Baba brings the chaos baked in

Baba Yaga accepted the invitation to the castle to meet the forest king and forest queen. This was a very big deal, and let’s be clear - a less worthy guest one could hardly imagine - but the king and queen knew what they were doing; experienced, as they were, in this kind of shimmery ruse, this kind of subterfuge.

As for Baba, she was very grateful; the visit being the greatest honour of her obnoxious life, so she made an effort: she wore a beautiful floor length dress to hide her bony leg; a skin mask made from spares covered the thin ochre cuticle of her carved apple head, and she spoke in a new, peculiar way. But she didn’t really fool anyone and looked, for all the world, like she was suffering a massive disruption of blood flow to the brain.

At the podium, she pretty much behaved, but then she didn’t really say anything that actually meant anything, mostly repeating a stream of very simple words and phrases that just baffled those who’d assembled in the great hall to listen to her. Most could only manage a wan smile and wince. But history tells us, Baba, who brings the chaos baked in, would lapse and then vent full tilt as she went on her way.

The visit split opinion across the land. There had been understandable fear that despite everyone’s best efforts the whole thing would serve only to gild the empty promises, the lies and the rage that Baba loved spreading. Though much of this didn’t come to pass, hers remains a slippery hand and a sinister magic. Hers is the rage and the bewilderment, and even now, when gone, her voice hasn’t left, nor her impact lessened. Ours, is now the need to change the calculus.

As she left, she used her hazelwood and birch twig broom to sweep up the traces before stepping through the skull and bone palisade and up into her rickety chicken-legged cottage. Her fingers found the phone in her bag. She switched it on and loosed a thumb across its sticky glass plate: I DONT EVEN WANT TO STOP THE WAR!