BABA IAGA HAD A DAUGHTER, A PELICAN CHILD. THIS DID NOT PLEASE her particularly. The pelican child was stunningly strange and beautiful as well as being very very good, which pleased Baba Iaga even less. It was difficult to live as a pelican in the deep dark woods, but the pelican child never seemed to think she belonged to any place other than here with her bony, ill-tempered Baba and the cat and the dog. They all lived in a little hut on chicken legs and they were not uncomfortable. Baba Iaga did not care for visitors, so when anyone approached, the chicken legs would move in a circle, turning the house so that the visitor could not find the door. This, too, was acceptable to them all.

When Baba Iaga went away — which she did frequently though she always always returned — she would warn the dog and cat and her beautiful pelican child against allowing strangers into the house. Even if they do not appear as strangers, don’t let them in, Baba Iaga said. And she would go off on her strange errands in her iron mortar, which she would row through the heavens with a pestle. Often she would return with little fishes which the pelican and the cat relished and the dog did not. The dog had his own cache of food which he consumed judiciously — never too much and never too fast — though he did not hoard it. He was generous and noble to a fault really, though he was shabby and ferocious-looking.