All Roads Lead to Baba Yaga's

The Amazon Queen has heard that Baba is organising the Advent Calendar this year and has 'all hands on deck'. So she has made haste to be at Baba's and help with the preperations. The Golden Spinning Wheel will be heard whirling late into the night.

Donkey Tale - Name Games

My donkey, impishly grinned and said, "you don't know my name, do you?" "no," I answered. "Well," he mused, knowing I was embarrassed at neither knowing nor having tried to know, after all I could have asked. Trying to set it right I bit my lower lip and said in a barely audible voice, "what is your name?"

"Well," he teased, "it is not sweetie, or babe, or little donkey, and it most certainly is not you stubborn old thing." I tried to mutter an apology, again, he stood there, grinning.



"You can be insufferable." I was nearly crying.
"You've nearly made her cry" came a small voice just to the side of me. I was quite shocked as I was not aware that the geese in the gypsy camp were also able to speak.



"You can speak too?" "If you are willing to really listen, we can be heard to speak," the goose explained. "I'm sorry I did not mean to be insensitive, but since I did not know you could speak it seemed silly to ask you your names. Still I am truly sorry if any of the things I've called you made you feel hurt. Would you tell me now please, what are your names?"

"Mine is Ginny," said the goose, "and my grinning friend the donkey is Doncaster Grey, he likes to tease, don't feel too badly" with that ginny crawled into my lap like a cat, she was a lovely and affectionate goose. The donkey was still grinning and making faces.



"Alright, Doncaster Grey, what is it?" "Well," started the donkey while shuffling his donkey feet in the dirt, "I've been thinking I should like to have a Halloween costume too, just as the humans do. I thought I'd like to be and angel, after all I already have wings." It seemed like a fair enough request and after a bit of consideration I took Ginny off my lap and made a few changes to have Doncaster go from just plain old flying and talking donkey to an angel donkey.

Some glitter in the wings and sparkly eyelashes glued on and a halo fashioned from tin foil and wire. "Would you mind very much, marm, sketching me in costume, to remember the moment by?" so this is what I sketched. Donkeys can be very silly.

Spirit Servant and Medusa

Baba Yaga has bought in her Spirit Servant and the Medusa to avenge herself. Le Enchanteur can run but she will have trouble hiding from these two. Let's see how she gets herself out of this pickle. The Spirit Servant's plan is to capture her in a bottle and let her be a servant, at everyone's beck and call for awhile.

Short Lived Glory

Baba said it 'would all end in tears' and right now she is far from happy. Le Enchanteur will need to watch her back because Baba is not someone to toy with. Turning Baba into a purple dragon is not one of le Enchanteur's better ideas, especially when Augustus and Moonbeam are playing out their hero archetypes. Could be interesting come Halloween!

Tree of Lost Letters - Hermitage

copyright Monika Roleff 2005.

This is a tree of lost letters. Seeing Halloween is coming up, the Hermitage is welcoming lost letters, so if you have a letter that was lost, this tree has caught them all. Feel free to write that letter and make it breathe new life. Even if you just think the letter, it might come to pass. The tree is for lost wishes that are captured by nature, and may come true one day.....

Spells Abound

Le Enchanteur and The Amazon Queen are down at the Archipelago practicing some spells for Halloween. Baba has flown away saying that 'it is all going to end in tears'. You would think she'd be happy to be turned into a purple dragon and not a common and garden green frog. Some people just cannot be pleased.

The Golden Bone Chair

Baba Yaga brings out this designer, hand crafted, chair especially for Halloween and All Soul's Night. The idea is that travellers can take turns to sit on the chair and have five minutes in the spotlight as they perform for the crowd. Come October 30th - through to November 2 Baba is hoping that one by one travellers will take the golden seat and make a special presentation. Costumes and wigs are available in Pandora's Costume Box. Excuse drunken Silenus who can never miss a party. Hopefully the donkey is taking him away.

My Goodness, Is that?

My Goodness, Is that?

I come huffing and puffing the last little bit into the gypsy camp. The camp which until now I'd only watched from the hilltop. Somehow I've just been to tired to face too many people all at once. Today I am determined to take myself all the way to the bottom of the hill and look into the Sunday market.

There in the middle of a open area of grass just behind one of the few permanent houses sat an old woman. Not old really, more like weathered, as if there were several lifetimes carved into her knowing face. Her eyes looked through and beyond everything, or so it would seem. Maybe she was daydreaming off in some distant world. Her life might seem to her as mine now does to me, like nesting dolls, one life inside another. I don't know about the gysy but I cannot know if I am in the inner life, the outer one or one in between?

She seems oblivious to the goings on, ladies dancing, pied pipers piping, giggling girls putting up laundry and a lively kitten swiping away at butterfilies. My donkey is trotting off to meet with other donkeys at the other side of the camp, they too are making quite the commotion.

I think I'll just sit here and rest a while. I'll think if I really should tie the old gypsy scarf around my head and read cards as my aunt Anna taught me. Perhaps I might see what teas the guides suggest I prescribe for the betterment of the customer's health, all in the spirit of the market to profit the overall karma and barter back and forth for what we earnestly need.



My fingers nervously knot the scarf around my head. I shuffle my Marseille Tarot deck. I don't need the cards, they are a prop, a lovely prop once given to me by a dear friend, for seeing babies in her future, when her twins were born, she gave me this deck. These cards have been with me for thirty years. Twenty years since I last used them.

I slipped the deck in my volumenous skirt pocket, and slowly descended the hillside, stepping gingerly sideways hoping to not be noticed just yet. Baba looked up and smiled. "Good, you're here".