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Babushka Baba Yaga
- Southern Illinois University Press
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13 Babushka Baba Yaga Everything starts with frozen skulls of cabbage that crack like lake ice, ring the hollow of her iron pot. The children outside her door play the old game, imagine the sound of marrow dropping in clots, fingers bobbing to the top of her heavy soup. She stops it with a slap of her axe on the hard pack of snow. Spitting streaks of steaming spiced wine, she panics the tight jeer of children until they break and scatter. But Babushka Baba Yaga is not a witch. She’s a grandmother living in the grain shack: a hut standing on four legs carved with chicken feathers, leopard claws, spider web. Totems against the desperation laced into the eyelets of a remote village night. ...