The Language of Thorns
Chapters - Leigh Bardugo
Story 1: Ayama and the Thorn Wood
In a drought-stricken valley, a king imprisons his monstrous second son - born with red eyes and black fur - in a labyrinth, while in the same season the beautiful Kima is born and brings rain with her singing. Kima's plain, overlooked sister Ayama is made a servant in her own home. When the caged beast escapes, Ayama is sent into the thorn wood to face him, and by trading stories with him she finds her own courage and a voice that compels the truth. She forces the king to confess that he freed the beast himself to play the hero, and seals him in his own labyrinth. Gentled by her, the beast marries Ayama, and the valley learns to wish for brave children rather than beautiful ones.
On page: Ayama, Kima, Ma Zil, The Beast, The King of the Western Valley, The Queen of the Western Valley
Story 2: The Too-Clever Fox
Koja, an ugly runt fox who survives on cleverness, talks his way out of every trap and becomes a legend of the forest, befriending the nightingale Lula and the bear Ivan Gostov. When the celebrated hunter Lev Jurek arrives and the woodland creatures begin to die, Koja uncovers the truth: the real killer is Jurek's quiet sister Sofiya, who drugs and skins animals for a gruesome cloak. He tries to befriend her, only to be drugged and skinned alive - realising too late that her lure was loneliness, the one thing every creature she killed had shared. Lula attacks Sofiya and blinds her, driving her into the dark. Koja survives, scarred, and makes a quiet life with Lula, having learned to prize wisdom over mere wit.
On page: Koja, Ivan Gostov, Red Badger, Lula, Tatya, Lev Jurek, Sofiya, Tupolev
Story 3: The Witch of Duva
As famine grips a Ravkan village and girls vanish into the woods, a widow named Karina Stoyanova marries the carpenter Maxim Grushov after the death of his wife, and turns his daughter Nadya out into the forest. Nadya finds the gingerbread house of the witch Magda, who shelters her and teaches her the old magic. To break the village's curse, Nadya helps bake a gingerbread copy of herself and sends it home - where her father, the true monster behind the missing girls, devours it and dies in agony. Karina, herself a khitka, abandons him. Transformed for a time into a crow, Nadya watches her father buried in barren ground, then stays on with Magda, becoming a practitioner darker and more powerful than the witch herself.
On page: Nadya, Maxim Grushov, Karina Stoyanova, Magda, Vladchek, Baba Olya, Anton Kozar, Uri Pankin, Bela Pankin, Peli Yerokin, Genetchka Lukin·Mentioned: Havel
Story 4: Little Knife
Yeva Luchova, a duke's daughter so beautiful she must be kept hidden, is promised to whichever suitor can complete three impossible tasks. The poor Tidemaker Semyon the Ragged succeeds only because the river itself, sentient and in love with him, does the work; he names it Little Knife and falls for Yeva. But the river is a captive spirit of the great sea, dammed and enslaved, and when Semyon frees it, it claims Yeva as its bride and carries her away to the ocean. Yeva lives out her days alone by the sea, ageing in peace and free at last of her beauty. Semyon, betrayed, refuses to drink water and dies, and the Duke's mill town of Velisyana withers with the lost river - the spirit having chosen liberation over love.
On page: Yeva Luchova, Semyon the Ragged, Baba Anezka, Little Knife, The Duke
Story 5: The Soldier Prince
The clocksmith Droessen, a craftsman with something demonic in him, gives a girl named Clara Zelverhaus a nutcracker soldier. Over years Clara's longing wakes the nutcracker to life and carries her into a dream-world, though he comes to doubt whether he is real or merely her wish. When her brother Frederik Zelverhaus claims the doll, the nutcracker - aided by the Rat King, who wanted himself into being - escapes the cabinet, longing to choose his own life. Confronted by Droessen, who insists he is only wood, the nutcracker so fiercely convinces the maker that he is loved as a son that Droessen himself turns to wood and dies, and the nutcracker walks out a real boy. Clara grows up to write strange tales and Frederik to wander the seas, until Althea Zelverhaus finds a new doll in the cabinet and the cycle begins again.
On page: Clara Zelverhaus, The Nutcracker, Droessen, Althea Zelverhaus, Frederik Zelverhaus, The Rat King
Story 6: When Water Sang Fire
Ulla, a grey-skinned sildroher shamed by rumours of human, witch's blood, befriends the bright-voiced Signy, and the two are summoned by Prince Roffe to the surface to craft a magical gift for his father the king. Roffe plays them both - promising Ulla a place as his court singer and courting Signy as a future queen - and to make a flame that burns underwater they turn to forbidden blood magic, for which Roffe murders a boy. Burned and unable to return to the sea, Ulla is abandoned by Roffe, who frames her for the killing, and Signy chooses to leave with him. In grief and fury Ulla sings a storm that drowns the city of Söndermane and breaks the coast into frozen islands. She becomes a creature of the deep - the sea witch who waits in dark caves to bargain with the desperate - while Roffe rules with a silent Signy who never sings again.
On page: Ulla, Signy, Prince Roffe, Kalle, Hjalmar, Sigrid of the Eastern Current, Kettil·Mentioned: Edvin