Ilya flung the door open and scampered through, nearly tripping on the rag-rug mat on the doorstep. The cold dawn air followed, nipping at his heels.
“Baba, Baba, Father sent me! The whole family’s working the fields and we need to get the plowing done before the storm!”
She was a silhouette against the blazing fire, hunched over, retrieving a blackened kettle from the flames. As she lowered the mass to the floor, she dropped the iron bar.
“Oi-yoi-yoi, that metal gets hot!” She rubbed her hands vigorously on her dress to cool them.
“Baba, father sent me to get you!”
She looked at him, confused, as if she had just noticed he was there. Her eyes scanned over to the open door. “We’re not heating the whole farm here. How many times do I have to tell you to close the door when you come in?!”
Ilya hurried over and swung the door shut with a snap. Baba watched him return with pink cheeks bowed.
“Sorry Baba, but Father said it was important.”
“What’s important to him is important to him,” she said. “Important is as far as it goes. I have my own work to do here.”
She turned from him and he felt the anxiety rising in his heart. Father can be very demanding, and Ilya worried now, seeing that his task of rounding up the old woman would be more difficult than he expected.
“But Baba,” he whined.
“Dyes don’t wait for fields, or cows, or sunrises, or even your father,” she said with defiance. “His work, my work. We all have work to do.”
“But the fields, the storm, he told me to get you right now,” he pleaded.
“It can wait,” she said, deadpan. And then instantly a smile flashed across her face like the first wink of sunlight above the morning horizon. “Come see what I’ve made!” she exclaimed with childlike glee.
Ilya’s brow crinkled all the more as he watched his stern, defiant grandmother shift moods in an instant. He walked over towards the fireplace and peeked around her shadow. Several pots were sitting at various distances from the fire; some deep-licked by flames into a rolling boil, others on the edge-coals wafting twirling whiffs of steam upwards into the rising smoke. Cooking vessels took on the visage of a sorcerer’s cauldrons, each bubbling and hissing in tune with the crackles and pops of damp wood.
“Go grab me a few more logs.”
Ilya’s mesmerized face turned away from the light and he obediently walked over and grabbed the few pieces that his small arms could carry. Baba poked at the crunchy coals around the kettles before adding more wood in just the right arrangement.
“Cook them too much and you lose the brightness. Undercook them and they’ll be pale and shallow.”
“What are these, Baba?”
“Egg dyes! A new batch, hopefully better than before. The dry weather nearly sucked all the color out of the flowers last year. My favorite recipe for fiery red instead made blushing, embarrassed shells,” she lamented. “They only last for one season,” she said as she gestured to the fire, “and these pots will be the colors for this Lent.”
She stooped and picked up the iron bar anew, its tip bent slightly upward. “Help me out here, onuk.”
He could tell by her effort that the bar must be quite heavy; even Baba’s strength could handle most tasks like the rest of them. With great labor, she clumsily hooked the wire handle of a kettle deep in the back of the fireplace. Ilya wrapped his small hands around the rod, alternating with hers, and together they lifted. His help was more symbolic, not strong enough to make much of a difference carrying the weight of rod and full kettle combined. But with a huff and a swing, they together fished out their catch and placed it next to the other on the hard-packed floor.
“Whew, that was heavy,” he said with some satisfaction at the completed task.
“Yes, thank you for your help, my growing boy!” She tussled his hair with her sooty hand. His glow of returned affection outshone the fire itself, and he quickly forgot the urgency with which he had returned from the fields.
The dawn light offered its purplish illumination to the house. As Ilya’s eyes adjusted from staring at the fire, he saw the nearby table covered in all manner of oddities. Several glass jars were intermixed with pottery vessels and ceramic bowls. Wooden mixing spoons were paired up with each container, their working ends stained with indeterminate hues. Two pitchers stood upright like watchmen: one, glassen, half-full with water, the other Ilya recognized as vinegar from the pantry.
These items, however, were well outnumbered by the piles of herbs spread like a village of anthills across the rest of the table’s space. There a stack of onion skins collected over the course of the year’s stew additions. Next to that a mound of wispy-curled petals with an indistinct reddish pallor. Some he recognized, like the shriveled, pellet-like elderberries nearly black in hue. Others were a mystery to him, or were mixed as herbal potpourris. A lumpy pile of yellow powder sat in an equally-yellowed mortar. Next to that a crumble of dried tree leaves; linden, perhaps? Or was it oak? A sampling of seeds encroaching upon a handkerchief covered in chips of bark, which itself was butting up against a lump of dried moss that seemed lifted straight off the good earth, peat layer and all. Shell husks and grasses, leaflets and stems, petals and rootlets; Ilya’s eyes never lingered long enough to categorize or identify each plant, instead coaxed from one mound to the next as he lost himself in the vast spread of Baba’s herbal laboratory.
