“Why have you come to see me?” asked Baba-Yaga.

Prince Ivan answered, “You old hag, it would be better if you first gave me a drink, fed me, steamed me in the banya, and then asked this question.”  That she did, so Prince Ivan told her of his search for Vasilisa the Wise.

"Your wife is now with Koshchei the Deathless," said Baba-Yaga.  “It will be difficult to get rid of him.  The key to his death is in the tip of a needle.  That needle is in an egg; the egg is in a duck; the duck is in a hare; the hare sits in a stone chest; the chest is on a tall oak; and that oak, Koshchei the Deathless watches like his own eye.”

The next morning Baba-Yaga directed Prince Ivan to the tall oak.  He walked there and saw the stone chest.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, a bear ran up and dug out the roots of the oak.  The chest fell and broke.  From the chest ran a hare.  Another hare ran after it and tore it to pieces.  Out of the hare flew a duck, which rose into the sky.  A drake threw itself on the duck and— just as they collided— the duck released an egg, which fell into the sea.

Prince Ivan burst into bitter tears.  How could he find the egg in the ocean!  Suddenly the pike swam up to the shore, holding the egg in its teeth.  Prince Ivan broke the egg, took the needle, and began to crush its tip.  As he crushed it, Koshchei the Deathless writhed in pain, tossed and turned.  When Prince Ivan broke the tip, Koshchei died.

Prince Ivan went to Koshchei’s palace of white stone.  Vasilisa the Wise ran to him and kissed him.  Prince Ivan and Vasilisa the Wise headed for home and lived happily to a ripe old age.

Daniel W. Marshall is a free-lance writer based in Missouri.  Part two of this series, the story of Ruslan and Ludmila, will be published in the June 1995 issue of THE WORLD & I.