The Baba Yaga Guild

Chapter Three: The Tale of Vasilisa the Beautiful

Any and all mistakes are mine and Google Translate's. This is based on the versions I could find on the internet, so... Yeah. Inspiration for this came from reading the amazing Araceil's "Fairy Tail".

13th September 2009

"Tell me more about Baba Yaga?" Harry asked once they were sprawled in Terry's cubbyhouse, the kitchen cleaned, breakfast eaten and Temnaya bathed.

"Once upon a time, there was a merchant." Terry started. "By his first wife, he had a single daughter, who was known as Vasilisa the beautiful. When she was eight years old, she lost her mother. On her deathbed, Vasilisa's mother gave her a tiny wooden doll, and told her that if she was ever in need, then she should feed and water her doll, just a little, and it would help her. After her mother died, Vasilisa followed her mother's instructions, and her doll comforted her.

"After a time, her father remarried, to a woman with two other daughters. The stepmother didn't like Vasilisa, and so was cruel to her, making her do horrible tasks which, with help from her doll, she did. Whenever young men came asking for Vasilisa's hand in marriage, her stepmother sent them all away, because it wasn't proper for the littlest sister to marry before the bigger sisters. But none of the men wanted to marry the stepsisters.

"One day, the merchant had to go on a long journey. So his wife sold the house, and moved them all to a gloomy house on the edge of a forest. Then, the stepmother set a task for each girl, and put out all the fires except for a single candle, which her older daughter then snuffed out. Vasilisa was then sent to Baba Yaga's place to retrieve more light. The little doll told Vasilisa to go, and so she went. On their way, she passed three mysterious, lone riders. The first rode a white horse, and all of his clothes and tack were also white. The second was the same, but all in red, and the third was in black. The last rider passed Vasilisa just as she had made it to Baba Yaga's house, and once he rode passed, night fell.

"Baba Yaga's house stood on big chicken legs, and had a fence made out of human bones all around it, and it wobbled and wailed around the clearing. Once night had fallen, all of the skulls around the house had lit up like lanterns. It was so frightening that Vasilisa couldn't even move! So she was still at the house when Baba Yaga appeared in her mortar and pestle."

"In her what?" Harry interrupted, laughing.

Terry's lips twitched. "You know, the thing chemists and cooks use to crush up herbs and stuff?"

"But what about a broom?" Harry grinned.

"Baba Yaga isn't like your kind of witch!" Terry said haughtily. "She doesn't wear a hat, either. Now zip it and let me finish!

"Anyway, so Baba Yaga appears in her flying mortar and pestle, and she says something that Vasilisa can't hear, but it makes the house squat down, and stop making so much noise. "What are you doing here?" Baba askes Vasilisa." Harry burst out laughing at Terry's 'witch voice'. "I came to fetch some light", she says – oh, shut up, you! Ahem. "I can do that for you, but first you must do me a boon."

"Nobody says do me a boon," Harry snorts.

"Oh, would you stop interrupting!" Terry scolded, smacking him up the back of the head. "It's a fairy tail! Anyway, so Baba Yaga tells Vasilisa that she must do the witch some favours, otherwise, she will be eaten. First she had to clean the house and yard, then do Baba's laundrey, and cook her a meal. Vasilisa also had to separate foul corn grains from good ones, and poppy seed from dirt, because somebody wicked had been fiddling with Baba's supplies. Anyway, Baba left in her mortar again, and Vasilisa despaired, because how was she supposed to do all of that in a single night?

"Don't worry," said the doll, after Vasilisa had worked as hard as she could. "I will do the work for you; you go and sleep."

"At dawn, noon, and night, each other of the horsemen rode passed – first white, then red, and the black came last, and behind him, came Baba Yaga. Once she had seen that everything had been done, just as she asked, Baba Yaga grumbled that there was nothing to complain about. So then she had three magic pairs of hands appear to squeeze the oil from the corn, and asked Vasilisa if she had any questions.

""Yes," said Vasilisa. "Who are those horsemen?" Baba said that the white horseman was her bright dawn, the red horseman was her red sun, and that the black horseman was her dark midnight. Before Vasilisa could ask about the bodiless hands, the dolls shook in her pocket, so she knew not to ask about it. Instead, she told Baba that she had no more questions, and in return, Baba asked, "What is the cause of your success?" Vasilisa said, "My mother's blessing", and meant her doll, but Baba Yaga spat, and said, "I don't want nobody with any kind of blessing in my house! Take this, and go!""

"Baba had taken up a skull, put it on a walking stick, and then filled it with coals, to provide light for her step-family. Once she returned, Vasilisa found out that no light had been lit, or able to enter, their house, except for the skull-lamp. But once she got inside, the coals inside the skull burnt brightly, and burned the stepmother and stepsisters to ashes. "Bury me where no one else will ever be hurt by me," the skull told her."

"That's a horrible story!" Harry said indignantly.

"No it's not!" Terry replied hotly. "Afterwards, Vasilisa's father comes back, and they move to the capital city, Moscow, where she learns to make cloth, and then she becomes so skilled, and so beautiful, that the Tsar himself went to see her, and then they got married!"

Harry scrunched his nose up. "It's like a really weird version of Cinderella."

Terry shrugged. "It's a Russian fairy tale – you should hear Babushka tell it. I'm not as good as she is."

Harry shook his head. "I'll take your word for it. Hey, have you finished the math sheets yet?"

Terry's eyes widened comically. "Yebat'!"

Translations:

tsvetok - flower

Babushka - grandmother

Yebat' - swearing courtesy of Google Translate. And please don't say that little kids don't swear, I was at boarding school for five years, the twelvies have worse mouths than most of the senior students