“God painted the earth with His hues, and my favorite part of pysanky is using His palette on my eggs.” She spoke with a youthful exuberance that Ilya had never heard before, thus drawing him into her own love of the craft.
“Each herb is unique, from one species to the next, from one year to the next, even from one individual to the next.” She pointed at a pile of stringy rootlets. “These I collect only on the night of a full moon.” She walked sunwise around the round table, patting her hand atop a stack of leaves and compressing them slightly. “These are from the tips of the lowest branches of the old oak at the village edge.” Ilya knew the tree well, having finally climbed it successfully just this year.
Baba continued circling, “These seeds were collected after the second frost last year, then sealed in a wooden container in the root cellar. The first-frost seeds are never good to work with.” She concluded her statement as if it was common knowledge.
“And this!” She stopped abruptly and with a flourish. “This I bartered two summers ago from a band of gypsies from Galicia. I had to trade three sweaters and a heapload of carded wool, but it was worth it.” She picked up a small, ornate bottle about as tall as her hand, and about half the width. The cap’s pointed end, bejeweled, sparkled in the firelight as she floated it towards herself. She held it in both hands, ceremonially and with reverence, and she walked it over to her grandson. Sitting in a chair, her hands at the level of his face, she carefully unscrewed the top.
“What’s this,” Ilya asked with widening eyes.
“This, my onuk…is bugs!” She quickly opened the top and Ilya jumped back, startled by her surprise. Baba laughed as he crept closer: it wasn’t critters inside, but a bright red powder, a poof of which still lingered in the air from the quick opening.
“Where are the bugs,” Ilya asked with wrinkled nose as he cautiously peered into the vial.
“You’re looking at them!” She poked a finger down and lifted its tip, coated with red. “Little red bugs are dried and crushed into powder. I had to pick up a cast iron pot and an aluminum kettle to bring out their brightness. But they’re tricky to work with.” Her voice lowered to a whisper. “The secret is a couple handfuls of wood ash, cream of tartar too, cooked to perfection!” Their eyes met in a smile and she winked at him, dabbing her red fingertip on his nose before he could protest.
Baba capped the container and returned it to its spot on the table.
“But blue: there’s a secret still out of my reach. Skies, water, health and wellness: all of that must wait until I figure out how to make a blue dye that actually comes out tastefully blue!”
She stood up again and continued circling, speaking of pile after pile, each with its own character and personality, each adding its special contributions to her art. Ilya’s introduction to her craft was an initiation into the deepest and most guarded of secrets. Even at his young age, he knew that this was the magic of song and legend. And here it was his Baba—his very own Baba—as source and keeper of this magic.
“Pysanky without dye is just an egg with lines,” she exclaimed with a smile. “These plants give their life for the egg, and the beauty of the egg, in turn, gives that life back to the people.” She drifted to a stop, facing Ilya from the opposite end of the table.
“But, my Ilyusha, the dyes are as much about the preparation as they are about the plants. Here, come watch.”
She gestured him to her side where she picked up one of her several mixing containers: a deep, vase-like pottery vessel of brick-red river clay.
“This clay will bring out the brightness of these petals.” She pointed at a pile of roundish flecks that lay flat and dry. “Mix the same petals in a wooden bowl and the egg will barely change color.”
With both hands, she lifted a cup of water. “This is from the river: excellent for the root boilings. Delicate petals will blanch if they’re mixed with anything but spring water. Berries work best when I collect from an evening rainstorm. I’ve even found a use for the stinky water in the horse’s trough!”
With that, Ilya looked up with surprised joy. “Old Buriy helps you make your eggs?!”
Baba laughed, “Yes, I guess he does!” The new logs popped and crackled, adding their own levity to the moment.
Just then, the sun splashed its first rays through the window: a brief showing with shafts of light highlighted by the smoke that lingered in the house. Light that spilled across the table and, for a few moments, gave the herbs their own glow.
