52 Project #44: A Doll for Vasilisa (Patreon)

The sick woman made her way slowly through the forest, stopping to rest many more times than she thought she should have to. Her eyes moved automatically over the herbs and vines and leaves she saw, checking for anything that would have value to her… but she knew her illness was beyond herbcraft, beyond even magic. Not that she had much of that left.

When she reached the Mother Tree, she sat down on a thick root, breathing hard. “Mother Tree, you’ve given me so much,” she whispered, too out of breath to speak more loudly. “Give me two more things, and then you will never need to give to me again? Grant me just a little more magic that I can finish my daughter’s doll… and let my sister know to come speak to me.”

As she waited, she pulled out her needles and yarn, to work on the doll. Most of its body was complete, but it needed to be stuffed, and it needed a face. It would be of no use to her daughter without a face.

After a time, she heard a loud stomping noise. She didn’t look up. Shortly afterward, she heard a voice yelling, “What do you want this time?”

The sick woman looked up at her mother’s, now sister’s, house, high above the ground on giant chicken legs. Her sister was leaning out the window. Without the strength to yell back, the woman could only motion her sister to come down.

“Well? Kneel down, you lazy thing!” her sister yelled at the house. Obediently it knelt, and the woman’s sister came out. “Now what do you want? You’re all skin and bones! Do you need me to feed you a whole pig? Maybe a nice plump little boy?”

The woman laughed, weakly. “It won’t help. I knew the rules. I had a daughter with a man of the world, not the forest, and now I’m dying.”

“You should never have left,” her sister growled. “I told you that man would be the death of you.”

“It’s my daughter that’s the death of me, and I die willingly to have made her,” the woman said. “But I thought I would have more time. I thought I’d see her grown.”

“I will not take in your brat. She’s not got a magical bone in her body. You had a child with a son of Adam and now look at you. She’s no witch, and you’re dying. All your magic is draining into her, and she can’t even use it.”

The woman nodded. “Not as magic. It makes her beautiful and gives her strength and perfect health.”

“As you lose yours.”

“I thought I’d have more time,” the woman said again. She held up the doll. “I don’t have the magic to finish this, but I must. My daughter needs a witch’s protection, and as you say, you won’t take care of her.”

“And you don’t trust that man of yours to do a good job?”

The woman shook her head. “He’s had a roving eye for years. I knew what he was when I married him; I wanted a child, not a faithful husband, and he’s provided well enough. But without me to hold him to the responsible path, I’m afraid he won’t take care of our daughter as well as she deserves. What if he remarries, and his new wife is jealous of her beauty?”

“You could poison him. Then he’ll never remarry.”

“Then my daughter would be left an orphan! And where would she go? To my husband’s brother and his jealous wife? To mysister, who tells children that she’ll eat them and would never share her hut with a daughter of Eve? No, he must live long enough for her to make her way in the world. She can marry well, or she can take up a trade, but she must be provided for.”

“And so? What does any of this matter to me? Tell me what you called me here for.”

“You know what I want.” The woman took a smaller needle, the kind for weaving fine cloth rather than the thick knitting needles, and poked her finger with it. When a drop of blood beaded up, she pressed her finger to the spot where the doll would have eyes, once it was complete. “Give me the herbs to stuff the doll.”

“You could eat them instead, and stay alive.”

“Don’t call me stupid, sister. I’ve tried that already, when I was strong enough to collect them and dry them myself. They gave me a little more time, but they won’t give me more.”

“So you’re going to waste them on a doll.”

“My soul will go wherever souls go, but my spirit must be part of the doll, to watch over her. And to protect her, the doll will need magic.”

“You’re assuming we even have souls.” The sister gestured at the Mother Tree. “We are forest witches, not children of Adam and Eve. Our souls don’t go where the people of the world’s do, if we have them at all.”

“That’s nothing I can change, so I’ll do nothing about it. It’s my spirit I am concerned with. I need to put it into the doll before I die. There must be the right herbs inside, or it won’t be able to hold them.”

“Mother told me, the day you left.” The sister leaned on her walking stick, glaring down at the woman. “She said someday you would come back, begging for help. I told her then, I’d give you nothing. You made your own bed.”

“And she told you, no, I am your own flesh and blood and if you won’t help me for that reason, help me for Mother’s own sake. And she made you promise on her deathbed.”

“When you were not there.”

“The baby was sick and I couldn’t travel, but she came to me in my dream and told me what you had said, and what she made you promise.”

The sister sighed explosively. “Fine! But never ask me for anything again. And I won’t come to your deathbed, when you didn’t come to Mother’s.”

“I didn’t expect that you would.”

The sister stomped back over to the hut on chicken legs and climbed in. The woman tried to breathe, despite the shortness in her lungs.

