Free Enchantments: A Novel of Rasputin's Daughter and the Romanovs by Kathryn Harrison Page A

beginning of his story, the part Alyosha asked for more often than any of the others, was the story of Handsome Alyosha and Baba Yaga.
    Handsome Alyosha had a cruel stepfather who made him do all the most menial chores while he and his ugly sons lazed about. But Handsome Alyosha had a secret. Before his real father died, he had called his son to his bedside and from under his pillow he pulled a little soldier doll. Keep him with you wherever you go, Alyosha , his real father said, and never let anyone see him. If you get into trouble, give him a morsel of food and ask his help .
    And so he did. The stepfather thought he could destroy Handsome Alyosha’s health and good looks by working him to death in the cold while he and the louts who were his sons warmed themselves by the hearth, but it was the soldier doll who chopped wood and drew water from the well. Since the wicked ones made no effort to help Handsome Alyosha, they never saw how it was that the brave doll hunted and dressed the game he killed. Be sharp, little sword , said the doll to his knife, be swift , and so it was.
    One day, when his useless lazybones stepbrothers allowed the fire to go out, Handsome Alyosha’s stepfather sent him to Baba Yaga to fetch a light, and the doll told the boy to be brave and do as he was asked. As long as he kept the doll in his pocket, no witch could harm him. But Handsome Alyosha couldn’t help but feel frightened, for, as everyone knows, Baba Yaga eats children. She flies through the night in a mortar, using the pestle as a rudder and a broom to sweep away the traces.
    “What traces can she make if she flies?” Alyosha asked.
    “Why, the bits of hair and gristle she spits out. The fingernails and the teeth.”
    Handsome Alyosha could hardly speak for fear when he found that the hut was made of human bones. But, Little hut, little hut, turn your back to the forest, your front to me , he said when he reached its door.
    Naturally, Baba Yaga didn’t give a boy what he asked for until he had performed the usual sorts of terrible tasks witches imposeon children. Baba Yaga flew off in her mortar and left Handsome Alyosha behind to kill the thousand snakes in her corncrib and to fill her wood box with tinder gathered on a distant mountaintop, and all the while the hut’s frightful scaly legs went on dancing so wildly the furniture flew about the room. But with the help of the soldier doll, Alyosha accomplished his impossible chores easily. He even bridled Baba Yaga’s three bewitched horses, red for the sun, white for the day, and black for the night.
    How did you! Baba Yaga screamed, when she flew home and found she couldn’t punish the boy.
    My father’s blessing , Handsome Alyosha answered, as he knew this was the one magic Baba Yaga could not overcome. She had to give the boy fire as well as a skull in which to carry it home.
    Handsome Alyosha walked through the dark forest without further trouble, holding the skull so its flame-bright eyes shone like headlamps to show him the way through the trees. When he reached his home, the fire leapt out of the skull and burned up the stepfather and stepbrothers as just desserts for their unkindness. Three heaps of ashes, that’s all that was left of them.
    “And then?” Alyosha would prompt.
    And then Handsome Alyosha kept the magic soldier doll in his pocket until the day he died, when he was no longer a poor boy but the tsar of all Russia, an old man who had fought many battles and won many wars and who had nine hundred and ninety-nine great-grandchildren. That’s how far his dying father’s blessing had taken him and why the story was Alyosha’s favorite. Often in danger of being extinguished, the life of Handsome Alyosha was filled with peril and impossible quests, even more so than the real Alyosha’s.
    I knew I couldn’t help him as my father had done, couldn’t whisper to the clamoring blood and stop its flow. Couldn’t lay a hand on an injury and make it disappear.