Perhaps we should call for Prince Ivan, the dog suggested.

Useless, Baba Iaga said. He has his princess and his castle. He never calls, he never writes, he is of no use to us.

We will put the beautiful pelican child in the oven, the cat announced.

I couldn’t bear to put my daughter in the cold cold oven, Baba Iaga said.

Who said anything about cold, the cat said. We will preheat it to oh say, two hundred fifty degrees and we will put her in for only half an hour.

Half an hour? the dog said.

That stove hasn’t been used in years, Baba Iaga said.

But they did what the cat suggested for what else could they do?

Carefully, they lay the pelican child in the oven which was no longer cold but not too warm either. Oh her beautiful face, Baba Iaga cried, her beautiful bill, take care with her bill.

Then they waited.

Has it been a half an hour yet? the dog asked.

Not yet, the cat said.

At last the cat announced that it had been half an hour and Baba Iaga opened the oven and the pelican child, as beautiful as she had ever been, tumbled out and tottered into their happy arms, alive.

After this, Baba Iaga continued to fly through the skies in her mortar, navigating with her pestle. But instead of a broom, she carried the lamp that illuminated the things people did not know or were reluctant or refused to understand. And she would lower the lamp over a person and they would see how extraordinary were the birds and beasts of the world, and that they should be valued for their bright and beautiful and mysterious selves and not willfully harmed for they were more precious than castles or the golden rocks dug out from the earth.

But she could reach only a few people each day with the lamp.

Once, seven experienced its light but usually it was far less. It would take thousands of years, tens of thousands of years perhaps, to reach all human beings with the light.