***

Once upon a time, a forest witch went to the Mother Tree, as her mother had before her, and her mother before her, until the days the forest first existed. It was midnight, under a full moon, the first one of the year. She bit a fingernail loose, and a small piece of skin beside it, and then her lip, until it bled. She pressed the fingernail and the skin to the blood, and tossed them down on the ground by the tree’s roots. Then she danced around the tree, slowly making a circle, and sang.

“Hear my plea
Old Mother Tree
By the blood and flesh I’ve given to thee
I beg thee, give a child to me—”

On the last line, the very last word, she tripped over a root she hadn’t seen in the dark, so it came out more like “mAhhh!” as she fell hard against the tree.

The witch did not curse her own clumsiness, because cursing here would disrespect the Mother Tree. She bit back the words she wanted to say, and started the entire ritual all over again. Magic required great precision. If you didn’t say all the words perfectly, the ritual generally would not work.

Sometimes it didn’t work anyway. Sometimes trying it again after ruining it the first time wouldn’t help.

The witch waited a long time before deciding that the tree was leaving her prayer unanswered. She bowed, thanked the tree for listening, and returned to her chicken-legged hut in a foul mood. It would be a year before she could try again.

But the next night, she heard such a wailing and clamoring outside as she had never heard before, and it woke her from a dead sleep. She went outside to find out who was making all that noise, and saw twoyoung girls, naked, holding onto each other by the tree, shrieking and wailing.

“Stop all that!” she yelled at them. “Why are you crying?”

“Because we don’t have a mother and we’re all alone!” one of the girls said.

“Are you our mother?” the other said, drying her eyes with her fist.

“I am,” the witch said. “I expected you last night. You’re late.”

The girls looked to be about seven or eight, if they were human. The forest witches always had daughters in this way. They performed the ritual to beg a daughter from the Mother Tree, and got a girl who looked just like them, young enough to be trained but already old enough to be helpful. But normally there was only one. The witch didn’t know any witches who had sisters.

It was because she’d had to do the ritual twice, she realized. The Tree had accepted the first ritual. It had taken a full day because she had inadvertently asked for two daughters, not one.

So the witch took her daughters into her hut, dressed them, fed them, and then began their apprenticeship into witchcraft. Which, at their age, mostly involved them doing chores.

In their childhood the two witch girls were inseparable. But in their teens, one of the witches was restless, and wanted to see the world beyond the forest. So she followed the path the children of Adam and Eve had made, into the town, despite her mother and sister’s warnings. And she fell in love with a young man, a son of Adam.

The witches had always turned to the Mother Tree for daughters because giving birth, the way the people of the world did it, would drain a witch of her magic and cause her to die young. The mother and sister reminded the girl of this, and warned her not to go with the young man, lest she get with child and doom herself. But the girl wanted a child. Not a copy of herself who could already talk, but a new child, a baby she could hold in her arms.

She knew it would kill her. She didn’t know her daughter would be barely ten when it did.

Her mother and sister had been very angry and had sworn never to speak to her again, but her mother had forgiven her, when her mother was dying and her own daughter was three. Her sister never had.

***

She was so tired, she’d almost fallen asleep by the time her sister returned from the hut with a packet of dried herbs tied in a cloth. “Here. This should be enough for your stupid doll.”

“Thank you.”

“Mother died too young, you know. She worried about you so much, it drove her into the ground.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I told her not to worry, and that she had you, but she didn’t listen to me.”

“Any more than you listened when she and I told you not to marry that man.”

“Yes. Not any more than that.”

The sister glared. “I’m done with caring about any of you. I hate you and I hate your brat. I won’t lose any of my magic or my life force worrying about anyone ever again.”

Despite the fact that the woman was the one dying, the sister looked older. She had already lost something to worry, it seemed.

“That would be safest,” the woman agreed. She got carefully to her feet with her precious packet in hand. “May the Mother Tree protect and keep you, sister. We won’t meet again.”

“And I won’t help your brat if she comes to me. And I won’t tell her I’m her aunt.”

“I didn’t expect you to,” the woman said. “And what child would ever go to you? You’ve told the world you eat children. You’re the scary old woman, the Baba Yaga. Some came to Mother for aid, sometimes, but I don’t think any will come to you.”

“Some do,” the sister said. “Sometimes I help them. More often I eat them.”

The woman laughed. “I hope the ones you eat are the rude little brats who treat you disrespectfully.”

“Of course. None of the children of Adam and Eve know how to raise their own children to respect their elders anymore.”

“Anyway, don’t hate my daughter so much. She did not ask to be born, and she is your flesh and blood, Mother’s granddaughter. If she has taken my life it’s only because I willingly gave it to her. I am the one you should blame, not her.”

“I do blame you. I just don’t have any interest in her.”

The woman smiled. She knew her sister was softer than she pretended. “Perhaps I will see you in the lands beyond life, sister.”

