She travels in a wooden mortar, wielding the pestle. The broom belongs to the same picture but has a different job: she uses it to sweep away the trail behind her. The ethnographer Andrey Toporkov has suggested the pestle came first, as a weapon, and the mortar was attached to her later by association.
Basis: Afanasyev (multiple tales); Toporkov on the mortar's origin · AI-generated
