Baba Yaga’s Haunt
Mark the silent shadows and the great elm silhouetted against the gloaming eve! The branches are skeletal and sinister, extending wretched hands to the sun, earnestly appealing for some brand of solace in a trajectory of accursedness. The clouds are fell curtains smeared in orange stains and pregnant with dark secrets, and the wind from o’er the bay clamours in irascible gusts and outbursts, reminding the remnant spectres of life that destruction is at hand, and the sprites of the air carry designs of violence and vengeance. Old Gandhari’s wrath seeks the inhabitants of earth in unabated ire!
Baba Yaga’s domicile is loose upon the land, perusing the snowscape in magical lunacy. The chicken legs upon which it is supported lurch and saunter and race in unpredictable spurts, and innocent animals go racing to the underbrush for shelter from the bright lightning and high magic which emanates from her ferocious hand. Now pink and now purple, the smoke of her incantations brings a hideous odor, a brazen affront to the mind upon inhalation! The concoctions which she prepares in her cauldron are from the headiest herbs and tinctures and the potency is veritably infernal. Her wry malice seeks sport in transformations and perversions, changing sundry children into ogre like ugliness and malformation, ruining the beauty of maidens and sometimes wreaking death and demise by the waterfall.
Baba Yaga has enlisted the service of the very moon to do her bidding. She has somehow charmed and bewitched that fair nocturnal presence to execute her unnatural designs, and she is emboldened therein! She batters away any competitors with unbridled aggression, using her staff like an implement of satanic power. None might compete with her incandescent lusts and uncanny puissance. All the land is captivated by her wry prowess. All the expressions of unassuming life extant on the steppe are beaten into dread supplication by her fierce will and her vengeful way. The stars race for shelter behind the clouds and the birds assume a guarded silence lest she discern competition to her unholy eminence. I am but a lowly shepherd, and even I am braced for her wrath…
