Chapter 1: Frostbite

The prince was born in the northernmost kingdom, with the aurora borealis for his bower. His mother was Snegurochka the Snow Maiden, who once long ago had lost her 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 that had done Snegurochka in.  Perhaps it was his rascal smile.  Whatever it was, it had worked.  Taking unattainable lovers was a snow maiden habit, after all. 

Time tended to move in cycles in Buyan, home to the Slavic spirits.  Buyan was a land a bit west of the morning and evening star Zorya goddesses and a bit to the north of dreams.  Its residents’ actions were no exception to the mythic circles of their fairytale land.  Snegurochka’s heart was notorious for wandering and it too fell victim to Buyan’s ebb and flow. 

Just like his mother’s heart the prince, a strange mix of steam and snow, was born a traveler.  After birth, he toddled his first steps out of his mother’s womb into the wilds.  Snegurochka had to catch him in her snowflake-spun arms before he disappeared for good.

He was named Morozko after Snegurochka’s Father Frost, or Ded Moroz’s present-giving ways.  Ded Moroz was the Winter King that wanted little to do with a bastard prince and much less to do with the rabble-rousing bannik that had 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 rituals of the banya to make attentive parents.  Banyas were the heart of Russian communities and banniks, overseers of the rituals of the bathhouse, had little care for their offspring.  They considered the banya their only children.

So Morozko grew up fatherless save for Ded Moroz’s stern gaze.  He was half of frost, half of fire, and nothing at all like his family.

“Mother, why does dedushka hate me?” Morozko asked before Russia was little more than a land fought over by pagans erecting poles the to snakeskin Veles the chthonic god in the underworld 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 Morena’s altar. And Baba Yaga, fabled witch of the mountains, devourer of wandering children, was watching.  The hag of the iron teeth was young, though she never remotely looked it.

After asking about his grandfather, Snegurochka had enfolded the sparks in her son’s hands and molded them into a rose of fire encased in ice.  “You are a treasure, Kolya.  That is why Ded Moroz does not 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 Morena’s doorstep.  Ded Moroz is known for winter’s barrenness, not summer’s warmth, and you are your father, all heat.  My father does not know what to make of such a rare jewel as you, my dearest prince.”

Tsar Vladimirs came and conquered, ambitious princes of Kievan Rus uniting Russia.  The capital city was rechristened St. Petersburg in the Eastern Orthodox faith.  The rulers burned the wooden idols of the old gods and erected crosses for the new.  The kings and magistrates dunked the pagan Slavs in the capital’s river to baptize them in impromptu fashion. 

Baba Yaga watched from her chicken hut all the while stroking her chin hairs, smoking her pipe, waiting.  The pagans, now Christians, still paid tribute to the old gods as saints and renamed them.  The peasants of dvoeverie double faith renamed the gods but never forgot them.  Veles and Perun retreated, the Zoryas abandoned their shining star thrones, and Mokosh slept deep below the mountains at the base of the Tree of Life.   

And one god with a rotting black heart took another name.  He watched, coveting, always waiting.  He had a thousand princesses kept under lock and key in his palace of ice and glass.  It was lit only by flitting firebirds and jewel fresh diamond fruit.  Still, it was missing a crucial light in all the dead magnificence.  It was something that would haunt Morozko in due time.

Morozko paid little attention to the rise and fall of immortals.  He was too busy growing.  He watched cranes fly across the northern wastes and shot arrows of steam at elk to be dried and cured in the smokehouse.  His grandfather barely tolerated him, Snegurochka loved him, and that was enough to churn butter for a small while.

Morozko gave little heed to the passage of the gods into history. 

One day he would remember his mother’s stories of Chernobog the Black.

Nechist - what the farmers in fields called land spirits - continued life in Buyan unaffected by Christianity, like Snegurochka and Morozko.  Peasants still left out kasha for house elf domovois.  Humans continued avoiding the 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 the weather, would not drench crops in rain.  Once in a blue moon, a wild girl would wander back to her village covered in moss and half-mad having escaped from an ill-fortuned marriage as a wood wife to a forest king leshy.

Thanks to shifting belief, Ded Moroz became something like Santa and rebranded the family business to deliver presents to children across Russia at New Years.  Father Frost was nothing if not good at giving away gifts like blizzards.  He and Snegurochka worked with the efficiency of a snowstorm.

Still Morozko couldn’t summon a single snowflake, much less command the winds to carry him to merchant’s homes and give their daughters baubles.  So he set out 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 humanity.  Morozko threw his icy crown off the ends of Buyan’s glaciers and renounced Ded Moroz’s heritage.  He was fully content to be a bannik, not a prince.

“To hell with princehood,” he muttered, “I’m a bastard through and through, and I would rather have nothing to my name and be free than be bound by convention and a court.”

So Morozko set off past the glaciers, to the land of evergreen and birch, and Snegurochka wept tears of ice.