The Winter of the Witch

AUTHOR’S NOTE

ALMOST FROM THE EARLIEST DAYS of drafting The Bear and the Nightingale, I knew I wanted to end my trilogy at the Battle of Kulikovo. This battle always seemed to me to create a natural point of reconciliation for many of the conflicts I wished to consider on the pages of these three books: the Rus’ against the Tatars, Christian against pagan, Vasya trying to balance her own desires and ambitions with the needs of her family and her nation.

The path I charted to get to the battle has varied wildly since those early days. But the destination never changed.

The Battle of Kulikovo really happened. In 1380, on the Don river, Grand Prince Dmitrii Ivanovich acquired his historical moniker Donskoi, of the Don, by leading a combined force from several different Russian principalities against a host commanded by the Tatar temnik Mamai.

Dmitrii won. It was the first time the Russian people combined under the leadership of Moscow to defeat a foreign adversary. Some have argued that this event marks the spiritual birth of the nation of Russia. I have chosen to take it as such, although in reality, the historical significance of this battle is the subject of ongoing debate. Who, if not the novelist, has the right to cherry-pick historical interpretations that suit her best?

My fairy-tale version of this battle ignores the incredible amount of political and military maneuvering that led up to the event itself: the threats, the skirmishes, the deaths, the marriages, the delays.

But the great events of my version of Kulikovo are drawn from history:

A warrior-monk named Aleksandr Peresvet really fought in single combat with a Tatar warrior named Chelubey, and died victorious. Dmitrii really did trade places with one of his minor boyars, so that he could fight with his men, unmarked by the enemy. Oleg of Ryazan really did play an ambiguous role in the battle: perhaps he betrayed the Russians, perhaps he betrayed the Tatars, perhaps he merely strove to chart a path between the two.

All that is true.

And perhaps, beneath the battle recorded by history, there was fought another, between holy men and chyerti, over how they were to coexist in this land of theirs. Who knows? But the concept of dvoeveriye, dual faith, persisted in Russia up until the Revolution. Orthodoxy coexisted with paganism in peace. Who is to say that wasn’t the work of a girl with strange gifts and green eyes?

Who is to say, in the end, that the three guardians of Russia are not a witch, a frost-demon, and a chaos-spirit?

I find it fitting.

Thank you for reading all the way to the end. I started this series in a tent on a beach in Hawaii when I was twenty-three years old, and now you are holding the final piece of that work in your hands.

I am still astonished by the journey, and more grateful than I can say that it happened.