Into the Forest: Tales of the Baba Yaga

Teeth gnash. Bones rattle. The forest waits.

Deep in the forest, behind a fence crowned with skulls, an old woman waits in a cottage perched on birds’ legs. She is witch and grandmother, helper and devourer, giver of life and bringer of death. For centuries, Baba Yaga has embodied the contradictions women are taught to fear: age and appetite, wisdom and wickedness, nurture and rage. She is wild, she is woman, she is witch—and somewhere beneath our own skin, we recognize her.

From the oldest S...