The Motivations of Baba Yaga

The library had a limit on the number of books you could take out and I had a limit on what I would be able to physically carry. That plus I'd need to leave some leeway for actually taking out books for class, you know the thing I was here on campus to actually do.

So I prioritized. The PhD thesis papers stayed in the library, as did any tome thicker than I reasonably thought I could manage in my spare time.

In the end I had a stack of six books. Alternating between childrens story books and a few promising books that spoke about the symbolism and history behind mythology and one book, in particular, whose title caught my eye.

Baba Yaga as Fairy God Mother: An Re-Examination of the Slavic Myth of the Crone.

Clocking in at just over five hundred pages and written by someone who insisted, apparently, on having their first name, their last name and all three of their middle names written out on the cover. The book is split in focus between the Baba Yaga specifically and crones throughout many different myths in general. It critically examines the history of the crone and, as it advertises in shockingly enthusiastic script it turns the tables on it and offers proof that we have been misinterpreting the meaning and indeed even the intention of it all along.

That book, that was the book I was most excited about. All five hundred pages of tiny type with seemingly little to no paragraph breaks and dense and technical language.

Yeah, absolutely fascinating. A real page turner. The kind of book that you will absolutely not be able to put down.

But a beach read, definitely. So light that you'll want to take it with you on vacation.

And you know it's gonna have a happily ever after.

Enough of that. The point was this was the first book that gave me an ounce of hope. Every other myth about her, even the kids picture books, cast her as the villain of the piece. She was evil beyond measure. She was...

She punished people.

I didn't want punishment. I didn't know if I could bear it. I was looking for a chance at a happily ever after, because I was starting to really enjoy this life and starting to see the bright side of things. I wanted to be here now, I think.

As crazy as it was to think of I was actually starting to feel at home here and in this body. I was starting to open up to the possibility that this was where I belonged and this was who I needed to be.

Emily Ross.

I was maybe, just maybe, Emily Ross.

And Emily Ross could be good and could be kind and could be a bright spot for the people of this world and more importantly she could be what I needed, what I'd wanted the whole time. A second chance, more even than I imagined she could be.

But if Baba Yaga was who sent me back and Baba Yaga was there to punish people then what did that mean for me? What did that mean for where I was?

It meant that I was just fooling myself.

So I was looking. I was looking for a way to accept this and I was looking for a way to find that she wasn't the evil old woman that every single person in myth and legend and history thought her to be and I was looking for some way to find my place in this world and the point of all this is that I wasn't looking where I was going and that's about when I ran straight into someone and went clattering to the ground in a tumble and a tangle of limbs and books.

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