In the midst of the sun’s blessing, she picked up an empty kettle from the floor. And like an herbalist, a potion-maker, she began her mixture dance. The river water was poured at a height into the kettle, singing a metal song as it splashed against the sides. She reached deep across the table and lifted a pinch of yellow powder, sifting it between her fingers into the water. A heap of crumbled leaves was piled into her up-curved palm. She eyed the kettle, eyed the leaves, then returned a small bit back to the table before releasing them into the mixture.
Ilya could see her eyes soften as her heart measured each herb. Baba knew them all like dear friends, whispering to each as she went, face crinkling as she paid attention to her feelings, eye-lines smoothing when the plants revealed the next step.
As she continued, the shafts of light quickly faded behind the building storm clouds. The wind picked up, unnoticed by the dye-herbalist and her wide-eyed apprentice.
“Now a touch of vinegar, a stir with a wooden spoon, and this young yellow dye is ready to be cooked to maturity.” She held the spoon gently, stirring slowly with her entire body rather than just her hand and wrist. “One more chance here to add love and prayers before setting it in the fire.”
“All that work…why not just throw it all together? It would be a lot faster that way.”
Baba froze, cut deep by his flippant comment. “Mindless preparation is for those who want dead eggs,” her voice crackled with loathing as she poked a gnarled finger in his direction. “Without love in every step, what’s the point? I use God’s tools to do God’s work here; how can I give any less than my best?” Ilya regretted his question. “Each color touches the soul in its way, like painting the heart. Each egg is a spark of prayer and beauty in this world. And it all begins here, like this.” She gestured across the table with her spoon, its end dripping dye onto the arm of the nearby chair. “Without this, without love, I might as well fry my pysanky in a pan.”
Ilya dropped his eyes back onto the table and reflected on all that she had just shared with him. Here he lived with a true master of her craft, a master disguised as a quiet old woman. He looked up at her again as she worked through her momentary disappointment. He could see her whole glow change as she settled back into her prayerful mindset, and with that, her spoon returned to stirring the kettle’s contents. In the silence between them, they heard the first pelts of rainfall on the windowsill.
“Baba, can you teach me how to make dyes this way?”
His question broke the tension. Her face softened again, “For my only grandchild, of course! That would make me very happy, my little onu…”
Before she could finish, the door swung open with a shattering crack. Father burst in out of the dim light, shirt wet with the beginnings of the storm. “WHERE ARE YOU TWO?!” his voice boomed. Ilya and Baba both jumped, and she dropped the kettle to the ground, its contents spreading outwards under the table.
“I sent you to get her! And here you both are, not helping, not working!” His words were icy anger.
Baba yelped when the kettle hit the floor, and she fell to the ground with it, hoping to somehow salvage her brew. Her hands scraped across the floor in futile grasps, trying to gather up spirit with mere flesh.
“Old woman, we need everyone; I don’t have time for this. Why did you keep him?! What crazy talk have you been filling his ears with!? And you, child, will pay for your disobedience.” He grabbed Ilya by the collar and pulled him back towards the door.
“Your work, my work, we all have work to do!” Baba screamed over the intensifying roar of the rain.
He paused, Ilya still hanging from his grip, and shot her a dark stare. “What work is this, you groveling on the ground?! Your eggs don’t feed us, they don’t plow the soil. What use are you, old woman?” He yanked the now-crying boy out the doorway and back to the fields. Baba stood, defiant, sniffling back her own tears.
Thunder gurgled in the distance just as a gust of wind shot through the open door, filling the house with its chaos. It lifted the whole tableful of herbs, tossing them into the air with its diabolical, unseen hands. Baba screamed as she saw her collection taken up in a whirlwind. She reached out to catch the storm of plants, grasping at her scattered hopes and dreams.
As quickly as it came, the wind escaped back out the doorway with its whistling laugh as the rain poured down outside. Baba stood trembling, her hands still outstretched, caught between the grief of loss and a deep inner anger. Tears opened like floodgates as she collapsed, her hand sliding across the puddle of dye still spreading outward.
She flipped her wet, trembling hand upwards, yellow as sunshine. There in the creases of her palm was adhered a single, tiny seed that she squeezed deep and clutched to her chest.
The storm’s thunder boasted itself through the open doorway. Her scattered plants each cried their own colors into the wet, earthen floor. And the cauldrons kept bubbling amidst the wind-swollen flames.
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