Who’s that on Baba Yaga’s fence?

'Vasilisa the Beautiful' webtoon by Julia Tar - https://julia_tar.artstation.com/projects/nJ4Dlr
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I want to tell you a story about Baba Yaga’s skulls. The ones that hang on her fence, presumably to ward off unwanted guests.

I always assumed that they were the skulls of her victims (or maybe her enemies?), but then I read the story of Baba Yaga and Zamoryshek, and… let’s just say, things take a dark turn.

In the story collected by Alexander Afanas’ev (the russian counterpart to the brothers Grimm) the “hero” Zamoryshek and his 40 brothers go on a journey to find someone to marry. Deciding to only look for sisters, they end up in a mountain palace fenced by 41 iron columns. I'm sure they thought the number was just a coincidence. This was the palace of Baba Yaga, who as it happens, had just the right amount of daughters. They have a nice meal, one thing leads to another and they are engaged! Later, Zamoryshek’s magical horse warns him that Baba Yaga means to do away with them, and that they should swap clothes with their betrothed. That night, after Baba Yaga's servants mistakenly took off the heads of her daughters, Zamoryshek and his brothers put them on the columns outside her palace as they fled. Enraged by what happened, Baba Yaga went after them with her fiery shield, burning down everything in front of her, but was unable to catch them.

I like to think that she was so distraught over the death of her daughters that she left the palace and became a hermit living in a forest hut, but she took the skulls of her daughters as a reminder of her hatred for the wicked.

In one of her most famous stories, Baba Yaga gave Vasillisa The Fair a skull with fire coming out its eyes, with which she burned her stepmother and stepsisters to a crisp, and in doing so, perhaps, quenched a morsel of Baba Yaga’s fury.