Old Slavic Lore: Bedtime Tales for the Sleepless
Some doors should stay shut. This book is full of them.
Before there were fairy tales for children, there were tales for the fire - told to keep people from walking certain roads after dark.
Old Slavic Lore: Book One gathers eleven of them: a well that gives back the voices of the dead, a mill that grinds only at night, a black rooster that crows when a village would rather forget, and Baba Yaga - not a villain to be outwitted, but something far older, and far less forgiving.
This is Slavic folklore the way it was actually told around the stove: slow, dark, and merciless, for readers who don't need a happy ending to find their way home.
Inside this collection:
The well that remembers every voice it has ever swallowedThe mill that grinds flour from something other than grainThe black rooster no one in the village wants to hear crowAn old man who loses his way in a forest he has walked his whole lifeBaba Yaga, keeper of an old and pitiless lawA tree that whispers the village's oldest, best-buried sinsA house that refuses, even now, to stand emptyThe Vodnik, who never forgives a debt to the waterThe Leshy, guardian of a forest that can no longer sleepA night of Kupala fire, and what it asks of the livingThree old powers, and the price of the choices they offerEach tale opens and closes the same way: a wanderer comes in from the dark, and an old storyteller offers shelter, warmth, and a story in exchange for company. Read one a night. Some of them you may wish you hadn't.
Eleven tales. The fire is lit.
Come in, wanderer - if you dare listen.
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