Vasilisa the Brave

Part One · The Doll in the Pocket

In a certain kingdom, at the edge of an immense forest, there lived a prosperous merchant, his wife and their only daughter, Vasilisa. When Vasilisa was eight years old, her mother became desperately ill, and before she died she summoned her daughter to her bedside and pressed a tiny wooden doll into her hand. "Listen carefully, my darling," she whispered. "Keep this doll with you always, and reveal it to no one. Whenever you are in difficulty, offer it a little food and drink, and confide your sorrows to it, and it will advise you." Vasilisa promised faithfully, and from that day forward she carried the doll in her apron pocket, the way another child might carry a precious secret.

Eventually the merchant married again, choosing a widow with two daughters of her own, because he imagined that she would be an affectionate mother to Vasilisa. He was entirely mistaken. The stepmother and her daughters were jealous of Vasilisa's gentleness and her radiant face, and they assigned her every disagreeable job in the household, hoping that exhausting labor and loneliness would make her thin and ordinary. But every evening Vasilisa crept into her little room, offered the doll a crumb of bread and a drop of milk, and described her troubles. The doll's eyes would glimmer like two miniature candles, and by morning the most difficult chores had somehow completed themselves.

One autumn the merchant departed on a lengthy journey, and the stepmother moved the entire household to a cottage at the very edge of the forest. In the middle of that forest, as everyone knew, stood the hut of Baba Yaga, the bony old witch who traveled through the air in a mortar, steering with a pestle and sweeping away her tracks with a broom. The stepmother continually dispatched Vasilisa into the forest on errands, hoping she would wander too close to the witch's dwelling. But the doll always indicated the safe path home, and Vasilisa invariably returned with her basket overflowing with mushrooms or berries, much to her stepmother's irritation.

Part Two · The Hut on Chicken Legs

At last the stepmother devised a more cunning scheme. One evening she assigned each girl a task to perform by candlelight, then allowed every candle in the house to go out except one. Her eldest daughter pretended to trim the final wick and deliberately pinched it out, plunging the cottage into absolute darkness. "Now we have no fire whatsoever," the stepmother announced, "and the only fire for miles is at Baba Yaga's, so Vasilisa must go and fetch some." The stepsisters pushed her out into the night. Vasilisa went to her room first, fed the doll, and asked it what she should do. "Do not be afraid," said the doll. "Take me with you, and no harm will come to you."

Vasilisa walked all night through the forest, trembling at every rustle and every snapping twig. Toward morning a mysterious horseman galloped past her, dressed entirely in white on a white horse with white harness, and the sky grew pale behind him. A little later a second horseman thundered by, dressed entirely in red on a red horse, and the sun rose magnificently above the trees. She traveled the whole day, and as evening descended she reached a clearing where a peculiar hut stood on two enormous chicken legs, revolving slowly round and round. Surrounding it was a fence constructed of bones, and on the fence posts perched white skulls, their empty eyes glowing like lanterns.

As Vasilisa stood there, frozen to the spot, a third horseman rode past, dressed entirely in black on a black horse, and he disappeared into the ground as though he had galloped through an invisible door, and night descended over the forest. The skulls' eyes blazed brighter still. Then the trees groaned, the leaves whirled, and Baba Yaga came flying out of the forest in her mortar, sniffing the air suspiciously with her long, hooked nose. "I smell a living person!" she shrieked. "Who is hiding here?" Vasilisa stepped forward and bowed respectfully. "It is I, Grandmother," she said politely. "My stepsisters have sent me to ask you for fire."

Part Three · Three Impossible Days

"I am acquainted with your stepmother," said Baba Yaga, examining her with eyes like wet stones. "Very well. Remain with me and work, and if you perform your work properly, I shall give you fire, and if you do not," and here she clacked her iron teeth together, "then we shall see what happens." She commanded the hut to turn its door toward her, and it creaked around obediently on its chicken legs. Inside, Vasilisa served her supper, enough food for ten hungry people, and the witch devoured every morsel of it, leaving only a crust of bread and a little soup. Vasilisa shared that crust secretly with the doll and confessed her fears.

In the morning, before flying away, Baba Yaga presented her with a list of chores long enough to exhaust an entire village. She must sweep the yard, wash the linen, prepare the dinner, and then separate the good wheat from a whole bushel of mixed and mildewed grain, down to the very last kernel. "If anything remains undone," the witch warned her, "you will be extremely sorry." When she had gone, Vasilisa fed the doll and wept. "Eat a little, little doll, and listen to my trouble." The doll ate, and its eyes glimmered. "Say your prayers and go to sleep," it advised her. "The morning is wiser than the evening."

When Vasilisa awoke, the yard was swept, the linen was hanging on the line, and the doll was removing the last unhealthy kernels from the wheat. That night Baba Yaga inspected everything, grumbling irritably, and could discover nothing to complain about. The following day she demanded something more difficult still: Vasilisa must clean a mountain of poppy seeds, grain by grain, of all the earth mixed into them. Again the doll accomplished the work while Vasilisa slept, and again the witch could find no fault whatsoever. So she summoned her three invisible servants, three pairs of disembodied hands that appeared from nowhere, to carry the grain away and press out the oil.

Part Four · The Finest Linen

At supper the witch glared at Vasilisa, who sat quietly and said nothing at all. "Why don't you ask me any questions?" Baba Yaga demanded impatiently. "Have you lost your tongue?" Vasilisa answered courteously that she would like to inquire about the three horsemen. The witch explained that the white rider was her bright morning, the red rider was her shining sun, and the black rider was her dark night. Vasilisa thought about the invisible hands, and decided that it was more prudent not to mention them. "Excellent," said Baba Yaga approvingly. "Not every question deserves an answer, and some answers are unpleasant. But tell me, how do you accomplish all my work so quickly?"

"My mother's blessing helps me," Vasilisa replied simply. At that, the witch leaped up as if she had been stung by a hornet. "A blessing! I will tolerate no blessed people in my house! Get out immediately!" She snatched a skull from the fence, fixed it on a stick, and thrust it into Vasilisa's hands. "Here is fire for your stepmother, so take it and go." Vasilisa ran all night through the forest, with the skull's eyes illuminating her path, and they only went dark when morning came. Several times she was tempted to throw the frightening object away, but a voice from the skull instructed her to keep it, and so she carried it faithfully home.

In the cottage, the stepmother and her daughters had not possessed a single spark of fire since her departure, because every flame they kindled had instantly flickered out. They welcomed her now for the first time in their lives. But when the skull was placed on the table, its glowing eyes fixed themselves on the stepmother and her daughters, following them relentlessly wherever they went and allowing them no rest. By morning they had fled out of the house and away down the road, and they never returned. Vasilisa buried the skull in the garden, locked the cottage door, and walked to the nearest town, where she found shelter with a kind old woman.

There she lived peacefully, waiting for her father to come home. To pass the time she spun flax into thread so delicate and smooth that it could be pulled through the eye of a needle, and the doll constructed a loom for her in a single night. With it she wove linen so extraordinarily beautiful that the old woman carried it to the tsar's palace as a present. The tsar wished to meet the person who had woven it, and when he met Vasilisa, he refused to let her go. They were married, and when her father returned from his travels, he lived with them happily in the palace. And Vasilisa kept the little doll in her pocket for the rest of her life.