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A Peek into the Picnic Basket
Nov. 26th, 2019 08:18 amHappy Tuesday! I thought I would go ahead and post an excerpt from my upcoming novel, The Wolf and the Girl, because… why not, I suppose! Tuesday is a good day for posting things.
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In the spring of 1911, when the snow was still on the ground, Mariya Petrovna walked through the woods to her grandmother’s house with a round loaf of rye bread in her basket.
Masha’s grandmother did not live in the village of Kostin with all the other peasants, but a little way outside it, in a cottage in a birch grove in the forest. She was a good help to have at your side during a birth or a death, and it was said that she’d saved Count Michugin himself when he was a little boy suffering from fever; which all in all meant that she was a person of power, and the villagers were a little afraid of her. As she grew old and bent, everyone began to call her Babushka, and the children began to whisper that she was a cousin of Baba Yaga, the old witch who lives in the forest in a cottage on chicken legs. One day Masha, quiet Masha, sweet little round-faced Masha, surprised everyone by punching big Foma Fomavitch in the nose after he made chicken noises at her.
No one talked about Baba Yaga in front of Masha after that.
A few of the girls in the village used to come to Babushka’s house to hear her tell stories. Not that they believed her stories of talking blini and men who turned into wolves, of course, for they had all been to the school Count Michugin set up in the village; but a good story is a good story. And perhaps there was something to the talk of Babushka’s powers, after all, for all these girls went on to great things, by the standards of the village, at least.
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***
In the spring of 1911, when the snow was still on the ground, Mariya Petrovna walked through the woods to her grandmother’s house with a round loaf of rye bread in her basket.
Masha’s grandmother did not live in the village of Kostin with all the other peasants, but a little way outside it, in a cottage in a birch grove in the forest. She was a good help to have at your side during a birth or a death, and it was said that she’d saved Count Michugin himself when he was a little boy suffering from fever; which all in all meant that she was a person of power, and the villagers were a little afraid of her. As she grew old and bent, everyone began to call her Babushka, and the children began to whisper that she was a cousin of Baba Yaga, the old witch who lives in the forest in a cottage on chicken legs. One day Masha, quiet Masha, sweet little round-faced Masha, surprised everyone by punching big Foma Fomavitch in the nose after he made chicken noises at her.
No one talked about Baba Yaga in front of Masha after that.
A few of the girls in the village used to come to Babushka’s house to hear her tell stories. Not that they believed her stories of talking blini and men who turned into wolves, of course, for they had all been to the school Count Michugin set up in the village; but a good story is a good story. And perhaps there was something to the talk of Babushka’s powers, after all, for all these girls went on to great things, by the standards of the village, at least.
( Read More )