“In hell?” the sister asked, rudely.

“You know well none of us ever spoke of hell before the children of Adam and Eve came and brought their god and their ideas. If we exist after death, it’s not in the place they believe we belong.” She sighed. “I’ll find out soon enough.”

“Take some bread, stupid woman,” the sister said abruptly, yanking part of a loaf out of her skirts as if she was pulling a knife and shoving it toward the woman. “You’ll need some strength to finish that doll before the end takes you.”

“Thank you,” the woman said, and bowed to her sister. “Goodbye.”

Slowly she hobbled away from her sister, her breathing ragged, her limbs burning from the exertion. She pulled off a bit of the bread her sister had given her and stuffed it in her mouth, recognizing the taste of the herbs. Soon the burning in her limbs receded and her breathing became easier, and she was able to return home more quickly.

The woman looked around at the sky, the bubbling brook, the trees and the bushes. The road, as she came out of the forest. The grassy fields of her neighbors. The goats placidly munching, the chickens clucking as they hunted for bugs and tasty bits of plants. All of this, she would never see again. This trip had taken what remained of her strength, and once she laid down in her bed, she was sure she would never rise again.

As she came near her home, her daughter ran to her. “Mama! Mama, I was so worried, where did you go?”

“I went to visit your auntie,” the woman said, somewhat breathlessly. “She gave me a bit of bread for my health.”

“That’s wonderful! You’re up and you’re walking in the fresh air and my auntie gave you bread for your health! Surely that means you’ll be well soon!”

The woman closed her eyes so her daughter couldn’t see the pain in them. She was resigned to her death, but feared most of all the pain her daughter would suffer once she was gone. “Vasilisa. You know I love you more than anything, right?”

The child threw her arms around the woman, almost knocking her over. “I love you too, Mama!”

“Let’s get back to the house. I’m making you a present and it’s almost done. You can put on tea and do the washing up for me, right?”

“What kind of present?”

“You’ll know that when I give it to you, all right?”

Vasilisa grinned cheekily. “All right, Mama,” she said, and then turned and raced toward the house. “I’ll get you your tea!”

The woman pulled the doll out of her apron. The stuffing her sister had given her could go in tonight. If the energy she’d gotten from the bread held up, she might be able to finish it tonight. Then she’d feel safe to die, knowing the doll was ready to protect Vasilisa once she was gone.

***

Many have told the tale of Vasilisa the Beautiful. How her mother gave her the doll to protect her, and died; how her father remarried a cruel woman with cruel daughters, who treated Vasilisa poorly and gave her all the chores to do, but the doll with her mother’s spirit inside could perform the chores for Vasilisa easily, so her hands never grew chafed with labor. How her stepmother and stepsisters drove her out of the house to beg coal from the monstrous Baba Yaga, the witch of the woods, and how Baba Yaga threatened to eat her unless she could perform an impossibly heavy load of chores. How the doll did the chores for her, thus passing Baba Yaga’s tests, and allowing her to return home with coals for the fire… which burned up the house, the stepmother, and the stepsisters, but left Vasilisa and her doll untouched, and free of their torments.

None have told the tale of why Baba Yaga, infamous for cruelty, would have cared enough, or even known enough, about what Vasilisa suffered at home, to place a curse that would save her.

In some versions of the story, Baba Yaga asked Vasilisa how she had accomplished the tasks set before her. None mention that she already knew, or why.

Vasilisa answered the question by showing off her doll proudly. “By the blessing of my mother,” she said.

“Blessing? I want no blessings in my house!” the old witch shouted. “Take these coals, that you came here for, and get out, blessed girl!”

Vasilisa fled the house, with the magical coals that the witch had cursed to kill all who meant the girl ill, and protect only her and whoever meant her benefit. The witch watched her go, with the spirit of her only sister tucked into her skirts, in the form of a magical doll.

And when the girl was long gone and could neither see nor hear any longer… Baba Yaga scrubbed at her own eyes, angrily, with her apron. “Wretched fireplace! You’re letting such smoke into the house, my eyes run with tears!”

The fireplace said, “My smoke is no greater than it was yesterday, and my chimney just as clear. But the girl who just left was your niece, and she doesn’t know it. And she carries the spirit of your sister in her pocket, the sister who left you eighteen years ago and died after ten of them, and you saw her only once in that time, when she was dying. Are you sure the tears are from smoke, mistress?”

“Shut up and heat my cauldron to boiling, lazy thing!” She looked up at the ceiling. “And you! Good-for-nothing hut, get up on your feet and run away from here! We don’t want that girl coming back.”

“Because then she might see you crying for her mother,” the fireplace said, as it roared to life around the cauldron, ready to set the water from a simmer to a boil.

Baba Yaga glared at the fire, and it wisely did not speak again.