Reimagining Folklore: The Polish Inspiration in A.B. Poranek’s Where the Dark Stands Still

You know the story. A traveler goes into the woods, sees a beautiful flower growing from a bush near a mysterious manor, and is greeted by the monster that dwells within. But this isn’t “Beauty and the Beast.” What lives in the woods of Where the Dark Stands Still by A.B. Poranek is something much more dangerous than a cursed prince, and the girl who agrees to work for him for a year is far from helpless. Instead, Liska is a girl trying to get rid of her own curse—a magic that she doesn’t want, and seems only to harm those around her—and the Leszy is the guardian demon of the woods. Despite what everyone knows about demons, Liska makes a bargain, and in doing so discovers how much of what everyone knows is utterly wrong.

Where the Dark Stands Still has a very fairy tale feel: the qualities of the young person entering the woods and encountering greater magical forces is reminiscent of many familiar stories. The magical manor that feels almost like a living thing itself evokes not just the enchanted house of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast (admittedly a film Poranek adores), but also the nearly-sentient house on chicken legs of Baba Yaga. Secrets hidden behind locked doorways might offer that same creepy feeling of all not being right that readers encounter in “Bluebeard.” But more than any of these tales, Where the Dark Stands Still draws on Polish folklore, the same stories that Poranek grew up with. When asked about the comparison to other European fairy tales, Poranek acknowledges, “There are similar elements: the flower, the library, the monstrous boy, but they were never intentional—these are just elements I’ve always enjoyed in stories.… I think a lot of fairytales tend to echo each other, since we always gravitate towards certain morals, like seeing the beauty within or helping those in need.”

In the story, Liska seeks a mythical fern flower, one that will grant a single wish. There’s nothing Liska wants more than just to fit in, and fitting in means getting rid of her magic. If only she were normal, she would have an intact family, and a friend who still cared for her like a sister. But something truly awful has happened, and it has driven Liska to this one last hope. However, finding the flower means navigating the Driada, a spirit wood where the demon warden, the Leszy, has trapped demons who will harm human travelers. The Leszy defends the mortals within the Driada’s boundaries, and they offer him tithes for the service. But he’s still a demon—or so Liska believes—which makes him dangerous, and not to be trusted. When the Leszy guides her to the fern flower in the guise of a white stag, he makes her a bargain: she must serve him for a year, and he will grant her wish. She knows it’s a trap, but she sees no better alternative. After all, what is a year when she will have the rest of her life without magic?

But as Liska serves the Leszy, who seeks to free her magic away from where she has locked it, she begins to realize how little she understands about the world beyond the borders of her small village. In order to help the Leszy keep humans safe, she must open herself up to the possibility that her magic might be useful. And once she does, she has to confront that perhaps she has never really considered what she wanted in life, only the life that was planned for her. Surrounded by a delightful cast of supernatural characters—a skrzat house spirit, a czarownik who has used magic for a lifetime, a siren-like rusalka, and more—Liska develops the vision of what the world should be, the duty of keeping others safe from harm, and the understanding that the wood must always have a warden.

Though Poranek grew up in Canada, she summered in Poland with her grandparents and was brought up on Polish folklore. “It was always a part of my life. My grandfather would often tell them to me before bed, but I also encountered many watching Polish TV through a type of kids cartoon called Dobranocki, and through cassette tapes my parents bought for us (yes, I still remember those),” she explains. But it took years for her to appreciate this part of her heritage, and to appreciate how unique the fairy tales were, as well as how much they impacted her as a writer.

Every sentence of Where the Dark Stands Still is steeped in that folklore: the architecture, the clothing, the names, and the geography all feel inherent to the world. Even the dance between paganism and Christianity is handled deftly, and with care, on the pages. “There’s actually a fascinating link between the Church and folklore in Poland specifically,” Poranek shares. “Poland was ‘baptized’ into Catholicism by King Mieszko I, an act which strengthened his rule and his alliance with the rest of Christian Europe. This meant Poland underwent a slow transition between paganism and Christianity, allowing a lot of pagan traditions and stories to endure, sometimes by being given a Catholic veneer.” The blending of those traditions is clear from czarowniks—called witches by the church—and spirits, who revere the Christian God. Late in the novel, a czarownik says to Liska, “Perhaps I have grown sentimental and mad in my age, but I think God himself put you on this path.” The practice of old magic and the devotion to the Christian faith are not treated as dual in nature by those who follow the older traditions, only by certain, rather uppity clerics who deem magic monstrous. There is, the novel seems to say, room for both.

There’s also room for romance, despite the shy young girl at the beginning of the novel encountering a man who seems to be a monstrous, deer-skulled demon at their first meeting. But as the Lesky grows to see Liska as more than a “not-so-clever fox,” as he nicknames her, and Liska comes into her own agency, it’s unsurprising that feelings grow between them. “I personally am a big lover of immortal love interests,” Poranek confesses. “I think there’s something so fascinating about the relationship between love and mortality and this idea of a world-weary character unaffected by time being humbled by someone who is young and bright and full of life.” But it was also important to her that the the power dynamic between the two become even: at the beginning, the Leszy is holding all the cards, has all the experience, and knows all the magic. But the gap shrinks: “By the end, their dynamic has switched entirely,” Poranek promises.

Although this is Poranek’s novel, she has plenty of suggestions for readers eager to explore more Polish-inspired fantasy. First, readers should seek out one of her favorite fairy tales, “Szklana Góra” or “Glass Mountains.” She describes it as “very surreal and surprisingly dark, involving a princess trapped in a castle atop a mountain of glass, a golden apple tree, and a young man willing to do anything to free her.” She also suggests Don’t Call the Wolf by Aleksandra Ross, which draws on that fairy tale for inspiration, and Naomi Novik’s Uprooted, “which is the book that initially gave me the confidence to write Where the Dark Stands Still,” she says.

But given the journey Liska goes through and the twists near the end of the tale, it’s a good bed that readers will want to read Where the Dark Stands Still more than once, letting the ambiance of the Leszy’s magical House Under the Rowan Tree, the companionship of the prickly not-quite-a-cat house spirit Jaga, and that sense that there is always hope sink deep into their bones. This is that kind of novel, with quiet moments that sneak up on readers in the middle of the action, making them breathe in the world and reside there for a spell. For all that the wood is weird and frightening, it is also beautiful and powerful—as is the tale set within its boundaries.

Alana Joli Abbott is a reviewer and game writer, whose multiple-choice novels, including Choice of the Pirate and Blackstone Academy for Magical Beginners, are published by Choice of Games. She is the author of three novels, several short stories, and many role-playing game supplements. She also edits fantasy anthologies for Outland Entertainment, including Bridge to Elsewhere and Never Too Old to Save the World. You can find her online at VirgilandBeatrice.com.