Hel - Volume 3 (Part 1)

“I am saying that a journey is called that because you cannot know what you will discover on the journey, what you will do with what you find, or what you find will do to you.”

James Baldwin

Hel - Volume 3 (Part 1)
 
 
Baba Yaga sat cross legged on the rug in front of the fire.  It was an old rug, worn thin in many places to the point holes were beginning to form.  But it was soft, and familiar, and it held a lot of power.
 
With a delicacy few could understand, the young woman who appeared no older than thirty-two began the slow and tedious business of creating a Namatu.  Or… a voodoo doll in modern terms.
 
It was a gift, meant for a young girl who had been wronged by a powerful man she herself could not get to.  So, Baba Yaga thought she would even the odds.
 
Hours and hours of meticulous work it took Baba to finish the small likeness of the lithe yet greasy man.  With his stringy black hair and tarantula like arms and legs, and his hollow eyes.
 
Those she’s saved for last, though.  Because that’s how you transfer a bit of soul into a doll, a doll that would provide a young girl with some much-needed justice.
 
“Deep,” the young woman with the flowing red hair chanted as she began to rhythmically rock back and forth.
 
“Deep from bone, deep… let it flow,” she whispered in her raspy voice.
 
It was like this with the old ones.  The ones who’d walked since time itself began.  No special sacrifice, no alter, not even a candle or a knife.  Just the will of a woman… or rather a creature… willing to reach all the way into the depths of her very soul to call upon the threads of time itself.
 
“Deep,” the wise woman of ancient creed intoned, again and again, over and over, as her naked body rocked with the rhythm of some celestial tune only she could hear.
 
When it was finished there was no burst of light and no great crescendo to mark the deed as done.
 
There was just the swelling of her heart and the throb of impulse deep in her belly.
 
Three days later, after the charm had time to set, Baba Yaga made a short trip across three thousand years and roughly forty-two-hundred miles.
 
“He will be your thrall, now and always,” the young woman told the young girl of ten.
 
“Thank you,” the young girl with the blonde curls said.  Then she looked down at the doll she held in her hand.  It was perfect, down to the man’s arrogant grin and his many guns.
 
“I would ask… but I already know,” the ancient woman remarked with a sad smile.  Then she patted the young girl on the head.
 
“Just remember, whatever you do can’t be undone.  It’s absolute.”
 
And with that the mystic evaporated into the darkness of the girl’s bedroom.
 
No evidence of her having been there remained.
 
Except for the doll, and the warning.
 
“Why did you ask for it?” the young girl’s best friend asked the very next day.
 
“Because Danny loves him and wants to be just like him.  And after every new movie he’s even worse… hitting me all of the time.”
 
(There was much more that Jenny wanted to tell her friend, so many things that Danny had done.  But ten-year-old girls don’t have words for such things.)
 
“Why don’t you just tell your mom?” the best friend asked, though she already knew.
 
Still, it is the way of the young to rip off bandages to expose any festering beneath.
 
But Becky knew what she’d asked had hurt her friend, even before she’d finished asking the question, and so she winced the same time Jenny did.
 
“She never believes me cuz he rarely leaves a mark.  Besides, she can’t afford a nanny… and I can’t go stay with my uncle ever again.”
 
From the look in Jenny’s eyes it was easy for Becky to recall all of the stories she’d heard about Jenny’s uncle Ben.
 
So, this time Becky bit her tongue, and then asked instead, “What does it do?”
 
With a smile reminiscent of a slave finally given a whip, ten-year-old Jenny firmly replied, “Anything I want him to do.”
 
 
 




© Raena Exe 2023 
​*All rights reserved

---

---