Jack Frost's Bride

r heart to a village boy. This time she had lost it to a bannik. Perhaps it was the curve of the bathhouse spirit’s strong arms as he chopped wood for the banya

ng star Zorya goddesses and a bit to the north of dreams. Its residents’ actions were no exception to the mythic circles

veler. After birth, he toddled his first steps out of his mother’s womb into the wilds.

d sired him. Snegurochka melted with bliss at the sight of her newborn boy and in doing so scared away her lover. Banniks were never good fathers anyways. They were too concerned with steaming saunas and overseeing the ritua

roz’s stern gaze. He was half of frost, half

derworld below and thundering Perun the king of the gods above. The people still swore on the Earth Mother Mokosh in those days. They still spilled blood on the death goddess Mo

understand you. My father showers treasure down upon girls in need like ice crystals from clouds but never keeps them for himself. He gave me away once to the people and only took me back when I was on

. Petersburg in the Eastern Orthodox faith. The rulers burned the wooden idols of the old gods and erected crosses for

d tribute to the old gods as saints and renamed them. The peasants of dvoeverie double faith renamed the gods but never forgot them. Veles an

s kept under lock and key in his palace of ice and glass. It was lit only by flitting firebirds and jewel fresh diamond frui

fly across the northern wastes and shot arrows of steam at elk to be dried and cured in the smokehouse. His g

ed to the passage of t

er his mother’s stories

he rivers in the evening lest they stray upon the drowned human suicides. The dead girls, now siren rusalka, would sing and seduce them to a freezing watery death. The peasants prayed that the Amazonian vila, guardians of

to deliver presents to children across Russia at New Years. Father Frost was nothing if not good

t with his mother’s blessing and grandfather’s disgrace. He sought his fortune in cities and the wilds when nechist still walked Russia and beyond alongside

rough and through, and I would rather have nothing to my

, to the land of evergreen and birch