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On the third evening of every week, dozens come to Stalactite Keep to hear the storyteller teach about the place beyond Wonderland. Tonight, with only dewdrops of honeycomb light seeping through the cells of the sky, Creed told them of toys.
Recent scholarship has shed considerable light on many previously puzzling or mysterious aspects of the life of the Baba Yaga—or, as some would still have it, the Baba Yagas. But one element has remained largely unstudied, and indeed, almost completely ignored.
The coffin she carried had felt like an imposition at first—a holy imposition! a welcome imposition! but an imposition nonetheless. But by now she had carried it on her shoulders out from the tenth school, carried it across plains, up and down canyons.
My son tells me that there’s a man in the house, someone he hears well after the lights are out, in the narrower halls or maybe at the far side of the den—a gait and creak he’s certain isn’t me or his mom, since he can hear us both breathing heavily and tossing in our sleep.
Posit a man. He could be any man. She could be a woman. They could be any human being anywhere on the spectrum. The story would play out the same. This is, however, entirely the creation of a writer who has written plenty of formidable women, and so he exerts authority for this one time and says that this is a man,
Finneus Lark finds the man nestled inside of the abdominal cavity of a doe, his skin so pale that his veins are like spiderwebs. Slick with visceral fluid, leaves and petals cling to the man’s bird-boned wrists. His face, haloed by damp curls and crowned by the doe’s diaphragm, is so peaceful he might as well have been asleep.
Kharatet moistens his sightless eyes with his tongue as he draws his finger across the limestone tablet glyphs. His audience today is a clutch of toddling nymphs, motionless save for their short tails rippling the shallow water impatiently. It’s a good age to read to, while the little ulmuns are still young enough.
The first time you can’t answer the question, you are already within the Great Dragon. Any bad decisions today? Mindy’s text reads. Around you, the Great Dragon’s pistons squeal, stutter, while the crew’s stressed voices echo above and below you.
To hear us sing is to know /your/ desire. The one you call captain, ruled by many longings, orders himself bound to the mast. Salt-cracked hands secure him. The prow’s a wedge to split the sea, carrying you toward /your/ fate: a role in /his/ story.
The unkind witch in Hook Tree Woods has little use for people. Mothers and sisters, obviously, will only disappoint you, and friends—well. She never had many of those. Her only friends now are snakes and toads, who are far preferable to humans.
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