Chapter 2
Baba Yaga
The feather wasn’t a regular bird’s feather.
That much was immediately clear. I flipped it in my hands.
It felt warm to the touch, just like the Firebird’s feather should feel.
The deep red color was more pronounced in the middle and was almost burgundy.
The sides were a softer shade, a warm pink, with orange undertones.
Even in the darkness of the forest, I could tell what this feather was.
It was the one. My heart fluttered as I ran my finger along its soft lines and noticed a golden shimmer that was only visible if you looked at it against the light.
The magical feather! I stared at it, forgetting all about the hare, the hunt, and the horses I’d left to graze on their own.
Dreaming of what I would do with the feather, I’d lost track of time.
Now that I was holding it in my hands, making a wish wasn’t as simple as I’d thought it would be.
What if I make the wrong wish? I’d always assumed it would be easy—wishing for the crop was the most logical thing to do—but now that I was holding the feather in my hands, my thoughts were racing.
I could wish for a nicer izba for our family, I thought.
That would make them so happy. I almost smiled, picturing Peter and Ilya sitting in a big house with their new brides, and then realized I would need to choose between feeding a village and having a nice house.
The possibility of ruining the magical wish so soon made me incredibly nervous. I took one last look at the feather and carefully placed it in my right pocket. I’ll wait until I get home, I decided, and give it to Papa to decide what to do with it.
Then, I turned on my heels, expecting to see the path that had taken me to the depths of the forest. But instead, I was now facing the trunk of an enormous oak.
It was so wide, it blocked my passage completely.
I didn’t remember ever seeing this tree before and had no recollection of passing it, but now, there it was.
When I was little, my nurse, Arina, had told me a story about an ancient oak tree, one that was a thousand years old.
That tree stood in the deepest part of the forest, but only a few could see it.
And once they did, they never returned, for the oak tree was a sorcerer’s portal and could eat you alive.
Looking at the oak, I swallowed hard, trying to establish whether it was the very oak tree from the tales I’d heard from my nurse.
Just as I was about to feel its trunk, I heard the cawing of a crow, and my heart started to beat so fast, it felt as if it would jump out of my chest. There was only one thing I could do, and that was to carefully step back nine times and retrace my way back, pretending the encounter with the oak tree never happened.
In the fairy tales, this was what the smart hunters had done, and this trick had saved them.
And so, holding my breath, I took a step back. Nothing happened. The leaves of the tree rustled, but I was still alive, still on the outside. I took another, larger step back, emboldened now. I was wrong, it’s okay, it’s all going to be okay, I told myself, and took another step back.
Now, three feet separated me from the tree, and I breathed hard.
I touched the feather with my fingertips, and the idea of using it to save myself occurred to me.
But that would have been a very selfish thing to do, for I would waste its magic on myself, and I decided against it.
The Firebird’s power couldn’t be used for something as silly as saving me, the Dimwit.
Another step. Four feet out. Just five more and I would be saved, and, as I moved slowly away from the sorcerer’s oak, I counted them. Cold sweat poured down my neck, I lost track of time, and it wasn’t until I’d taken the last, ninth step that I unclenched my jaw.
I stood there for a moment, staring at the oak tree, and then, just as I was about to keep moving back, it disappeared.
It was just like the fairy tales had said—it was gone.
It could have taken me with it, I understood at once, and the danger I so narrowly avoided brought tears of gratitude to my eyes.
Instead of the oak tree, a passage opened up, and I recognized the path to take me back to the horses and then back home.
I started walking. I knew the forest better than most. It was the first place I went if I ever wanted to be alone.
In the summer, I gathered berries and mushrooms there, in the fall and winter, I hunted, and in the spring, I went for the first flowers.
This is to say, the forest was my friend.
I knew it well, I trusted it. We had an understanding.
Or so I thought. Except this time, it didn’t feel so friendly.
What I thought to be a clearing was marshland.
I could see the murky waters underneath.
If I didn’t know any better, I would have kept on walking and sunk right in, and that would have been the end of me.
The ice on top of the marshes always melted first and would not hold my body weight.
