She is able to see and befriend the ancestral spirits that protect those who leave them offerings. According to Dunya, the cold evil that serves Morozko is only kept away from the villages because the peasants honor and feed the spirits of their ancestors.Īs she grows older, Vasya’s magical powers start to show themselves. She is raised by Marina’s old nursemaid, Dunya, who spends the evenings telling Vasya scary stories about Ivan and the Gray Wolf, the Firebird, and most terrifying of all, Morozko, the demonic king of winter. Vasilisa, nicknamed Vasya, grows up wild and adventurous, rebelling against the behavior that is supposed to be appropriate for girls. But when Marina prays to the old gods for a special child who would inherit her bloodline’s latent magical powers, she gives birth to Vasilisa and dies in childbirth. He and his wife, Marina, are almost completely happy protecting the peasants and raising their four children. In medieval Rus, Lord Pyotr Vladimirovich’s northern estate encompasses several villages at the edge of the wild forest. Writing in the fantasy genre that mixes realism with magic, Arden sets her story in the wintry darkness that backgrounds many Russian fairy tales, while updating the attitudes and gender politics of the time for a modern audience. The Bear and the Nightingale tells the coming of age story of a girl whose bond with the supernatural traditions of her village comes into conflict with the spreading influence of Christianity. In 2017, American author Katherine Arden published the first of her trilogy of young adult fantasy novels featuring elements of Russian folklore.

The bear and the nightingale book