2004-05-26 - 6:33 p.m.

I woke up in a sweat and this is what I remembered. whether it really happened or not, I can't really say. I don't actually know that this was a dream.

the forest was dark and there was a wetness in the air. like the night was sweating. the full moon cast an unblinking eye down upon the canopy of trees that filtered the silver light so that there were tiny stars on the ground, specks of luna.

there was a firelight in the distance, a small campfire smelling already of wet leaves and burning meat, burning hair, burning flesh. yet still I was drawn toward it, foot in front of foot, over dead leaves, in the direction of something I knew I didn't want to visit.

around the campfire, a clearing had been made, a circle in the woods illuminated by this little fire. across the fire from me was placed a small wooden bench carved and haphazardly formed out of some tree as dark as the night itself; a wretched thing that could not have possible been holding itself together. and perched atop the bench, a woman.

a woman of preposterous girth, fat and vile to no end, with hair so stringy and oily to almost not be hair at all, but instead strands of tiny worms. yet despite her girth, she possessed spindle-like legs, the legs of a sand-piper, legs that should not have been able to hold her up. my eyes were then focused upon her face, hideous and demonic. devil eyes sunk deep into her skull, one small and squinting, the other open so wide that she may not have been able to shut it. her nose stretched out from her face as if it was trying to escape her ugliness and her chin jutted out below her neck. but her teeth, god her teeth. inside her mouth where teeth should be were not canines and molars and incisors, but shards of jagged metal, things I knew in my heart that were used to rend the flesh from visitors such as myself. clenched in her maw was a tobacco pipe emitting the foulest smoke that crept up into the night air with the leisure of something that knows it will not be forced upon any course other than its own.

and behind her stood a small thatch hut that could not have possibly kept the elements at bay. and this hut did stand upon two giant chicken legs with its door facing away from the woman and myself.

and baba yaga smiled at me and I almost died.

and we held concert with each other and discussed many things, for despite her appearance, she was quite cordial with me. but perhaps this was because I was quite formal with her. the things we talked about, I do not know. the subjects escape my memory. yet at some point, it caused baba yaga to become very interested in what I had to say, for she then said this to me, through clenched steel:

"we do not normally make deals like that around here."

it was at that moment I realized that, though we were alone, we were not. other beings were present with us and had been the entire time.

baba yaga continued to speak at length and after some time, made to rise. she had with her now a giant pestle and mortar which she climbed into. one last time, she smiled at me and I almost died. she spoke these words:

"it is done."

and with three beats of her pestle against her mortar, she took to the night, screaming and howling.

***

and so it was that I awoke drenched in sweat and quite afraid. I had entered a pact with baba yaga. and for what? at what cost? I haven't a clue. and while it had happened while I was asleep, I cannot be entirely sure that it was a dream.

***

"in the black shadow of baba yaga babies screamed and mothers miscarried; milk soured and men went mad.

below, jews were burned in their houses and gypsies were beaten to death. night birds screamed and owls hooted and wolves howled."

from the hunt, a chapter of the sandman by neil gaiman

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