Q: Was there any scene that you wrote and later cut from the final version that still weighs on your mind? If so, what was it? But I never seriously thought I am a writer or even I want to be a writer. Not the kind who writes books you find in a bookstore. I hadn’t made the connection between what I did in my own head for fun and the work of others that I read. Strange things begin happening in their area. Animals are being killed with their meat left behind. The voice speaks to Konstantin again. And Anna see something during a church service that makes her start screaming. When Vasya looks the way that Anna’s eyes are facing, she thinks she sees the one-eyed man.

As she grows older, Vasya’s magical powers start to show themselves. She is able to see and befriend the ancestral spirits that protect those who leave them offerings. But her increasing powers attract the attention of Morozko himself, especially as the winter turns unduly harsh and he fully wakens. Vasya always possessed the second sight, which made for some interesting conversations with the various creatures living in and around her home. All the spirits that live in and around her house were quite peculiar,such as the origins of the domovoi: I am here because the house is here. If the house weren't here, I wouldn't be either Soon, Vasya's gentle childhood - spent conversing with the domovoi and the vazila (who guards the stables) - is put to an abrupt end.Atmosphere is the key word here: The Bear and the Nightingale captures that feeling of uncertainty and superstition. The characters are somewhere between the old and the new; believing in modern religion but still deeply tied to the stories of old - the creatures that hide in the dark, the demons lurking in corners, the spirits living in the woods.

An extraordinary retelling of a very old tale . . . A Russian setting adds unfamiliar spice to the story of a young woman who does not rebel against the limits of her role in her culture so much as transcend them. The Bear and the Nightingaleis a wonderfully layered novel of family and the harsh wonders of deep winter magic.” —Robin HobbSix years later, Vasya is now a mischievous young girl. She gets lost in the woods one evening and doesn’t make it home in time for dinner. The forest changes on her somehow, and she can’t find her way home. She finds a big oak tree with an old man sleeping under it. She wakes him and asks him to help her find her way home. Then another man on a white horse comes in to the clearing. Vasya asks him the same thing. Then he puts the old man to sleep again, which makes her uneasy.