Beginning of the Veshjuk tales. More info available at Oakpaw.com


         She came into the village on horseback. The night was windy but the breeze was warm: looking into the sky she saw all the stars and nodded. Yes, it was a safe time to venture into the mundane. So they trotted a bit faster and the warm winds whipped at their hair. 
           Puri Dai had never cared for the town, it was a place she grew from a chavie but she felt no regrets for leaving it. People were more accepting back then, they didn’t whisper “Shanti” with a hiss when she walked by. Now the clergy of the new church condemned her kind. The once free spirited Gypsies of the Czech and Romani people were now exhiled to the woods (the vesh).  Homes were burned and women and children slayed in the streets. Once honorable professions as Divination and herbal medicine were seen as evil deeds assisted by the church’s demons. Puri rolled her old yellow eyes at this.  She had been around long enough to know where the true demons lay.
         The horse balked and brayed at the sight of the village lights ahead. Puri patted the gray gelding’s side, “Calm Saster, we have business here,” and she gave a small kick to his side. He looked ahead and moved on, but with eyes as wide as lantern bulbs.  The town had changed so much since Puri had last been over two years ago. Even now at this desolate early morning hour the full moon showed the new freshly laid brick streets and the odd new churches and holy homes erected where parks and markets once were. The old spring that once marked the center of town now had a large well and fence around it. A signed marked the price to buy a bucket of fresh water. She shook her head as Saster calmly walked by: Is this what the future foretoll? Even what we need to live shall be used for profit? They walked on, soon they had reached the purpose of the nightly visit.  A small cottage that was rumored to be housing gypsies.  Surely the family would be slaughtered if the Vatican knew. It was the duty of one of the veshjuk  to lead them to safety. 
         Yes, Puri Dai the old Baba Yaga of the gypsy people was not like you and me, she was a veshjuk, a soul that made too many mistakes in it’s first life and was cursed to return in the next as a werewolf. No one really knew how old the Baba was, she seemed ageless and her weathered face showed only a few wrinkled beneath the fur. But that didn’t matter, she had an important job to do.
        Puri slowly let her old bones down from Saster, who nudged her with a smile and walked up to the wooden door. She held her breathe as she knocked three times. 
         

            The gypsies of the camps in the Forrest and by the river. She pulled some of her mane away from her eyes.  Her long silver hair matched the full moon above, and the deep yellows of her eyes pierced the darkness.  To a stranger in these lands she would appear a banshee, but to those who have lived in this part of the Czech country side she was a sage and a healer. Even though she was a wolf.
	Yes, Puri Dai the old Baba Yaga of the gypsy people was not like you and me, she was a veshjuk, a soul that made too many mistakes in it’s first life and was cursed to return in the next as a werewolf. No one really knew how old the Baba was, she seemed ageless and her weathered face showed only a few wrinkled beneath the fur. But that didn’t matter, she had an important job to do.