget Aurelia, too, and all she’d have left of Greg would be wilted flowers and a broken mix tape.
Why do they always listen to Mrs. Yaga? Are they so afraid, that they’d rather chance the thrice-tenth kingdom than whisk me away themselves? Do they think I’m someone they can own, something they can barter for? Aren’t I prize enough without a quest attached?
And lastly: A fucking mix tape?
No. Fuck no. A man needed to do more than that. I need to do more than that.
Aurelia gripped the sabre tight and headed up the path towards the smell of ash and brimstone.
Mrs. Yaga was waiting in the yard by the chicken coup when Aurelia glided down in the mortar. Three months had gone by, three long hard months etched into Aurelia’s face and the cracked skin of her hands. Her jeans and jacket were replaced by a Polish peasant’s dress and cloak of deepest indigo. The old witch said nothing when Aurelia clambered out from the pestle and reached in again for a rough leather sack. The young woman said nothing when she opened the mouth and deposited the sack’s contents at Mrs. Yaga’s feet.
A delicate flower with five golden petals each the size of a hand, a ghostly white light at its centre flicking about like a cat’s pupil. It smelled of mangos. A bound cord of sea-green hair. A heart that glowed with inner fire, not much larger than a human heart, and yet clearly the heart of something other.
Mrs. Yaga stared into Aurelia’s eyes and a smile touched those cracked and bloody lips. “Why did you bring these to me? You are no suitor, my little chick. I did not send you on this quest.”
They stared at each other a while longer, measuring.
“I am my own suitor,” answered Aurelia.
“Ah.” Mrs. Yaga nodded, then she thrust her chin towards the mortar. “You stole that from me.”
“You weren’t using it.”
Mrs. Yaga clicked her tongue, stooped and dug her fingers into the dragon’s heart, hefting it, admiring the glow.
“I—” Aurelia began, stopped herself, began again. “I always wondered, why only the men were allowed to be bohaterowie. Why you only gave quests to them.”
Mrs. Yaga shook her head. “I never gave quests to them. The fools would never have finished them, never would have trodden the dark paths of the world’s mirror and emerged unscathed. It was not in their hearts.” She paused, pierced Aurelia with her gaze. “The quests were for you, when you realized you had strength to complete them. Your training is done, Aurelia Wiśniewska. You may go where you will.”
Aurelia swallowed, nodded. “Thank you, baba.”
“Don’t mention it.” Mrs. Yaga was already shuffling towards the cabin, waving a hand dismissively, and Aurelia watched as the mortar slowly wobbled after its master.
Then she turned to the gate, and the road, and the world beyond the fence of skulls, and began to walk.
Inspirations & Influences
Of course I was going to write a story about the Baba Yaga at some point. That was decided when my father departed for a refugee camp near Rome, beginning the long journey that would take me from a small village in Poland to the Canadian north.
I grew up in the Yukon Territory, for the most part, going from a Polish home to an English school and back again, growing up between Polish and mainstream western Canadian culture. I never did feel like I “fit” in the latter, but when I finally did make the trip back to my place of birth, I failed to find that sense of belonging I so desperately wanted there.
That was my borderland of identity, negotiating between one culture and another. In Polish folklore, the borders are where witches dwell. Witches buried their spells “na granice,” on the borders. And the most powerful witch of all lives in the borderlands between the field and the forest, between the human world and something other: an old woman with wild hair and bony legs and iron teeth. She lives in a house perched atop chicken-feet, and she flies over the woods in an over-sized mortar. She is a mainstay of Slavic fairy tales, appearing as jędza baba in Poland, jeźibaba in the Czech Republic, and (most famously) as Baba Yaga in Russia.