For the second time that morning, I panicked and had to steady myself before I could continue.
This must be the Ogre’s marsh flashed in my mind.
And the next moment I was struggling to breathe.
“Yes, sonny boy, yes, Ivan, welcome to my lair.” I heard a voice so screechy that it grated on my ears.
“Who are you?” I screamed, reaching for the feather.
“Come and find out,” the voice cajoled me. “I’ll warm you up, Ivan.”
“I’m quite warm where I am, thank you,” I responded and tried to take a step back, but my feet wouldn’t move. I jerked my left foot up, but nothing happened. Then the right. In response, I heard a guffaw.
“Don’t bother, Ivan. From here on, the only way is forward.”
“Forward? But it’s a marsh. I’ll drown.”
“Ha, not such a dimwit after all, are you?” The voice chuckled. I turned bright red.
You see, until that point, I’d assumed only the villagers and my family knew of my nickname.
No one who knows me calls me just Ivan. They call me Ivan the Dimwit.
But now the forest creature was referring to the insulting nickname, and I realized rumors about me must have spread all through the land of Zorya.
“What do you want from me, Ogre?” I threw my hands up in indignation.
“Ogre? You called me an ogre?” The screechy voice wasn’t laughing. It sounded sad. “That’s it. I have to show you who I am. Now, Ivan the Dimwit, you’ll see a path in front of you. If you take it, I’ll show you my face and you’ll find out who I really am.”
“Why would I wanna do that? What if I just turn around and leave?” I asked, but of course, I knew the answer. The creature, whatever it was, would never let me go. I was doomed. I had to do what it told me or die.
“Because you’re no dimwit, Ivan, and you’ll do as you’re told,” the voice responded, confirming my suspicions. Right away, I saw a path made out of wooden planks carefully placed on top of the marshland. I tapped the first plank with my toe, and it felt firm to the touch.
“There you go, Ivan the Dimwit. Take that step. Don’t be afraid,” the voice said. It sounded melodious now, and I obeyed. I took the first step, then the second, and walked up the path in the middle of the marsh.
It took me about twenty steps before I realized the path was shifting on its own and carrying me forward.
It was like a flying carpet. And then I saw it—the hut on chicken legs.
I tried to scream, but no sound came. This was no ogre!
An ogre would have been nothing compared to her. It was the one and only. The hag.
The witch.
Baba Yaga!
The realization I was about to face the scariest creature in all of Zorya hit me hard.
Baba Yaga feasted on little children. Baba Yaga was scary, toothless, ugly, and unkind, to say the least. She was a mean old hag and prided herself on torturing the poor souls that came into her reach.
She loved to ask questions, and if you didn’t answer them correctly, she killed you.
She lived alone in the middle of the forest. No one came to her hut voluntarily. If you ever stumbled upon her residence, it was because of her trickery. Just like what had happened to me, with the marsh and the oak. And surely the feather, too, was part of her trying to trap me.
Within seconds, I was propelled toward Baba Yaga’s lair.
My nurse had mentioned how the hut stood above the ground on thin legs that looked like a chicken’s, but I could never imagine I would one day see it with my very own eyes.
I was facing Baba Yaga’s hut from the back.
It creaked in the wind, swaying from left to right, making almost human-sounding groaning noises.
“Hut on chicken legs, hut on chicken legs, turn to face me, your back to the forest,” I commanded.
This was the magic formula I’d heard from my nurse.
Immediately, the hut started moving and turning around, just like I’d commanded it to do.
It squeaked, shifted on its chicken legs, the wooden construction turning slowly, moving the four footholds one after another.
As it did so, its groans got louder, and some sounded like sobbing.
The last thing I wanted to do was stay in place, but I forced myself to do so and kept repeating the formula.
It was unnerving to see the whole house move, and for a moment I even worried it might collapse and crush me underneath, but, to my relief, after completing the turn, the hut stopped moving.
I was now facing its front, which looked as decrepit as the back, with the front door hanging off its hinges.
The lone window on top of the door was half covered by the shutter, which, I realized as it flapped against the wall, must have been the source of the creaking noise.