Marina and Pyotr have four children - a daughter, Olga, and three sons: Nikolai, Aleksandr and Alyosha. But soon Marina feels a quickening in her womb and feels that somehow this is the child she has been waiting for. This is the child she wants for herself, the one she must have, a daughter that will take after her mother.

Vasilisa Petrovna, Vasya, comes into the world just as her mother leaves it. She is an ugly child, with eyes too large, arms and legs too long, feet too big, all around too much. She is a headstrong girl, not afraid to look anyone in the eye, with no shyness that is expected of women, no qualms about doing what he wants at the bewilderment and censorship from the whole village.

Her father, Pyotr, soon realizes that he should get married again because someone needs to take care of the child. Her older sister is to be married and Dunya, the elderly caretaker is getting too old to care for a young, roguish child. So he goes to that capital and brings back Anna Ivanovna.

Anna is... strange. She wanted to go to the monastery because the church is the only place where she doesn't see "the devils". But when she is reluctantly married off ("to be some lord's breeding sow") and comes to the icy north where the old legends and the old gods are still revered she goes crazy. The fact that little Vasya seems to also see these creatures and is talking to them makes her even more irritable.

Convinced that Vasya will bring doom to them all, she urges Pyotr to marry her off, just get her away from their village. When the new priest, the lethally handsome Konstantin, comes to the village Vasya is vilified even more. Her refusal of behaving like a girl "should" chafes the young priest who is used to people venerating him, who is used to having people's attention, their love and fear. But Vasya will have none of it.

On the other side of the human struggles, there is a whole magical world. The old gods who have guarded the people against evil for centuries are now in peril of dying out because the priest has made people afraid, has made them worship the Christian god and abandon their long-time protectors. It is these little creatures that Vasya and Anna can see, thought they have utterly different reactions to them.

Being the one that sees them, and doesn't fear them, Vasya takes care of the spirits, talks to them and learns from their wisdom. She is entangled in a fight for the survival of he whole nation and it is exactly the things that made her an outcast that help her then. She is willing to see beyond what is expected and her courage and defiance help her see her goal through.

An element that I noticed throughout the story is the vilification of women. Whenever anything goes wrong, it must be a woman's fault. She is accused of being a witch and is ostracized or sentenced to death. In this story Vasya is given the option of becoming a nun or dying in the cold forest ("I must be a man's servant and a mare for his pleasure, or I must hide myself behind walls and surrender my flesh to a cold, silent god.") These are the patterns we still see, throwing all the blame on women, somehow always making them the source of evil, even in the most banal cases. A woman's place is in the home, with a husband and kids, and nothing else will fulfill her, right? Even in our modern society where women can have careers, the ones who do not seek to have traditional female roles in their private lives are somehow the reason for the apocalypse. And it is so nice to a see a woman, even in a book, not caring about any of it, simply following her path and pressing on until she realizes her full potential.

Anyway, read this book, don't you dare skip it. I will be reading the two sequels this month as well, so look out for that too. And, go - read.