The Doorway: A Dark Fairy Tale

The forest swallows her on the third day. Yara walks into the deep woods with blood on her hands and a question in her chest: What am I now? She was a midwife‘s apprentice, someone who stood between life and death. Then she killed a man who deserved killing-and discovered she could push people across that threshold just as easily as she could help them through it. She‘s not looking for forgiveness. She‘s looking for Baba Yaga. The witch in the house on chicken legs is supposed to be a monster. A test. A thing to be survived or outwitted. But when Yara arrives at the bone-fence and asks to stay-not to pass through, but to learn-she discovers that Baba Yaga is something else entirely: a threshold guardian, a keeper of the space between, a woman who has spent centuries holding the door for those who are ready to cross. Now Yara must decide what kind of threshold she wants to become. The Doorway is a feminist reimagining of the Baba Yaga myth-a dark fairy tale about violence, responsibility, and learning to hold the space between worlds without being consumed by it. For readers of Naomi Novik, Katherine Arden, and Madeline Miller.