by Freya
Growing up in Kiev, Ukraine, I loved reading and listening to fairy tales. These stories, filled with Slavic flavor, were opening up a new world for me, a world where one is to learn lessons and always to succeed, a world in which no matter how many hardships and terror a good character goes through, he or she always succeeds, a world in which a goodness always defeats an evil. Being my hide-away from the harshness of reality, that world was very much sought by me at all the times. Yet, this world absolutely needed to have a few definite characteristics to serve its purpose: the fairy tales I loved to read and re-read had to have Baba Yaga as one of its evil characters. The more evil this character was, the scarier her description, the more vicious her behavior, the better I liked the fairy tale. So who was this Baba Yaga character and what was it in this evil creature that drew me to read and re-read multiple fairy tales, in which I was seeking a camouflage from reality?
Witch's Well 